“Will you bring to Him that which didn’t cost you dear? Tis not a sacrifice that which cost you nothing”- Joyance Shalom James. There will be days which will be tough and nights which may be tougher. You may have to labor through the day and then watchman through the night. But remember that He who began the good work in you will bring it to completion for His glory, though the process is painful the end product is a vessel of honor for His glory.You may miss your bed and skip a meal or two, but remember this is your calling and He qualifies the called and not vice versa! At times you may feel at the end of your rope but remember with less of you there is more for God and His rule.You may work with tough-to-handle people but remember that he’s making a tougher you. Respect authority cause it’s God who’s kept them there. If He can toy with a Pharaoh’s heart for His glory then He can certainly use someone in your life for His purpose. The ship which has never braved a storm is the one which has never left the harbor.Be humble cause He gives grace to the humble and pride goes before the fall.Seek Him first, put Him before all else and all things shall be added unto you. Pray continually as you strive to be His hands and feet to the least of these. Wear your smile as you cloth yourselves with Christ, God loves your smile and they’ll love it too.
May they see your Maker in you.God bless.
Author: joyanceshalomjames
-
An ode to the resident/intern
-
The rapids!
Here comes life lessons inspired by the rafting along the Ganges river in Rishikesh. The decision to go for the approximately 14 km long rafting in the Ganges had to brave lot of apprehension and fear from my best-half Shalom Philip, before her final half-hearted approval. We started on the calm waters, before proceeding to the rapids. The rapids with their increasing grades of severity along with their equally creative names are at first a horrifying experience for the newbies.
Brave-hearts: Smile before the scream! 
In action: not so calm waters After a couple of rapids we realized that it required all of us in the raft to keep the raft afloat in the rapids and we needed to balance the weight. Panicking and freezing we realized were the most counter productive things one could do in a rapid, when we need to row all the more harder. Once we got the hang of it, we began to enjoy the rapids and much to my surprise, Shalom not only craved for rapids more than me but also scoffed at the less severe ones which could barely rock the raft at their best. Next we knew, we were eagerly waiting to get over with the calmer intervening waters and for the rapids to give us the adrenaline rush.
Life is so much like the raft on the river: rapids interspersed with calmer waters in between. The calm waters allow us to catch our breath, enjoy the scenic beauty around, socialize with co-rafters and wait for the on coming rapids with anticipation. The rapids give us a much needed jolt to break our reverie, break the monotony of the life and bring a new perspective. Once used to the calm-rapid-calm-rapid routine, nothing can exchange the experience the rapid offers.
God feeds the birds but He doesn’t put it in their nests, they need to exercise their wings for it. All birds are born with wings but they need to be thrown out of their nests in order to fly, sometimes we too need to be thrown out of our comfort zones to discover our full potentials. In a similar vein we need to exercise and flex our muscles in the much needed rapids of our lives to thrive and live a much fuller life.
It is not during the day that the light-house shines the brightest to guide the ships, sometimes darkness is essential to shine the brightest and fulfill the purpose. But for Goliath, David would have never known what he was capable of. We too need challenges bigger than our fears, rapids fiercer than our imaginations to push us beyond the limits we have placed on ourselves, to realize and unearth our truest selves, to become what God created us to be.
Brace yourself for the adventure, embrace your challenges, love the rapids, don’t just live, you were meant to thrive!
On the beach- much needed break! -
Prayers that move God
“It’s been said that faith may move mountains, but prayer moves God”- Joni Eareckson Tada
Desperate prayers
We live in desperate times and desperate times need desperate prayers. One classical example of heights defying desperation to see God move is seen in the gospels in the story of 4 friends who lower a crippled man from a hole-in-the-roof in front of Jesus in a room flooded with people that they couldn’t enter. Sure enough this desperate attempt to reach him moved Jesus who honored their faith. He still honors spiritual desperadoes. Matthew 5 says that blessed are we when we are at the end of our rope, with less of us there is more for God and His rule.
Bold prayers
Impossibility and scarcity don’t figure in God’s dictionary, abundance and omnipotence define Him. He specializes in the impossible, especially when we feel out of our league, that’s His league and the field is set for Him to move. Bold prayers honor God because they honor His omnipotence and highlight our dependence on Him.
“When logic is screaming ‘no’, faith is silently whispering ‘yes’. Nothing honors God more than a big dream that is way beyond our ability to accomplish. Why? Because there’s no way we can take credit for it. And nothing is better for our spiritual development than a big dream because it keeps us on our knees in raw dependence on God.” – Mark Batterson The Circle Maker
United prayers
Quoting Jesus in Matthew 18, “When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action.”
