Of Rebellion and Rejection

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1Samuel 15:23)

Consistent Bible readers will confess to having some troubling concerns and questions as to some difficult ‘omissions’ or ‘contradictions’ in the scriptures.

Those of us who believe completely and thoroughly in the God who released the Bible to us respond with an element of awe and expectation because we know that God never overlooked any detail, however minute, when He released His word. He will always explain the same when the time is right.

Others use the same as an affront to the validity of our faith or even divinity, many times using it to justify the ‘fact’ that the Bible as it is can not be from a God who is omniscient or even omnipotent.

It is with that that I would want us to look at this topic.

Have you like me wondered why Jesus, who was the only One who knew that Judas was a thief, never rebuked, exposed or hinted about his sin?

We see Him rebuking those closest to Him yet never even once confronting the person siphoning the funds given to support His ministry.

In the same way we also do not see Him even once confronting the Sadducees yet He was always having one battle or the other with the Pharisees and scribes.

Again, those of you who have been reading my posts and books know that I have always fearfully wondered at these verses.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 22, 23)

How is it that God can tell people He spoke and performed miracles through that He never knew them?

That is what I want us to look at today.

And we will look at three ministers, chiefly Saul the king.

Like most, Saul started very well. His humility and faith were admirable.

Then came the trappings of power. Then came the expectation of his host. And he started looking at his position as dependent on his person.

Another person who became like that was Jeroboam son of Nebat.

Then the commandment of the Lord became a suggestion depending on his interpretation of his present circumstances.

His first folly (call it fall) was that he decided that since a king ruled over priests, there was no harm in playing priest to deal with a crisis of monumental proportions. Again, we have Uzziah doing the same though we do not know the kind of crisis he was dealing with.

According to the laws of Moses, someone usurping the priestly role was supposed to be put to death.

We can comfortably conclude that Saul died in God’s eyes.

Since he was the anointed king, no one could legally kill him. But that did not change his situation in God’s eyes.

His anointing could not be nullified since it came from God. Let us have another verse to consider.

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. (Romans 11:29)

His rejection was therefore spiritual, or in the spiritual realm.

Or do you not realise that probably only his general heard (probably sensed) that rejection?

That means that God stopped dealing with him as the king as He started raising another one.

But he continued serving as the king for twenty full years.

One thing that we realise, however, is that God never again spoke to him, however desperate his situation became.

Again, we see enough instances of repentance, even very tearful repentances, yet none of them reached God’s ears. We see the same with Esau.

This is what must have happened to Judas.

He deliberately chose a cause against Christ’s teachings and so was deregistered from Christ’s design.

Like Saul before him, he had been personally called to be a disciple and so could not be unchosen.

He therefore continued serving though he had been removed from the register in the spiritual realm.

That explains why all that teaching against covetousness could not touch him.

See what threw him overboard!

He was incensed that a woman could pour a million worth of perfume in worship to Christ.

To his rejected heart, Christ was not worth that much, especially since it could have been translated to a tidy sum in percentage earnings if it was converted to money since he knew the proper math to take some of it. And that is why his next destination was the enemies of his former Lord to sell Him.

We see the same with Saul.

His final act of rebellion was in desperation resorting to the witchcraft that he had in his earlier years sought to eliminate to be able to get a message from God through His long dead prophet.

Let us get to the other character who will help us understand this topic even better.

That Balaam was a prophet of God is never in doubt. That he heard clearly from God is also evident when we read his story.

Yet what happens when he is given an offer too hard to resist?

He revisits God to seek an extra opinion on an earlier order!

That seals his fate.

You see, lords and kings do not revise their orders. And we know that God is the LORD of lords and King of kings.

In revising His orders, God removes Balaam from His register.

He therefore leaves as a free agent, albeit an agent with an anointing and gifting.

What God does on the way was not to give the prophet a chance to repent. It was to demonstrate that he had overstepped his bounds and so had become unregenerate.

And it was the same with Saul’s last assignment.

From then on, these men operated on cruise control, or what in New Testament would be called walking in the flesh since the Holy Spirit had ‘left’ them. Let me say it in simpler terms, God’s presence and voice had ceased to be part of their experience.

Yet God used Balaam. Even as He continued to use Saul and Judas.

But He had removed them from His register, to say it in terms we can easily identify with.

The conclusion of all their stories is the same because we see Balaam advising Israel’s enemies to do the opposite of what the God he had served all his years stood for since on enemy territory he had to somehow survive and he had lost access to God’s guidance and presence.

Let us look for a short conclusion in this topic.

Someone is chosen by God and even serves Him for some time.

He then is given a clear order that in his wisdom he disobeys.

God removes him from His register and stops all communication with him though he will continue functioning in the capacity God had placed him.

A time comes when he MUST hear from God and he discovers that he has been removed from God’s radar though he probably never thought it was that serious.

Those desperate measures eventually become the doom of him.

Let us translate this now to the mega apostles we see in Matthew 7.

Have you wondered how someone can drink or take drugs to deliver powerful sermons?

Have you ever wondered how someone can run from a whorehouse to lead ‘worship’ calling God’s presence down?

Have you ever asked yourself how a man of God can lead people into mass suicide?

