A traditional surrogate is artificially inseminated with a man’s sperm. She carries the baby to term and delivers.

Although a traditional surrogate can be considered the biological mother of a child being that she (sort of) donated her eggs towards the formation of a baby, she may however have to hand over the baby postpartum to the parent (s) to raise.

A gestational surrogate on the other hand has no biological or genetic ties to a baby. What happens is; a mother’s eggs are harvested, as well as a father’s sperm, and through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF), an embryo forms, and is then placed in the uterus of a gestational surrogate to harbour till delivery.

Let’s play a little mind game today…
Please say: John……Ada……Mercy, Grace……Your Name….STOP!
Now Say: Satan….Satan…..Satan ……..STOP!
Now please mention Jesus….Jesus….Jesus….STOP!
If I were to see you physically, I’d probably notice a reluctance and carefulness when mentioning Satan. Right……?
But did you have a similar feeling when you mentioned Jesus?
I can bet you felt; peace, hope, power, might, assurance and everything soothing and comforting when you mentioned Jesus.

Nobody wants to meet Satan. Imagine if you received a mail inviting you to dinner in some luxurious place, and the invite came from Satan…….(gasps!!!). An unquantifiable quantum of fear may immediately just flow through your entire body that you’d immediately head for the loo.

But why do people get the jitters with the name Satan?

Let’s try another game….
If you have an electronic bible, locate the ‘search’ area and just type in ‘Satan’.
What do the scriptures that pop up tell you about the personality Satan? Or maybe you were even too scared to type in that name?……hahaha…

My Bible gives a picture of Satan that suggests a Bad Guy figure….Satan appears to be all about doing some not so nice things.
He deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3),
he provoked David to number the children of Israel against God’s will (1 Chronicles 21:1),
he entered into Judas to betray Jesus (John 13:27),
he tormented Job’s flesh for days (Job 1:12),
he filled Ananias heart with lies (Acts 5:3),
he binds people with sickness and disease (Luke 13:16, 2 Corinthians 12:7),
he resists good (Zechariah 3:1, 1 Thessalonians 2:18) and so much more…..
Anywhere in the Bible Satan is mentioned, there seems to be an associated evil or not very nice occurrence…..

So who exactly is Satan?
The Bible identifies him as a specific character. He is a being. He moves, has powers, has followers/children, he knows the bible, etc. So Satan is a being unfortunately related often in the Bible with evil. Satan is the Devil (Revelations 12:9).

In John 10:10, Jesus tells of a ‘thief’ whose job is to Steal, Kill and Destroy. The 2 characters described in John 10:10 are;
a. The thief (Satan)
b. The person speaking (Jesus Christ).
Satan works through devices (2 Corinthians 2:11).

The 3 temptations of Jesus Christ as narrated in Matthew Chapter 4: 1-11; provides more insights into the traits and personality of Satan;
1. He knows the Bible and twists it into a subtle lie (verse 6, Genesis 3)
2. He comes to the Temple/Church (Job 2)
3. He is a tempter (verses 3, 6, 9) and most times tempts Believers/Christians based on a modified version of the Word of God (Genesis 3: )
4. He can tempt anyone. If Satan tempted Jesus, then no one is exempt.

Pause please:
Do you think Satan physically ‘carried’ Jesus Christ on his back or on his shoulders to the wilderness, pinnacle or high mountain?..
I think not. I believe Jesus Christ walked with His 2 legs under Satan’s influence, to all those places…
Verse 1 says; ‘then Jesus was LED up….”. The devil led Jesus to the wilderness, high mountain and pinnacle. That’s instructive for all Believers; you may not physically ‘see’ the devil when tempted…..and he may show up in familiar places (remember Jesus referring to Peter as Satan?).

5. Satan tempts with;
(i) Bread (food);
Jesus’ first temptation was to turn stone to bread. It was not a coincidence!
Eve was tempted to eat from a tree named; ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. A tree Eve thought looked good for food, pleasant to the eyes and one that can make one wise.
(ii) The ‘glory’ of the kingdoms of the world (money, wealth and power)
(iii) an Urge to ‘prove’ God (Matthew 4:6). Any day you become Really tempted to ‘show’ that you know God to anyone, recognize it as a likely spirit of Satan. And if God did not direct your actions (for His own glory and to profitably boost the faith of others), you’d only be obeying Satan and will be thoroughly messed up.

A few other characteristics of Satan I’d like to highlight here:
6. He has followers (1 Timothy 5:15; “for some are already turned aside after Satan”).
7. He is a father to some (John 8:44 “ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do).
Sometime ago, I lost my Ipad and was really sad because of all my notes stored up in it. I hoped and hoped that I’d find it, but didn’t. One day, the Spirit of God opened my eyes to see that Satan and his children also come to church!! (Selah).
8. Satan’s is a murderer and CANNOT tell the truth. (John 8: 44 “…..he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because THERE IS NO TRUTH IN him….”

We see that Satan has powers (Acts 26:18, 2 Thessalonians 2:9) with which he DECEIVES the whole world (Revelations 12:9) and he has a synagogue of liars, murderers, and everything evil (Revelations2:9, Matthew 12:26, 1 Timothy 5:15).
So if you find yourself in any ungodly gathering where you are promised ‘heaven and earth’, it can only be a lie with an ultimate aim to kill and destroy you as well as steal you away from the Kingdom of God.

Little wonder then people get quite anxious and jittery when they hear ‘Satan’. Poor guy with so much mess around him…..

Now, what are some of the important things a Believer must know about Satan?
1. Jesus saw him fall as lightening from Heaven (Luke 10: 18) and he transformed into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
2. Satan is the present lord of the world/age, an authority Adam handed over to him in the Garden of Eden. And he is roaming about the earth causing a lot of havoc as is his nature. He does not know how to be any different!
3. But he has no power over a child of God that has not been allowed him by God (Job 1:12, 2 Corinthians 12:7). Importantly, though we live in this world, we are not of this world. Our citizenship is of Heaven. We are Not under Satan’s Kingdom and should always know that.
4. Satan’s works are TIMED (Revelations 12:9).

5. And although Satan fell down from Heaven to Steal, Kill and Destroy, Jesus Christ CAME that we may have life and have it More Abundantly. It’s like saying, yes o, somebody came down to earth before me and spoilt things a bit, but take heart, fear not, don’t be dismayed or worried, BECAUSE I (Jesus), I have come to render his works null, void and of no significance!
Oh my goodness, Jesus Christ HAS COME and resides in me, so Satan has absolutely no powers over me. He may try a few tricks, but the TRUTH still remains that Jesus Christ Came and nullified all his works and gimmicks.
This is a REALITY that every Child of God must walk in.
6. Everyone born of God overcomes the world and its lord through believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. (1 John 1:5). That singular act changes your citizenship and destiny. You become Translated into another Kingdom, not of this world, but of God. The Kingdom of God.
And you MUSt live on earth with a full consciousness of your Heavenly citizenship. There is no sickness in Heaven, the streets of Heaven are paved with gold (doesn’t sound like a poor place), so resist poverty and sickness.
7. If Satan (in all his roamimgs) misses his way and comes around your neighbourhood, simply Rebuke and Resist him and he will flee (Zechariah 3:2, Psalms 68:1, James 4:7).

Recognize that every GOOD and PERFECT gift comes down from the Father of Light (JEHOVAH), in whom there is No darkness, no evil, and no badness of any form!!!
Jehovah CANNOT be bad. He is All good!
Even if God wanted to punish man for any wrong doing, I believe that Jesus Christ will not allow Him. As our Advocate, Jesus is Constantly saying to The Father; “they are not guilty of any sin, because I paid the ETERNAL price with my precious blood”.
Did you notice in the scriptures above, all the time Satan would come and meet God, to sort of ‘take permission’ to inflict a child of God?

If it looks evil, bad and destructive, I believe you know the culprit…..
My Father is ALL GOOD. I Believe so. …..

Halleluyah!

Have a victorious day and walk in the reality of who you are in Christ Jesus.

Love Always

Grace Obomanu.

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Sometime, not too long ago, my body was challenged with some strange illness and that got me wondering what on earth the problem could possibly be.

One day, as I pondered on the myriad of symptoms surging through my body, the Lord opened my eyes to ‘The Whole Armor of God’ in Ephesians 6.

What I believe God was saying is, it doesn’t really matter much the source of these very strange symptoms.Just cover up and stay protected!

Besides, there is hardly any sickness that is not caused by something, and new causative factors, bacteria, viruses etc are being indicted or discovered daily…. (Selah).

I decided to look up meaning of armour and got this;

“a protective covering that is used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual, or vehicle by direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action (e.g., cycling, construction sites, etc.)” -Wikipedia

The picture above looks nothing like a joke! And this is how Apostle Paul, thinks we need to dress up ALWAYS as Christians! This guy is battle-ready from head to toe. Fully covered up!

The armour of God though (Ephesians 6:10-18) , is not a physical one as depicted above, but it does cover up fully. It is not as inconveniencing as the photo above, but certainly requires personal discipline and dedication to put on.

It simply entails;

Helmet-of Salvation

Breastplate-Righteousness

Loins/Waist-Truth of God’s word

Feet-The Preparation of the gospel of peace

Shield-Faith

Sword-The Word of God.

Wow!!

I had to come up with my personal confession on the armour of God, which I repeated regularly. The more I recited it, the more the reality of my true identity in Christ became clearer. And over time, I could just carry on with my life, symptoms or not.

You are the Lord’s army, constantly been thrown darts at by the devil and his agents.

Simply stay covered up.

Many times I meet people and listen to them recite their many troubles over and again. A few of such times I look at such people and wonder; ‘is he/she really ready for a miracle? if I offered to pray with/for this person would his/her faith connect with mine for a miracle?
Familiarity and resentment towards a God-given vessel/medium for a blessing will always steal the blessing away! ……Selah

Little wonder Jesus, inspite of his compassion and passion could not perform a single miracle in His home town.
In Mark 6, Jesus walked into his home town and began to teach, reflecting great wisdom to the astonishment of his kinsmen.
But they looked down on Him and said;
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? and not his sisters here with us?
And they were offended in him” Mark 6:3

They knew Jesus inside out, he’d grown up with them, ate with them etc and worst of all; his father was a carpenter and so was he!!!
How dare he consider, conceive, and even attempt to want to teach them?
They can see and agree that he speaks wisdom
They can see and can attest to all the miracles wrought through Jesus
But all they’ve always known him as; a carpenter born to a poor wretched carpenter.

Somebody walked into my office a few years ago and audaciously said to me: ‘no matter what you do, you can never be head over us’
Shock and bewilderment swept through my entire flesh all at once!!
So, I had just been appointed into a new position that as far as I could see spelt out Responsibility to me in bold letters, without a shadow/smell of dominance or increased pay and yet someone did not only imagine such thought, but had the impetus to say it to my face…….ah….
But you know, that action painted a new picture of the role to me and also communicated the person’s subconscious recognition that I’d just been elevated higher than him….Selah.

Why have I shared this experience? Simply to convey the weight/impact of familiarity in inhibiting progress. This guy and I, had appointment letters with same date. So he couldn’t just bring himself to accept that I’d left our common ground and moved up. He felt he KNEW me.

But then again, God has brought my way, freinds, acquaintances and people with pure, clean hearts and thoughts who confide in me, we pray together and they return months later sharing awesome testimonies about how God answered that our prayer, sometimes, they even remind me that I prayed with them concerning it. Wow!!
So there you go, asking; haba Grace, how can you pray for someone and then forget?
Simply because I didn’t see it as a big issue in the first place, knowing that God has made provision for it to be handled and also because I believe that when we agree and pray together according to God’s word, I count it as Done and move on.
So they come with their big bellies filled with God-given babies (not from babalawo et al), beaming with joy and excitement.
I’ll just smile knowing that from the moment we prayed in unison, My Father, ‘passed it’
Praise God in the highest!!!!

