Anchor or Dead-Weight?

Ministry is exciting.

Ministry is empowering.

Ministry is liberating.

What then about the minister?

What about his support systems?

You see, a minister is not an island as is normally said.

A minister depends on structures, not only to stand, but to thrive.

The effectiveness of a minister is determined by the kind of support structures he has.

But it is more important to say that a minister’s success is determined by his proximity to God’s orders, and how close his support structures also are to those orders.

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. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14: 26, 27)

God’s call and orders predetermine the structures we will use or reject.

That is why Abraham was ordered out of all his support structures to be able to respond to God’s call.

And that is what Jesus is saying in these verses.

Our support structures may appear like launching pads for ministry when they are the tethering pegs ensuring we do not lift off.

Think of a job

I was called as a student.

Then God took me to college and then to a job.

I enjoyed ministering when I was employed because I had the money to follow my calling without needing anybody else’s support.

But the dynamic of what I am saying here became very clear.

A boss opposed to your call and values can make it almost impossible to minister as God would have you.

A boss who hates ministry (probably because your ministry is a daily reminder that he deserted the faith) will place innumerable blocks to your ministry.

In effect, you become a most deadly enemy to bosses who have a thing with your practice of faith and ministry.

A boss can plan your shifts in such a way that your ministry schedules are suffocated.

And as was with me then, he would micromanage it to ensure that that nobody else could hold brief for me even when there was an abundance of friends willing to step in because they respected my call, some who knew about my call since college.

This means that a job, as liberating as it may be, has other dynamics that could stifle ministry instead of enhancing it.

And rebelling against those structures is not an option unless they are calling on you to act against your faith, something I also underwent with other bosses.

I have indicated elsewhere that there was a time my salary was stopped for six months for a fabricated desertion.

But the reason was sadder; I had refused to attend a staff meeting in restaurant with a club because an earlier meeting had ended in drunkenness and that offended the bosses immensely.

What am I saying?

A job as a means of ministry support is dependent on many factors; schedules, duties, structures, colleagues, etc.

Yet the same job is a very visible ministry opportunity. It is actually a ministry opportunity that I believe is the major reason God would take you there.

Treat money and ministry elsewhere as secondary reasons.

There are ministry doors that opened in those job situations that could not have opened elsewhere. There were evangelistic openings that could not have opened elsewhere. There were interfaith interactions that could not have occurred elsewhere.

You are therefore first a minister at your workplace before accessing those resources it offers.

Many will make a huge mess of their workplace by focusing on ministry elsewhere and forgetting that Jerusalem of theirs.

They are therefore talking and planning for this or the other outreach even as they become shoddy in their workplaces. They kill their witness where God has placed them by focusing all their effort on the uttermost realms.

You must be faithful and excel in the workplace before God can entrust you with greater opportunities.

It is the same with business.

It is hard to be a great minister yet a shoddy businessman, especially when you are depending on that business to fund your ministry.

I will need to also reiterate that that business is also a ministry forum.

God places you in that business as His minister.

Money is a consequence of that first obedience.

And the same dynamic plays there.

Your other ministry must not interfere with that first one.

You do not unceremoniously leave your customers high and dry even as you are pursuing other ministry.

Your faith is respected by your reliability. It is respected by your customer relationships.

You will lose ministry opportunities if you think that the business is there only for the money. You could then be treated as a harlot.

Let us now look at direct ministry support where I am given money and other resources to minister.

Many people think that is a simple open and close transaction.

But is it?

For someone to give their resources to a minister, they must agree with whatever the minister is doing. They must want to be part of what the minister is doing.

It is essential therefore that the said minister justify that support if he must continue receiving it.

However, that is not easy for many ministers and ministries.

It is impossible for some.

Think of this missionary who is labouring in an unresponsive ground without any visible results for a decade or two. Think of this minister who is on the dumps rescuing derelicts where a single rescue may take years. Think of this other one who is reaching out to harlots with methods most would question and whose success is also painfully slow. Think of this one who dealing with confidential stuff. Think of the one dealing with the underworld; drug and arms dealers, pimps.