Do you ask, like I once asked, whether God has any standards when choosing and using ministers?

Do you ever wonder what happened to the conscience of some ministers?

Well, here is your answer.

You see, God is bound to those on His register. Those are His servants.

The rest are serving another master, a master opposed to God. And you know that nobody can discipline another’s servant in case you wonder at why God talks about disciplining those He loves.

If you asked me before God taught me this what Saul’s greatest sin was, I would undoubtedly have told you that it was the putting to death and destroying a whole priestly city. Imagine killing 85 pastors, bishops, apostles and their families and property in one swell swoop as well as sow their city with salt that it never be inhabited again!

Yet God did not seem to see that since it is not indicated in God’s verdict.

I hope you understand what I mean by being removed from God’s register.

God can only judge and discipline His servants.

So when you see a minister seemingly getting away with murder, it is because he is walking in his past glory before his deregistration from heaven.

When you see a believer appearing to have a dead conscience, do not worry any more. You are probably dealing with someone already removed from the annals of heaven.

God stopped dealing with them once their rebellion manifested.

Without God’s voice, we have nothing solid to count on since even our conscience suffers the same fate.

Sadly, I have found no fallback plan for such people. I have not found any route for repentance. I have not found any restoration for them in the scriptures.

Sample this

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6: 4 – 6)

And this

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10: 26 – 29)

Does this scare you?

You see, there is a cure for sin. It is repentance.

But there is no remedy for rebellion but rejection

There is forgiveness for sin once repented. But rebellion has overshot the reach of forgiveness.

That is why Judas committed suicide. That is why Saul committed suicide. That is why Balaam more or less committed suicide by going directly against God’s standards.

But the saddest for rebellion is that God becomes silent, however desperate the rebel seeks to hear from Him.

This also explains the deceptions rebels thrive in.

You see, once God becomes silent especially to someone who was used to walking in His counsel, it becomes very easy for alternative voices to be heard by those ears, especially because God is absent to confirm or deny the sources. Some of those voices could as well be creations of his own fertile mind to fill the vacuum lack of God’s voice creates.

It becomes worse because the performances continue as usual. One can hear God’s voice to prophesy. He can hear God’s voice to deal with demons and he must hear God’s voice to release the miraculous. The only thing he cant do is hear God’s voice concerning himself.

It is therefore very easy to convince oneself that the voice they are creating is actually God’s voice when it isn’t.

But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me to speak unto thee? (1Kings 22:24)

There is also the danger of jumbling of sources of the prophetic, especially when self interest takes charge as I suspect had happened to this prophet. He had no idea when he lost touch with God to the point that he was punishing the actual voice of God for speaking lies in God’s name.

The ministers who over the years and lands have been taking their followers on suicidal missions are the clearest manifestation of such a spiritual reality as are those who will preach their followers to poverty in their zeal to over give God. Incidentally their preaching very rarely, if ever, touches their hearts to do as they guide their followers to do.

Even their definition of sin changes and morphs into what is unconformable to their deceived hearts devoid of the voice of God.

That is why such people will hate family and friends if they do not agree with their deceptions.

In short, a cult is a group of goats (rebels) being led by a chief one and not sheep led by a wolf.

Once in a while a sheep may stray into their enclosure but their connection with God will very swiftly require them to be kicked out or the voice of God will lead them out.

This is because God will never allow someone seeking Him to be lost in the error of the one who was deregistered from His book. That is what omnipotent and omniscient means in actual terms.

Be careful therefore if you are always being drawn into questionable groups and ministers/ ministries. It could very easily mean you are walking in rebellion or walking towards it. That is why the goats are becoming very attractive to you because that is in your makeup.

For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2Timothy 3: 6, 7)

Otherwise explain to me why fishy pastors do not lose their pastorate one exposé after the other yet there are many churches with pastors without reproach. Goats flock around their own.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2Timothy 4: 3, 4)

Let me close with this.

Stilling God’s voice willingly may mean God stilling His voice towards you forever.

If that does not chill you to your bones, I wonder what will.

God bless you 

Adulterer, Me?

If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. (Exodus 21:10)

Allow me to delve into a very sensitive topic; sex and marriage.

I want to state that adultery is not simply when one is sexually involved with someone other than their spouse.

Adultery happens long before the actual act of sex outside marriage occurs.

You could actually be the best example of chastity when to God you are hopelessly lost in adultery. You could be the person everybody looks up to for marriage counsel when you are sunk to your neck into whoredom.

What am I saying? You may be wondering.

Jesus said that adultery, like any other sin, starts in the heart.

We must therefore seek to understand the heart’s yielding to be able to look at sin the way God looks at it.

Let me throw another spanner into your works by also stating that divorce does not happen when a couple legally separates.

You could actually be a serial divorcee even before getting legally married.

What people call dating is actually marriage even before the consummation of the same. Yet these days it is treated as normal when dating people have sex. And the same people will not feel any guilt when they decide that they have discovered that they were not meant for each other.

Let me scare you with this.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1: 18 - 20)

Why is Joseph planning on divorcing Mary yet they were not married according to us?

That pledge is the same as marriage when looked at with God’s eyes. That is why God says that Joseph should not fear to take Mary HIS wife and not as his wife.

