Juliet Odhiambo

Juliet Odhiambo

We know that we ought to. 
From the point of salvation, the exhortation is always to read your Bible and Pray every day.
 
For the most part we have the best of intentions but many times we slack in this area and I have personally had many conversations with friends on how to be consistent and regular with our time with God. If you are in this space, here are some thoughts and ideas that can help you.
 
The first thing you should tackle is your mindset and attitude towards spending time with God in word, prayer worship etc. The idea that we walked into a relationship with God should help us to look at time spent with Him like time spent with a loved one. We will long for Him and even miss Him when we have not had adequate time with Him. Secondly, understanding that we have spent a lot of time on earth developing our physical bodies and our souls and not our spirits should help us understand why we are quick to respond to what our bodies, emotions and untransformed will tells us instead of what our spirit-man needs. Watch this video for more on this.
 
 

Podcasts have become a great way for many of us to learn and grow, and while there are many great Christian podcasts out there, I narrowed down on these that specifically have content on how to handle/study the Bible. There are plenty of Bible Study tips and tricks from amazing people in this list and they are available wherever you get your podcast fix. The sub headings will direct you to the podcasts.

Wednesday, 23 September 2020 13:02

Avoid these mistakes during Bible Study.

I recently shared this Instagram post  and the response on it showed that it needed to be expressed in longer prose form, so here we go. Many of us grow into mature Christians that are able to rightly divide the word of God as Paul exhorts, but usually that growth journey involves some mistakes along the way.  We have an increasing number of Bible translations and Bible formats which is ideally a good thing. But, for the same reason, we need to be more cautious that these conveniences do not incline us to mishandle God’s Word. I confess that I have also made these mistakes. But we want to be better about it, right? Have a look at these common mistakes and let’s all make an effort to do better.
Wednesday, 13 May 2020 10:47

Why we struggle with Christian Living

 
I have just completed a study on the letter of James, if you have not already seen them, the videos are available on the Saturday PM Facebook page. You can also get them via the link at the end of this blog. One of the things you will notice about the letter is the strong emphasis on godly Christian living. James goes into a lot of trouble giving the early Jewish Christians, a series of easy to understand instructions or commands on how to relate with each other and with God. This study got me thinking about why even when we know how we ought to live and what is a true demonstration of the Christian faith, we still struggle and many times fail.

 

At the begining of the year I talked about going up a certain mountain. As I walked down the mountain I was sure about one thing that God wanted me to do. To write a devotional on the Gospel of John based on what God had been teaching me and showing over several years. There is a common string of thoughts that I saw as I read and listened to the Gospel of John but I was not sure how to communicate it. This is what has become of it, I can only pray that there is some justice done to it.

What would it look like if you studied the word as you would for an important exam?

I have been mulling for a while over this question. As a student, I prided myself in having a high level of diligence in preparing for both class and an exam. However, it would seem that I was not giving the Bible the same level of attention but I was somehow expecting that the truth of the word would come into my heart via some sort of osmosis process. Does this sound familiar?

No.

It does not have to be an actual physical mountain but if you can get something close to it, why not?

I recently visited such a place within these very corners of Kenya; a beautiful place that depicts the very meaning of what a prayer mountain ought to be. Tucked up almost discreetly off the Nairobi-Nakuru Highway, it’s a place they say where Divinity meets Humanity.

As you walk towards the highest point of the prayer mountain you will find a small Chapel aptly called the Mt. Sinai Chapel. It was while I stood next to this Chapel that God talked to me and showed me the role of the Mountain as I flipped the Bible pages chapter by chapter through the book of Exodus.

The irony of it was not lost on me.

I decided to keep my hair natural after I had a bit of a mishap in high school. In Form Two I experimented with relaxers without my mother’s approval but I quickly realized that I did not have the money to maintain this experiment. My hair fell off and I literally had to start from scratch. Ever since, I decided to stick to what my good Lord gave me with very minimal interference except for the blow drying here and there.

I was also quite slow to get on to the #naturalhair bandwagon until about a year ago when I learned about how much more I could do to take better care of my hair. Any naturalista will tell you that the first thing you do when you start the journey is understand your hair and develop a regimen that you will follow to help your hair flourish.

One year later and I can honestly say that it has been a worthwhile journey.

Tuesday, 14 August 2018 13:20

5 Years, 12 Stones: A story of God's grace

When God puts an instruction in your heart, you never really know where it’s going to go or what He is trying to accomplish. You might have an inkling but I think it’s fair to say that the exact picture of God’s end game is never quite clear to our frail minds. I often think that just by allowing myself to have an intimate walk with God I was allowing God to take me on a wild adventure filled with many uncertainties. Over time though, God shows us little by little what His big idea is and how we fit into it because He has called us to be coworkers and collaborators with Him.

Tuesday, 03 July 2018 04:06

The Love of My Life

We met when I was only thirteen. I know what you're thinking... I was too young, barely old enough to know what love is. You're partly right, I followed Him because everyone important around me was doing it. But the older I grew, the more I discovered about Him and the more He captured my heart. I was fascinated by who He was, the things He had done and all I wanted to do was hang around him.

Day and night I thought about Him.

We even had our own secret language... He taught me so we could use it when we were together. I know it sounds corny but you know how it is...nobody knew me better than He did 

Our relationship grew, I was smitten… whipped if you like-that's what you kids call it these days, isn't it?

It was beautiful.

