Resonance

Category: Uncategorized

  • Love One Another

    And now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34 GNB

    Romans 5:5 says, “This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to us.”

    Someone may ask now; how will I get this Love of God to love people?

    The Love of God is not far-fetched. It has been poured and is continually being poured into our hearts till we love all people with this very love. When someone is giving you a hard time, your prayer shouldn’t be that God should punish them so that they see their offence. Your prayer should be that God should pour more of His Love for them into your heart. The truth is this: brotherly love, romantic love and parental love – they all get tired and wear out eventually. The Love of God is eternal and continually renews within you.

    love one another

    You can only love one another with the Love of God when you have experienced this Love of God for yourself. And no one in the world can say that nobody in this world loves them – though that’s one of the commonest lies the enemy tells us – for we have all tasted of God’s sweet liquid Love. Oh, how sweet! When He pours His liquid Love into my heart; that is the greatest pleasure in the world.

    Whenever we love one another with the Love of God, the Love of God in their hearts reignites too. We cannot love without the Love of God. Whatever we genuinely love, even if it’s a career or hobby, aircraft or reading, we love it with the Love of God. That’s why regardless of what happens to us when we’re doing something we genuinely love with the Love of God, we’re not in despair.

    So I want you to be conscious of all good things. May your consciousness fill up with only thoughts that put a smile on your face. Learn to worship God in your everyday life. Set your affections towards God. Every other thing wears us out, trust me. Loving is effortless. Whenever you find that you’re struggling with Love, pray to the LORD in you. Learn to go on your knees more. Cultivate that habit. It makes your life more refreshed and purposeful. Now you understand when I always end my message with this;

    I love you ❤

  • Does the Bible Inferioriate Women?

    Does the Bible Inferioriate Women?

    He (Paul) writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
    2 Peter 3:16 NIV

    One may ask after reading what the New Testament letters got to say about women, “was Paul trying to downgrade the place of women?”. Certainly not. Paul was a radical person. He can be easily misunderstood, especially by those who want to do what they want but need Scriptural backing.

    Paul’s message about Grace has been misunderstood by generations as a license to sin instead of a license from sin. People say Paul said it is good for man to be alone (1 Cor 7:8) when God had said that it is not good for man to be alone (Gen 2:18). People say Paul said only “holy” people can take communion (1 Cor 11:27) when Jesus had said communion was for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28).

    Paul is not a controversial person. It is just how we read the Bible. The fact that the Bible is the Word of God does not necessarily mean we shouldn’t know who the writer’s original audience was. Because aside from Logus (a general Word applicable to everyone) there is Rhema (a specific Word to specific people). To one man, God can say, “Go”. To another man, He can say, “Wait”. Yet to all of us, He says, “Love”.

    Mind you, John the Baptist was not to drink wine (Luke 1:15) but Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine (John 2:9). In one church, Paul instructed women not to teach (1 Tim 2:12), and in another He instructs them not to even speak in church (1 Cor 14:35). Yet in another, Paul instructs them to teach what is good (Titus 2:3).

    Am I saying we should be selective with the Word of God? Or that we should throw away what doesn’t favour us and keep those that do? Certainly not. All I’m saying is that let’s understand the context so that we know when to apply what. The Bible is such that – when you throw away the context – you can find a verse to support you. We have to make sure that we are not applying a Scripture because it favours our stance. Rather because it is the Rhema for the context we are living in.

    In my post about Feminism and Submission, I debunked some popular misquoted Bible verses used to undermine the place of women in society. The post on Jesus calling God a woman made Pharisees angry – ironically, the post also made the religious people angry. So you see, it is necessary to understand the context. Context is key! Paul happens to be the most controversial because he is most misunderstood. My post about Understanding Biblical Context concerning women explains why, for instance, Paul tells the church of Corinth that women should not speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:34).

    This is not about gender equality. This is about matriarchy and their God-given place. Once God’s purpose for matriarchy falls on this generation, women of this generation are going to do exploits. Exploits no other generation has ever seen. This collaboration between males and females is yet to be fully realized. Women are not below men in any way. Women were always meant to stand beside, not behind. This same Paul said it beautifully, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman.”
    1 Corinthians 11:11 NIV

    I love you ❤

  • What the Bible says about Women: Understanding Biblical Context

    What the Bible says about Women: Understanding Biblical Context

    The entire Bible was directly written to three people groups; Jews (Israelites), Greeks and Romans. In order to understand the context, it’s important that we first know their culture concerning women.

