RUK4CHRIST

OF FRUITS, GIFTS AND THE TOTALITY OF BEING Hello again, my dear friend. How have you been? I hope you have been doing great. I know I have. Testimonies, good things arriving, even better coming. Exciting times, I say.   But, not necessarily the reason I am here. No.   I am here because of something that was made clear to me by the Holy Spirit, which I can only but share. A revelation that stems from the beginning of creation, and reaches into the present. Feel free to share your thoughts on this at the end. So, here goes everything…   Genesis 1:26 shows us the blueprint with which God used to create mankind. God made man so we could function with 2 different sets of attributes. His Image, and His Likeness. Only by functioning totally in these sets of attributes can a God-man hope to have Dominion on Earth. Now, I used to take this just literally, and I know a lot of Christians did too. I was made to look like God, physically. The likeness was still a vagu...

WHAT WILL I SAY? So here we are, once again. Welcome back. Sorry for the little break in blogition. Not my fault…yeah right. How many times have we told either ourselves or others this same excuse? Hmph. If not my fault, then whose? Truth is, priorities shifted for a while… Anyway, here we are once again, you, amazing, beautiful, wonderful you, and me, just one little, rough tool still in need of sharpening from the Master Toolmaker in Heaven. Today, I want to share with you all, something that happened to me in church a few weeks ago. It was both awesome and terrifying at the same time.   It was Communion, and we were to walk to the Altar to receive it. There I was, slowly walking, not really thinking, until I got stopped at the head of the queue as there was no space at the Altar for anymore; I had to wait until the people there had received and left. Then, it began.   I looked at the Altar before me, and I was struck by how large it seemed. The top seemed to str...

OF FROZEN PHONES AND THE (LIFE) MANUAL Fire in the skies, My heart beats, Ever longing, For…   What? Oh, this? You just caught me trying out my hand at poetry. Still beats me how people think my writing is poetic, but then, I can’t shoot myself in the foot, can I? I surely cannot, thank you Sir. So yes, you are looking at the next big thing. The stage is set! The lights are on! The invitations have all been sent out.   Focus, Raymond. Focus.   Thank you, oh voice of reason. So…what was I-   Aha! Got it.   A few weeks back, something happened (doesn’t something always happen?) to my phone (argh!) Raise your hands if you are tech savvy! Everyone? Wow… What about the days of the Nokia 3310s? The phones that had torchlights and green-and-black screens? Those days when the Sagem camera phone was the biggest deal on earth?   Simpler days. Nowadays, everything is taking a selfie of you. You pick up a potato, and it takes a picture of you...

SO I WAS HURT… “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s a hole in…”   Oh, there you are… Good…morning? Wait, lemme check… Ok. It’s morning here. Still. I don’t know what time it is where you are, so Good…whatever it is where you are.   Smile, it’s…Wednesday?   So, I don’t usually post things this close together. I usually let my posts marinate before I get to write it, but…   There’s always a ‘but’. Always. What would life have been like without ‘but’? You were hungry, BUT you ate so you are full. We were destined to die, BUT Jesus died to give us life eternal. I was going to write this BUT…   Okay, no ‘buts’ with that one.   So, why am I writing this? Why now?   Well…let’s just say that something happened somewhere, and as a result, another thing happened elsewhere. Let’s leave it at that. Take it, or take it. What, you thought I was going to suggest that you leave it? Pfft! Nah…   So as I was saying, aft...

GOD’S TIME vs GOD’S TIMETABLE “God’s Time is the best…”   How many times have we heard this phrase? Countless times, I suppose. Show of hands if you have said it. What? Only me? C’mon, spill. I know you have. Remember that time when your friend asked you when you were going to enter school? Or when you would find a spouse? Or that time when…   Okay, here is the deal.   So a few days back (maybe last night? Yesterday morning? Meh, who cares?) I let my mind ruminate on the things I had been learning, things I had read, heard etc, when I saw/heard this clearly in my head: God’s Time is different from God’s Timetable.   Hmm.   At once very unclear and still clear, I wanted to know more. Because you see, even if I didn’t fully understand what it was, I at once knew this was true, but I needed to know more. So, I did the next logical thing.   I tweeted it, and promptly decided to forget about it.   Yep, that’s right. Heh.   But it d...

