Daily Devotionals

God loves the world. He loves the world so much that he charged his only-begotten Son to save it. It is interesting to note that Christians are the ones that hate the world. This is not surprising because the goal of most Christians is to die and escape to heaven. The time has come to enlighten those that call upon the name of the Lord, that God loves the world. He wants you to watch over your world and steer it towards a better future. You have the grace to fix businesses, government, culture, or economy. You can beautify your world.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16‭-‬17 ESV)

God sent his Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through him. The word saved here should not be simplified to only mean the preaching of salvation. It also means to deliver the world, to heal the world and make it whole. When the bible advises you to “love not the world”, it is a word of caution not to fit into the world and forget your role in fixing it.

It is never in doubt that God loves the world and that he is still interested in empowering people to steer the world towards where he wants. The biggest shifts in human history were made by people fired up inside with a light from heaven. You think of Martin Luther and the reformation. Isaac Newton and the scientific revolution. You think about how people with nothing personal at stake have chosen to fight for human rights, social justice and the collective progress of all. The Spirit of God does not kill people and send them to heaven. He rather empowers you right now to operate as an agent of heaven wherever you are.

Let us start from the basics by acknowledging the Almighty God in his fullness and glory. Basic Christian theology teaches us that the Almighty God is omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnificence (all-creating) and omnipresence (all-present). We also understand that we act as God’s agent in the physical world and channel God into our world. The question then is this; if we could do anything by God, what should we be doing? If God makes it possible to do anything, what should you be doing? Well, of everything our connection to God makes possible. The most productive use case for spirituality is knowledge creation. We would be better off if more people leverage their spirituality towards advancing knowledge.

Being spiritual enables us to serve as a vehicle for the grace of God upon the dark world around us. We can pray and seek out the power of God to solve any problem we have. However, you need to understand that no problem is solved until the knowledge to solve it is available. It is better to grow in knowledge and invent a drug that cures headaches rather than rely on praying away headaches every time. For every hundred cases of headaches, the drug produced by the wisdom of God will cure more people than the healing sought by the power of God. We have not solved a problem unless we have solved it by application of knowledge.

The bible declares: “wisdom is the principal thing”. Intelligence, knowledge and wisdom are ranked higher than power. While you might love the ability to manifest the raw power of God to your world. The best way to serve your world is through knowledge and inventing better techniques through your connection to God. There should be no conflict between science and religion because they are both streams flowing from the throne of grace. The biggest drivers of change in the world are better knowledge, science and technology. You cannot build a better world around the “power of God”. You build it around the “wisdom of God”. That is why for real solutions, use your spirituality to advance science and technology.

We – every human being, are in pursuit of something. There are many things demanding your time and energy. A lot of things you could be doing, many things you should be doing. This makes it important for you to be sure that you are spending your scarce resources on the right pursuits. Money, fame and power are some of the things we spend the greatest energy pursuing. However, after all is said and done, they fail to deliver the sense of purpose we crave. You should chase after the spiritual above all. That is where you would find lasting peace and true happiness.

For someone who grew up in abject poverty, money is always going to look like the messiah. The one thing that delivers from a life of struggles. However, we know that to be false. “Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!” (Ecclesiastes 5:10 NLT) Kevin Systrom (Instagram co-founder) had this experience after selling his company to Facebook for $1 billion: “the biggest lesson coming into a fair amount of money pretty quickly, was that money itself is no end. It doesn’t make you happy”. A mentor of Systrom’s had warned him that money doesn’t solve many of the hardships that come from being human. “No matter where you are on the spectrum, you struggle in different ways,” Systrom recalled being told.

Money never satisfies. Money at best gives you a false sense of security and then it fails you. Fame is a burden that is more trouble than it is worth. Power without values and virtue corrupts the soul and leads to perdition. Your greatest pursuit should be towards things that would bring real fulfillment. The assurance that your work matters and you are making a difference in the lives of people. When your pursuit of God becomes your top priority, you get it all. With spiritual growth, you outgrow poverty due to increased fruitfulness and productivity. The associated fame is not vain and as God empowers you, you do not become corrupt.

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony! For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe (Psalms 133:1‭-‬2 NLT). Something happens when people can live together with a common goal, in peace and harmony. This scripture compares it with the anointing. That the action of choosing to cooperate in unity makes the anointing from God available. Therefore, we can expect everything the anointing can do to be present when there is true unity.

