BISHOP NWOKOLO ENCOURAGES CHRISTIANS TO STEP UP THEIR FAITH, APPROPRIATE GOD’S FLOWING GRACE

BY Alex Uzoigwe

Christians in the country have been encouraged to increase their faith in God at all costs for them to be able to appropriate God’s abundant grace.

They were consequently advised to always approach God whenever they were in difficult situations for solutions, saying that God’s inexhaustible grace is more than enough to sustain humanity.

The Bishop on the Niger, the Rt Rev Dr Owen Nwokolo, encouraged today, Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in the sermon he delivered during the weekly church service at the Calvary Chapel, Episcopal House, Onitsha.
According to him, “God is Alpha and Omega. He is our all and all. He is everything to us. If you have a problem, go to him. Whatever you desire, He is willing and available to satisfy you. He will quench your thirst and assuage your hunger.

“He knows us and our situations very well. He knows life and the world better than we do. That is why whenever you are in a very difficult situation you must find a way to consult Him for solutions, for His grace brings us favour that helps to facilitate our earthly endeavours.

The bishop however regretted that sin, which he described as man’s adamic nature, seems to inhibit the flow of God’s grace into man’s totality of existence on earth.

He therefore appealed that christians should be wise and reflective enough to judiciously make use of what he called abundant grace, and for christians to consciously refrain from unprofitable profanity and ungodliness.
While placating believers not to see what they were at present passing through as exceptional, he encouraged them to take solace and draw strength from Jesus Christ who he said once passed same experience during His earth life.

Bishop Nwokolo explained that Jesus descended to prove to humanity that He, too, was not in any way insulated from earthly problems, difficulties, erratic and unpredictable occurrences in the world.
Although the bishop conceded the God-man nature of Jesus, he said that such divine design was to convince the world that despite His God nature, He, Jesus, could not have been shielded from all earthly experiences during His earthly life.

Briefly expounding on what the bishop described as the mysterious and immutable nature of Jesus, he said, “It is impossible either to diminish Christ’s divinity or his humanity. Any attempt to do so, will be an effort in futility, for His godliness and his humanness are inseparably fused; that is the mystery of His being both God and man”.
He, therefore, urged Christians to step up their faith in God and experience a good encounter with Jesus who he said, “is the Alpha and Omega and everything to us”.

High points of the church service included administration of the Holy Communion and rededication by the bishop, of members of the Diocesan Women’s Ministry who ceremoniously cut a cake to commemorate the Worldwide Mothering Sunday held on Sunday, March 27, 2022.