Ama?

I was just wondering

How does one become the president or chairman of the parents’ association(s) in this country?

Are there qualifications? Does one become a senior parent first?

You see, I have become a very senior parent.

I have three children in high school in three different provinces. In fact, that will be so for some time as another will join junior high next year.

As an example, next week I will be travelling to Mombasa for a parents’ meeting. Then the other week I will be going deep in Machakos for another one.

At least the school in Kinangop has not invited me for another meeting though there was one before schools closed.

Or all that does not count?

What am I saying?

That God has really blessed me. He has given me children and provided for their schooling as I serve Him.

I am not looking for any positions since being Christ’s minister is more than adequate for me.

To imagine the monies required for transport alone is difficult.

Combine that with pocket money and it becomes mind boggling.

And we have not even started talking about fees.

Yet I am a simple minister of the Gospel operating different from common practice.

I am not employed by a structure. I do not ‘make tents’. I do not ask for offerings. I do not sell what I produce (technical interventions, books and Audio Bibles).

I simply do what God commands me and He sorts me out in His season.

I am not a common, or even logical minister since I operate contrary to what is commonly taught, when God commands.

What am I saying?

God has done great things for me.

And I am talking about twenty plus years in Nairobi.

From the person who was stranded in Nairobi with his family because what he was called to start was red carded because the bosses were not getting enough mileage by it to someone who has ministered in several African countries.

From the person who was wondering where the next meal for a nursing wife and small children will come from to the person who is called a blessing by many, especially in the writing and books ministry, though in many other aspects as well.

Going farther could very easily be interpreted as boasting so I will stop here.

In fact, lest you interpret this as boasting, I want you to know that though I leave for Mombasa in less than two days, I do not have any idea where the fare will come from. I only know that God will provide. And that is how it have been for the longest time.

But what I want to acknowledge is that God has been very good to me and the ones He has entrusted to me

This is therefore a thanksgiving message to each one of you.

Please join me in thanking God for all the things He has done and is doing to me as I seek to walk in obedience to His revelation. Thank God for the favour I and mine continue enjoying wherever we go. Thank God for the ministry doors He opens wherever He sends us. Thank God for the ministers He has raised over the years to support me in their season.

Pray also that I remain focused on His call in my life. Pray that I will remain focused on ministry and not overly concerned about provision since He has always provided.

And when God speaks, do what He commands you to do in this respect.

Otherwise, this is just a simple thanksgiving message.

God bless you

Passion and Politics

You may have realised that I always expect war when I make a political post. But I do not know whether you have ever asked why.

Have you ever heard a political discussion with someone leaning differently? Have you argued with someone supporting somebody or something?

Cultic is the closest we come in describing them.

In all my years, I have never come across a sober person deeply supporting a candidate or cause. Trying to bring sense or open up other perspectives will make you an enemy.

Questioning their narrative or agenda is treated as enmity because there is no middle ground according to them. No other opinion is worth one second of their time.

But it is not only about politics.

Did you notice that posting a question about the recent virus narrative on social media resulted in your question, and sometimes your page, being blocked?

Ever noticed that posting a scriptural verse questioning lifestyle choice will cause you to be blocked as well?

Why were there fact checkers when you question sinful and openly repugnant topics yet there were none on terrorism? Why fact check on the virus and not on the many destructive nutritional and medicinal abuses and gambling?

Why must I be blocked for questioning bestiality or homosexuality yet nobody is being challenged for writing positively on the same?

The world is at war with God.

It means that being on God’s side will open you up as an enemy.

And it is not logical because, as with politics, it simply blocks out a thinking mind.

Facts are looked for and fabricated to explain the agenda someone is supporting.

But for us it is very easy and clear.

We have God’s word in its undiluted format.

That is the only tool we should use to speak to a world in enmity to its maker.

We should not use the tools the world gives because as with David when he was given Saul’s armour, we are inadequate for the same however adequate we may feel.

We are God’s servants and should use God’s tools to run God’s errands and do His work. We should use His word to pursue His agenda.

That is what will make it very clear to us and the world that we really are not of the world.

Using worldly tools and reason to argue God’s things or even offer solutions to the world’s problems is stupid and useless.

It also has zero capacity to lead the world to God.

We should be more passionate about God than the world is about politics and many of its issues. But we should be so in the way God has prescribed in His word.

Martyrdom happens only to those who are sold out to God and His ways.

There was nothing logical about Stephen rejoicing and forgiving as he was being stoned to death. But that is not the passion we see in politics. The grasp of the word he exhibited before that clearly shows where his passion originated from.

That is why we see the mob shutting their ears, shouting at the top of their voices, as they dragged him to be stoned. All because they could not counter his logic which was simply scripture.

I pray we will be like him in our generation; passionate and completely knowledgeable in God’s word as we debate.

