Living The Abundant Life

A good population of people living in this world are Christians. This is is an undeniable fact as we see many fully packed Christian denominations and ministries all over the globe, working miracles and wonders. We have also seen powerful miracles being worked by many men of God on their flocks and it is really amazing to see this. It is, however, surprising that much as many people follow the Christian faith a big number of the "Christians" do not live a Christian life at all. This can be observed in the actions and attributes of the many Christians around the world. I want to focus much on two things; actions and outcomes of Christians.

To begin with, being a Christian is all about oneness with Christ. it is about following the Master, Jesus Christ, who came on Earth to live as an example to us all. The Bible gives us evidence that Jesus came as man, but still persevered the very same conditions every man at that time went through, but He stayed faithful to the Father, living without sin. Philippians 2:5-7 says, "But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." This shows that as Christians, our actions can be, and need to be in line with what our Master, Jesus Christ was preaching and doing. We also have to keep it in mind that our actions influence the people we see and thus we have to live as the light to the world, with Christian actions always.

As Christians, we also need to live as Christ Himself for the reason that the very moment that we gave our lives to Him, we ceased to live and He lives in us. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians said, "I  have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."(Galatians 2:20). These are the words every Christian should be speaking, not only by the word of mouth but also through their good actions which will bring light to the world.
As Christians, we should also live to be bearing Christian fruits in our day to day lives. This originates from the purpose that Jesus came on Earth for as stated in the Gospel of John. Jesus Himself said, "The thief comes not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10. The abundant life Jesus was talking about was not just the Spiritual life that we have, but it encompasses all the areas of life, be it our spirituality, economics, academics, relationships and our social life. A life of a Christian is meant to be successful in every possible way, but for many this has not proved to be the case for many reasons. The reason this has been the case for many, however, is that they refuse to put God first in everything.

Many of us have grown with the mentality that we encounter God when we go to our various church gatherings and nowhere else. The implication of that is that we see many Christians who can do mighty and wonderful works in church settings failing to do well in academics, finances or even in their relationships life.

In academics, as Christians we are supposed to be achieving a lot in our studies, understanding everything we learn and applying it wherever needed. This is achieved when we accept who we are spiritually and choose to apply it in our academic circles. The Bible in Isaiah 11:2 talks of how the seven Spirits of God, among them the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of understanding were on Jesus. If we follow the same Jesus, we will have the same knowledge and understanding and we will apply it in our academics for our good and the good of the people we will serve. As Christians in various academic institutions we also need to take into account Jesus' attribute of hard work. Throughout His 3 year ministry Jesus impacted on a lot of people because He could not stay idle in a place when He had work to do. That is what every Christian should always strive for; working hard to achieve better. On the other hand, we also need to consider our academic stance as a gift from God, and to honor Him we need to use them best as a platform to show how Great the God we serve is, all by achieving better grades that are coupled up with understanding of the material we learn.

Finances are also another important area where God's influence is important in our lives as Christians. Most of us have been disoriented by teachings that denote money as being evil, but that is not the case. Even our denominations(almost all) have an offering basket every time there is a gathering. If we think of money as evil, are we saying we have offering baskets for evil during our gatherings? Obviously not. Even the running of our church structures needs the very same money and it has to come from the pockets of the very Christians who gather therein. This is where also the abundant life which Christ talked about comes in on financial circles. People of the early church lacked nothing because of their full dependence on God. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles highlights that the early believers sold everything they had and gave the money to the church so that everyone could get some according to his needs. This full dependence on God can also be elicited practically in our lives in the modern days in many various ways and thus people need to stop looking to their earnings as the thing that keeps them running, trusting in God with all their finances always.

Our man-woman or boy-girl relationships also need to be influenced by God in our lives as Christians. As the Bible says, every good gift is from God(above) (James 1:17) and thus a good relationship also comes from God. This is also evidenced by Proverbs 19:14 which says, "Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD." This shows why most of the Christian youth do not succeed in their relationships life. It is simple because most of us choose to separate our relationships life from God that we can venture into relationships without praying about it. This is a very big mistake because once we do that, it means we have overlooked our God in our move to get into a relationship, and that relationship becomes not of God. As a result, God does not sustain such a relationship and most of those lead to breakups, for the simple reason that they are not from God. From this, as Christians we need to learn to involve God in our relationships, because it is He who gives us every good gift that includes good relationships.

In every other aspect of life, we need to be like Jesus our master as Christians. In the Gospel of John(Chapter 15) Jesus said that He is the vine and that we are the vine's branches. This means that we need to be producing the very same good fruits of goodness and success that Jesus produced in His life on Earth. That is the standard of Christian life every Christian should strive for. Let us keep in mind that there is more in Christianity than what happens at church.

Your enemy, the Devil

The word enemy is not new in the vocabulary of anyone reading this at this stage. It is so widely used, but I have just discovered that it is one of the mostly abused words in the world right now, mostly because people do not know their enemy.

For the purpose of this discussion, I will choose to define an enemy as someone who wishes another person bad luck, and is ready to do anything bad to the other particular person.

It is not so surprising nowadays to see somebody call another person a hater or an enemy, terms whish bear no difference to me as they all bear and element, not of love but of something more than the opposite of love-hatred for one another. People have grown to live with the belief that they have enemies; other people who they mostly believe are bad or evil. They have ended up fighting their so called enemies, bringing others down in the course of the action and affecting many innocent souls just because of one thing, not knowing their enemy.

The Bible in the first letter of Peter, on chapter 5 verse 8 says, “Be alert, be on watch! Your enemy, the Devil, roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” Peter, when writing his first letter to all of us tells us that our enemy is the Devil. He did not talk of any person or group of people being an enemy to anyone of the Christian community. Not even the ones that do not wish us well. It is so unfortunate however that hated and enmities exist, sometimes even within and between various denominations, all of which preach the same name of Christ, which raises so many questions considering that our only enemy is the Devil.

Why then, do we still have enmities between people and among groups of people? Simple as the answer to the question may seem, it has caused a lot of havoc, and a lot of people have fallen from the heavenly places they were supposed to operate from, just because of this. It is simply the work of the Devil that causes these divisions and sprees of hatred feelings among people. Being clever, He makes it all look as if He is not behind it and we can hardly notice it.

I will take a simple example of a situation in which someone insults you, or maybe slaps you. Most of us typically rush to act on the person by fighting back physically. One thing we forget is that there is something or some force behind, that propelled the person to do whatever he or she has done to us. We forget that the actions of the person have actually originated somewhere far beyond the mind of the person.

Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in His own image. By being created in God’s own image, one of the attributes of man, that all other creatures do not have, is the capability to produce the very same good fruits God can produce, and the capacity to be what God can be-LOVE. God created man to love, but when man sinned and lost his authority to the Devil, hatred was born on Earth, spreading out its consequences around.  Jesus Christ came to restore that image of God that we were created in, and by his death, the image of God was restored to those who are of the kingdom, those who are in Him. It is by this fact that all of us Christians need to have true love for all mankind. The Devil however, influences some actions in our surroundings, mostly through people around us, hiding behind them just to lead us into thinking that they are our enemies.

If for example, the Devil tempts someone into stealing from your possessions, mostly we tend to have negative feelings and intentions on whoever is responsible for the action. We, most of the times opt to deal with the person physically by inflicting all sorts of pain on others, as a mode of punishing or just out of the hatred that comes as a consequence of the bad action directed towards us. Some of us, for the fear of not appearing as bad and unforgiving people do not take action physically but we go on to pray that ad things should happen to someone who has done us something bad. One thing we need to understand now is that by just wishing somebody bad luck or by inflicting any sort of pain on someone, be it physically or spiritually out of hatred because of what the person has done to us, we are making the Devil accelerate in fulfilling his mission of taking with him as many souls as he can to hell. By the time we get to do something bad to a person, who happens to have done something bad to us, we should know that the Devil’s action has already caused one person to sin, against God through doing us wrong, and that when we revenge the wrongdoing we are the second victim of the Devil’s temptation, which was originally targeted at one person. When we revenge, however, we trigger an endless cascade of events which tend to affect more people, instilling even more hatred in even more people.

We as Christians need to control things by making sure that we are the stopping points for hatred. When someone does us something bad, we should not go on our knees, praying and fasting that he or she gets hurt. Those are some of the “spiritual” mistakes that we make as Christians. We should, as real followers of Christ, strive to live by the words Jesus himself said, in a very clear way that need no complex interpretation mechanism. In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 6 verse 27 says,” But I say unto you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you”. Jesus commands us to love those who do not wish us well, no matter how they may hate us. He tells us to do good to them! Just imagine what you would feel if someone you hurt had done you the best thing in your life! I do not know how you would feel, but for me, I would never feel like repeating the thing again. Verse 28 says,” bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you”. Blessing them that cure you and praying for those who do you bad things has one big purpose of making them realise how good God is and what His love, that should be in all of us is all about. This is why when we take those that have trespassed against us to God in prayer we should always be mindful of what we say about them. Binding them does not do anyone good. It just worsens the situation. Pray for them that they may realise the way of truth and that they should never succumb to the Devil’s temptation enough to hurt us again.

