Resonance

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  • What It Means to Have Intercourse with God

    Imagine being a King. Everything you create becomes a slave to you. Then one day, you look in the mirror. You see your image. It smiles when you smile. It talks when you talk. Then you get a wonderful idea. “Since I can do whatever I want, how about I give life to my image. He will rule over everything I’ve created. He will think like me, and be my best friend.

    What’s my point? Without downplaying the established fact that God created us to worship Him, the primary reason God created us is for intimacy. For us to understand how much He desires us, He intentionally creates everything apart from what Adam could actually be very intimate with; a woman. This was somewhat Adam’s first experience of how God feels when He sees us.

    As soon as Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh“, he fundamentally understood in his own experience our intimacy with God. “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.” We will never fundamentally understand God as our Father until we become a parent. We will never fundamentally understand God as our Husband until we fall in love. What’s my point? Your whole experience in life, regardless of the fall of man, was designed to bring you into experiential knowledge and intimacy with God.

    That’s why we have sex; so that by experiencing what it means to be one flesh with another human, we understand what it means to experientially know God. That’s how come Paul was able to easily explain it to the church of Corinth; do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. In other words, all experiences in life in obedience to God is a replica of our intimate experience with God.

    Even giving birth to someone who looks or behaves like you in one form or another makes us understand what it’s like to be born of God and be in His image. And Adam …. begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, Genesis 5:3 says.

    It’s interesting to know that Moses used the Hebrew word yada as the verb in Genesis 4:1; “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived”. It’s obvious Adam had sexual intercourse with Eve, but Moses didn’t use sakab which he used in Genesis 19:33 to refer to Lot’s daughter sleeping with his Dad. The connotation is, we know someone on a very different level after having intercourse with them. Intimacy is not just sakab, it’s yada.

    Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. Revelation knowledge is birthed in intimate relationship with God. Did you get it? God wants to yada with us. Nyame yada wo. The question is, wo yada Nyame? God is not looking for someone who has figured Him out. He will always bring confusion to the tower of Babel. God is looking for someone who longs for Him.

    Isn’t it interesting that the Bible says that “in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Not just the fact that it’s ALL. It’s also the fact that it is not only found in Him, but hidden in Him. He wants intimacy. He wants yada. That’s why He speaks in mysteries. These mysteries will never be understood outside of relationship. It’s just information when you’re outside of intimacy. It’s transformational when He reveals to you in the confides of His intimacy with you.

    That’s why your dreams from God are not straightforward. He doesn’t want you to replace Him with a dream manual. He wants you to yada with Him till He reveals it to you. That’s why it’s wrong to seek God for ministry or revelation or insight. You’re saying, “I want the fruit of intimacy without the intimacy”. That’s why your prayers aren’t getting answered. You want the benefits but you don’t want to commune with Him. The prerequisite for getting all your prayers answered is yada. “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you.“

    I’ve given you the secret of the covenant. Write it in your journal. Meditate on it. This is why we seek God. This is why God always speaks in a mystery. This is why we meditate on God’s Word. By meditating, we yada Him.

    Buy “Intercourse with God”

  • Spiritual Architecture: The Lost Spiritual Significance in Modern Architecture

    Since time immemorial, man has known that there’s more to what the naked eye could see. Life was so strange to be normal. There had to be a higher being who overlooked it all. This began the use of the visible to represent the invisible. These symbols had spiritual significance and kickstarted what I called spiritual architecture. Some built altars, others built statues while others carved gods out of wood.

    Imhotep, the very first architect known by name was Egyptian. Architecture in the first civilization went hand-in-hand with craftsmanship. Imhotep was more of an artisan who carved the physical till the spiritual was revealed. Today, architects are more or less photoshop experts. Spirituality was so relevant in architecture that palaces, temples and all public buildings were dedicated to gods and built to show that spiritual significance.

    Architects of the early eras were either kings, spiritual leaders or an honorable man chosen to carry out building instructions according to the oracle of the gods. Bezalel, mentioned in Exodus 31, was the architect who built the Tabernacle of Moses. The first man mentioned in the Bible to have been filled with the Spirit of God. Architects were held in high esteem and had some spiritual backing. Today, the average person doesn’t know how relevant the architect is, underpaying them into depression.

    Buildings with spiritual significance have produced masterpieces well ahead of a million generations to come; the Pyramid of Giza, King Solomon’s Temple, the Temple of Hephaestus, to name but a few. The architecture had divine concepts for a start. That is, the architect had a divine intuition to design it in a particular way that overlaid the spiritual on top of the physical realm.

    The Pyramid of Giza following the Golden Ratio

    Such places were seen as the place where diviniy met humanity. The mathematical order still made it more functional, beautiful and durable than most buildings today. Facts! Not only were the temples built in this way, the entire community was. The place of worship was mathematically placed as the centre of the city. Also, there wasn’t a single redundant element in the design. Every symbol, design and handiwork had spiritual significance.

