The peace that surpasses all understanding

God is amazing.
I look at my life 8 months ago, and I look at it now...and tears well up in my eyes.
From literally cents in my bank acounts, to panicing about my future, to a desperate desire to escape reality......

Now I wake up with joy, pure unalderated joy.
And this joy is not 'happiness', this joy doesn't depend on whether or not my circumstances are favorable.

Car mirror broke...I'm still joyful and smiling
Can't find my dream apartment...I'm still thankful to even be alive
Bills piling up...I'm still grining from ear to ear

no fear, no anxiety.

I wake up with a hunger for the day and a desire to do and be all that God has for me.

It's beautiful thing when all you want to do is give glory to God.

It will always get better when christ is your focus.

I know this is not a typical blog entry, but sometimes It's necessary to reflect on all God has done and continues to do for you.
I appreciate you father God, from the big to the small.

If your struggling with depression, anxiety, fear: enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise Psalms 100:4 . petition your father in heaven for the peace that surpasses all understanding Philippians 4:7. Pray without ceasing and his unfailing love will hear you.

Being ultra silly with my friend Shola.

All my love,
Obioma

Whats been going on these last couple of months: May-July

So I haven’t been writing. I haven’t had the motivation and I’ve been in a rut for lack of a better word. I've also been throwing myself various pity parties and other one woman affairs along the way.

Between April 2015 and July 2015, my life has been an exciting whirlwind of God’s grace, mercy, love and blessings.

I’ll start from the beginning.

April

I was preparing to graduate. It was supposed to be an exciting time in my life filled with warm memories and deep connections. Not so in my case. I struggled with my feelings of insecurity about my future. I struggled with my less than stellar grades. I struggled with anxiousness about where I was going to live and what I was going to do. I prayed continuously for God to reveal my purpose to me, I asked Him endlessly where I should live and what I should do. It seemed like God remained silent longer than I would have liked. I sought God’s direction about a Job, I literally lived paycheck to paycheck. I needed to pay for a mission’s trip that I had already committed to going on. It seemed to be one thing after the other after the other.

Honestly, April was a season where fasting and prayer were essential in my daily walk, but I prayed less than I would have liked and relied too heavily on the previous day’s bread for nourishment.

Through grace, the lord blessed with all the finances to pay for my missions trips and I began to truly learn that all earthly wealth is from the Lord, and he alone is my source, no one and nothing else.

May

Official graduate of the University of Central Florida

It was important that I represented a unique aspect of me in my graduation pictures. I choose to showcase my heritage

 I graduated, I made it through April. My friends and family surrounded me and supported me. God instructed me to remain in Orlando, to stay faithful to the church he planted me in and to help their ministry grow. I continued to struggle with the HOW. 

Yes God I know I’m supposed to stay in Orlando, but HOW is this going to be possible. I had no job, I had no source of income and my parents desperately wanted me to come home and focus on medical school applications.

I even went on a mission’s trip. God moved mightily in the hearts and minds of many people. I saw the beautiful country of Haiti. I spoke out loud the testimony God had grown in my spirit over the past several months. I spoke about the abusive relationship I endured due to my disobedience to God. I spoke to complete strangers and intimate friends about the beauty of the father’s redemption and how he saved a wretch like me from sure death and destruction at the hands of my own lust and selfish ambition.

I still struggled with the lust of my flesh and the need to fill the God-shaped whole in my heart with the affections of man, especially those of men.

God blessed with a job. The way he did it was almost surreal. I didn’t even apply for the position, I received an invitation to apply, and the job was given to me. Albeit it was the job which I had resigned from, but it was a source of income.

Arriving at Haiti with my missions group

Everyone loves a good selfie, with my sisters in christ: Kesi, Janelle and Noreka

We were advised to wear conservative clothing, so I spent most of the field time wearing long dresses  My brother in Christ Eno!

This is lovely, she loved taking photos on my camera so we had a mini photoshoot

June

 I felt a desire to desire more of God, I had grown lackadaisical in quest for more of God, for his spirit and power, for relationship with him.

I attributed my lack of desire to not attending Sunday service anymore. I also complained about not being able to be as involved with church as much as I would have desired because the job I prayed for required me to work Sunday mornings.

Thus began the groaning process. Why God? Please give me a better job. Lord how can I fulfill your will for my life if I’m broke and can’t even go to church.

I’m sure I did more complaining than praising. But God continued to provide regardless of my murmuring because he is faithful even when my faith is lacking.

The prayer for this season became: LORD, help my unbelief. Help me to trust you even when I can’t see what’s ahead.  Father give me a cheerful heart in this season of my life and let me never forget your goodness.

July

The Lord began to reveal his destiny for my life. I came to the understanding that I have to be okay with how the Lord chooses to reveal his will for my future, and that may be one step at a time.

I’ve come to the understanding that there are tests that need to be passed, that there’s obedience that needs to occur before I can be given anymore responsibility.

I’ve realized, I need to kill my flesh, literally suffocate it until it dies. This process truly has to be daily, regardless of how I feel. I may never feel like waking up and spending quiet time at the feet of Jesus, but it is necessary, my life depends on this, daily.

God blessed with a Job that far exceeds anything I could have asked for, he continues to rain down his favor in the big and the small.

And when I try to slip away from the grasp of his hand , he shocks me into obedience, convicts me accordingly and I repent whole heatedly because the true desire of my heart is to spend all my days abiding in the house of the Lord, forever and ever.

This really wasn’t an encouragement blog, but it’s a true snapshot of what my life has been like for a long stretch of time. I am continuously  in awe of my heavenly father.  I am so honored to be chosen and deemed worthy of his righteous love.

If I could sum up my experiences in these previous months using one passage, it would be:

Psalms 37:23-24 The Lord directs the steps of the godly.

    He delights in every detail of their lives.

²⁴ Though they stumble, they will never fall,

    for the Lord holds them by the hand.

I’m not perfect, but I continue to serve a perfect God.

My lovely mama. That's my prayer warrior friend

As I grow older I appreciate the time I get to spend with my family. 

All my love,

obioma

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