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“And that ye put on the NEW MAN... Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” ( Eph 4:24, 31&32. ) The Bible tells us that when we are born again, we become ‘new men’ , or ‘new creatures’ . When a man becomes a Doctor or an Army Officer, he is expected to behave in a certain way. In the same way, a certain pattern of behaviour is expected of anyone who claims to be a Christian or a ‘new man’. One of the primary qualities of a new man is that he forgives . The new man should not live in unforgiveness. According to Biblical principles, the new man must not live his life according to what goes on in this world. In the world, people hardly forgive. It is natural for a person not to forgive, but to seek revenge. However, when you become a new man, God expects you to forgive.

The likeliness of a person is also known as his manner. The image and likeness are almost the same just that likeness is with a character. Likeliness is the personality of a person, also known as the nature of a person; how he speaks, how he walks, how he behaves. There is this nature of God that we would want to share, which is love. The Bible makes us understand that God is love at 1 John 4:16 also at 4:8. Love is the nature of God, it is the first to be said in the fruit of the spirit at Galatians 5:22. God is love and this nature is in us as long as God dwells in us. His love comes upon us, we love not because of beauty or riches; it is our nature, I just love you. God gives love and that of the flesh is lust. Lust is totally different from Love; lust is a sexual desire for someone while love is the nature of God. In fact love is a whole lot of spiritual fruits. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 talks about the elements of love. You will see there that love does not envy, lo

I have come to the understanding that Christianity is not selfish; it is not self seeking. This is the nature of love, God did all these out of love, He blessed us with all the spiritual blessings because He loves us. When revelation of the word of God is revealed to me, I find it difficult to keep them to myself, I always want to share. This is not because I want to show you I know more, but it is done out of love. That is our nature in Christ, we are not competing in knowing God’s word but rather we always want to produce someone at least after our kind. We want to impact someone with all within us. If I’m allowed to teach or preach (share) the word of God, I could speak my whole life without getting tired of the gospel. I want to produce the listener in my image and likeliness, I want to let him think the way I think, speak the way I speak. That is one element of love… not self seeking (1 Cor. 13:5). This is what God did, “ And God said, let us make man in our image, an

James 1:19 says “ wherefore, my beloved brethren, let everyman be swift to hear and slow to speak, slow to wrath. ” Grammatically, hearing is passive while listening is active. On your way home, you may hear people talk about something; that does not mean you listened to them. But if you pay attention to hear someone, that makes it listening. We can easily conclude that listening is to concentrate on hearing someone or something. I had recently been talking a lot to God through prayers but refused to read the Bible when prompted by the Spirit of God to do so. He put a question to me that “ How often do I listen to Him? ” Suddenly I came to myself that I had never thought of that. All we do is to always talk and talk but never listen to Him. Today, we pray for this, and the next time for another, but we never pay attention to Him. Be quick to listen to God, He is always paying attention to us whenever we pray to Him. God is serious with His children, He does not play us a

Many Christians—not unbelievers—finds it difficult to be humble. But that is how God has made us in Christ Jesus; to be humble. Being humble to some people is foolishness; “ how can you just let him go after disgracing you in public’ you should have slapped him! By the way, you just a fool .” This is all they say, the carnal man sees a humble person as a fool. They think such a person is afraid to react, but it’s a gift from God. One of the fruits or manifestation of the Spirit is humbleness which falls under self control. Humbleness also falls under patience and love. If you have none of these you can’t be humble. “ And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so.” (Gen. 1:24). The cattle are referred here at Genesis. Cattle are one of the most humble animals on earth. Cows and oxen are referred to be cattle. The word cattle from its Hebrew unused root meaning is to be mute

You don’t ever have to be afraid of the circumstances of life or the challenging situations you may find yourself in. You can always be at peace, because the Bible says there is no fear in him whose mind is stayed on the Lord (Isa. 26:3). It’s up to you how you react to the storms of life that come your way. It’s your decision whether you flee in terror or begin to wring your hands and say, “Oh, my Lord! Why is this happening to me?” We have all been there at one time or another: We all cowered in the face of trouble and wrung our hands wondering, What am I going to do now? But thank God, those days can be gone! No longer do we have to flee in terror from the enemy. We can rise to victory! We can rise to our full potential in the spiritual realm where God wants us to dwell. How? God made Himself plain through His creation. And the Bible often uses nature to teach practical lessons and illustrate certain truths. We can learn valuable lessons from one of God’s majestic creatures: