Why I will not be imitating Ronaldo anytime soon

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When most people hear the name Ronaldo, they think CR7, Portuguese goal machine, the main man at Real Madrid. Before Ronaldo, there was another Ronaldo, the original Ronaldo. The Brazilian no 9, scourge of defenses, before injuries and weight gain robbed him of his blistering pace.

Apart from his ridiculous haircut at the 2002, the other thing that was synonymous with Ronaldo was his trademark finger-wagging celebration. It was a gesture fans were fond of, if you weren't in the opposition-that is.

Ronaldo frequently used this gesture, given his goal scoring prowess, but he isn't the only one to use it. The finger-wagging gesture is more commonly used when you are passing judgement on somebody, warning them, expressing your criticism of their behavior. More often than not, people shy from doing it openly to avoid being deemed hypercritical.Instead, they wag their fingers inwardly or criticize others via words.

People do this a lot, Christians even, to damaging effect. As much as sometimes people pass judgement with good intentions of correcting somebody else, sometimes it's taken a little bit too far. It has taken me some time to learn that discipleship is not about fixing people. It's not about constantly scrutinizing their sin and carrying out jicho-pevu like investigations to see what offense they've committed this time. As much as we have a right to point out somebody's mistakes, it shouldn't be our focus 24/7.

Sometimes mistakes/shortcomings are 'identified' before they even happen just based on the fact that someone did something wrong in the past and all the signs are leading to him/her doing it again. Judgement is passed swiftly without one knowing all the facts and swiftly concluding that he/she/them is in the red because of how things appear to look on the surface.

The log in my eye and the spec in somebody else's, quite a contrast Jesus made between the two. Romans 2:1 reads, "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things."

Just because I sin differently to somebody else shouldn't give me the right to obsess and whine about their iniquites, I may have far more greater than sins than I would care to think or talk about. It was then that I was conveniently reminded, that if God could remove the log from my eye, which he has done severally, why should it be hard for him to remove a spec from another's eye without my involvement? Is he too limited to do that? Not at all!!!

As I have grown in my walk with Christ, overcoming temptations, iniquities and growing in my knowledge of Christ, pride has sadly never been to far from my life. Pride has a habit of attributing victories that were God's to myself. Pride has seen me mistakenly think that the child of God I am today was primarily my doing or that the reason I don't struggle with sins that someone else does is because of my will. Big, big mistake. Fortunately for me, God's word rebukes and I stumbled upon Romans 3:10-11 which states that there is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no- one who seeks God.

Instead, Philippians 2:13 insists that it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Picture that. God working in you to worship himself, to be righteous, because by yourself, as Romans 3:10-11 implies, you would never seek him. I cringe at the very thought. It humbles me, nullifying any reason I have to wag the finger at someone else.

Ephesians 2:8-9 is yet another timely reminder. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no-one can boast. Salvation isn't a one-time thing, it's a process of 3 tenses, justification, sanctification and glorification.

You are first saved or justified when you admit you are unable to save yourself from the consequences of sin and you believe that only Jesus Christ can do that, because of the perfect self-sacrifice he made to God on the cross so that we may have eternal life. On believing he did so and accept his gift of salvation, we are forgiven, made right with God and justified as if we had never sinned.

It doesn't end there. Being forgiven doesn't mean one is free from sin's influence/temptation. One can still sin even if they have accepted God's gift of salvation. The underlying fact is that they are no-longer slaves to sin, they are saved through sanctification, sanctification being the process by which God delivers us from sin's power over us. It is where God makes us holy by giving us the strength to resist sin's influence and overcome it from time to time rather than meekly submit to it because we are human and it is our nature.

I believe this is very critical to the finger-wagger like me, because the third tense which is glorification, salvation through deliverance from sin's presence is only attained when we die. No-one alive is glorified yet, only being sanctified. Sin is still with us and we need God to deliver us from it's influence, we can't do it by ourselves.

I am holy not because I chose to be, but God compels in me a desire to be holy. I seek God through quiet time, through small group fellowships, through witnessing, not because of my own will but because of the Holy Spirit within me who strengthens me and convicts me of righteousness.

I'm not saying, leave it all to God, I'm saying any victory you have over sin, any righteousness you have acquired is by faith, God doing it. I can't laud it over others and sneer at them for struggling because God is ultimately the one responsible for my growth; not me. Therefore, I have no right to wag my finger at another.

Christ urged us to make disciples and by all means, we should do what our loving saviour commanded us to do. Make others follow him, make others thirst after him, follow Christ, follow his teachings, more so by modelling him yourself. Christ came to save the world and not condemn it, the only sinless man had the right to have finger wagging as his trademark but didn't so who am I , with my numerous sins to wag my finger at others.

He corrected them gently, allowing for restoration and I pray that I may learn to do it as much and leave the finger-wagging and the fixing him to him alone because he has proven in my life to be the ultimate fixer, a gentler one at that, may I just be the one to facilitate it with his wisdom and guidance.

Child-like faith vs Adult-like reason

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18th Birthday- Wooh!!!

20th Birthday- Awesome!!!

21st Birthday- Yeah!!

25th Birthday- Okay

26th Birthday- Seriously?!!

27th Birthday- Please, make it STOP!!!

Birthdays are days of the year we look forward to. Especially, as children. When Adulthood checks in, a massive paradigm shift occurs. Instead of anticipating them with eagerness and glee, we sometimes meet them with dread. You would think one more year of living life would be cause for celebration, instead, panic sets in at the realization that one's life is trundling towards the finish line,.

I know this for a fact because I've experienced it. I'm 27 now!!! I'm still very much in denial that I'm growing old. However, were I to consider the alternative, of dying early, then I appreciate that God has blessed me with another year.

