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Nigerian Christian music offers a wealth of worship songs as well as artists. The music from the Nigerian past was more biting and finger-pointing than it is today. However, one of the famous singers today is Nneka who is known as a gospel and soul artist. She is one of the new singers who is “telling it like it is.”

One of Nneka’s recent singles is entitled “Africans.” It is considered to be a blunt and raw record. The singer said she was offended herself, as an African, with the thoughts she had. The song calls for change. Nneka sings her song and threads the pieces together about how the country has the resources, but the country must act and react.

One of the unique gospel singers who hit the scene in 2007 is named Asa. Her music is known to be very artsy full of both spirituality as well as intellect. Another artist, Nigerian born Christian singer Ben Okafor has said that the new Nigerian music is creative in its beats and rhythm while being spiritually and intellectually bankrupt. This is more confirmation that the gospel music of Nigeria, the singers, the era from the past is presently going through a major transformation.

A number of Nigerian Christians feel the new songs have such negative values that they are eroding the value systems of both the youth and the adults in the country. There is some sadness that people feel that the Christian artists are not making any cultural statement with the music.

However, the Nigerian gospel music is still there; although the volume might be turned down a bit. In the 1960s the Evangelical Church of West Africa choir used their voices to let the people know what gospel music is all about. The 1970s brought the Good Women Choir, Sola Rotimi, Bola Aare, and Ebenezer Obey to name a few. One of the turning points was when Minister Dorothy James and Rev. David Mporampora transformed gospel music in Nigeria. It is believed that together they laid the foundation of the gospel sound that is known today.

The beautiful hymns, the moving gospels, all of the sounds known to Nigeria have spread the music throughout the world. Such artists as Jide Arowolo, Dayo Bello, David Ojo, Funmi Willians, and many others have taken the Nigerian music, made their own interpretations, and introduced these sounds to most every corner of the world.

The Nigerian music of worship remains a main vein in the African country. The artists from the past shared their beautiful voices and words that have carried on with the artists of today. In days past this music offered peace of mind and dedication toward a brighter tomorrow. The message continues today although some of the “new” Nigerian artists have added their own style and thoughts.

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8Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. - – Romans 13:8-10

God had given the Israelite 10 commandments after coming out of Egypt. These were given as basic “lowest acceptable level” type rules that God put in place to esure a happy and blessed life for His people.

As you continue to read through the Old Testament and into the New Testament you start to realise that these laws are constantly being broken by God’s people – and even continue to be today.

So Paul decided to try and make things a little simpler when he said, “The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus put it this way in Mark 12:28:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”

So what Jesus and Paul are both trying to say is, “All we need is love.”

To follow God’s commandments, we need to:

1. Love God
   Our love for God is but a faint reflection of His love for us. We would be unable to truly express love to ourselves or others unless we had first experiences God’s pure love.

   And once we have, how can we fail to love Him back?

2. Love Ourselves
   You may be thinking, ‘shouldn’t we put others before ourselves?’ I mean we are always taught ‘others first’ but that’s not what God is saying. Both Jesus and Paul specifically say, ‘ love your neighbour as yourself’‘. So how can we attempt to love others if we do not first love ourselves.

   How we see and treat others is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If we do not respect ourselves and put value on our own lives, then how will we ever be able to see the value in others?

3. Love Others
   We you love yourself for who God created you to be, then you cannot help but see others in the same light.  When you start to look at yourself through the eyes of God’s love, you cannot but look at others in the same light.

And the thing is that when you truly are able to love God, love yourself and love others, then you wont have to worry about the 10 commandments. You will automatically steer clear of them!

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4 “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.  5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Selah 6 Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. 7 “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.  8 Save me from all my transgressions; do not make me the scorn of fools. - – Psalms 39:4-8

David here questions the purpose of life – just as his son Solomon does years later.

David states, “Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro.” while Solomon puts it a little bit more bluntly when he says, “Life is meaningless.” But they are both in the same situation , wondering what is the purpose of their lives. Do we really matter in the scope of eternity? With our lives being so miniscule in relation to eternity – a drop in the ocean of time, then what is really important?

I love what David asks of God in verse 4:

“Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.”

Our lives on earth are limited . From the moment of our birth we are like an hourglass and the grains of sand are quickly passing with each moment. Yet we still get caught up in the little meaningless things and forget what is really important.

David realised this and knew that if he could really grasp how brief his time on earth really was, then he would start to find out what was really important in his life.

Have you ever had a near death experience or know someone who has?

Notice how almost instantly their priorities change? Thigs that were important are tossed to the side as they chase the dreams they were to afraid to live. They always seem to ‘get their lives in check.’

David mentions the meaningless of wearch in verse 6, just as Solomon does in Ecclesiastes 5. He also casts aside these as meaningless as well:

• Wisdom 16 I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. - – Ecclesiastes 1:16-17
• Pleasures 10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work,  and this was the reward for all my labor. 11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. – - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11
• Toil (Work)
  
  17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. – - Ecclesiastes 2:17-19

Infact, right at the start of Ecclesiastes, Solomon makes an extremely blod statement,

“Meaningless! Meaningless! ” Says the teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”

Now I don’t for one second believe that Solomon thinks that everything in the world is meaningless. I beleive that he is trying to convey the point that everything we think is important , really isn’t.

So What Is Important Then?

1. Know Our God
   After seeing how minute his life was, David started to realise what was really important when he says in vers 7, “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.”

   He realised that the most important thing in life is to know and rely on God. Nothing else is more important!

2. Follow Him
   Solomon draws a similar conclusion about the important things in life, when he puts forth the following passage at the end of his book.
   The good news is that we don’t have to!

