Who do you trust?

Sometime ago, I heard this story some about a family on a cruise. In the middle of their voyage long after their departure from their homeland, with neither ship nor land in sight, a storm broke out.

The troubled sea tossed and turned their ship around like a toy. Huge waves of water, swept over the mast of the ship tearing the sails. The winds roared and the gray skies seemed relentless, it poured and poured with rain threatening the safety of the ship.

In a corner of the ship, a mother sat wailing while her young son slept.  Soon the little boy was awakened by his mother’s wail.

“Mother  why do you weep?” he asked in a sleepy voice.

“You’ve been asleep” replied his mother “That’s why you do not know. There is a storm and we’ll drown if no help comes”.

“Is father still on the ship?” the little boy asked with an innocent voice

“Yes” the mother answered and while she still wondered what this has got to do with what she had said, the little boy went back to sleep.  Mother waited for his boy to explain or ask another question but instead, she heard a tiny snore. The surprised mother roused him up and asked “Did you hear what I said about the storm?”

“Yes!”

“Do you understand?” Her brow was in a crease and her eyes were wide.

"“Yes.  We could drown”

“Why then are you still sleeping. Aren’t you scared?” her eyes grew even larger and her brows almost touched her hairline.

"No I am not afraid. you said father is on the ship.  I can sleep because he wouldn’t  allow us to perish" he replied.

Here is what I learned from the story.  So deep was that boy’s faith in his father that he felt no need to be afraid. This made me ask myself who do I trust in? Do I trust in my own abilities or do I depend on man? Asking those questions, I am reminded of the Israelites and the Egyptians. The Holy Spirit also reminded me of Psalm 20:7.  What I realized is that if I have my faith deeply rooted in God, the fury of any storm cannot shake me. But how can I achieve this?

Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit of the spirit and right along with others “Faith” was included. This means that I should ask first for God’s spirit and allow him to take pre-eminence I must not in any way grieve him for this wouldn’t only mean Him staying away from me. It will also mean lack of faith and who knows? It could be as bad as being carried away by the storm for me. With faith, I learn to trust God and if I trust God, I will not be moved Psalm 21:7

So who do you trust?

The Deadliest Snake

I had an interesting discussion with a friend once about snakes. Ordinarily at the sight of a human, snakes run because they are as scared of us as we are of them.  However, if a snake notices any form of attack, instead of running, it attacks.   One of the snakes we talked about was the black mamba, the world’s deadliest snake. 

Here are some quick facts about the black mamba,

This snake is located in Africa and is colored dark olive or a dark brown color with black spotting along its back. The Black Mamba has the longest fangs of any snake and when strikes it delivers quick multiple bites and flees. This snake’s venom is a cardio toxin and a fully grown Black Mamba can deliver 100mg to 120mg. A lethal dose of a cardio toxin to a human is 10mg to 15mg. A human has up to four hours to live after one is bitten.

(excepted from http://www.uoregon.edu/~ddardano/snake/topfivedeadliestsnake.htm )

As an addendum to that, here’s what I learnt about the mamba growing up in Nigeria: when it attacks, the black mamba delivers quick multiple bites and doesn’t stop biting the victim until it observes that there is no more movement.

According to my friend, the mamba delivers the multiple bites because it is a very scared animal. I guess it is so because if one is bitten by a snake, the response would be for you to attack it in return. The Black mamba probably knows this so he’s trying to preempt his victim. Just think about it, the thought that they could be clubbed to death would scare any human and given the chance, they would by any means try to defend themselves.  In the same way, the black mamba in its bid to defend itself, continues to strike until its sure you’re unable to attack it anymore – signified by the lack of movement which shows total weakness – the enemy has been defeated! right?

That day, the Lord ministered to me that Satan is exactly like that mamba.  Once he gets hold of you he won’t let go of you until you are either dead or until he’s rendered you too weak to move.  It’s like this, if he gets the chance to attack you first, if there is nothing to prevent him from slipping in and attacking first, like that snake, he will continually strike at you because he wants you stuck at that place of attack unable to move towards your weapon, unable to strike back at him. He knows that if you should succeed in getting a weapon, he’s in total trouble, since you would render him useless in your case, totally defeated. So he gives you no breathing space and he doesn’t stop until you are no longer a threat to him

The reason the devil does this is because he’s scared. He seeks more people each and everyday to join him in hell  so he fights each day for each soul. He’s scared that once you find God, you’ll get the weapon against him and then he has lost the battle over you. So he strikes with different kinds of challenges, trying to keep you too busy to find God.  He tries all his possible best to continually prevent your movement in the right direction, by keeping you focused on all other things but God.

