When My Neighbor’s Wall is Breached

“_{Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”
Isaiah 58:112}

Like Rahab the former prostitute who eventually became Mrs. Caleb the priest, my house is on the wall of our estate (not city 😁). Well not exactly on the wall, but about ten meters from it. I rarely look at it, except when birds perch on it. Just realized now, just before I wrote this, that it is symbolic of my own spiritual call and posturing. Thats a story for another day. Let’s get back to this one. So am right next to the wall.

Last Monday, as I was sitting down on my desk which faces the window and the said wall, I noticed a security guard standing at the wall of a neighboring institution. It did not occur to me that it was a strange place for one to be standing, and that I now had a view right through. We just come from a traumatic and yet paradoxically, victorious weekend. The rains, floods, the WM meeting, and that I had been called on to minister at a fellowship in Kariobangi that Sunday. In Kiswahili. (To mitigate my afore mentioned challenges in preaching in this language, I have gone ahead and acquired a Kiswahili as well as a Luo Bible. I have a tendency of confusing these two languages drastically and catastrophically when speaking in public…and well…enough is enough. I am working on my public and more efficient utilization of both languages by reading the scriptures I am studying in all three languages. I now need a French one…AND… as we are on Bibles now, I need donations of these for members of the congregations I am called to sit with in Githurai, in Kariobangi and of cause in Embakasi where I live. In English and Kiswahili…ahem and in Ki-Luhyia.)

Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, in the heavy rains, we had to rush Gio to hospital…a fever gone awry. I have an amazing neighbor (thanks Aphlyne), two or three of these, and a praying kingdom community around me. Thank You LORD for this. God calmed this storm or I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to go teach on Sunday. If you know my relationship with my grandson…you understand this. Whenever he gets sick, I get, covertly, FAR worse off than he is… he actually knows this and reaches out to comfort me. COVERTLY AS WELL. May God turn around the incidences of these. The sickness attacks I mean. Anyway, so come Monday. And the wall. Then Friday. This time I took note. My neighbor’s wall had been a casualty of the floods. Gio confirmed it for me. “Dani, it fell down when you were taking me to the Oskitol.” I thought about a snake that had been killed around that time in our estate Court. I looked at the wilderness the toppled wall exposed and thought to myself that that was probably where it had come from, and that its parents and relatives probably lived in there. See where my thoughts FIRST took me. Eyishhhh. There was also a crowd of youth just hanging out there…in a…’discomfort inducing’ way. I did what I could. I took a picture of the wall, and settled down to pray and ask God if He wanted me to do anything about it. To speak to our Court about it. Silence.

“Help of the Helpless O Abide with me…”

Today, my friend Judy woke me up to talk about the floods. How these were affecting Nairobi. About doing something for the survivors. Let me just confess here, that I have not been aloof to what was happening around me. Personal concerns aside, I have been broken by the media being circulated on the same: people sleeping on roofs, people having their lives…reset…and not knowing how to take that first step, people dying, a father carrying the body of his dead child on his shoulders going…I have no idea where, cars with people in them being washed away…my concern for the children…the school year…how we do this one. For our leaders…that in making their decisions, they tune in to The Mind and Heart of God for His people in this region and beyond. We are not yet done with the survivors of the big blast at Embakasi’s Mradi…and then there is this crisis. And its hitting home…some of the warriors that stood for Mradi have been directly hit. And affected. Badly. I was thinking…that all I had to give, had been given. BEFORE the flood. That I needed to do something, but also needed something done for me, so I could. So, we did what I know to do, we prayed and asked God for the way forward. They did not need to articulate their requests…I needed to ask God what to do…when my neighbor had no wall about them anymore. The fact that yours fell off a long time ago, is no excuse for you to ignore their plight, when you can do something about it. I need help to help mine.

What about you, how is your neighbor doing? How is their wall? What can you do to help? God is brooding over the waters…as in The beginning. May He speak His Excellence in your neighborhood, as in mine.

