WOW! Its been (thinking...how many months now?) more than four months now since I last put anything on this web space and... Sorry about that. I was chasing a spider of my space. Apparently they had taken over the whole place since I haven't been this road in a couple of months. Well, I'll just have to handle both the spring cleaning and blogging at the same time. So straight to business.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge (or should I say a lot of traffic has passed this expressway?) Whatever! There's a lot that has happened in the past few months. I'll be filling you in as the days go by. However what's primary on my mind now is simple.
I was looking for a Don Moen CD recently, the I Will Sing album in particular, and I passed by this music stand somewhere in Iyana Ipaja, where I stay, in Lagos. What I saw disgusted me and I'm not trying to sound very holy since I have had issues with this in the past (and I, must honestly say, am taking my stand against it on a daily basis). The store owner was playing an indigenous gospel (christian) album so I simply stepped up to ask if she had the album I was looking for. On my left was this display of DVDs and this is where what sparked off this post came from. On display were pornographic DVDs, not for your viewing pleasure alone but also for your purchase.
My stomach turned at the sight and I quickly turned my face away. Now I need to make this clear. As an able-bodied man, the sight of a naked woman in different poses definitely excites strikes a chord in my natural senses. Not to talk of the fact that I have struggled seriously with porn over the years. It has taken a lot of focus on God and His grace to be able to live above it. That someone like me can almost vomit at the sight of porn is a miracle only God can explain but that's a post for another day right?
So here was I at the shop, that was playing gospel music and requesting a Don Moen CD and they were selling porn. It just didn't register. As I thought of showing the store owner my disgust, I wondered how we could be so two-faced. No wonder unbelievers don't change when we share Christ with them. We are so full of mixtures. I never really showed her how my disgust (and I didn't like that, not so much because of myself. I should be standing up against imbalances as much as possible).
However I left that place thinking how very two-faced we tend to be as believers. We have a space for God in our hearts but then our hearts aren't exclusively His. We compartmentalize our lives and our hearts giving God room to be Lord in some parts of our lives and then we lock Him out of some parts of our lives. We clean up some parts of our lives and leave some parts as filthy as it can get. We do all the 'spiritual' stuff and still indulge in a lot of carnal stuff. We are, many times, so unwilling to let go of that part of our nature that's not yet rightly aligned to the will of God.
The culture of the world informs us to keep our dirty linen secret and we tend to do that when we relate to God too. We want to appear pious and blameless but we fail to realize that the righteousness that's acceptable to God is not our good works but the acceptance we receive in and through Christ. We go before God and act up and then tell ourselves we'll expose ourselves to Him when we get our acts right but God expects us to come submitting all we are and have to Him. However, the message Jesus preached was that of a change of mind. First change your way of thinking and then a change of action follows. Clean the inside of the cup first then the outside will ultimately be cleaned up too.
Let's stop compartmentalizing our lives and open up to Him, who can clean us up. Let's give our lives to Him the way we are. Let's stop keeping Him out. Its time to repent and change the way we think! Its time to submit our all, good and bad, to Him.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge (or should I say a lot of traffic has passed this expressway?) Whatever! There's a lot that has happened in the past few months. I'll be filling you in as the days go by. However what's primary on my mind now is simple.
I was looking for a Don Moen CD recently, the I Will Sing album in particular, and I passed by this music stand somewhere in Iyana Ipaja, where I stay, in Lagos. What I saw disgusted me and I'm not trying to sound very holy since I have had issues with this in the past (and I, must honestly say, am taking my stand against it on a daily basis). The store owner was playing an indigenous gospel (christian) album so I simply stepped up to ask if she had the album I was looking for. On my left was this display of DVDs and this is where what sparked off this post came from. On display were pornographic DVDs, not for your viewing pleasure alone but also for your purchase.
My stomach turned at the sight and I quickly turned my face away. Now I need to make this clear. As an able-bodied man, the sight of a naked woman in different poses definitely excites strikes a chord in my natural senses. Not to talk of the fact that I have struggled seriously with porn over the years. It has taken a lot of focus on God and His grace to be able to live above it. That someone like me can almost vomit at the sight of porn is a miracle only God can explain but that's a post for another day right?
So here was I at the shop, that was playing gospel music and requesting a Don Moen CD and they were selling porn. It just didn't register. As I thought of showing the store owner my disgust, I wondered how we could be so two-faced. No wonder unbelievers don't change when we share Christ with them. We are so full of mixtures. I never really showed her how my disgust (and I didn't like that, not so much because of myself. I should be standing up against imbalances as much as possible).
However I left that place thinking how very two-faced we tend to be as believers. We have a space for God in our hearts but then our hearts aren't exclusively His. We compartmentalize our lives and our hearts giving God room to be Lord in some parts of our lives and then we lock Him out of some parts of our lives. We clean up some parts of our lives and leave some parts as filthy as it can get. We do all the 'spiritual' stuff and still indulge in a lot of carnal stuff. We are, many times, so unwilling to let go of that part of our nature that's not yet rightly aligned to the will of God.
The culture of the world informs us to keep our dirty linen secret and we tend to do that when we relate to God too. We want to appear pious and blameless but we fail to realize that the righteousness that's acceptable to God is not our good works but the acceptance we receive in and through Christ. We go before God and act up and then tell ourselves we'll expose ourselves to Him when we get our acts right but God expects us to come submitting all we are and have to Him. However, the message Jesus preached was that of a change of mind. First change your way of thinking and then a change of action follows. Clean the inside of the cup first then the outside will ultimately be cleaned up too.
Let's stop compartmentalizing our lives and open up to Him, who can clean us up. Let's give our lives to Him the way we are. Let's stop keeping Him out. Its time to repent and change the way we think! Its time to submit our all, good and bad, to Him.
