Friday 24 December 2010

Pickin

Me dey hungry
Me dey skinny
Me look, me look, me look, me no find food chop

Me dey hungry
Me dey skinny
E b like say I dey die..

D wicked d fly master
Everytime e dey come to dey pollute d food
Me belle e dey pain me every time I eat am

I stop

Me take me d eye look up
Me say me Daddy I dey hungry o ..no let me die
He send me d manna
He send me d sparrow bring me d seed
He send me d good aunty and d good uncle
Dem help me plant d garden

Ah I don chop again
E be like say dem pour fresh water for me body
Me body dey cool eh like so
I no die again

D friend of me e come visit me
E tell me say I dey look rosy O
Me dey blush for inside me brown skin ae
Me dey smile say na me Daddy O
Me Daddy no leave me

Even E send me d sparrow and make d manna to fall
But E tell me say me must to water d seed wey d sparrow give me
Me must to no keep d manna make e stale
But me go wait Him give me d fresh manna every day
Me must to bring meself come d place wey Him go put d fresh manna every day

Me must to plant d garden & dress am
Me must to remove all dem weed dem even d one wey I like d colour
Some dem weed dem fine ae! Like flower decorate d garden
But Daddy say weed na weed
Daddy say add d fertilizer every day, gather d seed wey scatter for d road
And drive all d birds dem commot wey wan steal d seed

So d garden go grow, make e dey gimme plenty plenty d fruit
Dis wey me Daddy tell me

Even though me Daddy don go for d distant land....far far away
Me still dey hear Him voice

Him voice na like d cool evening breeze after d hot Saro sun don finish hammer me
Me Daddy - Him Spirit no leave me

Saturday 18 December 2010

Are you HUNGRY??

This is for the hungry, the poor & the sober. If you are full, rich & laughing, then it's really not for you. See Luke 6 vs 20-26

When I listened to Leonard Ravenhill like I was telling my friend Mo I wept...fell on my knees before the Lord and wept, I didn't go to bed till about 2.00 a.m. that morning. It is as simple as that: I wept. Want to know one of the things that leave me speechless? This is it ...when a man speaks and I hear the very heart of God. I also said to Mo: he is very extreme - he seems to hate TV & what nots. Mo remembered a pamphlet he had written which she had back in our school days (sometime in the 80s probably), it had a picture of a man with his feet on a couch watching TV and written across the pamphlet was the phrase we wrestle NOT! ...get it? It means we do nothing ..the giant sleeps ..coasting through and it is still happening today.

We have designed our own agendas and set our own priorities, who are we lifting up? Is it Jesus? Or is it the by products of serving Jesus? "Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed." John 6:26-27

Jesus said "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me" John 12:32

Leonard Ravenhill speaks truth ...what he is against: is us being distracted from Christ as our No. 1 priority, from spending time with God in the prayer closet knowing God and anything that will seperate us from the presence of God in-dwelling & moving within us. Jesus spoke a lot about priorities - see Luke 9 vs 57-62 and it's still the same Jesus, He has n't changed.

The Lord had asked us for one thing and one thing only on our prayer line, He had asked for our hearts and the same night He led me to the video below. Jesus is after your heart as well as mine. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength Mark 12:30

Leonard Ravenhill was a man who pointed us to Christ, to learn to pray and cultivate the presence of God so that our lifes can be changed. We can not change the world when HE hasn't changed us yet and we don't carry HIS presence. We can only change when we spend time before God like Moses. When Moses came out from being in the presence of God, the reflection of the Lord on him was so strong. Exodus 34:30 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.

I like something Mr Ravenhill said: that you can not explain God to people because people have to experience Him. The interview is almost 2hr long so it's not the microwave type thing, this is baking ...real cooking. You know the kind of teaching like when Paul preached so long that Eutychus fell asleep ..see Acts 20 vs 7-12

All quotes except the Bible passages below are Leonard RavenHill's and they are life changing.