    In the Bible, God goes into exquisite detail into how the Ark of Noah and and the Tabernacle of Moses is to be built. The Bible also goes into tremendous detail into how the Temple of Solomon was built. A typical vernacular architecture had symbolic meanings to every craft and design technique too, reflecting the religion and culture of each clan and tribe. Can we say same for modern architecture?

    The Pantheon following the Golden Ratio

    “Spiritual” architecture has mathematical order. Only mathematics can be used to explain spiritual relevance in a physical way. That’s why most church designs have order, symmetry and repetitive pattern, designed a little bit above the human scale for the user to experience awe and see how small one is in front of a big God. It is mathematical order that makes ancient masterpieces more functional, beautiful and durable than most designs today.

    Frank Gehry wasn’t lying when he said 98% of what is built and designed today is pure shit. I couldn’t agree more. Including his designs, if you ask me. What is the focus of modern architecture? “I saw a nice building in that place. Can we replicate it here?”. Does the average architect know mathematical order, understand mathematical beauty and use them in designs? Golden ratio? Fibonacci sequence? Any spiritual significance? Any mathematical basis? Anything? Any?

    Let me hear your thoughts on this. Please comment below.

  • Declinism: Is the World Getting Better or Worse?

    One anthem of the older generation is how the youth of today are morally bankrupt, how the world has changed for the worse and how life was better back in their days. It looks like, with each passing day, something new comes up to remind us of how worse everything is getting. Global warming, war threats, political unrests, heat waves, natural disasters, well-planned genocides, unforeseen suicides, widespread homicides, poor healthcare, corrupt governments, stagnant education systems, rampant kidnapping, “debatable” rape cases and yeah, your best friend’s bad breath.

    Everything on the news is telling you how things are going sideways. Is it? Mean world syndrome is a cognitive bias that makes people perceive the world to be more dangerous than it is. Did you experience some sunshine? Took a deep breath? Smiled? The world is not dangerous after all, is it? Nonetheless, there are a lot of dangerous people in the world. The average person walks by a murderer 36 times during their lifetime. You didn’t even notice they were murderers, did you? Some even smiled at you. Thinking about it is even creepier. That’s what the news does all the time.

    News is always about something bad, someone dead, someway somehow. Imagine the news only being about the good stuff? Won’t it be amazing? Actually not. It is not the fault of any news agency to feed us bad news all the time. It is because of how the brain works. Studies have shown that the mind is negatively biased and thus, people pay more attention to bad news than good news. Trust me, bad news accounts for about 80% of the reason why we think the world is getting worse.

    This is actually not a surprise to anyone but, anything you hear happening today had already been happening. Wars? Pandemics? Rapes? Killings? Collapsing systems? It is not that they are rampant today. It is just that you have a higher chance of hearing about it today. In times past, messengers had to travel long distances to send any news to neighbouring cities. Today, Twitter alone can tell me how North Korea is flexing their muscles on the rest of the world.

    Don’t long for “the good old days.” This is not wise. 

    Ecclesiastes 7:10

    In other words, the world has pretty much been the same for a long time. There are just periodic abrupt changes for the good or bad, but things go back to the normal cycle of life; birthing, living, dying. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pretending that the world is any better than it is supposed to be. What I’m saying is that there are no “good old days”. The world is getting better at a similar rate of it getting worse. The possibilities are high for both extremes. When the world improves – for example, the divorce rate drastically reduces – unless you are pretty much concerned about it, you are most likely not going to hear about it.

    Let me give you vivid examples of how the world has gotten better;

    Global life expectancy has more than doubled in the past century, rising to an all-time high of 72. Back in the 17th century, people lived to be about 35 years max. 25 years, in the 13th century. Today, we say life begins at 40. In 1800, nearly half of all children died before the age of five, but today that figure has fallen to less than 4%. Due to high advancements in medical research and technology, each individual has learnt to take good care of themselves and go for medical treatment when sick instead of leaving it to the “god of health”. Don’t let anyone lie to you that the older generation used to live long. That’s only true because the younger generations are still young. Young people die since the beginning of time. It didn’t start today.

    More wealth has been created in the last four decades than in all of human history before then. Almost everyone was poor when Jesus walked the earth. It was only royals and officials who had all the wealth. Just 200 years ago, 8 in 10 people still lived in extreme poverty. Today it’s fewer than 1 in 10. Not just that. As the second of the UN’s 17 SDGs, the chance to completely wipe out extreme poverty increases with each day. From my phone, I can donate to the UN to help feed poor families in deprived countries.

    Download ShareTheMeal app on your smartphone today

    War, disease and natural disasters now claim fewer lives than at any point in human history. Two centuries ago, 88% of the world’s population was illiterate; now only 10% of the world is. I don’t even want to delve into technology and how it has changed the ballgame for generations to come. An average smartphone user now has more information at their disposal than the US president had 50 years ago. Until man went to the moon, we didn’t know we were destroying the ozone layer. No one cared about anything like that until the 1970s. Today, sustainability is the talk of many industries seeking to leave the world better than we found it.

