Are You a Common Christian ? (4 Minutes Read)

Don't be a COMMON CHRISTIAN. A COMMON CHRISTIAN is a Christian who, like Demas, gives no priority to the words and things of the Lord, therefore forsaken the Lord (2Tim 4:10).  A COMMON CHRISTIAN is like Judas, who will trade eternal treasures for temporal pleasures like thirty pieces of silver (Luke 22:4).  A COMMON CHRISTIAN is also like that third man in the parable of five talents, who does not know the value of the talent given to him by his master and so buries it (Matt 25:14-30).

We are not called to be a COMMON CHRISTIAN, because in the end there will be no room for the COMMON CHRISTIAN when the Lord returns. A COMMON CHRISTIAN is like a wasted vessel.

The Lord says, "He that will come after me must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Luke 9:23). We are supposed to deny ourselves - appetites, reluctances, and carnalities - and follow the Lord whenever he calls us because nothing can compare in value to obeying the Lord. When it comes to denying oneself to obey the Lord, a COMMON CHRISTIAN will not do that.

The Lord says, "if you love me keep my commandments." (John 14:15). Our obedience to the Lord's commandments, especially those that are related to helping others, is a prove of our faith, love, and thanks to the Lord. It is proof that we are not a COMMON CHRISTIAN who will obey the Lord only when it is easy to do so or for immediate personal gain.

The Word of God also says "Whosoever will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God." (James 4:4). A true friend will never leave or deny his friend. Only COMMON CHRISTIAN claims to be a friend of the Lord and still be ashamed of standing for the Lord in the public. The Lord said, "whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and My words, of him, shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His glory and in His Father’s and of the holy angels." (Luke 9:26).

We are not called to be a COMMON CHRISTIAN who will only speak for or follow the Lord only when it is acceptable or easy to do so. Rather, we are called to be true disciples, UNCOMMON CHRISTIANS, who obey the Lord at all times.

"Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed in Him, “If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed." John 8: 31

 

Five Most Desired Soft Skills by Employers

Soft skills are the skills that make you fit into a workplace. With these skills, you will fit in and succeed at your job place. But without the skills, you may have to move from one workplace to another, trying to fit in. Five of these skills are explained in this short article. 

1. Sociability
This is your ability to understand and relate with people. It also connotes your ability to be friendly, adapt, and share the feelings of others.

2. Self-management. 

This is your being able to understand and take control of yourself. It involves self-discovery and mastery. It also includes setting and working on your goals. It includes your ability to monitor your (work or life) progress and takes appropriate actions where needed.

3. Team membership 

This your ability to actively, cooperatively, and progressively participate as a member of a team. It means you will always contribute to your group effort. You see your group's success or failure is your own success or failure. You are not just working to succeed alone, you are working to ensure that your group members all succeed as well. You are always ready to support a group member when needed.

4. Leadership

This is your ability to see things differently and responsibly communicate what you see for others to understand. It involves being able to justify your points, persuade, and convince others to see your points. It also means you are able to devise a new way, which may be different from what others are accustomed to. It means you are able to stand alone for the course you believe.

5. Inclusive and diversity 

This means you are good at getting along with everyone - all types of people and characters. It means you work well with men and women of diverse backgrounds. You treat everybody without prejudice.

These attributes, combined with your technical skills, could set you apart and make you successful if you portray them in your workplace and life. 

3 Proven Steps to Manage your Money and Quickly Build Wealth

Poverty is the problem, but wealth is the solution. There is plenty of poverty in our world today because most people don’t know how to create wealth. This article is written for you if you are looking for ways to create genuine wealth and build a great future for yourself. 

There are three basic but proven steps to creating wealth. These include (1) Get a source of income, (2) Save part of your income (3) Invest a part of your saved income. These steps can make you rich as further explained below.

 

1. Get a source of income.

To create wealth, first, you need to have money, and to have the money you need to provide a service or sell something. This means you need a source of regular income. Once you get a regular inflow of money, then you can proceed to the next step. You can get a regular income via any of the followings;

• Get a job: Job is the work that someone does to earn an income. Depending on your education, qualifications, talents, or energy, there are different types of jobs you can get. You can work as a cleaner, salesperson, teacher, etc. 

