It was a bright, sunny, and beautiful April morning, and everything seemed perfect except that I’ll be leaving home later in the day to go for the Discipleship Walk. I’ve looked for every excuse in my book because I believed I didn’t need to go. My walk with God is steady, and I am devoted to living out my faith unapologetically. It took a nudge from the Holy Spirit to sign up to take a whole weekend off and head to…

The Jesus factor is rooted in absolution because His mission to die for the sins of mankind was once and for all. None before Christ and after Him can compare to anything He represents. He was a perfect human, and He is a perfect God. Abraham is regarded as the father of faith but even he can’t compare.

There are days I could run a thousand miles mentally, but there are also those days I take a long pause because I can't even move a limb. Today, the paths I could see clearly yesterday are cloudy, and all I can feel are walls boxing me into a corner. My strength from the dawn of the day becomes weakness from the night's somber clouds, and I just want to sit and rest on my Lord's shoulders.

As I walked into the hospital that afternoon, I didn't know what to expect. My heart was running fast because I was overwhelmed by all the sick people I saw. I didn't want to be there, but I had to be. I was in college, and a few days before, I'd received a message from one of my high school friends that Rashida…

I called all my kids to ask them who left things out of place in their play area and as usual, the three answers were the same “not me!” I’ve gotten so accustomed to this that I’ve learned a few detective tricks to fish out the guilty kid each time. I’ve lived with them all their lives, so to a large extent, I can predict who did what, based on their personalities.

It was another one of those episodes my mum had to go through. She had been sick off and on for years. But something about that night triggered questions in me to ask why. Knowing how much she loved God and how many people I’ve seen God heal through her devotion to praying and fasting for them, I couldn’t wrap my head around why she had to be sick.

My mother ran her race with Christ before her death and now I’m running mine with Him. While I have no doubt that she loved me, I also know she could not be everywhere with me, even when she was here. Her presence was limited by time and space between us when we were not in the same room. Even in the same house, she spent many hours daily, away from me.

Sitting on the hotel's patio, I looked at the sea before me and saw its vastness. The waves come in with a roar and recede with precision as if commanded. I tried to catch a glimpse of the end of it, but the more I looked, the farther it became. The ocean was majestic yet tamed by the greatness of God. It was a perfect reflection of the earth's beauty and the glory of its creator.

As I sat in church that day, I was overwhelmed by all that life threw at me. Like other times that I’ve felt burdened by a weight too heavy to lift, I knew I needed God to help ease my weary heart. The worship and message were great, but I needed something more, and a voice from Heaven would have been welcomed or a tap on the shoulder by a hand I couldn’t see.

The human definition of growth lines up with our sense of independence. A baby is deliberately weaned from its mother to teach him/her how to survive without the mother needing to feed it. The more a child grows, the less dependent he or she is on the parents. However, growth in walking with God is a flip of our understanding of what growing up means.

God has always used friends to keep me focused on Him and help me navigate through the complex curves of life. For every season I’ve experienced, there are people God surrounds me with to serve as sources of strength and vigor to my faith. I know that in my walk with God, my world would be a lot more difficult without others running the same race

God has been dealing with me recently, reminding me of His might and majesty. There is nothing more significant than the power of God, and He can do above all we can ask or think. I am a child of God, and it is He who made the Heavens His throne and the earth His footstool. He can move hills, change hearts, level mountains, and calm storms.

Although I was raised by Christian parents, I’ve not always been a Christian. I was born in sin, with the desire for sin, and I lived in sin. As I became aware of my conscience, sin only bothered me to the extent that it hurts others and if the law says anything is right, then I’m good. I built my own castle and ignored the nudging of the Spirit of God within, urging me to step beyond the

I heard a story from one of my pastors. He said while standing in the hallway greeting people as they left the church after service, he shook hands with a man, attending the church for the first time. Striking a conversation with him, he asked him how he enjoyed the service, and his answer was “It was great, but I don’t like Jesus sitting on my lap.”

We spend so much time thinking about what to wear to different occasions and putting our looks together takes effort. It also depends on where we are heading to. It’s easier when we are picking an outfit for movie time at home than movie time out of the house. What we wear and how we wear it speaks volumes about our personality and where we are headed.

Knowing who you are is the bedrock of whom you become. Growing up, my parents will always tell us to remember the daughter/son of whom we are. Although not present with us all the time, they want us to carry the silent creed of the family everywhere we go and to behave in manners that affirm our upbringing. The values my parents instilled in me play a huge role in how I approach the world around me.

When I became a Christian at age fifteen, my first desire was to start attending Church, fully. Although I attended Church with my family on some Sundays because my parents were Christians, it was impossible for me to attend as much as I would love to after I accepted Christ. We were only able to attend a few times a month because we moved farther away from Church and we had to depend on the Church’s bus to pick us up for services.

I’ve asked other people to meet me in the middle many times. It’s just a civil way of finding a common ground by reaching a compromise to gain something. When negotiating, people often ask to meet in the middle because no one wants to be on the losing end of a deal. Although a win-win situation is not always ideal or the best business deal, people prefer that because while you can lose some, you don’t want someone else to win all, at your expense.

I was having a conversation with my daughter, and we were trying to think of alternatives to serving Jesus, asking the question,” If not God, then who?” If the world so wants to pry me away from my savior, what alternatives does it offer me? Regardless of how you weigh it, it simply makes sense to follow God.

As we begin this new year, we reflect on the past year and acknowledge that it was by God’s grace we were not consumed. He was the steady hand that kept us up and the anchor that held our world above the waters. He was the peace that dispelled our fear and the love that shone through every hate and darkness. And as we start 2023, we surrender our all to Jesus and pray that each moment will be filled with His presence and that the world will grow in the knowledge of who He is.