    Phariseeism

    From Malachi to Matthew was 400 years. Within these 400 years, the religion called Judaism emerged. Judaism is not the working out of the Old Testament. Have you noticed that there are no Pharisees and scribes in the Old Testament? They were the ones who developed this religion within the 400-year period. Just like Buddhism, Confucianism, and even Christianity, the religion was created in the name of a person who wasn’t looking forward to creating a religion, this time in the person of Moses. There were 252 laws in the Old Testament (Law of Moses) but by the time Jesus was born, these guys had made it 613, including 100 laws against women. It includes the following;

    Jewish Culture

    In the Jewish setting at the time of Paul, women were the legal property of the men they married. They were considered candid slaves without a voice. They were allowed little or no formal education. Boys were sent to learn their dad’s profession while the girls stayed home with their mothers. Women were forbidden to speak to men in public and were required to veil their faces when in public. Jesus broke this law with the Samaritan woman He spoke with.

    Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

    John 4:27 NIV

    If she was caught unveiled, the man is required by law to file for divorce. A woman wasn’t allowed to eat at the same table as a man unless he was her husband. If the husband invited a guest, she was required to eat in a separate room. Marriage was betrothal; she was chosen to be married not the other way around, and there was little she could do about that.

    Whenever the writers of the Gospel wrote that Mary Magdalene was following Jesus, they were actually drawing the readers’ attention to the inclusive ministry of Christ. Women never followed the Pharisee’s congregation. They were not allowed by Judaic law to do so or even be part of the scribes. Religion was a men’s club. Jesus is indeed the friend of the anomalies;

    In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

    Mark 15:41 NIV

    Polygamy was allowed for men so women usually shared their husbands with other women. Women weren’t allowed to vote. She even couldn’t be a witness in a court case because the scribes and Pharisees believed women were inherently liars. They weren’t allowed to read the Torah or even be taught the Torah (law of Moses). Jesus broke this law when He taught Mary.

    …Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.

    Luke 10:39b NIV

    They basically weren’t supposed to do or be anywhere that involved more than one man. Thank God we’ve drastically grown past that as a generation. It will be therefore absurd on our side to go back to these things in the name of doctrine just because it’s written in the Bible. Ask yourself first, what’s the context of the content?

    As already stated, the Bible was written to 3 people groups; Greeks, Romans and Jews, especially the epistles. I’ve already discussed the Jewish culture, and now I want to continue with that of the Greeks and Romans, so we understand why Paul said the things he said.

    Roman Culture

    The books that were written to the Romans have no correction for women. No instructions were given by Paul to the Romans to restrict women from teaching or exercising authority. Why? In Roman culture, no one cared who was a woman and who wasn’t. Roman women could buy and sell properties.

    Unlike Jewish women who couldn’t own anything; anything they “owned” belonged to the man. Legally, Roman women were the property of men but in a much more open way. Roman women could have businesses and make money for themselves and own jobs. So for Romans, there were no gender barriers and women weren’t trying to compete with men, unlike extreme feminism today.

    Roman women also had the power to vote. Women weren’t an outcast in Roman settings, the poor were. No one cared if you were a woman or not; no stigma whatsoever against women in general.

    Greek Culture

    Acts 19:28 NKJV

    The Greeks made gods out of women and placed women above men. You’d notice that the epistles where Paul gave instructions for correcting or restricting women were those written to the Greeks. For example, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 that the man is the head of the woman (vs 3), women were created for men (vs 9) and women should cover their hair before praying (vs 13, 6). Why? Corinth was a Greek city with a Greek goddess as the main god of the city.

    Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2 that women shouldn’t wear braids or expensive clothes (vs 9), not teach or exercise any authority over a man (vs 12) and must be silent. Why? Timothy was in Ephesus, a Greek city with a multi-breasted female goddess as the god of the city, the goddess of fertility, Artemis aka Diana. That also explains why Paul said women will be saved through childbirth (vs 15). He wasn’t referring to salvation.

