How Winners Lose

I have been looking at war and the challenges of great armies losing pivotal battles and eventually wars.

One thing stands out; consistency.

An army is always training or should be. In fact many inventions in the technical world came from the military, even the computer that we use. The space adventure should also have started with the military.

The key word in the military is forward.

But there is another aspect in the military that one will overlook to their doom, adversity.

Remove an adversary or the threat of one and the military will disintegrate in a very short time. That is why enemies are created if they do not exist. That is why countries sponsor rebellion far off to be able to test the weapons they are developing. And having been in the media I know this quite a bit. That is why rich countries (with raw materials) are never allowed peace for a moment as they are key to two things, cheap raw materials since they are at war and an excellent test ground for weapons through arming factions.

That is why the most mineral resourced countries will never be allowed to enjoy peace even for a year. That is also why Africa is never allowed to get leaders that think for her people.

I remember once going to minister in the DRC and went to the town nearest the place they say has the most gold reserves. Do you know there literally is no road to the mines? We were told that it was only very recently that motorbikes started accessing them. Incidentally, I saw many UN helicopters (at least that is what they looked like) landing and taking off from beyond the forest that is the buffer from civilized life. Even the roads are so bad to get there. I remember praying very seriously that God performs a miracle to enable us get out by stopping the rain and drying the road as it was simply impassable even with a small drizzle.

Back to our topic. An enemy and warfare are important ingredients for the soldier. Even when there is no war, a soldier must always be preparing for war through constant training and drills to ensure that he is in tip top condition.

Complacency is the greatest enemy to warfare. Comfort is akin to committing suicide as a soldier.

Saul was a good king, initially. But then he became settled.

I am sure that had Goliath appeared in those early years Saul could have very easily faced him. That is from the little we have from the scriptures.

But he gets an army. And he has a very brave and loyal son. Then he becomes a big man.

At that point even God was unable to get him to focus on the reason he was made king. He starts thinking self-preservation instead of Israel and her needs. The army becomes more important than God’s word. Simply speaking he had lost his momentum.

But I think his problems began when he lost sight of his enemy. You see he was made g to handle the enemies of Israel who were by extension enemies of the God of Israel. He was therefore supposed to be attuned to God’s voice to be an effective king.

His first error is that he ignored God’s voice and word as he probably thought his situation needed instant action. He therefore usurped the priest’s office.

The second error was making friends with what God had ordered him to exterminate, and looking for justification for it.

Thirdly, due to those first mistakes, he transferred enemy status to a loyal friend, cheating him of a wife he had pledged, forcing him to marry another to kill or entrap him and even taking the same that was so expensively got and giving her to somebody else.

That is what took his situation from bad to worse to worst. He had simply lost his purpose.

By purpose I do not mean the cliché word motivational preachers are parading all over to guide lost people to love the world religiously. Let me give two verses that may help us grasp what purpose is.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

God is the source of purpose; meaning that only God is the focus of that purpose. It therefore means that purpose comes from revelation and not study or observation.

For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: (Acts 13:36)

Again it is God who determines whether we have served our purpose or not. Like I like to say He is the only one with the marking scheme.

Knowing the battles we are supposed to be fighting in our life will determine the kinds of victories we will enjoy. Forgetting or seeking relief from them is the precursor of our defeat. Sadly, that defeat is determined by the holder of the marking scheme though people in fellowship with Him are able to get glimpses of that defeat.

As an example Jonathan knew that his father’s season was over and so he had no crown to inherit. But he was content with serving the right king as God had changed the season.

I repeat; when Saul lost the purpose for which he was anointed as king, sin, all kind of sin became inevitable.

We can learn the same from David. When did he sin?

The first time is when he remained at home during the season kings went to war. He was thus left by his army to laze around and the devil had a very easy time leading him to sin.

The other time is when all wars had ceased that he started wondering how big his army was.

Manasseh was a product of ease after Hezekiah was added 15 uneventful years. We don’t see any war, any challenge, any building. The only thing we are told is that his heart became proud. We are also told he became insensitive to his posterity when told about the captivity his son would invite from his rebellion.

What can we learn from this?

We must be at the forefront of what God has called us to, consistently. We must be actively pursuing the vision God gave us without wavering. But above all we should be receiving our marching orders continually as our Lord seeks us to walk in victory and only obedience guarantees His kind of victory.

We will certainly get into sin once we lose touch with that.

Can we contextualize this for our times? Of course we can.

