Category: Lockdown Ideas

Happy New Me!

I haven’t posted this year, and for most of last year. It’s kind of felt strange not posting. I beat myself up a bit for not taking this more seriously and for not putting in the work. When this year rolled in I felt that I needed to say something about a new year, new chapters, goals, preparation and planning with God, but January came and went then a full quarter of the year past by and now a half year and I still didn’t feel like giving the happy new year message. I just didn’t feel like any of it would be totally honest or different from previous years. And the thing is we all want the new year to be different from the previous one, especially after a year like 2020. We all desperately wanted this year to yield some much more pleasant and promising prospects and memories than we had in the previous year.
For me, I didn’t just want the date to be different I wanted things to be different. A popular quote that most of us would have heard or come across at some point is, “be the change you want to see”. What a powerful concept and something we can all attest to be true. Yet after a year we’ve just had, which seems to have spilled over into the current year, more than ever I sense the difficulty to break out and be the change. Not only is it difficult to seek change in a world that has faced a series of challenges that are beyond human control, but also to find change when all we want and all we talk about is for things to go back to normal. It’s exceptionally difficult to commit to change when we’ve all had a year where we were confronted with our demons. For the first time, many people actually sat at home and had time to really think about their careers, really think about their financial circumstances, really think about their relationships, their habits, physical and mental health and spiritual life amongst so many other things. In the course of examination and thinking, if we were honest, we would have found things that we liked and things we didn’t like. We would have patterns and habits that have always been there but sprung up to the surface after a few weeks to months of sitting at home and having nothing else to do.

Just the other day, I was watching a report on the BBC featuring normal people, working professionals, people who didn’t lose their jobs or were significantly affected by the pandemic through the death of a loved one or by contracting the virus themselves, who admitted to drinking more frequently and in larger quantities during the day. One middle aged man said that he didn’t notice how much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis until his children pointed it out to him. He had gotten to the point where he couldn’t go through a day without drinking. It had become normal for him. He drank 2 beers and a bottle of wine every day, which worked out to be about 100 units of alcohol a week. The average maximum recommended weekly alcohol consumption is 14 Units.
His encouragement was that anyone who was drinking more, should get help, whether they were still functioning like he was or not.

I mention this not to cast judgment or to make anyone feel bad for slipping up, but to say it’s okay to look at our not so great side. Whatever your habits and practices are and have been over the pandemic months, that is your normal. You need to embrace all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. You can’t change what you don’t accept. You can’t change a world that you are not willing to acknowledge and be part of. You must show up and participate in your change for you to be the change that you desire to see.

Some of us looked at our health and realised that we really needed to get off the couch if we were going to have lives beyond just surviving the pandemic. We realised that pandemic or not, we were lucky to even experience another day from the comforts of our living room, because truthfully, with the way we’ve been treating our bodies we haven’t earned the right. So, we decided to get on that bike, take that walk, do those crunches and run that mile. Others realised that the issues that cropped up in their marriage was as a result of not spending time together, not seeing each other for who they really were, and they are now working on being better. Others found that the damage in their relationship was to extensive to repair and they’ve began to make changes.
We have all been through something corporately and individually. We have all felt pain and sorrow, loss and addition.

I’ve been through my own discovery journey and yes, the person that I am today is not the person I hoped I would now be. But I know that the person writing these words is not the person I will still be in another 10 years. There are things that I want to change and there are things that I want to maintain. But I’m embracing me and noticing that I’ve changed, I’ve become someone else and I’ve decided that going back to become the person I was is not an option. Nothing good comes from dwelling on the past. Even if that past is full of rosy memories. It’s gone and done. I can only learn from yesterday and make tomorrow a better day. The future is a moving mark full of possibilities and new things to discover and conquer. I have an idea of where I’m going and a map in my hand to guide me, but when I get there I know that really being there will be different and feel different to what I imagined, because the map is only a picture of the real thing. But more so, I would have changed. The journey to the future would have changed me again, just the way the journey of the past changed me into who I am now. Once, twice, three times or more every year, I will tell myself, ‘Happy New Me!’, because even when times don’t seem to have changed much, I will.

Covid 19 and Where we Stand

There’s so much to say when it comes to corona, but I’ve had to step back and ask myself what God is saying. Really there are many things that have happened in the world since January and I have been asking and seeking God’s mind concerning where we stand as his creation and his people. On a personal level and on a Global level God has been at work shifting things, showing us some, concealing somethings in his infinite wisdom and also prompting us to deep prayer.

If there is anything I know that’s happening for sure in this season is that God is requiring deeper, longer and more earnest prayer, worship and praise from us.