Few things bring more joy to a father’s heart than to see his children play and grow together in harmony. Father in heaven is moved when His children pray together, couples kneel together, and unity in prayer is an image of the unity in the trinity. United, harmonized prayers make way for the supernatural move of God. When we are united in prayer, we are in essence fulfilling the prayer of Jesus in John 17, “I pray for them all to be joined together as one even as you and I, Father, are joined together as one. I pray for them to become one with us so that the world will recognize that you sent me.”
Persistent prayers
Jesus shared the story of a persistent widow in the gospel of Luke. This lady was fighting her battle for justice and because of her persistent knocking on the unjust judge’s doors; he relented and granted her justice. Her determination and relentlessness make her the epitome of persistence. Perseverance and persistence quotient (PQ) was what Paul meant when he encouraged us to pray without ceasing. Hallmark of a persistent pray-er is to refuse to be quite or to quit.
Desperate, bold, united and persistent prayers move you to move the God who honors your prayers.
-
What is love?
Type “love” in the Google search and it comes up with more than 200 million results in less than a second. Ironically, while being surrounded by this ocean of love definitions most of our hearts’ search engines are still seeking and searching.
Love began in the Garden of Eden, when God made man in His own image and He still chose to love mankind after they broke His heart. Then He gave us Jesus and set a universal standard of love. His agape love (from ancient Greek, the unselfish, unconditional love of God) is set for all eternity as the highest form of love towards which all men must endeavor and which we must emulate.
“You hold the weight of the world
Still I don’t slip through your hands
Your love is bigger
Than just an ocean built by manI fall again and again
But You whisper, “You’re still mine”
You feel the pain of the world
But You never push mine aside”Reach by Peter Furler
Love finds the way when everyone else gives excuses; it sees the gold in the garbage.
“Nothing can separate
Even if I run away
Your love never fails
I know I still make mistakes
You have new mercy for me everyday
Cause your love never failsYou stay the same through the ages
Your love never changes
There may be pain in the night
But joy comes in the morning”Your Love never fails by Newsboys
CQ: cuteness quotient overloaded! As for me my heart is overwhelmed by love, the love from God poured out into my heart. He gave Jesus to save me for eternity; he gave me Shalom Philip, my best half to give me a taste of heaven on this side of eternity.
Every man & woman is a lover, in the sense we love somebody or something. May we strive to achieve the excellence of love demonstrated by God. May we see the best in our loves, as the One who first loved us. May we be so sold out and passionate, cause there remains: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13 AMP).
When hemmed in by things bigger and taller than me, I’ll cling on to the one I love. -
Make room!
Nazareth’s loss was Bethlehem’s gain, the palace’s loss was the manger’s gain, Herod’s loss was the shepherd’s gain, Mary’s first born, God’s only son, became human and made His home among us (John 1), He alone is the reason for this season. He came and lived and His own did not know Him. The sheep and the shepherds and the wise men from far celebrated His birth but the sleeping town of Bethlehem missed it!
Reminds me of a song from the yesteryears,
“Oh Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping
For God became a man
And stepped into your world today
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King”While you were sleeping – Casting Crowns
We celebrate a “X-mas” without the Christ, what have we missed? Will we go down in history as a people with no room for our King? In the busyness of the celebration have we missed the Christ in the Christ-mas?
“Is there room in your heart
For God to write His story?
You can come as you are
But it may set you apart
When you make room in your heart
And trade your dreams for His glory”Make room – Mark Hall & Matt Maher 2017
Let me include an open letter to Mr Santa Claus which I had written 3 years ago which I now want to restate.
Dear Mr Santa Claus,
The Christmas was never meant to be yours and you’ve enjoyed undeserved fame for too long. You are just a figment of a child’s imagination while Jesus traded the heavens for the place in our hearts, so please back off and let Jesus reign this day!
Regards.
Jesus’ birth, the first Christmas restored faith, brought hope in a hopeless and demonstrated an unconditional love to a people struggling for an identity under the Roman tyranny. Today as we celebrate His birth, He still promises to bring hope into our hopelessness and love into our love starved world; do we have room for Him?
Behold, He stands at the door and knocks, is there room?
Make room, have a blessed Christmas!
-
Made for me (Joy & Peace version)
Made for me Toby Mac released in 2012, this is my rendition of the song, edited for and dedicated to my beautiful best half Shalom Philip.She was 26 when she came on the scene
I saw her down the hall & felt that I was in a dream
See she’s from God’s own land which had this brother smiling
Little did I know that I’d be singing-testifying?
I love sunrise but she likes sunsets
I’m always running late & she is always on time
But I like k-love and she likes YouTube
But something tells me we are gonna be okay
Cause she was made for me
You gave her to me
I said I’d hold on loose but I so wanna squeeze you
Just right for me and for the life of me
I can’t believe I get to call her mine
And she was made for me, made for me x 2
Next chapter we got hitched
2000 miles yet apart
Still grateful to in the same time zone
I thank God everyday I’m blessed in a crazy way
Oh my! give her 10 on 10
This thing we got is cool like shake
I love sunrise but she likes sunsets
I’m always running late & she is always on time
Well I like T Mac and she like Furtick
So we meet in the middle with Planetshakers
She is a flower You are the rain
She gets more beautiful with every passing day
She is my flower and You are the sun
She gets more beautiful because of how You love
How You love
I get to call her mine x 2 oh mine
She likes slow dates & I like fast dates
She’s into art, I’m into books
She made straight As
Well I’m 6’1’’ & she’s 5’3’’
But tall & short always been a beautiful blend
Cause she was made for me
You gave her to me
I said I’d hold on loose but I so wanna squeeze you
Just right for me and for the life of me
I can’t believe I get to call her mine
And she was made for me, made for me
-
Work in progress!
I am a work in progress (WIP). I am a sinner saved by grace who still needs saving everyday when I fall under my cross. I am far from perfect but the One who has made me and is still making me is perfect and so I strive for perfection. I am adopted into His family to be called His son, chosen because He chose the foolish things of the world to put to naught the wise. God is not finished with me yet.
Work in progress is a painful and painstaking experience. It involves being broken in order to be made, being chipped at continuously in order to be smoothened. Work in progress is a life-long project, when a part of me is done and ready, he starts with something else. He is always at work. As my favorite author, Max Lucado said, “God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus. ”
Like all WIPs, I’m ugly at times, not a pretty sight, probably even an eye sore at times. Like all WIPs I can be an obstacle for someone or something, so much so that they have to take a detour to avoid me.
WIP call for perseverance and patience to wait for the finished work.
God loves me with my flaws and follies and idiosyncrasies. He sees the beauty in my ashes, the fragrance in my swamp, the design and pattern in my chaos and He will have the final say. To love a work in progress it requires an agape-unconditional love, which my Abba epitomizes. His love finds the way when everyone else gives excuses; it sees the gold in the garbage.
He is the grand Weaver, the Architect, and the Director who calls the shots, the potter at the wheel, and the Maker, He has the blueprint. He is not limited by time so He has seen the finished work and He assures that it’s beautiful. Of this I am confident that He who began a good work will bring it to conclusion. God wrote the best-seller on my life even before I was born, now it’s up to me to live that life and leave my mark. So I am up and about my task.
He wrote your story too, what are you doing about it?
With my God-sent angel to remind me of His agape love -
Life in the 2nd gear!
Up-hill! Slow and unhurried, life in the 2nd gear is best described by the word, “despacito” (people understand more easily, courtesy Luis Fonsi), Spanish for slowly. This writing came out of my first hill driving experience, a drive with my beautiful best-half, Shalom to Morni hills, an hour drive into the hills from Panchkula in Haryana.
The hills are where you realize the 4th or the 5th gear are not gonna take you anywhere.
Hills are where cruise control doesn’t work.
Hills can’t afford slacking off, demand alertness and dexterity and hard-work not to forget the motion-sickness for the sensitive. The constant paranoia of a land-slide on seeing huge rocks and the fear of going off the road into the valley is unsettling, adding to the misery. Life on the hill terrain is a constant pendulum change of gears from 1st-2nd to 3rd and never beyond that. The feet engage in tap dancing with the accelerator, clutch and the brake (unless you’re driving on hill assist on an automatic transmission vehicle).
Contrast it with a 4/6 lane highway drive, life is cruising at speeds faster than the fastest cheetah all the while allowing luxuries of popping a pop-corn, taking a blink-small nap, tapping or grooving into the latest single or even stealing a kiss if you’re flanked by somebody as beautiful as my best-half! Cruise control is the ultimate luxury on a high speed highway. Life is easy, life is fast and life is good.
But this is for all who’ve experienced the hilly terrain and for those who drive geared vehicle or at least have driven one, life on the hilly territory is hard-work offering little or no opportunity for the drive to admire or appreciate the beautiful landscape. But there’s good-news for all of us on the upward journey, beautiful, breathtaking sights await us at the top and it’s just a matter of time and distance. The top-of-the-world view and the feeling make us forget the arduous and nauseous journey (if at all it was one in the first place). Not to forget the down-hill drive this doesn’t require accelerator, thank God for gravity!
