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Wow superior attitude? Meaning there is also an inferior attitude? If that be the case the question now is which of the attitudes is of our Lord God Almighty and which one do I have? Here we are going to consider a rather more subtle escape route down which we may run when faced with unpleasant reality –the adoption of superior attitudes. Remember we talked of living in denial last week as an escape route and now we are talking of superior attitude. Superior attitudes here used means a way of behavior that shows you think you are better or more important than other people, an attitude of feeling superiority over others. Since we will inevitably feel inferior and inadequate whenever we avoid facing up to an issue, the personality helps us compensate for these feelings by assisting us to develop an aloofness and superior disposition. One of the characteristics of those who have extravagant notions about themselves is that they go around regarding others as foolish. Each time they see someone slip up or make a mistake they immediately think: ‘What a stupid thing to do.’ If this is the automatic reaction one has to people who fail or make mistakes, the chances are that some superior attitudes are developing within us and we just have to be very careful about it. We must remember that all escape routes are an attempt to maintain our balance, our wrong balance when we are under threat –a balance, however, which in reality is not a true balance. When we compensate or make up for our feelings of inadequacy and inferiority by going to the other extreme and indulging in inflated notions about ourselves, we are living a lie –we are not real. This feeling of an inflated self or superiority is all over everywhere; for instance in this nation, if we tell ourselves the truth, you will know that it is the amount of endowments and blessedness possessed by the Jews and Igbos which God has blessed them with that is being envied, that is being jealous by all other people making these people especially the Yorubas to exhibit ‘superior attitude’ the type we are here learning. I do not know how many people understand that it is this indulged superiority that played out between the Igbos and the rest people of Nigeria, between Dim Ojukwu and Gowon, between Awolowo and Zik, between Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka and it is currently playing out between Chimamanda and the rest, Soyinka inclusive. What about you? The Bible talked about being blessed and to be envied! Do you know when you are being blessed to the extent as to be envied? Do you tell yourself the truth about who is greater than you; this is why the whole mankind has hidden under the general truth that all men are equal, failing to realize that this type of equality being talked about is the one before our Lord God Almighty otherwise, in truth and reality God’s blessedness and divine endowment is in measure just as every other divine spirit gifts are in measure in every individual, some having more than the others, even prophecy, healing, teaching, interpretation etc are all in measures. God gives them to you as He sees you are able, and ability is dependent on many other factors which include your qualifications in virtually all perspectives of life. It’s surprising how many Christians will react strongly to any suggestion that they may be lying, yet they go on living a lie month after month and year after year. This is why we need to be willing regularly to open our beings to God and pray the prayer that is before us today: ‘Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’ an example of how to be mind wise or the first step towards being qualified for use by our Lord God given to us by King David who committed all manner of life errors or sin and yet he is the man after God’s heart; meaning that no matter what you think or feel is your own sin or life errors, God still loves you and wants you to come unto Him but He wants you to realize your wrong and be repentant over it with a mindset of not repeating it no matter what. Only the light of God from the word of God can penetrate those dark regions of our heart where we do our real living and it is expected that when God shines the light of His word in our hearts we begin to use it to identify our flaws compared to what is obtainable in Christ and make amends trying to be like Him; that is trying to have integrity in life. I di ka Jesus, I di ka Jesus aririo m bu ka m di ka ya…! In trying to be in divine relationship with our God, He draws us close to Himself so that He can effect a plus and minus arithmetic in our life to make our life constituents come close to what He is so that we will be compatible with Him and be able to live and stay with Him otherwise we will be always scared of Him and run away from Him as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. This running away from God today happens in our heart just as our dealings with Him happens in our hearts and this is exemplified in our attitude of not wanting to know or hear anything about God rather we prefer unnecessarily being busy, being in entertainment and enjoyment more than the enlightenment that comes from God.