As we advance in years, a part of us still wants to hold on to memories and experiences of our youth. A part of us still wants to be 'forever young'. A part of us still wants to live in the past of childhood and never grow old like Peter Pan.

For the child of God, this conflict of interests is a potential landmine. The battle that rages within, between the child-like self, that implicitly trusts, hopes for the best; and the adult self, that tends to rationalize things, leaning towards cynicism; can be subject to manipulation, the devil's manipulation and that of our sinful nature.

It is not without good reason that Jesus teaches us to model a child-like faith. For starters, God is trustworthy. He is love, He loved us so much that he sent his only son, Jesus, to show us how is like and then die for us to atone for our sin and reconcile us to God(John 3:16, I John 5:11-12, Galatians 2:20). God being the loving father he is, gives us good gifts,(Matthew 7:11) and if he could not spare his own son for us but gave him up for all, how will he not give us anything if he knows we need it(Romans 8:32)

Like any loving father who knows the significance of being present and the comfort children derive from knowing Daddy is there; God promises never to leave us( Hebrews 13:5). As kids, more so being sinful in nature, we can be prone to mess up but God forgives us, not just for our sake but his as well(Isaiah 43:25) and even when we don't think we deserve forgiveness or even when someone else doesn't think we merit forgiveness, he still forgives us.(Luke 15:11-32, Jonah 3-4)

Yet in spite of this, and more, our faith in God isn't as small as a mustard seed, worse, it's even smaller! Frequently, we lapse into moments of distrust and doubt in his good plan for us. In those moments, the Devil, uses an ingenious tactic, just like he did millennia ago with Eve, reason

He sidestepped God's command for Eve to trust God through obedience by leading her to reason and question if God was holding out on her; that the fruit was good for her. She fell and so did Adam, and he continues to use that as his trump card every now so often.

Reason is intrinsic to us, it's what make us human, it's what forms the basis for understanding and discernment, but on the negative, it is susceptible to Satan's manipulation when the foundation for our faith is substituted with manipulated reason. Reason is what he uses to lead us astray. It's usually packaged so well, with solid arguments and premises ,making it hard to dismiss. It may sound something a bit like this......

"This corrupt government steals my taxes, why don't I just understate my income. People get away with refusing to pay tax, at least I paid some of it."

" I am going to fail this exam, I am not going to graduate if I do, why don't I just cheat, I've worked so hard to come this far and it's only just to get a satisfactory grade, it's not like I want to be in the Dean's list or something."

"Let me just settle with this guy, I'm not sure I really love him but he loves me and he provides financial stability, good men are so hard to find any way."

" I have a loan to pay, along with rent, my kid needs to go to the hospital, this side-deal more than covers for those, I need the money, God knows I do. Who cares about policies and standard operating procedures?"

And the list goes on. Think of being rudely awaken by the alarm and hitting the snooze button because of thousands of excuses that run in your head telling you it's the right decision, that's the same way the devil operates alongside your sinful nature, feeding on the opportunity to sin if you let your guard down by rationalizing the act with every possible reason to make it seem valid. Most of the time, this flawed reason substitutes child-like faith to damaging effect.

When Abraham lied about Sarah, he reasoned he would be killed if he didn't so he lied. (Genesis 12,20)When David took a census, he reasoned that he could count his fighting men and by doing so, attribute his military success to numbers rather than God who granted him victory. (1 Chronicles 21)When Saul made a sacrifice, he reasoned that sacrifice was better than obedience (1 Samuel 15)

Reason ends up taking us places we later on regret after acting from reasoning it out. Child-like faith, on the surface looks crazy but it's the surest way to avoid the pitfalls of sin.

Child-like faith is comfortable not knowing the motives behind the commandments, it is okay not knowing the answers, it trusts, it believes and it obeys regardless of the command. Child-like faith is when Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, knowing without Isaac, it was crazy to foresee having numerous descendants like the stars. Child like faith is when Joshua  agreed to walk in circles even when the command made no military sense and was just borderline crazy. Child-like faith is when Naaman agrees to wash himself in the Jordan to get healed of an incurable disease

There is reward in the crazy. You may look stupid for pursuing integrity even when people are making money from unjust ways. You may look crazy pursuing sexual purity when sex is all around. You may look crazy when the world is shifting its convictions to allow for relativism while you stick to the bible. 

God is made manifest in such faith. God delights in responding to that crazy faith, not always immediately, not always as we expect him to or the way we want him to, but he responds to it all the same. Abraham's son was spared and the he had descendants as numerous as promised. After walking in circles the wall of Jericho came down. Naaman was healed after washing himself seven times.

Make no mistake, child like faith isn't easy for an adult, we want to know, we want to be certain, we want to logically and rationally work out things, but we must remember we are just children to a God, who is our father, who knows everything, who is in control of everything. He can work against the natural order of things like he did when he split the Red sea for the Israelites. He can move people's hearts to be favorably disposed towards you or your situation without you having to do anything to earn it like he did to King Cyrus towards the Israelites (Ezra 1). Even when other officials tried to foil those plans later on, another King is reminded of the favorable disposition and does the same(Ezra 5-6)

He can thwart the plans of those seeking to harm you like he did when Balaam tried to curse Israel.(Numbers 22-23). He is limitless in how we works unlike our limited ways with our reason. Not to mention, he loves us dearly as his children . Thus, we can respond to him in child-like faith and trust him to come through for us even if doing so appears crazy.  Whether it means waiting on him, whether it means taking a step of faith, whether it means refusing to compromise; child-like faith in our father, God, is the real deal.