About the horn of unforgiveness

How easy is it for you to forgive? Easy/difficult? Or something you don’t even dare? Are you one of those people who say they can forgive but they can never ever, ever forget? Lol… I used to be like that.

I attended a service in Asaba late in 2014 and my father preached on the horn of unforgiveness. As always I made notes you can share in, so welcome to church!

He started by saying, the company you follow/accompany determines what will follow/accompany you. I totally agree.

Zechariah 1:17-21

Unforgiveness is refusing to let go of something or someone who in your opinion hurt you.

Unforgiveness is not holding my peace and letting God fight for me but forcing Him out of my fight because I want to do it all myself. That’s scary, who are we without Him?

Matthew 18:20-21

Genesis 50:17 – ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.”

Who has noticed that forgiving people can be a difficult thing? And the greater the grief they caused, the harder it might be to forgive. But it is a clear instruction from God. We must forgive.

2^nd Chronicles 7:14

Psalm 130:3- 4 “Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies”

Zechariah 1:17-21 (yes, we read it again, for emphasis).

So, how do we defeat the horn of unforgiveness, which is rooted in anger? By the way, anger is some sort of inflammation, deep-rooted resentment or upset. The dictionary defines it as…

Psalm 103:4-5 “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? ⁴ But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.”

Ephesians 4:26-27

Daddy mentioned something I want to ask about; do you know how your heart skips a beat when you round a corner and see someone you’ve got beef for/with? Lol… Unhealthy stuff.

And the sad/unfortunate thing is that most times the person we’re beefing is not even aware so we’re just stressing our hearts and minds and the person is walking around free!

How do you deal with anger? (Err, don’t worry there’s no magical or high-sounding formula)

1. Keep your cool
2. Don’t say or do anything when you’re angry. This is something we probably already knew but did you know the Bible mentions it too? Proverbs 25:11, 15:1,3.

Ecclesiastes 7:9 – “Control your temper, for anger labels you a fool.”  Verse 17 of the same scripture says, “On the other hand, don’t be too wicked either. Don’t be a fool! Why die before your time?”

Did you learn something? Now to ask God for grace to let that learning shine through the things we do so that the few minutes we spent reading this don’t waste.

Dear Lord, help us to always turn our fights over to you, to remember that living like/for you means we must forgive people who offend us just like we’re forgiven all our sins as well. Help us to live right, amen.

Have a good week!

PS: Did you go to church today? Hope it’s a yes…

#31Days31Writers: “So I need a turnaround, but a turnaround from what?” Boom!

Sometime in the middle of the month I became a little fed-up of sending countless reminders to people to send in their pieces. By the 24th I’d missed two days, and I didn’t want to miss anymore, so I stopped mailing people and used the opportunity to publish pieces I’d written since June.

And suddenly, people started getting in touch to say their posts were almost ready. Lol. But then Ore emailed his, apologizing for being late, and without reading it (or checking the word count), I replied saying I felt he overshot the word count but I would publish today. He was sure he did 600 words and he said so. He was right, and I’m sorry.

I just read it now and it must have been God who made me pick this post for today. Dang!! Home truth after home truth, homie hit every note with this piece! Like, I’m so excited with it! Whoop! Feels like such a beautiful end to a beautiful series, and I couldn’t be any more chuffed!

Enjoy!

I bought a pack of Post-It notes today.

Or maybe I didn’t, I’m not sure.

Okay, I didn’t.

Seems like I need to constantly remind myself to remember.

And also to never forget that my life is beautiful.

Because it is.

But how did I get here?

Several times this year I have felt deeply sorry for myself, wallowing in self-generated moroseness as I contemplated my apparent lack of achievements. I would waste hours drawing up comparisons between myself and others who seem to have gotten it together, whatever that means. In the end, there would be no lesson learned and no grand plan for a swift turnaround conceived. A miserable state of affairs, if I may say so myself.