You can see that the watch words here in this verse are: teach me, which means that every true child of God must always ask our Lord Jesus to teach him or her in every situation of life; another word is Your Way, meaning that in every situation of life there are possible ways that seems to man it can be handled but in all the seemingly ways there is an Only Way which is the Way God wants that situation to be handled different from the way we man may want to handle it but it is Only God’s Way that is the Best Way to handle it and we must try and make efforts to see to it that we handle our life situations God’s Way otherwise we will end up being frustrated or disappointed in life which is what is happening to all of us most times and why we have disappointments here and there; then we come to another word walk and live, when God has taught you His Way, it is essential to know that you just have to walk and live in it knowing that it is true and the truth, any deviation from it spells out disaster this is why you see that King David followed by asking God additionally to direct and unite my heart solely and reverently to fear and honor God’s Way and God’s Name because from experience maybe King David has known that if God does not direct and unite his heart solely with God’s reverent fear and honor there is every tendency for him King David to stubbornly and disobediently do things his own David way and push God’s Way aside on the basis of the word of God ‘there is a way that seemeth good…’and end up disappointed and frustrated in life, this is the case with many people on earth today. So let us all be very careful with how we handle God’s Way in things we do in life! Last week we said that denial is one of the most popular escape routes down which people run when they are confronted by difficult or unpleasant reality. Ask yourself now: how much of my life is given over to the denial of reality? To the owing up to facts and realities of life simply because for one reason or the other I do not want to accept it even though I know in my heart that it is true and a reality. Be careful that you don’t get caught up in the trap of denying reality! Sadly, denial keeps us away from God, for whatever is true must be accepted. Integrity means having a system of living that never requires us to deny what or the truth before us. Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Somehow Biblically Integrity is a state of one being whole and undivided so in a nutshell our Lord Jesus Christ used a very simple statement to define integrity when He said “let your eye be single” as seen in Matthew 6:22-23 saying, “22 The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your entire body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is unsound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the very light in you [your [a]conscience] is darkened, how dense is that darkness!” Notice that sound is here used for ‘Single’! In life we need not exaggerate what is before us, we need not minimize what is before us, but we need to acknowledge frankly and honestly what is before us either as real or unreal. Then having known what integrity is, the question now before us is do we have integrity? Are we consistent, honest, real and factual in everything that we do and say? In some Churches the teaching is presented by people who deny reality in their own personal lives, and so, to be an accepted member of those communities, such people have to pretend that they don’t have a problem because if you acknowledge your problem you are viewed as not being a ‘good’ Christian for, in their thinking, ‘good’ Christians don’t have problems. This is a gross misrepresentation of the Christian life and a slur on our faith. Slur means presenting a thing wrongly! What happens to Christians who continue to deny reality? Their views soon turn into dogmatism –they push or force their limited or wrong views as hard as they can in order to convince themselves or others of their truth. Dr Lawrence Crabb says that ‘The strength of dogmatism is related to the effort we make to deny reality’. Dogmatism is stating your opinions in a strong way and not accepting anyone else's opinions: or the tendency to lay down principles as undeniably true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others. A theology that develops out of the whole Scripture, and not just out of a limited view of Scripture, is perfectly capable of dealing with all reality, no matter what it is. God is not afraid of or intimidated by anything that happens in His world, so why should we be?

You can see that the watch words here in this verse are: teach me, which means that every true child of God must always ask our Lord Jesus to teach him or her in every situation of life; another word is Your Way, meaning that in every situation of life there are possible ways that seems to man it can be handled but in all the seemingly ways there is an Only Way which is the Way God wants that situation to be handled different from the way we man may want to handle it but it is Only God’s Way that is the Best Way to handle it and we must try and make efforts to see to it that we handle our life situations God’s Way otherwise we will end up being frustrated or disappointed in life which is what is happening to all of us most times and why we have disappointments here and there; then we come to another word walk and live, when God has taught you His Way, it is essential to know that you just have to walk and live in it knowing that it is true and the truth, any deviation from it spells out disaster this is why you see that King David followed by asking God additionally to direct and unite my heart solely and reverently to fear and honor God’s Way and God’s Name because from experience maybe King David has known that if God does not direct and unite his heart solely with God’s reverent fear and honor there is every tendency for him King David to stubbornly and disobediently do things his own David way and push God’s Way aside on the basis of the word of God ‘there is a way that seemeth good…’and end up disappointed and frustrated in life, this is the case with many people on earth today. So let us all be very careful with how we handle God’s Way in things we do in life! Last week we said that denial is one of the most popular escape routes down which people run when they are confronted by difficult or unpleasant reality. Ask yourself now: how much of my life is given over to the denial of reality? To the owing up to facts and realities of life simply because for one reason or the other I do not want to accept it even though I know in my heart that it is true and a reality. Be careful that you don’t get caught up in the trap of denying reality! Sadly, denial keeps us away from God, for whatever is true must be accepted. Integrity means having a system of living that never requires us to deny what or the truth before us. Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Somehow Biblically Integrity is a state of one being whole and undivided so in a nutshell our Lord Jesus Christ used a very simple statement to define integrity when He said “let your eye be single” as seen in Matthew 6:22-23 saying, “22 The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your entire body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is unsound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the very light in you [your [a]conscience] is darkened, how dense is that darkness!” Notice that sound is here used for ‘Single’! In life we need not exaggerate what is before us, we need not minimize what is before us, but we need to acknowledge frankly and honestly what is before us either as real or unreal. Then having known what integrity is, the question now before us is do we have integrity? Are we consistent, honest, real and factual in everything that we do and say? In some Churches the teaching is presented by people who deny reality in their own personal lives, and so, to be an accepted member of those communities, such people have to pretend that they don’t have a problem because if you acknowledge your problem you are viewed as not being a ‘good’ Christian for, in their thinking, ‘good’ Christians don’t have problems. This is a gross misrepresentation of the Christian life and a slur on our faith. Slur means presenting a thing wrongly! What happens to Christians who continue to deny reality? Their views soon turn into dogmatism –they push or force their limited or wrong views as hard as they can in order to convince themselves or others of their truth. Dr Lawrence Crabb says that ‘The strength of dogmatism is related to the effort we make to deny reality’. Dogmatism is stating your opinions in a strong way and not accepting anyone else's opinions: or the tendency to lay down principles as undeniably true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others. A theology that develops out of the whole Scripture, and not just out of a limited view of Scripture, is perfectly capable of dealing with all reality, no matter what it is. God is not afraid of or intimidated by anything that happens in His world, so why should we be?