_{“In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep [primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth]. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2 AMP}

#AlphaadOmega #DoItAgainELOHIM #InHisPresence

Brain Bursting Slander

So… something happened this morning . Or rather last night, but I did not find out till this morning. God kept me in perfect peace as I tried to resolve it, and scripts went around and round my head over who was to blame…I suspected malice. And there is that feeling when you have been ‘_maliced_’ that just wants to pay back. It’s a ‘sweet’ feeling…tickling somewhere in your core, but promising extreme bitterness and torture if you don’t just…exhale, vent and destroy someone else as you do. It came…that feeling…and I tried to resist it as I spoke to our court guards…etc…it was a security matter of a domestic nature . Social justice matter. I held down as long as I could…made about ten phone calls…then I heard my mouth open noisily like an ancient heavy and rusted metal door…and even more noisily emit ‘hot Lavea’ from ‘the center of the earth’. Hell itself. Akiiii Almighty God and Father of mine, please forgive me. Am so sorry. Noteworthy though, is that my plight seemed to make little impact on my audience while the words were gentle, but when the pong escaped my soul…now EVERYONE WAS INTERESTED…IN THE SIDE STORY . They gladly swallowed the defilement, when they could have initially helped me by drinking and proffering fresh waters my way.

Image by <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/…/hand-drawn-head-exploding…“>Freepik</a>

I remembered last night’s Bible Study. How Isaiah 6:1-7 had caught my heart and mind. That same-same core that was being tickled incessantly this morning. A few hours later. How God showed me that when I am truly in His Presence, He shows me things about myself…things that He doesn’t like…but does not leave me that way. He sent searing help to me quick-quick. For Isaiah and for me this morning…I needed to be purged with coal from Heaven’s altars, applied to my tongue. Oh LORD God, The Living One, The Eternal Commander of Heaven’s hosts – please forgive me. I thought my head would burst if I didn’t say something nasty about this…but I realize that I have risked more than that in even speaking about it as I did. I broke Your Heart, and Your trust in me with this, that was actually going to be a platform for Your Glory…if I left it all unspoken. I repent.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

“”In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw The LORD sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is The LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His Glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I said:

“WOE IS ME, FOR I AM UNDONE!

BECAUSE I AM A [WO]MAN OF UNCLEAN LIPS,

AND I DWELL IN THE MIDST OF A PEOPLE OF UNCLEAN LIPS;

FOR MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE KING,

THE LORD OF HOSTS.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

“Behold, this has touched your lips;

Your iniquity is taken away,

And your sin purged.””

Isaiah 6:1-7 NKJV

Sprinklings of Joy

Needed to escape the hysteria. Don’t get me wrong – I had an amazing the day at the Medical and Legal camp. So many people to Love and smile at…hugs and smiles back at me. Jokes…photos taken, snacks…so many people from previous seasons…people falling in Love with Jesus for the first time, and then those coming back home. Despite the rain and the flooded halls and grounds, we registered at least 500. Not counting the ones who rushed in at the last minute…and didn’t register. It was an awesome day. I love people…so it was my kinda day.

But I got home. And ‘it all’ came back. Have you ever felt so ecstatically unhappy…you wondered to yourself, if there was EVER a time you were happy? At all? Have you ever felt so desperately broken, needed to go out and wail, but thought again and wondered how you would answer anyone… especially a child…who asked who or what broke your heart? One reason. This time? And suddenly the feeling just fizzles out…as you douse down your sorrows with the thundering waters of soft logic…

Have you ever been so wounded, but couldn’t seek rest and recuperation because someone else would feel abandoned if you did? And then you kinda forgot to check on them, without forgetting them, and now they hurt thinking that you don’t love them enough, or worse, at all, because you ‘weren’t there’s for them ‘when’ they needed you? Am saying something here, without really saying it for legal reasons . Who is missing from your happy/sad parade? Could it be… possibly…that they understand…intimately what this post…not me … is going on and on about?

I went looking at photos of when I believed myself to have been happy…but instead connected with the real feelings from that place…and just knew…my nerves remembered…but the tears were stolen and frozen by the question in paragraph 1 ? What I did with those times, I looked in the mirror and tried to improve on my image. Then immortalized the outcome into photographs I love…covering the story of that second…and those myriad ones after that with color and good make-up. Until The Embrace of God ‘CAUGHT’…and I was taken to ‘another place, another time.’ Beyond that one. Those ones…

Then I got off the couch and called Pastor Anne. We went a-walking. A-Traipsing which is what ladies like us do; Me in my sandals and Dera…items from another time I believed I was happily home. We laughed about this space…sang songs from back in the day when we first received God. When life was complexly simpler than it is today. We encouraged each other as we walked, we laughed, it was easy. God was with us. Emmanuel. Then we run into ‘her’. She didn’t even see us. She had headphones that blocked out the world…and was trying to beat the volume with her own voice that filled the night. She swung her shopping wide with each beat we believed and we ducked as she trotted past us. Such a happy, happy soul. And she scattered glittery divine joy into the souls of strangers that needed to be rained on from heaven just that second. God bless her. God bless her. I just thought to myself, what was I spreading as I walked along…as I passed by people I didn’t really see. Was the effect of dwelling in God’s Presence raining His Joy on them out of the overflow of my own life? Or was it….

Have a joy-filled weekend wont you? No matter what’s going on, and am serious…no MATTER WHAT IT IS….rejoice in The LORD ALWAYS.

Shalom beloved of The LORD.

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was Love”
Songs of Solomon 2:4

#Reset #IamInHisPresence 

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

Dissent at The Point of Labor

I saw this picture though, and just smiled to myself. If you know, you know. But the knowing goes beyond physical maternal health; to the spiritual and just about every realm in which we have labored hard, painfully, and too long. Or even shortly, vigorously, with maddening intensity. Our journeys differ. I viewed it with sad humor…both intense – the sadness and the humor. I remembered being in labor after several months of pregnancy…each with its own story for another day. Each a miracle, just to get to that point of birthing, because science had emphasized that I would never be able to have children. Twice. (And… are currently trying again to prevent it from ever happening again, because of ‘matters arising’ and the miracle of a cycle that has refused to submit to the natural wear and tear of some decades and a half 😇😉🙃)

But…I will handle this from a spiritual perspective. We carry a divine conception…first that we could be chosen to be Family with The Living God…His Bride, His Children, His Brothers…IS in itself miraculous. [ok…here…I ‘dissolve myself’ in ululations directed at The Throne and The ETERNAL Occupant.] Oh that always is a thrill for me. Then that…HE COULD TRUST YOU AND ME…knowing how we are…could trust us with ANYTHING Kingdom… BUT THAT HE DOES. AMAZING STUFF. So incredulous that the ‘company of witnesses’ that know us well, or think they do from the bits and pieces of us they have been witness to, vigorously fight the call. NO. NO. NO. This CANNOT BE GOD – they say…etc. etc. And when we sit back sometimes and think of it, for what it costs us, where The Wind that is God blows us sometimes…to land in excruciating, perplexing places…we concur, a little bit, with the chorus of the unbelieving.

We are on delivery beds – our feet strapped us to enforce a stillness that would allow for God now to be God. To proclaim Life or Death. And we wiggle free, seeking the comfort we knew before the conception…seeking to be free…unencumbered…because we fast forget at such times…how the burdensome the journey before this time was….

We try to pack our bags…but we forget that the company of those we knew previously are now faded from the spotlight…and in their stead, according to The Wisdom of The Commander of Heaven’s hosts, are a faithful heavenly Maternal Health Support group, including Himself – our ETERNAL BABY DADDY…ready to help you through and past this final push. They bring us, sometimes not so gently, back to that place of stillness. Our feet strapped up, and what we hide from everyone else, open to all witnesses – ONLY in this place of birthing. A select group of witnesses. Active witnesses. Mostly positive witnesses. What are trying to run from, because it is suddenly too uncomfortable to step forward. Yield and hang up your feet to The Hands of God. We will get through this.

Shalom.

“But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.” BUT WE ARE NOT OF THOSE WHO SHRINK BACK AND ARE DESTROYED, BUT OF THOSE WHO HAVE FAITH AND PRESERVE THEIR SOULS.“
Hebrews 10:38-39

*No rights to this picture btw.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

BROKEN HEELS AND MORTALLY WOUNDED HEADS

Where do broken hearts and lives go? To whom will they belong?

