THE CORRECT KIND OF SELF-HELP

Hey there!

How are you doing this fine day? I hope you're doing fine and that God continues to be with you and guide you. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

A couple of weeks ago, I read something about the Israelites that struck a cord with me and a conversation I had with my friend early in this week brought that to mind again and I thought to share. 

So in Exodus 19, God comes to Mount Sinai to talk to His people, of course through Moses. We see Moses go to speak with God on the Mountain and God giving him the 10 commandments in the beginning verses of Chapter 20. Now while God was conversing with Moses, the people of Israel saw thunder, lightning flashes and the smoking mountain and the sound of trumpet, and they were greatly afraid so they pleaded with Moses to please speak to God on their behalf, they didn't want to have direct interface with Him (Exodus 20:28-21). 

This is not the only time the people of Israel made that choice. They always were willing to have Moses be the "mouthpiece of God" to them and communicate with God on their behalf, they were extremely content to watch from the fringes and listen to Moses relay what happened with God when he came back down. 

Now I believe that if the Israelites had been willing to meet God by themselves and converse with Him like He desired sometimes to do with them, they would have had a better understanding of who God is and would have been more amenable to obeying Him. If you see the lives of those who had some form of encounter with God, you could see that obedience to God became easier for them; see Joshua for instance, he would stay behind after Moses had finished interacting with God and soak up the presence of God. And while he did that, he came out living a life so pleasing to God that he was one of the only two people in that generation that God allowed to see the promised land. 

As I thought about this, I realized that our generation of Christians have become lazy in our relationship with God: we do not want to seek God or know Him for ourselves –that seems like too much work! So we're content to receive the bye-products of the relationship of others with God. Some of us still feed on the faith of our parents like we did when we were children, some of us feed on the faith of our spiritual leaders. We're extremely content with hearing what these people tell us God said, so much that we are unconcerned with nurturing a relationship with God for ourselves. So why spend time praying, when I can simply tell my spiritual father about it and he'll seek God's face on the matter? Why should I study the word, when my pastor's going to give a detailed explanation of what the word says? Why go back to even revisit what my pastor said in church, when I know he won't lie about God's word to me?

And that's why we are a generation filled with "My daddy in the Lord said…", "my Papa said…", "my GO said…", "my pastor said…" and very little of "God said…". We've become so comfortable with taking what people say about God to be our authority that we have forgone the need to hear God for ourselves. 

Remember when Jesus breathed His last on the cross? The Bible records that the veil in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies tore, from top to bottom (Matthew 27:50-51). The significance of this event would not be easily understood without recourse to God's instructions in Exodus 26:31-34 whee God gave instructions for a veil to be placed dividing the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place, from the Holy Place. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies once a year on behalf of the people, he was the only one with a semblance of direct connection with God and would go to God on the people's behalf (Hebrews 9:7). Anyone else who tried it would die, in fact the High Priest himself would even have to offer sacrifices to cleanse himself before he could enter.  

So when Jesus tore this veil, He gave us direct access to God so that we no longer have to look for someone to go to God on our behalf, we can approach Him on our own. Imagine after Jesus took great pains, literally, to give us this access to God, we now decide that no, we no want! We want to revert back to the old dispensation and have someone go to God on our behalf. It not only doesn't make sense, it also belittles Jesus' sacrifice for us. I mean if God desired to forever have a human intermediary between Him and us, Jesus would not have gone through all that He did to restore us back to God. God desires a personal relationship with you so much that He gave up Jesus for your sake. 

In the light of all the above plenty talk wey I don dey talk, I believe it behoves us to make a conscious effort to know God for ourselves, cultivate a relationship with Him like He wants to do with you. Do no depend on someone else to be your connection to God. I mean why drink garri water when you can have the garri itself? 

Another reason why we must develop our relationship with God is so that we can learn to hear Him for ourselves, to know what He is saying to us at every point in time, so that we are not led astray by what someone else says which may not even have been said to you with bad intentions: you see, God deals with us on individual basis, so of I tell you something that God has said which applies only to me and you take it and work with it, e go fail you! Because no be you God give the message to. And that's why we're falling and failing, because we're running races God didn't send us, walking paths He didn't put us in, working in ministries He had no intention for us to even go near, and so we struggle! I remember in 2020 I saw someone do 'instastory evangelism': every morning, she'd wake up and post the lessons she learnt from her daily devotions on her story. I was following her and learning so much from what she was sharing, even on passages I had read myself. So I thought to myself one day "I can do this! I too can tell people about Jesus by sharing what I learned from my personal Bible Study each day." Did God send me? Of course He didn't! Did I do it? Yes I did! And it took me just a little while to become tired! And I stopped. God told her to do it but He didn't send me work yet I packed it on my head and I suffered for it. That experience taught me to always be sure to follow what God has told me to do and not just do it because someone else is doing it. It works for you? Fine, I'm happy for your sake, but I'll be busy going what works for me. 

The final reason I'll talk about why it is important to cultivate a relationship with God for yourself is because our spiritual guides and mentors and parents are all humans. See even with the best of intentions, they will never be an even halfway good enough substitute for God. You know why? Because they are not God. As much as you will not want to admit it, one day they're going to be gone, they'll leave this world and what then happens to you? Since your source of communication with God is no longer available, would that mean that you will not longer have a relationship with God? You'd just stop there and stay there till you die? That doesn't even make sense. I'm not even going to talk about those "spiritual leaders" who are even not walking in God's path, maybe we'll do that another day, but for those you're following who are actual following God, it would still do you no favours to only receive the bye-products of their relationship with God, know Him for yourself. In fact when you're waiting for someone to be your intermediary with God, you fall into the risk of making that person your idol, and you know idolatry is a sin. 

Last last, the point of this whole, very long🙈, gist is this: KNOW GOD FOR YOURSELF! No one else should 'help' you, it's a job you must do for yourself –with guidance of course, but guidance shouldn't take the place of God in your life. 

NLS HOT GIST: After nearly having a heatstroke on Sunday night, I had a perfect weather day today. In fact the weather was so perfect that I took a risk and wore a turtleneck gown and I no nearly suffocate to death the way e been dey do me all the other times I wore the gown. Everything about the weather lined up pretty well; it was cool but it didn't rain and sun too didn't shine with the intent to blind me as with almost every other day here. To now round it up, our light issues have seemingly been resolved so we've had light for almost the whole day today! 

Well that's that about that as far as that is concerned, see you next week and have a beautiful time getting to know God more. 

Love,

Achenyo. 

PS. My birthday is in 10 days!!!!

PSS. I really sound love to hear your thoughts so don't forget to leave a comment.