It would be impossible for them to issue satisfactory reports to justify the support they receive.

That is why some ministers cook reports. That is why some exaggerate results. That is why become professional liars so that the support flows.

Support also places an unpleasant dynamic to many ministers.

Unless God has spoken to the supporters Himself. Then they will not place that heavy yoke on His minister.

And I am speaking this as a minister who has experienced all that, and more.

And church support may be even more constricting because we have a pastor and board that must be satisfied by those reports before unwillingly releasing those few coins.

I remember not so long ago where a denomination closed in the whereabouts of sixty churches and sacked their pastors because they were not making a good return on its investment.

That is what I mean.

Allow me to get to the most delicate part of this message.

And it is about a wife supporting her husband’s ministry.

Of course, it appears very good and positive. And I will not begrudge that.

But even that has its own caveats.

Remember the common proverb, he who pays the piper calls the tune?

That is exactly what I mean.

It is very difficult to lord over someone who is paying your keep.

And it is near impossible to submit to somebody who lives off your provision.

There must be some situations where it works perfectly. But I believe it is in an infinitesimal number of cases, if there are any. And this is where we will have an exceptionally spiritually alert woman.

Why am I saying this?

In Genesis, we see the woman having a desire to rule over her husband.

The fall was in fact the evidence of that reversal of order.

And in this she had found the man complete; with resources and authority.

Her questioning her husband’s orders is the reason we fell.

If it is difficult for a woman to submit to a man with resources and authority, what do you think will happen to a woman who is the backbone of her man’s ministry?

As an example, I believe that many pastors and bishops who have their wives as fellow pastors do so due to the pressure of that same woman because she resents the background.

Numbers 30 deals with vows, the important one for our topic being those of a married woman, who must get her husband’s clear go ahead before proceeding.

Would she need that if even her husband ministers at her mercy (through her resources of course)?

Who between the holder of the purse and the carrier of the vision will be the determinant of the direction the ministry will take?

I am becoming such a wet blanket for some. But I believe sanity is more important than feelings.

Vision is the pursuit of an order from God whereas support is the response to an appeal.

Can a husband have the kind of authority he needs to pursue God’s order if he is subject to his wife’s support?

If, for some of us who rely on God’s people for all support, we have support shifting all the time, do you think a wife’s support is immoveable? Can she also have second thoughts about our pursuit of God’s call?

I am dealing here with a husband who ministers and the wife is holding a job or running a business to support him.

I am also talking of this man who raises support but the wife has to have a business or run a business to supplement that support.

She will therefore be required to step in again and again to rescue her husband when the support taps run dry as they always do.

If Sarah gave up and pushed Abraham to bend the rules to take Hagar after sixty years of faithfully waiting, yet she was feeding off his bounty and relationship with God, what makes you think that a wife would not get tired of stepping in so many times after a support dip?

What makes you think that she will agree to leave her job or close her business when God orders you to order her?

What makes you think she will listen to you when you receive an order she resents?

Those are the things I want us to think about.

She will in theory be the virtuous woman.

But her holding the pulse strings makes her somebody else, a major stakeholder to something she does not understand, as happened with Sarah and many others.

Or you do not remember Zipporah? Or Michal? Or Rachael?

A man must get his orders from heaven. And those orders do not need a wife to understand or even agree with.

Her position is bowing down to the lordship of her husband as he pursues those orders.

And it is impossible, I feel, for someone to bow down to someone who bows to them for support.

Many think a working woman is an asset to a minister but I feel the opposite is the reality.

I am throwing very heavy stones on a topic many will gladly stone me for saying.

But that is what I get when I interact with the word of God.

That is what I see when I observe ministers who are comfortable because mama is holding the fort with her resourcefulness even as he labours in the unyielding field.