The bible exalts the need for unity of purpose and harmony within groups. The Acts of the Apostles talks about how the early Church was united in hearts and minds and made it clear that was why they grew as fast as they did. This is also something that has been observed in modern times. The work is better in quality and quantity when the people operate in unity. Modern business establishments pay a lot of attention to staff morale and try to reduce any negative energy between team members. When organisations fail, you can always be sure that the unity and “team spirit” was lost.

If you are serious about doing great things, you must first make peace with the idea that you cannot do it alone. You will need to work with people. Then, you must decide to work with others in an environment of unity and harmony. We all have to share a bond, a strong connection around some well defined purpose. These are the requirements for building something great. It is useful to remember that when we cooperate with each other in unity and harmony, the power of God is made available in our midst. Unity makes anything achievable, anything is possible.

If your life’s work is to move mountains. You want God to work out some major socio-economic change through you. You have to make peace with the fact that it will not happen overnight. If something has been documented to require fifty years, it is not faith to think you can get it done in six months. Some things take time. If you are working hard on a challenging mission like reviving academic excellence and creativity amongst young people. Or creating a new country that can become an economic heavyweight. Or big ones like developing the technology stack that empowers people to live for 150 years and above. It will be slow and steady. And it might require a multi-decade approach.

Faith and patience work together. Show me a man of faith, and I will show you that the person also displays remarkable patience with the process. While you can read about the exploits of someone like King Uzziah within a few minutes (2 Chronicles 26:1 -15), you should also be reminded that his reign lasted over half a century. It took Christianity centuries to become the global phenomenon it is today. The temptations might be there to give up on such long term projects, but if you switch to moving molehills, stones and pebbles, sure – you will get the satisfaction that you are getting things done, but in the long run you will know within yourself that you ought to have done much more than just kicking stones around.

Most people devote their life to moving molehills, stones and pebbles. As such, they live unremarkable lives. Most of us need to look for the toughest mountains and start chipping away at it, chip by chip until it finally moves and craves to our will. When you study the works of people like Nikola Tesla (Wardenclyffe Tower), Elon Musk (SpaceX), and Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Alpha), you will understand what it takes to move mountains patiently. If the goal is to move mountains, then don’t expect too much to show too soon. Moving mountains will take some time. Moving a mountain will happen slowly, but we must stay steady.

As you begin to work on matters of your watch and begin to steer your world towards a better future, you want to avoid settling for material comfort and remain committed to your mission. Your job is to move mountains and perform miracles in the socio-economic sphere. You have to decide early in your career how far you are willing to go and what would bring you the greatest sense of fulfillment and impact. A lot of emerging leaders and voices get derailed after their first taste of success. As they begin to get into money, they allow it to get them out of their art. You have to decide that you will not settle for a caricature of your vision.

As you become more comfortable, will you remain in pursuit of the goal? Doing important work is associated with slow progress. When you are working hard for a better future, it is difficult to see or identify results of your efforts in the short term. This means that a performance evaluation might be discouraging and you would be tempted by other things. There will be alternatives that yield better returns with half of your current commitments. If your goal is to enrich yourself, then it would make sense to focus on how you can make the most money from the least amount of work. A true watchman understands that the goal is not personal enrichment and must never evaluate progress by any other metric apart from impact made.

A man in search of a value driven business idea was asked, “If money was not a factor, what business would you like to build?” His response revealed the ignorance in his soul when he answered, “If making money is not important, why would I be building a business?” There is no crime in optimizing life for maximum income and comfort, but that is not the way of a watchman. The watchman understands that there is no fulfillment in acquisition of material possessions. We get a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment in the things we give and not the things we get for ourselves. Do not settle for materialism at the expense of your watch.

Spiritual growth and development is incomplete without mental/intellectual growth and development. An uneducated, spiritual person is unable to maximize their spiritual giftings. This is because the mind has to process and make meaning of every spiritual signal and stimulation received. And an uneducated mind is limited in understanding and application of spiritual insights. The Bible talks about transformation by the renewal of your mind (Romans 12:2). Showing that the mind is a part of the spiritual transformation process. True spirituality should change the way you think. There should be a change in your perspectives on issues. We need a generation of people that are combining spirituality with knowledge and intellectual might.

Pastor Poju Oyemade once said, “A man who will allow the Spirit of God have total control over his thought life will require very little of the other things being peddled as necessary in order to succeed. The Holy Spirit revealing to us the thoughts of God for a situation and by Him maintaining those thoughts in our minds will work miracles through us. The last frontier for the Church is understanding how the Spirit of God employs the mind as its tool in order to manifest the immortal life and intelligence of God through us. Shortly, another breed of Christians will rise in this nation who will combine faith and divine intelligence.”