Many times God will give someone a great vision that he will pursue with utmost dedication. It then actualizes and starts bearing fruit, so much that he will require to get to the upper echelons of the structure to oversee its functioning. He gradually loses touch with the vision as he becomes the CEO of a structure that his vision created having no real contact with the vision as had been presented from heaven as he has become the ‘papa’ instead of the hands of the vision.

He will then start joining hands with other papas, many times without knowing their vision or even how or where they were got from. But that then becomes his circle.

Let me give an example.

A pastor is given an order to start a church in a desperate side of a desperate slum. Since he is following the orders of the Lord of the harvest, the church experiences exponential growth in a short time necessitating the planting another and then another in different slums or even the same slum. The speed is so fast that he is unable to even hear from God as the needs seems so urgent.

Of course everybody notices this. Other pastors crave that type of success in church planting and he is the new expert.

They therefore request that he hands over the churches to other pastors as he is created for greater impact as a church planting expert. And again the speed is so fast there is no time to consult with the Lord of the harvest as this new need appears so urgent and all those pastors couldn’t be wrong.

He therefore becomes a church planting executive, teaching pastors how to grow churches out of the desperation of the slums.

He is then given a new title, a new status and of course proper incentives so that he takes this new role.

Like Saul before him, things have gone so fast that he has been unable to know what it is the headquarters really wanted. It therefore becomes increasingly difficult to pray about any new offer he is receiving especially as the packages being offered obliterate the initial struggles and sacrifices he required with his initial step of obedience.

Of course his circles must change in line with his new status.

What does he live for at this point?

One thing that happens is that, like Saul, his prayer becomes an abomination to God who had called him. But it also becomes increasingly difficult for him to pray as, like Saul, he has gone so many steps without knowing what God wants from him. Where does he start with praying? Of course I am talking about personal prayer, what Jesus called the prayer closet.

The second thing is that he is surrounded by success once he loses that vital link to his Lord. He also has myriads who can swear by their lives that he is at the perfect place God needs him and will not only pour their all into that but also fight with all they have to protect him. And we also see that with God. Or do you not remember a whole priestly city was annihilated because they had ‘refused’ to report sedition that was a fiction of the king’s head?

Getting into actual sin is another very present possibility. And it will depend on the circles he moves with. By actual sin I am talking of these very open sins like adultery that are openly against their profession. I have heard very sad stories of very senior clerics who are whoremongers because the secret liaisons they have in those hovels (many times five star hotels since they have the money) cannot be hidden from all the hotel staff, some who are even bribed to swallow their disappointment with the ‘man of God’ instead of exposing it.

But even without getting into actual sin, he will have already been disqualified from the ministry God had called him to. This of course means that he will be running on his own fuel instead of the anointing of the One who had called him. Chances are very strong that he will, like Saul, look for an enemy who most probably would be the one the ministry he had rejected was given to, many times because the upstarts are pursuing it with ‘nothing’ and he had rejected it when it was fully packed.

How many zealous young men are being broken down because the spiritual leaders they have looked up to all their lives are doing their best to kill what God is asking them to do? I remember once talking to a minister friend of mine about the command I was pursuing after God gave me the word and he simply said that God cannot give such a command. Was it unbiblical? Of course any word God gives me starts with His word. But I think it rubbed him too roughly he was unable to hide it.

In short, his experience had led him to dismiss any word he disagreed with irrespective of whether it was scriptural or not.

Think of a young person saying that he had saved sex for marriage. You can’t imagine the rage, even hate, that meets them from other believers who had decided to throw in the towel in matters sex. You will be led to think that abstaining from sex until marriage is the ultimate sin. You may realize that some of the ones stoning him are shepherds.

You see, when you lose your focus there is only one way to go, down. That is unless you genuinely repent. That is why Saul is the example God has given us.

Or look at this believer that had sunk deep in sin and like the prodigal came back to themselves. They then look for an opportunity to testify what God had done for them and the so far they had strayed.

You will expect a celebration. Or won’t you? Yet they will find many friends and family so up in arms against their testimony. All because they have exposed what these others were unable or unwilling to face in themselves. They can’t appreciate repentance because they have refused to repent. They simply accepted their sinfulness and moved on like we like to say, without realizing there is no moving on with sin.

I haven’t followed the Kanye West’s conversion and its resultant ripples. But I won’t be surprised that the most vocal of his critics are scared that his conversion is genuine. You see it will show their Christian lives as hollow and shallow.

