Godstrong: How to Turn Your Pains into Gains

By Samuel

We all have challenges, sorrows, and troubles, but its possible to turn any adverse situation around when youre teaming up with the Lord. In this guide, a career pastor and prophet explores some of the doubts, fears, and perplexities he has experienced throughout lifeand reveals how he has relied on the power of the Holy Spirit to find answers, comfort, strength, and guidance.

In GodStrong, he explains how you can use doubt to strengthen your faith, profit from lifes traumatic experiences, and partner with God to build momentum and achieve your goals. You wont get anywhere in life by relying on a church-made, miracle-manic god that loathes the self-dependent and rationally spiritual. By understanding that success is dependent on the powers of self-reliance rather than on naive expectations of divine miracles, you can discover how to be a true champion of God.

Cherish the independence and freedom inherent in direct guidance from the creator, and then do the hard work thats necessary to achieve your objectives. Turn your pains into personal gains by being GodStrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491701133

Samuel

Samuel is an international motivational speaker, a career pastor, prophet, apostle, missionary, and singer. He holds a diploma in theology and a bachelor’s degree in legal studies; he is also a doctor of jurisprudence degree candidate at the William Howard Taft Law School in Santa Ana, California. He currently lives in Houston.

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Copyright © 2013 Samuel.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0112-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0114-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0113-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913632

iUniverse rev. date: 12/05/2013

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Forward

Prologue

About GodStrong

Chapter 1    From My Heart

Chapter 2    Doubt is Faith in Disguise

BOOK I—GOD STRON G MEMOIRS

The Nurture

Chapter 3    My Slum vs. His Manger

Chapter 4    Uche Disappears

Chapter 5    Survival of the Strongest

Chapter 6    Things Better Than Manna

Chapter 7    Perched on Eagle’s Wings

Chapter 8    Shepherd the Flock

Chapter 9    A Ram Who Loved Us

Chapter 10  Monday, the Rustic Rooster!

Chapter 11  Grandma’s Rambo Hen—Arangbo

Chapter 12  Taint of a Saint

Chapter 13  Abducted by Strangers

Chapter 14  Early Intellectual Odyssey

Chapter 15  Tears & Toils

Chapter 16  I Barely Get By

Chapter 17  Genesis of Self-Reliance

Chapter 18  Tango with a Priest

Chapter 19  In the Moral Jungle

Chapter 20  A Frantic Pursuit of Elusive Happiness

Chapter 21  Find Mom

Chapter 22  Beyond Borders

Chapter 23  To Accra with Hope

Chapter 24  My Family Roots Identified

Chapter 25  A Painful Departure

Chapter 26  Hi Mom

Chapter 27  Behind a Religious Iron Curtain

Chapter 28  Duels with Death

BOOK II—GOD STRON G PRINCIPLES

Chapter 29  Capture Rapture

Chapter 30  The Rise of the Self Is the Activation of God

Chapter 31  The Internal God

Chapter 32  God Has Favorites—Get Over It

Chapter 33  Activating the Gift of Self-Reliance

Chapter 34  Brave Heart

Chapter 35  We Are God-vertible

Chapter 36  An Irrevocable Covenant

Chapter 37  Understanding Omnipotence

Chapter 38  Divine Dissent

Chapter 39  Rituals Failure

Chapter 40  Can God be induced by Emotion?

Chapter 41  Dealing with Divine Truancy

Chapter 42  Take a Stand

BOOK III—GOD STRON G PRESCRIPTIONS

Chapter 43  Don’t Quit

Chapter 44  Avoid Isolation and Self-Quarantine

Chapter 45  Don’t Be Frantic

BOOK IV—GOD STRON G STATE-OF-MIND

Chapter 46  Self-Reliance

Chapter 47  Life beyond Favor

Epilogue

About the Author

Bibliography

Samuel

Through God we shall do valiantly:

for it is he that shall tread down our enemies

—Psalm 60:12

Dedication

To President Odumije, Baron Jimnatu, Samuella Ohema

Acknowledgments

To God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the magnificent, the omnipotent, our Almighty, be all praise for his unceasing love, care, protections, guidance and provisions.

