Resonance

Category: Hurt

  • Edification, Exhortation & Comfort : God’s Architecture of Grace

    We all get tired. Even the strongest believers sometimes feel drained. Some feel stuck. Others begin to gradually lose interest and give up. Many get sick and tired of being tired and sick. Even leaders and pastors who spend their lives strengthening others can often find themselves empty. God, in His wisdom, has built a spiritual system to keep His people from collapsing in the vicissitudes of life. He designed a divine rhythm for the soul; edification, exhortation, and comfort. It is God’s healing system for the whole person (spirit, soul, and body) and the whole Body. It is how He keeps His family standing, growing, and enduring until the end. Next week, we will talk about the Mystery of Encouragement but for now, let’s establish the doctrinal side of it.

    Edification: Increasing Our Capacity

    The word edify comes from the Greek oikodomeō which means to build up. It is the act of strengthening, forming, and maturing until a life becomes stable. Spiritually, edification is God’s way of stretching our capacity to carry His life. When you are edified, something within you expands. Your faith deepens, your understanding widens, and your endurance strengthens. You become more capable of carrying divine weight.

    “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up.” (Acts 20:32)

    God builds us through teaching, truth, and time. Like a master builder laying one stone after another, He establishes your inner man until you can contain more of His strength, more of His wisdom, and more of His people. We do not grow by accident. We grow because the Spirit keeps laying stone upon stone, truth upon truth, grace upon grace. Edification is how God turns the fragile into giants.

    Exhortation: Increasing Our Expectation

    Once you have been built up, you must be stirred up. Exhortation comes from the Greek paraklēsis which means to call near, to urge, to appeal. It is the voice from Heaven that says, “Do not give up. Lift your eyes again.”Sometimes you know the truth, but you no longer expect it to happen. You are built up but not stirred up. That is when the Spirit exhorts. He calls you near, speaks courage into your heart, and rekindles anticipation for what God will yet do.

    “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works… exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24–25)


    Exhortation raises your expectation. It awakens the dormant parts of your faith. It moves you from “I know” to “I believe again.” Through a message, a friend, or the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit, God exhorts His children to rise. The fire may be small, but exhortation breathes upon it until it burns bright again.

    Comfort: Increasing Our Threshold

    Comfort is not about removing pain. It is about raising the threshold to endure it. Comfort comes from paramuthia, meaning to speak closely, to console, to strengthen. It is the tender voice of God in the midst of trial.

    “Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation.” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

    When life feels unbearable, the Comforter sits beside you. He does not scold you for weeping. He stays with you through it. Comfort increases your threshold, your ability to face tomorrow without collapsing today. The comfort of God is not sentimental. It is strengthening. It restores your equilibrium, renews your peace, and brings sanity back to your soul. Comfort does not make life easier. It makes you stronger.

    God’s System for the Prosperity of your Soul

    This threefold process of edification, exhortation, and comfort is God’s divine therapy for the believer. It is how He balances spiritual maturity with emotional wellbeing. It is how He keeps your spirit sharp, your faith alive, and your heart tender. Built up, stirred up, and held up. That is the full rhythm of what I call God’s architecture of Grace.

    God never intended anyone to walk alone. From Eden to the early Church, His answer to human needs has always been another person. He builds through teaching and discipleship. He stirs through encouragement and prophecy. He heals through companionship and compassion.

    > “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (Proverbs 27:17)
    “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)

    When you isolate yourself, you disconnect from this system. Isolation dries the soul. Even pastors need edification. Even prophets need exhortation. Even apostles need comfort. God’s love often comes disguised as a friend who refuses to give up on you, a mentor who speaks correction where you don’t see one, or a circle of friends who simply sits with you in silence. His help usually comes with a human face. A true Word from God will always carry this triadic essence. It will build, stir, and heal. When you stay in fellowship, you stay within God’s healing cycle. The Church is not a club of perfect people but a living organism through which grace circulates. Each believer is both a receiver and a dispenser of Grace.

    “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

    You are God’s instrument of renewal to someone else. Your word, your prayer, your listening ear may be Heaven’s hand to a weary soul. And in your own day of need, that same grace will return to you through others.

    God’s Architecture of Grace

    Edification increases your capacity to grow. Exhortation raises your expectation to believe. Comfort strengthens your threshold to endure. Together, they form the architecture of grace, the system by which the Spirit constructs, energises, and heals His people. When God builds you, He does not only strengthen your spirit. He heals your mind, renews your emotions, and strengthens your endurance. We are built to last, established to be immovable and in a system that will preserve until you finish your race.

