Dating and Scripture

I want to state as categorically as I can that I find dating a very unscriptural concept.

In fact, even love before marriage is a very dangerous thing as the few examples we have in scripture demonstrate.

Jacob loved Rachael long before he married her and there was no end in the drama in their shared life. In his later years, it becomes clear that he had realized that Leah was the solid partner in his life and faith.

David also loved Michal before marrying her. Again we see enough drama to the point that he breaks scripture to get her back from her husband among much other drama.

I know some will shout Joseph and Mary.

Do you realize they were pledged to be married? It was marriage in waiting. That is why when Joseph discovered her pregnancy he planned to DIVORCE her secretly. Again God says the same. Do not fear to take Mary YOUR WIFE, not AS your wife.

They were not dating but waiting to consummate their marriage.

Dating is like touching the water to gauge its temperature yet you are not ready to bathe. It is like smelling well cooked food yet you know you will not partake of it for a long time.

In any case, what does the Bible say about love?

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. (Song of Songs 8: 6, 7)

How do you test death?  That is the way you test love.

It demonstrates the folly of wanting to prove its presence or otherwise.

Look at Isaac. He married Rebecca before he had set his eyes on her.

Yet his love endured her barrenness for twenty years without looking for any plan B. Compare that with Rachael.

Nowhere in the Bible have I seen any scent of dating. And it becomes even worse for believers because it really points at our lack of faith and obedience.

You see, if we must test our relationship and compatibility (whatever that means), we really are not open to God’s guidance. It can’t be faith if it is plotted by our ingenuity.

Does it mean I can just pick anybody on the street and we make a wonderful couple? I know someone is asking.

Yes. And that is if God is the One who has directed me there.

You see, the outward can cover a lot of stuff, some of it so unsavory. And like the scriptures say only God is able to accurately look at the content of one’s heart.

A very spiritual person could be very wicked and not even know it. Why?

The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked like Jeremiah wrote. And he continued by stating that ONLY THE Lord knows the heart of man.

Some people are good because they have no opportunity to become bad.

Some are holy because they have no opening for becoming wicked.

Some are generous because they have had no chance of being stingy.

And some are religious because they know nothing else.

Yet others are bad because they have no opportunity to be good.

What I am saying is that only God knows the capacity of a person to holiness or wickedness. And dating has no capacity at all of exposing that inner man for your assessment.

Could anyone have dated Rahab the harlot? Yet we are able to see her faith and later inclusion in the lineage of Christ. Why? God had assessed her heart even when she was in condemned Jericho and knew she had the capacity for better faith than most in Israel.

Those are some of the things dating blocks even as it opens doors to other dangerous issues.

Explain to me how someone can date for five years and divorce after two or less years. What knowledge did they not possess in that time or what secret had they not known in those years to divorce so quickly? Yet that is rife nowadays.

Like I also ask, how many people who marry people they have never seen like Isaac have dramatic marriages, especially where parents and other authority figures were involved?

The truth is that the human heart is deceptively wicked. You can stay with a person for a lifetime and never really know what they are like.

Worse still is that in dating we have two actors, each wanting to paint themselves in the best colors as they seek to see below the surface of their companion.

There is no faith involved in dating. There is no divine guidance involved in dating.

Worse still, dating exposes the daters to spiritual risks and temptations that would have been absent otherwise.

How many fall into sexual sin during the dating period?

The emotional energy required for dating is monumental. The spiritual sacrifice required is prohibitive since it does not come from faith.

This explains why very few who date for long (over two years) get married

Sadly, the breakages are rarely mutual. One person will lose steam as the other increases theirs.

Again this explains the many cases of murder and other crimes on people who loved each other to hell and back. You see, one deposits his last coin as the other is closing their joint account, leaving one emotionally bankrupt. This can explain their desperation and illogical actions. And it becomes worse because the spiritual was given a ride elsewhere.

Suppose we listened to God when we wanted to get married? Suppose we asked Him to guide us to the person He prepared before creating the world to be our partner? And suppose we followed His lead?

The first result will be our commitment to the marriage, the number one reason marriages stand.

The second will be the growth of our love for each other and for God.

The third will be the absence of any looking over the fence for any grass to see if it is greener since God can only give the best. It means we will stop comparing our spouse with others, our marriage with others since we know that ours was made in heaven where all others ought to have been made from.

Even our disagreements will be looked at with the same lens.

Will we be led by the Spirit in marriage like we like to boast about other things? Will our worship extend beyond singing (the only thing some think worship is) to the choice of the person we get married to?

Will we shed our preferences and prior wrong training on marriage to wait on God concerning this pivotal aspect of our lives?

To get you off your high horse of knowledge, explain to me why childhood sweethearts divorce, or even fight. Haven’t they known each other all their lives even before loving as adults and thinking of marriage?

Of course there are scriptural standards, and they are very clear when we read the Bible. But do you think God can flout His rules when you ask Him to give you a spouse? Can He?

Gratitude Reloaded

On 5^th December 1985, I clearly heard God’s call for my life and said Yes.

What an adventure it has been!

I was only a teenager then in form 5.

God has taken me places and done things TO me even as He did through me. That is why I am very grateful.

He has taught me and transformed me in ways that some people are unable to imagine the kind of person I was before that operation began. Just the other day we were talking with my friend and I mentioned the fact that I was chased from the scout movement in school for insubordination and he wondered whether I ever had issues with insubordination. Please thank God with me.