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, SERIOUSLY Psalm 103:2 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits…”   Some weeks back, I was in my Dad’s firm, when he called me into his office. “Close the door,” he said. Now, if you are like me (maybe not), whenever your Dad tells you to ‘close the door’, your head begins to make all sorts of calculations and permutations. You begin to ask yourself ‘what did I do now? What will he say now? What does he want from me now?’ It’s worse when he calls you by your middle name. Note to self: it’s not always about you. Got it.   I closed the door behind me but still stayed within easy reach for a quick escape. No way I was gonna give him the chance to make my stay there any longer. What was I afraid of? you may ask (although you know what. Yes, you do.) Heh. “I want to do something,” he said, looking at his phone. “What is it?” I asked. He told me. “Hmm.” My interest was piqued. It was something we had discussed to some extent...

ROCK4CHRIST MUSIC CORNER Artist: Wolves At The Gate (WATG) Album: VxV Genre: Post-Hardcore, Metalcore, Christian Metal Record Label: Solid State Records Year: 2014 …So the FIFA 2014 World Cup is over. Thankfully, good music isn’t. It stays with you, no matter where you go, no matter what you do.   And few do this better than Wolves At The Gate.   I stumbled upon these guys a few years back (one of the best accidents ever) on YouTube. It was their single, Heralds, from their. I think I was really distracted that particular day, cos I saved it and completely forgot about it, until I stumbled upon it once again a few weeks later. And I got hooked. Then, they captivated the world with Captors, an album that left me wondering just how they were going to top it.   I shouldn’t have feared. When you have the Holy Spirit at work within you, your latter will always be greater than your former.   VxV-pronounced ‘5 by 5’- is the 2 nd s...

READING THE CHRISTIAN “Out of 100 people, 1 will read the Bible. 99 will read the Christian.”   I stumbled upon these words in a picture as I trawled through Facebook about a few months ago, and I kept it. A while later, I began to think about these words and how it applied to my life as a Christian.   About a couple of weeks ago, something happened that brought these words to my mind again.   One area where I have had struggles has been with influencing people for God through interaction. Maybe because I sometimes saw myself as inadequate and in need of influencing as well. In time I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. Grace was available; all I had to do was ask for it. “Heb 4:16: Let us then with CONFIDENCE   draw near to the throne of Grace, that we may receive mercy and find Grace to help in time of need.”   I had some messages, so I decided to select the ones right for the situation I was in to build my Faith. And bui...

Ezekiel 22:30 "And I sought for a man among them..." When God made man (Adam), He brought him to a certain level of connection with Him, giving him Dominion here on earth. However, the sin and eventual fall of man rid us of this and created a chasm, a gap between God and man. Hereafter the Bible is filled with intances of God raising men that can bridge this gap on the behalf of his people, be it a family or a nation. Per time, from the people, He chose an individual to be a Representative, to plead the case of the people before Him. "...that should make up the hedge..."   Jesus Christ came down to earth not just on a Redemptive mission, but on a Modelling one as well. Prior to Him, every other person was always a TEMPORARY solution; if that man did not raise another to carry on, that cycle would close until God raised another. This is an indicator of God's love for man; He continually raises men for their sake.   God needed a PERMANENT so...

RUK4CHRIST MUSIC CORNER Artist: Demon Hunter Album: Extremist Genre: Christian Metal/Metalcore, Nu Metal Record Label: Solid State Records Year: 2014   2014 has been a great year so far, musically speaking. It has seen the release of awesome albums like Fight The Silence   by For Today, From Water To War by Nine Lashes and VxV by Wolves At The Gate, to mention but a few. Awesome albums with epic songs. But none of them have quite gripped me like Demon Hunter’s seventh studio album, Extremist, except probably VxV. How good is it? Extremist has made me (almost) forget that I have CREATION/DESTRUCTION (yeah, I came late to the party, sue me), the excellent album by Fit For A King (can’t wait for them to release something new; too soon?).   Demon Hunter is one of those rare bands that gets better with age, and with their latest album, they sure do not disappoint in any way. A band brave enough to stand for their Christian beliefs i...