So… you are out and abouting...and you see this other human being. Splendid looking. Seemingly DELICIOUS, provocative, alluring….You look, you see, you want, you desire, you crave…but even with those big bells banging in your skull you ALREADY KNOW that its not for forever that this desire had assaulted you …just to rub, to scratch an itch…for a moment. And after a moment or two, you imagine to yourself, that you would do anything to get that scratch…to be rid of that itch. Tell lies. Tell partial truths. Be kind. Be cruel. Buy gifts. Deny gifts – for the majority… Write poetry. Borrow other peoples’ songs to dedicate if you are not lyrically endowed…. Hang out with those you wouldn’t otherwise stand…smile at them even…face the elders and ancestors, argue your case even when it’s obvious – to even yourself – that you have none. Marry them because the itching does not go any other way in some cases. Even if you can only marry them verbally… If you are of a more base conviction, you club them over the head, or subdue them with potent substances…scratch and flee leaving them to deal with whatever you deposited in or on them…and whatever other consequences they have to deal with to pay, sometimes for a lifetime, for the fact that they temporarily assuaged your even more temporary discomfort. Discomfiture. Poh!!!!!

Let me start with some background. Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine, a spiritual friend…I ended up having the same conversation with three other spiritual friends…broaching this subject from three of the four poles. But let me start even earlier so you understand the picture attached to this post. A few years, I was out and abouting myself…on heels. Suddenly one of them got caught between the cracks of a street pavement…and when I tugged…it broke. I had to make a decision – would I walk on and complete my errands barefoot, or balance the other foot to the level of the still heeled one, walk through my day as though I was comfortable and then deal with the consequences as I rubbed my feet at home…in the evening? I opted for the latter. You can’t just be obvious all the time – right? I hope you are understanding this situation from at least three poles…right? A word is sufficient for the wise. I took a picture of my shoes when I got home…and that’s what that…down there…is. My former, or rather, ex-shoes.

So, then this week happened. I was in a situation, reviewing a previous rejection by an association due to a recently concluded relationship. In plain English, my heart was broken, my body and spirit beaten, I could not hold in anything that went in, or keep what was there before. Aside from this, I was mourning the death of one dear one that I had known all my life…and then went through a sharply articulated eviction from a status I was born into, but realized that I would probably have to walk the rest of my life with, only as a memory. Understood? Have you been there? If not, please, I pray you never do. Unless it’s for your good, and The Glory of God. For me…I shed excess weight…drastically, which came with wardrobe challenges for both outer and inner wear 😁😇. If you know, you know. I bowed over and mourned with my entire life, emitting life, it was coming out of all my pores…there is a picture I took late last year…that was…scary…more than one photo from that season…that I was vehemently commanded to unplug from my social media…because I looked dead, or like ‘something’ that was. I WAS…dying. And I knew it. There was nothing I could do about it. But God. He…has ways…Yes He does.

So, I go to this interview…and not really because I trust, but because I find it easier to say the truth and deal with the consequences rather than take time out of what is left of my life trying to remember and defend lies…efforts in futility…I poured out my heart. Are you married? And the floodgates opened. I couldn’t cry anymore, because…I was basically dehydrated…of anything liquid in me. Anything that could flow. My interviewer listened…trying to hide her horror at my story. I could tell what she was thinking. I could NEVER belong. I understood her completely. If I was in her place, I would PROBABLY be in her shoes. Walking her way. Then God caught up with her as she ‘fled the scene’, and she remembered possibly, LOVE. Saw my battle wounds. Saw beyond my ‘dehydration’ that I still believed…that God COULD. So. she passed the rejection to a more vigilant warrior to effect it…to bury me alive if possible. And I went…’to my own funeral’… walked in, sat through the next interview…fought valiantly…clung to God and His instructions when He sent me into this situation…I STILL BELIEVED. And even though the one with the itch had turned their back, even though I was ‘out of status’, even though technically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, I was standing before about eight open graves, I held on. They were beloved of God…and were holding on to what they knew too. From their perspective, they were destroying a bug, me, and doing their best to wipe out the smudge. I was too dehydrated to cry…so I leaned…leaned heavily on God…and on the ones He sent me to Love. Because even here, Loving still made sense. I don’t know if you have ever been here…

