THE PROTÉGÉ EFFECT

On random days, I'll suddenly have a desire to study the most random things. 🤗
Last week was a bit of Neuroscience. 🤣
I know I really hoped I'd become a neurosurgeon, but as far as we stand, I can only dissect the Word of Truth 😃

Anyway, my study centred around neuroplasticity and the effect of habituality. I didn't even know why I was reading into all these things, but somewhere in my reading I came across a phrase: “The Protégé Effect.”

The idea is fascinating and cites that ;
We tend to learn something more deeply when we study it with the expectation that we will teach it. Not necessarily because we will actually stand before a class and teach it, but because the expectation of teaching changes the way we engage with what we're learning.

And I immediately thought of Philippians 4:9:
the things which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, these do.
Paul had just told them what to think on:

Whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report if there is any virtue and anything praiseworthy meditate on these things.

And then he says:
the things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do or in other words practise them.

And this is where my random neuroscience study became rather interesting. 😂 neuroplasticity speaks to the brain's ability to adapt and strengthen neural connections through repeated experience, attention and practice.

In simple terms, what we repeatedly practise becomes easier for the brain to recognise and retrieve.
And isn't there something beautiful about seeing that principle alongside Scripture?

Paul isn't saying, “Think nice thoughts.

As we continually set our minds on what is true, pure, noble, lovely and praiseworthy, and then practise those things, we are forming pathways where those virtues become a norm.
The more we practise truth, the more familiar truth becomes.

The more we practise what is good, the more readily we recognise what contradicts it and perhaps that's why Scripture places such emphasis on renewing the mind.

So maybe my random neuroscience rabbit hole wasn't so random after all , I went looking at the brain and somehow ended up back at the renewing of the mind.

My desire is this , may my patterns be consistently shaped by the truth of God's Word as I delight in it .

PROMPTED? OBEY!

Yes, we live in an age where big and small tasks can be completed simply by prompting.

You need a payment made? Prompt.

You need something created? Prompt to generate it.

And one thing about a prompt is that it calls for a response.

When you’re prompted to make a payment, you don’t usually sit there contemplating it for three days. 😂 You act immediately.

Why?

Because a prompt is an invitation to action, not long overdue  deliberation.

And it had me thinking about our obedience to God.

The Holy Spirit will prompt you to do something or not do something. But sometimes, instead of responding, we begin to debate and deliberate.

Our what ifs become loud, and eventually we find ourselves saying, “Maybe later.”

We negotiate with a prompting that was meant to produce obedience and ultimately lead us where God wants us to be.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Delayed obedience is disobedience.”

Think about it this way: when a teller prompts you to complete a payment, you don’t get to choose your own convenient time indefinitely. The prompt may expire, and you may have to initiate the process again.

You proceed to obey because the prompt was calling for a response from your end.

And sometimes, I wonder how many times we ask God to speak again and again  when He has already spoken.

The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth (John 14:17). He doesn't just tell us what to do and leave us to figure it out on our own. He leads us, accompanies us, and empowers us to walk in what He is asking of us.

So, when He prompts you, be quick to obey.

You don't need to understand everything before you obey everything He has clearly instructed you to do.

The prompt is not the destination Our response is .

And this is what He says:

✨ “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.” — Psalm 32:8

His leading calls for our trust and willingness to follow.

✨ “Follow Me.” — Matthew 4:19

       this is enough divine instruction.

✨ “I made haste, and did not delay to keep Your commandments.” — Psalm 119:60

              obey with urgency .

When the Spirit prompts, don't negotiate, obey.

DailyWell — Peace ✨

STEWARDING DESIRE

Stewardship is one of the virtues we see and learn throughout Scripture. Stewardship is gaining mastery over what you have been entrusted with tending it, developing it, and bringing it into its intended purpose without wastage . This reminds me of prophet Isaiah speaking concerning the Messiah he said " God's pleasure would PROSPER in his hands ."

He meant ,Jesus would steward the Fathers will till it's completely complete and nothing would fail in His hands because he wasn't going to abandon the mission for pleasure or convinence.

