Ahithophel

And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father. (2Samuel 17:23)

This is a political post with spiritual parallels and vise versa, according to the lenses you will use to read it.

But I am addressing this to our president, Dr William Samoei Ruto, especially on the crisis facing this nation he leads.

This is best understood in the backdrop of my earlier posts on elders. And I write to you as someone who reads or has read the Bible since it is the one I use as a minister of the Gospel.

Ahithophel was a wise man, so wise that his counsel was treated almost at par with God’s word.

And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom. (2Samuel 16:23)

That is how good he was.

He fell out with David and chose to support his son Absalom to overthrow him.

And he succeeded.

But then something happened. As the kingmaker, either due to his ambition or the trust of the king, he became the general of the army.

And for probably the first time he blundered.

Why?

He was not able to see as well as a general as he had been seeing as an elder close to the king. No wonder his counsel was trashed.

However, as someone who had had unwavering trust, he was unable to deal with the rejection of his strategy and chose suicide instead.

This is the problem in your government, sir.

You have put overseers in the trenches. You have put consultants in charge of your ministries. You have made people who should be guiding you from outside in charge of the operations in your government.

Allow me to give a simple analogy.

How wise is it to take coffee tasters to the kitchen to brew coffee?

I had a friend who used to earn good money as a coffee taster. But he never had coffee in his house.

You simply cannot accurately assess the dish you have prepared.

Kick the consultants out of your government and pay them for consultation.

As a learned man, I know you value your fellow learned men.

But education and performance are two different things. Education and relevance are two different things.

Some of the best chefs do not have degrees. Some of the best entrepreneurs do not have any education. Some of the best musicians never attended music school. Many editors are not writers.

The fact that someone is an international consultant on the economy does not mean he will be best as the CEO of the economy in your government.

Like Ahithophel, he could be seeing farther than the moon out there but, on the trenches, may become useless, even dangerous.

That is because he could be completely out of touch with the reality on the ground. Or is that not the reason universities are called ivory towers?

Get executives who know Kenya beyond their degrees. Get street smart cabinet secretaries because they will not only know how to run the government, they will also know how the governed are faring.

Kick pastors out of state house for the same reason.

And I will give David as the example.

David had prophets. But they came to him when they either had a word from the Lord or David needed their spiritual counsel. It was the same with his wise men.

He did not make rooms for them in his palace.

Respect pastors but leave them in their churches. Otherwise, they will be entranced with the trappings of power and lose their spiritual connection that made you look for them in the first place.

Invite them when you need their counsel and not to have a cup of tea.

Can you imagine Nathan confronting David about Bathsheba over a cup of tea?

The prophetic voice must be distinct from relationships or leadership. Elisha was listened to by three kingdoms yet never once do we see him getting cosy with any of the kings.

The third thing you should do is kick those brash young experts who have absconded their duties in their constituencies.

Someone who does not know how the people who elected him feel about the laws he is making is unworthy of being your friend.

The fact that they and their businesses were targeted says this very clearly.

An MP is answerable to the people who elected him. Even a nominated MP is subject to the group he represents.

For the same person to serve you at the expense of the people he represents paints him as more corrupt than the Ahithophel I have talked about.

The expert may be unable to serve right because he can’t see properly when he is bogged by responsibilities.

But this character is more dangerous because he is actively distancing you from the people who elected you by not listening to them.

What made Kang’ata popular?

He told his boss what he did not want to hear, yet what his people wanted him to say.

There are better friends who will disagree with you for their constituents because that is why they were elected after all.

I will leave the rest to talk about corruption.

This is what I believe is making your government and in effect you unpopular.

Please look for elders on the ground.

Have friends who take their cars to Grogan for repair because they will gauge the temperature of the city very accurately as they take tea in those kiosks. Get friends who can walk the length and breadth of River Road and Nyamakima any time of the day without fear. They will get a feel of the economy there than from the best professional market research.

I know that you cannot be able to do that due to your position. Your security cannot risk you being in some places. Plus of course the presence of that security will make it impossible for you to see any picture clearly since the ground is cleaned before your arrival. Even roads are paved before you visit.

It is therefore important that you get dependable friends on the ground who will not be afraid to tell you how the ground is.

It is much better if these people are not looking for jobs or favors from you because only then can they be neutral. Otherwise, you will have people who hang on your coattails pretending to be the Ahithophels and Hushais to give their counsel to their benefit.

They must also be mature enough and secure enough to be able to offer any useful counsel.

Avoid younger people to avoid repeating Rehoboam’s and Joash’s mistakes. I suspect that is the reason you are in the mess you are in. You trusted and listened to young experts and neglected the old and probably uneducated friends who understand life since they raised these experts of yours.

In closing listen to these children.

They respect attention more than action. But action will make that attention sweeter.

You have raised this generation and so are not a stranger to how they are.

Listen to them.

Do what is in your power. Change what is possible. Sack the ones making the people who elected you hate you. Let them remember the next three years of your leadership with a good feeling.

Those small acts of acquiescence will go a long way in making them treat you as the father you are to them. And I am writing as a parent who also has the generation in my house. We are agemates, you know.