God recognises marriage when two people agree to get married and not when they actually get married.

Sex is the seal of what was recognised in heaven.

Breaking of the engagement is therefore akin to divorcing the person.

That is the reason I will always stand to be counted when declaring dating as not of God since it opens wide the door to divorce even before people become legally married.

Let me get back to our topic.

Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (1Corinthians 7:5)

Unfaithfulness starts when the deficiency of sex in a marriage is not by mutual consent and especially not driven by joint prayer and fasting. That is when the seed of adultery sprouts.

When sex starts being an optional aspect of marriage, adultery starts manifesting in ever increasing ways.

When the excitement and electric shock feeling from that touch becomes a bother or disappears, you can be sure one has gotten a notch higher in the path to full blown adultery.

You see, the desirability of a spouse is the running oil in the engine called marriage.

And by adultery I am not just speaking of the guilty party. The one becoming adulterous in their heart is an active partner in driving their spouse to adultery.

This means that not only are you committing adultery, you are forcing your partner into adultery.

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. (Matthew 5:32)

Denying your partner sexual rights causes them to commit adultery, and I do not think they have to physically do it to be so though it drives them in that direction.

But it happens long before that.

That denial or sparsity of sex happens because adultery has already happened in the heart.

When your partner stops being the prime object of your companionship, it is because your heart has already strayed elsewhere.

If your pastor commands more respect than your husband, you can be sure that God has already condemned you of adultery. If your boss’s word carries more weight than your husband, you are in the same place.

If prayer and other spiritual exercises are the reason your husband cannot enjoy your undivided attention, you are actually serving the devil, sorry I have to be so blunt.

Numbers 30 puts that in black and white.

What am I saying?

We many times blame the wrong person for adultery.

You could be crying to all that your partner is straying when you are the trigger that is actively driving them away. Your spiritual adultery drove him up the wall that they committed physical adultery in frustration.

Or do you think that it is a wonder that the women with the most unfaithful husbands occupy very prominent positions in church?

Does it surprise you that all that fasting and prayer for a husband to change takes forever to happen if ever?

The husband becomes a spare wheel in the marriage, however key he may appear to be.

His desirability is exchanged with somebody or something else; children, church, job, spiritual leader, chama, and anything else in between.

That is what drives him away from home. Because he has already been spiritually and emotionally kicked away from that home.

Look also at this

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; (1Peter 3:1)

That lack of submission, however justified you might think you are, is actually adultery because someone or something else has become your authority, which in spiritual terms means husband.

That is how God looks at it.

And you expect a husband you are cheating on to follow you to those places that will continually remind him how much of an adulterer you are because they are the ones that have kicked him out of his marriage! If folly was a person, you would be it.

Let us get to scripture before you kick me out of your attention.

We of course know that marriage is a picture of our relationship with God.

This means that we can understand marriage better if we looked at the model it is taken from.

Remember Israel in the wilderness?

Apart of the golden calf that occupied probably a week or at most two of the forty-year journey, is there any other idol you have seen that Israel worshipped?

I for one have never seen any other, except probably Baal Peor, and even then it was being outsourced.

It is in Judges that we see the presence of idols.

Yet why do we read this?

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. (Numbers 14:33)

Why is God accusing Israel of idolatry and prostitution? And he is mentioning, not one or two incidents of adultery but uncountable and stinking levels of prostitution.

Idolatry is not the bowing down to an image. It is not being completely sold out to God. It is a wavering of our desire and devotion to God that God terms as idolatry.

We must therefore understand that God was judging them for idolatry that did not involve actual images and prostitution that did not include sexual intercourse.

I hope you understand what I mean.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. (Revelation 2:4)

That church was doing everything perfectly. They had no complaint as to their doctrine or conduct.

They looked like you and the way you run your marriage.

There is no verifiable breach of performance.

But God sees the heart. And that is where He judges from.

Do not therefore be offended when I say that you could be a serial adulterer though there is nothing that is outwardly connecting you to adultery or even inappropriate conduct.

Do not be offended when I call you a prostitute when you are the leading lady of the church.

But you may be forced to agree with me if you decided to look at your marriage in the eyes of the One to whom we will have to give an account.

And I do not want to give an account that I feared to confront the corruptions that are breaking our marriages so that I am not hated.

Allow me to close with this

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)

Because

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Will you allow God to examine your heart and give you His verdict?

Will you take His prescription?

This is because I believe you do not have time, nor do I, before God exposes our hearts to the world.

Or like He says in the prophets, He will uncover our nakedness before all our lovers.

God bless you.

Prodigal Doctrines 2

Let me go a bit farther on the prodigal to let us appreciate the reality that the repentance of the prodigal was not the only requirement into his accessing any inheritance.

The first reason is that he had no inheritance at all. His connection to any inheritance was therefore dependent on the one holding it – the elder brother.

Second was that his system was already corrupted so that giving him access to inheritance could very easily launch him back to those wild days.

Let me give you this story that I know you may have as many variants as your experiences.

A minister fell into drunkenness and was lost for many years.

I knew that because everybody was always deriding his fall.

‘Can you imagine this was a pastor and missionary who even preached in other countries!’

It therefore bothered me and I made it my assignment to pray for his restoration even as I did all I could to not only understand but also help in that restoration.

I made him an Audio Bible and after some time he sold it and gave stories like any drunk does.

I think I still made him another one. We kept talking a lot but he was secretive and very hard (I hope you understand what I mean)

After over two years, a pastor friend of mine confronted him and he repented.

I was overjoyed.

I made him another Audio Bible, got him a Bible to read and a few other books. I even gave him a cellphone so that we could be in contact more and of course made a solar charger for the phone and Audio Bibles.

He changed!

He became clean, sober, very organised.

He even left his former crowd.

He would regularly visit and we would have great times discussing the scriptures. He even brough some albums of his past life as a man of God.

The only thing he did not do was activate the cell phone, his excuse being that his ID card was lost and its replacement was taking long.

After some time I started hearing about him in drunken issues.

As usual I believe time reveals most things so I waited since he continued behaving like a growing disciple.

One day I needed some work done and I was going to town so I went to the place he used to laze with some young men (his former crowd) so that they could direct me to where I could find him since that was his hood.

They called him from a bar! And that was in the morning.

Once his cover was blown, he tried to explain and even show that it was a blunder but God blew it another time.

It was as I sought to get him become open that he confessed to have sold the cellphone.

He died recently I hear in a drunken fight.

This was a man in his sixties.

I do not think he feigned repentance.

One does not leave the prodigal nature just like that as there are enough things that can trigger a relapse.

Let me give some other stories, this time of young men.

I was sought by a young man very desperately.

He was lost in drugs and wanted anybody who could help him and as he asked around the church was directed by a friend who knew that I was connected to a rehab.

When we met, I asked him when he wanted to join and he said immediately. He did not even return home for his personal effects as he was so desperate.

Well, I took him there and his transformation was immediate. He was clean long before the official time for having cleaned out.

He got into the worship team and even became a leader accompanying the big guys.

Then a friend gave him a cellphone and his former crowd was able to reconnect. In a short while he was where I found him, lost.

After a short time, he sought me out in tears to plead with me to help him rejoin the rehab as he had learnt his lessons.

I did so and what had happened the first time happened. The healing was very fast. Yet after the healing he was unable to resist the pressure of his former crowd.

I do not remember whether I took him back the third time but I eventually told him that I do not think he was ready to handle the transformation he sought.

To this day, any time he sees me he is always pleading with me to take him back to the rehab. But would you?

The next is still about another young man.

His parents brought the young man to me to convince him to go to rehab.

After talking for some time, I realized he was not ready and told the parents so.

He later came ready

When the time came to be released after becoming clean, he refused to go back home and said he did not trust himself enough to go back to his former crowd.

We looked for a college for him and the parents were more than willing to support the same.

He left the rehab after college and to date I continue receiving positive reports about him.

The purpose of all this narration is to prove to us that the prodigal, however drastic their repentance, must need adequate time to grow back into the inheritance.

We many times become enraged when we hear of a pastor eating his sheep without caring to know whether we released him into the sheep pen before completely curing his prodigal nature.

We scream the loudest when we hear of a spiritual leader eating all the offerings or a leader who is always insulting his flock without first asking where we picked him from before launching him into the ministry.

He may have just had a relapse because we did not allow him adequate time to detox his prodigal nature.

Our excitement at his homecoming overtook our reason.

In short, they are the way they are due to our folly and thus we are the ones to blame for their error.

It is sad that when a church member falls into sin they are disciplined for anything from six months to several years according to their sin. Yet the same church does not waste any time inducting someone who had been on the devil’s payroll for decades into leadership.

I have no issues with discipline. What I have a gigantic problem with is rolling the red carpet when a prodigal comes home to the point of overlooking the already overworked elder brother.

That is the sin of our generation.

I was told of girl that became pregnant and the boy was made a pastor because the girl comes from a prominent family. And that is not a church hidden somewhere in the bush.

And we seem surprised when we can’t contain the sexual explosion in our young people. We gave the prodigals the chance to manage the inheritance and left out the elder brother who had been managing it all the time the prodigal was away.

I repeat. There is need to celebrate the prodigal. Only that we must give him enough time to allow the stench of swine to get out of his system.

Otherwise we could end up having our whole house smelling like a swine sty. Not forgetting that it is very possible for him to forget that he moved from feeding among the swine to owning them and so comfortably start competing with them for food, something we have too many examples for comfort like the few examples I have mentioned above.

In conclusion, let me say that I love the prodigals coming back home. But I am even more excited when they are gradually grown back into the family before they are released into the mainstream of ministry involvement.

That is what we call discipleship.

Otherwise a harlot will come to church to leave that past behind and get converted into a ‘sanctified and anointed’ harlot due to lack of that growth.

I think that is one of the interpretations of this verse

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)

They thought capturing a proselyte was the main job like we do when we think the prodigal coming back home is the main job. And the outcome is the same.

I Hope we understand each other.

Prodigal Doctrines

And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. (Luke 15: 31, 32)

I do not know whether you have realized that the church is more celebrative over the prodigal than it is for the one who has been in the fold their whole life.

Do you realize that it is easier to get a spiritual position if you are from a spiritual sewer than if you have had no drama in your spiritual experience?

Getting saved as a child and walking in faithfulness your whole life has over the years been treated as a liability in the church, especially in leadership circles.

Sadly, it did not start yesterday.

I remember when children would create sins Christ had saved them from to make their testimonies more interesting.

You would hear a six-year-old talking about being saved from smoking when they did not even know what a cigarette was. Another would talk about being saved from drunkenness when the closest they came to alcohol was hearing drunks singing as they went home at night.

The church then gradually started looking for drama instead of spiritual substance in everything from testimonies to giving spiritual positions.

This made spiritual potency of very little effect. It made faithfulness close to worthless unless one is just a sheep.

We value the obedient and faithful as useful only in giving and filling the pews and being there when the drama fails to deliver.

We value drama over substance. We would rather someone lies to make their testimony more flowery and dramatic than hear a ‘dull’ testimony of someone who has seen God in action in the mundane, run of the mill times.

But is that the way God looks at the Christian life? Does He not reward faithfulness above other things?

It is in the mundane that God extracts the best of His servants, not the dramatic.

Even His Son was entrusted with the mundane for His preparation as He was placed in a carpentry workshop instead of the palace, war front or market.

You realize that He also picked from the mundane when He chose the apostles.

Looking at His methods of selection, you will realize that the dramatic never featured anywhere when He was choosing and using His servants.

But faithfulness was a non-negotiable whoever He chose.

Yet we find the prodigal being defined by drama wherever you look. This is because their definition is one of breaking rules, eliminating bounds.

There is drama in sin and sinful and rebellious living. There is none in obeying the rules and keeping to the straight and narrow.

That does not make breaking the rules more fun than obeying. It only gives a perception of fun because of all that drama.

Imagine the prodigal son when he was flowing with cash? Imagine him when he was rolling with all the gals and fine things money could buy?

That explains the bitterness his brother was feeling.

He enjoyed wasting his inheritance and I have been here slaving for you.

But it was an illusion, short lived at its best.

You can never maintain an inheritance by fun. And we have enough examples wherever we look.

Inheritance is kept and increased by the mundane.

I doubt the elder brother had ever seen the need for fun. He just noticed the lack of that fun because the prodigal was received with pomp when he came back.

What he also did not seem to notice was that everything that was left belonged to him and so he really did not need any permission to slaughter anything. You see, when his brother took his inheritance, everything that remained belonged to him.

Yet it appeared like a slap on his face when the wasteful had a party in his honor!

But was that the reality?

The father put things in their right perspective when he faced his mundanely obedient son.

Your brother has zero inheritance and you have everything.

We are just celebrating his coming back to life and not the life he lived.

It is similar to the way we celebrate someone who has been in a coma reawakening. He could still be sick but that flicker of hope he introduces is enough cause for celebration.

It is like we celebrate a child taking their first step or uttering their first word.

We know there will be many falls but are happy enough for that pivotal step.

But we will not dwell there.

Just as a person from a coma is not completely healed; Just like that first step or word is not indicative of a completion of the process; we will need to acknowledge that the elder brother held the keys to the prodigal’s complete restoration.

The prodigal coming back was the first step. His father opening the eyes of the obedient son was the next.

But that was hopelessly inadequate if the obedient son did not extend grace to him since the only thing he could have begged for was a job or even selling himself into slavery to his obedient brother.

The prodigal can never be self sufficient since he had already wasted his inheritance.

That is why it is very sad when churches overlook the faithful and pick the prodigal for whatever reason.

This is because the prodigal will always ride on the backs of the faithful. He will run with the resources of the faithful. He will swim on the favor gained by those boring elder brothers.

You see, the world was still moving the twenty years the prodigal was in drugs and immorality just as the farm was maintained when the prodigal was enjoying his wildest life.

Assuming that life just started when the prodigal came back is therefore a very destructive lie.

The fact that a few people joined the church due to that testimony of wastefulness does not invalidate the continuous trickle of members over the years before the prodigal joined the church.

The fact that a few moneyed members started giving large cheques after the testimony does no nullify the entirety of decades of backbreaking work that went on even without the money.

The fact that more people fill the prayer meeting does not mean that there was no prior investment in prayer before they came.

What am I saying?

It would have been folly had the father decided to make the prodigal the manager of the inheritance just because he knew what wastefulness was.

Yet we are doing that as God’s people again and again and do not even realize how foolish we look to the world we are seeking to reach.

I am not trashing the prodigal or his conversion.

I am simply saying that we should give him time to recover. We need to detox his prodigal nature from him before thinking of taking him closer to any inheritance.

Does the Bible say that?

Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. (1Timothy 3:6)

This is talking about leadership

Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure. (1Timothy 5:22)

And with the prodigal this is even more dangerous as a relapse is a looming threat, that is made worse when they are elevated in leadership or responsibility as it exposes them to unprepared attacks from the enemy of souls who has over the eons perfected the art of felling even the most prepared by taking advantage of the smallest lapse.

Yes, we need to receive the prodigal with open arms.

Yet it is important that we take enough time to allow him time to heal from his prodigalness before giving him the inheritance the elder brother had been building the time the prodigal was in those parties.

