Word of the week
The link between mercy and truth
Psalm 98:3a KJV
“He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: A
God, in His wisdom, has linked mercy and truth together.
If you want to access the mercy of God, you need to be a person that tells the truth.
The mercy of God is very important, because you cannot achieve anything in life without His mercy.
God says in Romans 9:16 that it is not of him that willeth or runneth but of God that shows mercy. Your efforts in life will be inconsequential without the mercy of God.
But truth is the magnet of the mercy of God.
Jonah 2:8 says those that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
I know in this context lying vanities refer to worthless idols
But you can also interpret this scripture to mean that lies make one to forsake the mercies of God.
Today, many people delight in telling lies, even so-called children of God.
The downside to telling lies is that anyone telling lies may find it difficult to access the mercy of God.
I want to encourage you to shun lies, and walk in the truth so that the mercy of God will always be available to you at all times.
Message of the week
The not-so perfect friend
Proverbs 18:24a NKJV
A man who has friends must himself be friendly
I was working in an office years ago and met a pleasant lady: charming, courteous, intelligent etc.
So, I thought I would really like to cultivate a friendship with this lady
The lady and I were both doing contract roles at the time.
So, we both left the place of work for greener pastures, so to speak
To my surprise, at some point when I call the lady, she would not pick my calls.
I mean she completely ghosted me.
I could not believe it.
A seemingly nice pleasant Christian lady. She ghosted me.
Unknown to me, the charm and courtesy were just a pretence
Now, there was an irony to the situation. This lady had hitherto confided in me about a particular problem she had.
So, one day God showed me a dream about why she had the problem and the likely solution
Unfortunately I could not tell her the dream and the solution because she had ignored me and cut me off from her life.
Friends, God will not come down to help you. It is people He will send to you.
But by the time you fight and quarrel with people, who will be there for you.
There are people in my life today that I should have cut off ages ago due to one reason or another.
But what do I gain from that?
Not every disagreement is an occasion to cut off a friend
Sometimes, some people set out to find fault in everybody
There is no need for that
I heard a profound statement a while ago: that statement says ‘People can hurt you without meaning to harm you’
That means someone may say or do something to hurt you, but they are not bad people
If you dump everybody who will be your friend?
Yes, I know some so-called friends are harmful and toxic people
I know that some so-called friends are backstabbers
I’m not talking about these kind of people
I’m talking about genuine friends
that have human blood in their veins, so sometimes they will misunderstand you and you will misunderstand them
But is that the reason to discount the friendship?
Is that the reason to block their numbers and ghost them?
Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 NLT says something very interesting. Please listen:
“Don’t eavesdrop on others—you may hear your servant curse you. For you know how often you yourself have cursed others.”
Sometimes, the irony of life is that we human beings expect perfection from others when we ourselves are less than perfect
Have you not noticed that when you do to people what they do to you or have done to you for years, they become angry.
Meanwhile what you did to them, maybe unknowingly, is what they did to you for years but you tolerated it.
May God give us the wisdom to manage our relationships in Jesus Name. It is not helpful to expect or demand perfection from others when we ourselves are anything but perfect
