By Pastor Kumuyi

Baptized in water as an infant, and you have received the rite of confirmation in your church, and you can tell the very history of the church in your locality, but lack the experiential encounter through the blood of Jesus, then you are only a religious fanatic waiting to implode.

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Better still, let us do without that sort of historic statement and let us delve deeper into the demand of God for your life and family.

2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

You may revel in bearing the title of my people, but if sin is still resident in your life, then you are just a disloyal rebel who chose to remain stubborn and defiant against the call of God, which is an act detrimental to your soul and well-being.

Isaiah 1:3 “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”

Of course, you are a creation of God, which earns you the designation ‘my people’, but you have failed to recognize God the way goats, dogs, birds, etc acknowledge and recognize their owners. It is a shame that animals, which are lower in character and nature could outperform you. It is unheard of and on this foundation for this argument, the Scriptures say, you suffer the way you do, because you have not seen reason to embrace your sole Liberator God sent to redeem you from the pains and anguish of sin and sorrow.

Isaiah 1:4 “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.”

Though you are a churchgoer, yet your life is still sinful and wickedness and evil doing have taken the better part of you. And even though you are familiar with the word of God and the commandment of God, you have sold yourself into doing that which is strange and inappropriate in the sight of God.

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That is why the suffering continues, and because you have failed to realize that there is sin in your life, which is the root cause of the problem you have been facing, and because you have failed to evict sin, you have eventually become the architect of your own downfall.

But if you will turn from your wicked ways and repent of your sins, that desirable change you have been yearning for, which God has promised to give to all those who follow Him wholeheartedly, will be yours. I can see that change happening in your life today. It will be yours in Jesus name! Amen.

Isaiah 5:13 “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.”

Sin brings captivity upon all those who accommodate it.

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