Can you now see the reason why Satan fights very hard and very tirelessly to make sure that the people especially God’s people do not have adequate time to get themselves embodied with God’s Word so that he will make them get caught up unaware with God’s judgment. So know it today that with the trend of things in the whole world based on fear of uncertainty, this is the time to seek the Lord with all amount of seriousness making war with anything that tends to obstruct your way to seek the Lord Jesus Christ even making war and fighting with sleep waves during sermon and the reading of God’s word knowing that Satan applies virtually everything available to him to try prevent your knowing God and His Word. Just as the passage of the word of God rightly said, it is time for all of us who truly claim childhood of God to begin seeking the Lord our God by making all effort to enter the ark of Christ. As we consider the most popular escape route that Christians run down when they are confronted by harsh or unpleasant reality –the escape route of denial, it is vital that we pay attention as to know and understand how we do it. We duck down this escape route of denial whenever we disguise or damn an unpleasant situation and persuade ourselves that it does not exist, simply because for one reason or the other we do not want to face it; so we pretend that it does not exist. In telling the following story, I do not wish to detract from the fact that God does heal today, but to draw attention to a tendency that some Christians have to take the way of denial just because they do not want to face the truth or the reality. I once heard of a Christian who experienced some bleeding from the intestines and needed to have several blood transfusions. Preliminary X-rays were not helpful in finding the cause of the bleeding, and it was pointed out to the man that further tests should be done to try to discover the source of the bleeding. The man said he believed God had healed him, and for this reason he would no longer require medical help. Sometime later he began to bleed again, but begged his wife not to alert his doctor. His wife did as he asked, but regrettably, three days later, the man died. The post-mortem showed the cause of death to be a ruptured vein in his intestine. His wife, who told me the story, said with tears in her eyes: ‘My husband was so frightened by the bleeding that I am afraid he lost touch with reality; may we never lose touch with life reality!’ This is the case with many of us myself inclusive which is why I have asked the Lord my God to always give me His sound mindedness and boldness so that at each point in time in my life let Him help me conquer fear because fear is our greatest enemy. As we consider this escape mechanism of denial, a friend of mine, who is a Christian and a psychologist, says: ‘I wish with all my heart that I could blast denial right out of the Christian Church.’ I can identify very much with that viewpoint because, in my judgment, denial or pretext is one of the biggest hindrances I know to becoming a real and honest person in life. Pretext is a reason given in wrong justification of a course of action that is not the real reason. Many of us don’t want to own up to the facts and reality of life and most often we like hiding what does not need to be hidden, hence the Igbos will tell you: onye zo oria, oria ezo ya! In the past, I have received many letters from people telling me how their faith was shattered when they heard of well-known Christian leaders who had died even though certain individuals in the Church had prophesied that they would be miraculously healed. An example of this statement is my late wife, because of her closeness with the Holy Spirit and the way Holy Spirit makes use of her in prophecy and healing, many thought she cannot die and the news of her death was a shock to many members and if it were not for the grace of the Lord many of our members would have lost their faith in God because of her sudden death. I believe in the ministry of healing, and I also believe in the gift of prophecy, but I have to say that in many sections of the Church these ministries of prophecy and healing are greatly misunderstood and abused especially when Christians are tempted to see their leaders who are endowed with these ministries as mini-gods and not the human beings that they are. I know of communities of Christians who are dazed and confused because prophecies made by seemingly reliable and mature Christians clearly have not come to pass. Let it always be known to us that God does with us as it pleases Him, we are created for His good pleasure and as such He can do with us as He pleases and nobody should grumble or complain or question, rather we give thanks unto Him with all sincerity and love. I am convinced there is a pure stream of prophecy and healing flowing through the Church, but I have to say that some of the statements I have heard coming from the lips of Christians in the guise of prophecy appear to me to be immature and irresponsible proclamations. Things that God is not and things that God is not in and it has become a source of worry in the realm of divine Spirit! Many things can contribute to this state of presumption: a failure to discern between God’s voice and their own inner feelings, a desire for impact or prominence, or even a longing to exercise greater faith and make a show of it. But the one common denominator in the extremism I am here describing is, in my opinion, a failure to recognize and deal with reality. Appearances mean nothing if they are not undergirded by truth. So in everything that we do let us be guided by the truth that comes from the Holy Spirit of God and the word of God.