    The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven?”

    Acts 19:35 NIV

    It was the culture of Greek women to travel to Ephesus during pregnancy so that the goddess would save them from death during pregnancy. Greek women were afraid to become Christians and leave Diana’s covering, thus Paul said if a woman walks uprightly and loves God, they will be saved throughout the childbirth process (vs 15).

    In Greek mythology, women are more powerful than men. Their reasons/beliefs were; a woman was created before a man otherwise how could the second human being have been born? Their second reason/belief was that, because a man’s sex drive is typically higher than a woman’s, a woman always has something that a man wants but a man doesn’t always have something that a woman wants. Thus, Greeks usually put women in charge of everything because they believed that they were created first. That’s why Paul wrote this order to them;

    But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
    1 Corinthians 11:3 NIV

    Now that you have a summarised view of how the Bible setting looked like, take your Bible and search for all the verses that “undermine” women and see how enlightening it becomes. Especially, in the gospels, one would beautifully see how Jesus broke all the rules concerning women, one by one. Also, you can do further studies on the various cultures in various settings to further enrich your experience and understanding.

    I love you ❤

  • What is God’s Gender? What If I Told You that God is a Woman?

    What is God’s Gender? What If I Told You that God is a Woman?

    “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
    Genesis 1:27 NKJV

    In the above text, we get to understand that when God created man in His image, He created him both male and female. That tells us that it takes masculine and feminine qualities to understand the nature of God. God is neither male nor female. We use “He, Him, Himself” for convenience’s sake because there are no pronouns for a neutral gender in any language. God is as genderless as a table.

    Much of the gender issues stem from the fact that we think the Trinity is predominantly men. God relates to us the way we want Him to relate to us. If you see God as your Teacher, He will be a Teacher to you. If you see Him as a Father, He will be a Father to you. Perhaps, seeing God as your Mother is going to forever change your perspective and give you an in-depth revelation of what God’s unrelenting Love actually means. If seeing God as a woman sounds blasphemous to you, then that says a lot about you.

    Have you noticed how almost every religion and culture is finding a way to downgrade women to being second-class citizens, an inferior gender or secondary to men? In fact, many women have been trained to “inferioriate” themselves to a man in the name of religion and culture. Have you ever wondered why? Are we afraid to see the repercussions when a woman finally understands who she is and takes her rightful place by a man? This is going to be one heck of a ride.

    Let us understand the context of Luke 15. The Pharisees accused Jesus of welcoming and eating with tax collectors and other outcasts. Women were included in the “outcast category”. How do I know that? It is written in the Talmud, a Holy Book written by renowned Pharisees and used in conjunction with the Torah (the Law of Moses). In the Talmud, it is against the Law for a Rabbi to teach women. It is also against the Law to speak with women in public. In fact, a renowned 1st-century Rabbi called Elzar wrote, “I’d rather burn the Torah than teach it to a woman”. His comments depict the religious communities of that day.

    In the Old Testament, women were relegated to the outer court of the Tabernacle of Moses. There were four sections; Most Holy Place, Holy Place, Inner Court and Outer Court. Women were in the last together with other outcasts; lepers, foreigners, and anomalies. But we know that Jesus had women following Him everywhere He went.

    Now that I’ve established the fact that the outcasts included women, let’s go to the 3 parables. Jesus told the Pharisees 3 parables, all having the same meaning; the Parable of the lost sheep, lost coin and lost son. In keeping context in mind (Luke 15:1-3); the shepherd was referring to God, the 99 sheep was the Pharisees and the lost sheep was the outcast, the sinners Jesus was welcoming. In the third parable, (famously known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son) the Father is God, the older brother is the Pharisees (who are jealous that His Father threw a party for the prodigal son), and the prodigal son is the outcasts.

    But with the parable in the middle, Jesus said something amazing.