What I also know with certainty is that God has called us to be a light and a voice of hope and peace, most especially at a time like this. We can allow the disruption of this pandemic to distract us and put us in a defensive zone or we can use it as a platform to be more active about our spiritual practices and more vocal about our Christian Faith. It will always be my prayer that people will not die, but live long and full lives and that when they do die they die peacefully without suffering and wake up to everlasting life in the arms of the father. Unfortunately, people die and suffer everyday, Corona or not, and it is important that regardless of how or when we die we make the very important and significant decision to  make Jesus Christ our Lord and saviour before we do.

Death is the reality of life, but more real is the Faith we have in God while we live, which promises a life spent with him in eternity. There are only two choices, life or damnation and we continuously pray that people get saved and know the love of the Lord here and more so in death.

What to Pray

The focus of our prayers should be that God’s sends salvation for our mortal bodies, especially for those who have been affected and are vulnerable to the effects of the virus. But we should also pray that more people will come to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. A cure and knowledge of the cure to Corona could save many lives, but it couldn’t save a single soul. Only knowledge of Jesus Christ and acceptance of this knowledge will save your soul. Let’s not get so distracted by the pandemic that we forget the pandemic of sin brought to the world through two humans, that is still corrupting and killing not only souls but lives at an alarmingly fast rate. The effects of this pandemic is very real and I do not take it lightly at all, but more than anything it has woken me up to the reality of finite state of the human race and how fragile and delicate this life is. It is precious and fragile and we should take it very seriously and use it to build a legacy of godliness that is guaranteed to out live us no matter how long we live.

I sense that God is wanting us to pray for mercy and wisdom first for ourselves and also for the leaders of our various nations. 2 Chronicles 7: 14 comes to mind, which says that “if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways I will hear from heaven and heal their land”. Scripture shows us time and time again that the key to healing and restoration whether for our bodies, filed of work or anything associated with us, is prayer offered up in humility and genuine repentance from evil. Our generation needs this mercy more than ever before. Daniel prayed for the captivity of Israel to be turned around and their lands to be restored, He prayed earnestly for 21 days and in that time he prayed for mercy for himself and for all of Israel. His prayer for mercy on behalf of Israel worked and brought the captivity of Israel to an end. It was the will of God then and it is the will of God today that we pray. Joshua Selman said that “Prayer is the highest form of humility before God”. This is very true. When we pray we refuse to lean on our own understanding, we declare to God that we need him and that we want him. When we add repentance to our prayer we surrender control and prove that our heart and action is in line with our words. Repentance enables us to draw near to God with our hearts and not just our lips (MARK 7:6). It also enables us to align our actions and heart with his will; genuine repentance leads us to seek out the will of the father (Matthew 6:33, Luke 12:31).

We must also pray for judgment over the corona virus and the spiritual forces that are propagating the activity of this virus. The scripture informs us that we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places (Epesians 6:12 NLT). The NKJV calles the evil spirits in the heavely places – spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavely places. Spiritual beings require, physical beings to effectively operate on this world. This is why when God redeemed us from sin and death he needed to come in human form live and die like us to restore us back to God. God had to reason and negotiate with Mary, Joseph (Jesus’ Parents) and Zacharias and Elizabeth (John the baptist parents) for his redemption plan to be fulfilled. God as a spirit being is always looking for who is available to be his physical vessel on earth. He is gentle and waits for us to let him in before he can use us. He will never use us without our willingness to be used for his good purpose. The enemy is not so. He will use whoever is vulnerable and susceptible to his evil suggestions and specially delights in those who openly and actively invite him to accomplish his evil work in through them. These are the people we must place under the arrest of the power of the Holy spirit. People have been spotted actively spreading the virus through unsanitary means, even after they found out they had the virus. Deliberately not complying with the advice of health professionals, going out in public places and contaminating public spaces. These are hosts of wickedness. People who have signed themselves up to the plots of the enemy. They may think they are doing the right thing for whatever reason, but they need to be restrained by spiritual means.

I believe that these are some of the foundational prayers that we need to pray at this time. We must be vigilant and keep our spiritual armor on. Our weapons of warfare are not carnal – we don’t use fists, knives or guns to fight our most dangerous battles we fight in the spirit with the weapons of praise, worship and earnest prayers. We fight from a place of Victory because we have already won. We skip right to the celebratory praise, worship and thanksgiving part because we are people of Faith and firm hope. We sing hymns and sound out our songs of the spirit. And we continue in this spiritual attitude because we know that all things will work together for good.