    How about the COVID pandemic? When the world had a pandemic in the 14th century, years went by without anyone identifying the cause of the disease. The Black Death wiped out cities. People were left dead on the streets for months. Many saw it as a curse from the gods. When COVID arose, in about 4 months the whole world shut down for the pandemic, knew its name, its causes and ways of spreading. Under normal circumstances, vaccines take 10 to 15 years to develop. In under one year, COVID vaccines were ready. The world has resumed and almost everyone is taken precautions.

    People used to talk more about the end of the world and impending doom for so long for many centuries that people actually looked forward to the world getting worse. Today, people go about their daily lives, not being superstitious and idly waiting for the world to end, though they have it at the back of their minds that it can end soon. Remember, the world keeps getting better and worse at the same time. However, many don’t want to hear that it is better than it used to be.

    All I am asking from you, O reader, is to leave a place better than you found it. Let the world be better because you are in it. Make someone’s life better. Make your environment better. It will make your life better.

    Don’t worry. We will talk about it getting worse as well 🙃

  • What At All is the Meaning of Life? I Need Answers!

    The first time someone really close to me died was in 2005. I had lost my grandad. I wasn’t particularly sad. I was alarmed. “So I won’t see him physically again?, So that’s it? He’s gone? Is that all?”. 19th August, 2005. My grandad was gone. After the final funeral rites and all, life went on as if my grandpa never existed. All his stuff was quickly sent out the house. His favorite radio was no longer valuable to any of us. All the things he treasured meant little to us. Even his bed was taken away.

    You see me now, but not for long. You will look for me, but I will be gone. Just as a cloud dissipates and vanishes, those who die will not come back. They are gone forever from their home— never to be seen again.ò

    Job 7:8‭-‬10 NLT

    The next set of questions came running through my mind. I did realize that my Dad, Mom, siblings and friends were not going to here forever. Everyone is the last person in their lifetime to die. Each death causes so much pain, so much disdain, so much havoc to so many families no matter how peaceful the death was. They rest in peace and leave the rest in pieces. Soon we too will be gone. Will our life be meaningful to those we leave behind?

    What really is the essence of life? Have you ever asked yourself that? What is the essence of life? Is this all there is to life? The sad part about asking this question is that it only comes to mind when we are down, aggravated, tired, weary, dry, suffering, contemplating and reminiscing.

    Life is simple yet very complicated. Life is short yet it lasts for eternity. Life is hard though we smile easily. Life is tough yet it is so tender. Life is dear and priceless yet it demands a lot of sacrifices. Life is unfair yet it serves karma on a hot plate. Life is unpredictable yet we catch glimpse of the future.

    There is no life without death and there’s no death without a life. What makes me alive? Aside the heartbeat and breath, what makes our heart beat faster and takes our breath away? What do we give our life to? What kills us within? What do we do with our lives? What do we live for? What will we die for?


    “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless.” Keep this in mind: The Teacher was considered wise, and he taught the people everything he knew. He listened carefully to many proverbs, studying and classifying them.

    Ecclesiastes 12:8‭-‬9 NLT

    Is living worth dying for? Is dying worth living for? How long till our bones are weak and our strength is gone? How long till I die at the hands of that unforeseen circumstance? How much time do I have left? How long till I’m long gone? How long is too long?

    Life is but a breath. Life is breath. What gives me oxygen? What deoxygenates me? What drains me? What have I drained myself into? What have I given myself to? What am I doing? What am I? Am I my own life? Or I’m living my own life? Or my life is not my own?

    What really is the essence of life?

  • Distractions: Social Media, Abstinence & the Secret of Addiction

    Who doesn’t know what to do to achieve good results? Who doesn’t know that salad is healthier than chocolate candy? In the Information Age, there’s barely any excuse for not knowing. Everything is basically one Google search away. What is common is learnt ignorance, where we choose to not know because we don’t what to know. Perhaps, the truth is a bitter pill to swallow. Many are afraid of checking their health status. Others are afraid of checking their school marks while others are afraid of checking their bank account balance.

    It does start from the little things where we are afraid of checking the remainder of our data bundle. This is one of the biggest fuels of inconsistency, deviation and wastage; not checking on your own progress though you feel that urge that you’ve deviated from your initial agenda. Also, not verifying though you are unsure and choosing to do the bare minimum with the pretense that you didn’t know the requirements.

    We are all know what is right. It doesn’t guarantee that we will do what is right. What we lack is the ability to follow through till we achieve the desired results. In other words, we are lacking the ability to avoid distractions. Life is not just about doing the right things. It’s also about not doing the wrong things. Have you ever been fully motivated to sit down and work hard till you achieve a certain goal, only for you to be stuck on your phone 45 minutes later, scrolling through social media. You come back to your task and all that energy is gone. What is left is just boredom, demotivation and reluctance.