I wasn’t doing myself any good and I knew it, but the habit had become far too ingrained for me to dispatch it with a swift kick. And so I carried on in this pathetic way, patching my doubt-ridden self-esteem inwardly with hollow motivational speeches delivered without any feeling to my equally unbelieving reflection in the mirror, and outwardly with smiles so superficial that could very well have been velcroed onto my face.

Until one day when, out of the greys (the skies never seemed blue then), I asked myself the one question I had never before thought to ask:

So I need a turnaround, but a turnaround from what exactly?

The answers, they tumbled out from the depths of my soul of their own accord:

1. From a family that treats me like I’m a godsend?

2. From a job I’m incredibly good at?

3. From the God who loves me unconditionally even though I have failed Him too many times to count?

And on I went with the list of positives, like a man who all his life had been convinced that he was lame but suddenly found that he could not just walk but fly.

Stacked up this way, my blessings dwarfed my mountain of supposed underachievement. You see, I had been wearing my misery-coloured shades for so long that all the good things in my life had become near-invisible and my measure of success was all the stuff I didn’t have, stuff I didn’t even need to be happy.

Bear with me while I struggle not to come off as preachy, please.

I’m truly sorry if you have no place for the God of the universe in your world, He makes all the difference. I’m as sure of this as I have no doubt that if I eat a meal of boiled beans and go to bed right afterwards, I will wake up with an upset stomach. That has never failed to happen, and God has never failed to come through for me. That is no small comfort.

So I am thankful for my faith in Him. That faith will guide me to everything good. At my own pace. In His time. I’m not in a hurry, lest my feet find paths they were not made to follow.

I am no longer afraid of the world’s critical examination of my life, no longer afraid that my shortcomings will be spotlighted and my carefully cultured thick skin will rupture as soon as the shower of prickly insults cleverly disguised as ‘good’ advice begins to rain down on me.

I have learned to count my blessings, and they have begun to grow.

And because I have been counting, I am becoming a blessing myself.

If that’s not an achievement, I don’t know what is.

The rest of the year will be fine. I look forward to more counting.

Boom! What did I tell you? Absolutely loved it!

#PornAgainChristian by Reverend Olamide Craig

Olamide Craig is a friend, a brother, and a great man of God without all the airs, the falsehood, and the half truths.

I saw this post this morning from a link off Twitter, and I just knew I had to share. Hope it blesses you as much as it blessed me.

Olamide is @RevDrCraig on Twitter if you want to get in touch.

Love, light, and God’s great blessings,

FGS.

PORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN

Tonight, I want to stand with a friend of mine on a thorny issue. Pornography.  A vast number of Christians are struggling with various forms of online porn. A friend talked to me about his struggle, and as I listened to him share his story, I smiled. I smiled because it reminded me of my own struggle.

So tonight, I want to share with you my story, not his. Its easy for preachers to tell other peoples stories. But how about ours?

I picked up my first Playboy™magazine when I was in primary school. I flipped through the pages with a combination of curiosity and disinterest. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. But a seed had been sown, and its roots would take hold of the soil of my soul to bud much later in my adolescence. By the time I was a teenager, I was familiar with all the American, British and French porn magazines. It was much harder then. There were no phones, there was no internet. You had to sneak around with glossy magazines and hope that no one knew that under the Good Housekeeping or Ebony magazine was Penthouse or Oui or Nuts. All this while I was a committed believer, I did all I could to please the Lord, but I still had this one issue.

And then one day, I got called to leadership in my secondary school fellowship and went from Usher to President. I was sure God had made a mistake. Surely there were others better than me.  I tried to stop, I wanted to fulfill my role as President with a clear conscience. The harder I tried, the deeper I fell. Ministry was great. Souls were being saved. The fellowship was growing. Lives were being transformed, still I was stuck. Mind you, it wasn’t all consuming at the time. I’d probably steal a glance once or twice a month but the guilt that followed was like a crushing stone that stayed on my shoulder and stuck wt me for months and months; it didn’t matter if I hadn’t touched a magazine in months. I always carried around a sense of guilt and shame.In between I would be fine. All would seem perfect in my life again. Then one glance would bring it all crashing down. I won a temporary battle while I was in SS3. Hadn’t slipped for months. I realize now that I was too busy with WAEC  

