Life from the Fire of Afflictions

By Patrick Igoche Egah, Ikwue

Life From the Fire of Afflictions is an exhortation from the heart of Patrick Igoche Egah, Ikwue. As much a devotional as a teaching tool, the author draws from personal experience and from scripture to encourage readers to persevere in the fact of afflictions and to rely on the Spirit of God for strength and endurance. Every page uses colorful language and beautiful poetry to bring the reader back to the heart of God, reminding us at every turn that God has a plan and His plan is better than any we can make for ourselves. If you want to learn how to have a deeper, more meaningful relationship with the God who has saved you, read Life From the Fire of Afflictions. It will raise the altitude of your heart.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Taylor
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781735073545

Book preview

Introduction

The heart of affliction is the center point of experience in life that reveals the chord that calls deeper and connects one to the love of God.

The reason God allows afflictions is to draw us deeper into the reality of His plan beyond the pains. Even then, He will never leave us nor forsake us.

When it comes to survival, there is one thing I have come to know from experience in life. There is only one person you can depend on: Even your thoughts and all that is around you will have left you disappointed, but God will never.

Sometimes in life, the only option is to contemplate turning back as you will no longer think for yourself. This is because you must have lost your mind to think in faith, trapped in fear and overwhelmed with worries. Innumerable questions in your heart seek answers, but the answer is never within reach. The truth is, when the answers to the questions in your heart cannot be reached, God can be reached. Then you’ll know He has already reached out to you by saying, Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

When you leave the rest of life’s troubles that you cannot solve, you will have rest and, in rest, you will have all of the troubles solved.

When you go through the fire of afflictions because of hurts, the greatest and most powerful effective weapon is love, because it is a language stronger than hate. And it is forgiveness. It never runs away and, in the end, it will always win.

When it comes to life’s situations, what God wants us to do is to surrender. Until you have surrendered your all to God, your situation can never surrender to you.

This book was birthed from my resolve to encourage myself in the Lord, and the contents will also encourage you. If you are going through stuff and are now feeling God has forgotten you, that is the devil’s lie. God cannot forsake you, but if He could, He would never leave you hanging. Nor will He forget His promises.

I will speak to you from the well of knowledge as one who is experienced, because the inspiration for this book created in me a hope that I am not alone in the struggle, with a certain assurance that God is involved and He is working things out for my good and the good of anyone whom He has called according to His purpose.

When God tries to communicate to us deeper truth, He will allow us to go through some certain experiences. These experiences could stimulate our minds to alert our spirits.  One of the things I have come to realize is the fact that God is too faithful to fail us, even when we tend to lose faith in Him; He is ever faithful to the end. The devil is a specialist in doing what he knows how to do, ever bringing charges against us. But you should understand what is written and ordained so you can pull out of self-guilt. It is the design of the devil to keep you perpetually in pain and agony, and in the wrong state of mind.

Romans 8: 33, 34 says:

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

One thing I have realized the devil will always do is make lies sound like truth. The devil uses this scheme of his to bring charges against you in order to set the world against you with legitimate reasons to condemn you. For the sake of the elect of the Lord, this is nothing but a fire of affliction designed to refocus us back to the mind of God. In that we have full confidence and hope to move on and never ever give up, even when things tend to go contrary to our expectations.

Sometimes, even in your innocence, you can still suffer adversely because of the hearts of men, which are desperately wicked.  What you are going through does not mean you have done anything wrong, so do not try to drag yourself into self-pity. That is exactly what the accuser wants.

The devil started this gimmick with Eve, who was Adam’s desire, and succeeded in Genesis 3:  4, 5. This became a window for humanity to start going through the fire affliction, which include temptations, trials, or persecutions.

Since the devil is cursed, he wants men to be accursed (accept the curse through his thought, even as he thinks in his heart). When we subscribe to anything connected to the devil, he makes us accursed. For God to purify us from the cursed nature (flesh), He will have to allow us move through the fire of affliction that is His refiner’s furnace. It burns off everything contrary to His nature in us that has dented our true identity (character) in Him and reconnects us to His Divine Nature in Appearance (DNA) (John 1: 14).

Isaiah 48: 10 says:

See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

How does the devil bring charges against God’s elect?

John 8: 3-6 tells us:

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the groupand said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

What I saw with my revelatory eyes: When Jesus wrote on the ground, at that moment a woman was caught in the act of adultery and was brought before Him so He could pass judgment against her in accordance to the law. He posed this question, Who shall bring a charge against the elect of the Lord? Jesus arrested the Pharisees’ conscience with the weightier matter of the law, by speaking to their heart of heart, saying, All of your sins have being placed on a scale and your conscience have been weighed. Jesus responded in love, for mercy prevailed against judgment. This is how God will always counter to shut up the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12: 10) that would always stand as an opposition to that which God has ordained as a good thing (Proverbs 18: 22).

Zachariah 3: 2 tells us:

The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is this not man a burning stick snatched from the fire?

Those whom the LORD has called according to His purpose are like a burning stick snatched from a fire and it will interest you to know that this fire is afflictions and long-sufferings.

What God works out in a man whom He pulls through the fire of affliction will certainly take the world by storm. The reason we often go through afflictions is to manifest fully the glory of God. And those who will not give up in this fire of affliction, God will certainly uplift. Afflictions could come through people we love and cherish but who are under the influence of the evil one due selling out to passion and