Dry Bones 3

You will allow me to close this call for prayer with the source of that fire.

And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? (Genesis 41:38)

That fire is not the product of our effort.

I am not therefore asking you to pray for me for more power to perform.

It is a prayer for the release of God’s Holy Spirit in His fulness in my life.

That is what is consistent with everybody in the scriptures walking in power.

The Holy Spirit is the fire that can never be ignored.

He is the fire that contains the power to transform.

He is the fire that convicts.

I am therefore praying for the fulness of the Holy Spirit in my life.

Do not for a moment think I am talking about the drama that charismatics have made of it.

Being Spirit Filled is all about being completely under His control and Lordship.

He is the One holding my reins, so to speak.

We see that when we read the Bible.

It has nothing to do with emotional highs or strange tongues but everything to do with His Lordship over every detail of my life.

It has little to do with the gifts and their exercise but everything to do with the reproduction of His character and nature in my life.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. (Galatians 5: 22, 23)

This is what Jesus meant when He said that we will be known by our fruit. The same reason He did not mention our gifts.

The problem with my spiritual life now is familiarity or something like that.

After being in Christ and His ministry for long, that fruit of the Spirit can very easily become the fruit of my experience because it has become habit.

I have overcome temptation for so long that I do not even think about it and it stops featuring in my experience.

It means I could effortlessly overcome temptation in my backslidden state.

My passion for ministry could be so ingrained that it becomes automatic and not dependent on a vibrant relationship with Christ.

My indignation against sin and evil has become part of me to an extent that I will fight spiritual battles in the flesh and not even realise it.

That is the danger Christ was warning us against when He addressed the churches of Ephesus and Sardis in Revelation 2 and 3.

I am praying against a habit led obedience and a momentum fuelled ministry.

And I must create the space for my most quoted verses

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 21 – 23)

That is the possibility I am seeing in my life.

And that is what I am inviting you to pray against.

I want us to pray against the beaten path that removes our focus on Christ’s Lordship.

There is something called driver’s fatigue or something like that.

This is when a driver falls asleep on the wheel yet drives for hundreds of miles without a single mistake though his mind is completely switched off to the point that he will not remember a single thing about that trip.

This happens because he has been driving for so long that it becomes instinctive.

He will brake when required, give way to others as required and follow lanes as required.

At that time, his eyes become sensers to guide his other body organs to automatically do what is required.

That is what I fear my ministry has been leaning toward.

The reality is that our enemy can see our autopilot ministry for what it is.

No wonder we stop causing offense because we lack the spiritual fire that comes from wakefulness that is the product of a vibrant relationship with Christ. Our enemy stops fighting us because we are on his side when he looks at our spirits.

Nobody can get scared of losing to a vehicle using momentum because sooner or later that slope offering gravity will end.

He will just give us space to flow then speed off before we realise that our engine was off.

Is this not what has opened my eyes to the state of my spiritual life?

Allow me to quote the message to the church of Ephesus to get my point

I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. (Revelation 2: 2 – 6)

There is not a single complaint about their character, ministry, doctrine.

They are scoring plain As for who they are and what they stood for.

They are doing the same for their relationships and witness.

But their spiritual engine is off. They are simply coasting on neutral. They are running on momentum.

Though to us it appears energy saving, simply because it is effective, to Christ it offers great offense because it takes the focus off Him to our effort. They are bearing spiritual fruit using tools of flesh.

That is why they were being called upon to repent.

And I believe that is the same call God has for us today.

And I have seen it in myself.

As you pray with me, please remember to pray that God also points that beam of truth on you so that you are able to see whether it also applies to you.

Otherwise, you may pray me get out of the darkness you are in.

But please pray for me.

Dry Bones 2

You will allow me to further explain why I am praying that God rekindles my fire; that He revives my dead spiritual life, by using scriptural examples.

Fire can never be ignored just as it can never be constrained, spiritual fire, that is.

You can never be neutral around that fire.

And we will look at several examples in the scriptures to understand what I am saying.

Remember Joseph?

His brothers did not hate him because his father loved him.

They hated him because of the fire burning within him.

They got rid of him because they could not endure his continued presence because there was a spiritual deposit in his life that they could not manage.

That is the fire that made Potiphar trust him, the fire his wife wanted to possess.

It was the fire that made them hate him because they finally realised that there was no way they could control it.

It is that same fire that made him take an oath from Israel to ensure that he was not buried in Egypt though he had been a national hero and treasure.

We see a similar thing with David

People either loved him or hated him.

The prophet of fire was not any different

People looked for Elijah either to kill him or benefit from his ministry.

Probably the most sobering case in the Old Testament is Jeremiah’s where the whole book is more of a study of the relationship of spiritual fire has with the world.

While some are unable to bear him, others are drawn to him like a magnet.

Look at Daniel and you will see the same reality.

The New Testament is even more glaring because we can identify the source of the fire.

Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, (Acts 7:57)

This is the crowd’s response to Stephen’s defence to the accusations levelled against him.

That fire held them through his lengthy exposition and witness. Then they exploded.

John the Baptist was the same way.

Herod hated him and wanted to kill him. Yet he was scared of doing it even when the occasion availed itself.

