Christians fail too

I made a promise to God:“I want to live right”.

Since I  renewed and revitalized my relationship with Christ, I want to act according to his will.

So I made a promise to God and said I wouldn’t do certain things anymore.

I was during really good, I whined and complained, but I was adhered to my word.

During my quiet time with God, I made the ‘mistake’ of asking him to reveal my heart to me. (I say mistake in quotation marks because, I wasn’t truly ready for what was about to happen next.)

My prayers were earnest and they mainly went: ‘Lord, what sins do I commit that displease you? Father what is the condition of my heart?’

The thing about a living God is that when you pray prayers like that, he answers happily but not necessarily in the way you would like.

Suddenly I kept getting hit with these tests. The biggest thing I promised God was that I wouldn’t entertain a relationship until I was sure that man was my husband.

Would you believe the guy I had casually been flirting with in my science class seriously started pursuing me shortly after I began my earnest prayers to God. What started as studying together evolved to texting, then snapchatting…then back to text.

I found myself making sure I looked extra cute when I went to school so he would notice and compliment me. My makeup was always done with extreme care so my aesthetics would please him. As we flirted, I knew he wasn’t the one. The things he said clued me in on that fact. The most significant thing being that he didn’t actively attend church. (We rarely talked about God, although he knows I’m a Christian). I told God prior to engaging in the relationship with this particular guy that I wanted a man who loved God with all his heart, and this included attending church faithfully.

But I was lonely, I liked the attention…I liked being pursued. It had been two months since I had gotten attention from a man that I was physically attracted to.

I lied to myself, telling myself that hanging out alone with the guy was a good idea. 

I had boundaries and I didn’t plan on crossing the line.

I would love to say I was right….but I wasn’t. We hung out alone and the lines were crossed. The things I promised God I wouldn’t do, I did.

After the initial encounter I cried. I didn’t want to pray. I felt like God hated me, like he was angry with me for being a liar. Like he was angry that I failed him yet again.

I would love to say I stopped cold turkey talking to this guy…but I didn’t. We hung out again, same thing happened…and again, the same thing continued to happen.

I beat myself up, I asked why was I doing the things my spirit hated, why was my flesh taking over?

Then I remembered my earnest prayers to God. The prayers where I asked him to reveal my heart and hidden sin.

 The problem was that even before I crossed the line with the guy…I thought about the line. I imagined kissing this guy. I dwelt on the thoughts of romance with the stranger who wasn’t my husband. I was already sinning against God in my heart and didn't realize it(by not staying focused on my promises to God), but it took a physical occurrence for me to recognize my sin. 

God allowed my failure to reveal my heart to me, to show me his correction and to cushion me in his grace.

Sometimes in our Christian walk, we act so righteously...we get cocky.

We begin to think that we’re better than our other Christian brothers and sisters because we don’t listen to certain types of music, or we don’t go to the club. We place ourselves on a pedestal we should never be on. We forget that our righteousness is only possible because of the grace of God.

It took failing for me to find comfort in my savior yet again. 

In the midst of my wallowing and disappointment in myself, God continued to pour out his blessings over me. I received unexpected finances and two friends shared that it was because of my words and actions that they were pursuing truly Christ.

I believe God did it as a reminder. Without Christ I am nothing. In my weakness and failures, his strength and majesty is fully realized. 

I’m reminded of Romans 3:23-26

²³ For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. ²⁵ For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, ²⁶ for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

It is only through the redemptive grace of God that we are justified. When we fail, God has already figured it out and he picks us up.

In our failures, Christ's Glory is manifested 2 Corinthians 12:19

And in these failures God is our vindicator and our redeemer.

 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication. Micah 7:8-9

Don’t dwell in the shame, nor in the condemnation for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Romans 8:1

While Christians sin, the difference is that the price for our sins have been paid and we run the race like a conditioned runner, enduring till the end with our hope planted firmly in Christ. The higher standard we are called to, is only made possible through our savior. 

Constantly returning to Christ and allowing him to replace your sinful nature with a Godly nature is how we endure.

So when you fall, or fail: know that your victory is assured, and that God has neither left you, nor forsaken you, repent and return to the righteousness of God's bosom.

All my love,

Obioma

Spending some quality time with my mom and brother. I love these moments

The Reality of race, injustice and the will of God

I'm a socially aware person. By this I mean, I keep up to date on world events via tumblr. I pay attention to the news and I'm active on other forms of social media, i.e facebook and twitter.