    So when you feel weary, do not withdraw. Do not hide your pain. You may be tired, but you are not alone. The same Spirit that builds, stirs, and comforts is reaching for you still to help you stand until the end.

  • Trusting God in the Process Even When It Doesn’t Make Sense

    Earlier this week, God has been putting it on my heart to write about trusting the process and hoping against hope. So that is what I’m going to share with you. I’m going to give examples for you to realize that you’re actually on the right track. We are called believers, not feelers. There are going to be seasons where everything is going to feel like it’s not in the right place but you are actually on the right track and you are in good company because most of the people you even know in Scriptures were on this exact path.

    The first person I would like to point to is that one precious believer during the time of Jesus who saw Him being beaten mercilessly and was looking from afar, praying sincerely for His rescue. However, God did not answer that prayer the way the person wanted because He had a bigger, eternal plan.

    The Bigger Picture

    That person is not mentioned in Scriptures but there was definitely somebody there who was praying to God that “Oh God, this guy is actually righteous. He’s holy, there’s nothing wrong that He has done. He has been doing good for as long as I have known Him. Please save Him”. He saw Jesus go through all the brutality, carry the cross, and die on the cross. He continued, “God, this is the right time to show up. If you show up right now, everybody will believe that you actually sent Him.”

    He must have continued, “God, let Him just mysteriously come off the Cross and then, you know, be in white clothing and say that, ‘Yes, it is true, I am actually from God’. Oh oh God, please answer this prayer.” It was a genuine, sincere prayer to actually save somebody. The person saw how brokenhearted Mary was and was like, “Oh God, look at this mother. What have they done to deserve this? Even people as wicked as Barabbas have been set free. If you’ve done it for Barabbas, please do it for Jesus.”

    Trust God in the Darkness what He Said in the Light

    But you know what? That prayer went unanswered. In fact, that day Jesus was buried. The following day there was no noise whatsoever. It was like a normal day. No show, no sign, nothing. So what the person would say is, “oh God, so Jesus is actually dead? So that is all? God, I don’t understand.” God expected that person to trust Him in the process because how you want it to go is not better than how God wants it to go.

    Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane also asked God if there’s another way He could do it without drinking the cup of God’s wrath. That notwithstanding, God has His way of how things should go. Sometimes it’s very difficult to explain the entire process to somebody who just does not just feel how the thing should go. So God may not explain so much to you because he has already given you a Word. You need to trust God in the darkness what he told you in the light. He expects that you hold on to the Word because His Word must test you. That’s why he told you when the skies were blue before the days where there will be no sunshine.

    You need to trust Him — what He said when your mind was straight — now that everything looks confusing and clumsy and you want a sign and want God to explain. Whatever He says now, you actually won’t understand. You will say, “but God, You are omnipotent. You can do all things, so why don’t You just do it now? God, You know all things, so why are You allowing this to happen?”

    That is where we will try to blackmail Him. So He has taught every one of us to trust Him in darkness what He told us in the light. The reason why God did not answer that man is because he had a bigger, better plan. It was not about showing Himself strong in the midst of just those few people who had gathered. No. It was a transgenerational agenda. It was an eternal script that He will raise up from the dead and conquer death. A bigger and greater purpose.

    Painful but Necessary

    Even though you have good intentions and genuine reasons, believe you me, God’s plans are better. Every time we subject ourselves to God’s Will, we expect everything to go well. But how God orchestrates things is certainly not how we think it should be because with God, Romans 8:17, if we share in His sufferings, we share in His glory.

    At the end of the day, you will stand somewhere and share your testimony. People will not understand what you went through because you will even say it in some simple plain words. You will not look like what you’ve been through. But trust me, everybody who has walked with God has gone through the process. At the end of the day, you will also be glad God took you through the process.

    The process is painful but necessary. It’s very necessary but it’s still painful. It’s painful. It does not make sense to the human mind but that is God’s agenda for you. He even prunes those who bear much fruit so they will bear more fruit. It’s not shameful to admit that it’s painful because the Bible says “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”.

