#jlucmin

[jlucmin]

My 5 Cents: Take or leave it ...

I have been following this controversy between Scott Stirm and the Garinagu over social media and the local mass media. I will point out that I am practicing Evangelical Christian and there are specific principles that I am taught to practice so as to expand the kingdom  ...

1. The first is a scripture which states, "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.(1 Cor 8:9)" The question is, do we want to be right or do we want to viewed as righteous. If we want to always be right, we have the tendency to put ourselves in quarrels, always feeling the need to justify and clarify one's actions. Because you know better, there are times that we need just apologize, whether right or wrong. Simply put! We are to be stepping stones. 

2. "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. (1 Cor 9:22)" After recent back and forth in the media, do you think that people are seeing the Jesus in us? And yes, while I must agree that we must stand our ground in certain issues, we must ensure that we are not doing so at the expense of our testimony. We must ensure that we love people to the truth because just showing them (preaching to them) is overrated. Becoming  all things to all men so that some may be saved, is not a weakening on your faith, it is a sign that you empathize which opens the door to the hearts of the people so that they can Jesus as their answer. Justification and clarification will not do as such. This morning (March 23, 2014), I heard Pastor Wade talking about using certain jargons in certain settings on his early morning show (Rise and Shine). While he may be right, we must practice the same when we are talking all people. When we speak, or before we speak we must research before using certain terminologies.

  3. “ But when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. (Matthew 6:3)” Giving to the needy doesn’t only mean the physicality, it means in any area. The word of God is clear, when we do such things and when we desire recognition and we have gotten it, we have gotten our reward. Certain stories and things that you is not meant for public domain. Over the past 12 years that I have given my life to the Lord (which I hate to mention because years knowing the Lord, doesn’t mean years of seniority or maturity) I have ministered to countless young people and even pastors but I don’t herald as such because I don’t want people to see me, I want them to see Jesus and He will take care of me. To stand in front of a crowd and go into specific details of specific stories (to me) is uncalled for.  

4. My final point is this,  If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,b but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Corinthian 13:1-4). Where is love? Where is the love that Jesus taught us to show through His word? Point blank, there are certain practices even in my own culture that I don’t agree with because of my faith in Jesus Christ but I must love them (the people) regardless. We may not agree with everything that the Garinagu practice, but we must respect them and love them. Without love in the picture, we are nothing. Jesus during His life and ministry chose to address the church, why, because Jesus realized that in order for His glory to manifest on the earth, that it be a beacon for people to trust and serve Him, the church must not think, act our look the same way as the world, there must be order, discipline and love (genuine love). In Isaiah, God told us that His ways and thoughts are higher. In the same fashion we are charged to be holy as God is holy. This issue is not about right or wrong, this issue is about people and often times we fight our battles the wrong way. We want to fight principalities in our nation, when we cannot event to unite on a simple in issue in our churches. Let’s get real, Jesus addressed the church and not paganism because He realized that when the church rise up and show love, that we have power to change the course of history for a nation. It is because of God’s love, grace and mercy that we are able to serve Him, let us extend the same to our brethren. 

In conclusion, just issue an apology and move on, it will be more beneficial to  kingdom. Whether right or wrong, it will let people see Jesus and not ourselves.    

[jlucmin]

Can I Rant a Bit?

For the past few weeks this has been bothering me and I did not know how to phrase as such so as to enable you to see the intentions of my heart. So here goes ...

The bible calls us to be salt and light of the earth(Matthew 5:13-16). What these two things  have in common, is the ability to change the course of something. When you are in the dark and cannot see, it is when you turn on the light that then you are able to get clear direction.  Salt has healing properties; if you have an open wound, you throw some salt on the wound and it heals it; though it might cause more pain, in the end it heals.

You know why the church have lost its lustre and glory? We have tainted it with our own ideologies and precepts, hence the reason the world looks at us and calls hypocrites because before we go out to the world to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to stand on street corners and pray aloud so that people can see us. We want people to come to the church yet we do not want to meet them at where they are at. Even the one that do make it through the door, we are quick to judge them because they don't measure up to the mundane standards of man. Yes indeed, it sounds harsh but it is a rough reality that seems to go unnoticed. 

We are infamously known for fighting the wrong battles using the wrong weaponry. Yes we are indeed fools because we have the most powerful arsenal at our finger tips and we choose to engage in babbling. We choose to engage in frivolous arguments that brings no profit to the kingdom. We have a world that is dying, destroying themselves at the lies of the enemies. Where the media have told them to raise to this standard, where is the voice in the wilderness crying out, declaring the way of the Lord? Our street corners have turn into corners of healing, our feet have to be girded with the gospel of peace, our lips have to become agents of blessings and life, our hearts of stone have to be traded in for the hearts of flesh, our souls needs to cry out unto God. We have to broken and contrite. 

How pitiful we have become, we have thought to believe that position equals identity, money and material gains is a measure of how close we are to God and when someone falls, we keep them in the ground. You see, I have struggled for many years and continue to struggle because there was none that I could not have confided in because of the fear that the intimacies of my mind would be slung in mud. Yes, and there are many who are like me. Yet, we conspire daily to make ourselves look better than our brother. What happened to the days of yesteryear when we were really our "Brother's keeper"?

Finally, I learnt that when we hook up and get intimate with praise, we produce five children with (him) praise ... Perez (which means to cut off), Hezron (which means shield/ protection), Karmi (which means vine dresser), Hur (which means liberty) and Shobal (which means embracer or corn). Now without a lifestyle of praise unto God we will never mature into who God wants us to be. We may be serving God but we are hardheaded and most of the times we refuse to listen to God and His instructions. He promised that He has a plan and purpose for us, a plan to prosper us. Let us remove everything that easily besets us and move forward, being that we have a cloud of witnesses. We have got to stop molding the church into something that mimics Babylon and release ourselves of the idols we serve.