Promise

Number Of The Day: 50

It’s funny how time flies. I remember quite vividly that just a few months back, there was this heavy desire in my heart to start a (we)blog. That little desire has produced its 50th post today! Yes, I’ve come across diverse blogs whose monthly turnover of posts is three times what I’ve published in a little over four months. But I’m not going to downplay the significance of this GOLDEN milestone to me. I know I’m not yet at the level I want to be. And I’m neither at the level I used to be. It’s the desire to forge ahead that counts.

I’m grateful to God for being my stay and source of inspiration in the past, the present and the future. I also appreciate all those who, in one way or the other, have encouraged me to be a better blogger. Thanks for your views, your comments, your likes, your follows, your shares and your corrections. God bless you all.

What’s Reality?

Imagine you woke up to find all your entire life as just a dream. Or maybe all your dreams as just a continuation of your life. Many philosophical arguments and their consequent philosophical gyrations have been based on what exactly reality is. I find the topic quite interesting and I just felt like chipping my two cents’ worth.

1. All humans have a yearning within their hearts pertaining to the reason for existence on earth. This yearning is a pointer to the fact that there’s more to life than what our senses can perceive. Otherwise, we’d just go through life without giving a hoot about our purpose for existence, where we came from or where we are going to.

2. The yearning has been put in our hearts by God because we all were created by Him and originated in Him. Man was initially in the dark as regards his origin. He was groping in the dark, looking around for his Source, as well as meaning to life. Religion, however, came into the picture. The diverse religions have had varying successes in providing Man with valid answers.

3. There’s eternity which is the period where time doesn’t exist. Our time on earth is sandwiched between two periods of eternity. We originated from eternity. We are born. We live our lives. We die. We slip back into eternity. We all originated from Heaven but not all would spend the second half of eternity there. Our destination would be a direct consequence of our choices on earth.

4. Eternity is a realm that doesn’t have time and space delineations. The eternal is also the spiritual since it can’t be picked or sensed by our senses. However, there are interactions between the eternal and the physical.

5. Man is a Spiritual being with a Soul and a Body. As a result, Man, in himself, is the link between the eternal and the physical worlds.

6. The Eternal controls the Physical. The physical world deals with all that can be seen, felt, smelt, tasted or heard through the senses. The physical world also originated from superiorly perfect versions in the Spiritual realm. Thus, Man has two realities: An eternal one he senses with his spirit and the physical one he senses with his sense organs. Man CAN influence his two realities by his choices and actions.

From my highly simplistic approach, it’s evident that man can have the best of the two realities. Nothing in the physical happens arbitrarily without an influence from the spiritual. So many are just concerned with living here and now. Stop cheating yourself. It’s God’s will for man to have the best of the two realities, even on this side of eternity!!!

N.B: Tapping into the Spiritual reality without God’s covering is writing an invitation letter to the forces of evil. These can manipulate your perception of the spiritual reality. You have to believe in God to experience the benefits of the spiritual reality. Here on earth and also in Heaven.

The Morning After

After our exams, the other day, I played video games to stupor. Whereas, a few other people went on to read inspirational books. They just couldn’t stop reading!
After the powerful church programme I had prayerfully prepared for, I went on a sleeping spree.
Whereas, my pastor just kept on praying like nothing happened. He just couldn’t stop!
What do you do immediately after a hard-earned success? Do you bask in the euphoria of completing a taskful assignment? Or you go back to the habit that initially brought the success to you?

After achieving success, the temptation is always there to relax and soak in all the comforts and adoration that success brings with it. After all, success is a product of one’s hardwork. However, the attitude to success is where the delineation between great men and exceedingly great men are made. While great men feel they have earned their rest after achieving success, exceedingly great men don’t do that. They return to the drawing board, restrategize and prepare to strike again. Habits die hard. And that’s why they are always ready to move to the next level.

The Secret of Greatness is The Mystery of The Morning After.

No Equilibrium

There are certain laws that govern the way things happen on earth. I’m not the laws of physics or chemistry. No, I’m talking about the laws of life. These laws have been established by God Himself such that their principles hold in the lives of any individual regardless of religious affliation, age, sex or race. An example of such law is the law of giving. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you do, once you give, you would always receive. That’s how God works.

However, a very important law that its principles govern our activities in life is what I’d call the Law of Equilibrium. I’d state the law simply as, ‘There is NO equilibrium state in life’. That’s the law. And it’s true. The same way a see-saw would never remain at rest in a horizontal plane. In all of life’s endeavours, be it physical (such as working) or spiritual (such as praying), you are either having an upward trend or a downward trend. The moment you think you have attained equilibrium, be careful, you just might have started going down…

Ruminate on this: ‘…No man, having put his hands to the plow, and looking back, is fit…’. That’s the power of Equilibrium!