Special thanks to the editorial evaluation team of iUniverse for evaluating the manuscript and making valuable recommendations.

Preface

It was almost midnight in the first week of June 2011. I was face down in my living room in Spring Texas, agonizing in prayer before God. My world had come crashing down two years earlier through a series of personal setbacks.

As I prayed for divine resolution, I clearly heard the voice of God speak twice, Son, write the book. Show your generation how you kept turning every personal pain to gain through my power and wisdom. I got up from prayer, wiped my tears, grabbed the laptop and started typing away.

The project continued till 2013 when I finished the last chapter. I still worked forty hours every week, plus full time law school academic load. I used every break and lunch period at work, stayed up after hours at night, spent weekends at the library and coffee shops typing at my pace. I knew this was divine because I could remember things that happened decades ago as though it was happening right now. Everything was clear as if in 3D vision. It took approximately two years of intense writing and revisions to finish GodStrong.

I wanted to stay obedient to God’s command and to the message of GodStrong which I believe carry the potential to transform and motivate lives across the world. GodStrong reveals how you can acquire God-enabled resilience, power, wisdom and insight to turn your personal pains to personal gains. Thus, your gain is worth the pain of my obedience in writing GodStrong.

As a theologian, career pastor, missionary-evangelist and prophet, I had spent my youth and adult life preaching the Bible and touching lives in many nations. Further, I have ministered to Pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical and parachurch adult, student and youth audiences in Africa and the United States. From these ministry perspectives, I bring a unique biblical insight and inspirational message through GodStrong. The message is deep, yet simple. Through God, you can turn your pains to gains.

Forward

As a seasoned professor of law and mentor to Samuel, I have personally witnessed the extraordinary revolutions that God has made in this young man’s life. At the times when he seemed to me at his weakest and most broken, he was able to mobilize the power of the Holy Spirit to guide him through his sorrows.

This book is thus a fitting testament to the power of prayer, faith and courage in the face of adversity. As you delve into the much heartache that plagued Samuel’s youth, you will come to understand how this extraordinary young man submitted himself fully to the Almighty God to triumph against the odds.

GodStrong is a laudable masterpiece and therefore a must-read for anyone who has ever fallen into the darkest depths of suffering and loneliness. It serves as a guidebook to those who wish to truly know the Lord, to devote themselves to his works and to learn how his power can conquer all misfortune. In Godstrong you will truly sense the spirit of God guiding the young author’s hand as he recounts his incredible journey from abandoned boy to internationally-renowned preacher, teacher, and prophet.

As a fellow committed believer, I can only offer praise to Samuel Japhets, both for his courage in submitting his destiny to the Lord and his graciousness in revealing the truth of the gospel to the world. Indeed, it is very rare to come across such a clear vision and positive articulation of the transformative power of God in our lives. Godstrong will set you on the pathway of personal triumph before you even reach the last chapter of this awesome, vivacious narrative.

Happy reading and God bless!

Professor Florence Shu-Acquaye, J.D., LL.M

Professor of Law

Shepard Broad Law Center

Nova Southeastern University

Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

USA

Prologue

I have been hard pushed by you, so that I might have a fall:

but the Lord was my helper.

—Psalm 118:13

There is the army-strong, and there is the church-strong, yet the Godstrong trumps them all! In this life, some are born in ready-made cushions of hope and are assured lifelong voyage on already-paved highways of ascendancy. Others are born in ramshackle thorny fodders of despondency, penury, and abject destitution. They must carve out their own pathways, hew down blockading timbers of troubles, and wade through forests of obscurity to visualize flickering lights of hopeless hopefulness.

