How Genuine is Your Faith?

I recently posted an article concerning learning about the seed from the drug and sin peddlers. I have been able to have discussions with a few friends about the same and I want to post some things that came out of the discussions (you can visit the blog to read the post).

In a nutshell it may require over Ksh. 100 000 to get a person addicted to heroin. Yet the peddler will invest many times that amount before they get a single addict. This is because only a small fraction of the people who are exposed to the drug will get addicted. Yet a peddler will not sell any drug to their target before they are addicted.

The same is done with any other drug. Nobody will spend money to get addicted to any drug, whether it is cigarettes or alcohol. The money spent will be many times what one addict will require because a bigger percentage will drop out before addiction sets in. Yet that does not discourage the peddler. Why?

He is confident about his product. He knows that taking five doses of heroin over a period of one week (my assumption) is sure to make a person addicted to the substance. He has no doubts at all about the efficacy of his product. He can therefore confidently offer free samples of this very expensive drug to whoever responds to his free offers.

Cigarettes will take even longer to addict, yet the peddler will painstakingly continue offering free cigarettes to the initiates because he is sure that a consistent intake of tobacco for one year (my guess) will make the experimenter addicted. It is his confidence about the efficacy of his product that will make him persist in pouring his money on his project.

Those sowers have one thing the church should copy, assurance that what they are offering is genuine. Investing a million shillings to get a single addict therefore is not a sacrifice. It is just an extension of who they are.

And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved (2Corinthians 12:15)

So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. (1Thesalonians 2: 8, 9)

Paul operated in that spirit. He was so confident of the gospel he preached that he refused to access the support that was his due until the church first became ‘addicted’. He did not hate receiving support from those churches, but like the drug peddler he did not want the support they gave him stand in the way of them receiving the gospel.

If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?  If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. (1Corinthians 9:11, 12)

What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel. (1Corinthians 9:18)

Paul was so complete in his assurance that the gospel he preached had transformational power that he could confidently refuse support of any kind from a church before it had experienced that transformation. Not only that but he was also very willing to undergo severe testing to make the availability of the same gospel to reach those not yet reached (2 Corinthians 11, 12).

Does that speak about us?

The other person we see is David. There is no scriptural evidence that David had a close encounter with God. The closest he sees of Him is an angel (not even the Angel of the Lord that Abraham and Gideon encountered). Most of his interactions were through prophets. Yet we see him committing all his wealth and creative genius to prepare for the building of God’s temple. We even see him preparing the worship aspect of the same, a task that was the duty of priests. He it is who said that he could not give to God something that cost him nothing. That was how genuine he considered his faith to be that he could even plan for and invest in the building of a temple that he would never see as he had been told it would be built after he was dead.

Abraham is another one. Though he had waited for the promised son for seventy five years, it did not seem crazy to offer the same to God, something he had waited for so long. This is the evidence that the faith he practiced was genuine. His relationship with God was so genuine that he could surrender probably the promise that started it in the first place.

Where is your heart when your mouth is speaking about God? Is your faith a marketing gimmick or it defines you? How far are you willing to go in defense of that faith you profess?

What about revelation? How genuine is it? Can you lay your life on the line for that revelation? Can people see your commitment to that revelation through the effort and resources you pour into it?

For example God has given me a ministry to raise Christian writers. Am I spending on that or harvesting from the writers God brings my way? Is that a by the way activity I do when it is convenient or is it a passion that I can forgo a meal, even sleep to pursue? Can people give a testimony about me concerning this calling? Do people see genuineness about his ministry by the way I carry it about? How many enemies fight me yet will not have any qualms referring someone who needs genuine ministry to me even when they are in the same ministry? That is the check list I should use to gauge the genuineness of what God has called me.

What has God called you to? How genuine are you in the pursuit of the same?

Let us assume you are called to missions. Are you like Paul? Do you need to raise enough support before venturing into missions? Do you use the tithe to pursue the same? If so your calling is fake or you are fake yourself. A passion (and a calling goes even deeper) is all consuming. When a man is in love with a girl, he will forgo lunch for a week to take her for lunch in a nice place. And he does not even think it is a sacrifice! His love is so genuine that forgoing lunch for a week does not register in his mind as a sacrifice. In fact he will never even want her to know the lengths he went to take her for that lunch or outing. He is not even proving his love for her. It simply is that his love is so genuine that it is incomparable to a week’s lunch.

Is yours discipleship? Show us the evidence. Can you confidently give us a generational reproduction of your ministry? Can you show us the materials you have produced as evidence of your involvement? Can you show us the ministries that have sprouted out of that ministry? Yet that is the shallow part.

How much have you invested in discipleship? How much time do you spend in it? How many other disciplers are you working with? How excited are you when you are outshined by someone you have discipled? Again would you be comfortable having your enemy writing your CV because you know he could never be able to distort it because the evidence is all out?

Just think of what God has called you to and use the same yardstick to gauge the genuineness of your pursuit of the same. Many times the world and the devil will try hardest to cause a disconnect between that and your genuineness in its pursuit.

(I will develop the thought in later posts)