ARE YOU FLYING OFF AS A RAVEN OR A DOVE

After the flood ended Noah sent off a raven first then a dove. The raven flew off and flew over the face of the earth until the water on the earth disappeared while the dove flew off the first time not finding a place to land came back to the ark. It was sent out again the second time it came back with an olive leave in its mouth and it was at the third attempt that it did not come back.
In business, the raven and dove represent two kinds of entrepreneurs and their route to getting started and established in life. The first category is the raven people. They need just a push to launch off and will face whatever life throws at them and whatever challenge that comes their way until things improve and they find their feet. They will never come back to ask for more resources or encouragement. Just like the raven flew around until the water subsided and gave it land to land, the raven entrepreneurs will take off in a seemingly unsurpassable challenge, do whatever it takes to survive until things improve because they are sure even if they do not know how or why that things will definitely get better for them in a matter of time.
The second category is the dove people. They will launch off, finding the challenges tough, return to their initial position. They are those who are more likely to return to paid employment after they experience the challenge involved in starting a business. Such people need people around them that even after the first failure they can be helped to relaunch again.
Just as the dove returned with an olive branch in its mouth, the dove entrepreneurs will at the achievement of a little success feel satisfied and come back to settle down but those around them must not allow them to bask in the euphoria of a little success and come home to retire. They must be motivated again to try and keep on trying until they are confident enough to go off and face whatever challenge they see without rush back to the safety of their former comfort zone.
Both the raven and the dove eventually found dry ground but by different route. Every entrepreneur must on launching out determine if he is a raven or a dove so that he can know in advance how to navigate the waters of a new business. If a dove person thinks he is a raven, he will be crushed by the challenges and never be able to get up. If a Raven person thinks he is a dove, he will delay unnecessarily and miss out on some opportunities he could have grabbed from the challenges he ran away from

BEWARE OF CONTENDING WITH PETER MENTALITY

When some of the believers in Jerusalem heard that peter went into the house of Cornelius, they started to contend with him, asking him why he went into the house of a gentile. These were born-again believers who had just received the Holy Spirit but they could not let go of their old believes and practices that told them not to go into the house of a gentile.
In fact despite the fact that they accepted and believed in Jesus and all he taught especially about loving everybody as yourself, they still held on to their circumcision based on the law of Moses and would not accept any uncircumcised person as fellow believer. They were believers, they had all the qualities it took to be a believer, but deep down on the inside, they were still their old selves who would not accept outsiders that were not Jews
In life and business, a lot of times, we go to a great length to change ourselves. We attend seminars, read the right books, and go for courses in order to improve our skills and knowledge. We could even go as far as teaching others the right things that will change and improve their lives. However, when it really comes to applying what we have learnt and been taught, we instinctively but unconsciously fall back to our old method of doing things. For example, we may read books that teach us about the importance of personal finance but when we spend, we do not follow a budget or keep proper records of our financial transaction, we may know that it is important to our health to forgive but we hold a grudge against someone that offended us long ago.
So, because we know the right things to do, we most times are not conscious of the fact that we are not actually doing the right thing. So like the early Jewish Christians who believed all that Jesus taught but still contended with peter for entering the house of a gentile, we may know all the right process but never realize that we are still practicing the old rules and habits that have been keeping us down in poverty and frustration.
Thus we must consciously put up red flags or seek for ways to regularly check whatever we are doing to see if it’s the new principle we learnt that we are practicing or if we are learning the new but still practicing the old.
It is not the right principles you know that will improve your life but the right principles you know and make conscious effort to put into practice.

ADAM'S GENEALOGY

In the book of Genesis chapter five, a genealogy of Adam was given. It says that Adam begot a son and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, he lived eight hundred years and had other sons and daughters and he died. Seth begot Enosh, after He begot Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years and had other sons and daughters and died. Enosh begot Cainan. After he begot Cainan Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years, had other sons and daughters and died.
The genealogy continues like that from Cainan until Noah. Between Seth and Lamech the father of Noah, every man had a son whose name was given, he lived for a very long time had other sons and daughters and died. However, when it got to Noah, the names of his three sons were listed.
The amazing thing in the genealogy is that each man had one prominent son whose name we know but each man had other sons and daughters who nobody will ever know except the sons of Noah whose names we all Know. The bible was careful to state the number of years the unknown sons and daughters’ father lived after the birth of the prominent son. Thus each unknown son and daughter of each man had at least five hundred years to do something while his father was alive that will bring him or her into prominence and cause their name to be recorded in the bible and preserved for eternity even if it was just offering daily sacrifice to God or one outstanding sacrifice to God. Unfortunately all the unknown sons and daughters lived ordinary lives such that it was a waste to mention their names in the bible until Noah came along.
Noah had a gigantic project in which his sons chose to be involved with. He also trained his sons to obey God in a very corrupt world thus qualifying them to enter the ark and thus had all their names HAM, SHEM AND JAPHET were preserved for eternity in the bible. Ham went a step further in birthing such off springs that left a significant impact that all his children and their descendants’ names were listed up to the point where they became nations.
Now it did not matter the birth position of the person to get mentioned. In fact in Chronicles, Jabez had to step out to make an extra ordinary request that pushed his name forward and made him more prominent than others
This shows us that in life, there are two options open to everybody. You can choose to do something with your life that will make you stand out and have your name known by everyone and be a beacon of light shining out for others to notice or you can choose to be like the unknown sons and daughters by living an ordinary life. The unknown sons and daughters had life toss and turn them all around without making any effort to change something around them.
The choice of what to be is in the hand of every man or woman and looking at the length of time their father lived to see them achieve something, it shows us that each of us has enough time in life to create some changes or make an impact that will mark our name in the sand of time and for eternity. So the choice is up to every man and woman to decide if his or her name will be mentioned or if he or she will just be one of the other sons and daughters that a father had.