Otherwise we could be launching him right back to where he came from.

The other reason is that his wild friends will take time, and a lot of it to be convinced that it was not just hunger and desperation that led him back to the father, something putting him in the limelight will more or less confirm – that he just knew how to play his cards.

I hope my point has come across.

Sin is a Journey 2

In the last post on this, I suspect I said something that left some people baffled.

I said that the other side (world, demonic) is very accurate on our proclivity to sin.

Let me make it clearer.

Those of us who have travelled a lot will tell you some strange things we have seen.

You will go to a new place where nothing is familiar, even the language is strange with a mixed team, probably workmates or something similar.

It is interesting that the whoremonger will have gotten a whore in the shortest time even in a place a normal person sees no trace of whoredom.

The drug user will have gotten their dose in a few short minutes.

The alcoholic using those concentrated and illegal concoctions will be swaying side by side before you have finished eating your plate of food.

How are they able to see those things when they are hidden from the rest?

I dare say that they each release a spiritual scent. A scent that is discernible by the spiritually alert (from the other side of course, though God can give discernment to a few in His kingdom for particular purposes).

It is a scent that is very ‘visible’ that one does not need to explain themselves to be understood.

How many ministers have not experienced shock when someone you have never met calls you by your spiritual function? How many ministers have not met a mad man (or woman) calling out to their spiritual position? How many have not gone to a new church in a new place where nobody knows them yet they are kindly called upon to share the word to a congregation even when they had made themselves as inconspicuous as possible?

You see, Paul was not the first or last person for whom demons were announcing their ministry as happened in Acts 16. Even Jesus had to restrain those announcers.

What I am saying is that demonic (or the world, to be polite) spirit-led persons are acutely aware of the spiritual temperature around whoever they encounter.

What does this have to do with our topic?

Everything.

And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. (Luke 4:13)

You see, the devil came to Jesus at His weakest.

He was very hungry from not having eaten for forty days.

And we know he was not tempting Him to try to perform a miracle because he knew Jesus could easily convert stones to bread.

The temptation therefore went something like this.

You are hungry and you are powerful. Why not combine the two realities to sort yourself out?

But I want us to realize that the devil came to Jesus ONLY when Jesus was at His lowest physical and spiritual point.

And he left Him so that he could look for another opportune moment.

You realize that the devil never came to Jesus haphazardly. Any time you see Him being confronted He will be at a position when it was very easy to fall, either from pride or exhaustion.

I am saying that the devil can smell the state of your spiritual vitality from afar.

And he does it as he is always hammering at your armor to see how quickly you are repairing the dents and breaches thus created.

Look also at Job.

It is at the time he is thinking that death is better than life that his wife (the person closest to him) asks him to curse God and die.

Let me go to the animal world.

Lions do not put down the big game quickly. I want us to realize that they will resort to the big animals when they are left with no options since the weak and sick are completely protected by their herds

They will attack and bite and injure as much as they can, leaving some of them wounded, even dead from the effort.

In a day or two they will return and do the same. This of course because the injured will be unable to keep up with the herd.

They will continue until their target becomes too weak to fight back then they kill and eat it.

Isn’t that how the devil deals with us?

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: (1Peter 5:8)

We are therefore dealing with an enemy who is relentless with his pursuit.

He is never a hit or miss type of adversary.

He will walk with us all the time, hitting and scratching us here and there until we have given him the littlest space to penetrate our armor, either from exhaustion or anger at those petty little scratches due to their consistency.

That is when he will bring in his most potent weapon to fell us in one swell hit. But it will not be as huge as we might think.

That final hit did not just come but was the culmination of a consistent weakening of our resistance.

We could call it the straw that broke the horse’s back as is said.

And a straw on its own, even thousands of them have no capacity to do anything to a horse’s back.

But that back became so loaded that it required that single straw to break.

That is the journey of sin I am talking about here.

I believe that God will give me another chance to build on this, especially on what we will need to do to be always ready to overcome long before those last straws come.

But it is important to repeat the statement that is the backbone of this post

Sin is not an activity or event. Sin is a journey, a journey whose end is the actual act of sin.

The sin seed was growing in our hearts for a long time until it finally brought fruit that is the actual sin.

That tells us that to effectively deal with sin we must tackle it from the seed point instead of the fruit stage since plucking a fruit can have no impact on the tree bearing it.

 

Radicalism doesn’t just Happen

Nobody starts trusting God like a switch turned off or on.

Faith is a process, or more accurately, the product of a process.

In the same way, obedience is the result of a process.

They are growing processes that require more than time and occurrence or experience.

How many times in the Gospels do you read something like this?

Now we know that You are the Son of God

How many times did they require to know? How many times does one need to know something? How can you know someone or something again and again?

You see, the revelation of God does not just happen. Faith doesn’t just increase.

The reason Israel was condemned to forty years of wandering was because they had misinterpreted the purpose of their experience with God. They had decided they did not want to know God beyond His provision. They were content to be feeding on His bounty without letting the same impact their obedience.

To them, God was only fun because He was responding to their smallest cry. But they did not want to interpret that experience to impact their obedience, or even faith.

