At the foot of the Cross

I watched!
I watched on as these merciless Romans manhandled Him
As hard as it was to keep watching, I also couldn't keep my eyes off Him.
Talk of Blood, Bruises and Wounds.
It was as if the very skin disliked the flesh on which it was on.
His whole body covered in red,
Wet and moist, soaked and mixed with Blood and sweat.
The tears in my eyes blurred my vision.
But as hard as I tried to wipe my tears to see clearly,
Still could not recognize His face.
So much blood on His face from the wicked excuse of a crown.
Face disfigured, out of shape.

As did the loved ones around him,
We burst into weeping!
We couldn't take it anymore.
Our friend, our brother, our teacher!
He was that close to us.
We kept shouting, as we wept,
"What has he done?!", "Its okay!", "Let Him Go!" He's Innocent!"
Of course, these fell on deaf ears.
All this was just seconds before He reached the crucifixion site.
Golgotha!, That place of skull

One helmeted Roman gave him a strong push.
As if to get Him quicker to the final destination.
He was totally drained and couldn't move any faster than He was.
He came tumbling down with the rocks and stones being His new friends.
With pieces of stones and gravels scratching His skin as He fell.
It made no difference though. There was already blood everywhere.
The flow of Blood created a trail every step He took.
I screamed and made a run for Him. To try to help!
Another helmeted Roman pushed me away so violently I could hardly stand on my feet.
Mary rushed to picked me up as we inched the closest we could possibly get.
I watched his tired, disfigured body as the soldiers prepped the wooden cross they were going to lay Him on.

Then my mind traveled back.
To the days I remember where ...
We would go to the synagogue and watch in amazement, wisdom pouring out of His mouth
Answering and clearing the doubts of many with questions
Feeding us when we hungered
Giving us a tasty a drink
Laughing and making merry with us visiting Zacchaeus
Mourning with us when we thought we had lost Lazarus

We didn't have much as we followed.
Places to sleep and what to eat were always in question.
But each day we followed, someway, somehow,
We got daily bread and shelter.
You were our provider and you really did provide.

What do we do then as these helmeted individuals slowly drain the life off of you?
Who's is going to be with us and relate with us like you were?
Feed, lead, provide and protect? Who?

I could hear the words... faintly of a woman crying close to me.
Took a closer look and it was the woman who was caught committing adultery in the open and was about to be stoned.
She was mumbling about how her "savior" was going so soon
when she had just started to know Him.
"Oh saving hand, art thou fallen
In the hands of your adversaries thou surrender
Where is my Hope?
Where is my savior?
My counselor,
Whose words, sweeter than honey
Whose word, breaks free the oppressed"

These were but a little I could hear!

I continued watching as these wicked inhumane Romans
Carried His body and placed His back on the Cross and dragging His body to fit.
And finally, the most surprising thing happened.
I expected these soldiers to have a little bit of dignity but no!
All dignity was lost!!
As if he didn't deserve the garment left on Him,
They stripped it off Him and threw it to the side so it did not obstruct their work.
How could man be so wicked!
*sighs*

The only thing covering His nakedness?
His Blood!
I watched as the soldier randomly selected a nail from the bag of huge industrial nails.
These were masonry nails. Huge and rugged!
As one man held His hand another placed the nail to his wrist.
And while He tried to free his wrist from the grip,
with the little strength He got, trying to avoid the nail,
The hammer came through.
Baim!
The was a loud scream obviously from a Man in pain
A scream so heart felt from within.
The depth of the cries felt like weeping for mankind.
At this point I shut eyes.
This is too hard to behold.
Hearing a mix of hammer hits and screams.
I just couldn't imagine that there would ever be a time like this!
Ever!

