Heralds Digest

  “ A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan; A mountain of many peaks is the mountain of Bashan. Why do you fume with envy, you mountains of many peaks? This is the mountain which God desires to dwell in; Yes, the Lord will dwell in it forever. ” Psalms 68 : 15 - 16 NKJV The opposite of real rest is fake fight; nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, life’s worries and anxieties on the activities of its enemies often occupy the attention of our hearts more than the promises of rest from God. Whereas, the evidence of fake fight is not the absence of the enemies’ wicked activity; it is the evidence of the absence of God. When the heart truly accepts the invitation to the presence of God, it accesses the real rest and recesses the fake fight. All its cares suddenly become the concerns of the Lord. Let the hearts with real rest focus on the Lord’s concerns, rather than getting disturbed by the enemies’ worries. And the Lord’s concerns, including His holiness in the midst of h...

  “ Poverty and shame will come to him who disdains correction, But he who regards a rebuke will be honored. A desire accomplished is sweet to the soul, But it is an abomination to fools to depart from evil.” Proverbs 13 : 18 - 19 NKJV While there is no doubt that the overriding motive behind human desires is prosperity, progress, and promotion, the experience of David in the wilderness of king Saul underscores the difference between deceitful and delightful desires. King Saul’s desire to retain his position as the king of Israel, after God has rejected him, is a perfect example of a deceitful desire. At one point in one of his wild goose chase escapades, Saul even said, “ God has delivered him (David) into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars ( I Samuel 23 : 7 )”. He had several opportunities to respond to divine correction, but he scolded and scorned all these corrective privileges until his deceitful desire ended in destruction. Where...

  “ The Lord gave the word; Great was the company of those who proclaimed it: “Kings of armies flee, they flee, And she who remains at home divides the spoil.” Psalms 68 : 11 - 12 NKJV When Pastor W.F. Kumuyi recently rephrased John 3:16 as the GOSPEL (i.e.,  God gave His Only Son , so no one will Perish but have Everlasting Life ), it left no one in doubt that this gospel is synonymous to the greatest gift. The gospel is always the word of God reserved for every believer’s proclamation by words, lifestyles, and conducts: “ Great was (and still is) the company of those who proclaimed it (the gospel)”. And just as the Word became flesh in Jesus, the word of God is expected to moderate every believer’s principle of daily living, social life engagement, and work ethics. Unfortunately, most believers would readily look away from the word of God when seeking worldly gifts; and thereby subjecting themselves as preys for the enemies’ manipulation. Whereas, every believer’s pr...

  ““ I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come .” John 16 : 12 - 13 NKJV When David prayed “ Give us help from trouble, For the help of man is useless. ( Psalms 60 : 11 )”, we can tell he knew how truly useless the human help. The best of human help can be sincerely honest, but it is still solemnly useless in comparison to God’s holy help. In his race against Goliath at one point, David responded to king Saul’s honest help with helmet, coat of mail, sword and armours “ I cannot walk with these, for I have not tested them”. David put off the honest help of king Saul to wear the holy help of God, i.e., the name of the Lord God of Host and the dependable army of Israel. More than even the honest physical presence of Jesus with the disciples, Jesus said “ N...

  “ Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.” Psalms 67 : 5 - 7 NKJV It is no news that the people’s engagement in reactionary praise are outrightly ignorant of the power of progressive praise. When the psalmist says “ Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You ”, it suggests that people’s minds are naturally chained and imprisoned by some sort of giant syndrome. During the psalmist’s days of internship, he was exposed to many fearsome giants, like lion and bear, even before meeting Goliath, the 9-feet tall champion of the Philistine. Those whose feet and hands or minds are shackled by the fear of the giant figure in their lives cannot praise God. Whereas, it is only the sincere praise of the majesty of God above all the manipulative gestures of giants that can set true believers aside for bre...

  “ He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. ”” John 14 : 21 NKJV When Jesus said greater works are manifested through His disciples because of His ascension, He anticipated every disciple to be His manifest to the world. A manifest is a comprehensive repository of the commandments or words of God.  Imagine every disciple of Christ as the embodiment of Jesus in this world of sin, compromise and unrighteousness, Jesus and His world will become evident in our family, business, and societal lifestyles with rebukes to unrighteousness and the returns to the ministry of reconciliation. Unfortunately, today, pride and arrogance would not always allow the influence of the words of the Lord to take root. For example, when king Saul can no longer retain being little in the eyes of the Lord, he jettisoned being the master’s manifest and modified the words of the Lor...

  “ So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John 13 : 31 - 32 , 34 NKJV Reciprocating any gesture of love with love is common; the only challenge arises with the call to love our enemies in truth. “ So, when Judas Iscariot had gone out to mobilize for the arrest of Jesus Christ ”, Jesus preached the demonstration of the glory of God on the basis of love for one another, including our enemies. But everyone knows that the reflection of God’s glory in our lives embraces the accommodation of pain, persecution, betrayal, like it happened with Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot. And having conquered the pain and agony at Gethsemane, Jesus was able to love Judas unconditionally. Unfortunately, we are often interested in pre...