My prayer is that this gets into your hands.

God bless you and guide you in restoring sanity and hope in Kenya

 

Explosion (Jonah and Stunted Revival)

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1Peter 4:17)

This comes in the wake of the ongoing demonstrations by our youth against the government’s policies. And I do it with a heavy heart.

How come the judgment started outside God’s household? And please do not tell me that the president and his deputy are staunch Christians, the simplest reason being that they are holding a purely secular office, their confessions notwithstanding.

I will also say something that will offend many about them because in the light of the scriptures they are really not living according to scripture.

How can their wives be their spiritual guides? That the husband is the head of the wife is first and foremost a spiritual mandate before taking any other dimension.

This directly means that we lack spiritual authority from the highest office.

The fact that the spiritual leadership of the nation (the bishops and other denominational leaders) have no issue with that is a clear indication of the blind leading the blind. And I have wanted to write about this for a long time but felt it would have produced more heat than light and so kept quiet.

But I cannot do so any longer since the nation is burning. And the fire has started from the wrong side.

You see, judgement, to move effectively and accomplish the most impact, must start with the people of God. Then the transformed (through the impact of the judgment) are in a better position to guide the world in a God led judgment of the world and its systems.

The issues the youth are raising with the government are even more prevalent in church. And they have been there for a very long time. They are things I have written about many times because they pain God’s heart.

What are they? You may wonder.

The first is an unresponsive leadership.

The leadership simply does not seem to know or care what ordinary Kenyans are going through.

When you want to tax a business that is barely surviving, a business that does not adequately support its owner, let alone employees for those who have them, you are simply intending to kill more than business.

When you want to increase the tax of an employee who moved from their rented house to live with the parents because the demands on the salary were inadequate to pay any house rent, you are courting disaster because you are creating desperation.

The second reason is the double talk of the leaders. They speak what they do not do.

When you tell the populace to tighten their belt when you are extending your hems, what do you think the led will feel? When you reduce money to support the needy people’s education yet allocate billions for the renovation of your mansions, what message are you sending?

How do you expect someone barely affording fare to work to feel when you use the money occasioning that increase to buying yourself a new fuel guzzler whereas the one he uses is almost new?

Is that not what the church leadership is like?

I do not know whether I have told you of this time in a service when somebody collapsed as the church was singing (worship as is called nowadays)

His problem was that he had not eaten for days.

This in a megachurch whose main men drive guzzlers for special occasions and other cars for mundane duties.

The main person will have a paid vacation across the oceans yet some members (who are also serving in the same structure) are unable to pay their children’s school fees.

I was told of this bishop who drives a guzzler and his deputy was unable to pay maternity for his wife.

That is why I am saying that judgment has started from the wrong end.

It ought to have started in the church because we have been at it long before ‘our’ man took the reins of the nation. I suspect he leant the game from his close association to all these men and women of God.

The other bone of contention for the youth is the skewed appointments.

People are being appointed in positions for the simple reason that they are friends to the boss.

Of course, nobody expects someone to appoint ‘enemies’ to work with him.

But it is wrong when a non-performer is given an office to run. It is inappropriate when a rude and abrasive person is handed a public office, however loyal he is to the boss. It stinks when someone who is not trusted by the public is given a public appointment.

As I said in the post, ‘The King’s Ring’, public office is a trust and not a possession. One is therefore accountable to the one who gave him that office.

Incidentally, the same things thrive in church as anyone who has served in church long enough will confess.

Probably the last reason I will state is arrogance.

Why has it taken this long before the president sees the writing on the wall? Why has it taken death and destruction before the president’s pastors advised him to come down?

The problem is that he has no ears on the ground, just like the bishops and pastors advising him.

A minister friend posted this verse today on the spiritual leaders of our nation. I will post it and add the following one.

His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. (Isaiah 56: 10, 11)

For me, the first culprit of the mess that is happening in Kenya is the man of God who has the president’s ear. It is the man of God who has the ear of the other leaders (from CSs to the MPs)

They are the ones who are supposed to have the ear on the ground. They are the ones supposed to know the temperatures in the nation. And they are the ones who ought to accurately know the state of the hearts of those people they lead.

The fact that they started speaking after the kettle had boiled over justifies the verses I have quoted.

They do not know because they do not care. And this because they are as removed from their congregations as the political leadership is from those who elected them.

That is why I repeat that judgment ought to have started with the house of God because they are the cause of what is happening.

I pray that another generation takes over the rotten leadership of those state house seeking shepherds who do not speak for their flock.

But it will be a judgment, a judgment worse than what we are seeing in the political realm. And it is because God will be the One running the show.

I am not praying for protests and demonstrations to replace these self-seeking shepherds. I for one won’t attend any if it is called.

You see, when judgment begins in the house of God, you can be sure that it is God doing the judging because He is fed up with how His flock is being led and how the church His Son purchased with His blood is running.

That is why I do not expect an explosion as we have seen in the political arena.

We will have an implosion.

Probably I am not using the right word.

But what I mean is that the judgment that will happen in church will not be the product of external forces like demonstrations and forceful evictions, though there are places that may just happen.

