Auditions

I am still on music as that is what I am teaching as a precursor to teaching music and instruments.

What do people look for when they call for auditions for worship leaders? What standards do they employ and where do those standards originate from?

How come we employ worldly standards to look for spiritual ministers? Does versatility of voice and bigger vocal range make for a deep fellowship with divinity?

How do we use the world to gauge for heaven?

Fake Worship

We continue with last week’s post, this time looking at the wrong type of worship. We look at the indicators of wrong worship.

Has the place you started singing/ worship become too small for your gift or talent?

Have you blown the roof off the place you started your ministry because it can’t contain your bloated ego?

Must your pastor plead with you to ‘minister’ in the place you used to plead to be offered a chance?

Are you too big to be rebuked? Are ministers scared to confront you for your bigness?

Must there be a big place and many attendees for you to lead in worship? Do you only minister in huge concerts and events due to your gift?

Chances are that it is the object of your worship that has changed.

By the way it is the same with all other ministry.

Must you pastor a mega church because you now have a doctorate?

Must ministerial progression mirror the corporate?

Will I examine myself in the light of scripture and use the One who bought the church with His blood as an example?

Anointing

Today I just want to pose a thought to help us appreciate our words and actions versus spiritual reality. 

I hope next week I will be having a computer to start having fully prepared messages once again.

David was invited by King Saul to help his well-being especially due to the fact that a demon was making a mess of his life.

What was David's solution? Not exorcism. Not words or authority speaking.

He just played an instrument. Then healing was available. And the demon left the king.

What was the reason?

David worshiped God in the secret place. It therefore meant that God was available to him when he played the same worship on a harp.

Is that the way we do it?

When was the last time (if you have ever seen) where singing chased demons from anyone?

Would we then be wrong if we concluded that what we call worship is actually worship to another God.

Just some food for thought.

Hibernating Ministers V

Jeremiah 42 deals with a team desperate for God’s word and direction. They go to Jeremiah for intercession and direction, promising to do everything God told the prophet.

Ten days later, God speaks. But He speaks outside their options.

They dismiss the direction God was giving, even accusing the prophet of being a hireling of their enemy to facilitate their destruction. They thus open themselves to judgment for seeking God’s will yet refusing to heed it when it does not meet their circumstantial logic.

Many times that is what a hurting spirit does to us. We limit our options to our circumstantial logic. And that is the most dangerous thing we can ever do as we will many times lock out God’s options.

That is the reason we are talking about hibernating ministers; they were so hurt that ministry, especially the place they underwent the hurt becomes off limits. Yet that is the place God does the healing most effectually.

Even more drastic is the fact that our hurt can easily ascribe contrary motives to God and people He uses to reach out to us. We then move in the direction that many times will be contrary to the one God had mapped out for us.

Hearing God clearly is the solution to the hurt we have or are undergoing. Only His word and direction offers the balm with the capacity to deal with our wounds and sores.

And we can see that clearly when we study David. 1 Samuel 30 deals with such an instance. David and his team have lost everything. Their families have been captured and they did not know head or tail of where and how they were.

His army was so discouraged that they thought to stone him. Again that is very natural to the hurting. They blamed him for their calamity, as if he had also not lost his.

But what does he do? He doesn’t try to reason with them or even defend himself, though he was hurting just like them.

He looks for the priest. He needs to know what God was saying about the situation. Once he gets God’s take he is then able to move, not earlier as logic would have dictated. This was because he had God’s assurance of victory.

That is the reason we see him passing the law that there was no difference in the spoils between the army that fought and the army that was left with the supplies. That was because it was in no doubt that God was the one who not only promised the victory, but also given it.

That explains the reason David was able to not only deal with his hurt and betrayal, but also help others deal with theirs.

We can never experience God’s healing outside His word. We can never enjoy that healing outside His direction.

I understand that you are hurting. I understand that you are in pain. But I am sure that God not only understand your pain but He has a clear path to His healing touch.

God can never give you direction inconsistent to what is best for you.

What has God been telling you since you were killed and the ministry you were doing destroyed? Do you even hear or did the injury make you dumb to any other voice outside your groans?

Have you trashed God’s direction because it appears as if it was from or for the same people who hurt you so?

Suppose I told you that God will never move until you move in the direction He orders?

Hibernating Ministers IV

And it came to pass afterward, that David’s heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul’s skirt. And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD’s anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD. (1 Samuel 24: 5, 6)

We are still on the wounded and bleeding ministers, most of whose injuries were caused by their spiritual superiors and mentors.

Today I want us to look at the path to healing by dealing with the first reality we must accept to be able to access God’s healing.

Saul had raised the best battalion to hunt down and kill David, and his men if they resisted. They then go around to strategically plan the ambush. In the course of time, Saul responds to the call of nature and retreats to a secluded den away from the eyes of his troop.

But it happens to be a huge cave, a cave where David’s men are hiding.

David’s men get very excited. They even become very spiritual.

This is the breakthrough you have been waiting for. This is the answer to the prayers you have been praying. This is the manifestation of God’s promise.

Imagine a defenseless enemy!

Somehow David, even in the confusion I suspect he was in, was unable to harm Saul. He crept near enough to just cut a piece of his garment.

Saul leaves without knowing or even suspecting anything had happened.

But David gets convicted, with intense guilt. Because of letting his enemy go free? Of course not. He is guilty of cutting a piece of the king’s cloth.

Why does God convict him of cutting just a piece of Saul’s cloth yet Saul was looking for him to destroy him?

This is the first point we ought to remember in our heart. We are supposed to respect God’s structures with all we have. The fact that you are hurting does not open the way for you to unclothe a leader God has placed over you, however rotten they may be.

You see, all leadership proceeds from God. From the good to the rotten, from the legitimate to the stolen. And that is why we are instructed to pray for the leadership God has allowed to be over us.

I have just gotten to understand an order God gave me when I was also bleeding from hurt, betrayal and outright cruelty.

I had the hard evidence, from commitment letters to minutes of meetings that I thought to take the evidence to court to at least find a way of taking my family from the dire straits it was in.

God told me to forget about fighting for myself.

God did not want me to expose ministers, uncover their nakedness, however badly they had treated me.

I remember a few times God has told me to burn letters that had brought me enough heartache. Obedience to that brought about the healing. Holding on to the evidence of the hurt meant that I was still preserving the evidence, probably to use against the offenders when opportunity presents itself.

God will deal with the people leading the structures He has ordained. And He does it very ably. He does not need our feeble effort, especially when we are in so much pain.

We can use scripture-ordained methods of confronting them. That is what David did. He treated Saul with the respect his office required. And the Bible has clear guidelines on how to deal with error from an elder, for example.

I reiterate that for our healing to happen, we must let go of our hurts and recognize that the ones who hurt us occupy a position ordained by God and only God has the authority to deal with him/ her.

I will next week talk about another pivotal reality we must face to reconnect to our potency in life and ministry.

Hibernating Ministers III

We are still handling these bleeding and wounded ministers who have been immobilized almost to the point of emasculation by their injuries, many times injuries nobody even suspects they have.

Surprisingly, very rarely will someone who has never experienced such betrayal, abuse and slander ever notice, let alone offer a viable solution for those injuries.

‘Just forgive’ is one epithet many will throw almost unfailingly to someone with such injuries. They assume that forgiving betrayal is the same as forgiving someone who kept your debt for an extra week. They think that forgiving someone who has falsely accused you of something so gross that you could never even have imagined thinking about it is the same as forgiving someone who promised to give you a gift but forgot.

Those are in a completely different league and the level of forgiveness required can never be understood by someone who thinks forgiveness is as easy as forgiving a child who has soiled their clothes.

The forgiveness I am talking about requires healing first. It is impossible to forgive someone when at the mention of their name your brain has a spin. It is impossible to forgive someone whose sight makes your heart miss a beat or two. And it is impossible to forgive someone when the evidence of the devastation he caused you can see with closed eyes.

What do I mean? Forgiveness is not cheap. Remember that even with God it cost His only begotten Son?

Forgiveness is painful, way too painful to treat with an epithet.

Telling the hurting that forgiveness will heal the hurt at times increases the pain, breaks open the wounds that were healing.

Your cheap prescription does not offer a solution. They already know that they must forgive. That may be the reason their pain is so much. That could  be the reason they have stopped ministering. Their pain has made them think that they are beyond God’s reach because they are unable to completely forgive those who crushed them using their trust.

Only someone who has positively healed from the injury can effectively reach out to them.

David could mould the rejects who ran to him because he understood betrayal from Saul’s treatment. Eli was unable to see pain in Hannah because it was a foreign concept.

I do not mean that you cannot be able to minister to them, only that it would require special grace to be able to touch those injuries with God’s healing touch. It is important that you realize that you really will never be able to understand the pain they feel if you have never gone through it.

The first point I want to make today is that we must acknowledge that they are hurting and that the hurting is very deep.

But we must agree that only God is able to heal that pain and that the only hope we have of dealing with this is connecting the hurting to God for the healing.