    “Or suppose a woman who has ten silver coins loses one of them — what does she do? She lights a lamp, sweeps her house, and looks carefully everywhere until she finds it. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together, and says to them, ‘I am so happy I found the coin I lost. Let us celebrate!’Luke 15:8‭-‬9 GNB

    We may not really get it, but the hearers totally understood what Jesus was saying. Who was the coin that wasn’t lost? (righteous people who didn’t need repentance) The Pharisees. Who was the lost coin? The outcasts. Who was the woman? God. Jesus used a woman as a metaphor for God. Jesus was saying God is not only like a man. God is like a woman who cannot watch her own children perish but is willing to sacrifice her own life to save them all. Let me end with this verse;

    “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!
    Isaiah 49:15 NLT

    I love you ❤

  • Submission & Feminism

    Submission & Feminism

    Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
    Ephesians 5:21‭-‬22 NIV

    It is outrightly said in many cultures including ours, that the man is the head. As to whether the woman is the tail or the neck by default, it undoubtedly relies on our understanding of “headship”. The word “head” is used 75 times in the New Testament, but never in the sense of overpowering domination. It similarly means Origin or Source. All Paul was saying in 1 Cor 11:3 is that the origin of the woman (not women) is the man. “If you Greeks think the woman is superior to the man because she was created first, you got the “created first” part even wrong.”

    Marriage is not ownership. It is a partnership. If the woman cannot sometimes lead for the man to support, then there’s no mutual submission. When God created a woman as a helpmate to man, He wasn’t creating a slave, subordinate, “lesser vessel”, or someone inferior to the man. The word “helpmate” is used 16 times in the Bible, 3 referring to woman and 13 referring to God. So wherein lies that proposition?

    In such a Greek culture where women were generally idolized, it was important that Paul stresses on the importance of the woman submitting to the man. In our culture where our “foremothers” simply endured emotional, physical and mental abuse in marriage in the name of “submission” – which is just a nicer word for sublime slavery – and sacrificed for the man to the detriment of their goals; dreams; aspirations; basically their life, I don’t think “women, submit to your husbands” should be the emphasis.

    It’s a shock that “wives, submit to your husbands” is such a famous verse and barely anybody took their time to notice the previous verse. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” It is important to realise that a win-win situation is possible. If women empowerment is to the detriment of men rights, we’re tearing each other down instead of building each other up. It is also important for men to realise that feminism is not a threat to their authority. Fighting for women and fighting against men are two totally different things. It’s about time matriarchs were placed beside patriarchs.

    I love you ❤

  • Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude throughout the Vicissitudes of Livelihood

    Take time daily to reflect on how much you have. It may not be all that you want but it is all you have. All you have is not all you want but it is always all you need. Do you have a heart, a mind, a soul, life or a moment? Then you have all you need. All what life has to offer emanates from these. “Cultivating an attitude of gratitude begins with counting your blessings”. In simpler terms, gratitude is expressing thanks for gifts we receive.

    An attitude of gratitude means making it a habit to express thankfulness and appreciation in all parts of your life, on a continual basis, for both the big and not-so-big things alike. “If you appreciate what you have, you make room for more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you’ll never have enough.” Truth is, there is no neutral ground between ungratefulness and gratitude. You’re either grateful or you’re not. If your words doesn’t say it, your actions will.

    If the gratitude process is hard to get started, begin by asking yourself, “What could I be grateful for?”, and see if the ideas start to flow. Every day won’t be perfect, but focusing on what we are grateful for tends to wash away feelings of regret and negativity. Gratitude is about feeling and expressing appreciation: for all we’ve received, all that we have (however little it may be), and for all that has not befallen us. It functions as an antidote for attachment to what we want but don’t have and aversion to what we have but don’t want. It is the expression of love that takes away the bitterness and hopelessness.

    Gratitude changes perspective—it can sweep away most of the petty, day-to-day annoyances on which we focus so much of our attention—the “small stuff” situations that bring up feelings of impatience, intolerance, negative judgment, indignation, anger, or resentment. Gratitude is a vehicle to diffuse self-pity and self-centeredness, increase feelings of well-being, and prompt mindful awareness of that which is beyond oneself—of belonging to a greater whole, and of connection to others, as well as to the world.

    Gratitude

    It’s valuable to be aware that nearly all experiences have both “positive” and “negative” aspects. Circumstances that are brutally physically and/or emotionally painful often contain considerable psycho-spiritual blessings in the forms of learning, growth, and healing. That is not to say that it is good you went through that hard time. All I’m saying is, even something good can come out of something bad.