As I slowly opened my eyes, I made eye contact with one of the soldiers.
He shouted brutishly, pointing at me!
"Do you wanna take His place?"
"Do you wanna Join Him?" Huh?
I shifted my eyes to see Look at Him, Jesus on the cross.
He slowly moved His eyes to meet mine.
As if to tell me to answer the question.
I cringed! My heart raced faster than ever! Huh? I couldn't say yes.
I couldn't have!

I really couldn't get myself to the realities of my iniquities.
I should have been on that cross!
I should have been nailed to it!
I should have gone through that suffering.
And yet someone. An innocent person at that,
came to take my place and said...
its free!
Free? Really, all this for Free? I don't understand!
I guess this is what makes you God and me man

I watched as they lifted the cross upright.
Then this line of a popular song came to my mind

"I'll never know how much it cost,
to see my sins upon the cross"

You did all this just because of the Love you have for me
which surpasses all understanding. Its true.
I really don't understand.

And all I can say is ... Thank You for the Free Gift of Salvation!

Inspired by "When God walked the earth" - Rick Joyner
Thank You Holy Spirit

+Albert

Cries of a God Chaser

The spirit within, Longing.
The spirit within, Yearning.
Craving for You!
Hungry!
A Hunger for your presence.
I know you are everywhere ...
But I am talking about your very essence
O that unforgettable experience
That life changing encounter.
Jacob got it.
Moses Lived it.
And I?
I seek it!
I chase it!

I am chasing after You Lord.
Chasing so hard sleep is overcome.

Tried man's way to get close...
Self-righteous and Religious futility,
Didn't get me there
Physically working in the church,
Move here, move there, anywhere? I'm there!
Nope, No that didn't work either!!

*sighs*

Feeling Desperate?
That your template, once again did fail.
Can you relate?

As my spirit doth await,
In this my state,
Of an anticlimax and blue
I sense Him!
Wait a second...
A response to my cries I feel herein
A warm feeling within...
More than a profound Love for someone ...
Beyond the expression of words
Trust me, I tried and can't explain!

Aha! ... Is this moment I have been waiting for?
I'm not sure but I know I want more.
Savoring every bit of it.
With tears running down my cheeks
My very being, Lost in You.
My Spirit, He doth renew.

...

Satisfied?
Yes ...
But I want to get more of Him!

- Albert

The order of flowing with God

Check this out: Numbers 16:9
Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself to do the service of the tabernacle of the LORD, and to stand before the congregation to minister unto them?

The order of things in the verse are important ...
1.) "...to bring you near to himself (To get you closer Him)"
God wants first of all to get close to Him.

2.) "...to do the service of the tabernacle (To work in church or to play a role in church)"
Your work in church is only valuable after you have known Jesus and gotten close to Him.

3.) "...to stand before the congregation to minister unto them (To preach to others)"
And before you start preaching and ministering to others, you should have served in the tabernacle, played a role, been under a someone and then you graduate into preaching. All the successful preachers you see can tell you of the church they grew in and served.

#TheArtOfMinistry
#DHM
#StillChasingGod

Loving God - Intro

I am in the season of Loving God. You ask yourself, why would anyone be in a season of Loving God. You thought loving God was a thing that you are always in. You are right! So now imagine a state that is supposed to be default state for you but you find out that its not! I need you to be very sincere with yourself as your read this post. There's a chapter in the Art of Leadership from Bishop Dag that says, "Know where you are, Know where you are not and you will Know where to go". This is exactly the purpose of this post. To see where we are regarding the Loving God; Loving the person of God.

When it comes God loving there's absolutely no question about that. Bible says that even whiles we were yet sinners Christ died for us. That is how he show His Love towards us. Now what Greater love is this that a man will lay down his life for his friends. In fact very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person even, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die! dare to die. Romans 5:7 & 8 John 15:13.

Now for our Love for him.....? I was watching from Bishop Dag called and Loving and Longing in which he explained what we do even as men when we love something or someone. It was then I got to realize there's more behind scenes when we say we Love God.