They said no to me. And it seemed to me, were offended that I did not die. And I say that in the nicest way I can. You see, they sincerely believed, still do, that I had sinned. That I had rebelled. Was an offensive outsider, an enemy. And that the mercy of Christ could never cover one like me. I on the other hand, knew, that I had been sent. The consequences were none of my business, obedience was. So, I obeyed. And loved. And the scratches became little pen-knife nicks, then were emboldened into stabs. I cried out as I obeyed. I had no one, nowhere, except this place. But God. He carried me through. One day, I couldn’t anymore, so I pleaded with Him, to let me go. The pain was killing me…I was still wounded from the eight open graves…and living in a ninth…alive…waiting for them to shovel in the sludge…so I could be…not even a memory. I began to claw out of that grave…and He, God helped me. I carried guilt for quitting…for letting God down by quitting…but I remembered who was not ready for the next day, if I was to die on that one. And on the other side of the grave, He met me and embraced me and strengthened me and widened the scope of His Love through me. And many times, my eyes would meet those of the most ardent warrior…and I could tell he was thinking that I was doing this to win his approval…and acceptance into association. I could tell also, that he was determined NEVER TO ALLOW IT as long as he was in that privileged position. But I was loving…for The Lover…Love Himself. God Himself. Without Whom I was, am, nothing. No one. No ones…

A leadership crisis and I became a leader in that association, without membership…and it was time again to show me how unlovable I was to God. And to His people. So, I made the appointment…so I could hear him out. And he ploughed at me. Scripture after scripture. God could not love me. But it was different this time. I had been through so much stripping…and had learnt to be strong without cloths, without props, without underwear. They had fallen off me like King Saul’s armor may have off a little shepherd boy named David as he walked in on behalf of a nation to cut off the head of a giant that had troubled them. Like the other Saul, the Apostle a.k.a. Paul, neither the bite nor the poison ‘took’.

That woman from last year IS DEAD. Perhaps they did shovel her and seal her in after all. But this version of her…has her head in and with God. She sees more than you would want her to…and will not react outside of God’s prompting. So, he reeled out how those wounded by family relationships, could not serve as leaders…and I asked if we were not playing into the enemy’s hands. An enemy that would strike the leaders, knowing that their colleagues, their Aarons and Hurs, would drop their hands in a second and use their own swords to gut them where they stood holding up God’s Kingdom should it become evident that their flesh not conform to the standards of their own understandings. And that the flocks would wander off…disappointed, dejected, doubting God, doubting the value of Life and Godliness, choosing Despair, Destruction and finally Death. Where was the place for restorative Love? Why were we using valuable artillery against our own gravely wounded and dying warriors? Warriors called out BY GOD to lead the battles, to lead us into victory…because someone used them as a scratcher…and then got tired and moved on to find more elaborate scratchers. Because their children do not look like the others that belong to the association…So, we not only turn our backs to their pain and to them – we also have our own issues to deal with – moreover we pursue them for learning to live without us…to steal what God would still have them retain, not even to use because the instruction Manual is The Living God Himself AND He HASN’T DECIDED TO TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF WHAT we STOLE TO us, then, we decide to kill them in myriad ways… Do we really know this God that we have refused to get intimate with, and block others from His redemptive embrace?…Sighhhhhh…. Where are the brokenhearted going to around you? Do you care? Or are they casting a blight on your narrative by being hurt, being hurt in ways unlike ours, and for longer than WE WOULD ALLOW THEM TO BE? Where are the broken-hearted around you, that walk in the embrace of God…and He is strengthening to destroy the serpents that would be aiming at your heels in your own future?

Back to you from the beginning. The one with the itch. So, today is Friday. And you may have that itch again…first of all, avoid me. I am actually dead…and alive to another realm… I am done balancing heels that do not exist for He to Whom I belong, has fitted me with those that CANNOT wear out. And warriors have been activated to defend my course in God AND me, that if you saw with your naked eyes would lead to your own dehydration of both inner and outer wear. If therefore you are looking to complicate someone else’ like – Avoid me. Second, if you do go out and use the image and likeness of God for a scratcher to ‘get your hair in place’ know that for them, it never really ends there. Even if they seem Game. Sometimes…they live with the death you projected their way…several lifetimes over. So please remember my many words… take a brisk walk or run around your hood, then GO HOME, to your habitat and take a cold shower, warm cocoa, put on some fiery worship music and pray for yourself and for your intended victim/s that God would keep them from the snares those, like you formerly were, had dug out for them. Many times, our games deny those we didn’t think we were hurting that much, their very lives and destinies. Be responsible.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

“Then one of the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] said to me, Stop weeping! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root (Source) of David, has won (has overcome and conquered)! He can open the scroll and break its seven seals!