The Godstrong are those who actively collaborate with God by deploying the powers of self-reliance as a realistic extension of God’s power in the face of extremely personal adverse circumstances. Across the aisle are the rest caught up in the docility of servile dependence on a church-made, miracle-manic god that loathes the self-dependent and rationally spiritual.

The Godstrong are like a God-mounted horse, ready to run, gallop, trot, or pause in response to the whims of the all-powerful, all-knowing, and ever-present horse rider. They are not designed to be dragged around or manipulated by man-made religious leashes, but cherish the independence and freedom inherent in direct guidance from the creator himself.

The Godstrong are explosively free, because they realize that spirituality is a personal, subjective, but potent property. Unlike academic endeavors in which the credibility of findings is based on peer approval, spiritual findings to the Godstrong do not necessarily require the quixotic approval of organized religion. The Godstrong are made indomitable by their resilient ability to see challenges through the eyes of God. This approach creates a possibility state of mind which defines the Godstrong personality. Possibility is at the crossroads of faith and doubt.

Unfortunately religion disparages doubt and promotes faith as the only divine gift capable of opening the doors of possibility. However, the God who gave man the mind to perceive faith is very much conversant with the powers of doubt and of the beneficial symbiosis between both.

Doubt is commonly suspected as the antithesis of faith, but I have discovered that those who have nothing to doubt have nothing to believe. The expression of my innermost doubt was the magnetic pull that drew God to rationally answer to my doubts, thereby activating a geyser of faith in my mind. Consequently, I am stronger in faith through my doubts.

The Godstrong are not just believers, but they are also doubters. Their doubts may be reasonable or unreasonable depending on which side of the debate you argue from. However because such doubts flow out of genuinely quizzical minds, God is personally interested even when die-hard religious fanatics oppose. The creator God is involved because to answer to every human doubt is a divine delight, since doubt is as much a gift as faith. As faith and doubt answer to each other through our existential situations and experiences, our covenant with God is strengthened, and we emerge with a Godstrong identity.

About GodStrong

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

—Philippians 4:13

The central theme of GodStrong is a revelation of the secrets of engineering adverse, unfavorable events to produce positive outcomes. In addition, GodStrong explores how people of faith can turn personal pains into personal gains. In other words, you can profit from life’s traumatic experiences if only you master the experiential and bible-based secrets I share here.

Bob, a former friend and member of my ministry team once remarked, Sam, I’ve never seen any man bombarded with so many challenges like you’ve been, and yet kept trudging forward.

Another friend, Jim, on our way to the local airport, early in august 2010, commented, Sam, I admire you so much because you are always deploying new strategies to advance yourself instead of giving up in the face of personal tragedies and difficulties.

These two opinions may sound flattering, but they capture my disposition in life and the crux of the matter in this book: emerging stronger in spite of any blast of tsunami life rolls your way, knowing that God is in you and working with you to turn things around.

47931.png    Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, twisters, volcanic eruptions, floods, and many other natural disasters are serial realities that are necessarily connected with existence in a physical universe. Some nations and peoples are closest to these realities than others. Similarly, in life, while people may physically share sociopolitical boundaries, the truth is that some individuals exist closer to certain realities that are totally inconceivable to the rest of us. There are those who dwell in a serial, roller-coaster-like trouble zone, and there are others who dwell in very blissful, trouble-free environs.

GodStrong is a product of my experiences as a human being and of my ministry to fellow humans over time. The principles and guidelines shared here are strictly for those who believe or perceive that life have dealt them an unfair blow in spite of their dedication, hard work, godliness, and diligent efforts. I am persuaded that as you find relevance in my story, you will equally rediscover a fresh motivation to give one more push to life.

Here, I reveal how my unfavored status defined and affected the various facets of my existence in Ghana, Nigeria and the United States. In addition, I show how I navigated the waters of uncertainties in the face of deprivation of much-expected divine favors. Plus, I communicate the intimate strategies that I deployed in tackling the inevitable shadows of doubt which confronted me in spite of devotion and dedication to divine principles.