Why? We are not the ones who save. We neither hold the standard of that salvation nor have the list of those who are saved. The only thing we know is that there is joy in heaven over one sinner repenting.

Why then are we up in arms when one sinner repents?

We have lost sight of our enemy and must therefore create a new battlefield.

In simple terms we have backslidden like King Saul. We therefore must develop new rules for the Christian faith that will be consistent with our backslidden state.

Comfort will many times be the culprit.

Let me close with this verse that many people find difficult to associate with Sodom.

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. (Ezekiel 16: 49, 50)

We say lack of exercise leads to a buildup of flab. That is exactly what happens in the spiritual realm when we lose touch with a consistent and committed relationship with God, especially listening and obeying His voice.

The Press Blocking Spirituality

And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press. (Luke 19: 3)

I posted sometimes ago about the press blocking people from getting to Jesus.

I was then looking at the negative press fighting the faith.

Today I want us to focus on ‘positive’ press and the damage it can and does do to the faith.

Have you ever asked yourself why a media house run by a Muslim has award winning Gospel shows on Sundays? Have you ever wondered why the most morally corrupt media houses run excellent Christian shows then? Do they get saved on Sundays? Or do they trash their editorial policy on Sunday?

Has Mammon become a believer and started worshiping Jesus? Has the pursuit of gain been overtaken by spirituality? Has their pursuit for base cravings all of a sudden become spiritual?

You see, I am in a way a child of the media. I was trained in a media school, worked in a media house and have been exposed to media in many fronts, even church media.

Look at these verses.

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1: 15, 16)

And this other one

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. (James 3:12)

What am I implying? I am sure you are wondering.

You can’t be an enemy of the cross during the week and all of a sudden become a spiritual nurturer on Sunday. Your agenda during the week is the same during the weekend.

What changes is the tactics. You serve the same master but simply widen the net to catch different fish.

How many couch and bedside worshippers do we have these days? Who do they worship? Yet they in the past they were consistent and committed members of churches.

You see, the devil is complete if he can get you to only relax in your personal devotion to God or break the littlest commands of the Gospel.

He does not succeed only when he has made you become sexually immoral or denounce Christ.

Let me give a few scenarios.

You used to wake up at 3 a.m. to pray but nowadays you wake up at the same time to follow a prayer master do their act, amening everything they say as they seem so deep and connected.

On Sunday afternoons you used to go home and hold hands with your spouse as you bonded in prayer and fellowship. Now the only thing your hands do is stretch out to claim and catch what the TV prophet is releasing to you. There is no time even for chit chat as that flow cannot be interrupted.

You used to leave early to church to help in the many aspects of the ministry before the congregants arrive. Now you can’t leave because there is this hot gospel program that is so rich and empowering that you simply can’t leave before it ends.

You used to fellowship after the service for hours on end. Now you will leave even before it ends if the preacher does not keep time because there is a program you must watch.

You used to enjoy a brunch or two during the week with brethren but now you simply do not have time as it has been taken by this or the other fresh anointing program on telly.

You used to reach out to the needy in society but nowadays they are a text book topic as you have no spare time to look around. What with the great Christian programming of these great stations?

You used to browse through Christian bookshops and libraries for spiritually healthy books and you have a very rich library at home yet you now have no time at all to read as your TV and net have more than enough spiritual content for any spare moment you have.

You used to enjoy reading through the Bible at least once yearly but nowadays you are fixated on what the superstar teaches as you totally agree with it.

I have not even started dealing with radio and internet forums.

How much are you in touch, leave alone in control of your spiritual life?

When others are the ones making your spiritual life flow and thrive, it is very likely that you have no spiritual life at all, or that your spiritual life is fake.

And that is what the media fights to make us.

I have enough friends running those shows who will be mad at me for saying this. But let me also throw a challenge to them. Has God told you clearly that what you are doing produces healthier believers? How many of them have responded to God’s call to the unreached out of that platform?

The media exists for profit and other agenda that growth in spirituality will kill or at the least limit.

It therefore stands to reason that the same media will have spirituality as an enemy that they will focus on neutering. And what better way than spiritualizing itself. Then the spiritual will think they have a very powerful ally just like Samson thought about his darling Delilah.

The biggest problem with the media in spiritual affairs is that you will completely lose control. They will set the agenda and simply run with whatever suits them.

Of course the ones running those shows are for the most part spiritually bankrupt characters whose only qualification is their popularity or excellent sound or diction. Some do not even read the Bible yet they will be your alternative for church.

They are paid for holding a crowd captive with whatever trash they produce as the same crowd will be used to convince advertisers to fund the program. Or have you ever asked yourself why people must call in, text, even use social media to show they are following? Then they give prizes for answering easy questions and bet by just sending your number.

They are simply using your feedback to look for money and not interact with you. Those rewards and prizes are simply bait.

Have you ever heard someone running those programs reminding you to hurry so that you are not late for church? Have you ever heard someone ordering you to switch off your TV to get ready for church?

The only thing you will hear is, ‘before you touch that dial or switch …’ They lose when you take responsibility for your spirituality, even your life.

Do not allow them press you out of a rich relationship with Christ.

Necessity and Inventiveness

We talk about waste and trash. We see garbage flooding our cities.

At the same time we have children who are hopelessly idle as their parents have all the money to buy any toy they need, be it useful or completely useless, even destructive.

When I was growing up it was impossible to find things thrown around as we always had use for them. We never had a plastic menace as there was not enough plastic to meet our creativeness. That is what we used to make balls for all games as it made balls that had the right weight and couldn’t be soaked; meaning that we could even play it in the rain and it would not weigh more.

Thrown away clothes (which were completely worn out as very few people had more than one change, and even those were the better off) were used by girls to make bean bags and toys.

We used the big Kimbo and Cow Boy (brands) cooking fat tins to make tambourines to play in church. Of course we looked far and wide for bottle tops to complete the instrument.

We used the smaller ones with the milk packaging and some other hard and shiny paper to make very attractive flowers. There were few houses that did not enjoy that beauty. 

 Another source of flowers was filled in books. Those were ‘weaved’ in very many patterns to make flowers that were hung all around the house.

Worn pullovers and cardigans (what we today call sweaters) were received with wide open arms.

Many times they would be so worn out that very little thread (or is it yarn?) would be left. But it would very patiently be undone and joined. Then it would be used to knit or crotchet anything from table mats to cloths to babies’ socks to full pullovers with as much color as the collection of the different thrown material. And they would be proudly worn as many times that would be the only warm clothing someone had.

Young men went to the forest to look for hard wood that they would use to make anything from combs to cooking sticks. In fact I think I first saw a plastic comb as I was about to clear primary school.

Of course girls even then had a painful relationship with their hair. The blow dry was a tin with many holes made all around with a stick of sorts affixed on them. Then live coal would be put inside. The heat transferred to the tin would be used to ‘burn’ the hair to the right texture.

Of course I can’t forget to say that a nail was a treasure to any boy. I doubt you could find any lying idle anywhere you find a boy, any boy. In fact it was a currency of sorts.

Boys would also go to the edges of the Mount Kenya forest to fetch a special grass that they used to make hats, and very durable hats at that.

Of course there were dangerous things we did.

One of the most dangerous was car racing. That is why nails were premium items.

We collected trees to make a go cart which was in two parts, one of which steered the contraption. Then a particular tree would make the wheels.

Let me not describe the rest of the production as it might scare some of you to death.

Then we would go to the steepest and highest point after ‘greasing’ the car with cow dung and ‘drive’ to the farthest.

Many times the steering didn’t work and so the car would take you where it chose, probably because the racing ground was also too steep that it would pick up speed too fast. But sometimes we did not also care as we even drove in reverse. And we never had any side mirror or even attempted to look backwards. And that place had gullies and boulders. We would be stopped by such a boulder or fall in the gully for the most part or fall off when the car lost balance. Many times cars would collide and that would also stop the race.

To this day I wonder why none of us broke any bones in that adventure!

We were village children and so our adventures were limited to our circumstances. I am sure city children also had their own brand of creativity as per their circumstances. And I am sure the city ones may have had a few toys as their parents were working. Yet I know they also mastered their own brand of creativity and maximization of the scanty resources they had.

That is why the city was then not as dirty as it has been since wealth and idleness seeped into the country.

What can we do to make our children as creative as or even more creative than we were?

Faulty Foundations

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7: 26, 27)

Sometimes ago I posted about this by stating that the foolish builder appeared to be more logical and must have started enjoying the fruit of his labor much earlier than the wise one. In fact, without adversity, I doubt anyone would have gone to the wise builder for advice on building beautiful houses because nobody would have wanted to waste all those resources below ground.

Have you ever wondered why to this age buildings are collapsing? Do you like me ask how a building that was designed by an architect and supervised by an engineer collapses?

