This past weekend I got a chance to participate in a half marathon for the first time. Yikes! The important thing is that I crossed the finish line…more like crawled past the finish line and heaved a sigh of relief. I have decided that you only need to run a marathon once for you to become an expert. With the expertise that I gathered, I put down a list of my top five must do’s to make your marathon run a complete ‘success’.

The day you accept the salvation of Jesus Christ is the day you are born again. And like all new-borns, you need a few vaccines. The day you are born again is when you make up your mind to part ways with sin.

It's a leap of faith. It is a test of courage. It is exciting and scary and painful and emotional. It is therefore very similar to actual birth. Don't be surprised if you cried like a new born baby yet you are a grown man.

Dear baby, if you are going to survive, you are going to need to get your shots. You will have to guard your new life, your salvation with your all.

Some sins are going to be obvious and straight forward. Some, we like to say have a wide grey area. For example, there really isn't that much of a grey area when it comes to murder. You've either committed it or not. The victim is either dead or alive.

There are sins, however, that we struggle with. Lying, for example, is one of these. What's wrong with telling a little white lie? How about a little exaggeration?

Or one of the big ones. Like fornication. Where really is the line? How far is too far? How physically involved can I get with my girlfriend before it becomes fornication?

That's when you begin the rationalizations. What does the Bible really mean by fornication? Or what does the Bible really mean when it says "a man will lie with his wife"? If my girlfriend and I love each other, aren't we practically "married"?

After the rationalizations comes the actual sinning. It does not take long for someone to rationalize lying and to justify it. It does not take long for someone to rationalize homosexuality and to come up with a study shows that homosexuality is something you are born with. It does not take long before the thought becomes an action.

Then you find yourself lying. Then you find yourself stealing. Then you find yourself dishonouring your parents. Whether you take the time to rationalize or you are spontaneous about it, you will fall short at one point or other.

For sure, you will sin after you accept the salvation of Christ.

What does that mean? Why struggle to reach an unattainable goal? It is not unattainable. Matt 5:48 : Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Christ attained this perfection and God empowers us to do so too.

Your life's question is "How can a young man keep his way pure?"

And God answers is "By retaining his word in your heart."

B is for Bible

Dear baby, you are going to need to read the word of God. Like a baby suckles on breast-milk, your life will need to revolve around his word. Find comfort in his word as a baby finds comfort at his mothers bossom. Let his word enrich you. Let his word build you.

The word of God is amazing. It is milk for the newborns and it is meat for those who are spiritually mature. You never outgrow it.

Weaning a child from breast-milk does not mean that the child no longer needs to feed. Get comfortable with reading the Bible. And make it a regular occurrence.

Read the word and meditate upon it. Let the word of God be on your mind constantly. Talk about it. Read about it. Write is on sticky notes and come across it everywhere.

This is the first thing you need to immunize yourself against sin.

C is for Change

Every time you hear the word of God, it comes to you so that you may change. So every time you hear the word of God ask God to reveal what needs to change in your life.

When the baby eats, the baby poops. And someone's got to change his diaper. You can't change it once a week. You can't change it once a day. You have to change it every time the baby eats and poops.

If the baby is eating and not pooping, you have a very sick baby. If you are reading the word and not changing, there's a problem.

The word must cause a change in you and the key to change is prayer. Take time to change. Take time to pray. Humble yourself like a baby in dirty diapers and ask God to change you. If you remain proud and refuse to be changed, well, you are going to smell and get sick. If you refuse to be vulnerable to God, your salvation cannot last. Humble yourself and let the potter mould you. Surrender like a baby to his father, and you shall be saved.

Psalm 51:17" a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise."

If you want to be safe from sin, pray. Pray without ceasing. Pray like your life depends on it. For it surely does.

G is for The Gift.

So does it mean if I read my bible constantly and pray constantly that I am guaranteed that I will not sin? Do monks and hermits sin?

Your humanity is still with you and sooner or later you are going to succumb to sin. You can do everything within your power, but you cannot ensure your righteousness.

You may sin unknowingly. For example, you may be doing something wrong but you have not yet realized it. For example, you may have jealousy or anger issues but you are blissfully unaware.

But I am not talking about that. I mean you may knowingly do something that is out-rightly wrong. Even after hours of prayer and bibles study, you will one day find yourself lying fervently like a little heathen.

God gave a gift for this situation. He gave his son. Before Christ died on the cross, you had to earn your own righteousness.

When you sin, and for sure you will, repent. Don't sit around whining. Don't spend days crying. The minute you have fallen, get up, repent and keep going.

Shame and guilt are absolutely useless and a waste of time. When you sin, repent and move forward.

What does it mean to repent?

Say your husband commits adultery and cheats on you. Say he had an affair with his secretary. Say he feels guilty and confesses. Your husband has truly repented if he:

A. Says he is sorry but keeps meeting his secretary for dates and going to her house for a drink or two every other evening.
B. Says he is sorry but allows her to retain her job, keeping it strictly professional.
C. Says he is sorry, fires her, cuts all contact with her, hires a male assistant and enforces an open door policy for his office for the sake of accountability and transparency and schedules dates three times a week with you.
D. Says he is sorry and becomes a stay-at-home dad because he feels very guilty about it.

Jesus said, that if your hand makes you sin, cut it off. He did not say, if your hand makes you sin, shame on you. He did not say if your hand makes you sin, feel guilty for a whole year. That's pointless. He said if your hand makes you sin, cut it off.

So when you do sin, be extremely aggressive in removing whatever it is that made you sin. Go to extremes. Do whatever it takes. If you struggle with lust, get rid of any material that may make you have lustful thoughts. Never watch another movie in your life if that is what it takes. If you are committing adultery or fornication or stealing or cheating or bribing, dump whoever your partner in crime is and cut all contact with them. For ever.

You are the only one who knows what you struggle with. When you sin, repent and deal with that sin aggressively.

Until you have done this, you have not repented. You are just pretending. Guilt and shame are worthless. God wants true repentance.

Bible, Change, Gift.

He moved to the city from the sticks and came to live with us. I was just a child then and my memories of him are sketchy...he was really skinny and really tall with really long fingers. He was funny too and he made our home lively and warm but one day he just disappeared.

The hand that holds the hammer breaks my heart. It causes me to cry and weep. It shatters my world into tiny little pieces. My dreams it makes insignificant, my pursuits it discards.
Is there a conspiracy to throw me to the dogs?
It frustrates my plans; my ambition brings to naught.
The hammer is uncomfortable, heck the hammer is painful.
I cannot see beyond this pain. I cannot see what the hand that holds the hammer sees.
The hand that holds the hammer belongs to the one who holds the world - He holds my world. He is;
The alpha
The omega
The beginning
The end

Eliyah had been taught to always love Yahweh all his life, he didn’t know any other way to live. His father had told him it was written in the books that he was to become a great rabbi. He never fought it, he didn’t know how. He wasn’t very good at tending his fathers’ sheep anyways, never could go a day without losing one. His brother Caleb was much better at that. So it went without saying that even though they were both taught the Torah by Rabbi Moshe, he -Eliyah was going to be the one to carry on his grandfathers’ legacy. He didn’t particularly like the idea, but he didn’t mind it either, at least he had a path of life to follow. Not many could say that.