General

War Between the Conscience and the Ego.

The worst possible combination you could ever find in a man is to have a weak will and a strong ego. Man is an amphibian. Half spirit, half animal. Your will comes from your spirit man while your ego is from the animal part of you. Whichever you feed will determine the power that is strong or weak. Galatians 6:8 puts it best by saying “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life”. Your spirit, which will manifest itself sometimes through your will and sometimes through your conscience needs to be fed a regular diet of The Word of God or it will be overpowered by your ego. So, when you find yourself getting offended and saying to yourself ‘who is he?’ or ‘how dare you?’, it is time to check yourself, the animal in you may have sue zed control from the spirit in you. Why? Because the answer to the question ‘who are you?’ is that without God we are nothing. Even Jesus, The Son of God said “I can of my own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who has sent me”-John 5:30.

Reno Omokri is the pastor of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and the author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God 

Jesus The Life Giving Spirit

When people tell me they find it hard to believe that God will resurrect the dead in Christ I ask them if they have a car. Most will answer yes. Then I ask them if they’ve ever discovered their car would not start because the battery was dead. Most will say yes. You see, when our batteries die we call a friend, a mechanic or an automobile association to help us jump start our car then we drive around until our dead batteries are charged and what was once dead comes back to life. In like manner, The Bible in 1 Corinthians 15:45 calls Jesus “a life-giving spirit” that gives life and will give life to all who live and died believing in Him. If a man-made battery can give life to another man-made battery that died, is it too much to believe that God can resurrect a mortal being that He created? “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:p”-1 Thessalonians 4:16.

Reno Omokri is the pastor of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and the author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God 

Number Your Days Not Your Money

One thing the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 teaches us is that God hates waste and He loves productivity. But of all things that can be wasted, the most precious is time. You can always make more money, but since God created creation till today, he has only stopped time twice in the case of Joshua in Joshua 10:13 and  in the case of King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:11 and Isaiah 38:8. The wisdom that we can glean from these experiences is that time is more valuable than money. So, never think that you can impress God by giving the best of your money to the things of God while devoting the best of your time to the things of men. God wants your life time before He wants your life’s dime! If you do not know how to make the best use of a normal life span on earth which comprises 70 years on average, how will you be able to make the best use of everlasting life in God’s kingdom? And that is the ultimate purpose of life-preparation for God’s Kingdom. This was the case of the rich fool in Luke 12:20. He knew how to manage his money but he did not know how to manage his time and God called him a fool. Why? Because when you number your days you become wise “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”-Psalm 90:12. However, when you number your money and not your days this is what The Bible says about you “why should fools have money in hand to buy wisdom, when they are not able to understand it?”-Proverbs 17:16.

Water Your Lawn Daily

As any aeronautic engineer will tell you, it is easier and better to maintain a high altitude than regain it. Likewise it is easier to maintain faith than to regain it. If you water your lawn every morning and every evening there won’t be dry, brown patches. However, if you don’t water your lawn, the dry, brown patches will spread until the lawn is ruined. In The Bible, The Word of God is most commonly referred to as water which is why Ephesians 5:26 talks about “washing of water by the word”. As everybody knows, if you don’t take a shower everyday, you will get dirty. In fact, some days are so hot that you will need to take a shower in the morning and then at night. Perhaps this is why Joshua 1:8 says “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful”. In fact, Psalm 1 says that if you constantly drink from the water of God’s Word you will be “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he does shall prosper”. So, if your fruit is not coming out in its season, and your leaves are withered and prosperity eludes you, check whether you are watering your lawn day and night because God’s Word will not lie and won’t change simply because you fast, pray and visit wonderful men of God.

Readers are Leaders

You cannot please God if you don’t read regularly. Ignorance does not please God-“my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”-Hosea 4:6. As the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 teach us, God is grooming believers for leadership positions in His Kingdom. Knowledge grooms us for leadership which is why God said “for I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”-Hosea 6:6. Readers become leaders because the mind is a muscle and reading is the only gym in which you can build up your mind muscle. So read The Bible and read books on leadership and management. The books on leadership and management may give their theories academic sounding names like ‘Pareto’s Principle’, ‘Theory of Proof by Assertion’ and ‘The Law of Diminishing Returns’, but don’t worry, these are fancy names given to the principles that already existed in ?The Bible. I assure you, that The Word of God is the Fountain of Origin of all the knowledge that exists in the world today.

Reno Omokri is the pastor of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and the author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God

Infinite Love Leads to Infinite Provision

It is a fallacy to think that God loves some people more than he loves others. John 3:16 is very clear about that “for God so loved the world”. However, some people are more conscious of God’s love for them than others and to the undiscerning, this may look as though God loves them more. It’s like a Man who has children and He opens up a line of credit for each one of them in His bank. His instruction to His banker is that they can access an infinite amount of money. Now, the children don’t know that their money is infinite. Some of them take only a little money so as not to take advantage of their Father’s generosity, but a few take as much money as they need and incur the jealousy of the others who feel they are inconsiderate. If only they all knew that they had access to infinite sums of money none of them would hesitate to draw from their lines of credit. God’s love for us is infinite. He cannot love us more or less than He does today. But only those who are conscious of this great love can access the benefits of it. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 7:7 “ask, and it shall be given you”. Unfortunately many of us are afraid or too ignorant of His love to ask which is why James 4:2 says “ye have not, because ye ask not”. You know the confidence you have in writing a check when you know you have money in the bank. That confidence is called faith in the spiritual realm and only those who know they are infinitely loved by their heavenly Father are able to make demands on the bank of heaven with the confidence that ensures that that check will be cashed!

Reno Omokri is the pastor of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and the author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God 

Unfading Beauty

Elizabeth Taylor and Mother Theresa started life at about the same time, however, one was more beautiful than the other and in the 50s and 60s, Elizabeth Taylor’s beauty propelled her to superstardom status. She was the toast of kings and presidents and wealth came her way. But as she grew older and her physical beauty faded, the kings and presidents and the wealth turned their attention to Mother Theresa who had also grown old. Why? Because Mother Theresa’s virtues of unconditional love, concern for the under privileged and selflessness were her real beauty and she proved to us that spiritual beauty (virtues) are more lasting and powerful than physical beauty. Hence The Bible says “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight”.

Empathize Rather Than Criticize

Empathize Rather Than Criticize: You Are Not in Their Shoes: Never think to yourself that you would do better than someone else if you were in his shoes, because his full situation is not obvious to you. You only see what you see. There are things that you do not see or know. “Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ”-Galatians 6:2. Consider That the Only Person That you Really Know is Yourself. So judge yourself and not others. “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you–unless, of course, you fail the test?”-2 Corinthians 13:5.

Are You Worthy of Jesus?

If Jesus says that you are unworthy of Him if you place your father and mother above Him and yet the 5th commandments instructs us to honour our father and mother, then how unworthy would we be in Jesus’ eye if we honour things like politics, football, music and Nollywood/Hollywood more than Him? “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”-Matthew 10:37

Faith Acts what it Believes.

When I was a child, my siblings and I used to play a game called ‘do as I say don’t do as I do’. In that game, you say something and do something contrary. It might have been a game, but in reality, I have seen life imitating that game. Religion is the outward appearance, faith goes to the state of the heart. It is possible to pretend to be religious but you cant fake faith. Jesus was full of faith while the Pharisees were full of religion. Faith acts what it believes. Religion believes what it does not act. And when you constantly criticize people you are claiming to believe in Christ but are not practicing what He said in Matthew 7:1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged”.