And there between the throne and the four living creatures (beings) and among the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God [the sevenfold Holy Spirit] Who have been sent [on duty far and wide] into all the earth.

He then went and took the scroll from the right hand of Him Who sat on the throne.

And when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] prostrated themselves before The Lamb. Each was holding a harp (lute or guitar), and they had golden bowls full of incense (fragrant spices and gums for burning), which are the prayers of God’s people (the saints)…

Saying in a loud voice, Deserving is The Lamb, Who was sacrificed, to receive all the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and majesty (glory, splendor) and blessing!”
Revelations 5:5-12

AMPC

God…Seemingly

Sometimes…we look down on a person because of our seemingly elevated positions above them…and God remains seemingly silent…unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes we betray them, [and because they are spirit too they know it] because we sit in forums where it seems okay to break their confidences and twist what we know about them in the worst ways possible…and God remains seemingly silent…seemingly unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes…we reward their smiles with scorn because something happened in our lives and another in theirs that sets us up as seemingly superior. Sometimes…we are privileged to see their need…even of us…and we gleefully walk away…because that is the plan with those that we know hate them…and it seems that we are LOVED BECAUSE THEY ARE HATED…like we are RICHER BECAUSE THEY ARE POORER… like we are IN BETTER BECAUSE THEY ARE AT THE BOTTOM…where we believe they will stay forever. We keep our ties with them…because we are determined to do ALL WE CAN to keep them at a disadvantage, because we SINCERELY ARE CONVICTED that their DOOM IS FOR OUR GLORY…

And God remains seemingly silent…seemingly approving by this posture, of our antiques…seemingly unmoved by their pain and our relentless onslaught over them.

I wonder sometimes…why we waste our energies, beating at those that we are TRULY CONVICTED CAN NEVER RISE FROM THE POSITION IN WHICH THEY ARE BURIED. Us and our company. Are we really convinced of what we tell ourselves over them…or is our back and forth, to collect information by which they can be kept down, also a sign that we don’t TRULY BELIEVE that ANYTHING can keep them down permanently, and we hope that they are fooled enough by our smiles, and fake geniality towards them, that in their EVENTUAL rising and TRANSFIGURATION, we would have carved ourselves a position as their ONLY FRIEND?

They know…. they know…from their position beneath us…they are better placed to see our nakedness…and it’s probably the filth they see…and smell, or the fact that God lies there with them…holding them still…that they too remain silent…and allow us to go as far as we believe we can…as we stand over them.

God seems silent, unmoved, uncommunicative, powerless, unloving…far removed today…

But CAN HE REALLY BE?

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

Minding The Kingdom of God

When you are busy, furtively, in your extensively futile #sidehustle of developing a marking scheme to…errrrr…’weigh’ towards disqualifying …anyone and everyone who doesn’t meet YOUR CRITERIA AND UNDERSTANDING OF BELONGING TO GOD…from their called-out position and God uses just one verse to tell you to mind your own business and let Him handle His children:

“Jesus said to him, “If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.” John 21:22

#EnterHisRest#RestFromFutility

And then He adds, just in case I did not fully understand the above – which He knows I did

“‘This is what The LORD says –

the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:

concerning things to come,

do you question me about my children,

or give me orders about the work of my hands?

It is I who made the earth

and created mankind on it.

My own hands stretched out the heavens;

I marshalled their starry hosts.

I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness:

I will make all his ways straight.

He will rebuild my city

and set my exiles free,

but not for a price or reward,

says The LORD Almighty.’”

Isaiah 45:11-13

Ahem…let me just go this way and seek His Mind and Heart about how to be ABSOLUTELY yielded as I follow Him today…and mind my OWN business as He defines it. I rest .