Further, I give insight on how, partnering with the Lord God, I developed the power of resilience, self-reliance, and forward momentum. I am a living witness to the scriptural revelation that we are co-laborers with God.

Lastly, through series of tactical responses to the traumatic events in my life, I reveal the triumphant legacy of resilience, perseverance and the power of persistent engineering of adversities.

Chapter 1

From My Heart

"I learned so much, so very much about myself in defeat. I’ve learned

very little to nothing in victory."

—Floyd Patterson.

Just consider my curious case and you will understand the gist of GodStrong. I was born to an Ashanti mom from Ghana and an Ibo dad from Nigeria. Both are renowned black nations of West Africa. My race is not the leading race of the world, and abject poverty defined my upbringing. Africa is globally recognized as the epitome of legendary poverty and pandemic diseases.

Despite being an intelligent and academically vibrant student, I was deprived access to desirable education because of poverty. There were no riches, nobility, or wealth in my family nexus. All my best efforts and legitimate strivings for personal advancement were shattered at the rock of financial insolvency. Deprived of full parental love and attention as a child due to the divorce of my parents, the meaning of love had no definition in my mind.

I served God as much as, if not far better than, any of my peers. I lived holy and godly as much as, if not better than, similarly placed individuals in my generation. I lived by the holy book, following every precept and rules of Christian conduct according to Pentecostal and charismatic traditions.

Yet the best I dreamt of and worked hard for had never been realized. The God I zealously served and still serve had never broken through the clouds to part the waters of mundane challenges for me. But I still trudged on in faith, hope, and confidence. Curiously, I discovered late in life what I should have been taught earlier by the church: that success is dependent on the powers of self-reliance rather than on naive expectations of divine miracles based on ancient myths.

This means that the union of our spirit with the Spirit of Christ at conversion is an induction into a life of partnership in which God reveals his creative powers through us. We become co-laborers with God as he unleashes our inert abilities to navigate through difficulties, challenges, traumatic experiences or trials.

48083.png    Thus, we realize that there is division of labor between us and God. He plays his part and expects us to play ours. He works miracles for us at his discretion, but the nature of the partnership requires that we develop our inert powers of self-reliance as an expression of faith and trust in God.

Now that I know and understand that we are co-laborers with God, all the resentment I harbored against God for not bursting through the clouds to my help are eroded. I can take responsibility for my life and God is honored as he observes me putting to work the previously inert self-reliant qualities he endowed me with. Life and godliness takes a different definition from this angle.

Christianity is better understood and appreciated from a self-reliant, God-enabled perspective than from the traditional exclusively God-reliant perspective. Reliance on God is determined by how much we rely on God-given intrinsic qualities within us.

In other words, it is an aberration for a full-fledged human being to toss hands in the air expecting divine miracles one hundred percent of the time while the human plays no part in his own deliverance. As a matter of fact, such persons never make headway in life, business or in whatever else because God as a no respecter of persons cannot bend his universal modus operandi to pander to such lazy dependents.

Unfortunately for me, I was raised among the fundamentalist, Pentecostal far right who religiously and fanatically deploy Bible verses and quotes to define and express destiny. Under such influence, a person’s worldview is so narrowly tailored to be guided by literal biblical verses which doesn’t really make any sense under the circumstance, but deemed spiritually necessary.

Reality was lost in the gamut of so-called biblical manner of living or spirit-led existence. Destinies were frustrated, crushed, limited or misdirected by cloudy spiritism. Human judgment and rational approach to existential challenges were often suspect and rejected. The few anointed controlled the rest of us to do their bidding in the name of the lord while our hearts yearned for actualization of burning dreams, visions and aspirations.

I knew God was real. Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are persons. The Bible undoubtedly is very potent. However, I also knew then, as well as now, that God intended for His children to harness a combination of spirituality and rationality to attain earthly success. Further, the God of our covenant would want all of His children to be self-reliant as well as God-dependent, because in Him we live, and move and have our being.