    Joseph’s Thirteen-Year Preparation for Eighty Years of Glory

    Look at Joseph. God gave him a wonderful dream of dominion but from that day onwards, everything went downhill for 13 years straight — betrayal, slavery, false accusation, imprisonment. He went from being hated by his brothers to being thrown into a pit. He was sold into slavery by his own brothers while God watched on. He was supposed to live as a slave till he died. Then Potiphar’s wife made matters even worse. He was thrown into prison for life. Yet, God was emptying Joseph of all pride and childishness.

    If Joseph had skipped the process, he would have carried immaturity to the palace and brought shame to the God who lifted him. But through suffering, God moulded him so that when he finally rose to power at 30 years old, he reigned wisely for 80 years. Jesus also suffered for a few hours, but now He is seated at the right hand of the Father, with all authority in Heaven and on earth. See, this season won’t last forever, and your glory days will far outweigh the circumstances. Indeed, the sufferings of this present time cannot be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

    Let me show you what it means for everything to work together for our good. It wasn’t God’s Will that you’ll be in the circumstances that you are in but He will use the circumstance as a healthy tool to shape you into what He wants you to be. All things (the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly) will work together for good. What good? It’s not referring to the end of a Nigeria movie where all your enemies die and you end up as rich nigga.

    The good of God is explained in the next verse: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son”. God foreknew you and your story and predestined it to end as a way of conforming you to be more like Christ. This is what He wants to achieve at the end of the day with everything He allows you to go through, provided you continue to surrender to His Will regardless of the circumstances.

    When everything is going opposite to what God promised, trust is crucial. Psalm 25:3 says, “No one who trusts in You will ever be disgraced.” The process might be slow, confusing, and painful, but God comes through always. Trust is not based on sight; it is based on the unchanging nature of God. It’s about believing His character even when you don’t see His hand.

    Trust the Doctor — Even If You Don’t Understand the Surgery


    Look at Abraham. God promised him descendants as numerous as the stars, yet he waited 25 years for just one child. Why? Because it wasn’t about just having Isaac, it was about becoming the father of many nations. It was about making him a blessing and giving Abraham a name that would echo through all generations. Since Abraham’s generation till now, every generation that has come to earth knows about Abraham. He’s more famous than all of the people who go to the devil for fame. Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all trace their faith back to Abraham. God indeed gave him a great name and yet, during his lifetime, barely did anyone know him because he was a nomad on the Promise Land.

    One challenge of our generation is that we have not been properly taught about the necessity of process. We are conditioned for quick results because we live in the era of instant gratification but in the Kingdom of God, endurance is key. Nobody today would want to wait 25 years like Abraham did, yet greatness demands patience. You should know that if God is disciplining us, it’s because we are not bastards. Process is not punishment — it is preparation. So yes, you are actually on the right track. You are in a good process. As long as you are going through this, it shows that God is killing certain things in you that will be a disadvantage to you in the coming seasons.

    When God is working on you, it’s like a painful surgery. Until this scrutiny – this surgery – is done, He will not want you to get up from the hospital bed. Even though the surgery is painful, it is definitely necessary. If the Doctor tried to explain every detail of the surgery process, you would run away. That’s why He asks for trust. If you knew how long some seasons would last, you would give up today. But God has good plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11). Trust Him even when nothing makes sense. Trust Him when the darkness is thick. Trust Him because He is good, and His plans are far better than anything you could orchestrate for yourself. Stay the course. God is faithful. He has a track record in these matters; you are not the first.

    You need to trust that yes, He has your best intentions at heart and He has plans of good, not of evil, and He will bring you to an expected end come what may. I hope that this has been a blessing to you ❣️

  • Why Does Life Have To Be So Hard?

    Why Does Life Have To Be So Hard?

    None of us wants to be in calm waters all our lives. Where there is no challenge, there is boredom. Passion dies whenever there’s nothing new to try.

    There ought to be something that looks bigger than us. Something that alters our mindset at the end of the journey. Something that challenges us, not just to do better, but BE better; to live to our utmost potential. Something experiential that challenges our perspective to something we’ve never seen before but was always there. Something that is worth living for. Something that is worth dying for.

    There’s gotta be something.

    But why does it have to be this hard? It’s like I’m always at my wit’s end. It’s like my bones are crushing, my teeth gnashing. It’s like the only reason why I have no reason to live is the only reason why I am living.

    Left to me alone, I would give up but I just can’t give up now. There’s something that keeps leading me on, telling me there’s gotta be something to all of this. Giving up hurts more, and failure is better than regret. It will definitely be worth the risk. What I become in the process is far greater than what I have as the product.

    Life is just like giving birth. After so much pain we thought we could never bear, what we are expecting finally becomes a reality, but in a way, we certainly did not expect. That is when we realise that the more the sweat, the greater the “sweet”.

    The joy at the end is far more unbearable than the pain we went through. The pain now just becomes a passed memory, but the joy becomes a present reality.

  • Negative Emotions & Realities: How To Deal With Them

    Is it possible to live in a reality that is out of place with our present circumstance? Are we supposed to allow ourselves to go through the incumbent emotions triggered by our brain due to the nature of present circumstances or we are supposed to “fake” a positive reality till we “make it”?

    The brain releases negative emotions a few moments after a negative experience. Any further negative emotion from then on is self-inflicted. Self-inflicted because we continue to dwell on the negative image our senses fed our minds over and over, thereby releasing the negative emotions over and over.

    Emotions are Symptoms

    Pain is a symptom. Anxiety is a symptom. Depression is a symptom. Whatever we feel are symptoms, insignia. It’s not the actual thing. It’s a reaction to the actual thing. The chemical reactions in our system are the same for everyone but how the reaction manifests differ from one person to another. That’s why people cry when they are sad, hurt, angry or even happy. Same reaction, different circumstances. The body will release different tears in these different circumstances but that’s not the point.

    The point is that we can inadvertently control how our body reacts in any given circumstance. Not by manipulating or tricking our brain. No. Our brain is the centre of our intelligence. It picks our reaction from previous scenarios. Any time we react calmly to a given circumstance, it teaches our brain to be calmer in similar circumstances. If you’ve been in a circumstance where you didn’t know how to react it’s because your brain didn’t have any “default settings” based on its archives. You hadn’t been in such a scenario before, therefore you found it hard to react in a certain way. You don’t know if you’re confused, happy, sad or simply indifferent, and that is okay.

    Emotional Maturity or Avoidance Coping?

    The goal is not to stop yourself from feeling any negative emotions ever. That’s insane. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that it’s necessary to feel both positive and negative emotions occasionally instead of feeling either of them all the time. What we can do is to channel that negative emotion into positive action. That’s the real deal. Elizabeth Scott, MS said it this way, “Managing negative emotions is more about embracing the fact that we are feeling them, determining why we are feeling this way, and allowing ourselves to receive the messages that they are sending us before we release them and move forward”.

    positive and negative emotions

    Stopping yourself from feeling hurt, disappointed, grieved or simply down is not emotional intelligence. It is avoidance coping. It can heavily backfire if we don’t tackle it. It’s like hunger. Hunger is a symptom, a sign that you need to feed your body with food. Avoiding the feeling of hunger and doing nothing about it creates more problems. If you kill the symptom, the underlying problem still persists. True emotional maturity is allowing yourself to feel the feels but not letting it change your mindset and stance into a negative reality.

    I love you

  • I Don’t Care: Breaking Free from the Apathy & Indifference

    I Don’t Care: Breaking Free from the Apathy & Indifference

    Ever met or been that person who is always like, “As for me, I don’t care. I don’t feel anything.” And we admired such people because they looked to us like strength. The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart. The Presence of God is known and it is also felt. Knowing God in our minds is boring and repressive. Having mental knowledge of God without ever experiencing Him is basically a religion. Joy, Peace, Love, Gratitude, Responsibility, Humility etc are expressions. Whatever we express is emotionally relevant. This means that anytime we try to act all cool and don’t really care who even died in our family, it’s because we have squirmed into ourselves.

    I have been a victim of “I don’t care”. Whenever I live constantly like that, I feel like I am a wall upon which all emotions around me are being thrown. I don’t feel like a person. I feel like an object in that situation. So I become invisible by becoming silent and I hide in plain sight. I don’t let people in. I am in a state of avoidance; being physically not present. So I go away so there’s nothing to relate to anymore. I hold strong boundaries or walls, keeping my feelings contained or even suppressed. And as long as I took this path of emotionlessness, I barely experienced God for myself. I interpret everything on a logical level. Even prophetic and worship meetings were full of my mind telling me how pretentious what was happening was.

    There are so many cover-up emotions today. This is where we can’t tolerate one emotion so we cover it up by feeling something else, usually something more acceptable. We can’t feel rage, so we feel frustration. I can’t tolerate intense betrayal, so I feel hurt instead. We can’t allow ourselves to feel unquenchable grief, so we feel sadness instead. I can’t even express or identify what we are feeling, so I stay silent. Because we do not know how to define what we are feeling or expressing, we would defend, hide, avoid, or escape it. But underneath these “defences” are often feelings of vulnerability. We too often identify a vulnerability with weakness, shame or being too emotional, in an attempt to cover a raw aspect of ourselves.