Shalom

#NimepewaShuguliz

vipslit@yahoo.ca

The Divine Marriage Story: To Be Handled in Maturity

I have been thinking a lot today about Covenant, and particularly, the marriage covenant. I believe, that whether we are conscious of it or not, God is The True Writer of EVERY marriage story that is in conformity with His Will. His Will – being the basis of my thoughts. Not legal, not traditional, not consensual…although sometimes these aspects are included – but a marriage that is considered valid of Him. It may be the marriage of two that are hostile to Him even (e.g. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel), or the marriage between His friends (e.g. Sarah and Abraham), but He writes the story. The pressure to conform…to this world’s standards exists, but God is the most creative, engaging, thrilling, comforting, discombobulating, unexpected even disturbing Writer EVER. So, the outcomes are RARELY ‘STANDARD’.

I am humbled by His Mind. Some of our marriage stories include those who got close to getting married, but never did, or got married later perhaps even to other people…or not; those who never had that inclination/desire/etc. to; those still waiting; those whose marriages were interrupted by or ended in widowhood, divorce, separation; those in complex marital situations – the kind that according to our well-earned ‘white wigs’ should be dissolved; some enduring; some happy; some hilarious; some tragic; some miserable; others divinely surreal; others….God writes every story. I wonder if the realization of this, would be grounds for celebration… honoring one’s triumph within and fidelity to God’s true manuscript of our authentically individual lives.

I thought about Abigail and Nabal’s marriage in the Bible – actually been thinking about this particular one a lot in the last few months. I wondered at the fact that God would bring a wise and stunning woman into union with a man that the Bible defines as a fool…an extremely wealthy fool. I thought how this was a masterpiece of a story; how despite what this experience may have meant for Abigail on a breath-by-breath level, God allowed her years of being a fool’s wife to lead her to a situation where she became queen to His most beloved (EVER) canal king. I looked at Abraham and his son Isaac, who were deeply enamored to their chosen brides but denied them promptly when they felt declaring their status would mortally endanger them. (This could comfort those that remain hidden spouses perhaps because of cultural, longitudinal, latitudinal etc. considerations.)

Then there is tradition – I thought about the divine trendsetter Moses, to whom God gave the code for His chosen race regarding everything including who they could and could not marry, ending up with both first and second wives who were not Israelite. I thought about the other scandalous marriages – that of Rahab the prostitute from Jericho who married an Israelite called Salmon, King David’s great-great grandpa. Then there was Hosea the Prophet, whose story revolved around his instructions by God to marry a woman who was given to harlotry. Not that she would be unfaithful once or twice, but totally sold out to being unfaithful to the prophet…. Then there were Zacharias and Elizabeth, John and Mary, Ananias and Saphira…I am still thinking…

God uses everything, even your marriage to write out His story, over His purposes. I wonder if knowing this would turn the shame that clouds our paths over the, sometimes, content and brevity of our espousals, into cause for celebration. That you tried to get married, stay married, gave it your best shot, but it didn’t work the way you planned it to.

Each one of God’s stories is a stand-alone, unique in its details, the combination and compilation of these for a divine purpose. Celebrate today. Yours was NEVER MEANT TO BE LIKE ANYONE ELSE’. Thats an impossibility. You are different. Each of you is a unique phenomenon. Pack the shame and return it to the devil, his agencies and agents that have tried to shame you for conforming to a standard that God never meant for you. FAST. And open yourself up for the adventure that The Writer has for your life…which may or may not include another marriage. And Celebrate. You are truly a hero in your story.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca

In The Image and Likeness of God

When you realize, that you are not defined by what happened, what you did, what they did to you, what you or someone else said, your grades, your job or absence of one, your debts or affluence, your marital status (or statuslessness ), your house (or homelessness), your dress-code (or nakedness), your squares, triangles or circles, your health status, who talks to you or who snubs you, who loves or who hates you, how shabbily or honorably they treated you, etc: you forgive all these because THEY WERE PERCEIVED OUTSIDE THE MIND AND WORD OF GOD.

Sarah laughed when God stated that He saw her as mother of nations. She was old and barren from her perspective and that of others, had even forgotten (sic) the pleasure of the process that proffers hope towards motherhood . But God. He lifted her to that state where she shed her old robes, opened up ‘the ancient gates’, received the seed in pleasure, birthed Laughter (the name ‘Isaac’ means ‘he laughs’) and enjoyed this joy for the rest of her life. Jesus moves legs when we conform to His Mind regarding us…and that’s one true miracle.

