THE REFINER’S FIRE…

“Because he knows the road on which I travel, when he had tested me, I’ll come out like gold” Job 23:10 (ISV)

Everything I have been talking about in this series revolve around the above scripture. Each time gold or any precious metal is mentioned, it takes me back to what it has to go through from when it is mined to when it is refined. I really wish I can get a real interview, I really do have a couple of questions for them. I believe if that was possible, they will tell me that the path to being valued so highly is not a palatable one. What we see in museums and jewellery stores are refined articles. They went through the refiner’s fire, and trust me, it was not a walk in the park.

The Hebrew word for REFINE is tsäraph which also means to test. So if God wants to test you, He takes you through the fire. This He does, not to burn you up, but to purify you and make you valuable and great. It is going to be uncomfortable and hot. You will lose some of the fleshly values you have given yourself, it will be a hot and tough process to go through, but it promises to make you better.

God has not said the path to greatness will be an easy one, but He is faithful enough to be with you through the fire. He has that pedigree and if He did it for one, He can do it for another. Trust in God and you will be just fine. There is greatness on the inside of you that is waiting for expression, just endure the heat of the fire and it will manifest when your test is over.

“When you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you; and through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you, when you walk through fire you won’t be scorched, and the flame won’t set you ablaze” Isa. 43:2 (ISV).  

#THE PROCESS

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Stay blessed.          

©TRANSFORMING WORDS SERIES
(Transforming the World through the Word)

Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

BE REFINED…

A few years ago, God showed me some interesting things about fire. I made an article out of that  and has subsequently developed it into a book (It is yet to be published). During that study, I saw the beautiful aspect of fire. I saw fire as a wonderful object in our walk with God and journey through life as a believer.

The concept of fire is one that has different effect depending on application. One application makes it an object of destruction, another application makes it a refining object. For what this series is intended to achieve, I will dwell on the latter application.

The process of refining is one that is a crucial one. This is where God fine tunes us to meet His standard. This is where we trade our filthy, dirty and disjointed nature for His pure, holy and righteous nature. This is where we are made vessels unto honour. This is where self is burned up and the glory of God, as a consequence of His Spirit, shines through us.

In the next episode, I will look at the role of fire in the refining process.  

#THE PROCESS

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Stay blessed.          

©TRANSFORMING WORDS SERIES
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Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

BUILD CAPACITY…

I did a little study on the dynamics of child birth and I postulate that pregnant women fall into four different categories during delivery. The first category includes those who experience seamless delivery. These women can almost not feel the pain during delivery, not for the absence of it, but it becomes insignificant to them. The second category includes those who feel excruciating pains during delivery but somehow manage to push through to delivery. The third category includes those who feel excruciating pains but do not have enough strength to push through to delivery, but enough to stay alive to probably conceive again. The fourth category includes those who cannot bear the pain of delivery and hence throw in the towel.

Two things find commonality among these groups; Ability to conceive and Birth pains. For you to get to your PUSH point, you must have conceived and by consequence anticipate delivery pains. What determines the category you fall in is the capacity you have built during your pregnancy period. What you do during your pregnancy period plays a key role in your delivery period.

If you must have a safe and sound delivery of the greatness that is inside of you, you have to build capacity. Your pregnancy season should be a season of capacity building. I know you hope to be on the big stage tomorrow, build the capacity you need today. Don’t just loaf around and wait for the big stage, make use of the little ones you see now to build the capacity you need for the big stage. Without capacity, the big stage will swallow you. Capacity gives you strength to PUSH through to delivery.

I know your big stage is yet to come. I know you have those big ideas growing in your mind and yearning for expression. But I want to challenge you today to invest in capacity building. Study, read books, attend seminars and workshops, listen to people who will help you expand your ability to think, and strive to acquire relevant skills. Go for knowledge and information that will equip you for the big stage. Delivery becomes seamless for the man who has built enough capacity.

“If you faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small” Prov. 24:10 (KJV).
  
