The Alpha of Certainty

UV 2960/10000 The Alpha of Certainty
That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
Luke 1 v 4

Most people think that there are only two certainties- our birth and our death. But Luke researched the life, teachings and times of Jesus and wrote His gospel as a letter to a friend in order that he might not know with certainty the truth concerning the birth, life, teachings, doings, death and resurrection of Jesus. This morning I just had an online discussion with a school classmate of mine now living in the USA. As a Muslim, he believed that Jesus is a prophet. I wrote to him that though Jesus fulfilled many prophecies uttered several centuries before His coming to the earth and He Himself uttered many prophetic words concerning things to happen in this world right onto the end time, He is no mere prophet but very God, man yet God, God yet man. One can combat a legion of doubts with this one certainty.

The certainty of our faith is that Jesus is the only person in history who is both historical and contemporary in the sense-He entered history two thousand years ago as a new born child, died as a fully grown man as a sacrifice for the absolution of all humanity but rose again with a transformed body and lives now and rules at the right hand of God the Father, the Almighty. Jesus is the first to call and reveal the nature of God Almighty as “Our Father in heaven.” In stating that His Father is our Father too, He was declaring us to be His brothers and sisters, His co-heirs to inherit all of heaven and eternity. The Alpha of certainty implies that among our unmet needs, the need for a child to know his father is the most fundamental. Jesus meets that need by introducing us to God as His children and God to us as our Father.

What are the things we are certain of? We are certain that we are loved by God. We are certain that we are saved by Christ. We are certain that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that there is no need for any alternative nor does an alternative exist. We are certain of our hope in Christ both in this life and the one to come. We are certain that our sins are forgiven. We are certain that the Father hears our prayers. We are certain that Jesus is our Advocate who pleads for us in heaven. We are certain that He ascended to heaven leaving the Holy Spirit to comfort, remind, strengthen, sanctify, enable, anoint, equip and counsel us in our new life in Christ.

The Alpha of Competence

UV 2959/10000 The Alpha of Competence
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God
2 Corinthians 3 v 5

Our competence is of God. This is the reason St Paul wrote, “ I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us.” The Lord supplies not just our need but the inner competence and strength and wisdom needed by us to fulfil His purpose on earth. Jesus proved in many ways during His earthly sojourn that He alone is omni-competent even as the Father is omnipotent. He could heal all types of diseases. He walked on water. He calmed the storm. He gave sight to the born blind. He enabled the crippled to walk. He resurrected the dead. He resurrected Himself when He lay dead in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. He did all this and more without any human help. He answered all the trick questions of His adversaries. He defeated the enemy in all the temptations posed by the latter.
Jesus replaces our weaknesses with His strengths. He blesses our gifts, talents and inborn strengths so that these become productive and useful. People in all kinds of professions and situations have prayed to Jesus and received amazing revelations, grace to do that which they would not have done in their natural selves. He uses our flaws to work His grace and power in. He gives us extraordinary power to triumph in all the challenges and difficulties we face in life. We only need to expand our faith, exercise it and ask for that ability which we lack or that which we need. As a student, when I needed the studying skills and presentation skills to excel, He taught me new methods and imparted the needed wisdom and knowledge and understanding. As a police officer, handling tough law and order and crimes, He gave me the grace to emerge victorious out of it. The Lord imparts His competence to us in a variety of ways- through the gift of the Holy Spirit, through a word of knowledge or wisdom, through anointing with a new hitherto unused or unknown ability, through divine intervention, by sending His angel of help, by sending us aid through humans with the particular gift or ability we ourselves lack.

The trouble is that we often doubt if Jesus can do it and if we believe He can do it, will He do it for me or in this situation? Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive.” We shall receive the omni-competence He alone can impart. At the end of whatever we are attempting, we should not forget to give the credit and glory to Jesus as St Paul did in these words- “Yet not I but by the grace of the Lord.” Like Paul, we need to define ourselves as “ I am what I am by the grace of Jesus.”

The Alpha of Compassion

UV 2958/10000 The Alpha of Compassion
In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.
Isaiah 54 v 8

But for the compassion of the Lord Jesus, we would have perished in our affliction. It is His great compassion that He extends His mercy to us. He loves to redeem the souls that He had made. It is true that we need to fear the lion-like anger of the Lord but His default mode is not anger but gentleness, kindness, mercy. Sometimes, when we displease Him with our ways, He may withdraw His face from us for a time but when we call to Him for mercy, He rushes to wrap us in His compassionate embrace. His kindness and love for us is not transitory or peremptory but everlasting and consistent.