    From one perspective, we live in a world full of distractions. Every product, lifestyle, fashion, accessory, software, tool, mechanism is designed to catch your attention. Everything you see, hear, feel, taste and smell takes a portion of your attention and craves for more of it till you crave for more of that thing. Technology is no different. It was designed to be persuasive and pervasive. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have synced into our way of life that fast. Every new invention and every virtual software is backed by research in human psycnology and is scientifically designed to “distract” you. That means it is easier today than it was yesterday to get distracted.

    Does that mean technology is bad? Is technology hijacking our brains? Is it getting everyone synced in a virutal reality that is so addictive and unhealthy? I am no conspiracy theorist. It is scientifically untrue that technology is a distraction because everything is potentially distracting and addictive. In fact, anything that solves pain is potentially addictive. Yes, some people do become addicted to technology as a defensive mechanism against their own lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-image.

    After all, it is easier to tweet your ideas to a million people than to stand in front of a million people to convey the same idea. So is technology; video games, social media etc. ruining our children? The idea of thinking technology is a distraction for our generation is in itself a distraction. It is distracting us from the potential prowess of exploration and creativity that comes with technology. You are using social media to convey the idea of social media ruining this generation. Think about it!

    So how do we stop getting distracted? One thing people do a lot but it never really works is strict abstinence. They say to themselves, “I’m never going to do that ever again”. They say it with all sincerity but fail over and over again. This is because strict abstinence is like pulling out a rubber band. It’s only a matter of time until all that tension is released and it ricochets even further than where it started. In order words, people who opt for strict abstinence end up doing worse. If you keep telling yourself not to do something, you build up a lot of pressure to actually do it. Why? Because that sensation of relieving the discomfort of telling yourself not to, is itself pleasurable. I just told you the secret of addiction.

    This is why people smoke. This is why people masturbate though they hate themselves for doing it. This is why people swear they will never drink again but still do though the drink is actually very bitter. It is not the only reason why they richochetted to the old behaviour but it is the commonest. Once you keep telling yourself, “don’t do it! don’t do it! don’t do it!”, doing it relieves you of the discomfort. Neurologically speaking, we all do things to avoid discomfort, remember? Strict abstinence will always backfire. This is because we are wiring our neurocircuitry to expect a pleasurable sensation whenever we relieve ourselves of the discomfort we impose on ourselves. Thus, it becomes a cycle.

    Bottom line: the biggest cause of all distraction is the instinctive nature within to avoid discomfort at all cost. It takes zero effort to live in your comfort zone. Wishes are free so everyone wishes for all the good things in life. However, nothing essential comes on a silver platter. The conquest belongs to the doers. To be consistent, to be revolutionary, to be relentless, to be determined, takes a lot of guts; Not just to want to do something special, achieve something extraordinary, or become someone great. No! It goes beyond that. In order to conquer the world, you need to conquer yourself. The biggest part of conquering yourself is denying yourself of the pleasure of distractions and the need to avoid discomfort. I love you ❤️

  • Falling in Love: How Our Emotions Can Deceive Us

    Falling in Love: How Our Emotions Can Deceive Us

    Emotions are chemical reactions in our body. When you “feel for someone”, that’s an emotional chemical reaction. The problem with emotions is that it changes every 5 seconds. Chemicals are never stable. Love is not emotions. Love is more of a knowing than a feeling. Of course, love can be felt but the feelings of love ought to be the fruit – not the root – of love.

    It takes 8.2 seconds for a guy to fall in love. The average guy has had a crush on dozens of girls. Some he has never met, some he seldom meets, some he often meets, some are twice his age, some are celebrities, some are even married. Some he had a crush on for many years, some just months, some a few days. This is totally natural. So if a guy is obsessed with you, ladies it is nothing new.

    Love is not blind.
    Research has shown that if you have a crush on someone, your brain overlooks their flaws and they tend to appear “perfect”. This seem to look like love but isn’t. Love is intentional not accidental.

    There are two reasons why we have a crush on someone;

    1. Because we seldom meet the person. Thus, the person appears perfect anytime we see them. We crush on them because we desire to have them with us.

    2. Because we always see them. They are usually around so we get intimate. We crush on them because we fear losing them. We have come to understand them and they have become a part of us.

    Reason 1 is responsible for most of the crushes we usually have. We usually have strong unexplainable connections with people we least expect. This is as a result of them being a projection of something we like and/or desire to have in us or with us that we see in them. When we crush on them, we usually want to get to know them more because we really don’t.

    Reason 2 is responsible for shifting the paradigm into a love relationship something that once started as mere friendship. We’d rather spend the rest of our lives with someone we have known and trusted and have come to realise that we’ve fallen in love with than with another who enchants us with their mystery. It is called the mere exposure effect.

    They say, “when you fall in love with two people, choose the second one because if you were in love with the first, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with the second“. That is not necessarily true. You can even love two opposites simultaneously, how much more two people. Once you like someone, there’s a potential of falling in love with them. Sticking to one is not something that comes automatically with love. It is a conscious decision one has to make. Even with that, being in love with someone has never stopped anyone from loving other people. Love is commitment.

    How long a crush lasts is no justification for its authenticity.

