REFLEXIONS

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10) The message of this passage is directed both to the enemy of God’s people and to the people of God. But our focus here is directed to what God is saying to us His children. Be still, He says, it is not over yet! Recognize that I am God and be confident in that knowledge. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. But God must first be exalted in your life! Let your knowledge of, and trust in, God be the biggest thing in your life. Don’t throw away your confidence, but exalt the Lord above all your problems. God wants you to know that no power on the earth can overshadow His power which is actively at work in the lives of those who trust Him! It is not in vain that God repeats a promise twice as He did here, “I will be exalted…I will be exalted”. We must pause and take good notice of what is being promised, as well as ponder the implication ...

"For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried." ( Psalm 66:10 ) One of the certainties of our relationship with God is that our confidence in Him will be tested, tried and purified. God’s love for His children means that He also wants us to be purified. This will require trying and testing. The symbolism of our reflection passage is very interesting. Silver, an impressive shinny precious metal starts out as a lump of earth mixed with traces of silver ore. But soon it goes through a fiery refining process and from the other end emerges a precious metal. The adversities, obstacles and challenges you face in life are the furnace of life in which you are being tried and tested, and the contaminants removed just as silver is tried and purified in the furnace of fire to extract that spotless piece of valuable metal with a sheen that can never be tarnished.  It is never comfortable when we face these oppositions, but they bring out the best in us. And w...

“Those who know your name will trust in you,   for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.” Psalm 9:10 . This scripture focuses our minds on one of the unshakable pillars our faith which is that the God we serve, whose personal name Jehovah (LORD) reminds us that He is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, is our creator who never forsakes those who put their trust in Him. Jehovah will never turn His back on those who trust in His name; they are assured of His abiding presence. This truth is repeated all over the scriptures and affirmed by those who have walked intimately with Him. God’s truth has no time limit on it: It was true for David; it was true for Joshua ( Joshua 1:5 ); it was true also for the writer of the book of Hebrew ( Hebrews 13:5 ); and it is still true for you and I today! The phrase “Those who know your name” is by no means all-encompassing. This “knowledge” does not arise from a cursory acquaintance with the Lord but from an intimate experi...

“The righteous falls seven times and rises again...” – Proverbs 24:16 Everyone goes through things in life that can potentially knock them down. No one however becomes a failure for falling; you only become a failure when you fail to rise again! The word of God warns us to expect life challenges. Obstacles and oppositions will trip us, but we only truly fail when we quit trying to get it right. A righteous person may fall seven times but finds strength and courage in the Word to rise again each time and get on with life. David faced a lot of opposition and disappointments in his quest to take his rightful place on the throne, but he never gave up trying. At one time his enemies ravaged his base at Ziklag and took his family and those of his men captive. Those men who had loyally fought alongside with him are now disillusioned and threaten to stone him to death. David however did not see this as the end of the road for him: he encouraged himself in the LORD his God . [i] David fel...

“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” . Proverbs 23:7 Our text is only ten words long and as powerful as any word of God to completely turn your life around forever. Have ever heard someone, or even yourself, say "Why do I say these things?" "Why do I do these things?" "Why do I end up with this kind of person or that kind of relationship?" The Bible teaches that there is something about the way we think that defines us and what we attract. Our own thoughts and confessions become self-fulfilling prophesies! Jesus said, a person’s life is harmed not by what goes into their mouth, but by that which comes out of it, which itself is the overflow of the content of the person’s heart (Matt 15:10-11,  15-20 ). What direction our hearts tend towards, the rest of our lives will gravitate towards is the unmistakable conclusion of the scriptures! Consequently, if we desire changes in our lives, we should start by changing the content of our hearts – what we th...

“The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  -  Proverbs 18:21 , NIV. The Bible reveals the mind of God and through it we perceive our lives, our present circumstances and our future as God intended. The word of God is life to those who find it and it is His will that you employ your tongue to release life-giving words and create a future that looks very much like the one your heavenly Father has in mind for you. In the first chapter of Jeremiah, God gave the prophet an assignment to which he responded “Ah, Sovereign LORD, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” But the LORD said to him, “ Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you .” [i] Jeremiah’s excuses would have only led to failure in spite of the grace God has made available to him. Are your words limiting you or empowering you? Are your words a hindrance to your own progress in life, work, ministry, and...

