wadza Mhute

God of Broken Things by Wadza Mhute.

/ Yinka (Anthonia) Gansallo-Lawrence / Leave a comment

I was having a discussion with my friend about therapy for Christians. My friend is seeing a therapist for work-related trauma but she had doubts about the process because she is a Christian. She moved passed initial misgivings once she started seeing a therapist and realized the need to speak to someone about her issues. Then a day later another Christian friend casually mentioned advice her therapist gave.broken 2

The message I was receiving from these seemingly random discussions was the need for me to look inward. It seems, at least to me, that once one receives Christ then the need for personal reflection takes a back seat and we are sometimes mired in religiosity and fail to understand ourselves. As Christians we speak to God through prayer and He speaks to us in many ways including through His word. In our prayer time, however, do we ask God to show us ourselves? This oversight maybe the reason a person who has been saved for 20 years still drinks spiritual milk while a new Christian is already on solid food.

I am not advocating for therapy, that’s a personal decision, but I am pointing to the need for introspection. We must take a step back, look at our lives and question why we think and act the way we do. This requires an openness to honestly view ourselves the way God sees us, through His lens without justifications or excuses. When you give your life to Christ, you are made whole and old things pass away. The issue with some of us is that we hang on to those old things without realizing. How will you know you need God’s help in certain areas of your life if you don’t analyze your thoughts and actions?broken 1

Change comes from a broken spirit, when we truly give up our lives for Christ. Living on the fence as a Christian, especially in this increasingly dark world, is not an option. We need to shatter the facade of being alright when we are not. We need to move from pride to humility. We need to understand our need for God everyday, every minute in everything we do. That requires brokenness. Often we ask God for help but behind the scenes we are working to solve our own problems.

David – the man after God’s own heart – understood his need for God. His words in Psalms show a man who knew his human limitations. However when he committed adultery and then murder, the Lord sent Nathan to show David who he had become. David did not even recognize himself in the story that Nathan told him. His internal decline had been a process that eventually manifested physically.

Therefore introspection is not to be done once but continually. We can never be too spiritual to accept that we are not perfect and as surely as sin entered this world, we will not attain perfection, only Jesus earns that distinction. On this side of eternity we have work to do. God is patient and merciful, He is waiting for your broken and contrite heart.

Psalm 51:17

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Written by Wadza Mhute for #Moving Forward With Yinka

 

 

 

The Battlefield: by Wadza Mhute

/ Yinka (Anthonia) Gansallo-Lawrence / 1 Comment

battlefield

In the past few weeks’ protests ignited on college campuses across the country.

The impetus for the University of Missouri protest was the Black Lives Movement that started from the death of Michael Brown last year at the hand of a policeman.

Students at the university under the banner of Concerned Student 1950 (referring to the year the first black students were admitted into the school) wanted the removal of the university president. After incidents of racism and antisemitism were not taken seriously by the president, protests culminated in his resignation. Subsequently protests at Yale and Ithaca College started because of similar incidents on their campuses.

It seems the country has been re-ignited with the fires of revolution that swept through the country in the 1950s and 1960s. This thing we call “skin color melanin” really has caused division and will continue to divide.

What are we to do in these times? It is important to know that there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1: 9-10 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

The only thing constant is God. We have to understand and believe that, If we protested every slight issue whether based on racism, on class divisions, on xenophobia – where does it end? As long as there is evil in this world, those issues will exist. I am not saying we need to remain silent when provoked but we should not put all our hope, all our faith in an unjust earthly system. Change came in the 1960s and again in 2008 with the inauguration of the first black President.

The revolution indeed caused change.

Perspective is needed. If you look at the revolutions against slavery which led to the Emancipation Proclamation in the 1863 and the civil rights movement lead by Martin Luther King, there was a common thread – Christianity. Let us even go back to the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt. God heard their cries just as he will hear the cries of the protesters in 2015 but the key is to cry to God above and not man below. While boots are crisscrossing campuses, let knees also stain the ground as prayers simultaneously go up to the one who can bring freedom to all.

Isaiah 49: 24-25  ‘Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce? But this is what the Lord says: “Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, And plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, And your children I will save.

We need to see ourselves as God sees us, we need to love as God loves and we need to put our faith in God.

God sees all.

Written by Wadza Mhute for #Moving forward with Yinka.