48085.png    Thus God is not diametrically opposed to self-reliant existence because it glorifies divine genius, and self-reliant manner of life is not anti-faith because every human ability and prowess emanates from our God. But the Church fanatically opposed any avowal of reliance on the self and treated such inclination as satanic or secular. So, I cowered in fear and submitted agonizingly to the oppressive authority and chilling powers of Church.

Consequently, maintaining a facade of hypocritical claim to divine favors and mercies became the norm and rule of my life to the point of maniacal absurdity. This was a part of the insanity of Pentecostal and charismatic theologies which suckled my youthful mind and soul.

However, these claims that lack verifiable, compelling evidence cannot continue to be a credible legacy of mine. These philosophies which lack the stamina to effectively compete in the market place of global leadership and dominance should no longer direct the course of contemporary Christian minds.

48087.png    Those who desire to be champions among their peers in a progressive world cannot maintain cutting edge supremacy by wielding outdated spiritual methodologies.

Therefore, after years of living the Pentecostal and charismatic lie, and suffering the inevitable consequences of blind allegiance to fabricated theology, I chose to critically analyze my destiny and truthfully assess my effectiveness in life. To my horror and chagrin, I discovered that I should be bold to accept that I am one of the unfavored, if not the chief among them.

The pastors and churches said to pray, because to them, human success was impossible without unmitigated and total dependence on prayer alone. Therefore, like a humble lamb, I did zealously pray. And when prayer failed to unlock the door, they said to fast, and I fervently fasted as often as I was urged. When fasting and prayer proved futile, they said to read, study, and memorize even more Bible verses, and those I did with religious fervor and precision. However, I saw no victories and won zero battles.

Thereupon, the spiritual guides quickly came up with a plethora of other religious solutions: they urged faith, love, holiness, forgiveness, exorcism, and every other thing in the book and beyond, plus motivational stuff. I gulped it all down, hoping against hope and anticipating transcendental divine help that never came. Notwithstanding my ardent faith in the power of spirituality as the only workable method of attaining goals, aspirations, ambitions and dreams, my unfavored status was not altered.

So I set my mind to find out directly from God, why my wholehearted commitment and obedience to his every word and spiritual directions did not suffice to mitigate the negative sentence on my destiny and that of millions of the silent others. I went on a personal quest to find out why prayer and die-hard faith alone were unable to unlock the doors of success for me and the faithful others who still believe. And I was shocked at God’s simple answers to my quest.

48089.png    I learned right away that we are co-laborers with God. He has some roles to play in our lives, but we have the bigger and most intense roles. We must work hard in life to attain our dreams and achieve our goals. If we do not work, then we cannot have enough to eat. Human beings were created to work therefore miracle is not a typical way of life. I uncovered the reasons we are stuck. I found out that the fact that we are covenanted with God does not guarantee success in life, unless we commit to rational existence and hard work.

Here, I choose to share more of the literal teachings of the Holy Spirit as I owned up to the absurdity of my old spiritual ways and opened up to God’s revealed way to GodStrong living. This unique way strongly suggests that faith plus work produces rational spirituality which simply means that we are self-reliantly dependent on God.

I pray that you will pierce through this light in these revelations so as to find satisfaction and fulfillment in life faster than most others who are still stuck in the mud of the old ways.

Chapter 2

Doubt is Faith in Disguise

"Though He slays me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless,

I will argue my case before Him."

—Job 13:15

There is a penumbra where the shadows of doubt challenge the luminosity of faith, and where only a surge of articulate reason could dispel or satisfy the dilemma of reasonable doubt, thereby reestablishing and upgrading the potency of faith. It is that zone in which there is inexplicable alienation of God’s discretionary favors from the righteous whose godliness, faith, and commitment are unrivaled.

Those who are able to resolve, with triumphant finality, the puzzle of divine alienation emerge Godstrong and forever unassailable over subsequent serial storms of life, having discovered the potency of God-given powers of self-reliance.

