Jax Okiro

The media recently highlighted the story of a church where the pastor teaches his congregation that in order to increase their faith they should, among other things, eat grass. Sadly, the congregation seemingly happily complied. While this seems ludicrous, I suspect that this kind of spiritual manipulation is more commonplace than we care to admit.

Let’s assess our own situation; church or ministry. I’d like to suggest that anytime your spiritual leader or pastor preaches ministry, ministry and getting involved with church activities Monday to Sunday, you are possibly in a similar position to those grass-eating congregants.

I’d like to suggest that anytime you accept your pastor’s or spiritual leader’s teaching unwaveringly, you’re putting his words above that of God’s Word. Again, you are possibly in a similar position to those grass eating congregants. In the words of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, “Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.”

Let me suggest a few things to consider to  help ensure that you don’t get spiritually manipulated:

1. Read the Bible for yourself
2. Study the Bible for yourself
3. Spend personal time in prayer with God
4. Make sure your pastor or leader’s teaching is biblically and doctrinally sound.
5. Be sure that your church, your ministry and your pastor or spiritual leader are committed to building God’s kingdom as opposed to their own.
6. Don’t put them on a pedestal.

The problem with ignorance is that  you’ll just lap up anything and everything from these so called men and women of God, purely based on the fact that they’re using the right language. Martin Luther King Jr. made the following statement: “nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. As children of God, let us not stand accused of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Have you ever been made to feel like you’re not worthy? Or better yet, been told in so many words that you’re no good? Well, rest assured, you’re not alone. Not too long ago, somebody told me and I quote: “You’re actually past your sell by date”. For a ‘minute’, I actually bought into it.

The mistake you and I make when we buy into the ‘past your sell by date’ mentality, is that we allow flawed creatures to assume the role of the perfect Creator. If you can relate, then dare I say that you and I have been sinning in this regard. I for one was guilty of this.

That was, until I wrestled with God, lost against Him and gave Him His role back.

Remember David’s story? Remember the way his brothers and father viewed him? Ray Boltz sings about it and says ‘when others see a shepherd boy, God may see a king’. And that’s the whole point of this blog; we will always be ‘shepherd boys’ both in our own eyes and that of others when we allow others to define our meaning and purpose in life.

Stop sinning. Don’t allow your self-worth, your identity, your purpose or your ‘sell by date’ to be determined by flawed people. God is God all by Himself and doesn’t share His throne with anybody! God has perfect vision for your life, He knows exactly what you can and cannot do, what He wants you to do, when He wants you to do it and for how long He wants you to do it.

I needed to confess that I allowed someone’s view of me to become more important than God’s view of me, but that was then and this is now. Over the last 13 months or so in particular, God’s convinced me that His view and opinion of me is what matters and when we had this conversation about my importance to Him, I heard Him say: “You are mine. I determine your sell by date”.

As for me being ‘past my sell by date’…well, lets just say that person was wrong.

Unlike many people I am fortunate enough to own a house with a small backyard. Some time ago I tried growing a patch of lawn and although it grew, it was never really lush and green like I wanted it to be. So I took it out and started clearing the ground.   That is when I discovered that my little piece of backyard is more like a dumpsite filled with builder’s rubble.  No wonder the grass wouldn’t grow properly!

Maybe you can relate to this in your own life. You’ve been going through the motions, you haven’t been growing as you’d perhaps like to but you haven’t quite stagnated either. I think we all experience this from time to time.  And perhaps what we need to do is to ‘shovel our back yards’.  Let’s do some introspection.

We need to do what is necessary in order to fertilize the soil and replant, perhaps even plant something completely different. Whatever you do though, don’t settle for what seems average or even good. Let’s keep digging deep, let’s go hard and only settle for great!

As you continue to journey into 2014 and beyond, may you discover and grow to be the awesome person God intended for you to be.

I enjoy a bit of photography and in an ideal world, I would be the world’s top wedding photographer. Now I’m still a long way off that but I thought I’d share some of my favourite photos in my wedding portfolio with you.

The thing about my portfolio is that it’s only a sample of the best weddings I’ve done so far, not the whole picture (pardon the pun). Looking at images from when I first started up to now, you’ll be able to see how I’ve grown over time and what I’m capable of at present.

My photos may not be world class yet but I think they’re  pretty decent. And there has been very obvious progress!   There are some that I took a few years back that I cringe at and wouldn’t want anybody to see, even though some would still find them acceptable. In fact, I’ve even seen similarly cringe-worthy photos as part of some photographer portfolios!  Hectic.

If your life was a series of wedding photographs, what would your portfolio look like? Would it all look the same or would we be able to see your growth? Would people cringe at some of the moments or would it all be so impressive that you would be in demand beyond what you can cope with?

We all project images to the minds of those whom we encounter daily.   When those around you look at the images of your life over time, what do they see?  Growth and progress and significant moments?

I nearly wet my pants the other day – literally. I got into a taxi and sat in the front next to the driver. He must’ve been possessed though because he was driving like a demon. Michael Schumacher had nothing on this guy. Weaving in and out, stopping abruptly, crossing 3 or 4 lanes in one go are just some of the pants wetting manoeuvres he pulled. I got out in one piece but completely shaken.

After I calmed down and I know this is probably a dumb thing to say, I actually thought to myself this guy’s got some excellent driving skills. I then daydreamed about having a mini-bus taxi driving Formula 1 Grand Prix type competition where taxi drivers got to compete against each other. I liked the idea for two reasons: 1) it would contain their madness to a closed circuit environment, albeit temporarily and 2) they’d know exactly what other motorists feel like when they put other people’s lives at risk. Truth be told, I loved the idea of them having a bit of their own medicine and like a mad person walking in the street, I even smiled at this thought.

Isn’t it amazing how easily we can go from love your neighbour as yourself to taking revenge on them? Yes, it was only some random thought in my head but truth be told, I really wanted for that taxi driver to experience what I felt and what other passengers and motorists feel every time their lives are endangered.

How often don’t people do this – bearing grudges and even take revenge when they’ve been ‘wronged’? Well, the truth is you and I are guilty too, much more than a taxi driving maniac! The Bible makes it clear that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). We have sinned against God, we have wronged Him and He has every right to act towards us, the way we would often do others.

But He doesn’t because His nature is love and we see this love poured out for us through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ dying and taking on the sins of the world – a price we were supposed to pay. Now if this is the nature of God and His response to those who have wronged Him, how much more are we not supposed to do the same? I know this is hard and at the best of times a difficult thing to do. It will however continue to be a difficult and near impossible thing to do unless we focus on the place where that response comes from. What is your heart condition? Perhaps that’s what makes a loving response so difficult.

Whether we like it or not, our responses have to reflect the nature of God. And so: