The Prison of God’s Love 4

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

When we started looking at God’s love, it became clear that we imprison someone who can’t be trusted outside the constraints of prison.

As such, we said that God’s power is so great that we need to be constrained when it manifests in us.

Why must we be constrained? It is so that God can channel Himself through us for His agenda to be manifested to a needy world.

God’s love is His manifestation of His agenda for the created order. He created everything because He loved it. Creation was His statement about His purpose.

But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:11)

Imagine the power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us!

What are the implications of that reality? Imagine a power infinitely more powerful than the hydrogen bomb, the nuclear bomb and all the other bombs combined lives in those who have Christ in their hearts.

Aren’t you amazed that God would entrust that kind of power in a feeble being like you?

We need to look at some destructive incidences of that power to appreciate the need for some constraint on ones possessing that power.

And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost. (Acts 12:23)

Imagine someone being eaten by worms as he is speaking!

And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. (Acts 13:10, 11)

Someone is stricken by blindness just like that.

Remember Jesus cursing the fig tree and it dried from the roots? Or the two captains and their fifty who were burnt by fire from heaven for attempting to arrest Elijah? Remember the forty two youngsters who were mauled by bears after making fun of Elisha? Remember the land lacking rain for over three years  after Elijah’s proclamation? What about Gehazi being stricken by leprosy for his greed?

Yet all this is part of the heritage God has placed in His children by virtue of their accepting Christ as Savior and allowed Him to be their Lord.

Where do I get this? You may be asking.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. (John 14:12)

In us is the power to perform miracles, even destructive ones like we have seen. It is therefore in the interests of our Savior to channel all that power to positive and creative things so that we can be witnesses of His saving grace to the world. Remember the Holy Spirit was promised to make us witnesses and not performers?

The other reason we need to be constrained is the trust God’s presence engenders. That in itself is dangerous because of its implications. And it is because it almost always perfect spiritual maturity from the outset. Yet we know that spiritual growth, like any growth is never instantaneous.

We may thus place spiritual infants in harm’s way due to that trust. There are churches that send young people on their own for a mission without mature supervision. Then they are surprised when they later find some girls pregnant, even their own children.

But this is the better occurrence because the evidence is out. I have heard church leaders defending their young people against accusations of immorality yet their excursions were unaccompanied by accountable elders.

I once attended a wedding where the pastor displayed the couple wedding as an example of holy matrimony. In other words, they had never touched each other. Incidentally, the youth group had split because there were others who were convinced that the two had gotten together that they even boycotted the wedding.

Sadly, the child came in record time, and I never heard anyone call it a miracle of accelerated pregnancy. But an even sadder part is that the leader of the team that boycotted also fell into the same trap.

On the same vein I remember a leader in church whose boss reported to the church that he had swindled or stolen some money and it was taken to a general meeting. The boss was demonized for trying to spoil the good name of the leader; until the leader himself was convicted and confessed to the church.

That is how some pastors are able to wade in sin and wickedness and their followers are swearing with their lives that they are innocent.

You see, the gift is not an indication of maturity, not by the longest of shots. Sadly, the same gift can blind us to the need to grow, especially as people treat us as mature and all-knowing of spiritual things. Or haven’t you seen a youngster being invited to teach leaders just because they are musically endowed? Or haven’t you seen people who got saved recently being made worship leaders (whatever that means) even before the smell of worldliness gets off them because they have amazing voices?

That is similar with giving a gun to a child. Yet what God has placed in us is way more powerful.

The gift needs a safe avenue to manifest without harming anybody. This is because a gift wrongly used harms everything and everyone around. It imperils the proclamation of the Gospel, and especially the understanding of the same Gospel by the same searching world.

How do you explain to unbelievers that the power packed miracle worker is the same who is their customer in brothels? How do you explain the fact that the same person who preaches the Bible so powerfully was the same one they saw gross throwing insults and curses at the trader who ‘overcharged’ him?

I will compare this to the difference between a bullet and a grenade. Both have the same explosive power in them just like every believer in Christ has God’s powerful presence in them. The difference is in the release of that power.

A bullet is constrained in the way it releases the power, making the bullet fly in only one direction. The grenade releases its power in all directions, making its destructive power effective over a small radius. The bullet can pick a target accurately from very far but the grenade destroys indiscriminately.

A bullet can kill an animal so that you get the meat but the grenade will make it impossible to pick anything due to the shrapnel.  That is why a bullet has very many uses while the grenade is only used for destruction and maiming.

It is the same way with God’s love. A believer not controlled by God’s love operates like a grenade. He destroys the devil’s kingdom but in his zeal injures the household of faith. He has no healing capacity in his dealings.

In his fight for doctrinal purity he will leave no survivors, injuring even those who are on his side.

That is where we need the constraints of God’s love.

We will be looking at those constraints in our next post, God permitting.

We have not even talked about the immense power of prayer as God has just reminded me in a dream. Most only read about the power of prayer to demolish strongholds and change the affairs of men.

Let me give you an assignment to experience the power of prayer.

Which one thing has been a pain in your neck and you feel as if there is nothing you can do about it? Start praying about it.

I feel led to challenge someone about a mosque that has deprived them of peace and quiet as they make their proclamations at the most inopportune times when you need most focus or concentration.

Ask God to do something about it.

If you have never considered a prayer closet, start. And a closet is that place where in quietness you will kneel and pour your heart to God so that no one is able to see or hear it as Jesus taught in Matthew 6. It might be by your bed when everybody is asleep if you are in a dorm.

But let the transaction be between you and God. Tell Him what you want Him to do in your situation. You might want to lift your hands toward the troubling object.

You might be having a burden about your city or neighborhood. Pray.

Then we will start hearing testimonies