48091.png    It takes particles of trials to forge a great destiny because trials are the manure on which the trees of destiny thrive. Your dimensions, heights of attainment, quality of existence, value, and impact in life are all dependent on how you manage the trials life throws at you. It is often said that what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Therefore it is possible and necessary to develop indefatigable resilience in the face of every adverse circumstance and to emerge stronger than the intended negative outcome of your circumstances.

The negatives of life come to pose a challenge to your much-vaunted faith in God. There in the face of the storm, you unleash this faith that God is able and will deliver you or prevent the storm from sweeping you away. Then, in horror, you watch as your God does nothing and the storms actually sweep you off, taking your faith and modicum of trust away with it. Alas, you are forced to question your initial faith in God. This is the birth of doubt. You doubt because you want reassurance that what you believed was not a lie. You doubt because you want to believe. You really want to drop anchor in a non-turbulent shore in life.

48093.png    Therefore, doubt is a cry for faith to arise. But this cry is not a desire for flaky faith rather it is a hardline stance for genuine, unadulterated rational faith. Thus, doubters are people of faith who have advanced beyond the common faith of ordinary basic believers. They have experienced the porosity of basic Christian faith and fanatical spiritism. They have experienced the flaws firsthand and have come to a conclusion that the omnipotent power of God must harbor something higher than the usual.

Unfortunately, the majority of believers still occupies the lower rungs of basic fanatical irrational faith and is therefore quick to judge and condemn the doubters of traditional fundamentals as being faithless or intrinsically unbelieving. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just as the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, even so, the doubts of a believer are the beginning of well-grounded, rational faith. I have developed infallible faith in God because I doubted and questioned the things I was taught that never worked for me as a believer when I confronted the competitive world outside the church. Because of my doubts, I have learned deeper things from God and developed tactical approaches to personalized challenges in life.

Thus, I would conclude that the doubter is a man or woman of faith in the making. This is the case because adverse events in our lives can make us Godstrong if only we persevere to the point of discovering the latent, personal endowments of self-reliance.

The pressures of life can either press out of you the faith to succeed or the fear to fail. The pressures are sometimes revved up to maximum, crushing levels that null every religiously held lifeline, thereby exposing the victim to a stark, sad reality of divine abandonment and pitiable isolation. The question then becomes whether beauty can arise out of those ashes.

Can a person constantly bombarded with serial adversity from birth to adulthood, and who has a genuine faith in God, consequently overwhelm and override those patterns of serial failures to emerge stronger than every storm? My verdict is: Yes, it is possible!

It is possible if you can turn the energy of doubt and frustration into the energy of rationality and hard work. If you can make the switch from indolent dependence on expectations of miracles to a proactive, objective, rational, self-dependent confrontation of life’s challenges, then nothing shall be impossible unto you.

When you do, your doubt becomes a weapon of faith because the fact that you expressed doubt opened a gateway for you to break from traditional way of doing things. You could take steps of faith which hitherto were not possible because you were taught to wait on God to do things necessarily reserved for humans like you. Doubt helped you break the fetters of religious faith so you can operate with the higher power of rational faith.

1.PNG   Understanding Divine Discretion and Disfavors

We, as human beings, are in God’s image in our spiritual, moral, intellectual, social, and physical natures and capabilities. We are endowed with peculiar potentials through which we mirror God’s divinity.

Thus, when God declared in Genesis 1:26, Come now, let us make man in our image, he did not intend to make perpetually weak and miserably dependent beings. His original intent was to form human beings who are God’s own self-actualization. They would be creatively independent, yet dependently unified in spiritual purpose with God.

God laid the foundations of creation but left the continuation of his unfinished acts of creation to human beings. God built no houses, designed no aircrafts, built no hospitals, and established no communication gadgets and so on. His expectations were that human beings will continue the process until they have dominated and filled the entire known and unknown universe of God. Thus, God made humans endowed with enormous capabilities.