It becomes worse when the ministry eventually picks up and is able to completely take care of the minister because mama will many times refuse to leave that job or close the business because she believes that job is the insurance scheme for the family, since, who knows whether that support is sustainable, anyway?

Or she will insist on being part of the decision making and resource sharing determining team in the ministry so that there are no shocks she is not part of.

This means she will be a housewife most of the time but must be there when ministers are determining the direction ministry is taking, having a bigger vote than any of the ones on the ground.

Or she will be in the background yet her husband or board cannot make any decision without her input because of her initial investment.

Should I stop here?

Forgetfulness

Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: (Numbers 14: 22, 23)

We were having a discussion about forgetfulness.

Though we differed on a few things, we were agreed on the fact that forgetfulness is sin.

In short, forgetting what I am supposed to remember is sin.

Then I got to consider forgetfulness.

Do you know that it could be foundational in the whole dynamic of sin?

It could actually be the sin that enables and empowers all other sins.

We say, ‘once bitten, twice shy’, because we are employing memory.

You remove that memory and you can be bitten all the time.

Let us look at a very common sin, illicit sex, or, in short, sex outside divine and societal boundaries.

Who doesn’t know that they could be caught and dealt with ruthlessly?

Who doesn’t know about STI, even terminal ones?

Who doesn’t know about the shame that accompanies that thrill?

Who doesn’t know that their marriage could collapse due to that?

Who among the unmarried doesn’t know that they are playing with their future?

Who among the students doesn’t know that that thrill will affect, may even kill their studies?

However, looking at the reality on the ground, sexual immorality is growing at alarming rates everywhere you look.

Boundaries are being demolished all the time.

That despite the fact that divorce is soaring and that is the key driver.

This despite the fact that there are enough examples of students whose lives have been cut short and others have had to do the same to their studies.

This despite the fact that businesses are collapsing as a direct result of that.

What does this tell us?

We choose to remember what favours our circumstance.

We employ selective amnesia for that short thrill.

In short, we forget everything else when the sex animal gets aroused.

No wonder Proverbs says that the sexually immoral lacks sense, or is an idiot if we used more current wording.

But it is the same when pursuit for self interest takes charge.

Look at greed. Or addiction. Or gambling

Look at corruption. Or overindulgence.

Someone is digging themself into a hole they know is bottomless yet lacks any sense to stop digging, yet it is in their power to do so.

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! (Isaiah 5:8)

The pursuit of things and wealth is one very stupid pursuit when looked at from outside.

You wonder what drives someone to pursue wealth at the expense of self.

Why does someone who has everything never stop grabbing?

Why does someone with more wealth than his posterity could ever exhaust however profligately they live and spend never pause to wonder why they still are unable to pause in their grabbing?

There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. (Ecclesiastes 4:8)

The rich fool in Jesus’ parable was wiser than most of us because he at least came to the conclusion of his pursuit when he realised that he had made enough to live on for the rest of his life.

The fact that there are wealthy people who die of hunger in their busyness as their employees and labourers are left enjoying their wealth is telling on that pursuit.

Forgetfulness is the reason Adam sinned.

The evil one just needed to question what God said, shift it ever so slightly to imply what He meant, to lure our first parents to rebellion.

And he succeeded because he dealt with the person who did not get the original memo since she couldn’t argue about an order directed elsewhere.

Then, because of her feminine appeal, she was able to shift Adam from the order, because she ate of the fruit before informing him and most likely questioned God’s ‘threat’ of death.

Did God really say? was Satan’s snare.

Will we really die? must have been Eve’s rolled eye challenge to Adam after she ate the fruit.

And the fall happened because of that slight memory lapse.

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119:11)

The only insurance we have against sin is God’s word stored in our hearts.

This is because it is the only one that can direct our heart to be aligned to God’s word since that is where it originates from.

But it doesn’t easily get into the heart’s storage.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17: 9, 10)

There must be effort to condition the heart to willingly host God’s word.

