Daily Manna

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

God Hates Boasting
Monday, January 11, 2009

TEXT: Proverbs 27:1-16

"Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1).

The Titanic disaster was one of the worst maritime tragedies in history.  The man who built the ship was asked after the construction how safe the Titanic would be.  With an ironic tone he said: ‘Not even God can sink it’.  But on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City it struck an iceberg just before midnight on April 14, 1912.  Of the more than 2,220 persons aboard, about 1,513 died; ending the euphoria about the ship’s invulnerability.  The luxury liner (46,000 gross tons) had been proclaimed unsinkable because of its 16 watertight compartments.  The ship was designed to stay afloat with any two adjacent compartments or the front four compartments flooded.  Many authors of books on the disaster thought that only a huge tear, perhaps 90m (300ft) long, could have caused the huge ship to sink; but a naval architect, testified in the wake of the disaster that the total area damaged by the iceberg was small and probably did not exceed 1 sqm (about 12sq ft).

Our text opened with a warning against boasting and bragging about our ability, talents or gifts, because we do not know what tomorrow holds.  The passage equally warns against the practice of self-praise and the prudence of letting others make compliments about us instead of blowing our own trumpets.

We live a very scheduled life.  We plan things ahead, and that is good.  However, we must always remember that God has our lives planned and He may change our plans.  He is all-powerful; we are not.  He is all-knowing; we are not.

Let’s learn a lesson from the failure of the Titanic.  We must always remember not to boast of tomorrow.  We don’t know what’s coming.  God may have a different plan.  So, let’s always include God in our plans no matter how knowledgeable we are or how confident we are about our abilities.

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

My Focus
Tuesday, January 12, 2009

TEXT: Proverbs 27:17–27

"For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation" (Proverbs 27:24).

There are those who fight, kill and wear themselves out because they want to be rich.  Really today, the way people go after wealth, makes one think they can buy their souls with money. What of the fight for position?  In some communities,  families are destroyed as they fight for political or traditional titles.  Those who want to be king in their communities are ready to lose their own lives and/or those of their  supporters.  But all these are done for riches that soon fade away and crowns that so quickly rust.

In the rush for wealth and position, we abandon other important things that we should do.  We are therefore counseled to be diligent to know the state of our flocks.  How many of us have forgotten to take care of our families especially the children that need our care and guidance because we are pursuing silver, gold and wealth?  Ministers of the gospel, in their ambition to keep their positions for filthy lucre, have scattered the flock rather than care for them.

Many continue in this way of life though they are warned every time.  Such are like the fool that, though is brayed in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, will not learn to be wise.

What then is the portion of those that concentrate on the pursuit of wealth and crowns to the detriment of their souls?  Hell and destruction.  Hell is never tired of receiving the foolish.

God does not want anyone to go to hell.  He wants everyone to be saved, including you.  He has abundant blessing in store for His own (verses 25-27), but the door that leads to God’s blessings is salvation.  God’s crown does not rust but endures forever.  Rush for that crown and lay up your treasures in heaven.

Though for today: Labour not for the things that perish.

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

My Brother's Keeper
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

TEXT: Leviticus 25:35–55

"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him..." (Leviticus 25:35).

As we go about our daily affairs, many of us can hardly spare a moment for the person next door.  The rat-race has so consumed a lot of us that what happens to the next person does not matter.  We care not about our kinsmen not to talk of others.  Many of us cannot even spare a moment for our suffering fellow pilgrims.  Unfortunately, many of our brethren suffer because of our indifference.  God is drawing our attention to such situations.  He says, "If thy brother (that includes sisters too) be waxen poor... then thou shalt relieve him." God is talking first about our brethren in the household of faith.  He says, there will always be poor people around us.  But what does He expect us to do concerning the poor among us?  Relieve him or her.

There are those who are indebted to us and cannot pay.  We are not expected to continue to press them for the repayment.  God says, "Relieve him." Some of us put our neighbours into perpetual poverty because, we lend to them on interest.  They are never able to pay off because of the inhuman high interest rate.  God says relieve them.  You should not lend with interest to your brother, you are not to exploit your brother.

