Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

Exhausted Hearts

Broken people with exhausted hearts, dead tired Christians almost at the point of giving up… do not lose hope. You are loved and cherished more than you can ever imagine. Jesus cares about you.

He knows the weary road you’ve traveled. He is familiar with the pain you are going through. He walked the thorny path you are walking in. He bled before a thorn pierced your foot.

Come to him, all of you who are weary and heavily laden. He will restore your strength. He will bind your wounds. He will put soothing balm on your bruises. He will refresh you with healing waters. He will put a pillow under your head. He will give rest for your souls. Continue reading Exhausted Hearts

Turn Words Into Stories

In order for us to harness their energy, words must be given limits. They must be moulded into a manageable shape that does some kind of work in the world. Words must get turned into a story that can actually guide the decisions a doctor makes with an ill or dying person. This requires that we understand how words stop just being “more words” and become a story. So we must ask, what is a story?

—Ray Barfield

Words Make Things Happen

Words make things happen. They can make a life better or worse. They can make the human heart feel courage, or sadness, or joy, or hope. They can make a person feel worthless, and they can rescue a person. The world of medicine is not built with shiny machines, knives, and bags of Latinate-named intravenous fluids. Those things are part of medicine, but the world itself is made up of stories that situate the person, account for the past, affect the future, and offer a sense of what to do next.

—Ray Barfield

Sorcery and Fortune Telling

As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune- telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. —Acts 16:16-18 ESV

In a space of just two verses, the Bible gives us a glimpse into the nature and activity of evil spirits and how they could do something as mind-boggling as fortune telling. In the original Greek, the text says that the slave girl was possessed by the python spirit. The Macedonians believed that this serpent was the guard of the oracle of Apollo and it gives the power for second sight and ventriloquism to anyone it possesses, something eerily similar to Voldemort’s parseltongue in the Harry Potter novels. The fact that this slave girl had been widely recognized for her craft in Macedonia meant that the city was under the grip of her spiritual influence. This begs the question: How do we think Biblically about sorcery? Continue reading Sorcery and Fortune Telling

The Thing About Forever Is…

The thing about forever is that we only think of it in its cutest terms, like how you would love to spend eternity with the one person that makes your heart do backflips every time you see her. That, in itself, is a wonderful, kilig-inducing idea. Except for a few snags, like these:

1) Eternity is a long time. If we go there now without transformation, we will bring with us all our sin baggage. Just do the math. You carry your own imperfections; the other person will carry her own flaws. Put that together and add “forever” to the mix, you get imperfect union that doesn’t ever end. It’s actually just marriage without the option of dying. Continue reading The Thing About Forever Is…