March 14
Faithful God, we thank You for a blessed day like this. Thank You for Your guidance all through the week, though it was filled with hope and anxiety but Your will which is always the best prevailed, therefore I bow before Your throne of mercy. Thank You for sending a comforter ahead of us to make the lost so light, and helping us with the understanding that you are preparing a mansion for every of Your child that made it to the end (1 Cor 15:19;40;42-45;51-54;58). Glory be to You, O Lord.
Beloved, the message we will be sharing today ought to cause some concerns to you but not to worry for your worth as a child of God should not be based in what you owned or achieved but in the life you imparted for Christ and the knowledge that you are through and through saved in the Lord. Put in another way, you are born again.
Persona Non Grata is not a palatable experience but like I said before it is not for us as a child of God, you are dead to self but alive in Christ. Read more:
Persona Non Grata
“The day after I retired I walked down the hall of the Company and I realized I was ‘persona non grata.‘”
Vice President of an international corporation.
The day will come when your status and influence in the business or professional community will diminish. You will suffer the loss of:
Position
Influence
And with that, you run the risk of also suffering the loss of:
Identity
Confidence
Motivation
Not everyone handles these changes well. Dr. Hube Mitchell made this sobering observation, “As I observe the great men of God, few end well,”
The aging process is inescapable: “All our days have declined… we have finished our years like a sigh (or whisper).“ (Psalm 90:9)
Yet, amidst this loss, it is God’s intention that we continue to live lives of significance… to be fruitful: “The righteous man will flourish like a palm tree… They will still yield fruit in old age… “ (Psalm 92:12a, 14a)
For this to occur, it is imperative that today we are finding our sense of identification and significance in Christ, and in Him alone:
“As far as this world is concerned, you are already dead, and your true life is a hidden one in God, through Christ… “ (Colossians 3:3 – Phillips Translation)
“God forbid that I should boast about anything or anybody except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which means that the world is a dead thing to me and I am a dead thing to the world.“ (Galatians 6:13, 14 – Phillips Translation)
Let us determine to prove Hube Mitchell wrong: By the grace of God, we will end well. How, someone is asking, because Salvation is of the Lord, more from below:
“Salvation is of the Lord.” Jonah 2:9
Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in trespasses and sins,” and it is He also who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation is of the Lord.” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever towards my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely.
If I have repulsed a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.
” Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul, and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh increase of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help cometh from heaven’s hills: without Jesus I can do nothing.
As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the great deep, let me learn this day in my closet: “Salvation is of the Lord.”
To God be the glory, I remember the last discussion I had with my father before in went into coma and then he went to be with Him afterward. I said Dad so far you have done well, for the remaining days ahead of you make sure you do not deviate from the way of the Lord for even if we part here on earth, we still have the privilege to meet again in heaven anything short we may not see again for by His grace I am working towards heaven not hell.
So dear reader, where is your radar facing now heaven or hell? You still have the time and opportunity to take a 360 degree turn and accept Jesus now for all men must die and judgment follows if Christ tarries.
See you next week, if it so please the Lord.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
Evang. Ifeoma Ohondu