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

Before it gets into the heart, it must be the conversation around me. it must be the topic I am constantly engrossed in, consistently.

I must be committed to spending adequate time hearing, reading, studying, memorizing and meditating on God’s word for it to have that kind of impact in my heart.

I cannot be flippant with my intake of God’s word and expect to have God’s worldview.

I can’t spend time following news and trends and expect to find my rest in God.

I can’t spend more time in worldly pursuits and expect to have a heart leaning heavenward.

In short, the amount of effort I spend on my pursuit of God’s revelation (Bible), will determine the state of my heart as far as God is concerned.

And it will be evident to anybody around me.

Preachers whose sermons revolve around current affairs show you where they are feeding from.

In this world cup season, you can be sure that most fellowships revolve around it, because that is where the hearts are.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

The filling comes because there is a desperation in that pursuit.

You cannot use your spare time to pursue godliness and expect to achieve anywhere close to someone who is up long before daybreak in his pursuit.

You do not expect to get as much from prayer when you are squeezing moments to do it as the person who dedicates hours toward the same.

You do not expect as much from your intake of scripture when you will open your Bible before bed as the person who has set up a study room, time and resources for his pursuit.

That is why there are believers who are decades in the faith who have never matured yet you find a firebrand new believer taking great strides in a very short time because of his sold-out nature.

We are still dealing with forgetfulness.

I just want us to realise that God’s word is the glue that binds us to all His revelation, past, present and future.

It is the one that activates our memory and kills our forgetfulness.

Allow me, however, to get us a scriptural example of forgetfulness.

Esau was third in line on Abraham’s promise.

He must have spent some years with the patriarch and heard enough stories about his journey of faith.

He of course knew of his father’s pursuit of a wife and its demands.

Yet for a meal he kicked himself out of that position.

Imagine hunger disinheriting you!

Worse still, he married Canaanite girls.

Yet he didn’t realise that his father was saddened by that breach until Isaac issued a similar order to Jacob.

Yet we know that Esau was a very hard-working man.

This simply means that his heart was not as hard working as his body.

Or that he allowed his hard-working body to dictate terms to his heart.

No wonder a birthright could be exchanged with a plate of stew.

And going the lengths his grandfather went to get a wife for his father was untenable to his basic need of a wife, even wives.

You even realise as he was meeting his brother that he had completely forgotten how he was tricked out of what had been his; because he had made it anyhow.

Esau was not spiritually leaning and so had little awareness of the spiritual.

And we are not much different if we become preoccupied with the here and now at the expense of the eternal.

The reality is that everything the world offers is temporal, however permanent we may want to make it appear.

And that is so from wealth to fun to power.

We are like a child who thinks he has an unlimited amount of time and energy.

We are like a tycoon’s child who looks down on everybody beneath his class because of the wealth he was born into, wealth he may waste in a flash once the one who made it exits the scene.

We are like that limousine chauffeur looking down on one driving his own ramshackle without realising that this one he is looking down on at least knows how to manage his own car.

All these forget the basics.

His parents were once children.

That tycoon sweated to create that wealth.

That limousine is not his.

In short, the main problem is that someone looks at the temporal and interprets it as eternal because of that forgetfulness.

And we do that even in ministry

For example, what are the marks of a successful minister or ministry?

We revere huge churches, large congregations, impressively large autos and huge titles.

We will want to tap into the anointing of someone who dines with kings without asking whether he could be a sellout to the Gospel of the kingdom.

We want to be mentored by the megastars of the church without caring to know where that stardom is based.

We conveniently forget that when God looks at His ministers, faithfulness in their obedience is the only currency He uses.

We also conveniently forget that Christ’s anointing manifested first in preaching the Gospel to the poor and underprivileged.

We also choose to forget that Christ’s mark of greatness was washing other’s feet, not lording over them.

We therefore forget God’s standards for the world’s allure.

We forget His standards for the world’s rewards.

And like Israel, we are condemned with wandering year after year, wallowing in our choices.

Can I stop here?