• Involve in trading: Trading is buying and selling. To get income by trading, you can buy useful items at cheap prices and sell them at fairly high prices to make some profits. 

• Provide a service: Service is something that the society needs such as transports, fashion, teaching, etc. You can learn of any service you like, get a license for it, and get a place to provide the service for money. 

Once you have found a legal way to make money, either through a job, trading or by providing service, the next step is to gather your wealth. 

 

2. Regularly save a part of your income

The second step in wealth creation is to gather the capital you need to create wealth. This involves a very simple but difficult habit of saving a part of your income. To do this, you will save at least 10% of every income you get every time you get it. This savings is a must and is not for you to spend or use for anything. But it is for you to keep. It is the money you KEEP TO CREATE YOUR WEALTH. It is your financial asset. Your goal is not to spend it to increase it. 

Many people are in poverty not because they don't have a regular income but because they don't save part of their income for wealth creation. 

Imagine, let's say you save $200 every month, that would be $2,400 (12X$200) in 12 months, $4,800 in 24 months.......$12,000 in 60 months etc. 

And you can always increase your monthly savings depending on your monthly income. The joy is that the more you save, the better you will feel, and the more sense of peace and happiness you will enjoy. This is because you will see your financial strength increasing each month. This is not yet your wealth, but it puts you in a position to build your wealth. Now you can go ahead to build your wealth.

 

3. Invest a part of your saved income

To build your wealth you need money, but not the money that you need for your daily life. You can only build wealth using the money you have kept for the purpose of wealth building.

So how do you build wealth? 

At times many people think they can build wealth just by working for money, whereas in fact, people can only build wealth by making money to work for them. 

 So to build your wealth, you will make part of your saved income to work for you to bring more money for you. This can be done by investing a part of your saved income in one or more of the following ways after adequate research and understanding of the potential risks and profits that may be involved.

• Lend a business owner: You can lend your money to a successful business owner and get a certain commission with your money (i.e. 10% or as determined) at the end of an agreed time. In this way, instead of leaving your money in a bank account without any interest, your money can be generating additional income for you without you doing anything. 

• Buy a share in the stock market: You can also put part of your savings to buy shares from the stock market from a successful company or funds you believe in. Usually, on a long-term basis, a share value can increase by 100 to 500%, especially if the company or fund is a successful one. 

For example, if you bought a share for $1000, and the share increased by 500% in two years.  Your money would have increased to $6000 within the two years. Meanwhile, that would not have happened if you had left your money in a bank or if you had no money to invest. In the stock market, you can buy and sell as many shares as you want at any time. 

• Buy and sell land: You can also use part of your savings to buy land near cities and sell the land in the near future when the price would have increased. The more land you buy the higher the profit you will make, and the wealthier you will become. 

• Invest in business opportunity: You can invest in a business opportunity such as agriculture production, farm produce sales, or buying and selling of any profitable commodities, which would not require too much of your personal time. You can also hire a personal assistant or manager to manage the business for you with proper record keeping and accountability. 

 

Wealth creation is possible for you. All you need to do to create wealth is to do what other people have done to create their wealth. These are the things described in this article. Although these are the basics, you can begin your journey of wealth creation from here and learn your way up from other sources. 

There are many books, websites, YouTube videos, or podcasts that are based on money management and wealth creation. You should also use them as other sources to learn more about wealth creation.

I believe you will achieve your goal of wealth creation and build a great life for yourself if you persist.

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc. 

 

A question for readers:

What other way do you think or know that people can create wealth? Comment your answer below to benefit others.

#2 Success Tip: Resist Failure

Success and greatness are achievable for everyone, but failure is one thing that keeps people from succeeding and makes them ordinary in life. But when you learn to properly resist failure, you will succeed and enjoy greatness. This article is written to teach you how to resist failure to achieve success and greatness.

