Christian Ministers and Politics

I long ago posted about Christian leaders and politics.

Today I want us to look at what it takes for a Christian to take God’s agenda into those positions. And I will specifically look at a Christian minister. We are therefore looking at God’s ambassador in parliament or other public office.

The first thing we need to note is that such an ambassador is first accountable to his sending authority. This means that the minister first and foremost responds primarily to God’s leading and direction.

Can I be answerable to an electorate and still owe supreme submission to God if I sought votes from them? Can I stop towing a party line if the party pushes for a policy that goes counter to God’s orders if the party sponsored me to that position?

Let me tell you what should happen to convince me that God sent His minister (or prophet) to those positions.

Joseph was in a dungeon minding God’s business. Egypt lifted him to the highest position on those terms. His submission to Pharaoh was therefore subject to his submission to God.

It is the same with Daniel and his three friends. One clear thing you will find with them is that everybody professed that the spirit of the holy gods was in them. That was clear that they played by different rules from those of the states they were serving. And the God they worshipped bailed them any time the orders they received went contrary to their faith however constitutional those orders were.

We also see the same with Mordecai and Esther. They were simply minding their business (faith) until God brought them to the limelight, ON HIS TERMS.

What would it take for a minister of the Gospel to convince me that God has called them into politics?

Very clear evidence that God is the only one that could put him in that position.

Let me give a hypothetical incident. I will assume that God has ordered a minister to join politics and so is the One behind this whole thing.

He must not join a political party as he will then be bound to their games. We have seen firebrands being quenched by that single thing when they join politics. He therefore will have to be independent.

The second thing I will expect is that they will contest far from where they are known, most preferably somewhere it is logically impossible for them to get a single vote. For the Kenya scenario I would think of someone from Nithi going to contest in Luo Nyanza or a Pokot contesting in Turkana. That way it must take the clear hand of God for you to get into parliament or any other position.

You will not be a registered voter where you are contesting, or even tell any of your friends where or even whether you are contesting to avoid influencing even one vote from fleshy effort. You will simply present your papers as a contestant and leave for good and wait for God to do His work. And it will not be difficult as He is the one who requires you there anyway. He will therefore influence the elections in favor of His ambassador since he must be in that position.

Forget about campaigning. God is able to make people vote for you if He needs you there.

I am not talking about politicians. There is need for Christian politicians who will practice their politics with the Christian ethic. But don’t ever tell me that God called you to join politics when you leave your ministerial position to indulge in a purely fleshy endeavor.

(Reminder: The Thanksgiving Service is still on on 11^th Dec. at Soul Saving Gospel Church, Kerwa. I hope to have the map ready sometime next week. You are all welcome.

I am thinking of taking a break from posting until I either get a computer or my other one is fixed as I feel I am not offering quality in my posts since I do not get enough time to develop the messages God gives me.

Please pray that God sorts this quickest)

Thanksgiving

Last week I said that when I look back at the 13 years since I obeyed God to stay and minister in Nairobi city contrary to sense I am unable at all to see me in the equation. Only God is visible to me as He has done a good job of taking care of me.

On provision I have experienced miracles galore. One time we had been without food for three days. My first born was sick and his brother was suckling. God brought someone from 400 kms away who came as if under military orders from their urgency to want to meet me. Food and rent were then taken care of though they had no idea what I was going through.

God has used extremely stingy people to provide for us for a season. I have met people who were crying to meet me since none of us had the contact of the other. Then we bump on each other and my needs are sorted. There are innumerable other examples I can give of His provision outside of the logic and reason box.

On guidance I can confirm that He has held my hands even when it also did not make sense. I have posted elsewhere the first challenge since I agreed to stay in the city. I was called to pastor a church where they were offering a house. To date I do not know how I was able to hear God, yet I heard. God has not only watched over me, He has made sure that I am able to walk in a way consistent with His calling.

The ministry itself has flourished. At times when I am very low God points me to a person or two that He has transformed through my availability. Sometimes He causes someone to just call to thank me for what my ministry has done for them.

But there have been some hiccups. Many times when I am in pain of any type I have problems finding someone who understands. I have shared issues which are taken as illustrations or parables instead of real issues needing solutions or someone’s assistance or counsel. There are people who think that I cannot have problems, can never be discouraged, etc. There are people who do not believe I can be broke and get angry when they discover that I am unable to help them since they are unable to imagine Gituma without resources to sort them out.

My very radical posts are a product of that season where God’s orders are followed. The reality is that obedience is not obedience if it meets our convenience (if it is not radical). I have learnt this more clearly through these 13 years.

I have gone for missions with only a bus ticket and a phone number of someone I do not know in a different country because I have gotten God’s clearance. I remember one time I went to Uganda when I was very sick. I had not eaten for four days and could not even swallow water.