I'm also a person who has  a lot of empathy. When I hear people's stories, situations and issues I immediately feel for them, I want to help..I feel defeated if I can't.

Needless to say within the last two years, the social and political climate of the United States has definitely been in turmoil. As a black woman, the deaths of Trayvon Martin, and then that of Michael Brown broke my heart. As I realized the realities of discriminatory law practices and learned words like patriarchy, institutionalized racism, Industrial prison complex, capitalistic infastructure...I found myself getting angry.

My heart became bitter as I looked at the racial dynamics of the United States, as I studied the statistics that placed black men and women at the bottom of the totem pole.
I became angry during the Trayvon Martin case. What I saw was a young man gunned down by a vigilante, but my white Facebook friends disagreed. They made statements in support of Trayvon's death, saying that he deserved it among other accusations. I found myself deleting a lot of those friends.

When Ferguson began to unfold, I became hooked on social media. I followed the live tweets of members of the Ferguson community, I watched their on-site video footage. What I saw were peaceful protesters, tear-gassed for daring to excrise their given rights.What I saw was an unapologetic police force created from corruption.  My white facebook friends disagreed. They saw rioters without respect for the law and the officers who keep said law. They saw a group of people who were asking for their own deaths.
When the Grand jury decided not to bring charges against Officer Wilson in the death of Michael Brown. I was so angry, I was hurt, I cried. This to me confirmed everything I had been witnessing in my capacity as someone who was 'socially aware'. It said to me that black lives didn't matter, and our deaths were of no consequence. It said to me as a young black woman that I needed to be careful about how I raised my future son, because his character wouldn't matter...and that somehow...someway his death could always be justified.

I found myself growing a hatred within me. I began to blame all white people. I had learned terminology like: 'white privilege' and was quick to use it. How dare these people not recognize their privilege. How dare white people walk about smug like their wealth wasn't built on the back of the black slave.

I didn't even want to acknowledge the plights of the black community....my black community. I didn't want to address our tendencey for lawlessness, our defeatist attitudes, our overt glorfication of violence...money.
I blamed everyone and everything else for the shambles of the community to which I self assigned.

Then God, as he always does began to check my heart.
I found myself addressing what the anger in my soul had truly became: hatred. I found myself questioning this hatred for a whole group of people.
I began to ask if I was better than my so called 'oppressors'
I even turned to God and asked...why us Lord. Why is my skin and my people so hated around the world. What have we done?

I would love to say that God answered right away. But he didn't. The silence seemed deafening.

I soon joined a church. My pastor and his wife are both white, but the church is multi-ethnic and multi-generational. The college ministry however is all black, with the rare exception of two or three token white students who visit on occasion.

I see my white pastors pour themselves out to the students that attend the college ministry. I see them give spiritually, financially and physically into the wellbeing of these black students.

I witnessed my Pastor on a Sunday morning, before the entire congregation boldly address the racial tension in Ferguson with the gaze of God's love and without fear of being politically correct.

I witnessed my white pastors feed countless black students each week, pay for groceries..

When my then boyfriend hit me and we both ran to the church before he ran away..it was my white pastor who held me in her arms and allowed me to cry.
She listened to me as I spoke and she spoke God's life giving and affirming word into my life.

This is when I began to realize, God doesn't see race. God doesn't see black or white. God simply sees the saved and the unsaved. We are all sons and daughters in the kingdom of Heaven. It is our sinful flesh that brings division and distinction between us.

As unpopular as it is to say, a lack of God's favor results in the destruction of man. And while I don't have all the answers, I do know that God is the only one who can stop the turmoil that is 'social injustice.' God is the only one who can heal the hurts of our hearts and the pain of our land.

Hating your brothers and in sisters in Christ because of this sinful world is deplorable in the eyes of God.

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek  my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

If we seek God in all that we do, If we obey his commandments, he promises to forgive our sin and heal our land. That means if we turn to him, truly turn to him, he promises to right the wrongs of this world's injustices'.

My hatred of white people was detestable in the sight of the Lord. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of any skin color. This love does not take into account what we feel because of our environment.  This love relys on the creator to fix the hurts of the human heart and mind instead of relying on the creation.

 God promises justice for the wicked and provision for the righteous.

So if you're like me, and Habakkuk, asking God why does injustice flourish? 