Take away any blinds and inhibitions you have put on yourself because of pride and envy
Stretch forth your hands, open up your hearts and receive your God sent medium for a miracle.
Because God will almost always work through people to bless you.
Reverence the prophets, pastors, teachers God has sent your way, so you can drink of His fullness.
It is not your duty to judge them. Correct them where you can but recognize that they are ultimately accountable to God.
I have been thinking very much lately about Saul and David. Despite the fact that Saul attempted to kill David several times, the unlucky and very unfortunate fellow that brought David bad tidings of killing Saul did not live to see another day.
David killed him without a second thought!!!….Selah
Can we reverence God’s anointed ones like David?
It’s a question you need to answer as a child of God 🙂
If I ever have a ‘king’ as diabolical as Saul, I want to Always be on the same side as David. Let the Lord judge. I trust The Lord to protect me from the king’s wicked plots….

Love Always
Grace Obomanu.

I decided to read through Matthew 4 (Bible’s Narrative on the temptation of Jesus Christ) again; probably for the umpteenth time, and there it was, staring right at me: God’s Strategy for Tackling Satan!

Isn’t it instructive that in all three (3) instances of Jesus’s temptation, Jesus did not consider it a dialogue of any sort. He seemed to have approached Satan decisively and business-likely.

Scene 1

Satan: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread”.

Jesus: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'”.

Scene 2

Satan: “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written; ‘He shall give His angels charge over you and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone”.

Jesus: “It is written..’You shall not tempt the Lord your God'”.

Scene 3

Satan: “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me”.

Jesus: “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ”

Isn’t this absolutely entertaining? Imagine it as a movie, and probably you’d appreciate Satan’s tricky and sad display of f-o-o-l-I-s-hness!

Jesus had an ‘it is written’ for All of Satan’s suggestions and gimmicks. (Selah). No ‘pleading of the blood of Jesus’, no sprinkling of the blood, no anointing oil bath, no holy water drama, no running to papa, pipi of mummy G.O!

Ephesians 6: 17, identifies the SWORD of the Spirit as the word of God.

The way I see it, every child of God is always at war. You ask me how I know that? Because the devil is always roaming around looking for who to tempt, who to kill, who to steal from and who to destroy.

But praise God that, no matter the depth or weight of the wiles of the devil all the Believer needs is an ‘it is written’!

Sometimes, as we see in scene 2, the devil can even attempt to twist the word at us. He pushed right back at Jesus an ‘it is written’ from Psalm 91(seemed quite ridiculous to me reading it!).

Jesus allowed no room for discussion on this matter. Like….

‘you wanna show me the bible? do you know how long I’ve been born again, preaching, teaching the bible?’ or I (Jesus) I am the word and you wanna pull ranks with me on it?

The moment we engage in such useless arguments or discussion, we basically fall headlong into Satan’s trap, giving him a good laugh.

So then, we need to constantly ‘be hearing’ the word and meditating on it such that at any time (t), we simply just release it.

No break of sweat!!

Jesus already did it all.

Halleluyah

Hi there,
My name is Grace Obomanu
I am a Christian and Nigerian
I trained as a Medical Doctor and I am currently pursuing a career in Health Administration under the Public Health Domain.
My steps were ordered to The Carpenter’s Church (TCC), Port Harcourt, Nigeria in December 1996 (to the then Royal Evangel Church), where I have been taught the undiluted word of God precept upon precept, and also given the privilege to function as a Premarital Counselor. My service in the past seven (7) years as a Believer’s Class Teacher in TCC, ignited in me a passion for teaching the Word of God and helped me discover my gifting in this area.
I have known my husband, Arnold, for 17 years, 12 of which we have been most happily married and blessed with 3 lovely children.
My Facebook page; ‘Talk with Grace Obomanu’, available online @: www.facebook.com/graceobomanu.org, which was launched to provide Godly counsel for every-day-real-life-issues, has somewhat become almost overtaken by teachings on the Bible, and I hope to correct that with the introduction of this blog site.
I believe that this blog will bring you Godly wisdom, shining the Truth of God’s unchanging word in your circumstances, and leading you through The Way that guarantees Life in its fullness.
Welcome!
Love Always,
Grace Obomanu.