Isaac Boluwatise

“All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. 12 Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all. 13 For I am the lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” Isa 41.11-13 (NIV)

Is there really anything that kills as the fear of the unknown or the fear of the future based on the uncertainty today. Jesus said this will be one of the features of the end time in Luke 21.26: “Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world …..”

But also there is really nothing as refreshing and motivating as to knowing the future ahead and as to receiving certainty of God.

Many are really concerned, for there are certain factors and circumstances that naturally mobilise against them featuring as opposition and barriers; and definite as areas of constant battle. So constant are such features that you have concluded on them as “my problems” meaning that though you do not enjoy these travails, you have come to establish an identity with them.

Your fear is addressed by God: the fear of shame and disgrace; the fear of being cast into oblivion and doom; and the fear of being destroyed is dealt with.

For every threat the factors posed against you, such design shall amount to the fate of the factors in your sphere of experience.

You shall look for them and not find them, for the Lord will take hold of your right hand to both guard and guide you; He is allaying your fears by saying “I will help you”.

Can you see the reason now why you can zealously push towards that future you have been afraid of this year?

I see an overflowing barn of your harvest this year.

Engage the strength He has provided for you and press forward. The finishing line and the prize are both awaiting you.

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There was once a king, who received a gift of two magnificent falcons from Arabia. They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained. Months passed and one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch, since the day it had arrived. The king summoned healers from all the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly. He presented the task to a member of his court, but the next day, the king saw through the palace window that the bird had still not moved from its perch. Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, “May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he cried out to his court, “Go and get a farmer.” In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, “Bring me the doer of this miracle.” The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?” With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, ” It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch, where the bird was sitting.”

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“Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” – Psalm 90:12NLT

He logged twelve-hour days, and sometimes weekends. Even when he wasn’t working, he was thinking about work. His wife tried to slow him down. He knew they weren’t as close as they once had been. He hadn’t intended to drift away, it’s just that she always seemed to want time, and that’s the one thing he didn’t have to give. He was vaguely aware that his kids were growing up and he was missing it. They complained about books he wasn’t reading to them, games he wasn’t playing with them and trips he wasn’t taking with them. After a while they stopped complaining or expecting their lives might ever be different. ‘I’ll be more available when things settle down,’ he thought. When he felt guilty he told himself, ‘I’m doing it for them.’ His wife asked him about going to church but he said, ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that sort of thing when things settle down.’ His doctor told him he had elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol-but he told himself there’d be plenty of time for that when things settle down. Quietly, efficiently, irresistibly, his body was preparing to do him in. One morning his wife woke at 3 a.m. and he was not beside her. She went downstairs to drag him to bed and saw him sitting still in front of the computer, his head hanging low. She touched him but he didn’t respond. When the paramedics got there they told her he had suffered a massive heart attack. Things had finally settled down!

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“Accept instruction from His mouth and lay up His words in your heart.” Job. 22.22

Make it part of your commitment to read through the Bible in 2011.

May He supply you with strength to press forward also in this manner.

God bless you.

IAT Boluwatise

THROUGH THE BIBLE TWICE A YEAR.doc
THROUGH THE BIBLE IN A YEAR.doc

When it comes down to it, Paul is pretty well convinced that there are two options for our lives. One option is to be squeezed. We can allow our lives, our values, our attitudes, our convictions, and our relationships to be shaped and formed from the outside in by the forces of the world around us. The other option is to be transformed. Our lives can be remolded, reshaped, redesigned from the inside out by the wind and breath of the Spirit of God.

Paul hangs those options out in front of us. With great passion he calls for our response. Therefore: because you know the mercy and grace of God, because you’ve seen how God loves lost, disoriented, confused and broken people, because you know how God’s love has been made real for us at the cross, therefore, for God’s sake, for your own sake, don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold. Rather, let God remold your life from the inside out so that you may demonstrate in practice the good, acceptable, loving, life-giving will of God for you.

Paul is correct, of course. You and I know that if we let it, the world around us will squeeze us into its own mold. If we let it, the world will shape our attitudes, our values, our convictions from the outside in, until it squeezes the life right out of us.

If we let it, the world will squeeze us into the mold of materialism. That’s the belief, the ideology, the conviction, the assumption that everything that really matters in this life can be bought and sold with money. It’s the belief that I can have what I want and have it now; all I need is plastic. We will mortgage our grandchildren’s future to have what we want and have it now.

One of the emerging pastoral concerns that we share is the concern for good folks, Christian people, who are being squeezed to death by the demon on debt and the demonic power of plastic. People whose lives are being controlled and managed by their credit cards. The crisis for many families today is not only the high cost of living, but the cost of high living. It’s a profoundly spiritual thing, and later this fall, we want to try to work on that.

If we let it, the world will squeeze us into the mold of self-centered amorality. That’s the assumption that there is no objective standard of right or wrong in this universe, and that my behavior is determined solely on the basis of what satisfies me. It expresses itself in many ways. We desperately need gun control in this country, but we will never control the violence of our culture until we deal with the underlying desire to have whatever we want, whenever we want it, by whatever means it takes to get it. It works itself out in a multitude of ways, but if we let it, the world will squeeze us into the mold of self-oriented amorality.

If we let it, the world will squeeze us into the mold of “squishy spirituality.” I borrowed that term from Jonathan Yardley, the book critic for the Washington Post. When I shared it on the Internet a few weeks ago, I received more response than anything I’ve sent out there since I wrote on Moncia Lewinsky. In a scathing review of a book on “boomer spirituality,” Yardley described “squishy spirituality” as a “blend of all the most self-absorbed aspects of pop psychology, New Age pseudo-mysticism . . . and half-baked religiosity. It completely rejects anything remotely smacking of authority . . . It is self-indulgent rather than self-sacrificial, and it is utterly devoid of anything approximating intellectual rigor.” He says the bottom line of most contemporary spirituality is “What’s in it for me?”