    Sometimes we have to work harder to locate the positive and unearth its gifts (and sometimes these become manifest only in retrospect)—but if we make the time and invest the energy to look closely and search consciously, we will find them. There is always something to be grateful for, no matter how negative or desperate things may seem.

    Gratitude

    If only you took your eyes off other people’s journey and sat down to appreciate your own journey. All things work together for the good. However, never forget this; it is those you are truly grateful in the hard times who really reap the full potential of fruitfulness when the storm is over. The storm will definitely be over, but your gratitude should never be.

    Just as ungratefulness gives us a bad time even during our good days, so does gratitude give us a good heart and a good mind as we face the vicissitudes of life.

    I love you ❤️

  • Balance: The Essential Universal Principle that Holds Life Together

    Art and science. Logic and emotions. Work and play. These words are not opposites but having the two creates a design principle of the universe: balance. This principle is not that everything should be balanced but that everything IS balanced. This is because balance is not a matter of choice or preference. Where there is no balance, there is destruction; a break in the cycle of resurgence where everything just swirls into depletion and nothingness. It is the basic ingredient of existence.

    Balance: Perfection’s Best Kept Secret

    Balance: Perfection’s Best Kept Secret

    Perfection is a scary word for many, really. Use it three or four times in a sentence and someone will definitely give you a lecture of how things can’t be perfect. True! We are not powerful enough to control the balance of ups and downs, highs and lows or even foreknow if the good will outweigh the bad in any decision we make. The power to make things perfect is not even 5% in our hands. There will always be a margin of error.

    However, perfection simply means complete. Have you seen how the earth revolves around the sun using the sun’s gravity? That’s perfect! If it were slightly lower by even an inch raised to the power of an inch, our earth will rotate slowly away into the “nothingness” of space. If it were slightly higher by the same margin, the earth will rotate slowly towards the sun until it was completely burned up by the sun’s harmful radiations. Do you see that balance?

    That’s not the only example in nature. I could talk about reproduction and childbirth, atmospheric pressure, the human brain, the cycle of nitrogen, the food chain, and so on. The good part about all this is; we haven’t discovered a tenth of all there is to know about the universe. Yet, we see it clearly. A lot of what we call perfection is balance at work. Perfection can choose not to exist and we’ll be perfectly fine. The day balance leaves office, hell will break lose. Balance is literally what’s holding hell from breaking lose.

    Balance: the Shortcut to Consistency

    Balance: the Shortcut to Consistency

    Life is so unpredictable, and all we feed our brains from social media is how inconsistent and messed up one thing or another is. It was only a matter of time until someone popularizes the idea that there’s no such thing as consistency. To be honest, consistency really sounds like a cool word for perfection. It would have been easy to sell the idea that it’s as unrealistic as perfection.

    Guess what makes consistency possible? It’s not sheer will power or motivation or even knowledge. We all can know what to do and still watch ourselves not do it. We ride our consistency on the shoulders of motivation till it exhausts, then we’re more inconsistent than we were before. Consistency is more about holding something together, keeping it going like a cycle. You can’t force it.

    Of course, there are no shortcuts to consistency. However, what makes consistency consistent in the long-term is balance. If you keep your hands up for like forever, it’s called punishment. If you keep your hands up for 2 minutes and bring it down for about 45 seconds so you could keep it up again for 2 minutes, it’s called exercise. Creating that balance is what makes you consistent. You don’t have to beat yourself up.

    balance

    Work, but don’t kill yourself working. Rest, but don’t be lazy. Have some days off. Resurgence, remember? If you don’t balance exertion and rest, either of them is bound to destroy you. As aforementioned, where there is no balance there is destruction. Balance keeps you in a cycle to keep on keeping on.

    So keep on keeping on, baby ❤️

  • Transparency vs Honesty II

    Transparency vs Honesty II

    Understanding “understanding” is knowing the similarities between two seemingly dissimilar word meanings. The opposite is equally true. There is such an in-depth understanding and enlightenment when we realize the difference between two words with similar meanings. Inasmuch as it’s important to know how honesty and transparency must co-exist in our relationships, in some context these words take sides and it becomes very important to choose one over the other. Let’s dive in.