Understand failure

Now you need to understand what failure is and what it is not, for you to properly resist it. There are two categories to failure. First, to simply put it; failure is failing to reach your goal. But not reaching your goal itself is not a failure if you do not give up on the goal. This means it does not means you have failed if you have not reached your goal yet, you have only failed when you accept failure. It means you have failed if you have stopped doing what can make you reach your goal.

 

The second category of failure includes anything that can prevent you from reaching your goal. Mostly these are wrong habits that may include laziness, indecision, procrastination, time wastage, wrong associations, running from books, wasteful spending, ignorance, wrong role model, lack of focus, lack of passion or ambition, etc. All of these failure habits are what can prevent people from reaching their goals. They are the real failure you must avoid.

 

Hate failure

To succeed in life and enjoy greatness, you must hate failure. Hatred is powerful, it is as strong as love, and this is the reason you must confront failure with hatred. When you hate a thing, you will avoid the thing by all means. When you hate failure you will use every means to prevent it from taking over you. You will only succeed in life when you don’t allow failure to overwhelm you.

 

Avoid failure

Another way to resist failure and enjoy success is by avoiding failure from robbing you of your success and greatness. To avoid failure, you must decide that nothing will hinder you from achieving success. First, this means you will never give up if you have not yet reached your goal. Second, it also means you will eliminate or avoid every negative or failure habit from your life. You must avoid failure by all means to succeed and enjoy greatness.

 

Learn from failure

Another way to resist failure is to learn from it. Failure can be a blessing when you learn from it. Failure is a signal that something is wrong. When you fail to reach a goal or get an expected result after making an effort, it is a signal that something in your effort was not done right. If you can locate that wrong thing and correct it, you would not fail again, and you will have expected results. Everybody fails, but only people who learn from failure can overcome their failure. To overcome failure, to succeed and be great in life, you must learn from your failure and the failures of other people.

 

Don’t repeat failure

To succeed and become great in life you must not repeat failures. You must discover the reasons why you and people fail and avoid the reasons in your life. You must ask yourself “why did that happen?” whenever you fail, and you must learn from the story of people who have failed or succeed in life and avoid the mistakes.

 

Success and greatness are achievable for you when you learn to resist failure; understand it, hate it, avoid it, learn from it, and never repeat it.

 

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc.

 

Question for Readers: what other ways can you resist failure?

#1 Success Tip: Think Greatness

Greatness starts from within

Everything starts from the mind: be it success or failure. It is the thoughts in your mind now that will determine what you will do next and how you will do it. And definitely, it is what you do and how you do it that will determine whether you will succeed in life.

You must first think greatness to experience it

You must first think of greatness in your mind before you can experience greatness in your life. As an example to understand this, if you look up, your face will face up, and when you face down, your face will face down. So if you want your face to stay up you must look up, and if you want your face to face down, you will look down. It's impossible to look down and expect your face to face up. In this same way, you must first think of greatness in your mind before you can experience it in your life. Your current status does not count; what counts is the direction in which you set your mind.

You can have all you need if you think so

You may be financially poor now, but you can have all the money you need later if you decide it in your mind. Even though you may be jobless at the moment, your story can change if you can begin to think about how to get a job. Every great person you see today did not start great. Most great people you see today start their greatness from zero-level before they got to where they are today. It's okay to be at a zero level. What is not okay is to think you are okay with that level.  

The secret to greatness is thinking greatness

This is the secret of greatness; thinking greatness. Once you start to think about becoming great, your mind will begin to give you various suggestions about how to become great. It will give you many ideas that you can work upon. It can show you some specific steps you should take or not take, or reveal to you the “Dos and Don’ts” you need to bring success and greatness into your life. For example, your mind can suggest to you the person you need to talk to or stopped talking with. It can suggest to you to change your location, get a new job, learn a new trade, engage in a new business, read a certain book, develop a certain habit, etc. Once you have these thoughts of greatness, all you need to do to experience greatness is to start working on each idea until you realize them one by one.

 

This is how you can become great and how you will remain great in life. Don't think small, but think greatness; think success and prosperity and you will experience it.

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc