Gospel – Mimi's Thoughts

Ghost Writer

At Elevation Church, Steven Furtick has been doing a teaching series for 5 weeks now. The series is titled Ghost Writer.

The Holy Ghost can write your story…with you.
The past 4 weeks have gone like this;
1.Page Turner
2.Plot Hole
3.Source Material
4.Places Everyone
Today I will share bits from week 5.

Title : Cutting Room
Scripture Reading – Acts 4:23-31

The cutting room can bring clarity. You get to decide what to leave in and what to cut out (of your life).
In the book of Acts we can see miracles and we can see mistakes. They were all left in scripture for a purpose;to guide and teach us today.
Some bad stuff are meant for lessons…not only in the Bible, but in our lives too.

Enter the cutting room – Revisit a previous experience with a better perspective and you will get a fresh lesson.

While you are in the cutting room, who is there with you? Take positive people and vibes. No negative people, cynical people, complainers.
Enter the cutting room with God. Let Him help you with your processing. Any process that does not start with God is doomed.

Let the Holy Ghost come with His scissors.
Don’t listen to what the enemy has been telling you… don’t take those words to the cutting room.
We grow through what we go over with God. That’s the review.

We shouldn’t start with the problem when we want to process the problem. We should start with God.
It’s bigger than us.

Some of the things we need to cut are the things we cling to.

Stop praying about the problem so much that you never get to God.God is bigger than this.He has a million ways to solve it.

The devil can’t do anything to you without going through God first.
Let go.

When you release yourself…God releases THE FINAL CUT.
That’s a fact. Stop battling with your edits. Let God.

There’s a lot more…you should look it up at elevationchurch.org

Can You Imagine

Since their album titled Old Church Basement and LION, I’ve always had something to say about Elevation Worship albums.

This time it’s ‘Can You Imagine‘

It’s an Eight track album.

Being an e-member of the Elevation Church, I had heard and rocked all songs long before they debuted on Spotify, apple music, YouTube and the lot.

Just like my son, I found that most people loved ‘Praise‘ a lot more than the other seven.

Praise is very upbeat… Just like ‘No One’ from the LION album.

I don’t have a favourite…yet. I love them all.

On this album, along with the Elevation Worship team, we have our usual collaborators; Chandler Moore and Brandon Lake.

Wait on You

I remember when my sister’s son was down and couldn’t walk for over a year. It seemed like forever.

We hoped, we prayed and we waited.

I remember the day I sent ‘God of Midnight’ to her. I had just listened to it on that evening and all I kept feeling was how that song was a message for Msugh my sister.

I believed her son Sever would walk. What scared me was whether I would be strong while I waited. I wondered… Then I found the song ‘Wait On You’. It was just what we needed.

Msugh and I would often talk about the parts of the song that encouraged us.

The day came, Sever walked… To the Glory of God.

I remember the first time I listened to ‘wait on you’ after he started to walk again. I broke into tears when I realised I was on the other side of the song.

… The part where we had waited and He had shown Himself true.

I never imagined what it would be like… Maybe I had been afraid to imagine… Afraid that if I imagined and he didn’t walk then I would be disappointed.

That’s the thing about waiting, the part where doubt creeps in every now and again.

Waiting can be hard…but receiving at the end of the wait is totally worth it

I’ll always wait on the Lord.

Divisions

I’m deep in thought this morning.

There must be different segments up there.

Probably Gabriel takes care of the VVIP area. Michael heads the VIP. Raphael must be at the Common Room. Surely there must be another, maybe Uriel is stationed at the shed.

There has got to be segments up there, because we live and act like we aren’t preparing to go to the same place.

Someone help me out here.

I’ve seen us, we pass each other on the street without as much as a ‘hello’… on our way to worship… In different worship houses. Or maybe even the same house.

Some say “He hears us better, we are more righteous”… Others call out “Join us and you will be saved”… I thought we were on the same path, I thought we all call on the same name…

🤔

If we can’t get along here, if we can’t love each other here, if we can’t respect each other here…. And we are all preparing to go to the same place, then…

…surely there are segments up there.

Listen

Sometimes God just tries to speak through several means when He really wants us to hear Him.

Ene called me today, she told me she had only just read the post I shared with her and she just had to call me immediately.

Ene is my friend’s sister and we had shared stories about our writing at her dad’s 80th birthday party and I promised to send her something of mine that I thought she would love. That was a month ago.

Fast forward to today, after doing a back and forth with God on a particular topic, she got a whisper from Him and just as if God wanted to confirm this, He reminded her of the post she was yet to read and when she did read, my post was just a confirmation of the conviction she had received earlier.

Why hadn’t she read the post all this while? Could God have known she would need this confirmation today? Damn straight. He knows, He waits, He makes us wait too… and at the right time, He lets us… He tells us.

All we always have to do is listen and be attentive. He is going to use different ways to speak and to confirm His word.

John 10:27

1 John 4:1

James 4:8

Prov 3:6

When I say Chris Brown

I’ve had a number of people literally drop a jaw or ask me “really?” whenever they hear me say a song was sung by Elevation worship and Chris Brown

Yeah, Chris Brown…but not the one you imagine.

Let me introduce you to the Chris Brown I speak of.

He is 41 years old, born on the 22nd day of December, 1981. He is married to Beth (college sweetheart) and they have two children (Joah and Adelaide).

He grew up under a pastor dad and a singer/musician mom… So you figure. He has a degree in Vocal Performance which he got from Anderson University.

Chris has been singing since he was a teen. He has been leading Elevation Worship since 2007 and has been friends with the Pastor for many years.

Although Chris isn’t my favourite worship leader, this guy really knows how to stir a heart to worship and to praise. Pastor Steven Furtick has actually admitted that he is his favourite.

He can be calm and soothing when he sings songs like Trust in God, Same God or Talking to Jesus and then he can be wild and crazy when he sings LION and Water is Wild (With Brandon Lake) or Rattle (especially with Steven Furtick).

When I say Chris Brown, this is who I speak of

Jesus loves me

“Mngu wan u Aondo”

It’s what my mum would say, everytime. It got pretty annoying at some point. It means ‘I am a child of God’.

She often said this when she got wind of or caught my siblings and I doing something wrong or when she was blessed with something she had been hoping for.

I used to feel a bit jealous; why will God pick her out specially and not all of us.

Lately, I have been hearing myself say those words so much that I began to realise why my mum kept saying them. He didn’t pick her specially, she only realised that she was special.

We are all special, the problem is we rarely realise this.

When God keeps showing up for you in the little things that you thought were of no concern to Him… You can’t help but declare; Mngu wan u Aondo.

Just a few days ago I caught myself singing 🎶 “Yes Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so”… But then I decided to change the lyrics.

I know Jesus loves me, not only because the Bible tells me so… It has gone way past that.

I know Jesus loves me because He tells me Himself everyday; from the rising of the sun, when He wakes me up, to my going out and coming in… In the way He shows up for me in EVERYTHING I face.

Mngu wan u Aondo… Jesus loves me

Grace

We come and we go as we wish.

We leave or might I say, we are not so keen on Him when we seem to “have it all together” and run back when we need help, need a restart or when we get stuck and don’t know which way to go.

The thing is He is always there.

I like to think that even if he didn’t start out as a jealous God, He would very easily have become one now with the way we act.

It’s amazing how His being jealous never affects the abundance of grace He has and continues to extend to us. Nothing affects His love and grace for us; not the hardness or our hearts, the magnitude of our sins or even our evil thoughts and desires.

Grace, the one thing we receive so freely but rarely extend to our fellow friends, families, neighbours, colleagues, bosses, servants and all other people around us.

As often as I receive grace from God, I hope I can extend human grace to others too.

Is there someone we can give grace to today?

ABLE

Having recently concluded Holly Furtick’s six week study on the book of Ephesians, I thought I would share a thing or two about what I learnt.

The memory verse for the entire study was from Ephesians 3: 20-21

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than All we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us…to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through out all generations, forever and ever. Amen

I didn’t have to memorise it… thank God (I have never been too good with memorising verses). The reason I didn’t memorise it was because I already had it in my memory for about 25 years or so. They were the exact words to a song I learnt as a kid from an acapela mix tape.

The verse has always been a comforting one for me. Only, during the course of the study, one word seemed brand new to me; Able.

God is Able to do what ever I ask of Him. There are no limitations to His abilities. None. If He has not done or does not do a thing for me, it definitely isn’t because He can’t do it. He is ABLE.

In addition to the one word that got me, I learnt that the entire book of Ephesians has a guide for me for:

Immeasurably more Wisdom

Immeasurably more Grace

Immeasurably more Confidence

Immeasurably more Peace

Immeasurably more Love

Immeasurably more Strength

To learn more about the study, please visit http://immeasurablymore.com

Shekhinah

Prayer means talking to God. This is the simplest of definitions we all get taught right from children’s church from an early age…but I fear that we have mystified and complicated prayer so much that it has been interpreted as hard and tedious.

Prayer is not meant to be rigid.

For a person who finds it difficult getting up very early, I often have a difficult time doing a thorough word study or spending quality time with God before I leave the house.

The thing is, on week days, I am usually out of the house by 7am for school run and by the time I’m done with that, I usually find myself in the parking lot of my office with some extra 20 to 30 minutes to spare before the start of work or before the first humans begin to show up at work.

That’s where I make my sanctuary. In my car. I use this time to spend time with God, I tell Him everything and I listen to hear from him.

And He hears me. He hasn’t failed me. Not ever.

Prayer time is not meant to be bondage. It is a time to be free with your Father and your Friend. Take the opportunity anytime, anywhere. Speak and listen. He is Shekhinah.

Scriptural guide:

Jeremiah 23:24
Psalm 139:
John 4: 24