Today our muse is by a guest at the The Saturday PM website. Itunu is a cyber (read facebook) friend of mine who allowed me to re post his thoughts that originally appeared on his Facebook notes.

I am especially grateful that he allowed me to do this even after i had confessed how i worked my cyber stalking skills on him. (trust me, its not as creepy as it appears to sound).

Enough about me: have a read and enjoy.

THE LORD’S LONG WAIT

BY SIMON NDOO

Or despise you the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? Rom. 2:4

The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. Ps. 145:8-9.

Why has not God dealt with you up to date according to your sins?

Because He is gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy.

Why does He wait for so long before executing judgment?

1. Because He doesn’t desire any to perish: 2 Pet. 3:19 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

2. Because He doesn’t delight in the death of a sinner: Eze. 18:23 “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? says the Lord GOD: and not that he should turn from his ways, and live?”

3. Because He loves the lost, John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

Therefore in His goodness and mercy, God bears with you, blesses you, spares your life, and gives you opportunities to hear the gospel. He doesn’t terminate your life or deprive you of blessing – he doesn’t deal with you according to your sins.

Wrong conclusions you can come to with respect to the Lord’s long wait.

1. That God does not exist

2. That God is a weakling

3. That God permits sin and evil

This is not so.

What the Lord requires: 1 John 3:23 “And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.”

Therefore God waits on you to turn to Him, and shall wait on you for your entire lifetime. But not any longer after you have crossed over from this life to the other.

Therefore, do not despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; for the goodness of God leads you to repentance.

First of all, let me just start by stating that;

that

is

not

possible.

There is no way to get to Ngong via Mombasa road or is there?

FAITH – THE EYE THAT SEES

AUTHORED BY: SIMON NDOO

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” Hebews 11: 13

We shall hereby attempt and labor to express the necessity of spiritual sight. Believers are called to persevere to the end – the end being not necessarily death, but the ultimate attainment of the goal, to win Christ, to enter into the eternal presence of God in heaven, attaining the glories thereof.

The spiritual affairs of eternity are invisible to the carnal eye; they elude even the faculties of the mind. They are realities and truths that we have not beheld or experienced the way we experience the world in which we live.

Being pilgrims in this world, believers move on by faith. Faith is the eye which sees the ultimate end, and that sight propels them to move on towards the goal.

We may stop and wonder, “what is it the men and women in the hall of faith saw that made them to face many a great trials, conflicts, sufferings and death in their quest to attain the goal?” The answer lies in what they saw.

They “saw the promises”. Which promises? These were promises of God pertaining to Messiah who is called the Christ.

Proper sight produces certainty of what is seen. And that is what faith is all about: “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Faith entails seeing things not seen, thereby producing the effect as of one who has seen. We have not physically seen Jesus Christ in His life, death and resurrection, yet we believe Him as if we have seen Him. We have not seen heaven, but we have faith that heaven exists as if we have seen it. It is such faith, such sight, such hope, such conviction that gives us the motive or motivation to pilgrimage with trust and surety, otherwise our walk is sure to slack and die off.

The principle of sight applies in ordinary affairs of men. We are most motivated to act or move when we are sure of what we involved with. This “being sure” is produced by mental perception, of seeing the end result of what we desire; hence we get inspired to do what needs to be done to apprehend such ends.

Men and women of faith knew their God, as such they did exploits; they knew where they are going, as such they were steadfast in their way.

It is important, therefore, that we get to see alright, and see what is right. We know that we have seen alright when we defy and resist whatever comes our way in pursuit of what we have seen; the men and women of faith did not lose sight of the promises despite the overwhelming pressure of trials and persecution. A pretender will sooner bend like willows than die for what he is not convinced of or stand for.

Faith sees best when it sees Christ. Of all the men and women of faith desired to see, it was Christ. All the promises and prophecies pointed to Christ, and they understood Christ to mean salvation and redemption, and the giver of a life better and eternal than the one they lost through the cruel deaths they had to face.

That is a life-changing moment when a person sees Christ; the men and women of faith saw Christ. Having sinned, they saw Christ as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world; being aliens and sojourners in this world, they saw Christ as the one who prepares a better country for them.

They knew too well that if Christ does not die for their sins, they are lost forever. They did not just see the kingdom of God being established as the majority of saw, as it were by political takeover; but that Christ shall come to deal with sin, and set forth the everlasting kingdom of peace and righteousness.

Those who have seen Christ testify that He is real and true. “Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” 1 Pet. 1:8. The phrase, “yet believing” (which is spiritual sight) is here inserted to counter “who having not seen” (which is physical sight) to differentiate between the two. Though having been denied the opportunity to see Him in flesh, yet through faith we see Him in spirit.

It is possible to hold onto what is physically seen too much at the expense of what is not physically seen. This was not the case with men and women of faith. For “…truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared for them a city.” Heb. 11:15-16.

They regarded they world which they had never seen by physical eyes (yet seen by faith) better than the world in which they were born. They denied the pleasures and amusements of this life for a better life of pleasing God.

Self, perhaps, is the country from which we are being called out of. When the men and women of faith were called to pursue God’s will, they denied their selves. As such Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross {Greek. Stauros, stake} and follow me.” Matt. 6:24.

They did not get stuck to their possessions, careers, families, or even to their lives. They were willing to lose it all in order to gain the promise of God.

We are called upon to build our most holy faith (Jude 1:20) which “was once delivered unto the saints.” Jude 1:3. “O ye of little faith”, wake up and build, nurture the mustard seed like faith, and make it grow. He who opened the eyes of the bind can open the spiritual eyes and give you light beyond the stellar sky, and bid you to see the invisible. Christ, the desire of the ages is that promise which the saints of old looked on to see, and though they died without seeing Him, yet by faith they saw Him, and their souls departed in peace, for they were able to see the salvation of the LORD (Lk 2:29).

Jesus says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” Is. 45:22. May for the grace we look unto Him and be healed, saved, and have our sight of Him strengthened, for His name’s sake. Amen.

I must admit, at the first mention of a Saturday evening service I was not one of those to be particularly excited about the idea, and so on this particular evening/night as we had this planning meeting for our bible study, I was among those who kept pushing it to be the last item on the agenda almost willing the idea to disappear into oblivion. It was a huge deal, a big idea and not to be taken lightly. However, like any good idea it didn’t just disappear it was seen to fruition and I am glad I didn’t stop it from happening. It has been a year-I think since that meeting and with a couple of months of the service under our belt I took some time to jot down what I enjoy most about The Saturday PM.