Remember the man by the waters. He too lay defined amiss by the illusion of his circumstances – for 38 years. But God. Through Jesus Christ showed up and did not scurry about stirring ANYTHING. He simply told him to pack his stuff and walk. Because He saw the man as he had always been – with legs that moved. And when He raised this man to His perspective, the man realized who he was in his image in God’s Eyes. He stood up knowing that in Christ, those ancient legs would carry him wherever God led him. He wasn’t healed then…it has ALWAYS been so with him. But his un-redeemed mind pointed to the illusion of experience, that was outside The Truth of God.

He raises you to meet His Eyes, and you see yourself as He ALWAYS has AND ALWAYS WILL – HIS IMAGE AND LIKENESS. There is no greater triumph – He is not rushing about to remake you or provide for you in panic and distress. He did it from the beginning of time…and Then, He rested. As will you. In Him. Will you believe Him? Will I?

Shalom

vipslit@yahoo.ca

#JusticeinJune#AlwaysinGodsImage#Indefilable#TheLORDISmyShepherd#ConversationsWithMySister#PackupAndLeave#StumbledIntoEternalTruths#HeMovedMyFeet

Cents for Your Eternity

A friend of mine and I were fellowshipping deeply over a four hour call early Sunday morning. I was having one of those nights where you are extremely fatigued but your body just won’t sleep. In her part of the world it was early evening so we just ‘keshered‘ away over Jesus Christ and His exploits in our individual lives.

She shared with me an interesting story from her childhood. She had two older brothers and a doting father. On Sundays, he would give them money for the offering basket. Each of her brothers would get 10 cents, but she, the apple of Dad’s eyes, would be given 50 cents. Now… I know many of you have no idea what am talking about; let me explain this. The 10 cent coin was the largest of coins in the Kenyan currency in the early 70s, and the 50 cent the tiniest. But it was worth five times more than the 10 cents. Simple arithmetic really. She didn’t know that however, and would howl for a ten cent too. Her Father seemed to be discriminating against his girl child .

I know you are wise, and clever too, and have understood where I am going with this. People tend to make other people feel that their 10 cents is worth more than the 50 cents God has given them. Sometimes we don’t even need other people to help us with this , we judge by our eyes. And that’s always a foolish thing to do. Always. Eyes are good for many things, and am grateful to God for mine. But they don’t always tell you the full story at a mere glance.

Yesterday, my son and I were reading from 1 Kings 13…the beautiful and yet heartbreaking story of the mis-mentoring to death of a young prophet. In one day he trusted God: begun by obeying Him fully, and witnessed the hand of a powerful king shrivel before him, when the king tried to harm the prophet for his obedience. [Read the story for yourself beloved – you will understand what am talking about.] God had given him simple instructions; “go by one way, say what I have told you to say, run off by a different route AND DO NOT EAT ANYTHING THERE!” As long as he obeyed God, his 50 cents as it were, stood tall above the 10 cent pomp of a gloriously decaying darkness. BUT THEN the day progressed and all that excitement of powerful moves of God, and answered prayers that spoke of God’s favor over his life probably wore him down. He sat a while and that’s when another mighty older prophet of God showed up.. to redirect him towards 10 cents…FOOD .

Its interesting how eating in certain places is such a distraction from the instructions of God…from the day of Adam and Eve. And than you could ask Jacob’s twin Esau about this one too. And that other guy who died after being fed with friendly fire, by a woman who proceeded to pin him down with a tent-peg. How even when God has shaken the heavens and earth for you, in front of you, some things just seem…more filling. Irresistible.

I wonder if what was in the menu that day was worth dying for…loosing your relationship with God over… potentially his eternity with God over. I doubt that there was anything. But he turned back and went and ate. Then God’s words of judgement flowed through the one he had chosen to believe over Him. And the rest is just sad…and mysterious. So what’s the 10 cents that’s causing tremors in your life, that won’t let you just…savor the immeasurable joys of Heaven’s menu that has been laid out by The King of kings and LORD of lord’s for you? Is it worth dying for? Is it worth an eternity in hell over?Shalom.#JusticeinJune#ByTheWordOfGod#TheLORDISmyShepherd

vipslit@yahoo.ca