By Oyet Alfonse
My fellow Christians have just concluded the commemoration of Easter festival, let us now walk together with him, stop deception, backstabbing and gossiping; they are the most dangerous behaviors which we should not carry along as they can lead to the destruction others’ lives. Let us learn the true love Jesus taught us; let us not only be good at eating at the back of our colleagues, let us stop trading our brothers and sisters to evil for wealth. Those are things which are hindering our development. They are dangerous.
The desire for abnormal wealth is an impact when we feel compelled to act a way that is immoral or living a lie because we want to fit in and be accepted by certain people. Nobody wants to be the person who gets talked about or laughed at. But, unfortunately, sometimes we lose focus of who we really are because it becomes more important to us to just fit in, especially when we’re young and immature.
Sometimes the love and yearn for money that we feel involves superficial things, like dressing a certain way to be considered cool, driving an expensive car, or sleeping in an expensive house. We have to have the name-brand outfits or costumes. Or maybe it involves doing things that we think every rich people are doing.
How do you feel when you add more pain to your longtime friend who is already suffering; you add more envy to frustrate them further by blocking their ways of success or job opportunities for our selfish interest? My brethren in Christ, we are not really far away from prince of darkness, the devil because we are drinking the blood of our own brothers for richness. If we continue doing so, how shall we develop and solve the problems of this country? For how long shall you continue with your deceitful behaviour?
The children of your brother, colleagues or relatives continue to suffer because you have killed the source of their livelihood for the reason that you don’t value their lives because you want to get rich or want to be known. How dare us! People are dying every day without clear course of the death, and here we are continuing with our business.
How many people here started to drink themselves silly and getting high because everyone else was doing it and they didn’t want to feel left out?
Maybe your friends were in on something and you went along and joined in because you didn’t want them to think that you didn’t have the heart or that you were scared.
Maybe you got caught doing something while you were just trying to fit in and go along with someone else. Or maybe you were the one who convinced one of your friends into doing something wrong. So, first off, we sometimes feel pressure from our friends.
I want to work with international organizations, United Nations or to move around the world. What should I do, I have to sell the soul or life of Mr. so and so? Why are you planning to do this? Is that how we Christians become rich or solve our problems? It is high time we stopped all these evil practices and seek for salvation to live a life of abundance and solve our problems.
If today you have become a killer of your longtime friends or relatives, how will you be tomorrow or how will people look at you? Will you be hiding? My brethren in Christ, I am pleading for the future of the young ones; be honest and sincere in Jesus’ and repent and he will give you salvation, make you a new person and give you eternal life. He will also restore the families of those whom you have destroyed. What do you expect your children to be tomorrow? Let us stop this up and down businesses and associations.
Nevertheless, if you are smart, you will eventually realize that there is no hope in pleasing the world, so why are you even trying? No matter what you do, there is going to be someone who wants to put you down. If you are really smart, they will say you think you know it all. If you are good looking, someone is going to say that you are conceited. If you are really thin or really heavy, someone will call you an ugly nickname. And if you talk too much about God, they will say, “Oh, so now you’re holier than thou.” They will always judge.
We should avoid having a Vulture-like behavior; we should be like an Eagle. An Eagle is usually successful on its first attempt when hunting for food. They strike their own prey, but Vultures always wait for another predator to make the killing and then swoops in for scraps after the hard work has been done; or swoop in after somebody else creates interest and simply undercut them to get the business. It is like an insecurity, envious, problem.
However, if you call yourself a follower of Christ, you are not supposed to even care what is going on with everybody else, let alone try to go along with it. 1 John 2:15-17 tells us, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passed away, and the lust thereof: but he that does the will of God abides forever.”
God’s word tells us that the last thing we should be trying to do is fit in with this world. Ephesians 4:17-18 reads, “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.”
If you are someone who blends in too easily with the crowd and you are comfortable being in the company of satanic or unsaved, rebellious people, then your Christian walk is obviously not where it should be. Psalm 1:1-2 reads, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standout in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law, he meditates day and night.” This verse is showing us that if we are comfortable being around sin, then eventually we’ll be taking a part of that sin. But instead of finding enjoyment in relationships with wicked people, your delight, the thing that gives you pleasure, should be found in the things of God.
In the end when you die and face God alone, will any of your peers matter then? No matter what clothes you wear or how much money you have or how much respect you get in your neighborhood, none of that is going to be able to help on Judgment Day. God is not going to look at you and say, “Oh, you have on name-brand clothes or wealth. Come on in.” “Oh, you had much respect in your neighborhood. I’m impressed.”
The Bible says that on Judgment Day, when the books are opened, only one thing will matter. Are you righteous or unrighteous? There is only one way to stand righteous before God, and that is through Jesus Christ. When you die, will you end up in hell with Satan and those other people who never cared about God, or will Jesus step up and say, “He’s with me, he obeyed me” Don’t you realize that no matter what you look like, whether you have nice clothes or not, no matter what the file that challenger has on you says, Christ is willing to say, “I’ll take him.” What do your so-called friends have to offer that compares with that?
So, if any of you in the past have wondered why God hasn’t answered your prayers and changed your circumstances and gotten you out of here, instead be thankful that you have God to comfort you, and ask Him to open your eyes that you might see the lessons He would have you learn. 1 Peter 1:6-7 reads “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”