The book of Ephesians reminds us that we are God's dwelling place by His Spirit and that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Being His temple comes with an expectation that we keep and tend what He has entrusted to us because he also helps us do that through the sufficiency of His grace .

But stewardship is not only about the physical. We are also called to shepherd and steward our souls by the renewing of our minds through the Word.

And today, I want us to look at one aspect of the soul: desire.

Desire is innately woven into us by God. We were created with the capacity to long, to pursue, to delight, to hunger, and to seek. But God does not just  want us to have desires that lead us to leaning on our own understanding ,He desires that our desires are stewarded according to His intent.

David puts it beautifully in Psalm 37:

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Psalm 37:4

Often, we  interpret this scripture as meaning that God has the responsibility of meeting all our hearts desires.

But perhaps we ought to pay attention to the order.

Delight yourself in the LORD.

The delight comes first.

As we delight ourselves in Him, He becomes the object of our affection and inclination,the source of our satisfaction, and the One who shapes our desires. We are brought to the place where what we desire is increasingly aligned and conformed to what He wants for us.

The promise is not simply that God will supply every desire we naturally have. It is that as we delight in Him, our hearts are being formed to incline to His will for us that what we desire not only looks like His but is also from Him .

David gives us another beautiful picture in Psalm 42:

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

Panting is a deep longing, a deep thirst for something and so here is something beautiful about the deer. 

It has a strong sensory system within it which helps it detect danger and navigate its environment , its pursuit of water becomes especially significant in dry and difficult terrain.

It been created with acuity senses that  influences where it goes either for safety or to quench it's thirst.

What a picture for the child of God.

There must be a posture in us where our inclinations and desires are shepherded by our need for God Himself  and not only our desire for what He can give us, but being with Him 

Stewarding desire is yielding yourself to Him.

Stewarding desire is delighting yourself in Him for the. does He teach your heart what satisfies it's longing.

Stewarding desire is learning to say no to what would entice and entangle your soul to ungodliness.

Stewarding desire is allowing your soul to rest in God alone .

DAILYWELL-PEACE ✨

IT IS WRITTEN ✍️

Jesus has a history of quoting the scripture , meaning he read 

Sometimes he'd ask " What's written in your law?

Other times he would declare "it is written."

And other times he would ask , have you not read? 

Meanwhile, you who is always singing "I behold until I am formed' keeps skipping the long letters written by some of his disciples. 

What colour is your problem, abi🤣

Your Lord read,scrolls.

Bereans were called noble because they searched the scriptures to ascertain what they heard.

In the book of Revelation ,Christ says blessed is everyone who READS , please read,it's more blessed to read than to constantly keep saying " I feel in my heart"

Jesus would have said "I feel it in my heart that bread isn't everything 😄😄 he was precise.He knew it is written.

Feelings are good but terrible substitutes for "it is written"

He desires us to come to the knowledge of who He is and that is through his Written word.

A heart settled on what God has said in his word is often seen when chaos arise ,because in moments of chaos, you do not rise to emotions  you stand on revelation.

When the word is the lamp to our feet and a light to our path, we are well led . 

Christ has a record of reading, he even has a book with him as proof 😄 and if he didn't want you to read,he would have sent a podcast link , a reel or a playlist,not a book with chapters ,genealogies ,super tedious lamentations which you keep fast forwarding👀

It is written,Go read .

Slowly.

Repeatedly .

Prayerfully .

Until it settles , otherwise Paul is in the cloud of witnessess judging our laziness 😄

BEHOLD

We've been studying the book of John and this statement by John the Baptist has stayed with me for a while now:

John 1:29

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

His pointing to the Lamb was to tell the world that the blood of lambs and bulls could not take away sin, but here was One who could,a solution has been made available and sin now has a way of being done away with.

for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Heb 10:4 

The other word that stands out and kept appearing is BEHOLD which is largely what I have been meditating on .

To behold is to gaze upon, to be in awe of, to consistently fix your eyes on. After your sin is taken away, your gaze still has to be on Him.