    No one was born a stoic. All creations are emotional creatures, birds and dogs alike. Because emotions do not come from our bodies though they do have a direct link with them; emotions are what makes us persons connected to the orchestrations of the universe as a whole.

    The truth is, once you close your heart to hurt, you also close yourself to love. Also, closing your heart will never stop you from feeling the negative emotions that come with life. It will rather stop you from fully expressing and benefitting from good emotions. There is hope in the shadows, there is peace in the storm, there is patience in the pain, and there is joy in the sorrow. Open up your heart. The Holy Spirit wants you to enjoy His fruits regardless of the circumstances.


    If you know for yourself that you’re in this “I don’t care anymore” state or you’re heading towards that in any important area of your life, I want you to put your hand on your heart and pray this prayer;
    Heart, you have permission to be wide open towards the LORD, to be fully present, to fully feel, to be fully affected. Heart, you have permission to know that He is emotional about you. You have permission to know that you don’t need to shut down. You don’t need to lock up. Lord, any place where I have stopped feeling because of pain, because of vows that I’ve made, I give you permission to open my heart back to you. I want to have a heart that is fully after yours. In Jesus’ Name, I pray, Amen.

    I love you ♥

  • Hurt & Pain

    Hurt & Pain

    One of the lessons we need to learn very quick in life is that we cannot avoid getting hurt. It is only those who are wounded that get healed. It’s only those who mourn that get comforted. First time I heard the song, “Brokenness is what I long for”, I was confused. It makes complete sense now. Pain is inevitable. Sometimes they could have been avoided if we had taken the right decision, but we can’t reverse time. What we can do is learn the lesson the long way and make better decisions in the future.

    But some pain is absolutely inevitable. No man has never walked the earth without encountering that pain. The pain from the passing on of a loved one. The pain of losing someone close to you; someone you trusted; someone you thought would always be there. There is also the pain of false accusations. When even the people close to you speak negative about you. It is not just an African thing. It is everywhere. Prepare yourself for it. It happened to Jesus too.

    First of all, when you lose a loved one or any other inevitable circumstance come your way, allow yourself to feel pain. Wallowing in pain is bad; not allowing yourself to feel pain is equally bad. Immediately you fall into such a situation and you “swallow” the pain, you store it in your threshold. One day that threshold will be full. It may be triggered by a totally innocent person or situation. It can cause you to break down for a relatively longer period of time. What you would feel will not be pain but grief. This is certainly not the way to deal with pain.

    To Jesus, weeping for Lazarus was not doubt. It was humanity. People confuse faith with aggression. When such a situation arises, they try to act all tough in the name of religion. If you develop that habit, you will involve yourself in weeping behind closed doors while pretending to be strong in front of people. Avoid that trap. Many pastors have lived in this trap. It is a living hell. Always be sincere and honest about how you feel, especially to yourself.
    That is not say live your life by how you feel. But how you feel often says a lot about how you are and how you think.

    In the same vein, when you start rising on the ladder of destiny and people you cherish stand to point accusing fingers at you, allow yourself to feel the pain. You don’t want to store pain in your heart. You want to store love instead. And sometimes pain comes to crack our hearts open in order to reveal the content; what we are made of. People often say, “they don’t really know how I am. That’s why they are fooling with me.” God has been looking in your heart since, and now every hidden thing you didn’t even know was inside will be revealed in that moment. God is in the business of winning hearts and giving His heart of flesh for your hearts of stone.

    Never forget this in this situation; don’t talk back to your accusers. After all, some of what they are saying will be true. When Jesus told Zaacheus that He would stay in his house, his own town people called him a sinner. Zaacheus will be hurt. He will be embarrassed. It was really shameful. But Zaacheus never tried to defend himself or even talk back to the people. He spoke to Jesus rather. If anybody would have listened at all, it would have been Jesus. Jesus knows your pain because He feels it too. He is one with you. Open your heart to Him about it.

    I love you ❤

  • What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

    What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

    What you are will be tested.

    Circumstances serve a very useful purpose. It comes to test what you are and what you’re made of.

    Proverbs 24:10 says, “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small”.

    Circumstances come to test your strength not your weakness. Whether you become stronger or weaker depends on what you made of the circumstance.

    Both the gold and the wood got burnt; the wood was drained but the gold was refined. The same boiling water that hardens the egg softens the yam.

    Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.

    I love you ❤️

  • You Are Not What You Go Through

    You Are Not What You Go Through

    Some circumstances we go through in life are inevitable. No matter your religion, race, color, gender, association or expectations, our story is not unique. Someone may be going through worse, but hei..there’s never a point in our lives where we aren’t going through something of a sort.

    Circumstances don’t obey the law of sowing and reaping.

    You do not have to be worthy of what you go through in life. What you go through does not care about you. It does not care what you care. So when you are going through something that seems unfair to what you are, it is nothing new.

    Circumstances do not define you.

    What you go through is not what you are. It’s always important to be able to differentiate between the two. The fact that you go through ups and downs does not mean even your emotions should follow suite.

    James said “count it all joy when trials come your way” (James 1:2). Why should you be so anxious when you go through a difficult situation? We have the power to live above our situation, not the other way round. What you are should never change or fluctuate because of circumstances.

    Our dog’s ability to be always happy to see us regardless is extremely underrated.

    You actually have the power to define your circumstance. How? By your reactions toward it. 1 Thess 5:18 says “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s Will for you in Christ Jesus.”

    It said, “in all things give thanks”, not “for all things give thanks”. God didn’t say thank Him for that accident. He said have the heart and lifestyle of thanksgiving, even if you have an accident.

  • It Is Okay To Not Be Okay

    It Is Okay To Not Be Okay

    Lecrae’s song with Kari Jobe “Broken” starts with the verse, “we’re all broken”. It’s true. When you lost that loved one; when your closest friend walked away; when you were insulted or assaulted for no reason; when you were harshly spoken against by family; when you failed that test and your problems piled up, you were probably broken. Right now, as you read this you’re probably down.

    A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. Proverbs 15:13 KJV

    But that is not the end of the story. Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win. What you must know for sure is that life throws new problems at us while we are still working on the old ones. That’s how come we are like, ” why me?”, “why this particular time?”. The reality is that problems are the human definition of an opportunity to grow. Comfort zone is a beautiful place but nothing grows there. Challenges spice up life and make you discover something already in you that you never knew of.

    Sometimes it’s okay to cry. “Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.” If you don’t weep, how can you be comforted? There’s no point in appearing strong on the outside when you’re broken on the inside. It will make things worse in the near future. “God is closer to the brokenhearted”. The Holy Spirit is your Comforter. He will restore your soul. Cry on His Shoulders.

    Cry on Him ❤

  • Keeping Your Shit Together

    Keeping Your Shit Together

    If you live in the past too long, you will be depressed. If you live in the future too long, you will be anxious. The only place you are designed to live is in the present, with your back towards your past and your face looking towards the future. Hope is imagining your future with God in it. Hope is one of the things – hope, faith and love – that will last forever, amazingly. That means God is so awesome that He expects us to look forward to His wondrous glory even in the times of the New Heaven and New Earth. He never ceases to amaze us.

    Sinach’s single epitomizes God’s assurance of everlasting Hope (1 Cor 13:13)

    That’s why I love Sinach’s song “He Did It Again”. There’s a line that goes, “and when I thought that He had done too much, Jesus did it again.” I have realised that the relevance of Hope is sadly missing. Over-ambition is not hope. Hope is confidence in patience. You can have faith and lack hope. In other words, you can totally believe in what God can do and still see hopelessness in your situation. You are not doubting God. You are just imagining a future without God in it. If a “makeup world” you have imagined is causing you distress, why don’t you just simply make up something good?

    It is so easy to wallow in hopelessness. We just lie down and think of all the problems we have in the world just because we are starving and do not have enough money. One small mistake we make, make us think about all the stupid decisions we have ever made and how bad we are when it comes to such situations.

    The more we wallow in hopelessness, the more we feel like the most miserable person in the world.

    When we remember out of nowhere how someone misunderstood us; then we link to when we were misunderstood by another guy sometime back; then another link to a very similar experience 2 years ago; then we link it to 6 more examples at once; then we are like, “I’m the most misunderstood person in the world
    😩😩”.

    All this happens under 5 minutes. It all started from one small not-even-a-big-deal problem. Then one seemingly harmless thought. Before you realise, you’ve had a bad day. This happens way too often. And today, we are leaving this attitude with all its accompanying emotions of hopelessness behind us. If my mind brings up a problem and another problem tries to connect to it, say “no! Not today.” We are learning to tackle one issue at a time, one step at a time.

    If doctors were told how many patients they will attend to in even a day, hopelessness may set in. But they attend to all these patients one at a time wonderfully. If teachers made a big fuss about the number of papers they had to mark, no one would like to be a lecturer of a huge class.

    You can never tackle all your problems at once so don’t think of all of them at once

    Some moments are just not the right time to think about important issues. When you wake up at the wrong side of your bed, don’t think about the reason why you were born. It may seem like a good thing to do but it will filter towards you and leave you with negative emotions and hopelessness. Someone may then ask, when is the right time to think about your problems? When you have properly dealt with your anxiety about the problems.

    Going over and over allll your problems will not help you, it will not heal you, it will not even get anything fixed. It is just a pity-party.

    If you want to talk about your problems, make sure the person listening is a person with hope; someone who will make up for your hopelessness. Don’t also think you always need someone to talk to. Once you get attached to that thinking and no one is ready to listen, it will add insult to your injury. Know when to deal with your personal issues personally. Know when to invite a 3rd party. Either ways, God is willing to talk about it with you. Yes He already knows but He wants to hear you pour your heart out to Him. He is closer to the brokenhearted. Just like David the psalmist, we are looking within ourselves on this day and telling our soul, “Hope in God”. Remain hopeful and praise God, for He is your God and your Help. Amen

    Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, My Help and My God.
    Psalm 42:11

    I love you ❤

  • How To Comfort A Friend

    How To Comfort A Friend

    “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
    2 Corinthians 1:3-4

    Our brain has the capacity to store whatever information we receive, whether it is needful or not. But as time goes on, the brain empties its short-term memory. Also, if what’s stored in the long-term memory – be it your birthday 4 years ago or what you ate for breakfast 21 days ago – is not revised with time, the memory decays.

    Why? Because of emotional overload.

    Every thought, word, taste, smell, scene, touch etc has an emotion attached to it. For eg. You feel sad whenever you think about the death of a loved one. However, some events happen in our lives that are so traumatic that we hit an emotional overload for a long period of time. For eg. losing someone really close to you or seeing someone get shot. These events are traumatic that it’s been scientifically proven to cause neuroplasticity. Did you get it? The victim is so overloaded that it literally changes the structure of his/her brain.

    Do you know one thing? We are all headed for such an experience. Life does not even prepare us enough for it. No matter how much you are prepared for it, it is going to shake the very foundations of your will to survive. Keep this in mind when you see it happen to someone close to you. There’s an Akan proverb that says, “when you see a vulture on someone’s head, say get away from us, not get away from the person. For if the vulture leaves the person, it is coming to you.” The vulture is pain, grief, sorrow, trauma, hurt.

    If pain in this life is inevitable, why do we pretend to be okay? Why then do we act like nothing is wrong? Why? Hmm. Maybe, here’s why. Usually, people don’t know when the other person needs advice, encouragement, upliftment or comfort. It’s frustrating when you simply need comfort and someone is trying to advise you; when you’re pouring out your heart and the other keeps interrupting you with unsolicited advice. In such a situation, it’s difficult to say the right thing, but one thing will always be the right thing to do; listen.

    Listen before you speak. Sometimes the other doesn’t need you to say anything. Don’t make it about you. No one needs to hear what happened to you 5 years ago right now. Listen to the person, not to reply but to be empathic. Also, there’s this culture of belittling people’s experiences just because they are young and “inexperienced”. If a 3-year old is pouring out to you about how frustrating school is, what are you going to do? I guessed it. Downplay it. As if to say the child’s reaction to those experiences are invalid.

    If someone says they’ve lost their mother, it’s stupid to compare it to your experience of losing your dog. It’s insensitive to think that the person should get over it because it’s bound to happen. It’s absurd to think they are young and what they are going through now is “little” as compared to what you’ve been through. Everyone’s capacity is different; everyone’s reaction to the emotional load is different. Don’t belittle someone’s traumatic experiences. You are not the one to validate someone’s pain.

    You’ve probably written a lot of exam in your life and failed some. How are you going to react to a 13-year old failing exam for the first time? Alright. Okay, how about someone who brought hurt and guilt upon themselves because of their actions? Let’s talk about that category for a second.