God expects that you will not allow your brother to serve with rigour or in slavish condition with another person.  You are expected to redeem him.  How can you watch an unbeliever turn your fellow believer to a slave?  Relieve him: your brother cannot be slave to you not to talk of any other person because he is a servant and child of God.

Look around today and find those you are to relieve and do it immediately.  God wants you to help your brother and bring him out of bondage.

Thought for today: The merciful shall obtain mercy.

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

Idolatory Forbidden
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

TEXT: Leviticus 26:1–13

"Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 26:1).

Obedience is the condition upon which the favour of God is promised.  A man cannot bribe God, no, not with sacrifice or praise.  Obedience to His commandments is an obligation emphasized in both Testaments.

In our text, the Lord gives a promise of fruitfulness, peace, safety and victory over every enemy to His people but the promise is based upon certain conditions namely, the forbidding of idolatry, reverence for His house and complete obedience to His word.

The Lord forbids the worship of idols and the making of any sort of images in our hearts.  He punished Israel when they imagined in their hearts that God must be like the bull god of the Egyptians and made a golden calf and worshipped it.

We will be falling into the sin of idolatry if we try to make God in the image that is in our own minds, worshipping Him to fit our expectations, desires and circumstances.  Some take God to be a Santa Claus, a jolly old man with a white beard having a basket of gifts in His hand.  They worship Him for the gifts which they desire.  To others, He is an Elijah to send down fire upon their enemies.  What reckless religious imaging of a most holy God that is!  Furthermore, every undue devotion and unrestrained appetite for money making, property acquisition, pleasure seeking and power is adjudged by the Holy Scriptures as a sort of idolatry.

Some in churches today do not obey the word of God anymore.  They are backslidden and are faithless. They are weary of worshipping a God whose face they cannot see.  They run now after the gods they can see.  If we walk by sight, we will slip.

Our God is holy and He is higher than all the gods of the earth.  He demands our love and devotion.  Even though we may not see Him with our natural eyes, we know He is there and He lives for ever more.  He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ to save us from all our sins.  Let us serve Him with everything He has given us here on earth and in eternity we shall see Him face to face to receive the reward He has promised those who obey Him.

Thought for today: Worship and serve God only.

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

The Best Story In The World.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010

TEXT: LUKE 20:27-38

"And he said unto them, But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luke 20:35,36).

A missionary couple and their children went on a sight-seeing tour in Costa-Rica.  The youngest of the children was six-year old Mark.  They visited a Catholic cathedral in Cargago.  The children noticed many images, including a statue of Christ hanging on the cross.  Later, they visited an old Spanish mission where some of the children were frightened by a wax figure of Christ in a glass-enclosed casket.

That night during the family devotion, little Mark said, "Daddy, I have seen Jesus dead so many times today.  Please tell me again the story of resurrection". After listening to the story, he said "Daddy, that’s the best story in the world".

The story of resurrection is the living hope that distinguishes Christian faith from any other men-improvised religion.  As Paul the apostle puts it: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14).  Critics and heretics always oppose the fact of the resurrection as the case in our text, but their arguments are always weak.  But a poet put the story of the resurrection of Christ thus: "A song of sunshine through the rain, of spring across the snow, a balm to heal the hearts of pain, a peace suppressing woe".

As assuring as the resurrection story is, there are two sides to it.  There is the resurrection unto life for those who have anchored their souls in Christ, who have genuinely surrendered their lives to Christ to be born-again and are dead to sin.  On the other hand, there is the resurrection unto damnation for those who are dead in sin. They live in sin even though they are in one religion or the other.  Such will be banished to hell.  Hence, sinners must repent and accept Jesus to take part in the resurrection unto life.

Thought for today: Resurrection of Christ is the pillar of the Christian faith.