I have one proposal to make. When such a house collapses, instead of what the government does to arrest the owner of the project who was just an investor, why not JAIL all those experts? You see, if experts tell me a cheaper mix or a smaller pillar is strong enough and it will save me a coin or hasten the completion date and therefore occupation, who am I to question their expert advice? They are the ones who went to school to learn that.

Yet I want us to move beyond buildings to eternal things.

Do we realize that it is far more destructive when we have a faulty spiritual foundation? We could be appearing to be in perfect spiritual health when inside we are crushed beyond repair. And like the foolish builder we could appear to be epitomes of spiritual health.

Why do we have ministers falling into very foolish and destructive foibles? Why are we having ministers who were called from civilian affairs giving the same civilian affairs spiritual names to carry them out from pulpits? Does it mean a businessman earning from the pulpit is different from a civilian one? Or was the calling just a transfer from the secular marketplace to a spiritual one? How spiritual is someone hawking on the pulpit from the one doing it on the streets? Is selling my book from the pulpit more spiritual than placing it on the bookshop shelf or street corner?

This is a clear case of a faulty foundation. It is very difficult to outgrow our foundations. That is unless we ask Christ to demolish them and establish a new one to build our lives and faith on.

Like we all know, the depth of a foundation determines the height a building can attain. And it all boils on the base of that foundation. We say rock solid to talk about the stability on which a foundation rests.

We are therefore not just talking about our foundation but what it rests on. You can have a foundation so deep but still have the building collapse because there is no solid base on which it rests.

What are our spiritual foundations? Who brought us the faith we have? How did they bring it?

That is because they for the most part are determinant of how our faith turns out. Again I will repeat, until and unless we allow Christ demolish those foundations and build us on another.

I have talked about marriage and indicated that those foundations are the reason Christian marriages are collapsing all over.

This is because European missionaries brought us their cultural concept of marriage, which is unscriptural, and made us believe that it is the model for the Christian. As a result, we trashed our model, which was closer to the Biblical, and took theirs, bringing all the confusion we see.

This is also what happened with evangelism and church formation. We moved from the Biblical model to a culturally, probably politically or entrepreneurially relevant model as we sought those numbers to fill our churches, meaning we left the solid base of our evangelism for one that probably produced faster ‘fruit’ and bigger numbers.

From my observation in missions and church planting, there is one fatal fault I find being repeated almost like it is the rule.

In the push for fast growth, character is overlooked. It appears as if spirituality is a vice.

I remember one time we were having an open air crusade and our interpreter was not doing very well. The team picked a Muslim to interpret Gospel preaching. I was stunned! But I was among the youngest and there were senior religious leaders with big titles making decisions so there was nothing I could do or say.

Or this pastor friend who had Muslims for his best couple due to their societal status!

But worse is the fact that most spiritual structures will reward loyalty above spirituality. Simply saying, a crook who fights for the pastor will have a higher status in the structure than the spiritual giant who is revered for his spiritual life.

In ‘Young Elders’, I posted about young people, some even unmarried, being made elders in churches that overlook men of God who meet the scriptural standard. And the real elders are overlooked because they have their own spiritual status and so will not foolishly run around with the pastor’s folly.

You see, when Christ’s commands are treated as suggestions and His word is treated as information, that is what we will be headed to all the time.

Pastors reward loyalty to them above obedience to Christ’s commands. And it is something I have seen again and again.

I was once kicked out of church staff and the discipleship ministry I was leading killed because I refused to be the pastors’ errand boy because that is not what Christ had brought me to do. And I communicated my position with utmost respect. Yet to date I see people with no spiritual stature, some who could comfortably work in a brothel being offered key positions in such churches. You will even see persons living in sin serving in and even being given positions in them.

I suspect that is the reason churches outsource for pastors instead of growing them. Then they will be answerable to their bosses since they hold the pen that ‘wrote’ them. Of course they would not be as ‘foolish’ as I was in calling for Christ’s standard.

One time I visited a church and was told it was closed because the pastor had bolted. And I had gone there because they had a big sign board on the highway.

A missionary went there later and took the person he found there and decided he was the pastor, even sponsoring him to Bible School. And the little I knew him I doubt he had any spirituality to be a pastor. Or take this other senior clergyman who was giving a testimony of how God saved him from arrest when a deal fell through. And what was the deal? Ferrying guns in his vehicle! To imagine he had even negotiated his price.