#THE PROCESS

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Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

PUSH!…

I want to start by saying that nothing great comes on a platter of gold. It is not enough to conceive a great idea, you must also work towards birthing it. If you must birth that great idea, you must first travail.

Your pathway to the greatness that God has prepared for you is not going to be without thorns and thistles. There are pains to deal with and battles to fight. You cannot afford to have a miscarriage of your dreams and ideas.

For there to be delivery, there has to be a push. You cannot relax and expect your ideas to deliver greatness to you, you have to travail and PUSH. You have to look beyond the immediate pain and push your way through the gains that lie ahead.

You have not received grace to be lazy and lousy, it is an aid as you PUSH your way through to all God has designed you to be at conception. God did not say there will be no pain, but He soothes the pain so you can PUSH!

If you conceive an idea, and you do not PUSH your way to delivery, you will definitely have a miscarriage of ideas.

“Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children” Isa. 66:8 (KJVL).

#THE PROCESS

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Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

CONCEIVE… (2)

The interesting thing about this stage of the process is that this is where divinity comes into agreement with humanity. The desire of God is that we be fruitful and multiply. This suggests to me that God has designed us for greatness and productivity.

I want to point out that God has released everything we need to be great and productive into our Spirit. Your inability to conceive does not in any way make God impotent. God is Omnipotent, and His potency cannot be demeaned by your inability to activate the ideas that He has released into your Spirit from eternity past.

This stage requires that we align our thought process to God’s thoughts for us. This is the part in the process where a lot of thinking is done. There is no limit to what your eyes can see, neither is there any barrier to what your mind can process at this stage.

I dare you today to open your mind to as much thoughts as God has released into your spirit because the things that will make you great are encapsulated in those thoughts.

#THE PROCESS

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Stay blessed.       
  

©TRANSFORMING WORDS SERIES
(Transforming the World through the Word)

Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

CONCEIVE…

This is undoubtedly the beginning of your journey through time. This is where God begins with you. This is where your life takes shape. This is where the process begins. Whatever you will eventually become will be a result of how you make use of this stage of your life.

This is where things begin to form up in your mind. This is where your imaginative power is expected to be put into full use. Here, you begin to see things with the eyes of your mind and not your physical eyes.

This is the place where ideas are formed, potentials are generated, and possibilities are appreciated. This is where the foundation of greatness is laid. This is the place where a friend of mine will call imagiNATION. This is the place of your beginning. You do not want to mess with this stage of the process. This is where greatness starts.

I will like to say that anything you do not conceive, you cannot have. If there will be delivery, then there has to be conception. If a woman is to expect delivery of a baby, she has to conceive the baby. It then suggests that if you must deliver greatness, you must conceive greatness. What you end up delivering to your generation is a function of what you have conceived.

“Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin…” James 1:15a (KJ2000).     

#THE PROCESS

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Also visit http://www.christapoet.wordpress.com every Monday to read your favourite TWS alongside poems from great poets.

LOCATING THE BRIGHT SIDE…

I want to at this point add that the bright side of the process is not a place or a point in a geographic map per se, it is a state of mind. It is believing that you will be all that God has said you will be, even though it does not look like you are making a headway based on what the physical eyes can see. It is believing that despite what you are going through, it takes God nothing to turn your situation around.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” Psalm 23:4a (KJVL).

It therefore means that you can only locate the bright side through faith.

I really am not about to query or investigate what you know about faith, but I want to dare you to exercise it.

“For we live by faith, not by sight” 2 Cor. 5:7 (ISV)

To get to the bright side, you need to see beyond what your physical eyes are showing you and see through the eyes of faith. What I am trying to say is that when problems are staring you in the face, see solutions and let it determine your response to life issues. When fear looms, quell it with faith.

From the next episode, we will look at some of the processes God takes us through. This journey is getting better, Halleluyah!     

#THE PROCESS

***Please share with others and let it bless them as it blessed you***

Stay blessed.       
  

©TRANSFORMING WORDS SERIES
(Transforming the World through the Word)

Visit http://www.transformingwordseries.wordpress.com for other series that will renew your mind and effect the desired transformation.