God will do a thing in our time that will make those fake shepherds flee from those titles and pulpits.

That is the reason I wrote the post on Jonah and Stunted revival.

I believe the time is right. There are indicators all the same.

And that is why we must have enough back up for spiritual leadership for the time these goons will flee or be forced out of the scene.

Why am I using such unsavory terms? You may wonder.

Why does God call pastors dogs who cannot bark? Why did Jesu call the spiritual leaders of His day whitewashed tombs and brood of vipers?

We must have spiritual leaders to stand in the gap once God restructures the spiritual leaders of our generation. Otherwise we will be like Nineveh of old.

The movers of this new move, as I have written in my past post, will be the so-called Gen Z.

They will need elders to help them take over the leadership of God’s church.

I have written this hurriedly. But I felt compelled to do it

Jonah and Stunted Revival

Very few believers love Jonah.

But this is not the reason I am writing this.

I want us to look at the whole topic of revival, using Jonah as our subject.

That Jonah refused to go to Nineveh is clear to all. That he even protested the pardon of the city after their repentance due to his ministry is also clear.

The fact that he even protested to God for that pardon tells the kind of heart this man of God had towards his enemies.

That God had to use an object lesson to make him understand His nature is telling.

That is where I want us to start. Allow me to ask a few questions.

Do you think God was only interested in the Ninevites just repenting? Do you think that was God’s end game?

Let me ask a related question.

Was the birth of Isaac God’s end game for Abraham?

I am sure you will say no.

That is what I want us to examine when we are looking at Jonah.

Repentance was the gateway, the key to a grander plan and purpose for Nineveh. It was the starting point for what God had in store for that heathen city.

God’s purpose for Nineveh was a complete spiritual transformation that was to be activated by that repentance.

God had wanted to create another centre of worship, if I may use such crude words.

Did it happen?

We know it didn’t because later Nahum proclaimed similar judgment on them.

Why did it not happen?

I believe Jonah was the reason. And you will allow me to demonstrate why.

God never sends a random message to a person or nation.

He sends a complete program of action with the capacity of turning around everything.

He also releases implementers of that program to ensure that it is not aborted or stunted.

Jonah was one such person.

God did not send him with the singular purpose of proclaiming that judgment and awaiting its fulfilment. He was sent to supervise and entrench the revival that the repentance was bound to birth. He was God’s messenger of restoration.

But he failed like many other prophets before and after him.

Though from his complaint he knew that God was about restoration, he had no place for that restoration in his heart. No wonder he was so bitter to God about His forgiveness, a forgiveness he knew was bound to happen even before reluctantly taking on that assignment.

That is not my problem, though.

My problem is that even after God demonstrated why He had sent him to Nineveh, he did not complete his assignment.

What was his assignment? I know you are wondering.

His assignment was to stay in Nineveh and teach them God’s ways so that the revival lasts.

Allow me to also give you another Biblical example.

Remember Elijah and God answering by fire?

Yet what happened after all the false prophets were slain after such a national turning to God?

Nothing much. They were shortly back to their old ways.

You see, Jeroboam had expelled the Levites who were the custodians of God’s word. This means that the revival went on autopilot since there was nobody to guide it since even the catalyst of the same fled from the scene. And with no Levites, they did not have the word to guide their revival.

Passion and revival are not related.

However genuine and deep repentance is, it must be built on God’s word to last.

That was the main purpose of the calling of the Levites.

They were the custodians of God’s relationship with His people. This explains why they were let off all other responsibilities.

In the absence of the Levites, God will require a similar servant to take on the responsibility of spiritual formation and instruction after repentance.

Leaving the repentant to their own devices is akin to leaving a newborn to cater for all his needs which in spiritual terms is not much different from a still birth, only more painful just like the death of a child is more painful to a parent than a miscarriage.

And it is not because the repentance was not genuine just like you cannot call the conception of a stillbirth or miscarriage fake.

It is because, just as a child needs nurture to become somebody, a revival needs nurture to last. Otherwise, it will be a small blip on the graph of spiritual activities.

I do not know whether you realise that most revivals had young people at the forefront. By young I mean below thirty years and many times unmarried.

At that time the whole world is before them and they fear nothing.

This means that taking risks is normal.

What happens when this person gets connected to the call of God?

They will literally fly off without a care in the world. They will respond to God without caring what anybody and everybody is saying and thinking. They will pour their last coin, even empty their savings, to do what they know is right or congruent to their passion.

But life is not that romantic. It is real, with enough warts to deter the most determined.

In a short while, their investment runs out. Their savings dry out. Their passion is sat on so heavily that they are unable to breath. They discover their passion had enemies probably more passionate in their opposition than they were in their pursuits.

What then happens?

Not only will they have run out of steam, they could be devastated.

They might eventually resort to thinking that God is not worthy of that sacrifice and abort what they had poured their all into.

That is the focus of this post.

I was once a young man and was as passionate as the best of them. Yet I am still passionate about God and His call when many of my compatriots let off steam, some completely deserting the faith or simply became perennial pew warmers.

What was the difference? You may wonder.

To add fuel to the fire, allow me to give you an incidence in my life.