It takes a whole lifetime to experience the full gamut of the Lord’s mercies towards us. As we gain an understanding and insight into His compassion, our own character and temperament gets transformed into a likeness of His. We will be able to deal with our own anger, resentment and bitterness towards our fellow beings more effectively. We too will begin to look at others with the eyes of compassion of Jesus. When Jesus saw people overburdened with afflictions, He was moved with compassion and He acted to heal them, to deliver them. When He saw a person burdened with guilt at his or her past, He forgave them freely, without imposing any condition. When Jesus saw the multitude following Him hungry, He was moved with compassion and He asked His disciples to find some food to feed them. When the food was insufficient to feed so many, He prayed and multiplied it to feed the multitude. Many of the miracles of Jesus when studied in context were not to prove that He is the Son of God but were the result of the deep compassion He felt in certain situations.

The uni-verse is a personal promise of the Lord to be ever compassionate to us. It is a guarantee that we will find mercy in the Lord whatever be our past , whatever be the folly or vile thing that we had done. We need to experience the compassion of the Lord in every aspect of our lives so that we extend the same kindness to others who have erred wantonly or unwittingly against us or against our own sense of right and wrong or of propriety. We ought not to keep a record of wrongs against others but release them with a spirit of compassion and kindness.

Using Alpha Power to Deal with Conceit

UV 2957/10000 Using Alpha Power to Deal with Conceit
Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:

Jeremiah 9 v 23


The Word or Alpha warns any man from professing to be wise, any man boasting of his power, strength, ability, gifts, talents, any man from taking pride in his vast possessions. The Lord is a jealous God and does not share His glory with anyone. No one can elevate himself in his presence like a god or a divine being as Lucifer one of the chief angels did. He catches the wise and the shrewd in their craftiness or negates their schemes. He nullifies the might of the powerful and brings them down to the ashes. Instead, the Lord expects us to boast or glory in our claim that we know the All-wise, Almighty and Owner of the entire universe- Jesus. He is the only real Landlord and we are all His temporary tenants and stewards in His vineyard. The rent we pay are our praises, thanksgiving and the disciplining of our character on the lines of His word.


We find our wisdom in Jesus, our power in Him, our riches in Him. The more we humble ourselves under Him, the more we glorify Him and get an impartation of His wisdom, power and riches. The Word says that the Lord resists the proud or conceited and gives grace to the humble. We should realize the severe limitations of earthly glory, power, wisdom, wealth and trust only in the heavenly counterparts revealed in and through Jesus. In this world, we should be wise without appearing to be overly wise. We can be wise only by acknowledging and trusting on the Lord with all our hearts. We cannot partly trust in the Lord and partly on our own abilities, influence, riches, resources. The more we empty ourselves of conceit, the more are the channels of grace that are opened up in our lives.

Realizing the vanity of human wisdom, riches and power, we depend entirely on the Lord for His wise counsel, His protection and His provision according to His eternal riches. Even the situations of need and challenge in our lives are meant for us to realize and experience the riches and abundance of His grace towards us. Our dependence on the Lord is total. He is the Alpha and Omega of our wisdom, of our power and of our resources. He provides everything we need from beginning to the end. Imagine three circles with A or Alpha at the point of origin and the circumference of Omega. These are the three circles of God’s wisdom given to us, His might revealed and manifested to and through us, His riches supplied for our physical, emotional, spiritual, social, professional, familial needs. We buy His riches with the currency of our faith exercised in the name of Christ, the signatory of God.

Using Alpha Power to Build and Mould Character

UV 2956/10000 Using Alpha Power to Build and Mould Character
According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

2 Peter 1 v 3

The divine power of Jesus is described herein as Alpha. It is the chisel with which He sculpts our character so that we are a likeness of Him. Character sculpting by the Alpha power of Jesus is a lifelong process and not executed overnight. He begins by strengthening our faith which is the foundation of our godly character. The first man had broken faith with God by disbelieving His word and by our believing the Word of God- Jesus, we are restored to the image in which we are created. But the distortions that have crept into us along with our disbelief this far are removed. To faith, is added the knowledge of the character of Jesus, the knowledge of the Word. To knowledge is added virtue or the excellence of goodness unmotivated by profit or pleasure. To virtue, is added patience. We are to learn to wait with a faithful and thankful attitude for the Lord to act in certain situations. To Christ-like patience and perseverance, we need to add godliness and to cap it all- the cornerstone quality of Jesus – godly love or agape love.

To build Christ-like character is not easy. It costs us a lot. But with the help of the Holy Spirit and a diligent study of the models of good and bad character and conduct strewn across the Bible as well as the principles and values of godly character embedded in the Word, we can grow in grace and truth like Jesus. Our focus is to reject the models and patterns of this world and to conform to the patterns of the word. As our minds are renewed in Christ, the Holy Spirit gets busy growing the supernatural fruit of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control in us. We sow in the spirit the seed of such fruit by thinking noble and wholesome thoughts consistently and develop godly habits and make choices that are pleasing the Lord.