    What does it really mean to be transparent?

    Transparency is spilling out what someone will need to know about you – because it directly concerns them – without being asked to, so as to let them know what they are getting their heads into.

    The closer we are to someone, the more open we are to them. Very close yet very open. That is what transparency is really about. The difficulty that comes with Transparency is knowing what to keep private and for how long it should remain private

    As to what to keep private;

    Our level of relationship with someone determines what they have earned the right to know. They may never ask because they may have no clue. There are many things we keep to ourselves, where no one deserves to know because it doesn’t affect them directly. But once you’re sharing your life with someone else other than you, those things will eventually be exposed. The more vulnerable we are, the more we expose what we are.

    Letting them know beforehand creates a bond of trust right at the start. You are saying I’m worthy of being in your circle because you have exposed something to me that not just anybody can know. Hiding it from them and they later finding out creates a bond of distrust. The longer the relationship has been and the longer you’ve kept it a secret, the stronger the bond of distrust.

    As to how long it should remain private;

    Being an introvert myself, I find it really weird when I get to know someone for a short while and they trust me with such vital information about themselves. In my mind, I’m like, “TMI..TMI”. This is the principle; start from the known to the unknown. There are things someone can easily get to know about you by asking a few friends, studying the way you go about things and checking out your profile online. Start from there. Allow the other person to earn the right to know certain not-so-obvious stuff. Don’t be an open book.

    When the mutual interest to get to know each other is identified, begin to tell them things only a few would know as time goes by. When it dawns on you that they should probably get to know something about you, tell them right away. Trust your intuition! It tells you what to share when to share it and to the degree it should be shared at a time.

    This is where the line between Transparency and Honesty is drawn. Honesty is telling the truth when I’m asked. Transparency is telling the truth because it deserves to be known. Honesty comes with a condition; you have to ask first. Transparency requires no permission. It is necessary to be honest and much more important to be transparent. Once I’m not questioned, there’s no accountability for my honesty or dishonesty.

    If you have a medical condition, it’s important that your new friend gets to know at the early stages. If you’re single-divorced, your new catch might wanna know. And if you skipped to read only the last paragraph, I might wanna know lol.

    I love you ❤️

  • Honesty vs Transparency

    Honesty vs Transparency

    In many contexts, Honesty and Transparency could mean the same thing. They can be used interchangeably in a given linguistic context and they certainly do share many similarities. To me, a resounding principle strongly holds in the English Language; if two words are dissimilar in syntax, they can also be dissimilar in semantics. Therefore, as long as Transparency and Honesty are two different words, they can have two distinct meanings. Context is all that matters.

    What does it really mean to be honest?

    In a relationship, honesty is definitely one of the most important virtues to look out for. There’s nothing more frustrating than someone who keeps lying to you. Constant lying brings about distrust, suspicions and frustrations. Surely, if you can’t trust me enough to tell me the truth, it’s a big red flag.

    Being honest is being true and sincere to yourself first about what you really think you are. It has nothing to do with being right. I can be sincere in expressing my thoughts and still be factually wrong. Being honest is really about facing reality – when we are being honest with others, –  and being vulnerable enough to open up our way of thinking to others in a more appropriate way. There’s a way of expressing ourselves without downplaying the essence of what we want to say and still tactfully presenting it in the best way to avoid unnecessary drama.

    Appropriate way? Unnecessary drama, huh? Let’s talk more about that; honesty is not an emotion. It’s a virtue. Yet in every expression lies an emotion. That’s what emotions basically are; expressions. Therefore, with honesty comes an accompanying expression. In other words, you can be impolite and honest at the same time. You can be angry and honest at the same time.

    it is possible to be calm and honest at the same time. You can be nervous, grieved, happy, depressed, relaxed, compassionate – to mention but a few – and honest at the same time.

    How can honesty be best expressed?

    There’s a way to express your honesty without hurting someone intentionally. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear because of the kind of emotion it was expressed in. Not only that. Sometimes the truth is hard to tell because we don’t know what emotion to express it in. Obviously, it’s very difficult to be honest and not be offensive or hurtful, but we shouldn’t express offensive and hurtful emotions and think our honesty will make up for it.

