*Matthew 5: 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."*
There are four basic needs in life, food, shelter, clothing and education. The ease or difficult of getting any of these, determines how poor or rich you are. We have in our seven past parts gone through food, clothing and shelter and in these last three parts I want us to tackle spiritual education need.
This last bit is very important because, it is not as set for us as the first three. It is a portion which you set for your own self.
I mean, you can come from a poor background, dress in clothes of the poor, eat the food of the poor, live in a poor habitat, *but there is no poor education*.
There could be schools for the poor and schools for the rich, but there is no education for the poor or education for the rich.
The man who made me desire to study Engineering is one of the richest men in our rural neighbourhood. He went to the same school I went to, which even at the time I was in it was still referred to as a school for the relatively poor people.
Spiritual education will teach you that *poverty is a mentality, it is neither a situation nor an occurrence.*
And the reason why people think that God has left them to be poor is because they lack knowledge. The Bible says that, "My people perish because they lack knowledge..." And lack is what we are talking about in this series.
Lacking something is not to say it is not in existence, it is to say, it is not available. You cannot say you lack, unless the thing exists in the first place.
Spiritual poverty therefore speaks of a dire need to understand the wisdom of God in occurrences, states and situations. Spiritually rich people are very conclusive. They are the kind that have "accepted" their portion in physical poverty.
I always say that *God does not take people to the wilderness, however, he passes you through the wilderness*. It is your pace that determines how fast you will stay in the wilderness.
It took Jesus only forty days to learn all that God wanted Him to learn in the wilderness, it took the Israelites forty years to learn what God wanted them to learn in the wilderness.
Whenever you find yourself in a wilderness, the first thing that should come to your mind is that *there is something that God wants to teach me.* After knowing that, seek as fast as you can what it is that God wants to teach you. Then learn it very fast.
I loved a certain lady in college, I loved her so much I could forgive her anything and though she didn't need material things from me, all she wanted I would do out of love. Yes, I mean ALL she wanted, and I did all even when my faith would tell me that sometimes what I was doing was not right. She let me down over and over again, but I forgave her. Long story short, she still left me, even after showing her that I cared for nothing more than I cared for her.
After that break up, I went through a wilderness. It took me about three years to learn exactly what God wanted me to learn. And I learnt it when I read the verse that says, *"You shall worship God alone, for the LORD your God is a jealous God."*
I learnt that all this while God was looking at us and wishing I loved Him half as much as I loved this lady. And therefore, God was against our relationship not because of so many things, but because I loved her more than I loved Him.
And believe it or not, this could be one of the reasons why many relationships break up. When you love a man so much as a woman that you can do anything for them, even when it is totally against what you believe in, you can be sure that that relationship will not go far. But the moment you can find a person that you are not afraid to lose for God's sake, that relationship will stand the tests of time. Because you will be taking care of not losing God and God will be taking care of you not losing anything that is yours.
We are talking about spiritual education, these are things you will not find in any class *(unless of course you meet Pastor Nesh, hahaha)*.
Some people get sick, so that next time when they are praying for the sick, they may get a reference point. You will be able to say, "If the devil is oppressing this man the way he was oppressing me...!" And then a certain synergy comes upon you and a holy anger like the one that came upon king Saul before he backslid, hahaha, and you slay the demons right, left and centre!
Somebody asked me, "Why is it that many times PKs (Pastors' kids) turn out badly?"
I told them, some times it is not for pastor's sake but for the sake of the church, that they may see a reflection of themselves when they look at those kids. Most likely, how those kids look in their eyes, is how they themselves look in God's eyes.
The problem with us is that when we are going through the wilderness, all we do is look on who to blame and the more we blame the less we learn and hence the more we stay in the wilderness.
No matter the situation, always strive harder to look at the bigger picture. Your husband might have left you, and you are always wondering where you went wrong. Have you ever paused and thought that may be it was not about where you went wrong, but all about where God wants you to go right?
We concentrate so much on where we went wrong until we lose focus of where we need to go right.
People concentrate so much on the devil until they lose sight of God. *People perish because they lack knowledge, not because knowledge does not exist.*
There are two kinds of poor people, one that has accepted poverty and another that is always seeking a way out of poverty. *The power to transform is not in the amount of knowledge you possess, but in your flexibility to conform to the force of the knowledge acquired.*
Many people are knowledgeable, but they are so brittle if you try to bend them according to the knowledge they have acquired, they will break. Do not be like them.
Shalom and keep the faith.
Please freely comment below and share your opinion. Remember to share if this message blesses you.
No comments:
Post a Comment