SURE FOOTING, SLIPPERY SLOPES

 Hello!

How are you doing this fine September day? How’ve these first days of the month been for you? Here’s hoping you’re doing fine.

Welcome to today’s gist.

For a couple of days at the end of last month, God kept impressing very strongly on my heart, the importance of walking at His pace and keeping my eyes on Him solely. 

It began with Asaph. In Psalm 73:2-3, he talks about his feet coming close to stumbling. He says “But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling. My steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant, as I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” (Amplified) When he said that, I realized that it was something I too had been struggling with.

In my case however, I was more angry than envious. I had been struggling for a while with anger at the fact that while I am staying true to the correct path and working by God’s principles, I turn around and see people who are busy cutting corners and doing terrible, and untoward, things getting ‘results’ and progressing, at least by human standards. 

I had been especially angered because there were things I had been working on for a couple of years that seem to have become the subject of attack by some people while I was looking at other people who were not putting the work and effort I was putting in getting the things that are due me. Like Asaph, I was also feeling like “surely then in vain have I cleansed my heart, and washed my hands in innocence.” (verse 13). It felt like I was wasting my time following God’s principles. And honestly, there were times were, for a few seconds, I felt like I was tired and wanted to stop following God’s standards. 

As I kept moving about with this bitterness and resentment, God had to pull my eyes to this Chapter and help me to understand something really instructive: in verse 17, he says that when he went into the Sanctuary of God and he saw the end of the wicked and dubious, how swift and utter their destruction will be.

As I read these words, God taught me that while it would seem like the wicked are prospering, and I’m suffering while doing the right thing, I must remember that it will never end well for them, so if decide to follow them in their evil ways, I will knowingly be setting up myself for certain destruction.

While I was writing this gist, I was sharing my thoughts with my friend Israel, and he mentioned how the system of the world is engineered to cause evil to thrive and that it would continue to be so till Jesus comes again and it almost seems like the words of the Bible aren’t as true anymore. But God’s standards will not change, evil will continue to seemingly thrive but God will surely bring recompense! 

My encouragement to you is really what my friend Israel said; let all of these things have the effect of pulling you close to God and becoming dependent on Him and your abilities as He has given you. It may not seem like you will be rewarded, and the reward may never even be one that is so tangible that you enjoy it in your lifetime and maybe the evil men may seemingly get away with their evil here on Earth but if there is one thing we can be sure of and bank on, it is that God will reward, positively or negatively, everyone for their deeds.

So, please don’t let yourself be carried away by envy or anger at the seeming success of evil people, please continue to hold firm to all that God has instructed you and all that you know to be true, the alternative is certain destruction!

I pray that God will help us all to follow His path.

See you next week!

Love, 

Achenyo.