I joined the media school around the time my faith was brimming to overflowing, not long after I had responded to God’s call in my life. I was in no doubt that God is the One who had taken me there.

For one, I did not apply. Some other people did it for me as I was busy serving God very far from the city when the opening came.

Secondly, they even wrote my names incorrectly. And I am not talking about the arrangement of my names. The names they used did not agree with my ID or certificates.

Thirdly, the competition for the college was insane. Plus a few other things that ought to have locked me out completely.

But I found myself there.

When we went for the first attachment and I told the guys who were working at the station I was sent that I was saved, one of them called me aside. This is what he had to say.

Do you know the history of media? Nobody remains saved. (Incidentally it was the only broadcasting media house in Kenya then).

He went on to give me example after another of people who joined on fire and the kind of life they led. He then gave me three months to be just like them.

I told him that if it was me standing, that time would be too long. But since Christ is the one in charge of my spirituality he could wait for as long as he wished.

Incidentally, after the attachment, over a half of the ones who used to attend fellowship stopped. By the end of the course, only four of us were still professing our faith. The rest fell by the wayside.

I am not writing this so you think that I was any special than any of those who fell by the wayside. I am writing to let you appreciate the essentials that made me stand amidst that history.

The first thing is that after responding to God’s call in my life God created in me such a hunger for His word that I was able to read the New Testament in that one month. I was able to complete reading the Bible in a few months. And I have been consistent in that over the years, reading at times up to three times in a year.

The second is that God sent a couple to get me into the discipleship journey.

That is what kept me in focus.

Over the years people have said that the faith of youth is like a fire from stubble. And as someone who responded to God’s call as a teenager, I know that the statement is not way off the mark.

However, allow me to quickly add that God knew that when He released His word. He knows that when He calls young people into His service. He knew when creating people and made those phases a part of who we are.

How does stubble burn?

Very quickly and then runs its cause unless a wind carries some flecks of that fire elsewhere to ignite other fires.

It would be impossible to cook food requiring a consistent amount of heat with stubble because of its sporadic nature.

But stubble is not useless. It is immensely useful in the making of a fire.

Stubble ignites very fast, making it ideal for starting fires and flaming heavier wood.

Before paraffin became easily available, it was nigh impossible to start a fire without using stubble.

That young people’s fire is therefore important for the kingdom.

But it would be folly to count only on stubble to cook for your visitors.

In case you have forgotten, I am dealing with the topic of stunted revival with Jonah as our fall guy.

Young people easily become ablaze for the cause of Christ. They can be passionate about soul winning. They can burn for the lost. They can blaze very brightly against sin and sinful tendencies in church.

But not for long.

Let me get us back to some of us who blazed beyond that stubble season.

We were stubble, alright. But we had something else, a fuel that went deeper than the stubble. A fuel that made that stubble run for longer than normal. A fuel that slowly transformed that stubble into the trunks we are now as elders.

And even in these times, the youth need that kind of backdrop so that they do not become statistics for other generations to use.

You see, that fuel made it possible for us to be kicked out of churches and fellowships and still continue serving God, the same thing that quenched the fire of the others.

We were able to go for retreats and camps and missions on our own without the fear many have about unsupervised young people of the opposite sex together. Yet today we see churches needing to employ security when a church has overnight prayers otherwise the whole compound will be littered with condoms after those prayers.

I dare say that this was the same thing that made Daniel and his three friends stand out when the other princes gave in.

In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. (Daniel 9:2)

Danies did not stumble on a random revelation. He had been consistent in his study and obedience to the scriptures to have been able to realise that the time for the restoration was due.

This is the thing that made Joseph remain relevant in a heathen place alone for thirteen years before his elevation.

It is the same thing that made Ezra shine in his leading of that restoration.

For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. (Ezra 7:10)

However, since we do not determine the who’s and how’s and when’s of God’s setting aflame His vessels, we really do not have the luxury of time in preparing these young men to enable them function beyond their stubble season.

We will disciple those we can. We are supposed to disciple them by Christ’s command.

But will we be able to disciple the ones God rescues and calls from the drug and whore houses? Will we be able to disciple those God called in prison? Will we be able to disciple those he calls from false religions?

Paul started ministry immediately after his conversion. Apollos was ministering before he properly understood the Gospel.  Lydia started ministering as proof of her conversion.

When will they be discipled? How will they get discipled?

Paul needed Barnabas. Apollos needed Aquila. And Lydia needed Paul.

Probably that is the reason God had me write about elders before giving me this message.

They will need someone who understand their fire. They need someone who can accommodate their fire. And they need someone who can channel that fire to God glorifying ends.

Something is happening with our young people, or what is being called Gen Z.

Before they occupied the streets in protest against the government in Kenya, I had been seeing one then another preaching the Gospel, one in a bus, another in a public place…

The devil is just seeking to divert that fire to his own rotten agenda because he knows and has seen that God is releasing an army for the nations in these youngsters.

As he did with Jonah, he wants to transfer that energy to unrelated pursuits. He wants to shift that passion to earthly agendas.

In short, he wants that stubble to blaze to extinction without accomplishing anything of eternal value.