Praising The Devil

Africans are the most religious people in the world. And Nigerians are the most religious Africans. And the Yoruba people are the most religious Nigerians. I’m African, I’m Nigerian and I’m a ‘Yoruban’, so believe me, I know what I’m talking about.

In my few years, I’ve heard numerous testimonies being shared. However, it’s sad that just a few of these ascribe the glory to God. In this part of the world, the testifiers either give glory to pastors of their churches or the devil. In fact, many times, you’d hear testifiers say:
‘Praise the God of our pastor….’ (Isn’t He your God too?), or even
‘I shouted Jesus and nothing happened, but everything got better when I called pastor…’ (That you are miserable, is the understatement of the year!)

However, giving praise to the devil has become so rampant in our churches here. Of course, it’s never done directly. Nobody would shout on the pulpit, ‘Praise the living devil’ without being hauled out for a deliverance session. But when someone’s given 10 minutes to share a testimony and the individual goes on to use over 9 minutes to tell us how wickedly cunning the devil is. This person doesn’t even mention God or His Might once! I can tell you, that’s tantamount to praising satan. I can’t fathom why this phenomenon is rampant in this part of the world. Maybe it’s the harsh economic conditions, the first-hand poverty and the general mentality. Whatever the reason, I’m sure of one thing: The devil has no power and shouldn’t be praised. The guy shouldn’t even be mentioned at all. We are meant to package the best form of insult for him, which is simply not acknowledging him at all.

The Israelites and the Philistines faced-off for war in I Samuel 17. Goliath, the giant Philistine champion, dared the Israelites to send a man to fight him. What struck me most was how the Israelites were able to know the giant’s exact height and the materials that was used to make his wargear. They even got an accurate weight of all his wargear. Commendable, considering that they did all these from a far distance! But enter David, who failed to recognize Goliath as a threat. To him, Goliath was just mere statistics, a trophy waiting to be added to his previous collection of a bear and a lion. David made God his focus and everything else fell into perspective. God responded by adding more victories to David’s belt. This is the same approach we should adopt when sharing our testimonies. Don’t tell how big your challenges were or how mighty the devil was. Instead, let’s know how big God is; how great and diverse His numerous wonders are.

Bleeding Bland Blood

In the days of old, the eyeballs of the Medical Profession were at the patellas. All were in the darkness of ignorance, groping via trial and error. Dirty gloves were used and reused till they tore. Single needles used on multiple patients. Painful surgeries without anaesthesia. Surgery equipments were not sterilized. In fact, ‘sterile’ was accepted as standard medical practice as recently as the early 20th century. Thank God for advancements in science!

Bleeding was one of the crude practices carried out by the doctors of those days. They would usually bleed a terminally ill patient, with the hope that ‘old contaminated’ blood would be flushed out of the body! As you probably guessed right, these patients were usually bled to death.

The logic behind bleeding in those days was plausible, but was not practical for a number of reasons. For instance, blood is needed to transport materials such as oxygen, food nutrients and waste round the body. Bleeding a terminally sick patient was always going to make matters worse. Also, ‘flushing’ out ‘old blood’ isn’t going to do anything if the basic cause of the sickness was not found. Even if it could, it would take weeks, if not months for the ‘new blood’ to meet the required volume necessary to support life!

Thankfully, doctors don’t bleed patients nowadays. But as individuals, we should NEVER stop bleeding ourselves. Figuratively, of course!
We all have character flaws that we aren’t happy with.
We find ourselves in circumstances we’re uncomfortable in.
We all want a better quality of life for ourselves and loved ones.
But are we ready to bleed?
Are we ready to take a leap of faith and let go of whatever we already have in order to get what we are anxiously looking for?
Are we ready to release the old to make room for the new?
Are we ready to jump headlong into uncertainty?
I can’t answer these questions for you. But as you are pondering on these matters, I wish you a Happy Bleeding in advance.

P.U.S.H

Sometimes ago, I watched a particular Hollywood movie. I think the name was ‘INCEPTION’. It starred Leonardo Di Caprio. The plot of the film was interesting.

It had a lot to do with dreaming. Dreaming in a dream. Sharing a dream with numerous people. However, of all psychological jargon in the film, one made a mark in my mind. It was called The Jump. This was explained as a push or nudge that suddenly changes your altitude from a higher to a lower plane. It’s this change in altitude that causes one to wake up from a dream.