Then we passed out of high school. I had handed over the ministry. There was no more need to be accountable…and the passions came back like a vengeance.  Before University, I did JAMB 5 times and in that period of depression and hopelessness, pornography became my escape; what had once been a once a month slip became a daily obsession.  Just before my 5th JAMB, I remember going to the roof of Anglican Church on 21 road in Festac and crying out to God. My life was in a mess and I desperately needed him to show up and sort me out. And I remember God telling me how much he loved me and how he had great plans for me. How will I ever make it I asked. All my mates were in school, I was still at home. My faith was a mess. I was a mess. And I heard words that I would NEVER forget. “Stop trying to fix it on your own, my grace is sufficient for you”  

Within that year, I joined FECA where I got my faith on track, passed JAMB, and got into the University of Ibadan. The things I learnt that year became the basis of the ministry I founded when I was just a 21 year old 100L student. Dianoia Foundation and Club Chayil over the past 11 years have since preached the message of sexual purity to thousands  

How did I break free from pornography? All I needed to do was let the Holy Spirit help me.  

The biggest mistake Christians make is trying to use discipline or strong will to keep away from sin. It NEVER works. Sin will always have the upper hand if combated in the flesh. Only GRACE through the Holy Spirit can win over sin  

Second I had to refuse to elevate that one sin above any others. The devil tries to make us feel one sin is worse… and so for as long as I hadn’t viewed porn, I could lie and be unchristian in so many other ways but wouldn’t feel it simply because I had hinged my acceptance in Gods eyes on whether I had viewed porn or not. The Holy Spirit taught me that in his sight, all Sin was as bad as the next. Murder. Lust. Lies. Same thing!  Once I learnt godly sorry for ALL my sins whether they were lustful or not, I realised how truly sinful I was and it was here that righteousness made sense to me. Jesus told me he had forgiven ALL my sins, and given me a new robe. I was righteous not because of what I had done, or didn’t do, but because of what he had done.  

Finally, SIN THRIVES IN SECRECY! If you want to be free you have to open up and let the light in. Tell someone!  Find a mature Christian and tell them your struggle. It’s one of the most important steps on your road to recovery. If you keep it hidden, it will grow. If you bring it out of the darkness, it will die. I promise you. Trust me!  Same goes for fornication and adultery. Expose the sin and it will wither conceal it and it will grow  

I’ve shared this so that you can know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE! There is help for you in God and he has not abandoned you  God bless you tweet fam!  

Thank you to all those who DM’d to share their struggle or to ask for prayer or to just say thanks… The feedback has been phenomenal.

Someone asked me how my journey’s been. “Has it been plain sailing since you started preaching sexual purity?”  It would be so easy to say that I’ve never touched the stuff again and strut around in a toga of self righteousness. Let me tell you as it is! This is a lifelong battle. There is no quick fix. There’s no magic wand. Once lust has occupied a room in your heart in the past, he will ALWAYS come back to see if there’s a spare room and when he comes back, you bet he’s come with family and friends and he’s gonna ask for the penthouse suite  

I thought it was a war that I had won once and for all. That I had defeated that enemy and he was finished. Your freedom has to be fought for daily. What you won was one battle. There is still a long war.  

I’m still fighting and wining my battle against porn. Its a tough one and sometimes I am valiant, sometimes I am not.  And you best believe that its so much easier to access porn now than it was when I won my first battle. I remember burning all my Playboy™mags with great fanfare ☺ No one buys Playboy magazines anymore. Porn is now online; no need to hide in a corner with a bulky magazine, or hide stacks of old issues under your mattress. One click and boom

But there is GOOD NEWS! The power that rescued me then is still potent enough to rescue me now. Hallelujah! And if you let Him, he can rescue you too.  