Thus, when they were called upon to take a step of faith decided that God was not adequate enough to obey since they were not really sure whether He could handle the giants His order required them to tackle.

In short, their faith in God had not grown an inch despite everything He had done to and for them since they were in Egypt.

‘Where is your faith’, is one thing you hear Jesus asking His disciples for the same reason. And that is the same reason Judas fell even after going through the experience of walking and ministering with the Son of God. To imagine he experienced everything the other apostles experienced yet actually went to the religious leaders to sell Christ!

I am saying that radicalism, or what people call extreme faith, takes time to grow. It is not a one-time miracle as many would want us to believe.

The fodder for the growth of the same is our interaction with two key things; what God says and what He does. And it principally depends with what we choose to do with them.

Lacking one of the two is detrimental to such growth. There can be no such growth without those two ‘ingredients’.

Many people pray and see God in great ways but are unable to grow their faith in that direction because their intake to what God says is minimal or depends on secondary sources of the same.

This is because their faith is dependent on the source of that word. That is why we have so many believers sold out to the words of a prophet or pastor (or any other title) and their structure but have no interest at all in the Bible or the body of Christ as a whole. Many are even disconnected to their immediate families for the same reason.

Their faith is actually not toward God but their superstar, who really is their god. The proclamations from those altars carry more weight than the plain teaching of the Bible. Or the Bible is as valid as the superman speaking it. The reality is that faith is a product of our interaction with God.

We can trust Him as much as we have experienced Him. And our experience of Him depends on the revelation we have of Him through what He has said (His word).

Once His word agrees with His conduct (from our experience), we can then trust Him even on other things we have not experienced.

His word carries enough weight as to overturn everything I knew if it is not in accord with what He says.

Incidentally, that is how parenting also works.

A child will respond to a parent according to their past dealings with him/her. The weight of a parent’s word is dependent on their past conduct.

Back to radicalism.

Do you realise that even those we call religious fanatics do not just happen? They have their schools and teachers that connect them to their radicalism. Those teachers must continuously demonstrate that they not only totally believe what they teach but are ready to take the bullet should it be required of them for their faith.

Let us go to one such radical in the Bible.

Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 21:13)

The fact that Christ had informed him about Jerusalem and Rome gave him such focus that prophecy to the effect of his imprisonment and torture were not adequate to weaken his obedience. Such prophecy (that did not mean that he doubted it) could not stick to his sold-out agenda and obedience.

We trace the journey to his radicalism to who he was before encountering Christ. He just transferred his radical obedience to the law to Christ.

But you also realise that it had the same two elements whatever level you look at.

No wonder many pharisees were able to turn to Christ after His resurrection. Their lives were governed by God’s word and their obedience to it. Realizing that Christ was the fulfilment of the word they obeyed just gave them a new momentum.

What am I saying?

The only way we can please God in increasing measure is by allowing His word to increasingly run our lives.

This is because the more immersed we are in His revelation, the more aligned we will be to His will in our lives and the easier it will be for us to walk in complete obedience, what people call radical obedience or radicalism.

It is therefore possible to become radical in your faith. And it is as easy as ABC

Allow your spirit to be led by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit.

Base all your life on the Bible which is the completeness of God’s revelation

Commit to doing everything God says in His word as He says it.

This will solve all your concerns about what the world may want you to be as you will be flush in God’s River of life and therefore flowing in those sweet currents.

I hope I have communicated.

Sin is a Journey

Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children: Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; (2Peter 2: 14, 15)

I want to clearly state that sin is not the simple act of sinning.

You do not become an adulterer when you sleep with a person other than your spouse.

The journey to the act starts long before the act is done. The act is the evidence that one is adulterous. It is the indicator that the heart was stolen long before the act.

Let me use our first parents as an example

Do you realise that their sin started long before they were tempted? They were tempted because they had already succumbed to the enticement of sin.

Why do I say so? You may be wondering.

How big was the garden?

Do you realise from the description in the Bible that it was in multiplied millions of acres? It occupied the land that encompasses a large chunk of Africa and the whole of the Middle East, and beyond.

You therefore wonder why they were found in the proximity of the forbidden tree and especially why they had not even sampled the tree of life which was in next to the forbidden tree.

They were simply captivated by what was forbidden to the point that they were unable to move any distance from it.

Their fall was therefore the culmination of all that craving for the forbidden.

The serpent became the prick to burst the balloon that was supposedly lack of sin because the act was absent.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. (Romans 7: 7 – 13)

Look at some things Christ said.

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)

He gives the act a context.

You start committing adultery long before the opportunity presents itself.

The journey starts when the heart is inappropriately drawn towards an object.

It then begins to grow and expand in the heart.

As a seed, it gets to the point that it must manifest by bearing fruit, the act of sin.

Remember Jesus describing hate and spite as murder?

He spoke thus because He was cognizant of the fact that the seed determines the harvest and the fact that a seed always grows and increases as it feeds on the surroundings so that it can then bear the right fruit.

Of course, the fruit is way bigger than the seed. But the nature of both is identical. The fruit is also in its way a seed for the next generation of fruit. Then there are way more seeds than the single one that started the whole process.