[Olabowale]

ogbeni olaadegbu! you are the only entrants, except my occassional entrantries of challenge, which you have been docking all the while! its ridiculous that you have not been able to send a single rebuttal to any of my three threads! am ery certain that your bosses in the christendom must have taught you how to respond to why call Jesus God when he knew just a little, and not know everything? am also sure they must have told you that since you are a child of "God", then there is no reason for the earliest of Christians, indeed the disciples of Jesus and Jesus himself bowing their faces on the ground/floor to the Almighty, yet they did it, so go get some wisdom from the pundents for explanation, man!

am sure that you will be able to fit three separate pillars of different sizes, in different places in a structure to be one single pillar on that structure? if you cant, for even from the physical understanding of it, leaving the structural analysis alone, that it does not make sense to fit them to be one pillar, then tell me how Jesus, on earth dying in the hand of few club in hands Children of Israel, his own people, the ghost who is unseen at anytime, and a father that you said seditenry on a seat in heaven magically become one?

olaadegbu, respond, man! and stop being a fake peace preacher: there is no actual peace in christinaity, but only illusion!

[Olabowale]

That night during the family devotion, little Mark said, "Daddy, I have seen Jesus dead so many times today.  Please tell me again the story of resurrection". After listening to the story, he said "Daddy, that’s the best story in the world".

Lies do make sense to the gullible! Children are gullible, especially to the words of their father, their hero! If the boy was not gullible, he would have asked; dad, what type of calculation did Jesus use to measure 3 days and 3 nights from Friday even to the dawn of the following Sunday? Dad probably will realise right there that a Jewish Jesus would not have said 3 days and 3 nights except it is from sundown to sundown, which should have been after sundown of the following Monday! The Biblical Jesus spend more than a day short! And he was not even in the belly of the earth, for that would have been a dug up grave, put his body in it, coma and all and cover him with the dirt! And not just a cave while some wise women who knew that he was alive and needed to be nursed back to complete strength prepared oil to heal him! Or the Children of Israel put oil on their dead body for 3 days before they wash him up for burial? LOL.

The story of resurrection is the living hope that distinguishes Christian faith from any other men-improvised religion.  As Paul the apostle puts it: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14).  Critics and heretics always oppose the fact of the resurrection as the case in our text, but their arguments are always weak.  But a poet put the story of the resurrection of Christ thus: "A song of sunshine through the rain, of spring across the snow, a balm to heal the hearts of pain, a peace suppressing woe"

You even quote balm here, just in the same manner those women were trying to heal the infirmed body of Jesus! Men-improvised religion, will Judaism not be part of this, from your "Christian view point?" Yet Salvation according to the Christians is of the Jews! You can see that you and Paul have preached in vain, when even Jesus cant calculate accurately 3 days and 3 nights and did not stay in the belly of the earth at no time and the balm robbing on the body is not practiced by the "Jews" even now or at anytime on a dead man! Stop this fallacy, man! Am sick of it!

As assuring as the resurrection story is, there are two sides to it.  There is the resurrection unto life for those who have anchored their souls in Christ, who have genuinely surrendered their lives to Christ to be born-again and are dead to sin.  On the other hand, there is the resurrection unto damnation for those who are dead in sin. They live in sin even though they are in one religion or the other.  Such will be banished to hell.  Hence, sinners must repent and accept Jesus to take part in the resurrection unto life.

are you not ashamed of the fact that Jesus, a human being under the heavens of God and on the earth of God, a man who ate, slept, tired, slumbered, etc even used the bathroom otherwise he would have died of constipation, a heart and lips confessor that he did not know the time of the hour, and could not do anything of his own ability, except what God allowed (all of these and many more parred him with human, creation though special, like Moses, etc), yet you take him as a God!

Are not a man-improvised religionist? Where is the ordainment of Christianity as the religion from God to man? Where is Jesus, a mere man, like me, who before he from his mother Mary, my soul was already in existence, is God?

Thought for today: Resurrection of Christ is the pillar of the Christian faith.

And those who discovered that the pillar is weak and improbable will leave Christianity, and seek a faith that is in full agreement to One Unique Sole God, and submit to His Orders!