We see the same with the apostles in their ministry.

Nobody could be neutral to their witness or presence. A fire experience is a convicting presence.

We see Jesus, our Captain, on another level altogether.

His experience magnifies this truth.

Enemies became friends in their fight with His fire.

Pharisees and Sadducees, who never saw eye to eye on almost everything became a team and were joined by Herodians who were way too far down their faith trajectory.

The same people who were tempting Him using loyalty to Caesar were obstinately proclaiming that they had no king but Caesar.

And He said that our likeliness with Him would attract the same responses from those around us.

I am not therefore talking about losing my fire in a vacuum.

I have experienced such as I served God, though not as powerfully as I would have desired.

Spiritual fire makes everybody uncomfortable positively or negatively and leaves nobody on the fence in neutrality.

And that is what is lacking in my life and ministry though for the most part ministry progresses fairly well according to normal standards.

But I seek the fire standard back in a more explosive way than those past experiences.

I need that fire to give my finishing kick its greatest impact.

But I essentially need that power so that God will manifest in my life in such a way that many will be drawn to Him and respond to His invitation.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. (John 12:32)

That is my cry

Will you pray for me?

Pastoral Marriage Killers 3

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: (Deuteronomy 13: 6 – 8)

I want to close this topic by asking some questions.

Why is a wife included in this passage that talks about enticement to idolatry?

Could she have been included if she was treated the way the Eurocentric church that we inherited treat their wives?

Does it mean that Israeli wives were more wicked than women from other nations?

On the same vein, who misled the wisest man on earth?

Women are women, wherever they come from.

A European woman is no more different than an Arab woman than an educated woman is to an illiterate one.

They were all made of the same material and so possess the same basic inclinations.

Upbringing and culture will predispose one to more vice than another. One will predispose one to submission even as another will lead towards feminism.

It is on that basis that the Bible is universal because it comes from the One who created all things.

Trashing things by branding them Old Testament therefore makes us prone to error and intense disappointment. Because nothing in nature veers so off the beaten path.

Let us go to the New Testament to ask a few other questions.

Peter had a wife before Jesus called him.

What was her name?

What was her ministry?

Where do we see her in his ministry?

Except for Paul, and probably Barnabas, all the other apostles had wives.

Where do we see them in the book of Acts?

Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? (1Corinthians 9:5)

If as we read, they were leading their wives, could they have been leading them as we do if none of them is visible in the scriptures?

Could those wives whose names we do not know have had as much influence and visibility as we have allowed the modern wife to have? Could they have been validating the calls of their husbands?

That is what I want to leave you meditating on.

Dry Bones

I am writing about the church of today.

But I do not go how far back the rot goes.

We desperately need revival.

And as I have always stressed, there can be no revival in the absence of death. In short, only the dead can be revived. Or, at the very least, those who know that they are dead.

That is what I want us to look at today.

The church is for the most part dead. Remember the church in Sardis?

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. (Revelation 3: 1, 2)

But I am talking about me and my practice of religion. Whether it also applies to you is not important to me for now.

Allow me to elaborate.

The other day I went with a fellow minister to deal with a crisis that at face value was the result of a sin by a friend and fellow minister who looks up to us, again at face value, very highly.

What we discovered and the discussions we had after it is the reason for this message.

The guy had not just sinned. He had been living in blatant sin for the longest time, time that we had been in fellowship with him, even dealing with crises that we had no idea were related to this life of sin.

How could he hide his sin from us for this long?

How come we had no inkling or suspicion that something like that was happening?

How could we fellowship with him without noticing that something was wrong?

But at the personal level, why did he not seek our spiritual intervention for his temptation and sin? Why could he not trust us with his restoration?

How can we be his spiritual superiors if he can be in blatant sin without us suspecting?

Incidentally, the same guy was attending a church and probably ministering there and they also did not know though he lived amongst them.

I know someone is thinking I am being paranoid for no reason.

But similar things have happened to me enough times to stop this from being an isolated case.

My friend and I looked at many other similar occurrences in the course of our ministry and church involvement and it is very unsettling.

What was our conclusion?

Our discipleship is not transformative

Our ministry model is not working

Our fellowship is dead

Why do I say so?

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1John 1:7)

In short, the church as we know it may not be the church Christ died to redeem.

There is so much sin in the church that we notice it only when it is the leader who is doing it. And even then it is when it affects the image of the organisation.

I am called a radical believer by most because I do not have greys in my understanding and practice of Biblical truth.

I am called too harsh when confronting sin in the body of Christ to the point that I have been kicked out of fellowships and churches because I refused to look the other way when addressing sin issues because that is the way I see it being done in the scriptures and church history.

As such, anybody who has been with me for some time knows my stand on God’s truth.

He will also know that I am delighted to walk with someone growing toward that reality.

I always have room for the floundering toddler growing toward spiritual maturity. Or what is discipleship?

In short, I am a responsible spiritual father and not a pampering grandfather who will overlook blatant breaches because it is the father who should be handling them.

It therefore hits me very hard when my ‘son’ does something so out of character and still continues calling me his father.

