Windows to the Heart of People of Faith. Chris Anianwu
every split of doubt. He does it in different ways depending on our individual walks with Him. It seems as if He has a blueprint for each of His children.
After you are grounded in Him, He begins to lead you into deeper things of the spirit. That is when you begin to see delays, rejections, disappointments and more. All of them are aimed at developing your faith muscles for the journey that will take you to greater heights in your God. We are sorry to say that it may not work out the way you planned it for you are not the Master Architect. No, you are not. Be informed that there are hills to climb; there are mountains to scale through and stormy seas to swim. All these and more take you to your land of promise, where you ought to be in Him.
The three Hebrew children said they would not worship any other God even if God refused or failed to save them. They did make their point but as they were led towards the furnace, no person knew what was going on in their mind. Any intelligent person would have asked, “Are these guys insane? Are they daft?? Why should they choose to die and die for nothing?!? What’s there in bowing down to these sticks and stones? … This is where many of us fail woefully. One could argue, “They could have bowed down to the idol and save their lives. Latter, they could continue with whatever they believed. There was nothing in it,’ such people would argue. ‘They knew what they believed. They could go ahead and serve their God in their secret places ….” This reasoning sounds great, doesn’t it? Sure, it does but this is the logic that has spelt the demise of many would-have-been great people of God: ‘Do it. There is nothing there.’ Brother, that is your defining moment; Sister, everything is in it. Blow to it and you may never have a second chance. Stand your ground and you might have written your name in solid gold among the people of faith.
CHAPTER ONE
THE WIDOWS
Words are windows through which we go into the heart; actions are entrances into the mind and trying situations are the factors that separate the grains from the chaff. Embedded in these are myriads of tiny holes and cracks we can navigate to reach the intents of the heart.
Often we underestimate the power of our words. We tend to forget that the power of life or death lies in the tongue, Proverbs 18:21. It is critical that we understand this because our words expose the person inside our body if you know what I mean. This insight can help us control our words and actions as we walk with God and interact with other people. Whatever we are going to change in our words or actions must start by some fundamental changes in our mindset. Such changes do not come by mere wishes. They come by quality decisions we take in our walk with God.
When Esau said, “Look, I am about to die, so what is this birthright to me?” he despised his birthright and followed through by giving it away under oath for a plate of food. When Shechem opened his mouth too wide is Genesis 34: 11-12, he set himself up for destruction which did not take time to come. Moreover, when Cain asked God whether he was his brother’s keeper, he condemned himself for that is exactly what he was, Gen. 4:10. On the other hand, when Mary said, “Be it to me according to your words,” she got enormous favor that was not easily bestowed, Luke 1:8. All these people and more exposed by their words the type of people they were. They did not need to think seriously before they said whatever they said for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. They were speaking who they were. We speak what we are and we become what we speak. Until we understand the spiritual implications of the last statement, we will continue to talk ourselves into trouble.
A trip into a person’s mind is a journey we make with trepidation - all the way. It is only in fictions that one can bulldoze ones way through a person’s train of thought but even at that, one should watch it. As it is, the two ways to people’s mind are through their words and through their actions. With these we shall try and figure out what went on and what goes on in the minds of people of faith. Even the smallest insight in this direction can change our perception hugely. The aim is to help us cross the finish line with minimal bruises and in flying colors as we travel in this journey called faith vis-à-vis, our spiritual pilgrimage.
Faith and faithfulness are fundamental ingredients in our walk with God. If we fail to handle them with care, we may lose steam and collapse along the way. However, to presume that one would not fall once or twice may spell complete disaster yet it should not be an excuse for some to ‘crash out of the race’ on purpose.
We want to snake our way into the hearts of people of faith and see how they felt in the heat of battle. A tiny picture of their mindset at such times can help us edge closer to our goal in our walk with God to prove Him the more and maybe, write our names in gold as most of the great men and women we shall talk about did.
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Why God should push his children to the point of tears and near hopelessness is beyond me. Why He would allow them get into situations that force them to ask disturbing questions is still beyond many Bible scholars. We can suggest some reasons why it happened and still happens:
•It may be that God wants to know how much they can trust Him;
•He may be out to know the intents of their heart;
•Or He may do it for reasons best known to Him.
The truth is that we may never know it all until we get there. Who would tell Job that God’s signature was on all that he went through? Who would have convinced Joseph that God was signatory to what happened to him? Nobody would have convinced Hannah that God shut her womb. We can go on and on but the great news is that all these people and more came out of their problems in flying colors. The big question is, how.
I used to wonder why God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but rejected Cain’s. Before that happened, we were not told that Cain offended in any way. However, Genesis 4:7 says, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” This implies among other things that God knew things about Cain we did not know. He also knows things about certain situations we may never know. Yes, He knows things about some people that we may never conceive unless we were told. In some cases even if we were told, we could not comprehend them. Therefore, God’s judgment is right and final because he weighs every aspect of a case before He passes judgment. The best we can do is judge with imperfect knowledge and incomplete information. That more often than not renders our judgment null and void.
For people of faith, on the surface, we see them as ordinary as any of us. What makes the difference is when a mighty wind blows. It never fails to tickle me as to what goes on in their mind at those critical times when every indicator showed that they had failed; when everyone “knew” that there was no way out; when, to many minds, the answer to the situation was a mighty negative. Yet these people kept matching on as if they already knew the end from the beginning.
You may be making an eternal mark for yourself and for children unborn in this race when you stand for the Lord in time of trouble. Yeah, the world may not know it but when books are opened and another book is opened (Rev: 20:12), you will surprise yourself. The fact that the world does not understand the great risk or sacrifice you made or you are making for the Lord is only natural for even if she was told, she could never comprehend it. It is way beyond everything she can imagine.
There are a few things in this small piece that may challenge what you knew. Chew them over before you condemn them. Do not be in a hurry to defend God. He can always defend Himself and the writer is not an atheist after all. If God fails to defend Himself, one may be right to assume that He is not there, but testimonies around the world say that He shows up at least, for His own. The good thing is that we do not have the privilege to command Him around. When we do not fully understand what is going on, our best bet is to keep calm. If we wish to talk, let us simply enquire. Yeah, some religions spread by brute force but the gospel of Jesus Christ makes its round on the wheels of love and peace. This puzzles the juggernauts out of their wits. Why Saul of Tarsus who hated the Church with every nerve in his system later became one of the greatest advocates of the same is still a mystery. So were many of us.
History is not in the past as we were made to believe. We are creating history as seconds mature into minutes. Everything we do as an individual or a nation goes down in history. We often repeat the atrocities of the past when we refuse to listen and