48095.png    God made no wimps. So those who negate divine intent by daily expectation of divine miracles, favors or discretion have lost the essence of God in humans. God has given us everything we need to excel in life for ourselves and for generations yet unborn. Why do we still sit by praying that God himself should descend and do the job he created us to accomplish? Is it not disgraceful that instead of reaching forth to break forth we are retracting into shells of inactivity, indolence and shame in religious houses purportedly seeking God?

God cannot settle for any less, which is why his Spirit is within each of his children, prodding us to break our barriers and surge forward. We are the imago dei or the image of God and co-laborers with God. But we do have a history that could potentially shape us or contort our journey of being conformed to his image. We have a culture of investing more energy invoking God to take over our roles. Thus we are hiding under the guise of religion and spirituality to avoid obligatory human responsibilities.

Irrational faith teaches us to wait on God so we don’t make mistakes in major life events. So, we cower in fear and procrastination helplessly waiting divine direction, discretion or favors. The world keeps rotating on its axis without waiting for daily commands from God, but humans refuse to act, because they must hear again and again and again from God before they act on pre-existing divine orders. The result is stagnation, spiritual confusion and frustration with a God who refuses to answer to the whims and caprice of a religious majority.

Who cares about making mistakes? That’s how we learn. We take risks, we make bold moves. That’s the stuff true faith is made of. Therefore, those who teach risk-free decision and choice making are misrepresenting divine theology.

48098.png    You can’t just sit around until a perfect God tells you the coast is clear to make a move. Such inclination is cowardice, but the righteous shall be as bold as a lion. We must avoid doctrines of devils and cowardly teachings of the unadventurous.

Just because an individual honestly believes in the truthfulness of his or her doctrine, it does not follow that such doctrine has the potency to persuade divine compliance. Now, that is sad news for those who choose to run their destiny dependent on certain spiritual doctrines.

Doctrines are simply sets of theories or principles upon which faith is based. The theories are not scientifically tested, so you rely on them at your own risk. We have only sixty six books in the Bible, but doctrines as innumerable as the sands of the seashores. Thus, many great destinies will never emerge because a church doctrine which they strongly imbibed was toxic enough to stifle such destinies.

Simply put, there are many gifted and talented individuals whose divine endowments will never see the light of day because they subscribed to some religious doctrines which are antithetical to the package of destiny within the individuals. Talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time or feeding a corn farm with toxic fertilizer.

I hereby propose to you that God’s favors and mercies which you seek daily are discretionary and cannot be rightfully claimed as fundamental Christian rights. They are not included in the Bill of Rights! Therefore it is an aberration to promote a theology of continued expectancy of divine deliverance in the face of obvious and serial denial of favors to anyone by God. Some teach that it is God’s responsibility to feed, clothe and prosper humans. So adherents invest energy, time and money in methods and means recommended by a church leader for divine persuasion.

At the end, only the false pastor, prophet or evangelist wins because he or she receives from all but gives to none. Adherents are forever encouraged to keep believing for the elusive divine favor and discretion. When all things fail, more tactical and strange measures of divine persuasion may be invented by the leader.

Thus, many believers are looking up for something. Expectations are always high. There is a remote possibility that God will show up and turn the believer’s fortune around someday somehow. And the people truly believe, because these lies have become so well entrenched that they are now regarded as traditional truths.

In spite of all those abhorrent irrational spirituality and abnormal theologies, my message here is that advocating appeasement or inducing spiritual measures is an exercise in futility, because God cannot be induced to play human roles if he does not want to. There is no alternative for human action where only such action is necessary for the advancement of the human.

Further, those who can’t stand the voice of truth would adhere to the traditional lies of waiting on God in frustration and then turn into spiritual misfits, ineffective, unfulfilled, cantankerous, bitter believers. They believe, like spoilt rich kids, that daddy is obligated to bail them out of their misery or else they will squirm at him in rebellion and quit church or cast away their Bibles in defiance.