No wonder this guy ran off and blocked me when he discovered that I was looking for him. And I was able to get the whole story after he ran off.

But I am talking about the church.

It is important that we look into our recent past to understand what I am saying.

When we took God seriously in our youth in the eighties, most of us came from a church background.

We therefore had enough churchiness to be members of good standing in society before we made that plunge.

Our new commitment was therefore not one from heathenness to the light of Christ but from a veneer of Christianity to an actual commitment to the faith.

Some of us were saved long before making that decision to delve deeper in the faith.

That is why there were terms like a Christian, a saved Christian and a very saved Christian, among other classifications. And those terms were understood to the world of those times.

Our decision for Christ therefore took us from the nominal to the radical believer through that personal decision we had made, many times publicly.

In those times there were clear lines and expectations as to what each group did.

Let me use sex to get my point across.

The difference between the saved and the very saved was in when they first had sex.

The saved had sex before getting married, but only with the person they were getting married to.

The very saved waited for their wedding before getting intimate.

The very saved would boycott the wedding of their brethren if they discovered that they had had sex before their wedding.

They would also do the same if they had gone down the spiritual ladder for a partner since that was clearly a compromise.

We had very few believers who had sex just like that, or simply in pursuit of pleasure with whoever. In fact, even for the nominal believers, a pregnancy almost always necessitated the marriage of the couple involved. And we had no divorces then.

That is why there were rarely any bastards.

Incidentally, nothing has changed about the morality of our generation for the most part.

We are as strict with our faith as we had in our youth.

The problem is with our expectation. It is with our children, biological and spiritual.

Nowadays, the same people who would boycott a friend’s wedding because they had not waited are flooded with grandchildren from their own children who, not only could not wait for marriage before having sex, but are all over having sex however and with whoever for the fun of it. And I have intentionally left out abortions.

I have walked off seminars when a spiritual leader says something like this.

Since they will have sex anyway, let us teach them safe sex and contraception.

That is how low we have sunk.

Churches have stopped having overnight prayers not because they have trashed prayer but because in the morning after such an event, they find condoms all over the church compound.

Churches place CCTV all over the church, not because they are concerned with security but to slow down the sex craze in their young people.

Our children are dressing like harlots and we are not even ashamed of taking them to church dressed that way.

They post sexually suggestive videos on social media and we are unable to do anything about it.

In short, we are scared of using the standard we used on us on our children and spiritual children.

That is our problem.

No wonder marriages are falling apart all around us because we cannot take any stand on issues.

We are like Eli. In fact, we are worse than Eli because he at least tried to talk sense to his children.

We think we are progressive because we are allowing our children to fill our compounds with the offspring from their unrestrained sexual appetite. We think we are accommodating when we teach safe sex to our church youth. We think we are good parents when our children can access X-rated programs on our TV and internet using the internet we have bought.

Whatever happened to the power of God? Whatever happened to the fear of God?

Does it mean that the power God had to keep us pure then has become impotent for our children that we must use the world’s restraints on them?

Does it mean that God has changed His character and nature to accommodate what was an abomination just a few years ago.

I do not want to even scratch the surface on homosexuality because we could not even imagine it. Yet it is a concern for our children and churches.

I am just using the standards we used on ourselves to see how far we have fallen.

We have fallen, not just backslidden.

In fact, we are worse than that.

We want to portray ourselves as right by accommodating intense darkness so that our fading light can still be acknowledged.

We have cooled our passion for Christ and find comfort in allowing the generation after us to sink into oblivion just so that we remain relevant for our dead spirituality.

We are like Lot who may have thought that living right in Sodom was evangelistic until he lost everything, even his own name.

It had to take his uncle’s intercession for him to be saved.

Sadly, that is the game our generation is playing by lowering our expectation on those after us.

And I hope you understand what I mean.

I am talking about us who stuck to the straight and narrow because that is where God starts from.

I am not talking about those who actually backslid; the ones who are believers for the limelight.

I am not talking about the elders whose audition for girls and women to join ‘worship teams’ is done in bedrooms.

I am not talking about spiritual leaders who treat church resources as personal property.

I am not talking about conmen on pulpits. I am not talking about crooks running churches. I am not talking about those who hand over their churches to their wives and children. I am not talking about those who change constitutions so that they do not retire or even take sabbatical leave.

Sadly, many of those characters also have a background of obedience, even radical obedience, in their youth.

It is that radical walk and obedience that qualified them for those positions.

I am leaving them out because everybody, including themselves, know that they are fallen and that it is only that they are unwilling to forsake the bounty from their life of rebellion.

They therefore are under no illusions about their relevance or usefulness in God’s kingdom.

But the ones living right and have solid doctrine are unable to see their fall because they do not look at their faith beyond their generation. And I am one of them.

I feel this is what God is saying to us.

Will we go back to the point at which we fell?

Will we ask God to lead us back to our fire days when death was more preferable than compromise?

Will we ask God to rekindle our fire for Him and His revelation?

Will we pray that God brings revival to our hearts?

Will you also pray for me?

I need God to rekindle that fire in me so that I stop becoming like the Pharisees who also had the right doctrine and conduct yet were far from Christ’s kingdom.