At times the 2nd gear gives us the power and the control which the 5th gear can’t offer. Enjoy the way on the way, all through the way. Remember He is sovereign period.
Ain’t no mountain high, no valley too low, when you’ve the grace and the favor of the Lord and a beautiful company beside you!
Wanna join me for the next hill drive?
Wait, gotta ask my wife!
Joyance Shalom James
-
Behold, I take thy name!
Joyance Shalom James
Pause! Take a breath; hear me out before the feminists jump in jubilation and the misogynists prepare to gun me down. The decision to add my wife’s first name to mine at least on the social media platform wasn’t born as an afterthought or as a part of a dare, but rather from the musings of a sane mind trying to make a bold statement.
I, Joyance James took Shalom Elsy Philip to be my lawfully wedded wife on the 15th of the last month. And as the Lord said Joy & Peace are no longer two but one, so I decided to extrapolate the union of the two individuals to the name too.
Why should it always have to be the wife who needs to change her name?
It’s not that I do not like my name, I absolutely love it, but Joy and Peace go well together. It’s not that I’m questioning the patriarchy, not that I love my dad any less, but I love my wife more and I want to acknowledge her individuality. It’s not that I like a publicity stunt, but I want to make a statement that it’s okay to stand up for what you believe even though it pits you against the popular opinion. It’s a threat to my manhood as some might view it, rather it takes real guts to be man enough to do it.
To celebrate the independence in the inter-dependence, Shalom & I decided that she doesn’t need to go through the hassles of changing her name to add my name. I do not see this exercise as a lack of submission or lack of respect for the head of the family, rather I believe as the head of the family I should earn respect before demanding it from my best-half.
I know my views are far-fetched with hardly any buyers for the thought. A famous survey by Men’s Health magazine in 2013 found 63.3 per cent of readers said they would be upset if their wife kept her maiden name after marriage. Meanwhile, almost all respondents – 96.3 per cent said they wouldn’t take a woman’s last name if she asked them to.
Here I’m taking my wife’s first name and not her surname while still keeping my dad’s name after mine. In doing so I salute and acknowledge the fact that we’re equals. God meant us husbands to be the head of the family, may it be to lead with example and sacrifice, to give & earn respect before expecting it, to bow down before expecting submission and to love unconditionally like Jesus. May our marriages reflect the greater one to come which will last for all eternity.
-
Missing rib!
They say the manufacturer or the maker knows the best and so it was with man. After Yahweh made man in His own likeness, He knew it was not good for Adam to be alone. Adam had all of the creation’s best unravel (some choose to call it evolution) before his eyes in Eden and still Yahweh said there is yet no helper just right for him. Finally, Adam missed a rib and found the one whom he acknowledged as “one”, bone from his bone and flesh from his flesh. We see God at work when man was asleep, beauty unspeakable, made in His likeness and whom He thought was just right for Adam. He was probably dreaming when God was at work with Eve and all he could dream of after that day was her beauty perhaps.
Finding your missing rib is no mean feat and I found mine when I was not looking for it (read sleeping akin to Adam). I found my “One”, Shalom Elsy Philip in the summer of 2016 and we were finally pronounced man & wife on August the 15th 2017, little more than a year since we got to know each other. It needed a lot of divine intervention to convince my missing rib and probably a bit of divine “deep sleep” for me (similar to what He used for Adam).
Joy & Peace that’s what I call us, together, we find our completeness in Him. Adam never told Eve, “You complete me”, rather he said, “you are one, bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh”, man & wife created to become one just as Jesus declared; “I and my father are one”. Unity in marriage was meant to be the shadow of the unity in trinity. Yahweh knew it was not good for man to be alone cause he (man) had a gigantic responsibility of reigning over the creatures of the sea, sky and the ground, man would need help and “woman” was just perfect for that. Together they can, what man can’t alone and so God said two are better than one.
I have found the one whom my soul loves and I have obtained favor of the Lord.
God gave me two gifts for which I’m most grateful for and all of eternity would be less to express my gratitude: first and foremost is Jesus the gift for eternity and the hope of glory and second Shalom the gift till eternity ensues after the earthly journey.
“She is a flower, You are the rain
She gets more beautiful with every passing day
She is my flower and You are the sun
She gets more beautiful because of how You love
How You love” – Made for me by Toby Mac