    Someone can have a crush on you for years and you may feel the need to reward their persistence. That is pity-love. That will surely not last and may end in a bad fashion. Love is mutual.

    What then do you do when you have a crush on someone you want to have something special and serious with? Cultivate it. Love suffers at high speeds. Love is patient. Once you begin to develop feelings for someone, you are careful not to mess it up. It can easily turn to lust when it is directed in the sexual path rather than being on the empathic path. Get to experientially know the person and understand the different dimensions of the person; intellectually, mentally, spiritually. In this way, the heart, head and hand can fully connect on a whole different level with your crush. Now there’s not only a crush, there’s a bond.

    I love you ❤

  • Self-Deception & Assumptions: How You Lie to Yourself without Realising

    Self-Deception & Assumptions: How You Lie to Yourself without Realising

    The brain was primarily designed to create, not store. Our thought stream is so amazing that we can think about and come up with assumptions on any random thing at any time at all. The speed of thought is so fast that I can travel to Jupiter and back in just 7 seconds. However, our brain has the power to focus our line of thinking. In order words, despite all the random thoughts, we choose which thought to pick and ponder on. Since our brain is not primarily for storing, we forget some thoughts as fast as we get them.

    See your stream of thoughts like search results. Our brain draws thoughts to our attention based on what we have previously fed it. Everything is mathematical in nature. Without self-consciousness, our brain picks data, derives meaning, makes analysis and draws potential conclusions without us even voicing it out. However, most of these “mathematical equations” in our brain don’t always draw the right conclusions.

    It’s like solving an MSQ math question, seeing our answer in the options and still getting it wrong. Our brain had all the needed data to put in but still produced a misconception. This is so dangerous to the extent that most of what we know to be true could just be lies assumed to be true. Let’s dive in.

    The first influences the rest

    One’s first thought concerning a particular and specific matter, aspect, facet, situation, field or even circumstance – be it truth or deceit – will affect the build-up of ideas that comes afterwards pertaining to that area. A foundation of truth is, therefore, essential. Building incorruptible on the corrupt results in deception. That is why it is very important to renew our minds in our new life in Christ.

    We don’t have the luxury of hitting the reset button for our minds. How you were brought up to perceive something and how you were conditioned to think about any particular thing will always influence your thoughts, opinions, ideas, concepts, philosophy and mindset. Since you initially didn’t know anything concerning let’s say thermodynamics, your very first knowledge of it is likely to become your absolute truth. You’ll swallow it hook, link and sinker.

    Any further knowledge you have about it will be believed only if it’s in line with prior knowledge or any already believed knowledge in another field. Speaking of the latter, let’s talk about our ability to believe something we know nothing about when it’s related well with something we already know;

    It is easy to agree with opinions in line with our thinking

    If you have no clue in a particular area of study, one can relate it with an area of study you are already conversant with so as to make you understand better. Thus, you now understand because it’s in line with your thinking. This is brilliant and dangerous at the same time. Transfer of knowledge is not always accurate. In many cases, it’s not.

    Having had the wrong conception as a foundation, any deception in line with it will easily be treated as truth. Any simple logic that may be true in a particular context can be transferred to fit into another unrelated context just to add up to our made-up fact. This is one concept of deception. Another concept is adding a pinch of lie to a wholemeal truth. When deception is built on a misconception that is already in line with one’s stream of thought, it is difficult to convince the person otherwise.

    Sometimes we don’t need a third party to deceive us. Our minds can draw its own conclusions and conceive lies based on truth. This is the concept of misconception. For instance, some whites think it’s the scorching sun that burnt our skin black. You’ll find some blacks who think this way. No one told them. It’s just their own theory they came up with based on the truth of skin burn, the hot sun around the equator and black skin. Their brain took the right equation and still came up with a misconception. Our skin actually produces melanin to protect us against the sun, not that the sun burnt it black.

    So how do we avoid making unnecessary assumptions that make us look paranoid when our weird assumptions turn out to be untrue?

    1. Ask

    Stop wasting energy that could be used for a productive thought process on an area where you can simply ask to confirm and affirm. If you don’t know, ask. You may realize that the issue is not in the direction of your assumptions at all. If it is, hallelujah. That leads me to my next point;

    2. Being right is not a trophy

    The reason why we may like assuming is that we find pleasure in being right. We have lots of theories and make baseless assumptions which could still come to pass due to the unpredictability of life. Okay, your assumptions were right. Now what? Should we carry you on our shoulders?

    3. Keep your assumptions to yourself

    Truth is, we can’t stop our brain from analyzing and coming up with possible explanations for issues we experience. We don’t even need to stop our brain. We need that drive, that curiosity. When there’s a problem, we need to come up with possible solutions. We need to make decisions based on predictions. So don’t stop assuming. It’s not something bad. Rather, keep most of your assumptions to yourself.