No one was ever stoned for being at the top of current affairs or breaking news. They are worldly, therefore temporal things that pose no threat to the ruler of the world since that is his domain.

How ready are you to counter political passion with scripture? How ready are you to counter sin with scripture? How ready are you to question worldly leadership, especially in the church, with scripture?

Are you passionate enough that like Stephen you will die quoting scripture?

Can you afford to lose a job, a promotion, a relationship, because they are standing between you and obeying and speaking God’s word?

Do you realise that this was one of Christ’s contexts here?

Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 10: 32, 33)

You see, the best way to confess Christ is to be speaking not just what He spoke but also as He spoke as well as live as He lived.

Unshared Revelations

I want us to look at something we all know with a different lens.

Have you ever asked why Isaac favored Esau and Rebecca favored Jacob?

They were twins, born the same day.

Yet their father loved the firstborn and the mother was so ‘smitten’ by the younger that she could risk a curse to cheat the system that was her husband to ensure that her choice was blessed.

I want to take us back to her pregnancy.

Remember she waited for twenty years to conceive? That Isaac had to pray for a breakthrough?

Then the pregnancy became complicated, so complicated that she sought God concerning what she was carrying.

God answered her before the twins were born.

The elder will serve the younger was God’s revelation.

I doubt that she ever shared that with her husband, making him behave as his culture required, prepare the first born to take over leadership.

But Rebecca did not completely forget the word she was given. Meaning that she moved with the revelation.

Suppose Rebecca had shared God’s revelation with her husband, do you think he could have called Esau for the blessing?

Isaac was a man of faith. Incidentally he came from a background where he overtook his father’s firstborn because of revelation.

He simply could not have trashed revelation since he was the product of one in more ways than one.

For one, Abraham had waited for him for an even longer time. Then he was born when his brother was fourteen years old.

But the promise that Abraham walked with required him to gift Ishmael and send him away so that Isaac could be the heir of Abraham’s call and revelation.

It is inconceivable that he could trash a revelation so easily. And Rebecca could have quickly reminded him.

The easiest conclusion is that Rebecca received the revelation and harbored it in her heart as she may have forgotten it since she did not share it with the other concerned party.

It is when she heard Isaac asking to bless Esau that the revelation boiled over since she then realised she had to do something. Yet it was also instinctive since she had probably forgotten the revelation. Only her system resonated with the revelation since it was over forty years since she had heard it.

That is why she resorted to create situations and look for other solutions when the situation boiled over.

And even then, she did not share the revelation with Isaac.

Are you getting something?

All that animosity between Edom and Israel could have been avoided had Rebecca shared God’s revelation with Isaac as soon as she had received it.

I guess she thought it was not very serious or urgent. What of the pressures of a first pregnancy full of complications? Then the joys of motherhood, especially after that much delay and prayer? Then raising two completely different children.

Then she forgot, first the revelation becoming an increasingly vague message before becoming completely irrelevant to the way life was taking her.

But that revelation had affected her. That is why she loved Jacob despite all his ‘laziness’ and character flaws. Incidentally, that was the only positive thing she got from the revelation.

What am I aiming at?

Revelation must be shared as soon as is practically possible. Unless of course God specifically orders otherwise which is very rare even in scripture. And even then, God will ask you to write it down.

Why is that so?

We are very forgetful.

Research has shown that at the end of Sunday someone will have forgotten over 90% of the sermon though I do not remember who did it.

Yet a simple way to confirm that is ask someone immediately after the sermon the specifics of the sermon. I guarantee you that you will be shocked, especially if the sermon was very exciting.

There simply is no hope for remembering a revelation a year down the line unless there is a way of recording it properly since our memory is hopelessly inadequate.

As someone who writes messages, I can confirm to you that no message, however powerful, lasts beyond a few days.

In fact, I read some of my posts of yore and wonder whether I am the one who wrote them. I suspect I could have had really appreciated the same if someone had just copy pasted the message on their blog.

If I can forget a message that impacted me so much before I posted it, what makes you think that I will remember one that was given in my distress?

Yet that was Rebecca’s reality.

Is this a message for today?

I am convinced so. And I think it is even more urgent.

What with all the flashy avalanche of information wherever we look? What of our even lower attention span due to that?

One day might therefore be too long to remember something.

In fact, I know from experience that if I decided, or was forced by circumstances, to wait for an opportune time to write, or complete writing a revelation, I most likely will have forgotten the main parts of the same.

In fact, I have in the computer innumerable messages that I had started writing but delayed after writing some bit. But now I have no way to complete the message since I have no way of knowing how to continue writing it.

Revelation is timely. That is why we talk of rhema moments.

It therefore means that if its time passes, there is very little chance of it being resurrected, however much we tried.

And that is why I always battle preachers who strive to live on their past glories by preaching their past powerful sermons.

They are giving their flock stale food when God always has the freshest of food for them if the shepherd is listening.

Revelation outside its time could be poison.

I simply want us to appreciate the fact that a revelation MUST be timely for it to serve its purpose.

Hoarding a message for whatever reason is not only sin but can eventually cause more damage than it was intended to avert.

And it is sin because it could abort God’s purpose or season.

Suppose Joseph had refused to share his dreams?

Do you think God’s process could have started?

But I need to say something else that many will call a threat.

God will overlook you and look for somebody else, somebody who is obedient since it really is impossible to abort God’s purposes.

Saul the king was God’s person for the season Israel wanted a king. But his disobedience created the room for somebody else to be chosen and him completely bypassed and overlooked.

Now imagine seeing and hearing somebody saying and doing something God had asked you to do and you delayed because of many becauses! Imagine hearing somebody sharing a message God gave you, word for word because you thought the time was not right for it!

Yet God always does that

Even being made a replacement for a rebellious servant is not enough guarantee because God’s obedience quotient doesn’t change.

Jeroboam was annihilated, yet he had replaced the rebellion in Solomon. And the one sent to annihilate him was also annihilated because he followed his own ways.

But we are talking about a message in its time whose dangers of delay go farther than individual disobedience because they affect more than the disobedient siren.

Why siren?

Imagine a house catches fire and you are the one next to the siren switch. And you delay activating it.

Like Ezekiel was told, you will be liable for all the lives that get lost due to that delay.

That is the simple message in this post.

But ensure that you hear the message clearly.

A false prophet is not false because he gives a false message. An inaccurate message, a vague message, an out of time message all fall under the title false prophecy.

And the judgment for the false prophet is dire as we see in Jeremiah.

Will we clearly hear, and clearly and on time share the messages God gives to us to share?

Pride’s Sore Thumb

Have you ever wondered what makes pride so offensive to God?

Pride is a form of worship; self-worship.

That explains why it lets nothing stand in its way, however minute.

And it is so even when it is a supposedly man of God having it because it stands out even more.

Allow me to give us an illustration from the book of Esther.

Remember Haman?

Everybody was bowing before him and he enjoyed it, thoroughly.

He didn’t even notice somebody was not complying until it was brought to his attention.

Then his whole life changed.

That person, that insignificant person who defied his ‘divine’ status became the only person and thing in his sight.

Nothing else mattered to him than dealing with that single threat to his divinity.

Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. (Esther 5:13)

Imagine that the opportunity of a lifetime mattered nothing to him.

It is difficult to imagine it but Mordecai refusing to bow to him now occupied and run his whole life.

Even revenge was not enough to give him peace.

Incidentally, that was the thing God used to bring him down.

I am saying that pride is the worship of self. And we know that worship and jealousy go hand in hand.

Does it surprise us then that God resists the proud?

And that is the reason Jesus was always at loggerheads with the Jewish spiritual leaders. They proclaimed God but lived in pride.

Sadly, many ministers fall into that pride, especially as their spiritual status rises.

Incidentally someone will many times be elevated for pride to really blossom. People will slowly bow to you for you to realise your divine status. Then you will slowly acknowledge it.

False humility is pride in a camouflage. And that is what men of God possess in abundance.

Sadly, it is the very discerning who are able to see it in others. Meaning that it requires greater discernment to see it in me. And by then it will have started becoming obnoxious to the spiritually attuned.

Pride prides itself in prominence and entitlement. Remember Haman?

So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself? (Esther 6:6)

Pride has no place for another. That is what makes it an abomination in God’s sight.

And that is why Christ came so that we can see first-hand what He loves.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2: 5 – 8)

That is the correct antidote to pride, living for causes outside of self.

Living for God is the ultimate in dealing with pride. And of course it is serving God according to His standards.

Powerful Word

People wonder why I never tire focusing on and speaking of the word.

For close to forty years, many people who know or have come across me found me dealing with the Bible one way or the other.

From giving out Bibles to challenging people to read them to starting reading clubs of sort, my ministry has always revolved around the Bible and its study.

The first reason is that the Bible sorted me out COMPLETELY.

As I have written elsewhere, when I got saved at nine, I happened to have many questions (probably too many), questions that the people who brought me to faith in Christ were unable or unwilling to answer or show me how to get answers for myself.

Due to that, and of course with a combination of other factors, I rebelled as a teenager.

However, for me, God’s hand continued being upon me as there are things that I can’t explain why didn’t do, like drugs when all my friends did them.

At eighteen I rededicated my life to Christ. It was the same time I heard His call, the call I am walking in to date.

God created in me a great craving for His word that I was able to read the New Testament in a month. And there was no looking back after that.

The more I read, the more my questions were answered. I realised that some of the issues I had battled for years had disappeared and I did not even know when.

That is how I started prizing the Bible. I realised that it was the real answer to all life’s questions and issues.

Let me give a couple of other situations I have seen as I ministered the word to people.

When I was doing campus ministry, girls would come barely dressed as we all know.

Is it interesting that after studying the Bible with them for a short time the they would start to be dressed better yet we were not even studying dressing?

I am involved with some guys on the streets where my input is an Audio Bible and probably a physical one when they are available. There is little we talk about since it is about friendship.

One day I arrive and they tell me they want to go to church.

In a short while one who had dreadlocks has shaved them.

When I asked him why he had shaved, he said that it just felt wrong.

Listening to the Bible was enough power to destroy long held values and lifestyle choices.

So far some have left that life on the streets.

Many years ago, I was asked to start a Bible study in my house by some neighbours

A refugee group joined the study.

One day one of the guys who had challenged me to start the BS approached me requesting that I ask one of the refugees to stop ashaming the BS by smoking openly.

I responded that I was not the Holy Spirit and so will continue doing only what God had called me to.

He left in a huff, saying that he has no space for hypocrites.

Well, a few weeks later, this refugee asks us to pray for him to stop smoking. And he stopped.

He later intimated to me that he had battled smoking for over twenty-five years.

He is a pastor today.

I was told that the guy who left in protest married a second wife.

Stories abound. Stories just like these.

They confirm that the intake of God’s word has so much power, power that transforms anyone who ingests it.

It is not a waste of money to buy and make Audio Bibles to give freely. It is no waste of money to print and give reading plans. It is no waste of money to buy and give out Bibles.

The Bible has enough power to transform.

When I see a worship leader (whatever that means) dressed like a harlot, it becomes enough evidence that they do not spend time in God’s word.

When I see a pastor refusing to minister because he has not been paid or because what he is offered is below his class, it is also adequate evidence that the word does not feature prominently in his life.

When you see a minister who has issues loving his wife and defending her, it is easy to know that the word they know does not go beyond their minds.

In short, the word rightly consumed offers a spiritual balanced diet, diet that will produce everything God intended when He created you.

The word is God’s agent of formation and transformation.

We love quoting that God’s word released causes healing.

We forget that healing is a small element of God’s creative power. Though it appears big in our eyes, it really is one small chapter of God’s magnificence.

Remember the question Jesus asked, which is bigger, healing or forgiveness of sin’?

Forgiveness causes healing. Forgiveness is therefore a more complete healing than the physical one.

Sin is the sickness that causes other sicknesses.

Sin is a spiritual sickness that touches and infects all other parts of life.

And that is where the word comes in.

The word is the one that can penetrate life at that level, the only one.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. (John 17:17)

Our generation loves to talk about anointing and the power anointing carries

The word has more potent power than anointing, especially because it is the proper source of the anointing.

We MUST therefore devote more of our time to the proper intake of God’s word as the cause of our spiritual power.

  

Selective Interpretations

Have you ever wondered why we choose favourite verses, sometimes deciding that the complete verse is not good enough?

Let me ruffle feathers by throwing a stone at the Pentecostal/ charismatic movement and characters. And I will hasten to add that they are where I come from.

What is their foundational doctrine?

I believe in the filling of the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4.

Do you realise that speaking in tongues was just one of the signs occurring in the upper room?

Why do we want to overlook those many other signs?

And why don’t we care to state that our tongues are different from those spoken at Pentecost?

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1 - 4)

Were the disciples in charge of the signs or were they not just the recipients of the same? Could they have chosen the signs they wanted?

If we believe our practice and experience is according to the scriptures, should we pick what to manifest? And is it of God if we are the ones doing the picking?

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? (Acts 2:6 – 8)

How intelligible are our tongues? Who understands them?

How then can we take a verse that says something so different from our practice yet claim it to explain our experience?

Is it a wonder when we find many spurious doctrines are pivoted on the Pentecostal movement?

We have the replacement of scriptural hymnody with chanting in the name of praise and worship, an avalanche of motivational preaching, the prosperity ‘gospel’, the ‘’Gospel’ entrepreneurship and many, many others.

But let me close with this other one.

Bring all the tithe and test Me in this is also their offshoot.

I have written extensively on the tithe. There are many posts on my blog on the same.

Just assuming that it is not an Old Testament dctrine that it is, let me give us the complete passage.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. (Malachi 3:10)

Why do we remove the purpose of the tithe?

The tithe was given so that there was food in God’s house. Food for the Levite, the widow, the orphan and the refugee.

It therefore means that without food, the tithe serves no purpose.

And do you realise that was the reason deacons were chosen in Acts?

Will we allow the Bible to speak to us without clipping out the parts we do not fancy?

ALL scripture is inspired, not the parts we love.

Allow me to stop here for now