48100.png    Let the wise among humans listen to my teaching, for it is from God. God is not obligated by any law to come to your aid at any time or to shower favors on any one. He may if he so chooses, but relinquishing your human abilities to invest energy in prayer, fasting, and other religious rituals with the sole purpose of inducing God to play a role traditionally assigned to humans, is a risky investment. No one can manipulate God. Those who try always end up frustrated, bitter and angry.

How divine discretion and favors operate is explained in the Bible as follows: For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." Romans 9:15-16. It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s discretionary ‘mercy.’ And, since it is discretionary, it is exclusively within the purview or province of God to do or not to do as he pleases despite human pressures.

1.PNG   A Work-Oriented Faith

We understand the powerful propositions of the author of the famous book of Hebrews chapter eleven on faith.

Based on the arguments posited by the author, most teachings culled the conclusion that it is therefore a fundamental Christian philosophy that everything God has could be appropriated through the exercise of faith alone, even a miniscule, mustard seed-sized faith.

However, I propose that the philosophy of the traditional interpretation is wrong and delusional. Faith is not an affirmative, substantive legal instrument such that whenever it is tendered, the pleader would automatically acquire the object of her desire.

The Bible has no evidence of faith being used as a legal claim instrument by people who worshipped or encountered God. To the contrary, most people who received miraculous results did not even realize that they were exercising faith, and most of them, including the dead who were raised, did not have the capacity to exercise faith.

In fact, the philosophical discussion on this matter by Apostles Paul and James had been mostly misconstrued by most Christian theological schools of thought for generations.

In his reasoning, Apostle Paul discussed faith in the context of receiving or accepting God’s free offer of salvation through Christ’s salvific sacrifices on the cross. He correctly concluded that unlike the Judaic philosophy of salvation, the Christian salvation was free and can only be appropriated by faith or trust in Christ.

The believer does not need to physically encounter the crucified Jesus Christ at the Calvary hill and have the literal blood drip on her for cleansing of sin. Even future generations of believers in Christ have potentially been saved in the past when they believe in the future, the apostle concluded.

That was a radical paradigm shift from the Judaic philosophy of representative atonement. Apostle Paul widened and stretched the scope and dimension of salvation beyond the Judaic imagination. If salvation no longer required physical presence at a holy location in order to be literally sprinkled with the blood of animals for cleansing, then it bothered the religious institution in more than one way.

First, the obliteration of physical presence or attendance, which was the nerve center of the trans-generational Judaic system, and which necessitated the lucrative bloodletting of animals, would destroy the Judaic religion.

Second, salvation based on faith in just one unrepeatable sacrifice by Jesus Christ would create an unwanted independence from religious hegemony, thus dismantling the perpetuation of dominion and control by the Jewish religious institutions. The authorities dreaded such philosophy and of course hounded Apostle Paul to death for daring to propose, among other things, a subtle systematic dismantling of Judaism.

Adherents of Paul, on the other hand, reasoned that if faith alone in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ was all that was required to be cleansed, then the concept could be broadened to encompass every other facet of relationship with God. And broaden its application they did.

Thus began the excision of faith from the salvation domain into every other facet of existence. The teaching began to spread that faith could be applied as a legal instrument to compel God to act on the believer’s behalf.

Sermons and writings flooded the Christian world from this rapacious reasoning. And in the frenzy of this purported new discovery, the proponents forgot that Apostle Paul himself explicitly documented his own journey of faith that amounted to a compendium of unimaginable trials and struggles as he tirelessly worked to achieve his dreams.

How could such a man who faced the greatest of human trials and tragedies in his time mitigate human life experiences by proposing that to have it, you just have to believe it and not really sweat for it? In all fairness, Paul never postulated such notions. Paul stood for the proposition: let him that work not, eat not. In other words, you must break a sweat if you must succeed in life. God cannot take the place of humans in the struggle for ascendancy and success. It is anarchy to think otherwise.

The spiritual anarchy attracted James, the presumed author of the New Testament book of James,