When we take things in our own hands in dealing with our ‘enemies’, what we do is just nothing less than serving as the Devil’s instruments of bringing disorder on Earth. I strongly believe that if Christians are to view the root cause of the bad things that happen on Earth with this viewpoint, there would be love flourishing, and that the world would be a better place to live on. I also believe that there wouldn’t be any rivalries between any religious groupings which lead to the downfall of many Christians.

I finish this with a plea. As we live and see people do all sorts of bad things to us or even people around us, let us not rush to condemning them. We should look at the root cause of the problem and pray that they may be freed from the Devil, because no human being is our enemy, but our enemy is the Devil. Let us also learn to be good to others so that we can portray a good image to others, making them lead a righteous life by not leading them into sin with our provocative actions.

Christianity involves a lot of battles, so KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

A Life of Trust in God

So many times many of us have prayed to God, looking for some of the things we desire, but God seems not to hear our prayers. Sometimes we even fast and sow seeds for things but they seem not to appear and sometimes we feel that maybe the Lord is too far or maybe not available for us. Some of us even lose our trust in the Lord and take things in our own hands, overlooking the fact that we have to let God be God. I just want to share with you now some few principles of a life of trust in God.

The best definition of a life of trust in God does not lie in the thought that God will provide to us everything that we want. True trust in God lies in the belief that God will provide us everything as He promised us.

This trust in God works best because God has promised us so many things In our lives through Christ Our Lord. If you read the Bible and just check out how many scriptures talk about what we have in Christ, you will be amazed with what you have in the life in Christ. The promise I want to share with you now, is however the one that is in the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians. In Chapter 4 verse 19, the Bible says, “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus”.

God here says that He will provide us with ALL OUR NEED according to His riches in glory by Christ. He is not saying that He will provide everything we desire, but the things we need. Sometimes we wonder that when w e pray, some of the things that we ask for do not turn out exact, the way we want them. This is because sometimes we ask for wants that are not even good for our spiritual lives and our lives in general, and God does not give them to us just to protect us from their impending consequences.  We tend to give up on Him, forgetting that all the things work for the good of those who put their full trust in God (Romans 8:28).

One thing we should always keep in mind is however that our prayers, powerful as they might be do not change the mind of God! You might be surprised at this, but the logic is simple. God wants the best things for us, so when we are praying to Him, we are just asking Him to fulfil His own perfect will for us.

This is why we should always let God be God in our prayers, because sometimes, we never know what to ask from God, but He knows our best need to us, and is always willing to provide it, for the Glory and honour of His Holy name.  

God’s plans are to construct us and not to break us (Jeremiah 29:11). He is there to help us make the Best out of ourselves. This is why our plans work best when they are in line with His perfect will. Let us take the example of Jesus, who let God be God even at the point of His death. He even said,” Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

Letting God’s will be done helped him get the strength He needed in His situation, and that is the same thing that will happen to us if we trust God fully, knowing that His plans are for the better life of us and the world at large.

Our standard in life should be that of full trust and dependence on the Lord for He is there for us always, making sure that we move in His very best. In all things, let us give thanks to Him knowing that whatever He does, He is willing to take us to greater heights. Even if He doesn’t give us the things we desire, let us give Him thanks for that, because that makes a difference between a person who trusts in Christ fully and another who does not. This is what makes the difference between Christians to whom Christ commits himself and the “Christians” to whom Christ has not committed (John 2:22-24)

If you thank Him fully for not giving you something you asked for knowing, that He has the best for your life, God knows you really love Him and trust Him, and He leads you into knowing Him more and more.

Let us all redefine our trust in God, to live and fully trust Him. You will never regret, because the Lord knows and has the best for you.

One more scripture: Habakkuk 3:17-18. Take this scripture as the standard of your life, making sure you praise and thank God for each and everything, even in unpleasant situations. Something big will happen to you that way. I just don't know how big.

Stay Blessed. 

Welcome to Richie Online

Hello everyone. In the first place, I would like to thank you for spending your time to have a look of what is on this blog. This is a blogging site that has been created by, me Richard G Kamwezi, to, as indicated above, act as a platform for the improvement of various aspects of our lives through the sharing of knowledge, especially on things that affect us young people.

There are so many things that surround the life of the youths in this country nowadays in all the aspects of life. These things range from our social life, academics, relationships, finances and above all our spiritual life. As young people living in the ICT age, we spend so much time on the internet, searching for various sorts of information and social networking. I have taken advantage on the improved connectivity to the internet to share the little I have with my fellow youths and whoever might be interested with the content I will be posting on my blog.

As I will be sharing to you the little knowledge God has blessed me with through the posts made on this blog, I would like to ask you to keep checking the posts regularly and to keep giving feedback and suggestions on how to improve on it because this is all for you, dear people.

I hope that we will keep sharing and that you will be giving me your feedback and additions.

Enjoy!