Habakkuk 1:1-4 How long must I cry, O Eternal One,
    and get no answer from You?
Even when I yell to You, “Violence is all around!”
    You do nothing to save those in distress.
³ Why do You force me to see these atrocities?
    Why do You make me watch such wickedness?
Disaster and violence, conflict and controversy are raging all around me.
⁴ Your law is powerless to stop this; injustice prevails.
    The depraved surround the innocent, and justice is perverted.

Take heart, because God promises justice for every injustice and right for every wrong. Just because we don't see how or when, it doesn't mean God will not glorified in the end.

Habakkuk 2:12-14 Woe to him who builds a city on bloodshed
    and who establishes a town by injustice!
¹³ Look! Is it not because of the Eternal, the Commander of heavenly armies,
    that all the people work for is consumed in fire
And that all the nations produce comes to nothing?
¹⁴ For as the waters cover the sea,
    the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge
That the Eternal is glorious and powerful.

The eyes of the almighty are roaming the earth to and fro looking for those that are faithful to him, and he promises to strengthen them. 2 chronicles 16:9 So do not be dismayed by this world, or allow it's evil to corrupt your heart. Love God, and trust God. The end.

All my love,

Obioma  

A silly picture of the blond braids I intended to wear into my 22nd birthday. The braids only lasted 6 days and unfortunately did not make it. Check out my youtube channel for the reasons why :)

Man I wish things could be the way they used to be.

'Man I wish things could be the way they used to be.'

Trying out some blond braids for the big birthday. Hello 22!

This  has been the single statement that has gnawed at my brain. I went back to it continously while rehashing my former life.


I've been living in the memories of my past for quite some time now.
I feel like the Dad who was the star quarterback in highschool and for the last 20 years (more like 4 months in my case) all he's done is focus on his former glory.

My 22nd birthday(March 13th, yay!) is fast approaching and the thoughts that consumed my mind were...."I wish so, and so was here to spend it with me."
 " I wish I was in my old financial situation."
 " I wish I was younger and more carefree."
I struggled so much with this I began to bring it up in my quiet time with God.
I started off thankful, like "Father thank you for reedeming me and taking me out of darkness." but  sooner or later my flesh would murmur "now what..."

I missed being popular, liked, everyone texting me about everything.
I missed the 100 likes on instagram, and the thousands of reblogs on tumblr. (this is me being totally transparent.)

But God in all his loving mercy instead of rebuking me for daring to question the position HE's put me in, reminded me of the promises HE has for my life.
The Lord used Haggai 2:9 to speak directly to my spirit.

 

⁹ The future glory of this Temple will be greater than its past glory, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. And in this place I will bring peace. I, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, have spoken!”

Upon reading the verse, it resonated so deeply with my soul. Yes God took away my earthly wealth, my established friendships, my popularity...but didn't I know that he would restore everything he took away from me for his greater glory? Didn't I know that my past would pale in comparison to my future?

If God has placed you in unfamiliar territory, it's for your edification and for your growth. While I had my popularity,money and friends...I can count on one hand how much time I spent with God. When he stripped me, truly stripped me and I surrounded all to him, I flourished in his presence.

So while you may be questioning what's really going on in your life and wishing that you could live in the past. Ask yourself: Why?
Maybe in some ways your past was fantasitic, but truly examine what it lacked. Why has God placed you in the position that you are in now. What talents, abilities and convictions is he establishing in you?
what has he called you out of?
What has he called you into?
Were you too dependent on your 9-5 to make ends meet, ignoring scripture that says the Lord will supply all your needs? Philippians 4:19

Are you so focused on what you were that it's keeping you from what God is calling you to be?

Yes, I was popular and I had a multitude of friends, fans and associates...but I was a terrible sinner who labeled myself a christian. So while I had received the ability to lead and influence from God, I used it for my glory, not his. I can't tell you how the thoughts of those I may have led astray hurt my heart till this day.

The point is this: Stop looking at the past. It is behind you for a reason.
God is focused on your present and your future, your past is of no consequence to him. Scripture says the Lord is no respecter of persons. Acts 10:34 That means God doesn't care about your past accolades, titles, positions or influence. He's not impressed by who you were, nor is he intimidated, made afraid by (the list goes on). God simply wants a present relationship with you in the here, now and for eternity. 

Anything God has taken away, he promises to restore many times over. So take comfort in your present, look to your future with hope, and in all things, look to God to direct your steps.Proverbs 3:6

All my love,
Obioma