Where are the elders to capture that blaze? Where are the elders to direct that blaze to the accomplishing of God’s agenda?

I want to stand to be counted. I want to be an available elder to these Gen Z zealots with the call of God in their hearts. I want to be available to answer their many questions. I want to be available to speak for them when their churches want to kick them out and look for an alternative if that fails. I want them to feel free to serve God as He has called them and not as He called me.

Young people with God’s call on you, do not lose hope. God wants to use you. God will use you.

And I will stand with you because I know how difficult it is for established religion to accommodate God’s fresh call.

I am available to grow with you in your call.

Who else is with me?

I do not want to be a Jonah to Gen Z.

I want their fire to blaze through many other generations.

Can we have a team of elders sold out to this?

Can we get together?

Elders 4

I have been writing about elders the way the Bible looks at them.

I want to add another dynamic to the topic. And this follows in the heels of my post about discipleship.

Allow me to call them old ministers instead of elders. And I call them thus because they are still in active ministry, and active because they are still on the trenches.

They can be equated with player coaches in sports.

However, I want us to examine that model since it is different from what I have been sharing in my previous posts.

And this is because God is at liberty to call His people as He would. This of course means that my calling and perception and obedience is not exclusive to how God calls His people.

It is important to also realise that even the elder I have described must have gone through the process I am looking at in this post as part of his preparation for eldership. The only difference being that he put a stop in the active ministry part.

We are dealing with mentorship or what in simple terms I will equate to a spiritual apprenticeship of sorts.

I will explain this by giving an example.

Most believers of yore know Bill Gaither, a hymnwriter and singer since the fifties.

Even those who do not know him know some of the hymns he has composed.  Many know and love ‘Because He lives, I can face tomorrow’. That is one among many.

Well, not so long ago, my family as been watching some videos he has been making probably since the turn of the century called the Homecoming videos. From my observation, they are called homecoming because many of the old people in them have one foot on the doorstep of eternity. In fact, a few times one would cross over between the recording and the video release.

In them he brings together Christian musicians together for a time of worship in song.

Some are much older than him, some who influenced his ministry. Yet he is almost ninety.

But he also has young and upcoming musicians in those sessions. You will see singers of all ages; from teenagers to centenarians.

What do you think will happen to a teenager sharing a platform with a legend his parents and grandparents spoke about in complete awe? What do you think a teenager rubbing his shoulders with a centenarian who has been in the music ministry probably since his teenage will feel?

I believe that is how Asaph and his team operated.

And they cast lots, ward against ward, as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar. (1Chronicles 25:8)

Allowing younger people, even immature believers, to minister alongside mature and ‘experienced’ ministers will expose those youngsters to ministry in a wholesome way, a way no classroom can teach.

Another thing with Gaither and his team does is that not only do they sing together, they plan events in diverse places, from Australia to Africa to Israel and many states in the USA.

This means that they will travel together and more or less live together for the duration of the event, from planning to travelling to performing.

This will expose these younger ministers to the whole package of these established ministers.

That is the kind of discipleship Jesus was involved in.

It would be almost impossible for a young person so grown to fly outside the orbit of relevant and God-glorifying ministry.

It would be preposterous for such a young person to take his ministry to dens of wickedness for a coin.

It would be impossible for such a youngster to compose songs off right doctrine because he has walked hand-in-hand with singers, composers, instrumentalists, who have been there done that yet are humble enough to allow them to grow alongside them.

And it would of course take a lot of effort for them to have pride and bloated egos because they have been with people revered everywhere and for a very long time who did not have such issues.

And finally, it would go totally against the grain for them to seek self-glorification because they have seen glory in its right context. This means that they would have no qualms at all in doing the same to other, probably struggling or upcoming, ministers.

Suppose all ministers copied this model?

What would happen if evangelists did the same? What would happen if prophets did the same? What would be the result if writers and teachers like me copied that model? What about other musicians all over the world? What about pastors?

The church would truly be God’s family where people are born, are nurtured, taught and allowed to do their part in a non-threatening way until they can later stand on their own as they start the whole cycle afresh.

What has God been speaking to you as you have been reading these posts about elders?

Is there something specific He has challenged you to do? Is there an order He has released your way?

What will you do about it?

God bless you.

Spiritual Realities

I want to open our eyes to the spiritual realities that govern our lives all the time.

Though many think of these realities as superstition and primitivity, I want us to realise that they are as portent as those superstitious characters paint them, sometimes more.

I want us to look at a few practices in our past that may be construed as wicked and immoral when the purpose for them was the inherent spiritual realities.

Not many people have a clue about the causes of some things that happen to them. Not many understand why things happen to them.

Over time, however, a pattern may appear to lead the victim to associating the events to some dark moments in their forebears, a consequence of some of their actions.

Let me start with the Bible.

We really do not know why Canaan was cursed by his grandfather. It is probable that he was the culprit in what happened to Noah and that Ham was just a witness who was unable or unwilling to, like Eli, stop what was happening, whatever it was since Canaan was his last born.

Noah did not curse Ham, the witness and father to the perpetrator (my theory).

He cursed Canaan.

You will of course tell me that this is not in the Bible, and I will agree.