“The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” ( Proverbs 18:21 , NIV) This may or may not surprise you, but the plain truth is that a great deal of what’s happening in your life today may be simply down to the environment your own words have created. Your words are powerful! They are powerful enough to set the forces of life or the forces of death in motion. God has endowed your words with so much power that something as small as the tongue can utter words capable of altering the entire course of your life just as a small rudder can turn a mighty ship around with relative ease. It is the will of God that we rule our world with words just as God created and upholds all things with power of His word. Setting the forces of death in motion is akin to speaking limiting words into your own life or taking ownership of the limiting words others have spoken about you. They could be words that make you feel comfortable in that place of poor perfo...

“My son , pay attention to what I say ; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart;  for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body . ”  ( Proverbs 4:20–22 , NIV) If your doctor said to you, “I have discovered an elixir that is so potent it can literally renew your youth. All you have to do is to judiciously follow my prescription”, what would you do? Recently, I read about the findings of a research into the effectiveness of certain drugs prescribed for arthritis. The drugs were found to have nothing but a placebo effect. And the report authors added: “We see  no harm  in having patients continue these preparations as long as they  perceive a benefit  and cover the cost of treatment themselves.” [0] Most intriguing! People are willing to pay any amount for the latest drug or cosmetic procedure that promises youthfulness and might even be prepared to pay for a perceived benefit. Yet ...

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” ( Proverbs 4:23 , NIV) The Condition of our heart reflects the kind of thoughts we’ve been focusing on and what we have come to believe about our situations and ourselves? The vital position our heart occupies as the battle ground for conflicting thoughts and beliefs that can potentially rule our lives for good or not, makes urgent the challenge to “guard your heart above all else” . Protect, maintain, or watch over your heart “above all else” suggests that protecting our hearts ought to be a primary objective for living an overcoming life. Furthermore, our passage for reflection suggests that, left exposed, your heart will be influenced in a way that does not allow it to be “the wellspring of life” – it fails to be edifying and empowering. The things that we ought to guard against when watching over our heart will usually gain access through our eyes by the things we see and and our ears by what we hear (general...

“He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night” ( Psalm 78:14 ) Every morning the children of Israel woke up to a visible reminder that God was their guide; at night when the pillar of cloud blends into the darkness, the light of God shone brightly in its place. They never lacked His presence; He guided them day and night yet they wandered in the wilderness for forty years. God has promised never to leave nor forsake His people, but His people sometimes wander away from Him to do their own thing. God has given us His word and His light to guide us but He will not make us obey Him or follow His light. Obedience is willingness to follow God’s guidance. There is no coercion in it. A person may have received Christ as Lord and saviour, but unless he or she is living each day in vital contact with the Lord, trusting Him and walking in the light of His word, they are no different from those children of Israel who wandered in the wilderness in spite of God’...

"Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble" ( Psalm 119:165 ). Great peace! Great contentment, a great sense of wellbeing – according to the writer of this psalm, this is the quality of mind those who, like himself love the law of God, will enjoy. What a wonderful place to be! It is that place where all who love the law enjoy a prosperous relationship with God. “Law” here refers to the overall teaching, instruction & direction of God's word. And the passage encourages us to apply ourselves to God's word which “is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live” [i] . Those who do not shrink from the teaching, correction, instruction and direction are established and kept from falling. The God of peace will grant you His peace because you love His Word! This is not the kind of peace the world gives; this peace envelopes the heart of those who love the Lord causing them to have a s...

“Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house”. (Proverbs 24:27) There is order in life. No successful completion can emerge from an ill-conceived foundation. God is not the author of confusion. The wisdom of the passage of our focus in today’s reflection is this: It impresses upon us the value of carefully planning and organising our day as opposed to simply jumping at the first thing that grabs our attention. There is a time for everything and each must be done in its proper season. First, get the fields ready and get all the outdoor preparation for cultivation done as the planting season approaches. Next, it is then time to build the house. The implication is obvious: God is interested in how we use our time. God challenges us to daily set our priorities right. Failing this, we will find ourselves jumping from one thing to the next without any goal, and at the end of the day, our busyness would not have translated to anything of significance...

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! ” (Psalm 139:17, NIV)  What really counts and what should matter to you as a covenant child of God is not what any man or the devil thinks, but what God thinks about you. The sum total of everything that God has said about us (His Word) is the only thoughts that should mean anything to us or have a life-changing influence over us. In this life, we daily come in contact with people who presume to know us enough to offer an authoritative opinion about us. But ultimately, it is not what man thinks that counts. David understood this; he concluded that God’s thought was the most precious thing to him – if God said it, then it is settled in heaven! Unfortunately there are many whose lives have been blighted because someone whose opinion meant something to them – a parent, spouse, a trusted teacher or mentor, etc – told them they will never amount to anything, they believed it and were broken by it. But “who c...

“From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things as surely as the work of his hands rewards him” – Proverbs 12:14 Words, words, words! The words you speak are never empty. Words are containers; your words always communicate something and will have consequences for you – for good or bad. And though you may want to distance yourself from your own utterances by insisting that they were unintended, a joke or even an innocent comment, words are like seeds. In germinating, seeds do not discriminate whether they fell into the ground intentionally, accidentally or in jest, they will bear fruit under the right conditions. As we read in Ecclesiastes 5:6 , “ Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest..., ‘My vow was a mistake’” . When we carefully chose our words always bearing in mind the power that those words carry, then like a person who takes care to do a good job is fittingly rewarded, we will be equally rewarded and filled with good things as fruits of our l...

“[The Lord] holds victory in store for the UPRIGHT, he is a shield to those whose walk is BLAMELESS, for he guards the course of the JUST and protects the way of his FAITHFUL ones.” ( Proverbs 2:7–8 , NIV) “Upright..., Blameless..., Just..., Faithful...!” These are adjectives that God uses to describe His people. In Christ, we are all that and more. And because God has called us by these names, he says “I hold victory in store for you, I will be your shield from every adversity, I will guard the paths you walk and protect you. What a wonderful portrait the Father paints of His children in their walk. It now remains for us to live the truth and appropriate these blessings as our daily experience! In every trial, temptation, opposition, the challenge is stay true to who God says we are. Do not call yourself any name that God has not called you, neither walk unworthily of the Lord. But let your walk, course &; way of life be morally upright. Receive grace to walk with God and be who...

"O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me" ( Psalm 30:2 ) A CALL TO GOD! That’s what your prayer is. And God hears every righteous call, indeed none is cut off. Every call He hears, He answers. The Lord hears us when we call and He responds to our call with an answer that satisfies your heart’s desire. Here, David acknowledges God's gracious answer to his call for help by blessing Him with healing among other things. And there are many others in the Bible also who called to God for help including the Apostle Peter, who, “beginning to sink, cried out…” ( Matt 14:30 ) Sometimes God's people call everyone else for help but God; and soon they grow weary and distressed, and turn away in despair. However, it takes only one heartfelt faith call for you to get God involved and to engage his help! The Lord Himself invites you to confidently call to Him to Him so “that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrew 4:16). May the Lord y...

We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds. You say, " I choose the appointed time ; it is I who judge uprightly... ” ( Psalm 75:1-2 ). Our daily response to the Lord our God ought to be one of sincere thanksgiving no matter how bad or unfair things may look from where we stand. Our God sees the whole picture and has all knowledge. With Him there is an appointed time, and there is a due time. What we must learn from this then is how vitally important it is to wait for the Lord!  It is not in your power to alter that which God has put in His own power. Discipline yourself today then and remember that the God you serve is God who chooses the appointed time. He is able and willing to make all things beautiful in due time. Shalom!