Looking to Jesus who is the author and finisher if our faith. 

David testified of this in Psalm 34, saying that those who look to Him are radiant and their faces are not covered in shame. Because shame is a result of condemnation. So every year when the sacrifices of bulls and goats was offered ,it reminded the people of their sin but to those  In Christ He says ,there's therefore Now no condemnation because son has been done away with and our conscience has been purged to serve the living God .

While writing to the Corinthians, Paul said 

Bt we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Before beholding , realise He takes away the veil then you been till you are transformed .

Every time I have read a Scripture with the word behold, I have paid close attention to what is being beheld as the subject matter.

For instance:

✨Isaiah 43:19 — “Behold, I will do a new thing.”

This is an invitation to look at the new thing, to perceive that God is actually commited to doing it so forget the old .

✨Revelation 3:20 — “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.”

This is an invitation to incline your ear to the door because He is standing there and knocking. Be willing to open.

Beholding Him is always a drawing into His kind of life. It is a narrow path that leads to an abundant life.

✨Behold, He is making all things new.

Beholding is a wonder .  James 1:25 would have us understand that it is those who look into the perfect law of liberty and continue therein that are  blessed indeed.

Prophet Isaiah said it this way , He keeps in perfect peace those whose minds are stayed on Him . Perfect peace is a guarantee to a mind that's stayed on God 🤗 

There is a continuation after looking, it's not a glance and go,it's staying fixated our situations not withstanding.

Also interesting to note: it was God who first told man to behold what He had created then John redirects our gaze back to Him.

And in closing , Rev 21 guess what the King says to you;

 ' Behold , I make all things New ' 

BEHOLD HIM! 

DailyWell-Peace ✨

TENDERNESS 2

I had an interesting lesson the other day .

I was required to lead prayers as we began our service, which was a great privilege. But because it was the second service, I also had the responsibility of helping set the house in order by asking those who were not joining the service to exit the auditorium.

Some chose not to move, so I began leading the prayers and continued with the service.

Later, my leader called me aside and said, “Next time, have people move out and let everyone else who remains be active in the service.”

It was a simple correction, but as I thought about it, I realized how often we talk about being corrected without considering how we receive correction.

Sometimes correction comes, and our first instinct is to explain ourselves.

'they weren't listening

And before we have even considered what was said, we are already defending what we did.

But I found myself thinking about tenderness.

Perhaps one of the ways we know that a heart is becoming tender is by how it responds when it is corrected.

A tender heart doesn't mean you never make mistakes,it means your heart remains malleable when the mistake is revealed.

A tender heart remains teachable

DailyWell-Peace ✨

TENDERNESS

There was a time I was asking the Holy spirit to teach me how to be tender as a woman. So He did , and we began unpacking little heart issues 🤗

And as I searched the Scriptures I found these two scriptures ;

✨I will give you a heart of flesh Ezek 36:26

✨A contrite heart You will not despise psalm 51:17

It began to dawn on me that tender working begins on the inside before it ever becomes an outward expression.

A tender heart is a heart that is easily moved towards God. It gravitates towards what pleases Him. It is willing to be shaped, corrected and made malleable by the hands of God as the Potter .

Tenderness is first an inner working ,the positioning of the heart to incline towards God's character and eventually to live that out loud.

So, we began by looking at the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5 which is the outward expression of what has taken root within.

And one thing I found interesting is that Scripture calls it the fruit of the Spirit, singular,not fruits because these virtues are meant to function with great dependence because they are of the same spirit.

      ✨Where there is love, kindness follows

      ✨where there is faithfulness,self control remains

And perhaps this is where tenderness begins to make sense.

Tenderness is not simply being soft spoken or agreeable. It is the outcome of a heart that has been continually yielded to the Spirit of God.

It is what happens when the character of Christ begins to shape the way we respond to God, to ourselves, and to others. 

Tenderness is what happens when the Spirit is given room to shape the heart and the shaped heart eventually speaks, moves, loves in the way it is shaped . 

DailyWell-Peace ✨