I went in that condition and God healed me before I started ministering. And it was so complete that it was as if I had never been sick as I had enough energy for a very rigorous mission.

That is the reason I am holding a Thanksgiving service.

I want to see Christ lifted up for who He is and what He has done for me.

I want to see people who have given up on their call for the hardships and risks involved to not only reconsider but also pick up their broken pieces and start their journey of obedience afresh. I want people who gave upon missions for the comfort of the congregational or denominational employ dusting themselves up and running to the mission they had abandoned.

But above all I want people to KNOW that God is still faithful and has never changed. What we read of Him in the scriptures is as valid today as it was when it was penned.

Once again I want to invite you for the Thanksgiving Service on 11^th December 2016 at Soul Saving Gospel Church, Kerwa from 2 to 5pm.

Kerwa is between Muguga and Rironi on Naivasha road. I will try to give more precise directions as we go along.

Please contact me if you have a testimony you will want to share to also lift Christ up. Or maybe a song or any other presentation that you feel may make our thanksgiving richer.

It is important that you thank God with me for all that He has done for and through me.

A Faithful God

I was called to Nairobi to set up a ministry in 2001. In a short while, the ministry was doing very well, changing lives through discipleship and all other ministry openings God was providing.

They had prepared some package for me and even documented it.

Unfortunately, my position in the ministry became untenable as the big chaps in the ministry were disappointed that I was following Christ’s orders instead of being their PR or errand boy. Things came to a head when I told them that my obedience to Christ’s orders were not negotiable, however senior the ministry leaders were. Incidentally they confirmed that what I was doing was in agreement with what they had called me to do. But they were not willing for me to continue going in the direction Christ was showing.

Two years later they decided to terminate my ministry involvement. I insisted that at least they give me someone I had discipled to hand over the ministry to, or even someone of their choice and they refused. In the words one of them told me, ‘the ministry can run on its own’.

That closed it. I decided to leave the ministry that had been the joy of my heart, a ministry I had seen transforming lives and lifting others from the dumps, so to speak.

It still pains me to see the death of a ministry I had invested so much into. But I had no choice given the order I was given, especially the words.

I was not given anything for severance. I was just left in the wild.

With a small family in a big city, two children in school, I was left in a very bad place. Over ten years previously I had been working in Nairobi as a single person and things were bad enough. How was I to make of life without any source of sustenance?

The option was simple. Go back home. I had a house and a piece of arable land. And I could revive the workshop I had closed when I was called to start the ministry.

But on praying, God told me that He wanted me in Nairobi. He told me that He is the One who had called me to Nairobi, whoever else He had used. And He also told me that He would take care of me.

Of course it did not make sense. It was illogical. And this because I did not know where my support would come from and even when I had responded to His call to leave employment I had not envisioned looking for support. And He did not even tell me where my support would come from.

To say it was not painful would be a falsehood. When people you have highly esteemed for a long time for their depth of spiritual experience do something like that it is very painful, even bordering on depression. That believers can easily discount their own written commitments is painful, very painful, let alone the immediate reality of needs in my household resulting from that.

I thought of taking all those documents to court to fight for my rights, as I had an abundance of them but God told me not to go that direction. He told me that the fact that He wanted me in Nairobi was sufficient. Who He used and the manner of that call were inconsequential to Him. That closed that.

But I was in pain. My spirit was bleeding from the wounds inflicted by people I had trusted for so long.

Again I thought it impractical to continue in fellowship with them and their cohorts. I therefore sought to move from the fellowship.

God told me not to. What of the hurt? What of my bleeding spirit? I asked.

I will heal you. He told me. How will you know I have healed you if you run away from the scene of your injury?

And he healed me, so completely that people who know what had happened wonder how we can continue to be in fellowship with people who had treated me so.

Since the time I responded to God’s call about 31 years ago, I treat God’s voice as final, however illogical it appears. And there are enough examples I have shared in my writings.

It was initially a very difficult time. From days without food to real threats of eviction by landlords for delayed payment of rent.

But we have seen God in immense ways.

He has raised support for me from the strangest of places. From a landlord reducing rent to another providing food for my family even when I was in rent arrears to people being driven as if on gunpoint to bring me money and other support. God has provided support.

As I look back 13 years I have been walking this journey, I can confidently affirm that God has taken very good care of me and my family as I have continued to serve Him. From open doors that He forbade me to enter to others He opened beyond expectations.

He has supported. He has provided. He has enriched.

People ask me why I give my books away and some refuse to believe it is because of an order from Above because it does not appear to make sense. As if staying in Nairobi made any sense when God issued the order! They wonder how I can pour all that money into a book and not seek to recover the cost. As if I was the one who provided that money!

I have published over a dozen books and many other booklets. I have done probably a bigger number for new authors. And God provides.

I have gone for missions all over Kenya as well as a few other countries. Yet I do not beg or even ask for an offering because God provides. He is the one who speaks to those He wants to support me.

