Excellence

There was a time when I was really big on excellence. It's something that my Pastor talks about a lot you see and it's an attitude/way of life that is totally necessary if we are ever going to reflect Christ in our lives.

For any reading this who may be less versed in church speak.
Excellence / a spirit of excellence is a term for doing things to the best of ones ability and "going the extra mile".

I was first confronted by God's desire for me to manifest excellence in my life when I began working and I would attempt to cut corners, only to experience, erm, I suppose a sense of wrong doing in not doing things to the best of my ability as I would if, say, the area manager was watching me. An example was when I was in the stock room and there wern't many orders so I would be on the phone, reading the paper, drinking hot chocolate, revising for A-levels etc. The Lord convicted me anyway and I started finding work related things to do, even though nobody would see, but God sees init! As a brudda from work put it, "we don't need no (work) supervisor, we've always got a (eternal) supervisor". One of my workmates did notice though :).

So this attitude then began to spread throughout much of my life and I'm not gonna lie, it jarred my flesh quite a bit lol. I couldn't leave dishes to "soak" any more, no more 95% doing things, I had to be on time to Church and not 5,10,35 etc minutes late. The list goes on.

Recently, I feel that I've let this slip in some areas, specifically punctuality in regards to university. Getting out of bed for 9am lectures has never been such a struggle as in 2011. I've missed soo many lectures and I've been late to even more and it's not cool. It began when I believed I wouldn't be continuing my studies in Jan 2011 and so I became lax from then. This was clearly the enemy (crafty bugger) and now I'm in a war to get my excellence game back on!

I've been losing the war so far, I won't lie.

Time to get the big guns out! Time to become accountable!

But to whom?

Provision

I was at work after the shop had shut, just tidying up and stuff, as you do, when a God conversation suddenly broke out!

To say that I'm rusty in this area (of evangelism) is an understatement. It's quite sad actually. Lately however, I've been really inspired by God to go after the lost but in my head this takes the form of street and youth orientated evangelism. He did teach me (or re teach me) a valuable lesson about sharing the truth with others yesterday though.

What happened was, I was on the till and I had been making insinuations to my manager that she should come to church, having been inspired by another younger guy that works with me who invited her and told her it would change her life. This led to a full blown conversation with the usual spiritually blind questions and comments. "do you read the Bible every day then?", "do you pray every day as well?", "why does bad stuff happen to good people then? cos I'm a good person" and so on and so forth.
In all honesty I didn't have instant amazing answers for them, although I've been through all of this stuff before however I did manage to convey some understanding to them by God's grace lol.

You see the Lord dropped it into my spirit that there is a ripe harvest of lost and broken people who need Christ all around me and that evangelism need not begin with strangers on the street. I need not be intimidated by my own massive vision (if that makes any sense at all?) but must grow in Him and be faithful with little before I am faithful with much. I'm just really encouraged though, cos God kinda made the opportunity for me and now I'm gonna zone in an go back to work ready! Girded loins and all!(that's ready for action for those who are less fluent in Bible speak).

But there's more! When I was at home, Sarah contacted me and told me that a note I posted on Facebook ages ago, about the validity of the Bible, had been used in her Bible study to encourage and equip the bretheren. Material like that note being the very same stuff that I need to bring to the guys at work. God's provision is too nuts. Man said (hood term), what I needed was already on my own Facebook, plagiarised by my own hands! God's provision is too nuts and I'm amped at the prospect of people's broken, dreary, sad lives being transformed, renewed and filled with contentment!

Jehovah Jireh for real, and that's not just when the mortgage needs paying!

(Jehovah Jireh means the Lord who provides or the Lord our provider)

Discernment

God is faithful you know! Like "dem way dere" when sometimes you pray a casual prayer and then forget about it? Or even a serious one? Well God answered that prayer. It's nuts when you pray something soo in line with God's will that He's just like, "about time!", then BOOM the situation changes on ya!

Well my prayer was for discernment cos basically I believe that a lack of wisdom, ruthlessness and discernment can often lead to the downfall of a young Christian. I myself was quite ineffective for a while last year because I didn't discern the enemy's clever movements in my own life.

Let me take this opportunity to point out something that was revealed to me. Satan has been here trying to destroy us from Genesis so that's like 6000+ years and we, well... I, have been here for 20 years. Clearly he's got a head start on us and he knows exactly what he's doing ya dig? So we need a supernatural advantage if we are going to survive in this game of life and not just survive but run this race well and go to WAR! (more about war in the coming blogs)

So yeah, anyway, God answered my prayer nicely, just like when I prayed for wisdom when I was younger! For instance last Sunday we had a powerful service! It was beautiful, bare grown men crying at the front and that! Then afterwards there was some confusion as to which teams were meant to be doing what in regards to packing everything away the way that we found it (we rent a school hall you see). Basically some people left early without doing some stuff and it was left to others who weren't meant to be doing it and you can see how an argument was brewing between team leaders and members... *Sigh*

So then the Lord just showed me that the enemy was trying it after such a great service and I just let one of the leaders know and he was like "its true you know bro, thanks" and we all continued in one accord! *big grin*
That's just one example though, I've actually noticed this increased discernment like every single day lol. God is good man!

So erm yeah, discernment. It's great! Pray for it! Use it! Don't get taken out! Grace and Peace!

A Hungry Man...

I don't know what's come over me! I used to be hungry all of the time and then my hunger slowly faded to bearable but of late I've become ravenously hungry. No seriously! On a daily basis I suddenly become so hungry that I'm actually upset or even angry at times.

This new piercing hunger has led to me doing things which i consider morally wrong, like eating McDonald's. :(. There is a two sided story to food for me though. You see eating food makes me happy, really happy. Like, if I'm having the crappiest day I will just go to the Yard shop (Jamaican) and get some stewed chicken with rice and peas or ackee and saltfish with fried dumplings and it's like the sun suddenly shines on me lol. Or if I'm having a great day then it just makes my day even greater! (Currently have a big grin on my face just thinking about it)

So suddenly, the thought popped into my head... "what if my wife can't cook?". :o :o :o
It was a distressing moment for me I must say! You see my mum can cook and I'm used to a certain standard of cooking and not that I would expect my wife to cook every day but... well need I say more?

I plan to learn how to cook this year cos I can't really expect my wife to cook and me just chillax, although that's what my mum does now lol. #sigh

A hungry man is an angry man they say, but I suppose if she wanted to make me happy then she'd be able to deal with that.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5Mt2PLf9E