[olaadegbu]

Mallam olabowale,

How are you coping with the weather there in New York?  It's been a long time since I've read from you until today that I logged in since I last posted in February.

I believe that your concerns about the Bible true stories are because you juxtapose them with apocryphal myths which will not help you at all.  If you really what to know the truth read the Bible with an open mind and pray that your Creator gives you understanding and enlightenment, by so doing you will be reading with eternity in view and you will realise that the Bible is as straightforward as you can get.

[olaadegbu]

Daily Manna

Not by Might.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

TEXT: LUKE 22:39--53

"And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him" (Luke 22:50,51).

Before Jesus came to the world, the purpose of His coming had been made known to Him. All through His earthly ministry, He did not leave anyone in doubt of His mission on earth. Those who plotted His arrest were merely fulfilling a pre-determined purpose. This accounted for the reason why Judas Iscariot was able to “succeed” in his evil plot.

When Jesus knew the hour was at hand, He went into the Mount of Olivet to pray. It was there His captors swooped on him. He never resisted them! Christ demonstrated the lifestyle of a lamb. He was taken yet, never resisted them, He was manhandled yet, He never complained. Even when one of His servants used his sword to defend Him, He simply told him to hold his peace.

In another account, Jesus had said if there was need for it He could have called ten thousand angels to fight for Him. But He knew the hour to pay the price had come and He must do the Father’s will.

Our passage today is a challenge to us all that when we face persecution, we must count it all joy to suffer for the sake of the gospel. The Bible tells us that all those who live righteously must suffer persecution.

As believers, we must commit all judgments into God’s hands. Vengeance belongs to God. He knows when we are wrongly ill-treated, persecuted and oppressed, and He has promised to deliver us. We must not fight for God; He will fight for Himself at the appropriate time. Sometimes, believers distort the plan of God for their lives through carnal defence. Some people also try to fight for God when the Almighty has not sent them. We can win all battles by simply following God’s instructions.

                       

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Some trust in chariots, others in horses, but we will remember our God.

[olaadegbu]

Right Attitude during Persecution

TEXT: ACTS 7:9-16

Key Verse  “And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him” (Acts 7:9).

Persecution is a common experience in the lives of all those who are living in righteousness and true holiness. The Scripture says, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). This is not a promise but a revelation of fact to strengthen the faith of the brethren. When Satan engineers persecution against followers of Christ, he does so in order to turn them away from the path of righteousness. Persecutions come in forms of  mockery, hatred, affliction, denial of rights, envy, beating and even death.

Stephen reminded the council that Joseph suffered persecution in the hands of his brethren as well as in the house of Potiphar. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brethren because of their envy and jealousy against him. However, Joseph’s attitude in persecution is instructive. Though his brethren hated him, he surrendered himself to God as instrument for the preservation of the Jewish race at a time a terrible famine threatened their existence.

As true followers of Christ, our attitude during persecution is expected to be characterized by prayerfulness, love and forgiveness for our persecutors. At such a time, we should totally depend on God because He has the power to preserve our lives. It is not a time for revenge, or of habouring hatred or malice but a time to show love that will conquer their hatred; forgiveness that will conquer their persecution; and joy that will overwhelm their sadness.

When persecuted, we are to “rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). That is the time to sing praises unto God and to trust in Him who know the many “afflictions of the righteous” and is able to “deliver him out of  them all” (Psalm 34:19).

Talk for Today "Your attitude determines your altitude".

[olaadegbu]

Dealing with Discouragement
Friday, July 23, 2010

TEXT: Numbers 11:10-15

"Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers" (Numbers 11:12).

Talk For Today:  "Lord, help me to praise You even in my dark hours"."[/i]

For More . . .

[olaadegbu]

Triumph over Opposition
Thursday, September 9, 2010

TEXT: EZRA 4:7-16

"We certify the king that, if this city be builded again, and the walls thereof set up, by this means thou shalt have no portion on this side the river" (Ezra 4:16).

Thought for the day:  "The Lord will fight for you today"[/i]

For More . . .