The morning time reveals every thought, conversation and deed of the night. Let your thoughts be pure, “be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.”
Our thoughts frame our entire being and lifestyle. May you be gracious enough to let love which is God to rule and guide your life because when He does, He makes a better person out of you.
But when you lead yourself, you only make mess of your own life.
It is unimaginable how comfortable it feels for some people to go to sleep through the night and all that runs in their mind is what evil ploy they can muzzle up only to ensnare another at the break of dawn.
Every time I consider all the evil that has become so rife in our society today, this biblical verse comes alive in my inside, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks…” Everyone give in accordance to or from what he/she has in the inside as everyone is solely a representation of what and who we are really are inside. If you see a person that is loving and caring, it’s because of the grace that resides in his or her inside – no one gives what he does not possess.
A natural man is incapable of true love and well doing because those are only qualities that found in a man who has been regenerated, a man who has come to the full knowledge of the salvation of Christ and the spirit of God which has come to make its aboard in us. We cannot do good at all, not in this life or the next outside Christ. The good we do is but one that has been imputed in us by Christ. The scripture says, “The heart of man is desperately wicked, who can understand it.” A natural man is only drawn to what is selfish and conceptually personal – the “me, myself and I” mentality.
My heart is rend into pieces when I think about the lives of those innocent people that were killed in their farms by the so called, “unknown gunmen.” Why these people carry that name unknown gunmen still amazes me today, in a country like ours, Nigeria, “the giant of Africa.” How long comes these men go faceless? How comes we’re not bothered about it? Why is the government not putting measures in place to curb and put a stop to this menace?
The gory pictures of those dead bodies spilled on the ground, being prepared for mass burial paints a picture of how sudden anything can happen to anyone of us by reasons of the insecurity that has befallen this nation. Strangers can walk into this nation any time, any day and do as they so please and nobody can say who or where they come from. But I’d like us to note this truth because it is no joke; houses can burn and be rebuilt. Wealth can be restored if lost. But human life is precious and priceless, there is no amount of money in this life can be evaluated with human life – you can’t replace human life when it’s lost. These are innocent lives for that matter, men and women who were only trying to survive, make a living, work out what to feed their families with. Those were lives of people farming on their own lands after the long months of toiling, the Covid-19 pandemic, the hunger suffered during the lockdown period. And here are people saying “leave this matter in God’s hand?” That is a mentality of a hopeless person. If God wants every matter left in His hands, He wouldn’t establish justice and there will be no peace without justice.
The big man sits in comfort, not bothering himself with the evil that is rampant in the society today because nothing bad or evil has happened around him. Every human being has found him or herself at difficult one difficult time or the other and must have been wondering what to do. You witness a situation that is just so unbelievable and you start to wonder; Why is the heart of man this wicked? Are we inherently depraved as a race? Or are we just a victim of the harsh circumstances we found ourselves living under.
I think there is really no absolutely right answer to this. I remember having this argument with a friend of mine once and he was of the mind that human beings are inherently wicked, and I choose to do, be the good advocate and be on humanities defence, and say that no human being is born wicked, and we are all as much capable of being good as we are capable of being evil. The only difference is the kinds of life we’ve known and the different situations to which we have been exposed to.
A point of contention was to go back to when we were children. I argued that children are peaceful, lovely and innocent creatures because that is our unfettered disposition and that is the dispositions we were all born with, but it is only after we’ve been born and we’ve been exposed to the ups and downs and hardness of life that we become evil. I told him what is to blame is not man himself but the system.
To me, it is the system and the scarcity of resources that makes men go to the extreme to get the needed resources they need for their survival. I told him, for example, that people will go to the extreme distances to protect their fellow man as much as they’ll go to the extreme to harm him. And most of the time these ţwo scenarios tend to clash. And it’s this clash that is the problem.
Which is why you will see a man having to rob his fellow man just to feed his family, because basically he is being forced to make a choice between the health and wellbeing of another man and the health and wellbeing of the people he loves, all because of the scarcity of resources and the system.
Now, he argued on the other hand, that man is inherently depraved and his wickedness can even be found in children. He said for instance that if you put two kids in the same place and give them candy, these two kids will fight over the candy rather than share. He said that this is because man is motivated above all things by self interest. He cited the writings of Ayn Rand as a coroboration of his point. Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926.
He said that self-preservation will always be the number one most important thing for men and that he will go to the farthest extent to ensure this, even to the point of hurting another man that may want to impede his self preservation.
It’s hard for an objective person to not see the validity in both arguments of course, but I told him that in the case of the children, candy is a limited resource and that’s the reason the kids will fight over it. He countered that as human on earth, resources will always be limited. And if I’m right that also means that man will always be depraved.