I am going to start a series on Facebook publishing each what Loving God means to me as a Christian. Each day of publication is actually a reflection of how I saw the day through the eyes of Loving God.

Stay Blessed!

Thank you Holy Spirit

Can You Wow God?

Wow, what a question...
I believe it you can wow God. Now I know what you are thinking. How can you possibly wow God. What hasn't He seen before. There's nothing new under the sun! He knows everything so why wow Him. Before I start, lets try to give the word "wow" some meaning to it. Its probably what you thinking though. To make God say "wow!" Exactly.

Now one of the things that wows you is when something awesome you were not expecting happens. Or someone does something you were not expecting. The key here is expectation. Does God have an expectation of us? Yes he does. God knows us and knows what to require of us. Look at Job 1:8 when God told Satan, have you considered my servant Job. The verse said that, "...there's non like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man who feared the Lord..." Job must have done something to make God talk about him like that to His adversary.

Now note two things about this verse in Job.
First God calls Job His servant
Second, God tells of how and why God is speaking so highly him.

Note that even as we got human servants, there are expectations of servants. We expect them to play their role and do their assigned tasks. Now when they go above and beyond what they are required to do as servants, you as their master is wowed. Now I'm not talking about doing a little above what you were asked to do. That will only impress the master which is okay. I'm talking doing Above and Beyond. Like I ask my servant to build me a hen coop and when I return, I see an ultra modern hen space fitted with the most advanced technology to make experience of the hens simply amazing. It is fitted with state of the art sensors to give me real-time data on the statuses of vitals in hen space on my phone. I mean I wanted a hen coop but here is someone who has thought through the need of the master to get an amazing output. Also know that for the servant to do this, he has to know what the master likes and what the master is not a fan of. Not everybody likes technology. Not everybody will be impressed by it. I fact it will be even a bother if the person is not into it.

Again for humans, some or most are not so much impressed about something they have encountered before and so the general attitude is like, oh yeah, that, I have seen that before! Its not anything! Sometimes, the fact that you have seen it before may even stir up pride within you. Something like, if you see man of God ministering powerfully under the anointing, the first time you see it, you are wowed. The longer you stay at it might make you familiar to the awe if you don't check yourself because that is the general case.

However thank God that our God does not change. He the same from the beginning and ever shall be. Its why we don't have a version 2 of the bible or an updated version. The same things that wowed him still wows Him today. Oh yeah. If that's the case then, lets dive into the bible and look for people who wowed him; For God to say wow!

Well first person and you guessed right. Jesus. Yes God the father Himself said, Behold, this is my beloved son, in WHOM I'm well pleased. Now God can be pleased with you that's fine, but when God says I'm well pleased with you, that's wow.

Okay so you like well that's Jesus! How will He not wow His dad!
I got good news for you. He's your dad too.

Lets continue with more instances.

Let's look at the life of Abraham. Abraham was know to be a man of faith. His name is mentioned in Hebrews when faith is discussed. By faith even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.
By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son.

Bible says then that without faith, you cannot please Him. That's your starting point!

Its very easy to think that it is because of what you do that makes God pleased. The Bible says however that, it is faith, which isn't something you do, however it's something you got within.

Since we want to be God to be well pleased and not just pleased then something has to happen to the faith. Bible makes us understand that faith are in levels. To every man is given a measure of faith (Rom 12:4). Jesus also tells people of how little their faith were.( oh ye of little faith). If faith can be little, then it can be great too. The greater it is, the better you'll be at pleasing God. So then the question is, how do I get great faith then. Bible says in verse that faith comes by hearing and hearing God's word. But there's a pre-requisite. You can easily jump into going to read your Bible or slotting in that tape or watching that video. Before that, you need to be in presence of someone, the person Holy Spirit. Without Him, your Bible reading and tape listening is zilch, Naada! For God to speak to you, you need to be in His presence. Same as on earth, if your earthly father or anyone for that matter is speaking and you want to hear, you draw closer to hear. You be in His presence to hear Him speak.