    This is a good read. I know you just read only the words in the pictures. Please go back to the top and read every word. You’ve probably heard this idea of cognitive biases before. I’ve articulated into words, so read and understand. This last paragraph is intentionally full of assumptions so you’d have a good laugh. Now where’s my “my assumptions were right” trophy? 😂

  • The Truth You Didn’t Know About Lies

    Lie. Deception. Cheat. Falsehood. Mislead. Falsity. Untruth. Fiction. Concoction. Fabrication. Hoax. Forgery. Exaggeration. Malarkey. Hogwash. Exaggeration. Baloney. Misrepresentation. Fake.

    There seem to be so much in the word family of lies. Perhaps, this shows that lying is something more definitely known and understood than the truth. If we had explored the truth long enough and had definite knowledge of it, we surely would have had a deeper understanding of truth. That’s not the case for many people. Lies, however, is where we all somewhat agree on and are very familiar with. What is the noun for people who tell the truth? Mmm, doesn’t exist. What about those who lie? Liars. That says a lot.

    WHY ARE WE SO GOOD AT LYING DAILY?

    If we were to separate people into those who lie and those who don’t, the whole thing will be one big lie because we all lie. Everyone lies! Sometimes, without even realising. We lie unperturbed. Some lie to their doctors about their health condition, sadly. In court, a witness swears by a Holy Book to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yet, that’s where we fabricate even bigger lies. Lies are so multi-faceted that for every one truth, there are a billion lies.

    The truth is, lying is a psychological trait passed down to us hereditarily. This also means that the more we passed down the trait as a species, the more we became good at lying. In other words, someone born today is much better at telling more complicated lies than someone born 200 years ago. See, we are born natural liars. A study showed that we begin to lie to avoid punishment as early as 3 years. We tip the bowl over and when asked, we blame it on the innocent dog or cat. 

     It’s not like lying is any simpler. It takes more effort to fabricate a lie than to tell the truth. However, we lie because it is easier for our nature. On a daily basis, our brain makes what I call a calculated lie. A lie smooth enough to be true and not raise suspicion. We lie so much and have evolved in it so much that we lie to ourselves. This is so alarming. That means one part of yourself is actually keeping information from our own consciousness. 

    Further studies have shown that college students lie in a quarter of the conversations they have with their best friend, half the time with acquaintances and almost 80% of the time when talking to strangers. They lie to their romantic partners in a third of their conversations, and half of the time when they call their moms at home.

    LYING IS NATURE

    The thing is, lying is bigger than all of us. It is in the DNA of all creatures. Lots of animals deceive their prey or predator with their movements, chemicals, sounds and/or behavior. Viruses are lying to our immune system. Scientists call it molecular deception. Parasites deceive their hosts in order to survive. Chameleons use camouflage to deceive their prey of their presence. Lying is everywhere in nature. Yet, humans reserve the repertoire to consciously fabricate and verbalize lies. The more we tell/verbalise, the more we tell “verbal lies”.

    The average adult speaks about 10,000 words a day, and we lie about 10 to 200 times daily. The more you speak, the more you lie. As one speaks, one is likely to omit facts, twist them, cite some and fabricate new ones. Solomon said it beautifully in Proverbs 10:19, “The more you talk, the more likely you are to sin. If you are wise, you will keep quiet.”

    Does keeping quiet, however, solve the cure for lying? Not at all! Lying is so complex that sometimes keeping quiet can pass as a form of lying, especially in cases where you were supposed to simply tell the truth. So why we do lie, why is it so often and what can we do about it? Fasten your seat belt, my guy!

    I really enjoyed the Truth series. Are you ready for the Lies series? I can’t wait to delve deeper. I have all the answers….

    Okay, that’s a lie 😂 I don’t have all the answers, but it’s going to be exciting. No doubt about that 😊

  • If You Want to ReDedicate Your Life to Christ, This Is For You

    Many start well and end terribly. It is better if they never started in the first place. That makes one begin to ask, “what even happened along the way?” How on earth did Solomon mess it all up at the last minute? Was Samson always that stupid? How did Saul keep messing up in the end like that? What at all was Adam thinking?

    To think we are above their errors is a joke. You can mess it all up even before you know it. Some of us may have even started messing it up, but pride keeps us from acknowledging it to ourselves. If this post touches your heart, then you must re-dedicate your life to Christ while it is still day. The night will soon come.

    For all those who fall along the way, some few things run through. Secret sin; having knowledge of God and a form of godliness but lacking the power thereof; living in unforeseen pride; and trying to work our way back when all we need to do is surrender EVERYTHING and come as we are, just like the prodigal son. Your zeal for God is slowly dying out. Wake up, precious one.

    Your Heart: the Root of Your Life

    I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart.

    Ezekiel 36:26 GNB

    Before I got to know that this was an actual verse in the Bible, I had had a vision long long ago where Jesus did an operation on me. He removed a piece of stone where my heart was supposed to be and put an actual heart there. Then, with His fingertips, He wrote on my heart. I could feel it. James calls it the engrafted Word of God. It is written on our hearts.

    This is how God tackles the root of the problem. The symptom is not the sickness. You have high fever because the body raised its normal temperature in order to kill the parasite. The high fever isn’t the problem. The parasite in your bloodstream is. You see, pride is the quicksand that makes sure you keep sinking in your sin.