The question isn't were you challenged. The question is were you changed?" Isaiah 29:13 "Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men"

“My main ambition in life is to be on the devil’s most wanted list.” Acts 19:15 "And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

  •  Most Christians pray to be blest, few pray to be broken.
  • There is a cost in discipleship-- God has no basement-bargain blessings.
  • If Christ isn't worth everything you have, He isn't worth anything you have.
  • You can’t develop character by reading books. You develop it from conflict.
  • The law of spiritual progress goes like this: Process then crisis, followed by a process then crisis, ad infinitum.
  • The Christian has every right to tell God he wants to be a saint, but the Christian has no right to tell God how to make him one.
  • If a million people smiled on me while I knew God frowned on me, I would not be happy. But if God smiled on me while a million people frowned on me, I would not be unhappy.
  • No man ever did, or ever will do God a favor - God does all the favors.
  • God owed us nothing - He gave us everything pertaining to life and godliness in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

"You see, today we try to organize. We try to get a bunch of people together. God never did that. God takes individual men. He takes Moses to the backside of the desert. John the Baptist was in the wilderness until the day of his showing forth. Jesus, the Son of God who had left the Glory, spent thirty years in training to minister! John Baptist thirty years in training. The apostle Paul at least thirty years. Moses at least forty years; and we want to go to Bible School six months and come out like a super prophet! It’s the time factor that kills most of us. Tell me how much time you spend alone with God and I will tell you how spiritual you are."

I urge you to read the sermon on the website:  http://www.ravenhill.org/weeping1.htm and listen to the interview below.

    

Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, 'Leonard, you took Me too seriously'? Leonard Ravenhill 1907-1994

Tuesday 7 December 2010

The burden....

I noticed the president was bothered about something. You could see it written all over his face that he was weighing something in his mind, the outcome of which seemed to concern him terribly. Being a member of his staff and well, me just being me, I went up to him and asked what was on his mind that concerned him so. Somehow I found myself sitting on a chair across from him, he was also seated. He said he would have to demote some people and this obviously bothered him. I shrugged saying something along the lines of well, life happens to us all. I wasn't feeling particularly generous, I still hadn't forgotten the financial tsunami that was 2009 and a few other events here & there. I for one had taken more than my fair share for Team Lara, therefore couldn't get into the sympathy groove much, more so I didn't recall seeing a sympathy envoy at my side when I was going through! I was learning that life was tough, that you take the good & the bad with it!

Then Mr President proceeded to speak with me in the way that only one person could...he went along the lines of not so Lara, when a, b, c & d happened I had your back. He took me through a no of events, showing how I had been protected although others lost their positions. Nepotism I hear someone say? Perhaps or I was just a really good worker he didn't want to loose. I took my leave at the end of our little chat headed for bed but not till I did one last thing; because I knew I was leaving him there, mulling over his thoughts still, I turned around and said to him....you have to take the bad with the good, when bad things happen, just think about the good things, they make up for them. He looked up at me and smiled, the warmest, deepest & most sincere smile, there was so much love in that smile and you would have thought I had just said the most profound thing in the world and made his day. Odd, this relationship with my boss right? Well, he treats me just like his child, I guess it helps that I sleep in the same bedroom as his daughters. I got into bed, the girls were already asleep so I turned in for my beauty sleep.

I woke up ...from my dream and realised that it had been the Lord. There is only one person who looks at me like that, face full of love & compassion, strong but yet meek, no condemnation ...this wasn't the first time I had encountered Him. Yes, it was nepotism and I hadn't really said anything profound. He simply loves and delights in me because I am precious in His sight.

