As a result, most Christians strive to live in the world, but not of the world, because we believe God wants us to transform the kingdom of this earth to be more like the kingdom of heaven.

It has been said that some Christians are so worldly that they are of no heavenly good, but there are others who are so heavenly that they are of no earthly good. We are to avoid these extremes.

We are to walk to the beat of a different drummer. Someone greater than us is in control of our lives. We are to strive to live lives worthy of God’s praise and that glorify God. We are to be different people because in Christ all things become new.

We see life differently. We strive to love others and ourselves with the same unconditional love that God has for us.

We are called to be different in that Christians focus on truths that provide meaning and joy to life. We focus on the resurrection and not the grave. Hate shall not have the last word: love will.

The Apostle Peter states in his first epistle that holy living means exercising self-discipline in all we choose to do, actively showing love to others as God loves us and anchoring our hopes in what God has done, is doing and promises to do.

A difficult assignment? You better believe it, but we have the Holy Spirit to help us.

DR. GENE NORRIS IS A PRESBYTERIAN PASTOR.  

She had been sent to the church by her relatives after they heard about Prophet Michael Osei, founder and leader of the church and his miraculous encounters with witches and wizards.

They had the conviction that the man of God could help their child to get rid of her witchcraft.

Olivia had told her parents (the father and a step-mother) that she was forced to send her mother (now deceased) to a witches camp where she was slaughtered for a feast.

“They gave my mother’s heart to me to eat and our queen witch feasted on my mother’s head as our culture demands,” she told the stunned congregation.

Earlier, Olivia had confessed that she was given the witchcraft spirit by her paternal grandmother at the age of five.

“I personally did not like the witchcraft and I fell sick often, so l told my mother about it. She did not believe me and warned me not to mention it again saying that it was not possible.

“Again, I persisted in encouraging my mother to take me to a powerful man of God to exorcise me but she refused to do anything about it until I turned 15, by which time I had become well-versed in witchcraft.

“I became so strong spiritually that once when my mother took me to a pastor in Cote d’ivoire, where we lived, to be exorcised, a strong burst of smoke suddenly came out of my nose and mouth as the pastor faced me, forcing him to fall flat on the ground. He was not strong spiritually to face the witchcraft spirit in me, so we left.”

According to Olivia, later and before her mother could decide to take her to see another man of God, the witches ordered her to bring her mother down to the camp to be slaughtered for one of their numerous feasts “since I had been feasting on other witches’ meat and had never brought any meat to the camp for a feast.”

I felt reluctant to comply with their order and so I refused to go to the camp for two weeks but they attacked me at home spiritually one night and beat me up mercilessly until I became very weak. Before they left, they threatened to kill me if I refused to bring my mother to the camp within some days.

“Their spiritual assault on me manifested physically the next day. When my mother saw the marks on my body, she demanded to know what had happened but I never told her the truth. She then took me to the hospital where I was treated and discharged.

“Because of their threat to kill me, which I knew they could do, I had no option but to spiritually take my mother to the camp the following day to be slaughtered.”

She said after her mother’s death, she decided to prevent her elder sister from having children.

“I turned my left hand into a knife spiritually, opened her womb and placed a goat’s horn in there to prevent her seeds from growing. It has been in there for the last 10 years during which my sister has gone all lengths to find a solution to her barrenness without success wasting a lot of time and money in the processes.”

The goat’s horn was invoked spiritually by Prophet Osei and Olivia’s sister vomited it out in the presence of the congregation after she (Olivia) was ordered into the bush to pluck some leaves which the prophet used to induce the vomiting.

According to Olivia, if her sister had gone for an operation in her quest for a baby, she would have died on the operating table.

“Also I had no reason to place a cowry in the stomach of my grandmother but I did, resulting in her constant stomach troubles which wasted her money when she went round hospitals and herbal centres looking for a cure.” The old lady vomited the cowry in the presence of the congregation after the prophet commanded it out.

Olivia, who does not know how to drive a vehicle physically, said as a witch, she was a driver at the camp and drove the witches to wherever she was directed to drive them to.

Asked where they got their vehicles from to drive around spiritually, she said they could use anybody’s vehicle spiritually.

“The car may be seen to have been parked but we take it away spiritually,” she said.

She added that their careless nocturnal driving sometimes damaged some of the vehicles they took away spiritually, giving the owners a hell of trouble the following day.

Asked whether she had a witch’s pot in her possession, she replied in the affirmative and said it contained all the moneys her parents and brothers have acquired in their lifetime, adding that it accounted for their abject poverty and inability to advance economically as well as other miseries in their lives.

“I have put several impediments in their way to prevent them from advancing in life,” she said, adding that even though it may be sheer wickedness on her part in the physical world, in the spiritual world, no witch or wizard recognises his or her family members, much more having sympathy for them over their day-to-day miseries.

When we go to the camp, we hold parties, sing and dance around. When people bring their ‘animals’, we slaughter them and prepare a feast.

As to how she went out to the witches’ camp, Olivia said she would spiritually put her room mates to sleep, turn into smoke and pass under the door of the room to the outside. Once outside, she would turn into a bat and fly away.

S: ghananews

christians suffer in iraq

KIRKUK, Iraq, Oct. 22 (UPI) — Members of the Christian religious minority in Iraq say instability and the north, particularly in Kirkuk, is forcing them to consider fleeing the country.

The Christian population in Iraq is centered largely in the north of the country. Several community members describe their situation as quite dangerous, noting there may be less than 100 families left in the region.

Tensions between Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians are complicated by political disputes over the status of Kirkuk. There are several considerations given to the oil-rich city, with lingering administrative rows straining relations with the Kurdish and central government in Iraq.

Christians in Kirkuk say they are the target of armed groups, and several members of the religious community have been killed or kidnapped recently.

The Christian community in northern Iraq was the target of a rash of assassinations in 2008, forcing close to half of the population to flee to neighboring Syria.

Imad Yuhanna Yaqo, a Christian member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, tells the Iraqi analytical Web site Niqash that his group recorded nearly a dozen kidnappings or killings since April.

“The number of Christians in Kirkuk before the fall of the Baath regime was more than 20,000,” he said. “This number has dropped to 10,000 and the number continues to decrease.”

S: www.upi.com