Opinion / Columnist
Mark and avoid them
21 Feb 2017 at 01:16hrs | Views
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. Romans 16:17
There is something which is very important for you to understand inorder to make your year a better one than the previous year. If God is to come to you and ask you how many friends you have what will be your answer to that? No matter what their number is, what has qualified them to be your friends? What is your criteria and what exactly do you look at when you are choosing friends?
If you consider what I am going to share with you today it will make your year better. Any conflict that you have had, any pain that you have experienced can be traced back to a person that you entertained. There is a person you entertained that you shouldn't have.
Imagine what the world would be like if Eve, in that day, had decided to ignore the voice of the serpent. Where were we supposed to be today if one person who represented us in the garden had chosen to ignore the wrong voice? The pain that you go through now as a woman, nine months of pregnancy up to the time of giving birth, the pain is not originating from you. It can be traced back to somebody who entertained a voice she should have ignored.
If God tells you that your friends are too many and you have to reduce their number, who are you going to start with and remove from your list? Who are you going to be left with and what is your criteria? If you are supposed to be left with just two friends who are you going to be left with?
Are they people that are helping you or these are people that you are helping, these two? Are they people that can be easily replaced? What have they helped you with so far? What makes those people so important that you would get rid of every friend that you have and be left just with those two?
If you are going to attain a life that is greater than the one you had last year, there are major, serious and critical decisions that you need to take right now. When you are breastfeeding a child there comes a time that the child has to be weaned from its mother. Weaning a child is not a sign of trying to hurt the child.
It is a moment of maturity where you have a child who has matured being separated from his mother and starting to live his own separate life. There is a generation which has more power, more control and influence; not because they fast or pray a lot. What makes those people powerful is the fact that they have people that they fasted. The fasting that we are used to is simply abstaining from food, whether food or drink.
There is another fasting which can help you to grow much faster. It is a fast that you declare where you no longer abstain from food, but abstaining from certain people. You have to fast certain people, not because you have anything against them.
When you want to have good people in your life you do not choose them by name, there are characteristics and behaviours that you have to list down. It would not be wise to go after certain individuals because of their background. Have expectations that if a person can have such characteristics he can have a place in your life. If a person would want to have a position in your life he has to qualify himself based on your expectations. People who do not meet these expectations are the ones you have to fast.
If you are fasting people they have a certain energy they used to give you and certain stories they normally tell you. These people have certain behaviours that you normally enjoy and for years you have been sustained by these people, you were feeding on them. When you make a decision to fast certain people they cease to sustain your existence.
There is no better advice one can give than the word of God, why didn't Paul encourage us to pray and be stronger no matter what people do or say? He told us to avoid people causing divisions and bring offences. This is a generation that if you want to survive you need to avoid. There are voices that you need to avoid this year if you want to prosper.
When a person comes in your life to divide, he is not just coming to divide you from your partner if you are married. Even if you are still alone he can divide you into two because he specialises in dividing people. If such a person find you as a couple he will divide you, if he finds you as an individual he will divide your focus, energy and attention.
You have a dream that you are pursuing and you want to become somebody; that is your passion until you share that desire with a wrong person one day. He will then divide your focus and you will lose interest in something you were pursuing for years. There are people that are very good at that, you show them something that is very beautiful and they have a way of discrediting everything.
If you know that money is something you desire to have and on your way you meet somebody who criticises money, you have to mark the person and avoid him. You must not talk to him again along those lines. There are people that sharing your dreams with them, your desire and energy will be divided.
There are people that you need to eject from your life, people who bring your energy level down. Who is the person in your life that when you talk to you feel like you are coming from the presence of God. You can feel more of the presence of God after talking to somebody just for two minutes. Yet there are some people that you talk to just for two minutes and you feel like you talked for two hours, they drain your energy. You will feel like confessing before the Lord like you have sinned after talking to such people. Mark those people who cause offences, there is always a person behind your pain. Certain friends you have should be avoided because their mentality is toxic. Mark those people and avoid them.
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