    Instead of taking a prescription to reduce our temperature, God gave us the medication to cure our sickness of sin; a new heart. Out of the heart comes the issues of life. That is where who we truly are is really hidden. Desire a good heart. Once you have a good heart, you can have a good life. Forget about the philosophies of the world and their misconceptions. Desire a good heart. If you have a stubborn heart, there’s no hope that you will finish your race.

    No Temptation is Below You

    “…speak evil of no one, be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.”

    Titus 3:2‭-‬3 NKJV

    When Kojo was young and full of Nigerian-movie scenarios, he couldn’t possibly fathom why married couples divorce. “I mean, if the two of you love each other”, he explained away, “I don’t see the reason why you should divorce”. He exclaimed, “just go on a vacation or something. The guy should buy her flowers and the girl should prepare him his favorite meal”.

    A lot of us talk like that, especially concerning situations we’ve never been in ourselves. Truth is, it is easy to criticise a mistake you’re not part of. On other hand, it is easy to give excuses for a flaw you find yourself in. So we find ourselves in a dilemma; being hard on others for not being perfect, yet explaining how it’s not really our fault when we are the ones who fall short.

    Remember, Jesus said it is those who are merciful that shall receive mercy. It is the same standards you use to judge others that you’ll be judged by. It’s unnecessary to blame Adam for your demise after all what the second Adam did. Remember this: what you’re heavily judging others for, you’re going to meet a similar test in future. You may have forgotten what you said about the situation, but Jesus said He will judge us for every idle word we said.

    No form of temptation is above you. Have some compassion on the fallen. Show mercy to the cripples. Be an extension of God’s grace in someone’s life. Rebuke in private. The tables will soon turn, and pride may keep you from acknowledging your wrongs because you have a “public image” to protect, o thou holier than thou. The merciful shall be shown mercy. This is true wisdom.

    The Tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil

    “I am the Lord, who made all things, 

    who alone stretched out the heavens, 

    who spread out the earth by myself, 

    who frustrates the signs of liars

    and makes fools of diviners,

    who turns wise men back

    and makes their knowledge foolish.”

    Isaiah 44:24-25

    We human beings go through lengthy stretches of our lives with an “I’ve got this” posture. We convince ourselves we know what’s best in any particular situation or what’s right for any particular problem. We convince ourselves that we “get it.” We maintain this belief . . . until we can’t anymore . . . until we find we don’t actually know all that we think we know. We maintain it until we finally face the reality that God is God and we are not.

    Trust me, God has destroyed my very foundations of truth TWICE. Don’t pass there. You may even end up being an atheist if you’re not careful. Stop trying to build up knowledge of God. It sounds like a bad advice but hear me out. God will ALWAYS bring confusion to the Tower of Babel. Because of who He is, because of who we are, there’ll always be a tremendous amount of mystery in the relationship. We must be willing to accept and embrace it—and not let it become an impediment.

    Even if we had access to know all the answers, we won’t have the capacity to understand it all. Such knowledge may even destroy us. You may “need” to know why something is the way it is or why something happened the way it did, but most times we simply cannot—and still we must believe, and still we must obey. To be in right relationship with God we must instead adopt a posture of “I don’t know . . . and I’ll do what He asks nonetheless.” Trust in God because none other than the fact that He is God and you are not.

    A Little Advice

    Have a personal relationship with God. Not for ministry, not like God is a system, not as a ritual. God is a person. Chat with Him like a friend. Walk with Him daily. It is the only remedy. Start from there, and forget about all the super-spiritual showoff of knowledge. Seek God with all your heart. All that passion within you, pour into seeking God. That journey is life-changing. It will automatically break the cycle of sin and penance.

    Pray this Prayer of Rededication

    Dear Lord, I humble myself before you and confess my sin. I want to thank you for hearing my prayer and helping me return to you. Lately, I’ve been wanting things to go my own way. As you know, this hasn’t been working out. I see where I’ve been going the wrong way—my own way. I’ve been placing my faith and trust in everyone and everything but you.

    Dear Father, I return now to You, the Bible, and your Word. I pray for guidance as I listen for Your voice. Let me return to what is most important—You. Help my attitude to change so that instead of focusing on others and events to meet my needs, I can turn to You and find the love, purpose, and direction I seek. Help me to seek you first. Let my relationship with You be the most important thing in my life.

    I give You back control of my life. You are the only one who gives freely, with love to anyone who asks. The simplicity of it all still astounds me. Thank you, Jesus, for helping me, loving me, and showing me the way. Thank You for new mercies, for forgiving me. I rededicate myself to You wholly. I surrender my will to Your will. In the Name of Jesus, I pray.

    Amen.

  • Don’t Give Up Now: If Only You Knew Your Future

    Don’t Give Up Now: If Only You Knew Your Future

    If only you knew how glorious your future is, you wouldn’t be perturbed by the prevalent winds of the present. If only you knew how glorious your future is, the past would remain what it really is; the past.

