On The Path Of Winners
BY BAYO OGUNMUPE
Treading The Path Of Eternal Glory
THE person God describes as ‘‘a
man after my heart” should be studied carefully. ‘‘I have found David, a man
after my own heart,” Acts 13: 22. Let us examine the life of David as one who
treaded the path of eternal glory. David had a humble start but a terrific
finish. He began as a shepherd, ending up a king. The chances of that happening
were slim to none. Among the ancients, shepherds were so low on the totem pole
that they couldn’t testify in a court of law. Their word wasn’t considered
reliable.
Yet David ended up writing the most widely
read and loved Bible Psalms of all time. When you invite Allah into your life,
He cancels the liabilities of your past, rewriting a new future for you. But
you must accept what He has chosen for you. The life of Paul is an interesting
contrast to that of David. Paul sowed his wild oats before he met Jesus, he
then went on to live an exemplary life.
David became king at 30, but during his 40 years
as king, he experienced devastating failure. There are some lessons from this.
One, do not rush to judgment. It is not over until Jehovah says it is over.
David’s story is a warning to the transgressor, a rebuke to the self-righteous,
a testimonial to the justice of God that would not allow us to escape the
consequences of our actions. It also shows us God’s abiding love that will
never let go of us.
Two, God can bring good out of evil. He can
take every experience you have been through and make it work for good, either
for your good or for the good of others. When you seek to fulfill the purpose
of Providence, in spite of your weaknesses, He makes ‘‘all things work together
for good,” Romans 8: 28. David was anointed king in his teens; but he only ascended
the throne at thirty. There is a pattern here.
Three, Jehovah calls His man. In spite of
being unappreciated by his family, overlooked by Prophet Samuel, God picked
David. Jehovah also picked Deborah to lead Israel in a male dominated society.
Stop trying to pre-empt God. Stop comparing yourself to others. Four, only God
knows the span of time required for your undertaking. Which is why you must
cultivate endurance. Endurance means standing firm under pressure. The prize
belongs to the man who is committed for the long haul. Joseph refused to let go
his dream, that enabled him to say no to the advances of Potiphar’s wife and
endure unjust imprisonment.
But the day came when Potiphar and his wife
knelt before Joseph. So keep your eyes on the prize and do not give up. David
knew the Israelite Prophet Samuel was coming to his house looking for a king,
and that he was not invited. Though that hurts, how did he respond? By asking
someone to put his name in the hat? No! Promotion comes from Allah. But David
knew nobody could keep God from blessing him. ‘‘Then Samuel anointed him in the
midst of his brothers,” 1 Samuel 16:13. If you remain faithful, God will lift
you up in the midst of those who overlooked
and put you down.
However, when the holy spirit left King Saul,
he was tormented by evil spirits, ending up in consulting a witch. Which was
why David prayed, ‘‘Take not thy holy spirit from me,” Psalm 51:11. If God has
called you to give you a job, He will give you all the grace needed. But if God
hasn’t called you to do your job, the spirit will torment you day and night.
So, be prepared for trouble. Like Joseph’s
brothers, they will say of you, ‘‘Let us
kill him and cast him into some pit and see what will become of his dreams,”
Gen. 37:20. Why would such Christians and Muslims alike who are supposed to
love you say and do such things? This is because they know who you really are
or recognize your God-given dream. So, expect rejection, especially when there
is no evidence to validate your anointing. When David demonstrated the faith to
take on Goliath, his eldest brother Eliab called him arrogant and resented him.
Such things happened to the ancients as examples and were written as warnings
for us in the modern world. These are examples showing that success isn’t
cheap. The pursuit of greatness is riven with dangers.
Our champion today is George Lukacs, the
Hungarian philosopher, writer and literary critic who greatly influenced
European socialist thought in the first half of the 20th century.
His major contribution include the formulation of a socialist system of
aesthetics that opposed political control of artists and defended humanism,
elaborating on the Marxist theory of alienation. Born into a wealthy Jewish
family, Lukacs became a socialist, joining the Hungarian Socialist Party in
1918. After the overthrow of Bela Kun’s Hungarian Socialist regime in 1919, in
which Lukacs served as the minister for culture, he moved to Vienna where he
lived for 10 years. He became a journalist, and wrote a book: History and Class
Consciousness where he developed his own unique philosophy of history. There,
he laid the basis for his critical literary tenets by linking the development
of form in art with the history of the class struggle. From 1929 he became a roving
newspaper correspondent between Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. In 1945, he became the
Minister of Culture again during the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Thereafter, he
devoted himself to writing, he wrote more than 30 books including a collection
of essays which bolstered his reputation as a philosopher. He died in Budapest
in June 1971.
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