Spiritual Security

Why do we lock churches? Why do we have safes and accounting departments in spiritual institutions?

I want to look at this in two different ways.

When I was growing up, I never thought someone could steal from a church. And I am sure this is true to most people of my generation

Until very recently, people left their shoes at the door of mosques for the same reason.

And have you ever noticed that in places witchcraft is rife you can drop your loaded wallet on the street in the morning and find it intact in the evening?

You may be wondering what I am aiming at with all this.

Let me drop this meagre bombshell.

Our spiritual awareness determines every single action we take. That is why I am talking about different spiritual realities yielding similar results.

Lowering the spiritual awareness of an individual disconnects them from the realities inherent in that spiritual entity, though it in no way nullifies it.

What I mean is that my ignorance of spiritual realities will not diminish their power.

Uzzah didn’t know how close he was to death until he died

The fact that he had not been instructed about the ark was no defense for his ignorance.

In the same way Nadab and Abihu also died because they had not appreciated how portent God’s fire was when they were playing with that fire.

God is powerful, infinitely more powerful than we can even imagine.

In the same way, demons are powerful, though in a limited way. They are powerful within their bounds since they are territorial as per the authority they have been handed over by the people in that territory.

I suspect you have heard that a witch or wizard cannot do much outside their domain.

The reason is simple. The demons he can control (that he is under the control of) only operate where they have been allowed to.

That is why we do not have inter-tribal witchcraft. Even with all their enmity, none has the capacity to cast any spell over the other for that single fact. Demons must be given their authority by their human hosts, whether tribal or familial.

I therefore must be under that territory to be affected by its witchcraft.

Allow me to state another controversial fact

Why must someone perform the tribal or cultural wedding to be allowed to do the church one? And why is the church powerless to fight it yet the law says nothing about those rites as a requirement for marriage under any act except the cultural one?

It is for that simple fact. It is to place the marriage on the foundation of culture and all its requirements and ceremonies even without knowing why. Then the church wedding is just a ceremony without any spiritual significance or relevance.

You see, once I have bowed to the demons controlling culture (I have never heard anyone disputing that) it would be impossible to counter them at a later time, especially as I did it willingly.

I will therefore struggle having a Christian marriage because it is built on a cultural foundation as I gave those demons legal authority over my life and marriage when I allowed those ceremonies. They are therefore operating legally in my marriage; however Christian I may want my marriage to be.

Let me also add another thing.

Do you also realise that what many call a Christian marriage is just another cultural marriage, only that the culture came by ship?

But I want to leave it there for the moment so that you can digest it slowly.

This means that there is a war of cultures and not just Christianity and culture. Christianity just adds another warfront to it.

I am sure someone is wondering what this has to do with locking churches.

Submitting to a spiritual entity gives it unrivalled control of everything I do. However, not recognizing it only limits its control over me, not its power.

But that does not include the places where it has been given unlimited authority like temples and shrines.

In those places, only a higher authority, that can only be God, or probably a principality with a domain encompassing it, can overrule its authority.

I will rule out principalities because they all operate under the rulership of the evil one and so would never really fight for domination.

Meaning only God can overthrow that dominion.

Yet He does not do that on a whim. It has to fit into His purpose. It also has to be through a surrendered servant and not an arrogant one. It has to be someone He has sent and not someone who jumped at the opportunity to deal with the other side or fill his CV with such an experience.

Back to churches and locks.

The church building is God’s domain by the fact that it is called a church.

This means that He has the authority of the people in that structure to function in His element.

He therefore allows His ministers to function as He has revealed in His word.

A deviation from that is the reason the church as we know it is powerless, yet we can be sure that God isn’t powerless.

He has simply been denied the authority to function as He would in His structure.

Remember the Ark of the Covenant that killed seventy thousand Israelites did not kill the Philistines when they captured it? Why was it?

Grace. God does not normally judge unless and until we have made an informed choice.

Yet you may also realise that the presence of the same on Philistine territory was such a huge punishment that they had to look for a way to return it. And the same in Dagon’s temple broke the idol to pieces.