I got up out of  bed, went up to the living room and somehow managed to dose off again on the couch. Then I heard someone call my name. I was expecting a friend of mine to drop off her kids that morning so that she could go to an appointment, she couldn't really afford to be late and I was conscious of that fact. I thought she must be at the door calling but I just couldn't get out of sleep despite how hard I tried to rouse myself. When I saw that that wasn't working, I decided to call in the big guns, I said Holy Spirit help me wake up, I don't want my friend to be stuck outside with the kids. Immediately I woke up, I looked at the time, it said something like 3.58A.M, it wasn't my friend who had been calling me. Yet I knew that I had distinctively heard my name, I was a little concerned at this point I must confess. Reluctant to go downstairs, I started to pray and as I was praying it dawned on me that it was the Lord calling, so I decided to respond like Samuel ....Yes Lord, open my ears and my heart, speak to me, what would you like to say to me, what would you have me do...something along those lines.

Three days earlier I had decided to wait on the Lord in prayer and fasting to seek His face, and now I had found it. The thing was though where I had my attention focused was not what the Lord had come to talk to me about, he did address directly some things that had been on my mind which I had acted out in the dream but He had come to share His heart with me....His agenda.

Over the months the Lord started to open my eyes to a number of things, through wonderful people He had placed in my life and through His word; I understood that I had to re-align some of my focus and the reason I am sharing this, is to urge you to do the same.

I learnt something from a precious man of God when he shared with us a revelation about the Shunamite woman and urged us to follow after her example. Here was a woman whose husband was advanced in age and they did not have a child, when Elisha passed by, she made a decision to make his journeys more comfortable and when she was asked what he could do for her, she didn't think to ask for anything, she didn't even think to ask for a child. Some might say, she didn't believe it was possible any longer...perhaps. But it is quite clear though that it was not the foremost thing on her mind, it wasn't her focus, rather she honoured God by honouring Elisha ...one would call that busy with the Lord's business. She was not consumed with or dominated by the need in her life (2 Kings 4).

The Lord once said to the Pharisees (Matthew 23) that they had neglected the weightier matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness and had gotten carried away with self indulgence, straining out a gnat (fly) - they had swallowed a camel ..rather counterproductive, don't you think? I mean look at the sheer disparity in size. He admonished them to clean the cup from the inside and not just the outside - which was where they had their focus.

When the Lord came, the rest of Israel could not recognise Him because they looked for an earthly liberation from Rome rather than eternal life & deliverance from sin, they chose to stay in darkness because the life of compromise was easier and their eyes were focused only on an earthly agenda. They could not understand a crucified Christ. That is why the gospel is said to be as foolishness to those who are perishing because you can not attain it by earthly wisdom, the cross comes hand in glove with the glory. "but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" I Corinthians 1:23

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Two things.... Paul was pointing to in Philippians 3:10....the power of his resurrection which is the glory and the participation of his sufferings which is the cross. Which is why Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Matthew 16 vs 24)

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me Philippians 3:11. He poured out his life because Christ meant more to him than his own life or agenda. His life was a love song to the Lord, this was demonstrated by how he lived and what his priorities were. This was a man who died to self, he said I die daily..daily! (I Corinthians 15:31) Everyday he places Paul on the altar before God and rises up in Christ. That is the cross and the resurrection: he dies to live, he dies to the flesh so that he can rise to life in the Spirit. Lord help me to die daily!

Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. Philippians 3:17-19

I've had to take a long look at my priorities, I urge you to do the same. Are you stumbling at the cross? That part of your faith which requires you to crucify your own agenda? Is this an offence to you? Or do you rather ignore it completely, telling yourself that it's all about the glory and seek the glory only?

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 4:17). What does the kingdom of God mean to us? Is the agenda of our life driven by the Holy Spirit or fueled solely by our flesh?

The burden I saw on the Lord's heart was people ...souls within the Church languishing due to misplaced priorities and ultimately souls unsaved outside of the Church. "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" 1 Peter 4:18

Revelations 1 to 3 - I urge you to read it, we as a Church need to see where we hold parrallels with the 7 churches of the revelation and address the issues identified there.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.