    I know situations get more complicated but this is my principle; don’t try NOT to offend anyone. It’s pathetic. Someone will definitely get offended for their own self-projected reasons. On the other hand, don’t try to intentionally offend someone. Comedians say some of the worst things we would have found angering in another context but we rather found it hilarious and had a good laugh about it.

    Is Honesty meant to offend?

    Let Honesty do the offending rather than offending someone and trying to let your honesty make up for it. For instance, you may tell me that my posts are boring. You were being honest but I became offended. That’s great! In the same instance, if you try to insult my posts just to offend me, that isn’t honesty. That is subtle hostility. Sir Isaac Newton said it better, “Tact is making a point without making an enemy.”

    In the next piece, let’s talk about transparency and what it really means. Don’t forget to like and share.

    I love you ❤️

  • Believe In Yourself Like No One Else In The World Would

    We all know and have heard several times that we should believe in ourselves. The major reason we usually don’t is because we think we know ourselves too well. Some think success will crumble them. Others think it’s good to be lazy sometimes (then sometimes gradually turns into all the time), while some others think consistency will break them. We are our own worst enemy. No one limits us more than we limit ourselves. It’s amazing that of all the things we can choose to think of ourselves, we choose negativity shaped as truths and live by it.

    John C. Maxwell once told a story about a school that performed an interesting experiment. They randomly picked a teacher from the teachers’ database and assigned the teacher to randomly picked freshmen, about 30 of them. They met separately with the teacher and said, “we chose you because you’re the best teacher in your field in the entire region. Therefore, we’ve assigned to you the very best students because you deserve the very best. Then they met with the students and said, “we chose you because you’re the best students in one of the best schools in the world. Therefore, we’ve assigned to you the best teacher in the entire region because you deserve nothing but the best.

    At the end of the academic year, the selected students’ group performance was 30% higher than the rest of the freshmen. The teacher was really proud of the performance and applauded the students for being the best of the best. The students also were very proud of their achievements but weren’t surprised because they had the best teacher. The board came back and said to the teacher, “we have a confession to make. You actually aren’t the best teacher”.

    The teacher somewhat understood and immediately accredited the extraordinary performance to the students. The board then said again, “We have another confession. Your students weren’t necessarily the best. They were randomly selected by a computerized system. Then the teacher asked, “if you randomly selected me and randomly selected the students, why did the students excel? The board concluded wisely, “because you thought they should and they thought they should”.

    What happens when you have someone who believes the best about you? You raise the belief in yourself to a higher level. A level higher than yourself. The sky no more becomes the limit. The limit becomes the sky. So are you going to wait till you find someone who believes in you? Life is too short to give that power to someone else. The reason why people live mediocre lives is not because they aim high and miss; it’s that they aim low and hit. So you’d want to examine yourself and realize the standard you’ve set for yourself. If you raise it too high, you’ll always be too hard on yourself, stressed out and feel like an under-achiever. But for most of us, we’ve set it too low so that we don’t feel too bad about ourselves for not trying hard enough.

    You need to constantly raise the bar a little in order to consistently grow in ways you never thought possible. It all begins with believing in ourselves. There’s a part of you within you that lies undiscovered because you refuse to jump off the cliff. You’re too sure about yourself, but the truth is you are too complex to understand everything about you. It takes more than a lifetime to know ourselves for sure, so don’t think negatively about yourself all your life based on one or two past circumstances. Your future drastically changes when you change your perception about your own self. Your thoughts will change. Even your thoughts will change and so will your choices and decisions.

    Do you want to change? It starts with changing what and how you think about yourself. Believe in yourself. Anyone else’s belief in you is auxiliary. It doesn’t matter who believes in you if you don’t believe in yourself. God believes in you. The universe believes in you. What about you? Do you?

    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 ❤

  • The Glorious Paradox in Recovery from Addiction

    There are a list of at least a dozen paradoxes in recovery, but they all begin with the big one: I had to be willing to give up to win against drugs and alcohol. Only when I was completely out of options did recovery seem like a viable option. From that one point we move […]

    The Glorious Paradox in Recovery from Addiction
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