You are not really spiritual, if you are not improving the quality of your mind overtime. True spirituality will drive you to improve the quality of your thinking. The end goal of spirituality is intelligence. The intelligence that empowers you to operate at a higher consciousness than the unspiritual person. The quality of intelligence generated by your spirit is limited by your intellectual range. So, you want to improve your mind by getting a proper education. It is not a coincidence that the people that made the greatest impact in the bible were educated in their days. Moses (Acts 7:22), Daniel (Daniel 1:3-5), and Paul (Acts 22:3) to highlight a few.

The Apostle Paul once wrote to his son-in-the-faith, “Meditate upon these things; give yourself wholly to them; that your progress may appear to all” (1 Timothy 4:15 KJV). There is a need to give a considerable amount of time and energy towards matters of your watch. It is not enough to know there are things in your world that ought not to be. You have to think, meditate and exercise your own reason and judgment upon those matters. One reason most people fail to make a difference in society is because they did not go beyond complaining about the situation. Worry and complaints are unfruitful and a waste of time.

You want to meditate upon matters of your watch, and by giving yourself completely to it, you will begin to make progress. It is not helpful to complain about the menace of teenage pregnancy every time a new case comes along. If you observe that your attention is always drawn towards teenage pregnancy, it is a sign that you are meant to do something about it. That matter should become personal to you, it becomes your watch. And as you study the problem, and think about it, you will begin to find ways to make the problem less severe.

The reason you are failing to make much progress with your passion projects is because you have not taken Apostle Paul’s counsel. There is always the tendency to excuse lack of progress to lack of money or resources. This is proven to be wrong. You are going to need money and support to get things done, but the first step in the process is clarity. And you will get the clarity you need as you study, meditate and plan around the issues. Nobody becomes powerful enough to move mountains towards achieving their goals by working on it once in a while. You have to give it total focus.

Your goal is to change the world. Steering it towards a better future that is well defined and falsifiable. What you would observe is that in order to accomplish the goal, you would need to work hard. This is a pattern we have seen over and over again by people who changed their world. While most people would succeed by working 40-hour workweeks, you would need to do more than that. You would find a reason to commit to 60-hour, 80-hour or even as high as 100-hour workweeks. You would find the need to become a workaholic (just like Jesus) because you have too much to do.

While not everybody will need to work for up to 100 hours every week. You must be willing to work at such intensity in order to be effective in your leadership role. If you want to change your world – your community, city or nation – you have to work harder than any other agenda. It is a competition. Donald Trump, a businessman and former president of the USA said in 2009, “How does somebody that’s sleeping twelve and fourteen hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?” You could choose a normal working window of 9AM to 5PM every weekday, but then, nobody has ever changed the world with such a work ethic. You have to do more.

On a practical note, you cannot work for long hours if you do not have the passion for your work. The first step to succeeding at this is to be clear on what change you want to see. Then you want to be sure you love your work. You would need to love this work more than food, sleep or mundane relationships. Working 100-hour workweeks is something you want to do during your most productive years and then scale back as you begin to reap the fruits of your labour. I recommend you start with the desire to invest 10 hours, 5 days a week. As you plan, tweak and work towards being effective at this, you would unlock the doors of greater productivity.

After all is said and done, your goal is to steer your world towards a better future. Something that must be verifiable by an objective third party. When John the Baptist inquired whether Jesus was the right man for the job, Jesus responded with results that could be verified by anyone (Matthew 11: 2 – 6). The goal is positive change. The challenge is that changing your world at a scale that matters is expensive. It exacts a toll on the watchman. Jesus got his results by working so hard that his family and friends wanted to take him into custody, fearing for his mental health (Mark 3: 20 – 21).

You must be ready to invest time and energy towards your defined goals. There is no other way. Elon Musk once said, “If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks, and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then, even if you’re doing the same thing, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.” Whoever is willing to work the hardest, wins the day. You will lose the battle of steering us towards a better future if the parties opposing you are working harder than you. The changes you want to make are not impossible, but take a lot of work. Start with investing 100-hour workweeks.

It has been said, “you cannot defeat a full-time devil by working part-time”. You have to operate with a mindset to out-work the devil, out-work every other agenda in your world, and even out-work other players on your side that lack the necessary work ethic. When you gain clarity around your goals, you will see that investing 100-hour workweeks is necessary if you aim to complete your task in a good time. Investing 100 hours a week takes much discipline. Begin by taking charge of your day, plan and engage in productive activities. You only get 24 hours in a day and you have to make it count. This season demands thoughtful action over flowery speeches.