The only way we can defend ourselves is to be watchful in order that we might be able to strike him before he has a chance to strike at us.  This means we have to be close to God every single second.  Our only victory is in Jesus who is able to give us the victory over all the devil’s strikes (tribulations, frustration, distress, whatever the enemy might challenge us with  Romans 8:35-37.

God will provide every weapon needed  to handle the biggest and deadliest human enemy who is not after the death of our body but our soul.

When Life Happens

“Never say this can never happen to me” preached the Senior pastor in church today. His sermon was  about how easy it was to fall into sin but half way through his sermon, something he said triggered a memory from about twelve years ago and  it was all I could think of for the rest of the service. What the sermon brought back to mind was  another setting, another message and another pastor.

“When Life happens, how do we find time for God?”

“Dealing with the daily demands of our life, how do we spend quality time with God?”

These were the questions a visiting minister had been invited discuss with the graduating students in my fellowship that semester as they prepared for their final exams.

“Thinking about your bills or the boss at work, worrying about your spouse or a sick child, all these can engulf your mind so much that the last thing you think about is sometimes God”

How tough can it be to take 10 or 15 minutes out of your day to spend with God? I wondered that day as he explained how the hurried pace of our daily lives after college often makes it difficult for us to spend time with God. It all sounded silly to me but now that I think back on it, that pastor’s message was based on years of experience and maturity. Why did it seemed ridiculous to me at the time?  Why not?  I was a undergraduate student, no spouse or children to worry over. I didn’t even have to worry about my tuition or living expenses, all was taken care of by my parents, I lived in an apartment at my uncles house, he took care of all the bills and so I didn’t have to worry about that either so how could i  ever have been able to fathom this ridiculous idea that life after school was going to be any different? As far as I was concerned, the most important thing was getting a good job and once that was taken care of, everything else was bound to fall into place. Well I was later to find out that that kind of thinking was nothing but the rumblings of an immature mind.  Now over 10 years later, looking back in retrospect, i find cannot argue with that minister’s rationalization. Instead I find myself wishing that I had listened better to his admonitions and advice.

Life after college has indeed been on the fast pace.  With work, marriage and parenting, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do all I have to do.  Being a stay at home mom, you would think that i have all the time in the world to do much. But between running errands when the children are in school and being a writer, the 24 hours of a day seem to fly by too fast.

After dropping the children off at school in the morning, I just have enough time to do my grocery shopping or pick up laundry before i have to turn around and pick the babies up from preschool. Then we go home to get lunch and right after lunch, it’s back to school to pick my kindergartener up.  The younger ones are in school only a few days in the week, so I don’t have much time in which I am by myself. I’m sure most parents would agree with me that getting anything done while the kids are up and about is tough so the only time I can really do anything is after I get them into bed. Between finishing up on my writing, and getting the stuff for the next day ready, I barely have enough free time.  A lot of times, i breeze through my prayers and read the passage for the day on Bible Gateway.  But I discovered that I am tired, cranky and impatient most of the time and mentally, physically but most of all spiritually, I feel drained, because I am not spending enough time as I should getting refreshed from the fountain of life.

Reflecting on this, I begin to understand why in Mathew 14:23 and Mathew 26:36, Jesus took time apart by Himself to pray. It was a time for Him to refresh.  He was in the human body just like us so just like us, He needed  time for replenishment of His physical and spiritual strength thus he went apart by Himself to avoid distractions and eliminate interruptions.   It is indeed essential that despite the “business” of our lives, we must find time for ourselves (our me time) a time set aside for us to refresh.  Most families take a vacation in the summer for this very reason.  We need to remember that each one of us needs that time alone not just for our physical health but also for our spiritual health and so we have to try to find it.  It may be as simple as having your spouse watch the kids for a few minutes in the day to get that alone time. It may also be scheduling for a sitter to come in once a week or once a month for a few hours. You are the only one that can identify what works for you. But whatever it is, we need to remember that when life happens and responsibilities increase, it isn’t time to be away from God. It is the time that we need Him more. He is the only one that “gives us the strength to do all things” Philippians 4:13 and with Him by our side, even the mountains of responsibilities the challenges of out lives thrust in our laps each day will “melt like wax” Psalm 97:5. 

Think of it this way, “When life happens, to really progress, we need quality time with God”.