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JUST DIE (MY LETTER TO THE STRUGGLER…)

 

Dear Struggler,

 

This is going to be a long letter but I beseech you to read every word of this. I am trusting God to use it and help you.

 

Easter is one remarkable season to Christian faithfuls as it commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Over the years, preachers and writers alike have done phenomenal jobs telling and retelling the story that can be referred to as a very important biblical folklore. There is hardly any Christian gathering that its activities this season is not geared towards retelling the Easter story. This story took on a somewhat wider reaching dimension when it was told using motion pictures. One of those movies was “The Passion of The Christ”, which you must have watched.

 

Moving forward, I particularly at some point was a little concerned with the way this story was told over the years and its intended effect. At one time, this story becomes so compelling that it calls for sober reflections. At another time, it is told in a scary way that it scares people away from its true essence. I guess it must have covered you with goose pimples when it was told. Howbeit, this is the greatest story ever told.

 

I will not bore you with details because I assume you are conversant with this story; from the betrayal, to the arrest, to the denial, to the trial, to the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. You really did not need to have been born again to be able to retell that story. So I will not dwell here, I will move this thing forward.

 

Like you, I thought I was used to the story and all of its significance. But God was set to show me a part of this love story that swept my feet off the ground. I never really paid attention to this part, but God took me there. It is found in Matt. 27:54 and I will quote from the New King James Version:

 

“Now when the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the son of God.”

 

I will come back to that text but, let me take you a little back in time to a board meeting Jesus had with His disciples in Matt. 16:13-19. By this time Jesus had done a lot of miracles at different times and places. He had taught the people things that were not conventional with the way the teachers of the law taught them. As a matter of fact, by this time, He had not told anyone yet who he really was. However, he knew (possibly by instinct) that people were saying a lot of things about Him. Here He was, trying to know who people are saying that He was.

 

This situation may not be a stranger to you. You do your best to keep abreast with the personality you put out with every rise in popularity. As you carry out your assignment and carry yourself as a Christian, somewhere in your mind you hope that people are seeing you for who you really are. You take out time to check on what people around you are saying about you. I am not saying it is a bad idea, even Jesus found Himself in that place where He wanted to know what people are saying about Him.

 

Well, Jesus’ survey showed that people where seeing him, not for who he really is but in the light of what they see him do. They saw Him as a prophet because they were used to prophets performing all manner of signs and wonders. They did not see Him as The Son of God. As a matter of fact, He was addressed as The Son of God on two occasions prior to this board meeting: The demons that possessed the Man at Gergesenes and the disciples when they saw Him walk on water. Outside the disciples, no other person saw Jesus as The Son of God (Even John, the Baptist, doubted the son-ship of Jesus at some point). When He declared it before the high priest, He was tagged as a blasphemer (Matt. 26:63-65). While on the cross, people mocked Him with it. His declaration of the truth that He was The Son of God was not enough to make the people other than His disciples believe it.

 

Let me take you back to the text. As I dwelt on this part of the greatest love story ever told, I could not help but asked: WHY DID PEOPLE WAIT FOR JESUS TO DIE BEFORE ACKNOWLEDGING HIM AS THE SON OF GOD? Is it not interesting that the Centurion and the other people around declared Jesus The Son of God just after He gave up the ghost?

 

I simply wrote this long letter to submit to you that your place in God can only be relevant to humanity if you can JUST DIE to yourself and be alive in God. That way, you neither need argue with people about who you are nor do a survey to know if people really get it that you are a Child of God. Jesus had to die to His flesh, when He gave up the ghost on the cross, for men who are without to come to know him as The Son of God that He is. I do not doubt that you have been born again, but yet people cannot identify you as such. JUST DIE to your flesh and be alive in Christ (Rom. 8:13-14, Col. 3:1-6).

 

As I drop my pen, I want to ask that you pass this letter to other people when you are done reading it. Understand that you are not the only one struggling right now, there are billions of people that needs this letter.

 

Thanks and God bless you.

 

Your friend,

Ibeh Uche Sam

 

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