Pleasing God starts from the Holy Spirit. Its takes God to show you how to please Him and go further to wow Him. Before that, as a servant of God, you need to spend time to know Him so you can become the servant that built a state of the art hen space much to the delight of his master and the master was wowed Not because it was state of the art technology, but because it was what the master liked! The similarity between all the men who wowed God in the Bible is that they were close to God and what they did is as a result of their closeness to God and their faith.

So to put it all together, so "wowing" God begins with being in His presence which is presence of the Holy Spirit.

Further studies ... 
Look for people who had great faith and study their lifestyles and why God was please with them.

Thank You Holy Spirit...

Seed Sowing and Sacrifice

Hi there,
I was praying one day at church during a prayer meeting and at a point, I started talking to the Holy Spirit and strangely, I asked Him a question about the difference between Seed Sowing and Sacrifice. They go hand in hand and you can hardly do one without doing the other. They seem to be coupled together in some sense.

Lets get started. Sowing a seed, very much what farmers do, is taking a seed and putting it into the ground. Actually, apart from putting the seed back to the ground, there's not much use for it. Of course they have secondary uses like making industrial chemicals and such but their primary use is that they go back into the ground to bring forth fruits later for the one who planted. As a Christian, there are times where you must sow seeds, in a form of money or time or "sacrifice"(more on this soon). Spiritually when the time comes for you to sow and you redirect that seed for something else, you have really missed something great; missed the fruits you would brought forth. Your seed gets translated into something so out of place, a secondary use and not as much fruits. Usually when seeds are used for secondary uses like making of chemicals, more seeds are required to make a unit of that secondary product.

Again, when farmers are sowing seeds, they not are exactly sacrificing anything. They are just putting the seed to its primary use. They wouldn't say they have lost anything really because the value of a seed not in the ground is close to valueless. The Seed has to enter the ground! Understand here that as a Christian, even though you can sow a seed of sacrifice, the act of sowing that seed is not sacrifice in it self.

Now Sacrifice is when you give out something that costs you to some extend. In fact the extend to which it costs you shows the depth and value of your sacrifice. As David makes us understand by stating in 1 Chronicles 21:24 that "I will not ... sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing". Or consider when God required Isaac from Abraham. In a sacrifice also, it is not exactly obvious what the sacrifice is going to do. There's a mystery to it than meets the eye. And guess what, it is also a seed. Of all the seeds that can be sown, sowing with the element of sacrifice has the greatest results. Reason? Consider what God, the Father did when He wanted to get the world back to Himself. He sowed a seed, Jesus and it was not just any seed, it had the element of Sacrifice. A Great Sacrifice Indeed! A Life! It is that sacrifice that makes it possible to be a Christian.

Do you want to want your seeds to bear much fruit? Go for the mystery of Sacrifice. You will not fully how it works behind the scenes, but it works!.

I was wondering why the Holy Spirit talked to me about Seed Sowing and Sacrifice when I was praying for the Anointing. I mean, what is the connection? Anointing will not come without the element of Sacrifice!

Thank you Holy Spirit and just saying ...  (In the Second I Typed, Thank You Holy Spirit, Bishop Dag, in a message I was listening to, in that same Second, Said Thank You Holy Spirit!)

Stay tuned for more!

When God sends you part 1

Ezekiel 2:1-7
Before you can go and and do what God has sent you to do, you need the Spirit to enter into you and set you upon your feet - meaning you need to be anointed...
And one of the ways of being anointed is by hearing the word of God aka soaking messages (listening to msgs over and over and over)

And then to be set upon your feet -
Eph 6:15 talks about your feet being shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace....
Setting u on feet and readying you for the task ahead...
Preparation in Greek = Endunamoo which is to acquire strength or be strengthened...

Be anointed and prepared as you take on the work of God in Jesus Name.