Today, looking at the different life threatening turns and dimensions that events and circumstances are assuming in our day, it is important that wise people realizes that the best divine benefiting attribute and characteristic nature which any truly wise individual should labor very very hard to acquire and attain are lovableness or charity, righteousness, uprightness, justice, right standing with God, Christ and man, following the will, plan and purpose of God in one’s life, living at peace will all people; these are vital life condition and requirement if truly attained could be likened and seen as ‘entering the ark of Christ’ of the Second advent different from ‘entering the Noah’s ark’ of the First advent in other to be alive when the earth will once again experience the vicissitude and desolation as it was in Noah’s day because it is this entering of the ark of Christ that will render the individual unshakable as was with the contents of Noah’s ark when our Lord God Almighty will embark on His promised in Heb. 12: 14-29 quoting Hag. 2:6-9 where He said that He will once again shake the earth and included the heaven this time around. We are seeing that the reason why we turn to things that stimulate our physical senses when we feel frustrated is because the feelings of pleasure that come from arousal of the senses help to tune out feelings of displeasure. Arousal is a state in which you feel aggravated or excited or very alert, for example as a result of fear, stress, or anger. Thinking angry thoughts can provoke strong physiological arousal. One feeling becomes a substitute for another –a pleasurable feeling taking over from one that is not so pleasurable. But isn’t that what God does for us –He provides us with good feelings as a substitute for bad feelings? Why then do we resort to things (repressants and suppressants) that only relief us temporarily? The reason we resort to these temporary reliefs is because we do not know and trust our Lord God Almighty and what He can do for us! So still exploring why we prefer temporary reliefs instead of the permanent, then I repeat: But isn’t that what God does for us –He provides us with good feelings in Christ as a substitute for bad feelings in anti-Christ? In life let us try choosing good feelings in Christ! The answer to the above repeated question is ‘Yes’, that is exactly what God does for us but it is an answer that needs some explanation. God does promise that He will replace the bad feelings with good feelings, but He does not promise that He will always do so immediately; this is understanding our God and the way He deals with us: ana m cho imara gi. This is where many Christians are confused: they expect that as soon as they hit a situation which hurts or frustrates them, God will immediately replace their unpleasant feelings with pleasant ones. Sometimes it happens that way, but reality is that more often it does not. God is not a Quick Fix that immediately cancels out any unpleasant feelings that arise within us. This is where many of us are misunderstanding God and one of the reasons why we turn away from Him and go seeking another, possibly arousing His jealousy. Like Reverend Obi Okorie will always say that, “God does not run a fast food joint”. Instead God supports us to bear those unpleasant feelings and brings alongside them more acceptable and pleasant ones. The aim of God in dealing with all our errors and mistakes of life called sin in this manner is to be sure that we have learnt our lessons, so you do not expect a teacher to hurriedly be moving on and ahead with his student when he knows that the student has not learnt, or do you? So God is not a quick fix. He takes His time because nature itself teaches being gradual in all situations: o ji nwayo aga anagi emeru ahu! Have you ever observed a new plant coming out of the soil? Do you not observe that it does not use its delicate blade tip rather it uses the bent. Facing harsh and unpleasant reality can and will hurt yes–never forget that. In time, however, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit who resides in your heart will bring comfort and control when you realize and conditioned your mind to seek help from Him God. God’s solutions to life’s problems are sure solutions, but they are not always instant solutions because holy things are not given to dogs. Let us be clear on this issue lest we present to others a faith that is not consistent with reality of life which is what many people are doing. Now think of it this way, do you just go out of your way to help who does not seek for your help? Remember that God created man a free will individual, so He does not apply force to make him man love and cherish Him God as to seek His help. He wants us to seek Him out of our knowledge of Him to be a good God who loves, merciful and gracious having our good and well being in His heart; so seek God out of your love for Him believing He is able and with Him all things are possible.