I have been involved in many empowerment drives; from refugees to orphans to persons with disabilities because God has not only provided but also enabled.

I will not even attempt to say everything God has done because it is simply impossible.

All I can say is that there is absolutely nothing in me that would predispose God to accomplish all this, and more, in and through me.

My heart is overflowing with gratitude when I look back on what He has been able to do. I do not have any words to express that gratitude.

That is why with my family we are inviting you to a Thanksgiving Service on 11^th December at Soul Saving Gospel Church, Kerwa from 2 to 5 pm.

Join us as we lift His name high for what He has done for us

Self-Seeking Spirituality

How many times do you do a good thing for the single purpose of pleasing God? When was the last time you considered your interests as unimportant when pursuing a spiritual agenda?

We were sharing with a bishop yesterday about people who fast too much and why they do it. For a majority of them, personal is the reason they do it.

They fast to get a spouse. They fast to get a job. They fast for their bothersome spouse to get saved. They fast for many other things which are not really a priority on God’s scheme of things.

And we see the same with giving. Pastors are celebrating all the bounty because they have convinced their congregations that giving is the magic key to that better job, that great contract, a piece of land. People will therefore give so that they will get this or that with no concern at all for the bigger picture, at the very least the corporate or church picture.

It also goes for ministry. I know many who join ministry because they are frustrated at their work places. Some do it to attract a mate or get a job or other benefits. There are some who join ministry because in their eyes it is the least demanding profession, the one asking for the least qualifications. It also does not ask for any experience. Just say you are called and very few will care to find out the nature of that calling or even its source.

But why do we relegate God to the periphery when we are looking for our thing? Why should we be the focus of the worship we are not ashamed to direct at Him?

David said that he will not offer God something that does not cost him anything. We seem to operate on the contrary spirit. We will not offer to God anything that does not offer us anything in return.

The Bible states that all things were created by Him (Christ) and for Him. This means that He is the ONLY focus of creation. Is it in order to even imagine that God exists to meet our needs? Is that not blasphemy?

When did you fast to know God’s will for your life? When did you give simply to meet a need? When did you join ministry simply because you felt that God wanted you there without considering your affairs?

In the beatitudes (Matthew 5 – 7) we see some things that indicate whether we are pursuing God or selfish interests.

The prayer closet leaves me with God so that I can get His agenda and pursue it. KJV says He sees what we do in secret but answers us openly. Why? Because it we are exposing our hearts and spirits to God’s scrutiny.

We are supposed not to let our left hand to know what our right hand is giving because we are responding to a prompting outside of ourselves. We are able to fast without letting anyone even suspect because we are fasting for a purpose outside ourselves. And we are supposed to minister with the single purpose of pleasing God.

We do not sing for God so that we can sell our albums. We do not go for missions to increase the weight of our CV. We do not give to the needy to demonstrate how philanthropic we are.

God is the focus of everything we do or we are not really serving or worshipping Him.

(I am sorry I am not able to write conclusively because my computer is down. Pray that God either gives me another or makes it revive. As of now I use someone’s for the sort time it is available)

A Generation of Half Measures

I want us to look at the pleasure many ministers derive from quoting half promises and issue threats to half commandments to understand why it is completely unbiblical even as it is sometimes comical.

Everybody has heard the Malachi 3: 10 threats to devastation if one does not bring in the tithe to the ‘storehouse’. One is then asked to test God in that.

Have you ever asked what happens to the second part of that verse? Where is the food that is expected to fill the storehouse from those tithes?

Simply speaking, we are fracturing scripture for our own narrow interests. We have no place for God or His word in our preaching, only our bulging tummies from eating all that tithe.

Or Psalm 54: 17. Why do we focus only on what God will do to our enemies without caring to know whether we have any responsibility to God for Him to do that?

Then I want us to look at the Sabbath because I have been bombarded with argument after another on the same.

The argument is that the Romans changed the Sabbath day to suit their purpose and that we will go to hell if we do not reject the same. And I will go with their argument for now.

Do we realize that we are using their months and years? Does rejecting one day sanctify the whole year? Does keeping the day justify me for breaking the month and year?

Do we realize that there is a Biblical year and Biblical months? Why are we so focused on the one day when we are breaking the rest?

I will not leave the grace license advocates. Does the fact that Christ paid for all my sins allow me to live in sin? Does the fact that He died for my sins mean that I can sin all I can since my sins are covered?

Is there responsibility for someone whose sins are covered?

Do we read the Bible enough to know what is expected of us as believers? Do we wait for experts to break down the Bible for us as if God ever promised to instruct us through experts?

Do we know the compete scriptures of those doctrines we hold and pronounce? Are we conversant enough with the Bible to know in which context they are?

WILL WE READ THE BIBLE FOR OURSELVES?