AN OYSTER IN YOUR HAND

It is written: "who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His Holy place?, he that has clean hands and a pure heart, he that has not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive blessings from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation". - Psalm 24: 3-5. But, if God decides to mark iniquity, who is that person that can stand?

The journey of life on earth is filled with numerous possibilities and impossibilities. There are constants like death and taxes and there are variables like missed opportunities, nothing is absolute, to every rule,  there is an exception but with God, all things are possible!. Having said that, I am of the opinion that every individual is responsible for his/her actions and as such should bear the consequences when they come. The Bible taught us about grace and also taught us about favour. Grace is said to be unmerited favour while favour is an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual. These two things are at God's discretion, He makes us experience them as He wishes.

In life, the things we do to ourself or to other people, whether good or bad, will come back to us! From the book of Genesis to the book of revelation, every good done by every man was rewarded with blessings and every evil done by every man was rewarded with punishment and curses. God is no respecter of persons! As much as He loved David, he cursed the house of David for the death of Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba. The sword has not departed from them till today. 

Believers of today have debased and abused the concept of grace and favour as taught by our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Our character and attitude in thoughts, words, speeches and actions are not in tandem with the teachings of the Lord. Some of us do things that unbelievers will be afraid to do, yet we claim grace to abound in our iniquities transgressions.

Does grace come on its own? Is it free? If it is, then where is our obedience? Grace comes by obedience to the word of God! There are laws to abide by and there are rules to be obeyed. Even the free salvation we seek, must be worked for. Salvation is earned and not given! How can people intentionally perpetrate evil to others and then psychologically run back to grace for cover? God cannot be mocked. We reap what we sow, as you lay your bed, you lie on it. You can't eat your cake and have it at the same time. 

It is better to stand for something than to fall for anything. Imagine someone that has no regard for anybody, a very rude, cunning, calculating and unreasonable person, no one is too small or too big to be insulted, no opinion from elsewhere is good enough, very selfish, a user of people to achieve greedy means, always causing trouble and rancour at the slightest opportunity. Such person blasting in tongues, binding and casting in church under the anointing of grace. Hmn! Is character and attitude not the true worship as written in the Bible? 

Some people have had their prayers answered long before they even prayed about it but because of their selfish, dodgy and insensitive attitude, they are yet to see the prayer manifest. Some of us have knowingly or unknowingly used our attitude to send away people God wanted to use to bless us. Imagine Mrs A borrowed some money from Mrs B and promised to pay on a certain day. The day came and she did not pay up. Five days after, she still has not paid and did not deem it fit to communicate with Mrs B to explain why there was a delay. Mrs B was compelled to call Mrs A but Mrs A refused to pick her call, changed her SIM card and started avoiding Mrs B. At the Night vigil service in church, this same Mrs A was fasting and praying and shouting to God to answer her prayers like there is no tomorrow. 

She was always complaining of her prayers not being answered. God cannot be fooled! Mrs B denied herself some comfort and did Mrs A some favour, only for her to be rewarded with lies and deception. How does Mrs A expect God to answer her prayers? She caused her friend pain and she wants to smile. She forgot Mrs B also pray to this same God.

Some people tell lies like water rushing out from a tap. They do not need to think before dishing out big lies to whoever falls prey to them. Falsehood and deception have become their middle names. The Bible warned about them. At their workplace, they appear very important. In their church, they aspire for positions of authority, in their neighbourhood, they like to be in control, in the midst of friends, they like to dominate but in their homes, they are nobody! They are grossly irresponsible to their wives, husbands, children and relatives. 

They are dodgy, they have the hands of Jacob and the voice of Esau. They cannot stand by what they say. Their word is not their bond. Beware of such people. They have their oyster in their hand just like you and I. What we make of our oysters depends on what we stand for: TRUTH or LIES......The choice is yours!

MASCULINE FEMINISM

In a world dominated by male specie, judging from sheer physical strength, coupled with cultural and religious domination of the female specie, little do we know that the woman is indeed the most powerful creature walking the surface of the earth.

In many aspects of life, if critically examined, a woman has got the upper hand, but the creator of this universe in His infinite wisdom used an authoritative clause to subdue the woman to the man's authority. I will touch that later! Nothing compares to the strength of a woman. She is better when it comes to multi-tasking and some other aspects of life.

She cooks, does the washing, fix the meals, wake the kids, bath them, dress them up for school, go to work, be the first to get back home, cook dinner, do homework with the kids, put them to bed, wait for daddy to return from work before she goes to bed, only for daddy to grab her in bed for that thing and when she complains of exhaustion, daddy will complain of neglect and emphasise having his way else daddy and mummy will not sleep that night.

All daddy did that day was to wake up, dress up, have his breakfast, go to work, come back home, have his dinner, go to bed to have it with mummy and sleep off as if he carried logs of wood during the day. Men are not designed to do what women are capable of doing, we simply do not have that patience and endurance.

Often times, we have seen women in their middle ages turn widow or single parent by virtue of their spouses' death, separation or divorce and single handedly raise their children without re-marrying. A man will find that difficult to do, he will highly likely re-marry 'cos he is a big baby that needs to be taken care of despite having so much muscles. He is not designed to do what a woman will likely do in such situation. Can we see how powerful our women are?

The worst pain anyone can experience according to medical journals is the pain at child birth. Next to it is pain associated with toothache, I have had tooth aches and must confess to you that the pain is not nice at all. I cried like a baby several times it hooked me. It was excruciating. Now, imagine child birth pain. After carrying the load for 9 months with so much pressure was on her spinal chord. Let the man that can do that raise up his hands!

In the spiritual world of worship, from the ages till today, where a god and a goddess are to be worshipped together, it is observed that the female goddess is given preference over the male god. When obeisance is paid to witches and wizards in Yoruba mythology, we hear panegyrics like "mo juba eyin to laye, eyin iya osoronga". We do not hear them mention baba osoronga. It is the woman that possess the breasts of life "omu iya dun". This shows the power naturally embedded in feminism. They may appear weak, yet they are strong, much stronger than men.

Have you seen any wise man take a woman for granted? Have you seen any deeply spiritual man treat a woman badly? They hardly do because they know the consequences. Even the mighty Prophet Elijah fled from Jezebel until God put His judgement on her. Esther, a slave woman, with her humility, dethroned the queen of the land. Adam could not resist eating the apple Eve gave him despite knowing he shouldn't eat it. Talk about manipulation, talk about being cunning, talk about desire, talk about spiritual insight, talk about the 6th sense, talk about keeping secrets, God gave the keys to these things to women. Men, haven't you wondered how a woman will quickly know when her man is secretly seeing another woman? Hehehe......

When a man sees a beautiful woman and say to himself that he would have her, there is a 90% chance that he will fail at it, but when a beautiful woman sees a man she likes and say to herself that she wants him by all means, her chances of getting him is 90%. That is how powerful our women are. It takes the grace of God and the conscious effort of a man to overcome the advances of a strange beautiful woman.

I believe men with God fearing wives that are full of upright character should be grateful to God for what they have. May we not come across women like Jezebel that will teach us a bitter lesson in Jesus name. Pastors, reverends, prophets etc are falling on daily basis before such women. Never take your good wife for granted! If that is what you are doing at the moment, please have a rethink and put a stop to it.

It is written: "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you" - Genesis 3:16. This is our saving grace as men. If not for this decree by God,  our eye for see pepper from women. Some men eye still dey see pepper despite the decree. LORD HAVE MERCY.....