    Having been called to comfort those who mourn, we have learnt to weep with those who weep and be happy with those who are happy. But how do we comfort other people without denying their reality to sell false hope, and also to avoid our own emotional overload? If you are that friend who always listens to other people pour their hearts out (and we all are that friend in one situation or another), how do you comfort without siding with the person’s mistakes he/she is not willing to admit with uncompromising Compassion?

    Jesus is the character in the Bible who is said to have compassion the most. He had compassion over the two blind men in Matt 20:34, the large crowd in Matt 14:14, the four thousand men in Matt 15:32, the five thousand men in Mark 6:34 and many many more. What I found is that Jesus didn’t tell them that there is hope, Jesus was their Hope. Any time Jesus had compassion on the sick, lame, blind, broken, crushed, sad, wretched, Jesus became a channel of healing for them.

    Don’t let them dump their burdens on you; help them lay down their burdens before the Father. Don’t promise them comfort, comfort them with the comfort God comforted you. Don’t just let them know that you’ll listen – so that the two of you will be wretched? NO! – let them know that when they come to you, they are not leaving with the burden they came with.

    Don’t be a helper in carrying burdens. Be a lifter of one’s head. Learn to comfort the broken without being broken. Don’t absorb their reality, impact yours.

    I love you ❤

  • Fake Friends Leave, True Friends Stay?

    Fake Friends Leave, True Friends Stay?

    Put yourself in this scenario; Imagine you are in an emergency. Think of people you can call. Those are your real friends.

    I used to think this way until I read the exact same idea on the internet. To me, it wasn’t a nice confirmation. It was rather a time of contemplation. There are those who will call me in such a scenario that I can’t call if I find myself in the same scenario. It doesn’t mean we are not friends. We are just not that type of friends. The “scenario” concept is just theoretical. In reality, it’s more complicated than that. It would be therefore detrimental for you to put those who would respond to your emergency in the special category and label all others as fake friends.

    No matter how hard you try, whether you are the most approachable person in your workplace, the funniest guy in the world or the most famous entertainer, we all have a small circle. It’s not small just because there are more people outside it than there are in it. No! It’s small because no matter how hard you try to expand it, it will remain small. The more people you add to your small circle, the more likely some others in the small circle will leave. No one has a small circle of 50 people. The goal is to expand your acquaintance circle. That circle can take everyone in the whole world. Expanding the small circle has a great limitation; it can only hold about a dozen people at a time. This leads us to a major misconception that needs to be tackled;

    MYTH: FAKE FRIENDS LEAVE, TRUE FRIENDS STAY

    Perhaps we’ve all had a “friend” we really thought was our friend till a situation came up. After cutting off the person, we see quotes like these on the internet and we find it so relatable. First of all, no matter how many times the universe is involved, we ultimately choose our friends. We can become acquainted by accident sort of, but no one unintentionally becomes friends with someone by chance. If anything at all, you made an effort to intentionally communicate with the person, which is essential for the growth from just an acquaintance, to being a close friend.

    When someone is in your close circle, there is that feeling of “best friends forever”, “you and I against the world”. Though seemingly unrealistic because we do not know the future, it’s necessary that that phase occurs and y’all live in the moment and enjoy every phase of it.

    The truth is, some people are gonna leave your inner circle with time. Not anything so personal. It’s just that, life happens. Of course, not all your best friends are gonna be best friends with you forever. Y’all became friends at one phase in your life and may move on when another phase sets in. That’s just the way it is. The truth is, once you’ve been friends with someone through the thick and thin, it doesn’t matter if y’all don’t talk or see each other often; in your hearts, y’all are still friends. In fact, such a friend may even die but you can remember them in your heart for the rest of your life. Are they in your inner circle? No. But they used to be. Such people are in what I call the “good friends” zone.

    Am I saying that there’s no such thing as a fake friend? No! All I’m saying is, friends come and go. Real friends. And that is absolutely okay. For some of us, life is gonna take us away from our families and they are gonna leave our inner circle. But they will forever hold a special place in our lives regardless. Truth is, you’re gonna meet your once best friend one day, exchange pleasantries, catch up on the good old times, share memories and then move on. Were they fake friends? No. Not in anyway. We just should’t expect someone to be there for us all the time. It’s beautiful that our journeys criss-cross and we meet people who forever make an impact on our lives, but always remember, we all are on our own individual journeys to our destination. One day, our paths may literally separate us. We should simply know that that path is gonna connect us to many other people who may choose to walk with us as well.