But whoever cursed an innocent person, a grandson nonetheless? Why would he curse him anyway?

As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come. (Proverbs 26:2)

As I have explained many times, curses and blessings are simply consequences of our actions.

Their power lies in the power God has to reward or punish. And He does this as the ultimate judge of everything He created.

What land was Israel promised? Was it not Canaan?

That was centuries later. Yet the Canaanites paid for the sin of their father.

That is what I mean by spiritual realities.

Many Canaanites might have been completely unaware of the curse or the cause of the same. Yet that did not stop the same curse dispossessing and eventually obliterating them.

We have the Gospel and so for much of this post I will not dwell on believers.

In the past, people were very literate about spiritual realities. Though it is called superstition, it is actually a response to the prevailing spiritual realities.

They therefore went to great pains to insure themselves against repercussions of the same.

They knew that a curse must land. They knew that a broken vow must be dealt with. They of course knew that the good done must be rewarded. They had learnt that by observation of the spiritual realities around them.

I do not know whether you realise that taboos, among many other cultural norms were in the backdrop of such realities.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. (Acts 17:23)

There are some cultural practices that were guided by the fear of some of those unknown repercussions.

What we now know as open sin was then just a precaution against unseen dangers.

Allow me to give one or two examples.

We are told that agemates shared wives.

But that is not the whole truth.

Remember Jeroboam and Baasha and Ahab? God had determined to clear the whole male population.

It did not stop there.

As communities grew, the reality of such a curse on an individual (who would later become a clan then a nation), such a judgment could be seen by simple observation.

Now, since as I have said earlier nobody really knows what their forebears had exposed them to, it was wise to take insurance against such an eventuality.

That is why for most communities it was advisable for a man to have at least one son who was not of his blood.

Then, in case such a curse existed, there would be someone to carry his name when that spiritual cleansing occurred.

It was not simply a woman sleeping with a random man out there. That man was properly vetted to ensure that he does not bring about another curse and also that he was not in the same clan. And it was also very private so that nobody outside that close circle got to know it since adultery was sin even in the culture and liable to bring about judgment.

Our generation has just poured scum on that practice and made it mainstream and even public because we want to modernize sin as if there are no consequences for it.

It was the same when a man was infertile.

Again, it was in a very private way that a man to impregnate his wife was sought so that the secret never got out and the man be shamed. Nobody outside that close circle ever got to know of the execution of that plan. The fear of the curse was the reason for the same.

Many people associate abortion with the modern times.

But do you know it existed in our cultures?

But it was not because of unplanned pregnancies as we think nowadays.

It happened because of a spiritual breach.

We do not associate our past with incest because there is not the slightest hint of the same.

But we know that our forefathers were not holy.

It means that young men were just like our young men and that however guarded they were ‘accidents’ even then happened.

But incest was an abomination, among the most dreaded causes of a curse.

That is why you will never hear of cases of children born from relatives. They dealt with that curse swiftly.

Have you ever wondered what guided adoptions in our past?

When someone realised he was walking in a type of curse and had no way of reversing it because he did not know its cause he would then resort to making a break with that past by effectively asking to transfer to a family that did not have such curses.

He would then be ‘born’ into that family, requiring a sacrifice of sorts and he would then be a full member of that family.

Incidentally, even whole clans would shift, but then to another spiritual structure altogether, a different nation or what in our days we call tribe. Then they would have made a clean break from any shackles holding them back since the new structure has no spiritual relationship with the old.

These are things I have seen and heard a lot about as I listened to old men.

Incidentally we see the same even in the Bible.

Why is this minister dwelling on the past? I know someone is wondering.

Spiritual realities do not stop existing because we become modern. They do not pause because we become believers. They do not become nonexistent because we are ignorant of their existence.

The Gospel does not kill spiritual realities. The Gospel is a spiritual reality. It operates as a spiritual reality at all times.

Understanding the Gospel is actually understanding spiritual reality. Understanding the scriptures is the key to understanding spiritual realities and knowing how to live.

Many preachers have abused the ignorance of their flocks about spiritual realities to mint a tidy sum from them. This is what guides this post.

What is a generational curse? What is the solution for a generational curse?

I have explained how culture dealt with the whole topic of generational curses.

Allow me to repeat that a curse is the consequence of an action, actions, behaviors, attitudes, etc. someone has done. It is a judgment from the spiritual realm for something someone did.

This means that only spiritual intervention has the capacity of dealing with them.

And since it is directed at a person or the structure a person created, only that person or a person in the structure has the authority to deal with it. No proxies have the authority to deal with a structure they are not a part of.

The truth is that those imposters calling themselves experts on deliverance and generational curses are simply charlatans feeding on the misery of the ignorant.

Only, and I repeat, only Christ has the authority to deal with those spiritual dynamics, and not through proxies.

The exciting truth is that He dealt them a death blow on the cross.

That victory is available to everybody who has believed in Christ and walks in obedience to Him. It is not the preserve of a few or chosen ones who must sell that power to the needy believers.

Reading the scriptures and living according to that revelation is the route to accessing that power.

