Henry E. Afekuana

Bondservant of Christ — saved by grace, shaped by His truth, ruled by His kingdom. Living to carry His light, wisdom, and witness wherever He assigns.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Jesus Christ is Lord—crucified, risen, reigning, and coming again.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Apt DD! "missio Dei" God has a plan. He is working it daily. And He has invited us to join Him in it. Some things He reserved for Himself: the growth, the increase, the guarantee. Some things He assigned to us: plant, water, pray, stay in the ship. We work from grace, not for it.

[dele osunmakinde @deleosunmakinde]

This is one of the most pervasive themes in Paul's theology: God's sovereign purpose never eliminates human responsibility; it establishes it. Divine certainty and human action are not competitors but companions.

Paul himself embodies this tension throughout his ministry.

In Acts 27:22–31, God gives Paul an unequivocal promise:

"There will be no loss of life among you..."

The outcome is settled because God has spoken. Yet moments later, when the sailors attempt to escape in the lifeboat, Paul declares:

"Unless these men remain in the ship, you cannot be saved."

There is no contradiction. The God who ordained the end also ordained the means. The certainty of God's promise did not render the sailors' remaining on board unnecessary; it made their remaining the very instrument through which the promise would be fulfilled. Divine sovereignty does not bypass human agency—it governs it.

The same pattern appears repeatedly in Paul's writings.

1 Corinthians 3:6–9 — "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth."

Paul refuses two opposite errors. He neither attributes everything to human effort nor dismisses human effort as irrelevant. Planting was real. Watering was real. Both required labour, wisdom, sacrifice, and obedience. Yet neither planter nor waterer possessed the power to produce life. Growth belonged exclusively to God.

The farmer cannot manufacture life in a seed, but he must still plough the field.

The preacher cannot regenerate a sinner, but he must still preach the gospel.

The believer cannot sanctify himself apart from grace, but he must still pursue holiness.

God alone gives the increase, yet He ordinarily gives it through means He Himself has appointed.

This is why Paul can write in Philippians 2:12–13:

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure."

Notice the logic. He does not say, "Work because God is absent." He says, "Work because God is at work." Human obedience is grounded in divine operation. God's working is not an alternative to ours; it is the reason ours is possible.

Likewise, in Colossians 1:28–29, Paul describes his ministry:

"For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me."

Paul genuinely toils. He genuinely struggles. Yet the strength by which he labours is not self-generated but divinely supplied. The harder Paul works, the more he magnifies the grace that empowers him.

This same principle governs salvation itself. Faith is indispensable, yet salvation is entirely of grace. Repentance is commanded, yet it is God who grants repentance. Believers are called to persevere, yet it is God who preserves them. Scripture never treats these truths as rivals. It presents them as complementary realities within God's redemptive purpose.

Paul therefore rejects two extremes. Fatalism says, "If God has determined the outcome, my actions do not matter." Self-sufficiency says, "The outcome ultimately depends on me." Paul embraces neither. Instead, he proclaims a God whose sovereign decree establishes—not abolishes—the meaningfulness of human obedience.

The biblical pattern is remarkably consistent:

God ordains the harvest; therefore we plant.

God grants the increase; therefore we water.

God promises preservation; therefore we remain in the ship.

God works within us; therefore we work without.

God guarantees His purposes; therefore our obedience becomes the appointed means by which those purposes are accomplished.

In Paul's theology, divine sovereignty never negates human responsibility. It is precisely because God is sovereign that human actions are meaningful, effective, and caught up in the accomplishment of His eternal purposes.

[Leandro Trossard @LTrossard]

To all the Arsenal fans, thank you for everything, from the bottom of my heart.

Once a Gunner, always a Gunner.

Leo

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

@i3cia1 Faith and works don't produce each other. Both flow from the same genuine interior life God produces in us. Works are faith made visible. And faith visibly expressed deepens and strengthens through the journey. Abraham's faith in Genesis 22 was the same faith as Genesis 12.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Faith is completed by the journey not just begun by it.
James 2:22 Faith was completed by works. The teleios faith of Genesis 22 was the same faith as Genesis 12 but completed. Having reached its intended end. The formation process did not add to the faith. It completed it.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The formation produces a man the world could not have produced.
The Abraham of Genesis 24 who confidently declares he will send his angel before you is unrecognisable from the Abraham of Genesis 12 who ran to Egypt in a famine without praying.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The test comes when the formation is ready for it.
Genesis 22 came at the end of twenty-five years of formation for a reason. Abraham in Genesis 12 could not have passed the Genesis 22 test. The King knew exactly when to test what the formation had produced.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The King never abandons the son in the failures.
Every failure in Abraham's journey was met with the King's intervention, protection, and restoration. The covenant was never revoked. The calling was never withdrawn.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The silent seasons are formation seasons.
Thirteen years between Genesis 16 and Genesis 17 with no recorded encounter. The King was working through the ordinary, undocumented passage of time and consequence.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The same failures can recur at advanced stages of the journey.
Genesis 12 and Genesis 20 are the same failure. Decades apart. The formation is real. The same root can still occasionally produce the same fruit even in a mature believer.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Formation takes longer than we think it should.
Twenty-five years from Genesis 12 to Genesis 22. The King was not in a hurry. He was after something deep and lasting, not something quick and impressive.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The son who trusts the King's promise but cannot trust the King's timing will always produce an Ishmael.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The goal is to be so matured in Christ and so settled, fully persuaded, in everything God has willed that no teaching, pressure or season can move you off the ground He has given you. A believer who has grown up, dug in, and cannot be talked out of what God has said!!!

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The man who chases the sunset never sees the dawn. Face the darkness. Run through it. The rising sun is on the other side.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

@deleosunmakinde Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

The gifts of the Spirit are the Spirit making himself visible. You are the jar of clay, just the container. The treasure is his. Not given for display but for the common good, the body growing into the fullness of Christ. #HolySpirit

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Holiness is not separation from the world geographically, but distinctiveness within it.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Worship is the whole-life response of the creature to the Creator, and it is impossible without the Holy Spirit.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

A life of prayer that is only petition and never beholding misses the deepest thing the Spirit offers in prayer: not merely answered requests, but transformation into the image of the one beheld.

[Henry E. Afekuana @afekuanahenry]

Prayer is not the believer's lonely effort to be heard by a distant God. It is the
believer, indwelt by the interceding Spirit, praying through the interceding Son, to
the searching and hearing Father.