Revival (Repentance 2)

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. (Luke 15:24)

I want us to use the prodigal to look at what results from genuine repentance, that is the revival of the relationship sin had killed.

The argument is the same. There was nothing to build on concerning the prodigal’s relationship.

His departure from his father’s compound and authority had effectively killed his relationship to him.

He therefore had nothing to heal since it was dead and buried.

What he needed is a new relationship established.

But as we saw with repentance, many of us seek to pump up those dead relationships with the hope that we will refire what had waned without realizing the folly and futility of the whole thing. Doing that is like trying first aid in the mortuary.

When we need revival, we are not talking about refiring our passion for the things of God. We are calling on God to create in us a new thing; a new love and passion.

We have nothing to build on but God’s mercy and reviving power.

Sadly, most of the people talking about revival boast about their being alive. They still believe their passion for the things of God is fine and just needs a small push. No wonder nothing changes however many revival activities they may have.

The first qualification of revival is a confirmed death.

We have heard of drunks who were mistakenly taken to morgues because they appeared dead.

But were they dead? Of course not.

The good thing is that some of them were able to see their spiritual death and cried to be revived in that direction.

Before you start arguing, allow me to give a few other scriptures.

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. (Isaiah 6:5)

For Isaiah to be revived, he clearly saw his depravity. And I hope you realise that he was already a prophet when he was saying this.

Go ye, enquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us. (2Kings 22:13)

Again, you will see that Josiah was repairing the temple when the scriptures were found. He was not minding his own business when he saw his need for revival as we have also seen with Isaiah.

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. (Luke 5:8)

We also see Peter seeing his wretchedness after he had offered Jesus a platform for preaching and performing a miracle.

What am I saying?

It is only in our deadedness that we can be able to see our need for revival. What I mean is that we must be clearly able to see how dead we are to qualify for revival.

You can’t revive a living thing.

We are deceiving ourselves when we are praying for God to revive us before we see and acknowledge our death.

From the three people I have mentioned, it is only the spiritually awakened that can clearly their death and thus their need for revival.

Others will continue shouting revival in their liveliness.

It is like the prodigal confessing that he has been reaccepted by his father before seeing how completely he had disconnected from him.

I am sure he battled that deception for a long time before finally seeing the futility of the same in the eyes of the prevailing circumstances.

My father loves me unconditionally. My father will accept me unreservedly. My father knows that I am sorry for my shameful and wasteful conduct. I am the son of my father. And many other positive confessions.

I am also sure that David battled the same thoughts and probably made similar confessions after his sin.

That is why repentance takes time. We fight the most to make our sin look less serious than it is. We fight the fiercest to convince ourselves that it is not as big a deal as others may think or even the Bible says.

We forget that we are not the ones that set the standards we have breached. We forget the fact that we are the ones in need of forgiveness and restoration.

We are the ones who left home. We are the ones who left the marriage. We are the ones who left school. We are the ones who left whatever it was we had betrayed.

It is therefore foolish to even imagine we have any right to be accepted.

It is water under the bridge, only that we broke that bridge into pieces in our breach and we have no capacity to rebuild it since it does not lead to our compound but to the compound we deserted after desecrating.

We are pleading with the offended to rebuild the bridge and allow us to use it to get into his life. He is not the one in need of that bridge.

He therefore determines whether there even needs to be a bridge in the first place, let alone whether we will need to be allowed to use it.

Allow me to say something else concerning repentance and revival.

It originates with God and not man.

Let me explain.

Someone has to see God for who He is and what He represents to be able to see his wretchedness.

I will always defend my choices and actions because I was not forced to sin.

Using me as the standard will always seek to justify me.

That is why people look for verses to defend their sin instead of confessing.

Isaiah had to see God to see his wretchedness. Josiah had to see God’s standards to see his fallenness. And Peter had to see Christ’s power to see his sinful nature.

You may realise that nobody preached to them. It was the presence of God that painted their sin clearest.

This means that there is only one type of preaching that can bring about revival. And it is the preaching that paints God clearly; His nature, His attributes, His holiness, His jealousy, His hatred for sin, His love, etc.

The preaching that builds kiosks around His love and mercy and leaves out His other attributes has no capacity of bringing about revival. Preaching dwelling on His Rapha and Jireh and leaves out His Tsidkenu and Kabowd psyches people to hope without changing.

You can’t truly repent if you have not encountered God and seen what He is like. You can’t repent is you do not have His standards in your heart and mind.

Those are the same terms when we use when talking about revival.

Any student of revival will tell you that.

Repentance is what we do when we encounter God. Revival is what results after God restores the relationship our backslidden nature broke.

That is what was done to the prodigal.

He was restored into a new relationship.

A ring restored his authority.

Washing removed the stench of his rebellion.

A gown restored his honor.

And the party indicated his restoration into the family.

But that was able to happen because he had finally confessed to have died to his father so that the father more or less created a new son from the old.

That is what revival is.

The tragicomedy that our generation calls revival is actually a stench in God’s nose.

Will we look up to God to allow Him to define revival to us? Will we seek to know Him enough to repent after rejecting our self-justification for so long?

Do we really agree that we are not worthy to be called His sons?

Or is our independence fighting to force God to accept us on our terms?

Repentance

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (Luke 15: 18, 19)

I want us to look at repentance today.

And the main thing I want us to focus on is the complete lack of entitlement in repentance we see as we study the Bible.

Second is the fact that we have no entitlement except a plea for mercy that we will give the offended the whole stick to do to us as he would.

It is preposterous to expect any mercy if you will set the terms for your forgiveness or reception. That is why I want us to start with the prodigal.

He had wasted his inheritance. He had defamed his father through his reprehensible living. He had shamed his friends when he ran off with harlots.

He had chosen to live his life contrary to everything he had been taught and had therefore disinherited himself completely.

Did his father love him? Of course.

Was he following him? It is very possible he had his tabs on him and was seeing him wallowing in that slough of sin.

The reason I say this is because we see him prepared for his comeback. The fatted calf, the robe, the ring, were all indicators that the father was expecting his son to come back.

Why then did he not go looking for him?

Doing so would have short-circuited the repentance. It would have dealt with repentance on the prodigal’s terms.

The son had to come back to himself. He had to see himself in the eyes of his father and his standards.

It is when he knew that he was unworthy to be called a son of his father that he qualified to be restored into one. That is the reason his father never looked for him.

I know about parents whose children die on drugs/ on the streets for that single reason. They are not given time to come back to themselves. They are not allowed to experience their lostness. Their parent’s love and care will supersede those whorehouses and sloughs.

This breeds entitlement since the prodigal knows that he will be rescued however much he shames his father. He therefore feels as if his father’s love has no boundaries and would stretch to infinity.

They go to prison and their father bails them out. If they were this father we are talking about they could have never allowed their son feed swine and even battle with swine for food. This because they have an abundant of food as we see the prodigal confessing.

But the father of the prodigal was not like that. He allowed him to sink to his lowest because he knew that intervening before then would not have created a chance for his son to repent.

No wonder his son came back to himself.

Look at what he says.

I am disqualified from being your son. Please just give me a job.

He was not negotiating any terms for his acceptance. He was not even reminding his father that he was his lost son. He was not pleading for any forgotten inheritance.

He was pleading for mercy; to be made a hired hand.

That is what made his father know that he had his son back.

Handling sin with kid gloves worsens it.

Spoilt children, or sons of Belial as the Bible calls them, are children whose sin was handled delicately. They were allowed to repent on their terms, making their repentance plastic and completely hypocritical.

Let me give a Biblical example.

Absalom killed his brother for raping his sister. I am sure he was angry with his father for not doing the killing. Since he knew that he was supposed to die for his crime according to the Bible his father believed, he ran away.

When he is brought back, it was not because he was sorry for his crime but because his father longed for him. Now that breeds entitlement.

He burns the farm of the person who negotiated his coming back to be able to see his father.

Then he starts plotting to overthrow his father, something he almost succeeded in.

All because he was not given time to repent before being received.

Anyone who has dealt with addicts will confirm this since they deal with this aspect of repentance every day.

You see, true repentance is very humbling. No wonder it takes ages before someone can get there. Remember this?

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. (Psalm 32: 3, 4)

David was not battling conviction. He was fighting the acknowledgement of that sin since there were sure to have been decisions that would have needed to be made and actions that needed to be performed.

Saying that I have sinned is very easy. That is where rebellion thrives.

Facing my sin is the actual problem we have after we have sinned because I am not willing to face my sin head on. I am not willing to wear the gown of shame the sin made for me.

Like Saul we want our reputation to remain intact. We want our confession to return us to the place our sin snatched us from without dealing with the damages it caused. It might be the problem the prodigal had, to the point that he battled swine for food just because he couldn’t face his father in contrition.

The good thing is that he finally decided that enough was enough. He was able to empty himself of entitlement of any sort. He was not even pleading to be taken back because he knew that he had completely disinherited himself from anything and anybody his father represented.

Forget me as a son. I am not making any demands on you. I am just pleading for one thing. Just give me the most menial job so that I can at least have something to eat.

Which father can resist such repentance?

I am sure that if he had met his elder brother and approached him like this he could also have softened.

This because his repentance went beyond saying sorry. He humbled himself completely as he faced his fallenness head on.

He was not ashamed to call himself worthless and useless in his father’s economy.

But assume with me that he came like most approach repentance.

Father, please listen to me. I know you will not understand. But you see I am your son and had to do what I did. And we can always look for some more things to replace what got lost.

What kind of grace could he have expected?

Nobody is interested in knowing how you fell or even why. Nobody cares what made you live contrary to everything you knew was right. Nobody cares to know, let alone understand, the temptation that brought you down.

Seeking to take them there is akin to causing them to revisit the pain you have caused them in that fallenness and sin.

I will repeat. Nobody wants to know why you fell or even how you fell. In fact, you can only be sure of one thing; no mercy or understanding can be accessed this way. No grace can be extended your way from the offended if you pursue that path.

You see, the father and elder brother knew what the prodigal was doing with his inheritance. And they also knew how short that experience was going to be.

Explaining that wastefulness would have been reopening those painful wounds. That is the bitterness we see with the elder brother because he had been absent when the confession was made. He simply thought that his father had been involved in the coming back of his brother.

There are two dangerous camouflages rebellion uses to feign repentance.

The first I have mentioned earlier being the explanation of the error and seeking to be understood so that you are then received on favorable terms, simply saying, terms that suit you.

We see that with king Saul when Samuel confronted him.

The truth is that it will harden the offended and make it harder for them to ever accept the genuineness of any repentance on your side.

The other one is the back door type.

In this someone seeks to reverse the damage in their spirit with good works. Allow me to use the prodigal to explain.

Imagine him sneaking to his father’s compound and swearing the servants to secrecy so that he can slowly try to rectify the damage he caused by becoming the best servant. He trusts that his father will discover that that most hardworking servant is his prodigal son. Then he could have repented when the confrontation occurred.

Do you think that ruse could have worked? Wouldn’t it have hastened his complete banishment by blocking any chance of restoration?

You see, it is the offended who has all the keys to restoration. Only the offended has any olive branch to offer the offender.

Yet how many times do we see ourselves or others doing that sneaky backdoor repentance?

About thirty years ago in a church I served, a young man became so engrossed in ministry, almost everywhere. From teaching Sunday School to choir to evangelism.

But he had been in church all along and so it was a sudden burst of zeal all of a sudden.

We didn’t think much about it except appreciating the new worker God has challenged.

But in a short while we came to learn that he was running away from the impact of his sin. He wanted to cover up his sin by being serious with God. He was seeking to cover his need for repentance by serving God.

Sadly, this repeats itself so frequently one wonders why repentance is so difficult while sin was so enticing, probably pleasurable that you were ready to trash what God says to enjoy it.

The truth of the matter is that for repentance to happen, there must be a complete absence of any entitlement, any respect, any personal worth or value in the repentant.

I must empty myself of myself to be able to truly repent.

Let me get us to this verse we very frequently quote.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

God is not asking us to explain our sins and fallenness. He is simply calling us into repentance, promising to forgive us if we do so as we see in subsequent verses.

Allow me to wind this up by saying in summary that repentance, to be acceptable, presents the repentant at his most vulnerable, requiring only mercy.

It is that mercy that has any capacity of extending forgiveness.

Going it any other way is counterproductive as it worsens the pain the sin had created. It actually reopens the wounds someone had been trying to heal after your injury (many times knowing about your sin).

I am sure probably all of you have dealt with that fake repentance at one time or the other. I know very few will confess to being culprits in that fake repentance.

But what is wrong with examining our hearts afresh so that we can deal with whatever God shows us concerning our repentance(s)?

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)

Partnership Dynamics

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. (Romans 15:1)

I have intentionally chosen the ‘wrong’ verse to communicate a Biblical truth.

Why wrong? I know someone is asking.

I am writing about the relationship between a man and his wife.

I will start by taking us to farming, since as anyone who has interacted with the Bible consistently knows that the book leans on agriculture than it does business. God deals with His people as a farmer as opposed to as a businessman as many nowadays teach.

With very few exceptions, all the parables in the Bible and in Christ’s teachings were also agricultural in scope.

With Jesus, the parable of the talents is the one that is plainly business oriented though it also easily fits an agricultural perspective.

Let me get to my message.

Many a farmer with a yoke of oxen must know the respective strengths of each of his bulls. He must know the weaknesses or peculiarities of each bull to be able to work them properly.

Allow me to explain using the farm.

When the farmer is ploughing with that yoke of oxen, it is extremely important that he knows how each of the bulls can pull.

Then he will be able to plan his compensational tactics. Otherwise, he will end up with a farm that is shoddily ploughed.

It is the same with the ones used to pull carts. The driver must know his oxen well. Otherwise, he will end up crashing into fences and rockfaces and harming those oxen in the process.

Or do you not remember God commanding His people not to be yoking a donkey and an ox together?

That is the primary reason. Though there might also be religious reasons as was with planting two different plants and wearing two different fabrics.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. (1Peter 3:7)

That is the dynamic I want us to examine today.

What happens when two oxen of different strengths are yoked together is similar to what Peter is saying here.

The husband and wife are yoked together in marriage, no wonder they are called one flesh.

However, one is stronger than the other, the husband.

The implications of that are that there would be disaster if they are treated as equal in their yoking since they will be pulling very differently, or using very different strengths. They could very easily be moving in circles since the stronger partner cannot move straight as he will be being pulled back by the weaker one, ending up forgetting the straight and narrow.

There must be some compensational mechanisms in place if the team is to accomplish its intended purpose.

What am I talking about?

The stronger partner must intentionally handle more weight for the work to be done smoothly. It is as the stronger partner takes in more weight that the team will move in tandem as the weaker one is relieved from handling the weight she would have handled if the burden was shared equally.

As every Christian confesses, marriage was God’s idea. This implies that He is the One who came out with the blueprint for the same.

He therefore is the One who came up with those compensatory mechanisms I am talking about.

The good thing is that He has released them through His word. Sadly, our generation seems hell bent on trashing those guidelines.

Let me quote the most blatant of it because it is happening in the holy place.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. (1Timothy 2:12)

Was God stupid to allow that verse in the holy writ?

Yet it is not the only verse teaching that. You will be hard pressed to argue for the trashing of that instruction.

Let me give another passage

If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth; And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand. But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her. And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or uttered ought out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul; And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it: then her vows shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her soul shall stand. But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the LORD shall forgive her. (Numbers 30: 3 – 8)

Allow me to also add two other verses from the same passage

Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void. But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity. (Numbers 30: 13, 15)

That for me is the strength God meant.

It is illogical to hold someone answerable for another person’s vows (commitment to God) if they are equal partners. Two people cannot be equal if one is held accountable for the actions of the other.

Like you will notice when you read the Bible, God always holds the husband accountable even for the sins of his wife. And Ahab is the prime example. He was judged for doing something he probably had no idea how it happened. And that is repeated wherever else you look in the Bible.

A weaker stronger partner or a stronger weaker partner is therefore a disaster wherever you look for that reason. A partner who allows the weaker partner to make their decisions is abominable in God’s eyes. For the simple reason that all those decisions will be attributable to him. A partner whose spirituality is guided by his wife is an ignoramus because he is the actual spiritual head in that structure and is thus accountable to God for the direction that spirituality takes them.

David committed adultery yet the woman was nowhere mentioned in the judgment though I highly suspect she is the one who set up the king. And you will see this everywhere you look at in the Bible.

For example, do you know that even Mary who carried Jesus was completely overlooked once Joseph took over the responsibility of taking her as his wife. Why was someone who was so highly spoken of completely shunted when decisions concerning her were being made?

I know this is a hard teaching. This is the reason I am trying to go slowly because I could easily (I know I have already done to some) antagonize the bulk of my readers based on the teachings they have been receiving and examples they have been following.

It is plain when you read the Bible that the spiritual weight of any family is on the man. That is why Paul said that he is the head of the wife, and not the family as many people teach. It is the two that will head the family unit as yokefellows.

Allow me to add another aspect to this topic.

In the verse above, the word vessel is used.

Why vessel? I think it is primarily because she is handling some treasure.

Second is that she is delicate. That is why prayer is mentioned.

This directly makes the man a carrier of that vessel, a carrier who must handle it with care to enable her to carry her treasure and present it to her Lord, Jesus Christ.

The man not only handles proportionately more weight than his wife, he is called upon to carry her and do it very carefully so that she can fulfil her responsibilities, the weight God has placed on her.

That is why he is judged for the sins of that wife.

What are the implications for the man?

He must guard his relationship with God jealously since that is what will give him the right direction in handling this new vessel that God has entrusted to him.

He must be essentially the spiritual power house in that structure as anything else is against God’s blueprint.

It is sad that in many homes it is the wife who guides the prayer (and everything spiritual) dimension therein. Yet is that even scriptural?

I commented on a series of prayer books directed at everybody else, except the men who are the only ones scripturally ordered to pray.

Or do you not remember that only all the men were instructed to go to the designated place three times a year? Do you think it was oversight on God’s side? Or did not God create women with a spiritual dimension?

The truth is that women are more spiritually leaning than men.

That is why they can very easily bring men down spiritually as we see everywhere we look at in the scriptures.

That is the problem because that spirituality is multidimensional; meaning she can easily connect to spirituality from any direction. Incidentally that is why they boast of being able to multitask since that is easily apparent in the spiritual dimension.

That is what we see with Eve.

Whereas Adam was focused on the assignment God had given him, Eve’s spirituality drew her to renegotiate God’s orders with the wrong spiritual dimension leading to sin.

Adam sinned because he defended her misdirected spirituality. That is why God judged him for listening to his wife. In short Adam was judged for giving his wife as the authority of an equal partner.

That is what the Bible plainly teaches.

I will address other aspects of this message if/ when God allows me to.

Why Serpents? 3

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. (Psalm 1:1)

Today I want us to move outside what we were looking at, ministers of the Gospel.

I want us to look at our enemy as the serpent, since that is what he is called severally in the scriptures.

I also want us to look at him as he is addressed by Peter, as a roaring lion.

Way am I doing this?

Primarily because our generation has recreated the devil and magnified him beyond what the scriptures say.

The devil is not powerful, at least not as powerful as many believers think he is.

Second is that he is not omnipresent, meaning is operations are limited to places and people who have allowed him to use them and the places that have been dedicated to his use.

Third is that he is not all knowing and so depends on people getting him information to use.

This is the reason I want us to look at him with the revelation I have shared about serpents.

Probably the last reason I need us to look at the enemy of our souls as the serpent the Bible calls him is because he is as vulnerable against the march of an obedient church.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)

As I have stated severally, gates are defensive. This verse therefore paints the devil as losing ground once our obedience is sealed.

The other verse that says the same thing is Genesis 3:15.

The only place the serpent can bite a man is the heel, thereby endangering his head in the process since that heel is part of the foot that can easily trample him.

I hope I am communicating something even before getting to the crux of the message.

The devil is limited.  And I am repeating this for emphasis.

But the point I want us to focus on today is his shrewdness. He must be shrewd because he is fully aware of his limitations. He knows that he has no chance of achieving anything unless he uses that subtlety.

A roaring lion, as I have written elsewhere, roars for the simple reason of scaring his enemies since a lion does not roar as part of his hunting strategy.

Incidentally, the devil is not called a roaring lion. He is pictured as projecting himself as one.

That roar is therefore part of that subtlety. It is part of his knowing his limitations and therefore putting on a false front to scare some of you into incapacity.

For many believers, that roar has scared them to the point of crippling their whole lives as it has completely dominated their whole system. It is said that a lion’s roar can be heard 2.5 miles (4km) from the point of the roaring since it is meant to keep his pride safe from marauders.

You could therefore be scared of leaving your house when the lion is too far to even smell your presence.

Is that not what the devil has for most succeeded in doing in our generation?

Explain to me why is there more discussion on the devil and his servants and wiles when Christ should be the only focus of our narrative? Why is most prayer nowadays about binding, resisting and commanding the devil than it is about releasing God’s kingdom?

I have written about blood abuse. And it has to do with Christ’s blood.

Do you realise that this whole doctrine finds its roots in the glorification of the devil and everything he represents? Do you realise that we call on that blood to cover us (blood abusers) because we are scared of the devil that we need that film to cover us?

Yet we are not diligent enough to pursue a more spiritual cover from the attacks of the enemy, which is our obedience.

What am I saying?

Simply that the devil, like any serpent, is vulnerable and limited.

He is therefore not someone to disturb an obedient believer. In actual fact, he is scared to death of being trampled by the same since he knows that there is absolutely no chance for overcoming him unless he can rebel against God as he knows that he cannot even repel him from raiding hell since his progress breaks through the gates effortlessly.

He will pretend to lunge at you so that you think he will finish you though he knows that even if he was to bite, his poison can never do you any harm. He will roar so that you imagine how impenetrable and heavily guarded they are to stop from approaching those gates since he knows that that is the only way he stands the slimmest chance of delaying, not stopping, the advance of the church.

This is not a conclusive post. I have written briefly just to enlighten you that your obedience is your victory. That once you pursue obedience, the devil has a zero chance of harming you unless on God’s orders as happened with our brother Job and Peter.

Will you choose obedience?

 

Teaching in Pain, a Lesson on Gratitude

As I have boon looking at the flooding in our region, it has dawned on me that God is so precise in His guidance when we allow Him to.

This has led me into having so much gratitude in my heart for that leadership.

Let me get you into my heart briefly.

As those who have been following me through my blog, you must be aware that God has for a long time been speaking to me about my new aspect of ministry, especially after I turned fifty

As I have shared, priests were supposed to serve from thirty years and stop serving at fifty.

It means they were to stop serving when their bodies were still strong and able to continue serving.

Incidentally, God had impressed that truth on me for a very long time. I therefore knew that it was just a matter of time. I remember sharing those truths even before the day approached.

Among the things God did as that time came was to offer me some rest. It is essential for an elder to be seated to offer adequate guidance to the active.

I had been in the city for a long time with all the hassles inherent in it.

So, the first major thing God did to me was to give me my own place to free me from the stresses of house rent and its related strains.

He did not give me a ready-made place. Instead, He gave me money for the purchase and building of that place; in the right phases since that was one way of getting me into the place of rest.

I first got money for purchasing land yet it was six months before I was able to get to see that land. This is the focus of this post.

There was a wide range of places to choose from and it required not only the money but also the close guidance of God who had opened that door.

Since I had an inkling of the kind of place God needed me to have, I was looking for land in four counties, something I have also shared. Even then, I had my preferences according to the vision God had placed in my heart.

I would be called to see a piece of land, sometimes in far off places, by friends I had asked for assistance on the same.

With a friend or two, I would then go to the place to view the land.

A few times, we would immediately dismiss the land as not representing the vision God had put in my heart concerning it.

Sometimes, the land would be ideal and we would fall over ourselves in admiration.

I could take the copy of the title deed to commence the process of the purchase.

When I went home, however, God would stop me from proceeding by refusing to give His release.

At some point, I wondered whether I was the one who was not hearing God right, especially with the advice I got from my friends to take the very good pieces of land.

I remember once being caught in the curfew with my sons who had accompanied me to one such visit that we had to lodge in Nairobi during the corona season. Even then we had gotten the ideal piece of land among the very many we had viewed and even taking a copy of its title deed.

Still, God said No!

It was then that my broker told me that there was a place that had had so much war for a long time and that there was sure to be some land if I was not scared of that past.

We therefore went to view.

The piece of land was simply amazing, ideal for everything I would need.

It had a well already dug and built over. It had enough building materials to set off my building project. It even had mature trees, enough not just for shade but even for a few other uses. And of course, the price was just right. The owner was a minister of the Gospel.

There was no dispute that we had got the deal I was pursuing. I even started imagining the ministry I would be doing in that place.

God is as always interesting.

A few days after waiting for a copy of the title deed to be brought, I was told that the owner had been convinced to stop selling the piece of land.

What I think happened is that God realised that the offer had blocked my ears from hearing Him and had barred me from pursuing that deal, as has happened to me some other times. He therefore simply stopped it.

Later I was told there were some other pieces of land in the same area being sold and I didn’t feel any push towards them after that disappointment.

I went anyway. There were several offers on the table.

The first one we went to view was so way off anywhere (it appeared so) since we parked our vehicle and walked through the bush and brush for so long.

However, when I was shown that wasteland chocked with weeds, I felt in my heart that that was the land I had been looking for.

We went to look at several other pieces which looked even more promising and nearer development but my heart had already gotten to its rest.

My friends advised me against what my heart was telling me but I had the peace of God.

That is the place I am at today.

I have written all this to get us to this point.

The place I settled in is slightly elevated and boasts of sandy soil with a very gentle slope.

With this abundance of rain, my place has never flooded.

Two reasons. First, sandy soil simply passes the water through. Five minutes after the rain stops, you might think it rained the previous day. Second is that due to the elevation there is no time you will find any excess water on my plot, even in the farm. I then walk in sandals, even to the farm!

Less than fifty metres from my place you will get to a river and lake that go for over a kilometre.

In the other direction, I can comfortably get to the road without wading in water or mud.

With the rains, my crops are doing quite well as they are free from flooding.

What am I saying?

God directed me to the place I am at. His precision at doing it is amazing just like Him.

When I think of the place God stopped me from purchasing, the place everybody, including me, thought was ideal, I am sure that it is at this point completely flooded. I most likely would have had to move out.

I hope you now understand why I am so grateful.

Catastrophes

I want to write something I posted several years ago concerning what is happening to our nation and region concerning the flooding we are witnessing.

I have thought to rewrite it since it is a difficult task to get since it is possible it got lost when my computer crashed some time ago.

I also can’t look for it on my blog because there are over six hundred messages that would require a substantial amount of time to trace yet I can just write it.

I will therefore write the message as I feel God wants me to share at this time, trusting that someone will hear what God is saying concerning what is happening. I will also add something on it.

What is the purpose of catastrophes in the life of a believer? And I am saying believer because I am convinced that the world hangs on the lives of the believers. The truth is that all of creation depends on the believer to function right.

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8: 21 – 23)

Last year, we were informed that El Nino was coming and that there needed to be adequate preparation, just as had happened the time I had shared that message.

Everybody got busy with interventions. Tons of cash was raised.

Then it downgraded itself.

Kenyans complained very bitterly, blaming the meteorological department for raising false flags. But those flags were international.

Then it came, but not as brutal as was expected.

This season not much rain was expected. But it came with a vengeance and is still continuing to wreak havoc.

Why did the weather people not warn us?

That is what I want us to look at.

God sends catastrophes to draw our attention. I compare it with a shout for attention.

That is why He warns before they come so that His people can respond and avert that judgment.

Shifting that information from repentance to human interventions therefore serves to dull our ears to what God is shouting about.

As I said at that time, our interventions will make Him defer that judgment because it will then serve no purpose of His.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with interventions.

What I am saying is that the main reason God will send something of that sort is to draw our attention; to bring us back to Himself. He brings them to draw us back to His grace, forgiveness and restoration. He brings them to show us the futility of our effort; to demonstrate to us that we are helpless without Him and a right relationship with Him.

Focusing on interventions is therefore counterproductive if it is the only thing we do.

No wonder He will then defer the catastrophes to a time we will be forced to see ONLY His hand in them. Because then we will have the option of deciding how we will need to respond to Him and His revelation.

I am sure that is why God referred El Nino last season and brought it this season.

But I doubt whether many believers know that or can even acknowledge it if it was told them.

Will we return to God?

Allow me to also add something else.

The earth is the Lord’s. He is therefore the ultimate custodian as her creator.

He is in the best position to make it function as it would.

We have had a drought that has devastated nations, and that for a long time.

Could this mega rain be His way of restoring the water that has been lost through that drought? Could it be His way of restoring the water tables to where they should be since we have refused to repent to allow Him to restore them as He desires to?

You see, wells and even boreholes had started drying up.

This flooding, apart from bringing God’s people’s attention to Him, will restore the water table since His people have refused to call for His intervention.

You may realise that it is not only people who are affected by calamity. But as the custodians of this earth that God bestowed on us to manage, we are ultimately responsible for whatever happens.

The animals and plants will not die just because man has refused to go back to God since God has no issues with them.

That is why He will send a flood after a drought.

The plants and animals will thrive even as man is called to attention by his creator.

Plants that otherwise may have become extinct will all of a sudden appear as people desert those lands.

Or do you not know one reason for the captivity; the sabbath of the land that will restore the land?

God is, in bringing those floods, causing the land to replenish itself since man has been unable (actually unwilling) to listen to and obey God.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2Chronicles 7:14)

Even the global warming narrative is a pointer to our greed. It is the indictment of our selfishness and self-seeking. That is what God is drawing our attention to.

But even there we have completely lost it.

Dealing with everything but greed will also be counterproductive. Dealing with anything but sin will be even more devastating.

God created everything to be completely self-sustaining. There is simply enough for everybody and everything if we chose to be content with our lot.

There is enough land for everybody. There is enough food for everybody.

But we must decide to hold only to what we need.

But we are hoarding. We are not content with what we need. We feel content when we own the whole world and everybody else is our slave.

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)

Is it any wonder that the land itself rebels?

 

Idols 3

I want to close this topic by looking sharing from my heart my own experiences regarding this.

And it spans more topics than provision.

When I responded to God’s call almost forty years ago, there was an excitement about doing God’s will and sharing His message of salvation to His people wherever I went.

Incidentally, God opened a door for me to get into the wards of Kenyatta National Hospital, the only referral hospital in Kenya then.

This happened because I was living in the compound and I was also in fellowship with the nursing school, among other reasons.

I would get into the wards any time I felt like as God had extended favor for me all around. This means that nobody blocked me, from the gate keepers to the ward nurses.

How did I operate?

I would get to the person God led me and share the Gospel when the patient gave me a chance to do so.

Then I would pray for their healing.

Though I am not writing about motivation and the prosperity ungospel, it is important to repeat that as I have written elsewhere, I was a firm believer in the doctrine, having been fed on it since childhood. I therefore believed that sickness had nothing to do with God or faith.

The first person I prayed for (probably the most memorable incident) was a young man with tubes protruding from all over. He was in a bad place. His name was Rotich, if I can still remember.

He communicated through gestures since there were tubes protruding from his mouth and nose.

But when I shared the Gospel, he indicated that he wanted to get saved.

I therefore prayed for him to get saved as he agreed with me.

Then, probably with baited breath, I prayed for his healing. I doubt my faith had encountered that hurdle before.

Then I left.

Two or three days later I returned to the same ward and on asking his neighbors where he was, they told me that he had healed enough to be discharged.

You can imagine what that did to my faith.

I of course continued sharing the Gospel and praying for healing, but now with even more favor.

I will bring you now to the last incident. And I call it last because, like the one I have just shared, it was one I couldn’t ever forget.

I went into the pediatric ward to of course share the Gospel.

Among the first mothers I met was a lady who was a believer. We connected immediately.

I therefore teamed up with her to share the Gospel with her immediate neighbors and they responded positively and we had a great fellowship. I remember even giving her my first Bible, the Bible I treasured since it was the one that set me of into a consistent reading and study of the word.

Then we prayed for healing. And I will hasten to add that her child was not as bad as the children of those we were sharing the Gospel with. I was therefore certain that her child would be the first to receive healing.

Then I come to the same ward probably a day or two later.

The ladies we had shared the Gospel with had been discharged but my sister’s child had died.

To say I was crushed would be an understatement. Whipping could not have inflicted as much pain as I felt then.

Why of all people had this sister’s child died?

I ruled out lack of faith because the others we had prayed for (with her) had healed.

Why then? I cried to God.

As we see in Psalm 73, it is when I resorted to God’s word that I was able to make sense of this hurt. And this is what I am writing about.

God is never at our mercy. God is the Lord and never subject to anybody or anything, even if this is a person who believes in Him.

God heals for His purpose. God heals when and how He chooses.

God does not heal because I believe. I believe because He heals. There is a very clear distinction here.

It is very possible for faith to be an idol instead of a sign.

The bronze serpent was a sign. But we later see it as an idol.

And for me that is the greatest error of motivation. We want to box God into our faith instead of allowing Him to shape that faith.

That is why someone starts as a true prophet and eventually ends up being a false one.

Because God must speak, irrespective of whether He wants to or not. Irrespective of whether He needs to speak or not.

That is why preachers regurgitate other preachers’ sermons since they have no time to wait for their own word. That is why those people called Gospel musicians produce spiritual trash and error because they must produce those songs in their season and not God’s.

It is idolatry because our focus shifts from God to what He does for us. It shifts from Him to the faith that accesses what He has to offer.

And that idolatry does not happen all at once. It happens after we have gone some distance with God, a distance where we have established that He is all He says He is.

We then become too familiar with Him and are able to ‘accurately’ know how and when we can access Him and His.

We were full of faith when we were growing. Then that faith became the focus, many times because it starts getting the accolades of those around us.

It feels nice when our faith is applauded. Until we forget the object of that faith and transfer our commitment to that faith instead of the object of the same.

Incidentally that is the reason some ministers buy miracles so that they continue being relevant in their performance.

 Miracles started becoming more important, not only than the one performing them, but even than the purpose of the same.

When people attend our meeting because of the drama those miracles become, we will be afraid to declare that they are not the focus of those meetings at all. The purpose of those meetings is the message of the cross that will connect each and every respondent to the miracle source.

But that will diminish our status because we want all those fans to follow us, and especially those miracles.

That is why prophets must have that word whether God speaks or not. Because everybody is coming to hear that word from our mouth and pointing all those people to the source of that word will diminish our relevance.

That is idolatry.

But it is important to realise that God still heals. God still speaks. God is at work on our behalf.

But on His terms.

So God continued healing and saving as I continued ministering in those wards.

Allow me to close with a demonstration of that.

I was in school when I responded to God’s call. My first assignments were therefore in the school setting amongst fellow students.

I started a devotion in the morning before the assembly. Initially I was with a friend I wish I could be able to contact, Joseph Wafula. We would share a word of encouragement and pray. Then we would leave for the assembly.

In a short while, almost half of the school (and it was a Catholic sponsored school), would attend that devotion. Until the school started giving me a chance to share in the assembly.

I was also discipling as I was being discipled.

One day, I became very sick. I think it was that bad malaria that refused to respond to medication.

I felt that my time had come. And I was at peace because for the few months since I responded to God’s call, I had given my all to following everything I felt God leading me towards.

I felt like Paul that my assignment was complete and that I was ready to go home and shared the same to the small group I was discipling. I asked them to release me to go to my rest.

They said something very interesting.

You have taught us to know God. You have taught us to believe God. You have taught us to pray. We will pray and believe for your healing.

And that is what they did.

And God healed me immediately.

I hope you can understand what I am sharing.

Shifting the focus from the object of your faith is idolatry. And it becomes so when you have waxen fat from feeding from that faith that you slowly detach from the object or focus.