   13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

   When we know our God and understand what He has really done for us, we have no other choice but to offer our lives to Him – to follow Him.

   David takes a more personal approach when he cries out ‘Save me from all my trangressions.’ He realised that He would never be good enough to follow God in his own power.

   The good news is that we don’t have too!

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Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

- – Joshua 1:7-9

What God is doing here is laying out to Joshua His strategy for success. As Joshua takes over leadership from Moses God wants to ensure that Joshua will leader Israel into victory and live a successful and prosperous life.

God Wants You To Be Successful

But before we can look at God’s plan for success in our lives we mush first understand what true success is. The dictionary defines success as:

The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted

So putting this into God’s point of view, we are successful when we acheive what God has desired fulfilling the plan he has for our lives.

I don’t know about you, but I definately want to be successful in God’s eyes, so lets pull that verse in Joshua apart and look at 3 things that we can do to ensure that we are doing all that God has called for us to do.

1. Guard Your Heart And Your Tongue
   I love the Message version of Proverbs 18:21

   Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.

   Words are powerful. Think about it, God formed the universe with His words, He spoke and light was. This is why He says to Joshua: ‘Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth.’

   God wants us to be speaking life into situations, into people and into ourselves. He wants us to confess His promises, His laws and His love. However His promises have to be in us before they can come forth from our mouths. They need to be ingrained into our spirit before we can speak them with authority.

   I love Luke 6:45 where it says: ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’

   How often do you hear someone says something that is hurtful, only to add ‘I was only joking.’ Maybe you have done this yourself. I know I have many times, which is why this verse really hit home with me. Usually when we say these things, they just come out, before we can stop ourselves we have already blurted out this hurtful statement – because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

   Knowing this, I decided to make a change. But instead of trying to stop myself from saying these things, I went to the root of the problem -  my heart. I had to examine what I was allowing into my heart, and put up walls and set boundaries to stop certain things from influencing my heart.

   But stopping things from getting into your heart is only one part of seeing God’s heart flow abundantly out of our heart – and mouth. We need to make sure we are letting God’s word in.

2. Meditate On His Word
   The way we find ourselves constantly speaking positive statements of faith is by filling our hearts with the promises of God. In the passage in Joshua, God first calls Joshua to continually keep His Word flowing from his mouth, but then gives him the means to do so.

   meditate on it day and night

   I love this, because meditation is so much more than just reading a section of Scipture over and over. Meditation is:

   to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.

   The way we see God’s Word constantly flowing from our hear, through our mouth is to be always reflecting on what what we are reading from His Word and what we are hearing from His Spirit.  Notice how God doesn’t just say ‘meditate when you get a chance‘ or ‘ meditate once a day‘? He says, ‘meditate DAY and NIGHT‘.

   His word, either written or spoken – whatever He has been speaking to you, needs to be in our hearts and on our thoughts, and we need to be reflecting on how His word relates to our life and our situation.

   We cannot wait for circumstances to arise before we start looking at what God says about it. Otherwise we will be fighting on the back foot. God’s word needs to be branded on our heart so that when a situation arises we already know exactly what God says about it – and we are able to boldly confess His word to that situation.

3. Do What God Says
   The final thing that we need to do if we want to walk a successful life that God has called for us to walk is that now we have watched what enters our heart, and made sure that God’s word is constantly on our heart is to start to act on the things that God has said.Once again from the passage in Joshua, straight after God tells Joshua to meditate on His Word day and night, He adds,

   so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.

   This is the reason the first two steps are so important is because, how can we do what God says, if we do not spend time learning what He wants us to do? How can we meditate on the purity of God’s Word if we are not guarding our heart and our tongue?

   So let God speak to you as You meditate on His promises. So many people do not know what God wants them to do because they never take the time to just sit in His presence, to meditate on His beauty and promise.

   God wants to speak purpose and destiny into your heart – are you putting yourself in a position to hear Him?

   Psalms 37:4 says:Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

   A lot of people read this verse and think. ‘Great! If I delight myself in God and dwell in His word, then He will give me what I want – the desires of my heart.‘ But I want to challenge you to look at this verse in a different light.

   The way I see this verse is that when we delight ourselves in God, as we spend every moment of our waking lives meditating on Him and his Word, then our heart will align with His heart and He will begin to birth His desires into our heart.

   So instead of Him fulfilling ‘our desires’ instead we are aligning ourselves with Him and He is birthing the desire in our heart – His desire.

   The reason I see this verse in this light is due to the following verse. Where it says:

   Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.

   If God is has already given us the desires that we have in our heart as most people read verse 4 as saying then what is He bringing to pass in this verse?

   However, once you start to see that as you spend time with God mediating on His Word that your selfish, worldly desires are replace with His self-less desires, your human, sinful heart with His pure and spotless heart.

   AND THEN…as you commit your ways, your thoughts and your actions to Him, pursuing His desires which have now become your desires you will start to see God turn the impossible into possible. When you walk in His Word you will see the things that God has placed on your heart, the things that you know you could never do on your own, starting to come to fruition.

   You start to walk in Godly success, without even intending too. You start to achieve things you could never dream and it all comes down to guarding your tongue and your heart, meditating on God’s Word and then putting into action what He is saying!

I hope this has inspired you to live a life of Godly success! I encourage you to walk in His promises and seeks God’s desires for your life.

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I love how Isaiah paints the picture and so I want to take you through a visual journey of the greatness and grandeur of OUR God from different passages in Isaiah 40!

Who has scooped up the ocean in his two hands?

or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger?

Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of his baskets,

weighed each mountain and hill?

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