Please pray for me.

 

Pastoral Marriage Killers 2

I will start with a point I forgot to mention in my last post.

If she gives you money or things without her husband’s express permission, you are a thief, stealing from another man’s house, after stealing his wife.

If she tithes to you without her husband’s express permission, you are actively destroying her marriage.

And if the husband gives you permission to go to minister with her in his absence, that man is also and idiot who has no idea that his wife has long departed from him.

According to the Bible, the husband is the spiritual head of his wife. And there can be no other head for her. God treats any other head as open adultery whether sex happens or not.

No wonder she is told to seek answers from him when she doesn’t understand anything in church.

Allow me to go to the next point in this message.

And it is guided by an erroneous teaching that has been circulating in Christian circles for the longest time though its source is the source of all things unscriptural.

It is the oft repeated teaching that a wife is her husband’s determinant for ministry.

What I mean is that common church teaching is that it is sin for a man to serve God without his wife’s permission.

Though it sounds logical and a tad spiritual, there is nothing godly in it.

Imagine Abraham seeking Sarah’s permission before taking Isaac to the altar!

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

David’s wife laughed at his worship. Jacob’s wife stole idols from her father. And so on.

A man’s call excludes everybody else, even the wife, especially the wife.

I know men who abandoned clear calls to ministry and ministry direction because their wives refused to join them. I know men who have watered down their sermons because their wives did not fancy their tough sermons. I know men who became corrupt in ministry because their wives prodded them through their constant demands.

Ahab is the clearest case of this. Plus of course Solomon.

A man is answerable directly to Christ for his spiritual responsibilities. He answers directly and only to Christ for his call.

Accountability structures are there to ensure that that call is better managed.

Though there is nothing essentially wrong with telling her before all others about what God is ordering you to do, there is everything wrong with taking her word as final. Because God is the One who does the calling. And He does not seek anybody’s permission to do so.

That is why I pity a girl who decides to follow a man for his wealth and position without considering his spiritual account. Because she must bow to that spiritual kid’s spirituality as happened to Abigael.

We are therefore killing marriage when we make a wife the determinant of a husband’s calling because women crave comfort and no calling leans toward comfort. They also crave control and submitting to God takes that from her.

It is therefore the rare woman who will agree to her husband’s calling outside the comfort zone.

That is why we have pastors who must incorporate their wives into ministry because that is what the wife craves and because of the perks and authority it confers.

Putting a wife in the position of determining her husband’s calling elevates her even above God.

No wonder we have pastors who have refused to retire, changing church constitutions to continue in those positions because ‘mama’ is not ready to leave the limelight.

That is why we have pastors who have refused to move to places God is calling them because it looks like a demotion to her.

That is why we have pastors who have opted to split churches instead of moving on as God directs because she is not through with her assignment, the assignment of a full belly and status.

That is why we have pastors who have refused to repent or face their sin because she feels doing so could put her out of the picture. And of course it gives her more leverage on his ‘ministry’.

Some men, however, have chosen to follow God’s orders and lost their marriages, many ending in divorce.

Yet these rebellious women will find great welcome and accommodation in the places their husbands had been commanded to leave, many times being allowed to take over ministry from their radically obedient former husbands.

That a pastor and church can take a woman divorced from her obedient husband into their bosom is what I describe as wickedness. Yet it is happening all the time in church.

I know I am sounding gross to some.

But I would rather be on the side of scripture than on the feminine agenda.

God calls a man and a godly wife unquestioningly follows him where God leads.

That is what I read in the scriptures.

Anything else does not proceed from God.

Pastoral Marriage Killers

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. (1Corinthians 11:3)

Today I want us to look at one seemingly innocent but powerful weapon the evil one has crafted to kill the marriage institution among believers.

At the root of them is the confusion in the roles and accountability systems in it.

And I will ask us to consider Numbers 30 to appreciate how grave the situation is. Read it.

Numbers 30 deals with vows to God, or simply, someone’s offering of themself to the service of the divine.

Do you realise that a married woman must get her husbands approval for her offering to be acceptable to God?

Why does God give the husband veto powers over his wife’s devotion?

Do you also realise that the husband is accountable to God if he allows his wife to serve and later rescinds his acceptance? Why is his wife innocent for that open breach?

Do you also know that a wife’s sin is attributed to her husband even when he was unaware of the same?

A case in point is Ahab.

He is the one who was charged with the murder of Naboth though he probably didn’t know what had gone on for him to acquire the vineyard.

Bathsheba was the one who left her matrimonial bed to sleep with David yet is nowhere when David is charged with and judged for the sin.

It is therefore important for us to appreciate that God’s way of doing things is different from the error we have been promoting over the years, however innocently we have been doing it.

I will throw a few other verses in the mix for someone who thinks that this is Old Testament theology.

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (1Corinthians 14: 34, 35)

How different is this from what we read in Numbers 30?

Do we not realise that this was written in the context of a church overflowing with gifts and their manifestations.

It is therefore not wrong to assume that the confusion and reigning sin in the church may have been attributable to that breach of the spiritual order.

Simply saying, the spiritual wife is subject to her husband, however unspiritual he happens to be.

It is in her submission that the husband can see God’s grace at work in her life.

Simple observations will make this clear.

It takes no effort between the time a husband believes and when the wife and children follow suit. Yet it always takes decades for the husband to believe if it was the wife who believed first.

That is also clear in the Bible.

A husband believed with his whole family.

Joshua 24:15 is as valid today as it was when Joshua made that proclamation.

From observation, it is easier for the man of the house to believe if it is the children who believe than it is when a wife believes.

That is the error I want us to tackle today.

We have polluted the divine order.

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. (1Peter 3: 1, 2)

The evangelistic tool God has given to a woman is that uncompromising submission to her husband.

For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. (1Peter 3: 5, 6)

That is offensive to the modern woman, basically because the church has developed a different doctrine and theology concerning her position and role.

According to Biblical revelation, it is wicked for a woman to discuss spiritual issues with anybody other than her husband.

Now we even have women holding spiritual positions over men, even their husbands.

But let me not get that far as it may get me off topic.

What do I mean that pastors are breaking marriages and not through physical adultery?

It happens when a woman develops a spiritual relationship outside her husband’s domain.

That in itself is spiritual adultery.

When a pastor offers a married woman a position of service in church outside or without consulting her husband, he has directly trashed the husband’s authority and in effect killed that marriage at the spiritual level.

He has introduced a different spiritual structure that he heads and that treats the divine order as irrelevant or impractical.

Of course, the wife will stop being subject to that husband because she has transferred her submission to another ‘husband’, albeit in the spiritual sense. She will believe that she has become more spiritual to her husband.

But she will continue living in this idiot’s house and feeding off him. She will even pretend to be married to him.

But her heart has shifted.

This husband then becomes spiritual baggage to the point of being called a demon when he seeks to assert authority in his dominion.

He will then start being reported to the new authority for interfering with the new ‘marriage’.

But neither she or her new husband acknowledge the new reality though they are walking in it.

No wonder physical adultery will many times result in such situations.

The woman transferred her submission from her husband to a new husband in the spiritual where marriages exist.

Her lawful husband ceased from existing and became a problem to be prayed against.

Estrangement does not happen because the husband is unreasonable. It happens because his wife has acquired a new husband through her involvement in ministry outside her husband’s authority.

I am using strong words because that reality must be grasped.

I have been part of that error and feel very sorry for my stupidity.

But I didn’t know better because that is what I was taught and saw. But I have repented and am learning to agree and walk in God’s order of things.

You see, having Jesus as a ‘personal saviour’ makes the spiritual relationship personal.

Nobody needs nobody else to function. No structures exist for someone with such a personal relationship not to be and do whatever they want in that personal relationship.

But Jesus can never be personal since He owns everyone and everything.

He also has structures that He has created for the proper functioning of what He has created, structures He has revealed in His word, the Bible.

The personal nature of our salvation is therefore subject to the functioning of the whole created order.

And that order is the reason God ordered that the woman is subject to her husband in all things

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. (Ephesians 5: 22 – 24)

A woman is not submitted to Christ if she is not submitted to her husband completely.

It is important to note that children are commanded to submit to their fathers in the Lord whereas the wife is commanded to submit to the same man in everything.

As usual, I know there are some who are already too infuriated with me at this point that they can barely see through their tears to continue reading.

But I am writing what the Bible teaches.

I do not have to like it but I also do not have the luxury of disregarding it.

There are too many wrecked Christian marriages to afford me the luxury of keeping quiet.

Are you speaking to a married woman without her husband’s express permission?

Then you are the reason her marriage is breaking. You are therefore seeking to mend a breach you have created and are enlarging by your involvement.

Are you counselling someone’s wife without his permission?

You are basically doing the same thing.

Do you minister with or to a married woman without her husband’s express permission?

Are you praying for a woman without her husband’s presence?

Do you smile at a woman when her husband cannot see?

Do you visit a married woman in the absence of her husband? (Even if you go with all the elders)

In the spiritual, you are committing adultery and killing a marriage.

And God holds you accountable for the breakage of that marriage.

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mark 10:9)

You are asundering what God has put together.

And you can be sure God not only holds you accountable for that sin, He will certainly judge you for it.

I know there are unreasonable men out there. There are sons of Belial out there.

But I have never seen an exception to God’s revelation when I read the scriptures.

In any case, even when we have exceptions, which we don’t have, they are exceptions because they are very rare.

Let us therefore deal with the common before arguing for the exception.

But allow me to repeat that there is judgment for any breach of the spiritual order.

And I do not want you to be judged.

Powerful Women

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)

We love power!

Yet there is a power we do not want to be associated with.

Ever heard of someone calling their daughter Jezebel? Yet the lady had immense powers, even the power of life and death in the kingdom she was a part of.

What about Delilah?

Yet she was able to rescue her people from a tyrant. She was a great heroine to the Philistines. You can be sure they sung her praise fora long time.

And Judas? Yet he had been the accountant/ treasurer to the King of kings, even playing all trusty when he was siphoning funds.

Nobody wants to be associated with such power, simply because it was destructive, destructive because it went against God’s agenda and revelation.

It is respectable to kill for a cause, to steal for the poor. Many heroes of the past became such because of doing it.

But it is wicked when it is done for personal gain. It is wicked when it results in oppression or deprives the vulnerable of their rights.

However, we must guard against flipped narratives that will paint the villain as the hero as we see in many freedom movements where the real heroes either ‘disappear’ or are smeared with betrayer tags by the turncoats who were the actual traitors.

I therefore want us to look at the Bible to see what makes a believing woman powerful by looking at some women in the Bible we love to associate with and, if possible, emulate.

The first quality I find common amongst them is self-effacement.

They were meek, or in simpler terms, under the control of someone else, and willingly so.

They did not fight for dominance like many a modern woman.

The other is self-sacrifice.

They willingly surrendered their rights for someone or a cause outside themselves.

I want us to look at a couple of such women, beginning with Mary.

I do not know whether you realise her obedience being looked at from her side was worse than suicide.

A pregnant unmarried girl was stoned to death for adultery.

The second thing was that marriage would be impossible had she even overcome that first hurdle.

Do you not remember Joseph starting the process before God stepped in?

That surrender and sacrifice was therefore immense. No wonder she is talked about with such good words.

And even after Joseph takes her, we do not see her dominating his space at any time. Nor do we see her trying to control her Son or reminding Him of her sacrifice.

The second woman we look at is Rahab the harlot.

She saves the spies from torture and death.

Yet, instead of making demands on them, she actually pleads with them to save her life. And not only her life, but the life of her whole family, beginning with her parents.

That is not how harlots behave.

Ruth allowed Naomi to completely dominate her as if she did not have any rights.

And with her I want us to look at another aspect of these women.

She looked at this bleeding woman and chose to serve her, completely foregoing her dreams and aspirations.

Imagine foregoing marriage to walk with a grieving woman even when she is fighting so hard to ask you to leave her alone.

Hannah behaved the same way.

She prays for a son and then completely gives him away. And that with no assurance that any other child will come.

I do not care to have a child provided they stop calling me barren and (to society) cursed. An answer to her prayer to counter her barrenness ended at that. And she followed it up.

I think that aspect of release/ surrender/ sacrifice is what makes them stand out.

Each of these women gave away something extremely precious.

And of course, we remember the other Mary who poured all her savings on Jesus’ feet until Judas couldn’t take it any more and went to the priests.

I will stop here. But treat it as a pause.

 

Why Serpents 6

I want to develop my last post on this topic by giving scriptural examples of what I meant.

Our first example is Lot.

Though there is nothing wrong he did in following his uncle, he had no calling or understanding of what, where and why Abraham was going.

It is no wonder that when push comes to shove and he is given an option he chooses the physical appeal over spiritual relevance since he must have known the basics of Sodom’s spiritual reality.

No wonder he lost big. Lost his wife and name

The second is Esau.

Again, he did not know the spiritual nature of Abraham’s calling, thinking that his inheritance was purely material.

No wonder he was bypassed so easily. And the fact that when he meets his brother much later he had completely forgotten that he had been cheated of anything since he had been able to make his own wealth anyway.

Gehazi was poised to get the double portion of Elisha’s anointing but lost it when, like Esau, forgot that he was involved in a spiritual enterprise.

Solomon lost it when the miracle and the breakthrough became more important than the One who had performed it. The gift became more important that its giver.

In the New Testament we have Mark when he accompanied his uncle on his first mission.

But I think the ultimate is the Sceva brothers of Acts 19.

Sending is different from being sent.

I think that is the point of this post.

Why Serpents 5

About this time last year, I posted a series on Jesus’ instruction to His disciples (which we also are) concerning how they were to be as they took the Gospel to the world.

I built it on the serpent’s physiology, limitations and vulnerabilities.

But I remembered recently that I probably overlooked the foundation to the whole thing.

We are as sheep being sent to wolves.

It is the hunted hunting the hunter.

It is the prey searching the prowler.

Just imagine a cow looking for a lion or a goat looking for a leopard.

Yet that is the reality of that instruction.

We are not being told to be shrewd the way some are called streetwise.

We need to be shrewd because we are being hunted by the same people we are seeking to win over.

This means that any slip on our side is not just disastrous, it will result in our consumption.

You see, the hunter lives to eat the prey. He must eat the prey to survive.

Can you imagine a deer being sent to Esau just before he had gone home to sell his birthright?

That is the kind of chance we have with our mission field.

Forgetting that simple truth has led many believers into spiritual destruction.

I have severally written about people who have gone to minister becoming the vices they had gone to rescue their mission field from.

Like pastors burdened for harlots ending up as their customers. Or others who have gone to rescue others from alcohol dens ending up being drunkards.

How many ministers have gotten into politics to bring righteousness into politics have ever dented that wickedness? Do not they become part of the problem they had sought to solve? Do they not become as wicked as the people they had gone to ’save’?

But it is not a lost cause or Christ would not have commanded us to go.

It is only that we, in our passion to rescue the damsel in distress (a lost world), we overlook the giant holding her captive, and especially the fact that the same giant is not satisfied with having one captive.

The bravado many of us employ in our rescue (evangelistic) efforts expose us to the giant long before we get anywhere close to his tower, meaning we will find him ready for our approach.

Our proclaiming victory before we get to the battlefield extinguishes our fire before we need to use it.

But the most dangerous part in our endeavours is the fact that for the most part we want to get into the battle field before getting any orders from our King and Lord.

Allow me to share a verse many know yet assume never exists.

Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. (Luke 10:2)

The fact that the harvest is plentiful is not an open invitation to rush into that field. The fact that there are no labourers does not make you one immediately.

Our first call is to pray; call the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into that field, availing yourself in case He may see it fit to send you yet leaving the decision to Him.

And that because only the ones who are sent are equipped for the job at hand.

Even in military circles, when there is a war, it is not everybody who picks the weapons, it is the ones who have been assigned those duties.

The driver does not rush to the armoury. Nor does the cook or doctor.

Each will run to the place where the tools of his part in a war are.

Incidentally, that is the same way with ministry and spiritual warfare.

We must know what our commander wants us to be doing. We must receive His direct orders on the same.

Allow me to give an example.

I have gone for numerous missions.

You will find everybody rushing for the flowery parts of ministry leaving the very essential ones to somebody else.

Everybody will want to be in the door-to-door and open-air campaigns and nobody will be left in the kitchen or washing dishes, thinking those are inferior tasks in a mission.

Then they come complaining that supper is late, yet only one person was responsible enough to realise that those ‘evangelists’ also had stomachs.

And there will be a battle the next morning because nobody wants to lower themself to wash the dishes, especially because they will be left out of the actual mission of reaching out to the lost.

That is why as I grew older, I found myself gravitating around those ‘lower cadre’ ministries lacking volunteers so that I can fill in the gaps.

It is sad that on a week-long mission you will have one person smelling of smoke because nobody had any burden for anything other than ‘lost souls’. That you will find someone who never left the camping ground to even get a glimpse of the land being ‘conquered’. That you will find someone completely exhausted from doing all the donkey work alone without any assistance or appreciation.

That is why you will hear such a person vowing never to be involved in any other mission due to the draining that one exerted on them.

That happens because probably none in the whole mission had a personal invitation to participate in that mission.

They simply interpreted that verse to mean

The harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few, please rush into the harvest field before time runs out.

The sheep rushed to the field to save wolves without any order and equipping.

Imagine a sheep going to the wolves’ den and introducing himself thus,

Good morning my friends. Will you allow me five of your minutes to share with you about the love of God (or the four spiritual laws)?

Would be the wolves be listening to the narration or whetting their appetites for this juicy meat that brought itself to their den, saving them valuable hunting time and energy?

Yet is that not how many of us approach evangelism?

What is the application?

I leave it to you to pray about your part. 

Painful Waiting

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. (Isaiah 64:4)

Who is a fan of waiting?

Who loves suspense concerning him?

You see, suspense movies and novels are nice. We love to turn and turn and turn to the next page to get to the conclusion of the plot in the book. We love those nail-biting moments in movies.

But have you ever placed yourself in those situations?

Are they not fun because they concern other people? Aren’t they exciting because you are a spectator?

Allow me to ask another question.

Would you love for your story to have as much suspense as you see in movies and read in thriller novels?

That is what I want us to look at today. And that because God is a storyteller, nay, a story maker.

And God loves suspense because suspense makes the story more interesting.

One reason the Bible is exciting to read is because it is composed of page after page of nail-biting suspense concerning the characters in it.

God is more interested in the plot than in the conclusion because it is the suspense in the plot that makes the ending more captivating.

Think about the book of Esther, the only book where there is no mention of God, and you discover that it is probably the book where the demonstration of His overarching presence is most visible.

But do you think it was exciting to Mordecai? Do you think it was nail-biting to Esther? Do you think it was uplifting to the Jews?

That suspense was stifling to the players in the plot but enriching and exciting to the audience, us.

Incidentally, I believe that is one aspect that sets apart the Bible from all other religious books. It is a down to earth book because it does not hide anything to make its story appealing.

What am I trying to say?

God is writing my story as He is writing yours for others to read.

And that story must have a good level of suspense to not only be real, but also highly enriching.

Good endings are good because they are the product of suspenseful happenings.

A journey is not a story worth reporting.

Even an accident is not a captivating story.

However, walking out of a written-off vehicle is.

Do you realise that this is the way God shows off the most? Do you know that is the way He attracts the attention of a world indifferent to Him?

I therefore want you to place yourself in Mordecai’s situation, because you are in a similar situation if you are a believer in God.

It is good to remember that Mordecai was not for the most part desperate because he had options.

He had raised the queen and saved the king and therefore could have easily used that to pull the rug off Haman’s plot.

But Haman’s plot was not personal. It was clearly spiritual.

It was an affront to the God of Israel.

And a man of faith does not use worldly weapons to fight spiritual battles.

He therefore called on God, and then waited for Him.

We see the same when he goes to Esther, bringing God to the fore of his request.

And Esther did the same, throwing a curveball to the Jews by asking them to call upon God, and also waiting.

No wonder God shows off.

The point I want us to get from this is that waiting is not desperation or the product of the same.