This is not confusing as I know some of you are thinking.

God’s power is not limited to those who are aware of His presence and power. Though for the purposes of grace He will many times limit that power so that people will knowingly acknowledge Him.

Some time ago on a mission to the Coast we went to see probably the most powerful shrine that is actually a huge piece of shrub and bush land. I say that because during elections most politicians from all over the country must visit it.

We could not of course get beyond the entrance but we were allowed to take pictures of that place.

Interestingly all the pictures we took of that place disappeared from our phones when we left the place.

I have also heard of a place (and a media investigation confirmed it) where a witch lives just outside Nairobi. You get to the gate and any media gadget stops functioning. Yet it will start functioning once you get out of there.

Those are the spiritual forces I am talking about.

The world and its systems demonstrate their power to be able to get a following. But God does not need to demonstrate who He is or what He is capable of. Though the world is no match to His magnificence and power, He never shows off.

We are talking about locking churches if you have forgotten.

At a time of revival, God is not a mystery as everybody is able to see His power transforming cases that were beyond repair. Bars close not because anyone orders them to but because God’s transforming presence completely kills the thirst for the broth. Police stations become idle not because policemen go on strike but because the criminals that necessitated the police to work are transformed out of crime. Brothels do not close because the owners get tired of the drama but because the harlots and their customers encounter God’s transforming power and move to God-honoring pursuits.

God’s presence becomes palpable. You can sense that presence when you are approaching an evangelistic meeting as you can do when approaching a place of worship.

In such a season, sin is judged very promptly. You don’t play around spiritual items. You don’t joke around places of worship.

Or you do not remember Ananias and his wife, or even Herod who was not even a believer?

This means that the farther away we get from revival, the more remote the power of God seems. To the point that it becomes theoretical as had been Gideon’s experience prior to his own encounter.

The sad fact is that not many who have been even on the fringes of revival long enough for those days when God was revered and His power feared. The simple reason being that we are not radical enough and know that nothing short of a radical faith and obedience is safe in God’s manifest presence.

We have enough people chanting God’s presence, God’s manifestation, God’s anointing, when at the same time living lives so far removed from the kind of life that presence demands; a thing that would attract immediate judgment when a revival is present.

Being in ministry for as long as I have been (and still am), I have heard preachers openly lying to make their testimonies or sermons juicier and they attach the responses to those ‘ministrations’ to God’s favor and presence.

I have been told about converts who have been paid to add juicy and completely false and made-up experiences to demonstrate the power of God to convert.

Do you think the people they left from those faiths who have their actual story will be as awed as the ignorant believers? Will they also flock to or even respect our faith under those circumstances? Will the spiritual dominions in charge of those false faithss be threatened by such conversions? Is that not the reason many say that anybody leaving their faith was paid to do so?

We do not need to create any psych for God’s presence. He just needs to be allowed to function as He would through our obedience.

Our veering off what He has revealed through His word is the reason we are unable to experience His power.

Two reasons we lock churches.

For those like me who know (not as much as I would) God and His power, we lock to block people from getting too close to the consuming fire in judgment. Playing with God’s power is far worse than playing with exposed electrical gadgets and wiring since it has the capacity to go through generations. It is like placing a safety net for a tight rope walker.

For those far removed from the experience of God’s power, it is because they need the security those locks provide because they do not know God enough to trust Him. They must therefore provide human security since spiritual one is just in theory.

Many believers of our generation treat God as text book knowledge. They therefore preach Him as their minds have interacted with whoever taught them.

When they talk about God speaking to them, they are actually talking about a brain wave of sorts since to them God stopped speaking so long ago that there is nobody who has heard Him can be traced.

As an example, God gave me an order about the books He gives me to write. I told this senior ministry friend about the order and he plainly told me that God cannot tell me that. Another time God gave me a timeline about the first book He asked me to write and I told this other senior minister friend who looked at me as if I was out of my mind. Yet it happened exactly as God had told me.

Have I communicated something?