One time I was called to someone who was experiencing a lot of spiritual oppression or whatever people would want to call it.

My response was walking them through the scriptures to show them not only what Christ had accomplished on the cross but to also show them how possible it was for them to access that victory. I led them to Christ and gave them materials to help them grow in their Christian lives.

It is interesting that they were not very pleased with my ministration because I did not have the drama many associate with such ministry.

But I do not do things because people are doing them. I do them because I am convicted by the Holy Spirit through the scriptures that it is the cause of action I should take.

Teach obedience and you will deal with the worst the devil can release.

Stray however little and you will be led into a maze of incessant drama that will never allow you the smallest rest because of all the busyness those activities will require.

The same applies even to what people call generational curses. A surrender and submission to the Lordship of Christ is the antidote, the only one.

That is why, apart from exposing God’s people to His word, the next thing I do is teach lordship, the Lordship of Christ.

You see, nothing else has any chance at dealing with the spiritual realities I have been talking about.

We will see that even in the Old Testament there were very many people who did what I have explained and got rid of the curse that was part of their being.

Ruth is one of them. She was able to get into the mainstream of God’s people because she trashed her gods and the security they represented.

Another one was Rahab the harlot.

As I have said many times, she was a despicable character in a condemned city. Yet she was able by her choices to connect to the God of Israel.

In David’s army were many such characters who had disconnected from their gods to become Israelites, among them Uriah the Hittite.

And the Bible treats them as the Israelites their conversion (since that is what happens once someone leaves their gods) had made them to be.

Is that different from the adoption that used to happen in our cultures?

The greatest highlight in this is the single non-negotiable present whichever situation you look at.

When someone changed tribes, for example, they left everything; name, language, family.

When an adult was adopted as I have earlier said, they also left everything; relatives, family.

They did not have any vestiges of their past apart from the fact that they came from somewhere.

I was shown a subclan in the clan I come from that was born into our clan. Nothing but the past distinguishes them from the rest of us.

From my understanding, it is the spiritual vestiges of the past that are the cause of generational curses.

What I mean is this; someone has not made a clean break of the past when making their commitment to Christ. In short, they are not born again because they did not die to their past.

Let me explain.

What was Abraham ordered?

Make a clean break with your past so that I can make a new thing out of you. It even took the death of his father for him to realise the enormity of that order.

It was not ‘negotiate a separation or departure’.

Yet that is what we are always doing, especially with our spiritual roots.

One or two times I have been made a spokesman in the dowry negotiations and it is astounding how low believers can stoop.

The most memorable I can remember is when all of us introduce ourselves and basically everybody in both teams is a believer.

Then the demands start streaming and you wonder the kind of Christ we were confessing.

That time I stopped the discussion (I represented the boy).

Then I asked a simple question.

I thought from our introductions that we are all believers. And our children are also believers.

Why then are we going back to things that have no bearing with our confession?

Then the whole dynamic changed.

It is those spiritual vestiges I am talking about.

The early church did not deal with them because it was clear to everybody coming to Christ that they had to spiritually disconnect from their spiritual roots.

That is why there is not a single instance of deliverance in the Bible.

My faith demands that I completely detach from my spiritual heritage and sink into God’s swamp of forgiveness and its resultant holiness.

Otherwise those spiritual tentacles that I refuse to excise from me will eventually finish me.

But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. (Numbers 33:55)

I hope I have made my point.

The King’s Ring

Today I want us to look at authority and what it means to have it.

I will use Haman to demonstrate the fact that authority wrongly used can be far worse that open rebellion.

Why does a king give his ring to a person in his court?

It is because he is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the person will be acting as the king himself would. It is because the king expects that person to serve his kingdom as per his dictates.

The ring can be equated to a letterhead and rubber stamp. It can also be equated to the password, PIN, or something similar in our day.

At no time does the king expect that subject to use that authority for his individual benefit.

A father who gives the PIN for his ATM card or makes his son a signatory to his account does so because he knows that the son will use any money in his account just as the father would.

No father would release that authority to a son just because he is over eighteen.

One son can be offered that authority at eighteen while another would be denied the same even in his sixties.

This is simply because that authority presumes that the person entrusted with it not only understands the person issuing it. He must completely agree with basically everything that person represents and vow to live within its confines.

We will look at two clear examples of the same in scripture.

The first is Joseph and the second is Haman.

Two things that accompanied the issuance of that ring.

They were given complete authority over the kingdom and people were ordered to bow down in their presence. They could even change the constitution since that ring made them more or less like the king.

In Joseph’s case, the king told him that the king was higher than him only as far as being king was concerned. Mening that he could be and do everything in the kingdom except being king. Remember nobody could lift his hand or foot without his permission?

But we see him consulting the king. We even see him asking for favors from the king who had given him absolute authority.

However, when we look at Haman, we see someone who allowed power to get into his head to the extent that he almost equated himself with the king.

He starts scheming without asking the king or his wise men.

And that was his waterloo as they say.

He simply forgot why he was given that ring, that authority. He thought that it was his personal ring to do with it as he willed. And that stupidity cost him everything, and more.

What am I talking about? I know someone is wondering.

Do you realise that there are many times we are entrusted with similar rings? Do you know there are many times we are like Haman in the exercise of that authority?

How many times do we forget that that ring is a stewardship and not a title? How many times do we forget that it is a trust and not a blank cheque?

It feels nice riding that huge car. It feels nice being saluted for. It is exhilarating when everybody stands when we arrive at a scene. How nice it is when we are guided to the best seat in an event!

But we need to remember that it is not the person us that is being respected.

Look at this incident to understand what I mean.

A man in a big government office is entrusted with bodyguard and driver, a car with a flag and  being saluted all the time.

The bodyguard receives a signal that his boss has been dropped (sacked is the proper word).

In a flash he stops by the roadside and removes the flag from the car. Only politeness prevents him from kicking his former boss out of the government vehicle since he has stopped being a government employee.

In short, the king has retrieved his ring.

This is what happened to Haman.

The same people who were bowing to and trembling before him were the same who were reporting to the king where he should be hanged.    

The reality is that the king’s ring can never be personal property. It belongs to the king for the exclusive use and guided by the purposes determined by the king.

As they say, the boss’s dog is a boss, and not because he has ceased being a dog. It is that he exists for the purposes of serving that boss, bowing to his every whim according to his ability.

He stops belonging to the boss and he could be just another stray.

That is what I am talking about.

The assignment is the purpose for that ring and not our person. We will enjoy the perks that go with that assignment. We will enjoy the respect and esteem that accompany that assignment. We will go through those doors that assignment will open for us.

But only as long as we are on that assignment. Only as we are walking according to the dictates of that assignment.

Pushing our weight around because of the assignment is folly because we do not determine how long that assignment will last since it is only the king who holds the sole prerogative of the same.

There is something I need to say about that ring. And it is that there are perks associated with it.

That is what confuses many who have been given that ring.

As part of his being given the ring, Haman was also given a huge house with an enormous compound and probably farmland.

The fact that he could build gallows on that land without the permission of the king who owned the house tells you the problem many of us have with titles.

The fact that he could then go ahead to ask for permission to hang someone on gallows he had made on someone’s land without permission is clear evidence that he had allowed power to get into his empty head like it gets into some of us.

Perks come so that we can complete our assignment. They are not a reward for our doing the assignment. Otherwise, someone living in a government house ought to own that house when they retire.

Come to the point. I know someone is shouting.

Have you ever been elected to a leadership position? Have one or two friends asked you to go to do something on their behalf (would be four sending you be on their bequarter?)?

That is one of the rings I am talking about.

You will be going in their name. You will negotiate in their name. You will be favored on their behalf.

You were made a leader because they trusted you to do something for them. You actually became their ambassador.

It is the abuse of privilege to even imagine that you are representing yourself. It is folly to speak as you. And it is thieving to imagine that whatever you accessed was in your name.

You are as important as your assignment.

Let me give an example.

What is a pulpit? How do people view one? How do people respond to it?

A pulpit represents God and His word being released to His people. It is a ring given by God to His spokesman.

It is not an arena for a person to shine. It is not a forum for someone to sell his merchandise like books and songs. It is not a platform for a speaker to get followers or supporters.

Using the pulpit for a purpose other than proclaiming God’s word is akin to using the king’s ring for personal benefit. Using the pulpit to defend yourself or settle scores is abusing that ring. Fighting to occupy that pulpit is abusing the owner of that pulpit since it is telling Him that that ring is your personal property.

God will not allow anyone to own His ring (pulpit). He only allows him to use it to further the King and His Kingdom’s agenda and nothing else.

Yet that is not how many view pulpits.

Many view it as their property and treat it as that.

They jealously guard it against outsiders for fear that it could be snatched from them. They fight to occupy that pulpit to the point of slandering the occupant so that they can snatch it from them. They use any trick on all the books, fair or foul, to ensure that they occupy that pulpit.

I believe the only thing we should jealously guard against on a pulpit is false doctrine and sin, not other ministers.

There are enough instances of preachers being hounded out of a pulpit as they were preaching because they said something that did not sit well with the perceived owner of that pulpit.  And that had nothing to do with false doctrine or sin.

I know pastors who have been hounded out of their positions in church for the simple reason that they preached against sin.

The pulpit is a king’s ring. It is the King of king’s ring.

As such, we are simple stewards of that ring and should at all times seek to use it as the King Himself would have us use.

We abuse that ring if we hold on to it until our son or wife is ready to succeed us as I see many people nowadays do.

I am also talking about ministry of whatever shade. It is only that the pulpit wrongly used sticks like a sore thumb and so cannot be hidden.

We should seek to get clearer orders when God entrusts us with that ring known by the world as serving God.

We concentrate on the perks and authority we have and hold by virtue of that ring and forget the trust and responsibility we have been entrusted with.

Sadly, as happened with Haman, we will be punished for the wrongful use of that ring.

I could go on to write about other places and situations where a king’s ring is present. This because any position of trust really is not much different from having the king’s ring.

But allow me to stop with the pulpit and ministry.

I may probably build on this if God allows.

You see, this forum is also a ring God has entrusted to me and so I must be careful to use it as God would have me.