In the end, we decided to look it up on the internet and the only thing we found is that of course, there is no absolute principle on these things. We found articles of psychological studies that proposed that children can be very caring and might even put other children’s self-interest above theirs. And that this altruism is not limited to children alone, citing lots of scenarios that occurred where we see a human being putting his or her life on the line to save another human being,( for example there are women who jump in front of trains to protect her babies)
But we also found articles that seem to suggest that man is really inherently wicked. Either way, it depends on the way one looks at it.
As for me, I choose to believe that man immately good and that the only reason he’s bad is because of the things to which he has been exposed to in life, and the limited resources needed tho ensure his survival.
Needless to say it, but reference sakes, I make this adulations. This whole negative vibes started with the fall. Adam knew that God had commanded them not to eat of that tree of “Good and Evil” wherever was it Adam had gone to, whatever it was he went away to do, it is not told us but there was negligence in the whole happening. What was it that was so urgent that Adam had to attend to, to have left the duties God had assigned him? No excuses! And even when his wife presented the fruit to him, he didn’t ask where it came from. Of course, he could not have mistaken that fruit for anything else. Adam had tended that garden for awhile before this mischief maker came in to plant his seed of deception.
Then, followed are the episodes of Cain and his brother Abel. Adam and Eve lost both sons at that very moment when Cain stroke his brother dead. The story says that Cain ran away and became a wanderer, a vagabond on Earth – Cain had no specific place of aboard. He went from one place to another, aimlessly.
We have record of God conversing with Cain and through the early practices of Cain and Abel, we realize that God set aside the opportunity to show them the best possible approach to make penances and without a doubt showed them the reason it was important. The Bible says Enoch strolled with God and furthermore gives record of God particularly having discussions with Noah pre-surge. He had individual associations with these individuals and what He trained them was without a doubt go down to the youngsters through oral instructing.
So, God strolls with people He had invested something in, to give th instructions, direction and guidance to what they need to know and do per time. God never takes anyone on am aimless rollercoaster, He always bring us through successfully.
Any journey that’s taking you to aimlessly directions and messing up your shine isn’t God, you had better identify what or who is leading you on such journeys. When God leads you, the journey is always a fruitful one, He never allows you go through the pains of wandering because whenever He allows you in that direction, He provide the lifts and shocks to carry you through unhurt.
All we need to do is to go with Him in His simplicity so that our destination is secured but if we take it up from Him and begin to lead ourselves, we will loose it totally and maybe lead ourselves in our own directions in the thought and impression that God is leading our steps – we know for sure that we are leading ourselves but others who have no inkling where you’re going and what you’re doing get the impression, “it’s God leading you” probably because of how you have portrayed yourself. But we always know deep down inside of us who is really in charge – oftentimes ourselves.
If you want your peace of mind and joy to be intact, you need to let go and let God take the steering wheel. Let Him steer you through this quest for peace and satisfaction. Your satisfaction will not come from the material wealth you might have acquired, you worth might not come as a result of the numerous houses or beautiful times you have with friends and family. True joy comes from the fact that God has your back. The scripture says that a man’s worth isn’t measured by the amount of material things he has acquired.
Pastor Paul Adefarasin of House On The Rock Church said on The Rock Church online message he titled, “The Quest For Joy or Imperatives Of Joy” and I quote, “Everybody wants to be happy. But lasting and enduring joy or real happiness is never a function of anything that somebody gave you. In fact, you are designed by God to be happy. But He has also designed you such that the only source of true enduring happiness that doesn’t waver with circumstances in your life is He, God Himself.
The imperative then, is that you must fight for this joy to ensure that your sense of enjoyment is focused primarily on God, even though He will use things in the world that He has given to you to illustrate His very nature, His attributes, and His capacity to give you enduring and lasting joy over and above any of the happiness that you may get from the things that He has presented to you.”
I saw these principles somewhere and I think they will work well for everyone of us if we imbibe and learn to practice them. They teach us ways and manners of how to live and relate with people around us.
Protocol ways to treat others:
- When you meet young people – INSPIRE THEM.
- When you meet children – EDUCATE THEM.
- When you meet old people – HELP THEM.
- When you meet wise people – STUDY THEM.
- When you meet leaders – HONOUR THEM.
- When you meet foolish people – AVOID THEM.
- When you meet humble people – TREASURE THEM.
- When you meet arrogant people – IGNORE THEM.
- When you meet gracious people – EMULATE THEM.
- When you meet aspirational people – ELEVATE THEM.
- When you meet strong people – SUPPORT THEM.
- When you meet godly people – BLESS THEM.
- When you meet elderly people – RESPECT THEM.
- When you meet weak people – STRENGTHEN THEM.
- When you meet hardworking people – ENCOURAGE THEM.
- When you meet kind people – ESTEEM THEM.
- When you meet Honest people – PROMOTE THEM.
- When you meet virtuous people – REWARD THEM.
- When you meet evil people – EVADE THEM.
- And in all situation “Watch, Pray and wish everyone well”
Be blessed as you make adjustments in your life to be a better person. Make every effort to change.
insidetimsmind 
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