This has been a very good month. I have learnt about TULIP and experienced the updates that Apple has added to iOS 7.
All in all the beauty of life is further enhanced when one learns about things especially things that arouse one’s interests.
It has been a decent 30 days as well as a reminder that the year is going out slowly now but will eventually pick up speed.
Looking forward to a powerful October
I had some photography opportunity when I travelled recently and was opportuned to have a change of environment. It was good to see how people did things in their own way following their vision and make all the effort to achieve the ultimate goal one person at a time. Photography is one way of making sure that the nostalgia of the trip is continuous.
I had the opportunity to practice my photography by taking some pictures of people and places using my compact camera and I will post them later.
I did not have the best of luck most of the time because I kept getting a Memory Card Error which will not let me take a picture or look at the ones I have taken but I later found a way around it much later after the trip.
After taking the pictures I really appreciated the power of the Abobe Lightroom 5. It does an excellent work managing the pictures whether it is in JPEG, RAW or when asked to convert it to DNG.
I really think that everyone needs to have a way of managing their photographs so that with the proper keywords and ordering which is faily easy to do in Lightroom, all you need is to type in the event and voila! the pictures are in front of you in all their glory.
Slideshows are the best way to arrange the photographs for viewing purposes. After I select and edit the pictures of interest, I arrange everything the way I want it with intro and outro slides then I export it as a video which is then streamed to the TV with nice tune accompanying the transition within the video.
All in all, I believe the most useful item that affects my photography other than the camera is this software.
I am still editing my shots but it is just to much fun working inside Lightroom 5.
The Fatherhood of God is something that bothered theologians for a while in the past and in the process of defining it, some where labeled heretics.
While we have moved on and the theology of the Godhead can be said to be fairly resolved, there are still instances where one has to wonder if anything has been learnt at all.
Now I do not address those that as a matter of policy, principle and doctrine have issues with the fact that the Christ is the son of God or the same as the son of God, that is a discussion for another time. The issue here is focused on those that believe He is and that the Father is His father just like He is our father.
In most cultures around the world the place of the father is not disputed. Fathers are usually placed on a pedestal and you could almost say worshipped.
Children may easily overcome their mothers’ authority in some instances but when a Father is available, the respect that the Father commands when they play their role as expected is one of the most persistent around the world after all these years.
Well it can be explained that it is because most cultures are patristic which is true, more importantly, I believe it is because it is a natural ordained role for men to play a particular purpose in the family that this exists.
Where am I going with this you may ask. Well believing that when we come from where we agree, we can look at the things we don’t agree about.
That we call talk about the fatherhood of God shows that we have an understanding that He has a relationship with us, a relationship in which He has the Fatherly role. This is not something that just dropped on our laps, it is by virtue of learning and experience that we have come to see this role as how we can interact with him especially when we observe the teachings of Jesus Christ His Son. This write up is not to discuss our knowledge of the theology of the Trinity. It is to address the practice in some quarters with respect to Hallowing the Name of God and our relationship with Him.
A typical prayer in these quarters starts with a very loud shout of F-A-T-H-E-R two or three times which is then rapidly followed by a litany of requests. The impression you get is that of Rulers of a house commanding and demanding the presence of a slave.
But for understanding the meaning of the English word father you would think it was a subordinate being called.
The issue is this, if we have learnt from a young age to respect the fathers we have at home and even in our old age and improved social condition or otherwise still deal with them with utmost respect and even fear, how then has it become proper to shout out the name of the Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth, the immortal and invisible wise God. We cannot seriously say that this approach to prayer in anyway demonstrates respect for the name. Moreover how can we claim we respect Him or have any reverence for Him since we threat Him worse than we should.
The people of Berea we were told in the book of Acts when back to verify if the things they were told by the preachers were true. If we could only borrow a leaf from them we would realize that its not everything we hear or see come out of the pulpit is worth emulation.
Blessed by the name of the Lord God Almighty.
Strange Fire
October 31, 2013 by Jide Ajayi • Issues, Life •
This is the month of Strange Fire. It is a conference that held at the Grace Community Church in California from October 16 – 18 2013. It was an event that focused on the charismatic nature of the evangelical church today.
It had men who have devoted and keep devoting their lives to the teaching of the word and living according to the word by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit lead the sessions and review some of the things that have become common place in regions like Africa (though according to some, they are in the fringes) where these things are common place and all the people know to be Christianity. These men include John MacArthur, Steve Lawson, Conrad Mbewe and Phil Johnson to mention a few.
So many things were said at this conference and most of the sessions were streamed live so that over 25 Countries were represented at about 25000 individual points not to mention the number of people that were at each point.
Since it spoke about how the charismatic interpretation of the work of the holy spirit, the twitter-sphere was buzzing under the hashtag #strangefire with a lot of emotion underlining a lot of the comments particularly targeted at Pastor John MacArthur who is the Pastor of the church.
I learnt a lot of things at that conference. The most important is that Jesus preached the gospel and those that got saved did so after they heard the gospel. Also, the Apostles preached as they heard from Jesus and the people listened to them and they were saved. Therefore there is a true gospel and my prayer is to learn that true gospel and preach that true gospel as it was taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
In some parts of the church now, the gospel is not as it was preached by the aforementioned rather it is filled with promises of what changes God is going to effect (especially financially and elimination of challenges) in the life once one believes. The rich young ruler went to Christ with his riches and obedience but when he met Jesus and interacted with him, he realized the demand was more that adding a tag to himself and becoming spiritual.
It is natural to resist anything that calls us out on what we believe and we can respond in two ways. We can either fight back or we can try to learn what we did not understand properly. This is what has happened since the conference ended and it is still happening.
Personally, the conference was a call to action, a call to wake from the slumber of indifference and self-preservation to realize that these are very serious issues and are such that men’s lives depend on the proper handling of the word of God.
May God continue to bless all the people that give themselves to the proper use and preaching of the word.
You can find the website to the conference here and the downloadable audio files of the sessions here.
God Bless