Lust is not gender specific folks. He destroys as many men as he does women. Don’t let the enemy fool you into thinking you’re the only one! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!  

Same goes for masturbation, fornication, adultery. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Sin thrives in secrecy. Break the yoke. Be free!  Jesus died for all your sins including this one. His blood has cleansed you. Take your stand daily. This war can be won  

God bless you twit fam! Have a blessed day.

Related articles

• Tribute to my father, Yinka Craig: Five years on – David Olamide Craig.
• Want!
• Weapons for the War 2 – More Weapons

menoword

Menoword’s note: I follow an incredible minister called Rev Craig and he posted some tweets yesterday night that impacted me very deeply. I got his kind permission to put all his tweets together and create a blog post. The only editing I have done is to remove the words “young men” from the second sentence in the post. Please read this post with an open heart, I hope that it will bless you. And don’t think that this only relates to porn – I learned many of these lessons while struggling with financial responsibility – it applies across the board to anything that anyone might be struggling with and also contains wonderful lessons on generally living a victorious Christian life. You can find Rev Craig on Twitter @RevDrCraig or check out his blog at  http://olamidecraig.wordpress.com 

Enjoy: 

PORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN

Tonight, I want to stand with a friend of…

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OVERCOMING SIN BY THE BLOOD

I’m sure you might be wondering about the new attitude to the chronicles on this blog; I know, I feel like I’m doing great too! Basically, I think it’s because I’ve got some free time now, and I’m also trying to satisfy you so much that when I get to Nigeria and get too busy (not like I can ever get too busy for you), you’ll remember these happy periods!

Ok, today’s post is from a sermon by my Papa in Abuja, Bishop David Abioye! I actually was in church when he preached this message sometime in late 2009 but when I asked my darling sister to send me Mp3’s with messages, one of them had this sermon! I listened to it on one of ‘those days’, and below I have reproduced my notes,. Be blessed as you read! Err, and I hope you went to church today!

*All scriptures are taken from King James Version of the Bible*

OVERCOMING SIN BY THE BLOOD

Sin is worldliness, and worldliness is made up of these three:

1. the lust of the flesh – Galatians 5:19-21
2. the lust of the eyes
3. the pride of life – 2 Tim 3:1-5

1John 5:17 “All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.” All unrighteousness is sin – anything I cannot share a testimony about or do in public; anything I do/say/think that is wrong is sin.

Colossians 3:3 “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

2Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

Hebrews 12:4 “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.”

• I must resist sin with the same intensity I resist sickness, poverty, and unpleasant circumstances. How do you resist sin? By engaging the power of your will!

Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”

Genesis 39:8-9 “But he refused, and said unto his master’s wife, Behold, my master wotteth not what [is] with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand//[There is] none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou [art] his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”

Daniel 1:8 “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.”

There are three dimensions to the Blood of Jesus:

• The Speaking Blood – when I am confronted by evil thoughts, desires ideas, I can plead the Blood. Hebrews 12:24 “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than [that of] Abel.”
• The Sprinkling Blood – I can sprinkle the blood and purge my conscience. Hebrews 9:12 – 14 “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for us]//For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh://How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
• The Drinking Blood (the communion) – partaking of the flesh and blood of Jesus not only ensures that the life of Jesus is continually infused into mine, wiping anything in me that doesn’t please Him. John 6:53 “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”

What The Blood Of Jesus Does/Can Do For Me

• The Blood of Jesus is my ticket of redemption. Colossians 3:13-14. Revelations 5:9. Ephesians 1:7-9
• The Blood cleanses. 1John 1:7
• The Blood purges (from stubborn characters, besetting sins, etc). James 4:6, 1Peter 5:8

I pray that as you administer the Blood of Jesus (whichever way you need it), it answers for you in Jesus name, amen!

That’s it! Do you have anything you want to share with us? That’s what the comments section is for!

P:S – I didn’t write out all the scriptures because I didn’t want the post to get too long, and also because I hoped you’d reach for your Bible to do some reading for yourself!

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