I do not wait because I am short of options.

I wait because I realise that the battle really belongs to God and He must be given the chance to show off.

The other point I need to make is that waiting is not passive.

Waiting is not for the lazy bones or weaklings.

A wait because, not only am I waiting for God to show off, I am waiting for the orders He may have to open the door for His showing off.

Mordecai prayed and waited. Then went to Esther and waited some more.

Esther prayed and waited.

Then went to the king and waited for just the right moment, probably after praying for a sign to know when the time was right.

No wonder we see many becoming Jews without crusades or door to door evangelism. Simply because God showed off.

But before I forget, allow me to look at our verse.

I want us to realise that the outcome of waiting on God is completely out of this world.

If it has been seen, it is not the reward of waiting on God

If it has been heard, it is not the reward of waiting on God.

And if it can be imagined, you can be sure it is not the reward of waiting on God.

That is what the verse plainly says.

This means that to be waiting on God, you must stop looking out of windows and gates of whatever nature for that breakthrough. You must stop looking for those text messages and emails for your miracle.

The only thing you can rightly do is listening to an order should it come, because He may just decide to bypass that order to show off as He did with Mordecai and even Joseph in prison.

Incidentally, Joseph is another person of interest in our study of waiting on God.

Waiting is work.

Waiting is doing what God has revealed as you wait for Him to show off. And it is doing that even when nothing seems to make sense. It is serving God amidst uncertainty because you trust Him.

He served with distinction even when he was sold as a slave.

He refused to sin even when that could have opened a few doors for him.

And when he was sent to prison for daring follow God’s revelation, he still served with distinction in that prison.

Is God left with any other option than showing off?

Waiting is therefore probably the only work God has for most of us.

Because waiting requires us to be listening and doing what God orders us to do.

And that until He either changes the orders or the situation.

It is establishing in my heart that no other position is viable, no other open door is open and no other breakthrough is worthy my response but His revelation and showing off.

I am sure Daniel knew of the plot of those colleagues.

But he refused to intervene because it was clearly an affront to the God he served.

As their boss, it is inconceivable that he didn’t know that plot as it was being hatched. And as their boss he could have easily nipped that plot at its bud by simply going to the king and exposing it.

But he knew that his God was not impotent. His God could stand on His own.

He therefore let Him show off in the best way. And He did.

But do not for a moment think that that was an easy time for him between knowing of the plot and being rescued from the lions.

And I am sure it was the same with his three friends.

They could have comfortably disappeared from the radar so that they are not seen not bowing to that idol.

But what would that have communicated about the God they served?

But it was not an easy ride between the time the idol was unveiled and the time they walked out of that furnace.

What am I saying?

Waiting for God requires for me to trash any other options that would leave God out as the sole provider of my solution.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2Chronicles 16:9a)

Leaving God as the sole source of solutions gives Him complete leeway to do whatever He wants with us.

This means that He will get maximum, nay, all the credit for the interventions He offers.

I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. (Isaiah 42:8)

It is one thing to wait for the Lord while you are scrolling all over for solutions.

It is a different thing altogether when like Shadrack and his three friends say

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3: 17, 18)

If God chooses not to show off, then so be it. We will continue serving Him even if we will be consumed by the fire.

That is what waiting for God entails.

Stephen died proclaiming the Gospel.

Waiting for God means placing my neck on the chopping block, not for God to suddenly decide to melt it or convert the powers that be, but for God to decide the best way to show off by offering my life as a sacrifice.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12: 1, 2)

Abraham had waited for a child for over seventy years.

Yet he does not hesitate when he is ordered to offer him as a sacrifice because he had been waiting for God.

And we know he had options. Hagar is one demonstration of that.

And from reading the story it appears that the angel probably held his hand to stop him from killing the promise.

Simply because he was waiting for God.

God was greater and way more valuable than the promise, however valuable the promise was.

I know some are thinking I am hitting too hard.

But since when did faith become fashionable? Since when did obedience become easy? Since when did waiting become free flowing?

In closing let me give us a verse or two of some promises concerning waiting.

And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him. (Isaiah 30:18)

There is a blessing bestowed on the person who chooses to wait for God, on God’s terms.

Blessing in the Bible speaks of a completeness, a peaceful restfulness because God is delighted in us.

And that precedes His showing off.

Call it showing off in us before showing us off to the world.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

Ther is a renewal when we choose to wait for God. There is a refreshing. There is an energising.

That because waiting for God is not easy.

It may be the most energy consuming aspect of our faith because it requires an obedience without an end in sight.

It many times requires our rest amidst great turbulence.

It requires my confessing that I believe when nothing makes sense, just because God has said it.

That is what made Peter sleep in prison when everything pointed to his being beheaded the next day. It is what made Paul peaceful when all indications were that they would be drowned by the storms besetting their ship, because God had told him that he was taking him to Rome.

We wait because we have God’s word.

It is therefore important to get that word.

And not these words the conmen on the pulpits are giving to get the offerings flowing.

It is His word for you.

I hope I have rattled your faith enough to challenge you to consider waiting for God alone.

Because

O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made heaven and earth. (Isaiah 37:16)