Paul talking to the Corinthians, in a typical no-nonsense fashion gives us the impression that our walk of faith ought to be characterized by a continuing and increasing capacity. That is to mean that believers are expected to be growing in faith; from one level to another. Paul wrote that the Corinthians were still babies in their faith and had to be fed milk and not solid food. How did they demonstrate their infancy? By the fact that that they were still worldly in their dealings. He mentions jealousy and dissension as a show of worldliness. So this got me thinking, who is to say whether one has matured in faith or not? I did a bit of research and will talk about top three signs of maturity, by no means is this an exhaustive list, but what I found them to be true in my own walk with God.

Here we go.

Read your bible, pray everyday. We sang this song every week at Sunday school and that exhortation was not just for us little kids. Every new believer receives these instructions from day one of giving their hearts to the lord. Even if you have been in the faith many years, this still remains true in order to experience growth in our faith and knowledge God.
 
John 3:16 tells us that Jesus Christ gave up his life so that believers may attain eternal life. What is this eternal life though? For a long time I was looking forward to chilling in heaven in joy and happiness, drinking smoothies and hanging out with my friends, you know….typical eternity stuff :-). That was until I came across John 17:3 that defines eternal life.
 
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
 
Mind.
 
Blown.
Monday, 12 February 2018 09:42

Date a guy who prays

I know people who respond to Valentine’s Day with a gag or by burying their heads in the sand and coming out of hiding after three days. Don’t fret my friend, this could be the year that God leads you to that special person. This post together with what you’re going to read down here might be God’s way of helping you identify the wheat from the chaff…so to speak. By now I want to assume that we know not to be unequally yoked but more than that we need to look for partners who have an intimate walk with God. Ladies, you might want to find a guy that prays. Here’s why

Thursday, 18 January 2018 11:38

Here is the secret to your success this year

For many of us, the new year comes with an opportunity to regroup, refocus, re-strategize and rewrite our personal and professional goals. We have high expectations for what we would like to see and accomplish this year and they (expectations) sometimes get thwarted when we fail to meet them. If only we could be sure that everything we set out to do will be met by 100% success. These are the thoughts that led to me to one bible character that set out to accomplish a goal and was successful at every instance.

Lean in a little and let me show you what you need to experience good success this 2018.
 

Wednesday, 26 July 2017 04:21

Hear O Kenya! This is what the Lord says.

I started studying the book of Jeremiah because I was convinced that it would help my heart reconnect back to the heart of God to a level I have not been in for a while. I was convinced that my worldview was being steered away at a slow rate to the things that God would not be pleased with. I wanted my heart to ache for what ached God’s heart, to hate what He hates and love what He loves. Jeremiah happens to be writing to a people who had lost God somehow; who were different from the people that God had called, they did not know him, and they did not know his laws; they only had this temple that represented an idea of a god whom they did not quite understand. They had equaled Him to other gods and through Jeremiah, God allows us to see His vulnerability at the neglect of his people, he lets us see His pain and his anger; this is what I was going for when I started reading Jeremiah.

Monday, 29 May 2017 04:15

Shall we look for another?

 
The past couple of months I have been grappling with how to handle my disappointment with God. Many atheists talk about getting to the place of unbelief because a certain expectation of God did not pan out exactly how they thought it should have. Our nature as human beings is that we often experience that failure of faith and failure of spirit; our fallibility causes us to ask the kind of question that John the Baptist asked when he was at his weakest point, when his expectations of the messiah were not being met, a time when he was disappointed with God.
Sunday, 26 February 2017 06:46

Miss Perfect takes a bow

Perfection is a trait that has always fascinated me. I was thinking about it the other day after a conversation with some friends about how we are propelled by the fear of disappointing the people who expect something from us. I am probably not the only one either; talk to any HR person who does talent acquisition and you will hear that in job interviews the most common answer to the question ‘’what is your weakness?’’ is the fact that people seem to think they are perfectionists. I know there're guys who say it because it seems to be the ‘’most appropriate’’ response to land the job; but, what about those that struggle with this need to be perfect?

 

Take me for example… :-) 

I was in a matatu the other day on my way home when Michael Bolton’s song Soul Provider came up. It’s a pretty old song and to be quite honest it was not the first I was hearing it but it was the first time that I paid attention to the lyrics. Maybe it was the fact that I was so close to the hair raising speakers or the fact that I was seated in the middle seat right behind the driver (isn’t that the most uncomfortable seat though?)

Monday, 15 August 2016 10:36

Rock Solid: The testing of our Faith

The dust is yet to settle on her grave, the memories are yet to fade and my relationship with God has seen better days. That last bit is the most disturbing because you see; I have always prided myself in having rock solid faith in God; not so much in what He is able to do (which I know is much) but in his existence and His person, the kind that weathers the storm and rises above it, unmovable and unshakeable. The past couple of months though, have stretched my faith to limits it has never wandered to before; I found myself asking God questions that in the past I considered an abomination. Uncharted waters they are but there’s comfort in knowing that He has been here before with many, men and women of old as well as those of this day and age, for that reason I must believe that this too shall pass, and there’s something beautiful at the end of this tunnel.

Friday, 29 April 2016 15:22

God Loves The Atheist.

The Atheists in Kenya are having a party dubbed without God. It’s a celebration; a celebration of acknowledgment. You have probably seen the flyer making rounds on social media. It’s usually followed by gasps of disbelief and despair. It’s almost as if the world is coming to an end. Which is true if you think about it; first it was Project X and now this, not to mention all the other stories that we are fed everyday in the media...it can definitely leave you with a sense of hopelessness; wondering what has become of our beloved country. The founding fathers who penned the national anthem must be squirming in their graves. I mean, who are we asking to bless our nation if He does not exist?

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LIFE’S QUESTIONS, GOD’S ANSWERS

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