We are in a hurry to establish churches and ministry outposts that we are always overlooking God’s standard in doing so. One verse I am convinced we always overlook is this.

Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. (Luke 10:2)

We look for the laborers instead of trusting God to do it. And in our hurry, nay, disobedience, we overlook everything He has said concerning those laborers.

That is where loyalty comes in. Someone who was disqualified for spiritual office owes all to the crook who gave him that office he was not qualified for.

Sadly, this goes way back, probably to the fathers who brought the Gospel to us. And that is the reason we have some untouchables in most churches, people whose word will overrule consensus, however spiritually it was sought, people whose conduct can never be questioned, people who make pastors quake in their boots should they fall afoul of them. And they are not even clergy. In fact some of them are not even known by the general membership as I doubt they even attend services. And they are not spiritual at all. They can be equated with very powerful shadows.

Yet these are the ones who choose pastors and bishops in some of our top denominations.

Of course there is another side to this. Ministers do not argue with the monied or positioned. What I mean is that the sins of the rich and influential are beyond the reach of the church’s radar, especially if they are in the membership or support the structure or its leadership. I am sure some of these pastors wonder what was wrong with Peter killing Ananias and his wife when they ought to have made them prominent leaders of the church for their generosity.

And no wonder we are unable to tackle corruption in high places since we have their proceeds building our churches and paying our pastors!

Our foundations are faulty.

Yet I have noticed as I have ministered over the years that if I asked God to give me ministers for particular tasks He is does an excellent job of picking them, though for the most part they are not the ones I could have chosen had I taken up the responsibility.

Incidentally it also occurs whether it is a discipleship group, choir or even church members. God knows exactly who needs to be on our team and will bring them when we allow Him.

Sadly, that has not been our foundation, for a very long time.

God gave Samuel a revelation that puts this in focus. Man looks on the outward but God looks at the heart. And the outward is not only the body or stature or looks.

Visible zeal for the most part is an outside dimension.

I have been disappointed time and again by people having a very attractive external zeal when a job needs to be done. In fact some of the most unteachable characters are some with that kind of zeal.

I am not against zeal. People have called me very zealous since my youth. But zeal is one factor that can lead you astray if you depend on it to assess somebody, especially spiritually. Some of the zealous people rarely have time for any devotional time and will rarely ready the Bible, even portions as they are too busy chasing this or the other spiritual high.

‘Still waters run deep’ is a saying that is very applicable in spiritual matters. I have seen some of the most dependable believers being some you will rarely notice even in a small crowd. They will rarely give a promise but any they give will be kept. One with zeal is like the seed that fell on the rock. It catches fire immediately but burns out almost as soon as it starts burning.

They could give you all the money in their pocket if what you say touches them but will forget almost immediately when you tell them to go home to pray about it. Those are the people televangelists and TV pastors target with their preaching. That is why you will hear them say something like this

Get out that check book, send that pledge now. Then they will use guilt very effectively after that ambush.

They are simply taking advantage of their zeal.

But that is not what God has called us to do. Christ taught us about counting the cost before committing. Should our supporters also not count the cost of supporting us? Should they not hear from God about supporting us? Why the hurry to receive? And no wonder they spend that offering very lavishly.

I know I am very offensive to many who seek to support me because I tell them to pray first about supporting. I tell them not to pledge but give when they can as God prompts. And that gives them a spiritual responsibility many are not ready or willing to take up. In short they would rather support without praying than pray about support. In fact I find many wanting me to even give them the amount of support they should give.

Even that is a faulty foundation. And it has consistently affected ministry support for generations. We love speaking about the priesthood of every believer and even have coined a convenient term ‘personal Savior’ but have a problem with that same personal Savior becoming a personal Lord since we have transferred His Lordship and guidance positions to others though for many it is for the fear of where that Lordship could lead to. Of course there is a very possible reality that He will order us as He did the rich young ruler and we are not interested and so prefer proxies.

How deep is your relationship to Christ? How often do you communicate for you and not the others? How deep is your devotional life go? Who guides that devotional life?

This is because the one who guides you has or is the foundation of your faith.

And that foundation has a direct relation with whether your faith will stand or crash.

Let me ask this question.

What would happen if your favorite pastor, preacher, bishop, prophet denies the faith? What will you do if he confessed that he has realized that the faith he has been preaching is fake?

Will your faith grow or will it wilt?

Incidentally this is not as far-fetched as very recently some ‘key’ opinion shapers have denounced their Christian faith, even taking pride in that fact.

On what does your foundation rest?