House2HouseMD

The Devil Made Me Do It A boy slipped away into the kitchen and straight to the cookie jar. As he was rattling and opened the jar, he did not know his mother was somewhere watching. He proceeded and put his hand into the cookie jar and at that point, his mother came. She asked him, Bill what are you doing? Bill replied I was trying to see if I will be tempted. This is funny, but true. We all at some point have been tempted and have given in to temptation. Jesus “was tempted in every way, just as we are –yet was without sin” (Hebrew: 4:15). What are the prime ingredients of our temptations and how can we like Jesus overcome them? Let’s learn from Jesus who is our example. Luke 4: 1-13 “1Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. 3The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to be...

Our Identity Crisis Montgomery County Council (where I live) has passed a law that grants equal access and rights for all transgender. It is called the Gender Identity Bill (It should be called Gender Identity Crisis Bill). This law in its un-amended version would “let a person use facilities based on the gender identity that the person publicly and exclusively expresses or asserts”. This meant if you think you are a woman today and you are actually a man, then you can use the women’s public bathroom. You can see the identity crisis of the transgender and also of the County Council who are totally confused to even consider such an absurd law. We read this public identity crisis and think wow, but there are individual identity crises we sometimes go through. Today we will study about Jesus who did not experience any identity crisis because He knew exactly who He is and whose He is. Luke 3: 21-22 21When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, h...

Produce Fruit and Evidence of Repentance You and I are used to well dressed, politically correct and smooth talking preachers who live in nice houses and neighborhoods. Now meet the wild John, a locust eating, desert dwelling and no-nonsense preacher. We would probably pass John on the street and never pay attention to him. We will dismiss him as weird and crazy. The Baptist denomination will disown him and may even sue anyone who called him, “John the Baptist”. John’s resume will not impress us but it impressed Jesus who referred to him as “among those born of women there is no one greater than John”. Remember his miraculous birth to old aged mom and papa Elizabeth and Zacharias (Luke 1). John had specific message to his people then and it is the same message to us today. Repentance leads to forgiveness of sin and must have evidence to show for it. Like the commercial for Sprite, “the difference has to be clear” in our lives when we repent of any sins/habits that destroy us and our...

What Are You Waiting for before Death? As I begin to write, my heart is heavy with the news of the loss in my family back in Nigeria . Yesterday (4/24), my second cousin who is about 25 years, died in a motor cycle accident. He was a young man full of life and smiles most of the times. This is a life short lived in consideration of the circumstances surrounding his death. He had gone drinking and returning ran into a parked car and killed himself. I now compare him to a life long lived for God waiting for the consolation of Israel and all the people of God. What are you and I waiting to accomplish or see happen before we die? Or put another way, what would we like to see happen before we die. One thing is certain and that is we are all going to die the first death. Let us review the lives of Simeon and Anna in Luke chapter 2. Luke 2: 25-38: 25Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel , and the Holy Sp...

God Visits You at Your Work Imagine being at your work place and some stops by to give you a message. You are told that God is in town. I do not know how many of us will make haste to go and see him. Many of us do not associate our workplace as the place to meet God or be about his business. We have adopted the stance of “separation of God and work” as if it is written somewhere in a legal code. There is no such thing. It is as bogus as “separation of church and state”. You can not separate a person from his God while at work neither can you separate a state from the God of the people of that state. Today in Luke chapter 2, we read about shepherds at work whom God visited on the job. Luke 2: 8-20: 8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good new...

God’s Vision and Our Questions There comes a time when God gives us His own vision of what He wants to accomplish through us. Most often, we may not have any personal interest in the assignment or at least from the onset, it does not look like we have any immediate thing to gain. I consider such visions or assignments as coming at the “Kairos” moments – meaning “Where time and destiny meet”. There are not too many of those opportunities or kairos moments in our life time. The young Mary, engaged to Joseph as we read in the first chapter of Luke had a kairos moment. Mary’s encounter with the angel is contrasted with that of Zacharias in that there is no indication of Mary praying to God to have a baby for God. On the contrary, we see Zacharias and Elizabeth had been praying to have a child. In other words, God initiated both visions but Zacharias was connected to a present need while Mary’s was not. It is apparently clear that Mary did not ask for it. Luke 1: 26-38 (Also read Matth...

Our Visions and Questions As U.D and I experienced our 15 years of barrenness without a child, I often worried that I may become mute or dumb before seeing God’s miracle of now Jonathan. Why would I think that way you may ask? When you read the first chapter of Luke, and compare and contrast the two different questions of Zacharias and Mary, you are careful of the questions you ask God when He gives you a vision. Zacharias and Elizabeth had been without a child for a long time though we do not know how long. Like all of us, they had the need, desire and aspiration to have a child. They had prayed and fasted and perhaps almost given up (as we can deduce from Zac’s response in the story) and then an angel shows up with good news. Luke 1: 11-20 11Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has ...