St Paul further summed up the godly character in three attributes of the mature believer of Christ- faith, hope and love. His description of love in I Corinthians 13 in fact includes all the fruit of the spirit or the attributes of God-pleasing character. If we are imitating the love of Christ, we are to avoid being envious, proud, resentful, bitter. We are to cultivate a lifelong habit of continual forgiveness. We are to virtually kill or sacrifice our personal egos or pride as we mature in Christ. Jesus took His first twelve disciples through a lifetime course of character building where they kept shedding some attributes which were not God-pleasing and developing attributes that were God-pleasing and edifying to the early body of believers. Peter, for instance, had to give up his racial and cultural biases. He had to cease being temperamental, emotional, impatient. Sometimes, the Lord uses a painful experience or affliction to deal with some aspect of our character even as Paul endured a painful unknown affliction, a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble despite the awesome revelations he received in the course of his ministry.

Using Alpha Power IN Obtaining an Extraordinary Catch

UV 2955/10000 Using Alpha Power in Obtaining an Extraordinary Catch
And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes
John 21 v 6

The secret of a good catch in life is to listen to the Word of Jesus. When He asks us to do something, we should do it and the results will be astonishing. After the death of Jesus, the disciples had returned to the only profession they knew- fishing, not knowing anything better to do with their lives. Simon Peter had been first convinced Jesus is the Messiah when He had similarly told him to cast their net deep into the lake and they had an catch exceeding their expectations. They had not caught any fish all night- a frustrating experience for any fisherman. But on hearing the word of Jesus and acting on it, they caught an immense number of fish in their nets on both occasions, when they were first called to be disciples and later, when they were re-called to be apostles to catch mankind for Jesus.

Jesus will counsel us on the right direction in which we should devote our efforts. It was business as usual for the disciples who were fishing. It was an ordinary day. It is not as if Jesus could lead only fishermen into extraordinary success on an ordinary day but any of us, whatever be our profession or our calling in life as followers of Jesus could act on His word and similarly experience a miraculous catch, beyond ordinary human experience and expectation. The difference is that now we as believers need to go to Jesus to seek His direction, His counsel on where and when we should cast our nets. Of course, we do not catch humans by putting hooks in their noses but casting our nets has a metaphoric meaning.

We cannot stand on the shore and attempt shoreline fishing. We need to take risks and go deeper in faith. We need to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we row into uncharted seas, new experiences. The alpha power of Jesus works with pinpoint precision. He could tell the experienced fishermen to throw a line and catch a fish and that in its mouth they would find a gold denarii enough to pay their taxes. If He can direct fishermen in the area of their core competency, He can direct a businessman in business, a homemaker in bringing up children, a teacher in teaching, a policeman in detecting crime and keeping the peace, a doctor in healing, a statesman in governing and resolving disputes, a leader in leadership. Jesus does not cast the net on our behalf. We are to do what He tells us to even as Mary told the servants at the marriage banquet in Canna, “Do as He tells you to. “ We only need to have the faith, the confidence that Jesus is able to do far more than what our reasoning allows us to believe.

Using Alpha Power to Deal with Corruption

UV 2954/10000 Using Alpha Power to Deal with Corruption
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2 Peter 1 v 4


The root of corruption in this world lies deep within each individual human. We are mandated in this uni-verse to share the DNA or divine nature of Jesus by trusting and appropriating the power in the precious promises of God contained in His word. Lust is the bad root in us that causes corruption. In order to escape, avoid, overcome the corruption in this world to which our flesh is prone, the bad root of lust has to be eradicated from within our souls and the good root of Jesus, the Alpha and Omega of love should be engrafted. Once we are engrafted to the True Vine, we will bear good fruit in every season of our lives. The Alpha of God's Word has a double effect on our lives- it removes the evil root and plants the good root. It acts at three levels- in our spirits, minds and hearts. It shapes our desires and motives.

Instead of being addicted to the evil caused by the lust or the bad root in us that the world has planted and nourished, we can add to our precious faith, we can add goodness, to goodness, we can add knowledge, to knowledge, self control, to self control, to self control-patience, to patience-godliness, to godliness-brotherly kindness and to kindness, add love. In short, once the root of lust is removed from our hearts, minds and lives, we are heading in one direction- all round excellence. We will get rid of corrupt thoughts, corrupt communication, corrupt company, corrupt desires and motives in our lives. From the new root of Christ, will spring forth the new life of love, peace, mercy and hope.

Once the natural inclination of our souls towards lust or corruption is ended, our lives will become productive, blessed, fruitful. We will abound in the fruit of the New Vine of Life of Christ-like love, Christ-like joy, Christ-like peace, Christ-like patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. The evil fruit of corrupt communication, corrupt practices, corrupt desires, corrupt actions, corrupt thoughts, corrupt habit and attitudes will cease in our lives. We sow the seed in the spirit and not in the flesh. We feed the spirit and not the lust of the flesh or the pride of the mind when we feed on the Word. We nourish the good root of faith in us through faith in Jesus. The fruit of good deeds and righteousness of character will follow logically as the root takes hold in our souls.