We all have dreams, visions, aspirations and goals. But we are always content to remain in the Theatre Of Dreams. It’s been said that any man who wants his dreams to come true must wake up. But, even while awake, many still remain in the dreamstate. There’s nothing wrong with dreams or visions. However, we must wake up to create the ideals we dream about.

To awake from our blissful slumber, we all have phenomena that nudge us awake. For some, this could be in the form of the activities of encouragers. Others aren’t so lucky, as they are rudely awakened by life’s harsh realities: unemployment, poor health, poverty, etc. In spite of these, we have a place we can all run to where we are in need of a nudge that would wake us up to bringing our dreams to the real state. That place is the place of Prayer.

Are you in a dire need of a nudge or a P.U.S.H? Praying Until Something Happens (P.U.S.H.) could be your best bet in creating the ideals that you waste time dreaming about. Try Prayer. It works!!!

The Platinum Set: Odd And Unique (Part 7)

If we had exceptional results at the end of freshman year, we could cross to Medicine. And so many of us did excellently well. Hopes were high. Excitement levels were fever pitch. Some started buying textbooks for Premedical classes.

Then again, the oddly unique thing happened. There was a new provost in the College of Medicine who wasn’t so excited about crossing into Medicine. So, he banned it for that year. Again, this was the first and last time something of this sort happened.

We were heartbroken. We were disappointed. We had had high expectations that we had missed up to 5 weeks of lectures in our parent department. Everywhere looked bleak. Many of us were further disillusioned by our senior colleagues who told us that all we achieve as a physiologist graduate was a lecturing job. That sent shivers down our spines! So, that ‘disorientation’ caused us to search within and without for what we could do with our lives. Now, we are still pretty much confused. But this time, it isn’t because we don’t know what we want to do. No, it’s because we are spoilt with various mouth-watering career paths to pick from!

As I glance over my shoulders, I can’t help but to see God’s hand at work in The Platinum Set of students admitted into Physiology in 2009. He caused us to be beacons of light in a place where that had been the darkness of anonymity. He caused us to be rivers in a dry and weary land. We are salts that are adding flavour and taste to where there was none before. Despite all the ‘oddities’, we have pulled through. Suddenly, we find ourselves as a point of reference, as a result of our ‘uniqueness’. We are condemned to Greatness, so, you’d better stand by to be stunned!!!

CONCLUDED.

The Platinum Set: Odd And Unique (Part 6)

Another chemistry course was Inorganic Chemistry. Majority of high school chemistry was inorganic. So, my approach to preparation for this course was lax. Soon, it was exam time and when I saw the questions, I almost chewed my pen halfway. There were 50 questions, each starting with ‘WHICH IS ODD?’. Then there were 5 extremely similar options to choose from. How were we expected to fish the right answer out? Well, all I know is that I passed!

We also had fond memories of our Physics courses, especially the BASIC PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS II. The name struck me as something like a movie series. Interesting.

However, when the time came for the exam, I didn’t find anything amusing about the course. The course was just too abstract. I couldn’t relate with it. I had never been a fan of cramming stuff and I would never be. That’s why I try to understand whatever I’m taught. The bottomline’s that I had never before in my life written an exam like this one! There were options for each question. And naturally, only one was the correct one. Only that, I couldn’t relate to the questions. They were hostile. The fans in the exam centre were on, yet I remember sweating profusely.

I had 2 hours for the exam. An hour and half later, I was at Question 3. Out of 35! I was even sure the answers I picked were correct. Soon, I saw my self shading the answer paper randomly. It was THAT bad! At the end of the paper, I was earnestly praying to have the passmark, which was 40%. I knew I had no hope of passing. Eventually, when the results were out, I passed and got higher than my expectations.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Platinum Set: Odd And Unique (Part 5)

Physical Chemistry had been overhyped for us. And rightly so. The Almighty 157 was responsible for sacking over 100 students the previous year! Everyone was afraid of being nipped at the bud. So, many faced the course, at the expense of other courses. Different weapons were flashed in the face of the enemy course. I started reading overnight, solving past questions, going for classes earlier than normal, and the works. It was also at that time I started praying like I won’t read and reading like I won’t pray. It paid off. At least for me. 70% of the students who wrote the course failed it. I didn’t get a ‘WOW’ score like I used to in high school. But hey, I didn’t fail!

The funny thing about this course was the exam format. All past questions that I used for practice were in the Multiple Choice Format (MCq). However, in my set, the format was changed! We had to fill answers into blank gaps! I never fully grasped the course but I had been relieved that there would be options to work my calculations towards. And, as was the case of the UME scores, the format was reverted back to MCq after my set. And it has not been tampered with again!

TO BE CONTINUED…