    One mistake we often do is pick our present static state and put it in a dynamic future context. Why wouldn’t we be so anxious?

    Hard times make us appreciate the good times. Sad times gives us the experience of learning to do things at the right times. It’s not that we only tend to appreciate things when we lose it, but that we can only understand fully in retrospect.

    It may be hard but don't give up now

    That is why it is necessary to have a testimony. Testimonies are prophecies of possibilities. Have you been through a difficult time where you thought you had hit rock bottom but somehow you came through?

    If only you knew how painful giving up is, you wouldn’t have made it an option. It’s better to do your best and fail than to have never tried. There are some things that a person must learn on his own. A person grows up when he is forced to overcome hardships. The best in us will never be revealed until we have come between a rock and a hard place.

    Things change; hold on and don't give up

    Some things don’t change while others always do. Some things will change no matter what you do. Others will never change unless you do something. That is why you must never see “giving up” as an option when it gets so hard. Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily. The mind resorts to our instinctive most immature self when we are hard-pressed.

    Let the convictions of your heart be the decisions of your mind. One reason people resist change is that they focus on what they have to give up, rather than what they have to gain. The minute you think you wanna give up, think of the reason why you held on so long.

    At the end of the day, it’s not only going to get better; you’re going to get better. If only! If only you knew that one day you’re going to look back and be grateful that you didn’t give up, you’d work so hard to bring out the best in you.

    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 ❤

  • Uncompromising Compassion: How to Remain Sane in an Increasingly Insane World

    Uncompromising Compassion: How to Remain Sane in an Increasingly Insane World

    Once upon a time, life was just simple. Two guys could hug, be madly close and say that they love each other without it being weird. That wasn’t so long ago. Now there are lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, queers, intersexuals, and pansexuals and 99 other “genders”. Soon, it may even be weird for two girls to be around each other or for siblings to be best friends.

    Everything was okay till someone wanted to marry someone of the same sex. After that was accepted, now people have fought for the right to marry themselves, animals, and even objects. A man decided to even marry his laptop. Now the whole idea of marriage is lost – and loses its relevance – in this insane mess. So you find people making a big deal out of not marrying and that can easily become an unexplainable societal trend.

    One wanted to be transgender; basically being a gender one is not. Then another discovered she could be trans-racial, pretending to be black when she really wasn’t. Now the system is broken. We have trans-disability; people who think they ought to be disabled and behave as such when they actually aren’t. Until when will we realise that being trans is basically trying to be something we originally aren’t?

    We pick every other identity that isn’t us except what we are really made to be. In fact, “what we are made to be” is even up for debate. Sexuality has now become a spectrum so fluid that there are “genders” being made up everyday. LGBTQRSTUVWYZ. Yet, it’s amazing we still count health cases according to the two God-made genders. This is not an LGBTQ+ slandering message. The world is in a serious identity crisis. Nothing makes sense anymore. What do we need to do now?

    It does matter who hang around with and who you allow into your inner circle; it does matter. Jim Rohn once said that “we are the sum total of the personalities of the five closest people to us“. Thus, the adage, “show me your friend, and I will show you your character”. The Scriptures says, “Don’t be deceived; bad company corrupts good manners.”

    When you hang around people who are broken, our compassion makes us feel and understand what they think, but that doesn’t mean that we should take up their mindset. Compassion becomes perversion when we reduce our convictions to embrace the crooked. Christianity is not a calling into isolation, where we isolate ourselves entirely from people due to their negativities; poor, broken, rude, hot-tempered, gay, bully, or naughty. Christianity is not compromise of convictions either.

    Many Christians complain to God that people take advantage of their good heart, their compassion, their generosity, when that is not the case. They then want to isolate themselves. Yet we are the Light of the World. It is the deepest darkness that needs the most light. We are that light. No need to squirm and hide your light.

    If no isolation at one extreme, then no compromise at other extreme either. People hang out with the poor and then develop a negative attitude against the rich. Pastors accept everyone for who they are, even homosexuals, and then develop a theology that supports homosexuality. How are you bringing light when you become darkness?

    Hanging out with people who don’t believe in godly values doesn’t mean we have to take up their conviction. It is wrong to avoid gays because you’re the help from God they need. But it is equally wrong when we try to defend their stance as though it is right. That is NOT compassion. That is compromise.

    You don’t have to change your convictions to love a homosexual. You’re not even helping the homosexual when you change your convictions. Jesus had great compassion for the lady who committed adultery and was about to be stoned. Jesus didn’t condemn her. Neither did He support her. Love is NOT Incompassionate compromise. Love is uncompromising Compassion.

    The whole sexual crisis in our world today is an identity crisis; be it homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, transsexual, transgender, queer or what have you. And just like Jesus did for the adulterous woman, our uncompromising Compassion is what will change their lives for the better. This is the true meaning of unconditional love.

    “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my Unfailing Love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed”, says the LORD, “who has compassion on you”.
    Isaiah 54:10

    I love you ❤