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of HIS own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. (James 1: 14, 15)

Sin starts with OUR OWN LUST. The devil just takes advantage of that lust to lead us to actual sin so that we can be able to acknowledge our sinfulness and of course give him a chance to justly accuse us to God.

For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women LADEN WITH SINS, LED AWAY WITH DIVERS LUSTS, (2Timothy 3: 6)

These false teachers do not go to mislead innocent women but silly women laden with sins and already lost to different lusts.

They therefore take advantage of their fallen hearts (though their conduct may be fine) and maximise on their lusts to give their ‘astrayness’ an avenue to manifest.

Balaam is another example that brings this out clearly.

He craved to feed from the king, probably whichever king was open for his ‘ministry’.

That is why he, instead of saying what God told him to say, simply said that God had refused to allow him to go. God was the reason he couldn’t go.

He was simply saying that he would have been on his way were it not for God.

And that is also why he had the guts to go to God again to look for new permission.

I suspect God acceded because Balaam could have continued to look for that permission until God granted it.

We again see it when he is confronted with a talking ass and angel with a drawn sword. He continues looking for permission.

A sober person could have simply turned back as there was no need of extra evidence to know that God was opposed to that ‘ministry’.

No wonder that he decided to offer wicked counsel when he couldn’t bend prophecy. To imagine he was God’s prophet!

And we see something else in Eden.

Why did they add to God’s command?

God never said anything about touching.

I suspect they added that commandment to inhibit their cravings for that forbidden tree. They wanted to make it difficult to sin.

But the problem was in the heart, a heart that was craving to sin. And no barrier is high enough to block it.

There is no way you can ringfence obedience. And that is what our first parents were trying to do. No wonder it failed so terribly.

Let me also say something I have come to the greatest realization just recently.

The spiritual sensitivity of the other side is way more accurate in assessing our heart’s tendencies toward sin. They are so accurate in that as well.

They can smell a person trying to avoid sin when the heart has fallen into the sin from miles away. And they get the actual evidence when they throw in a temptation your way from your response.

‘I am married’ is an excuse not to commit adultery as with many other ‘reasons’ you may give. Just like, ‘we were also forbidden to touch’, was in Eden.

He will then know that you are in the sin realm and will just need a little prodding before you give the evidence of the state of your heart sin-wise.

Compare that with Joseph

How can I do this and sin against God?

He was not looking for excuses. His heart did not have issues.

If truth be told, it was much easier for him to fall into sin than David

But David gave excuses until God confronted his sin. Then he was able to use Joseph’s argument.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. (Psalm 51:4)

Even justification for sin works along the same lines.

He mistreats me, she is unfaithful, he does not love me, she is not submissive, etc.

Those are the counter arguments the devil will use to break your attempts at ringfencing obedience (I am saved, I am a church leader, I am married, I signed a True Love Waits commitment card)

And he will win all the time because he captured your heart long before the temptation. He has in fact been nurturing that lust so that his final attack will be as easy as it was in Eden. All those excuses and reasons are the ones he has been growing in intensity until the only resistance remaining becomes so flimsy and the temptation so massive that you can be felled by a finger.

What am I saying?

The act of sin is an indicator of a long association with the tendency of sin harbored in our hearts for a long time.

That explains the folly and shame we associate with sin.

Like why would a mature and respectable church woman be found in bed with her watchman or shamba boy? Why would a pastor be found in bed with his house girl or harlot? Why would a respectable man or woman be found in bed with a street boy or girl? Why would someone have sex in the church compound or the bush?

Why should someone who can afford any five-star hotel room be found having sex in a car in the parking lot? Why would someone have sex with their own offspring?

The process of sin was complete and anything and anybody available could access the ‘goods’ since they were on display for whoever was available to pick. Everything else became secondary to that few minutes of pleasure; reputation, job, marriage, business opportunity etc.

Nothing else will matter when the fruition of sin occurs.

A CEO will have no qualms sleeping with a tramp, however unkempt they may be, at that point since that was the only available channel of release.

The sin act is the manifestation of sin that has been maturing in the heart.

I have used sexual sin because it is one sin that defiles all of life and nature.

But all other sins follow the same trajectory.

Unfortunately, the heart can easily deceive us that we are fighting sin even when we are nurturing it in our hearts.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

But God as always has a solution; His word.

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119: 9 – 11)

We are as safe as our alignment and agreement with the completeness of God’s word since we know that the devil is an expert at using this or the other verse to lead us to sin or explain our depravity away.

Our hearts must be in the right place for us to be able to identify those leanings toward sin in us.

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. (Psalm 19: 12, 13)

That must be our prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)

A very determined prayer. Also, a prayer that opens our hearts to the leading of the Holy Spirit towards the holiness His nature requires.

Otherwise, we could very easily be feeding the sin in our hearts by the right verses to bloom and flourish so that our fall will be all the more dramatic since he is a master at this game.

Only God can shine His light to enable us see the depravity of our hearts even when the sin acts are absent.

That explains this verse.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

This is because our hearts, however ‘clean’ they may look, harbor depravity in God’s eyes, a depravity only the blood of Christ can cleanse and only the total yielding to the Holy Spirit can overcome.

Where is your heart?