I remember the head teacher (they were called headmasters then) at Lodwar High School had vowed to expel me before we closed school when I refused to allow him get me a transfer because I had become a pain in his neck though I do not even know what crime I had committed. The only thing I know was that I was not good to authority and authority figures everywhere as even prefects feared me.

Anyway, God stepped in and changed me without changing my name.

I was scared of going back to school because of that vow, especially because the headmaster was a Catholic brother and he had just renewed his term.

But who is God? (direct translation)

I found that he had been replaced.

I therefore started Form 6 on a clean slate.

And that is where I started ministry. But of course that was also where my discipleship journey started with Mike and Ann Wekesa.

And the ministry even then thrived. With a friend we started a devotional minute before the assembly and it became almost another assembly. Where is my friend Joseph?

So much that in a Catholic run school they started including me in sharing devotions during assembly. That is where they started calling me pastor.

Where was I heading to?

As I was clearing, the new headmaster was giving me the leaving certificate. Then he opened my file and saw some unsavory reports.

He showed me and asked who was so bad as to write such things on my file.

Of course I told him that they were true and then shared the Gospel with him.

God has done so much in my life as I have followed Him in obedience.

From singing to songwriting to running and starting choirs to instruments,

From evangelism to preaching to teaching,

From encouragement to nurturing,

From missions to church planting,

From spiritual warfare to healing its victims,

From writing books to helping grow writers,

I am grateful to God, very grateful.

I am just scratching the surface of what God has been about my life since I responded to His call.

Please join me in thanking Him.

And pray for my next phase.

Of course I have written elsewhere about it but it won’t hurt to repeat.

I am old (if you are disputing, I think you are old too)

I feel God wants me to settle down to what old people spend their energy on.

I want to focus on raising another generation of ministers.

In short, I want anyone God has called to benefit from my experiences in ministry and not just my ministry. My ministry now is therefore using everything I have to build other ministers by pouring myself into them.

‘Ministry and Mortality’ and ‘Varsity on the Hill’ are posts talking about this aspect of my ministry. You can get them on the blog.

I feel I should stop travelling (and haven’t I travelled!) unless for the express purpose of raising or growing ministers. I want to travel to resolve ministerial issues. I want to travel to encourage ministers. I want to travel to empower ministers. I want to travel to equip ministers.

Ministers are my focus in this phase.

Talk of mentoring and equipping.

Therefore as you join me in thanking God for these 34 years of great faithfulness, please say a prayer about these ministers that He will be bringing my way for the ministry God has for me toward them.

But I am very grateful to God.

How Winners Lose

I have been looking at war and the challenges of great armies losing pivotal battles and eventually wars.

One thing stands out; consistency.

An army is always training or should be. In fact many inventions in the technical world came from the military, even the computer that we use. The space adventure should also have started with the military.

The key word in the military is forward.

But there is another aspect in the military that one will overlook to their doom, adversity.

Remove an adversary or the threat of one and the military will disintegrate in a very short time. That is why enemies are created if they do not exist. That is why countries sponsor rebellion far off to be able to test the weapons they are developing. And having been in the media I know this quite a bit. That is why rich countries (with raw materials) are never allowed peace for a moment as they are key to two things, cheap raw materials since they are at war and an excellent test ground for weapons through arming factions.

That is why the most mineral resourced countries will never be allowed to enjoy peace even for a year. That is also why Africa is never allowed to get leaders that think for her people.

I remember once going to minister in the DRC and went to the town nearest the place they say has the most gold reserves. Do you know there literally is no road to the mines? We were told that it was only very recently that motorbikes started accessing them. Incidentally, I saw many UN helicopters (at least that is what they looked like) landing and taking off from beyond the forest that is the buffer from civilized life. Even the roads are so bad to get there. I remember praying very seriously that God performs a miracle to enable us get out by stopping the rain and drying the road as it was simply impassable even with a small drizzle.

Back to our topic. An enemy and warfare are important ingredients for the soldier. Even when there is no war, a soldier must always be preparing for war through constant training and drills to ensure that he is in tip top condition.

Complacency is the greatest enemy to warfare. Comfort is akin to committing suicide as a soldier.

Saul was a good king, initially. But then he became settled.

I am sure that had Goliath appeared in those early years Saul could have very easily faced him. That is from the little we have from the scriptures.

But he gets an army. And he has a very brave and loyal son. Then he becomes a big man.

At that point even God was unable to get him to focus on the reason he was made king. He starts thinking self-preservation instead of Israel and her needs. The army becomes more important than God’s word. Simply speaking he had lost his momentum.

But I think his problems began when he lost sight of his enemy. You see he was made g to handle the enemies of Israel who were by extension enemies of the God of Israel. He was therefore supposed to be attuned to God’s voice to be an effective king.

His first error is that he ignored God’s voice and word as he probably thought his situation needed instant action. He therefore usurped the priest’s office.

The second error was making friends with what God had ordered him to exterminate, and looking for justification for it.

Thirdly, due to those first mistakes, he transferred enemy status to a loyal friend, cheating him of a wife he had pledged, forcing him to marry another to kill or entrap him and even taking the same that was so expensively got and giving her to somebody else.

That is what took his situation from bad to worse to worst. He had simply lost his purpose.

By purpose I do not mean the cliché word motivational preachers are parading all over to guide lost people to love the world religiously. Let me give two verses that may help us grasp what purpose is.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

God is the source of purpose; meaning that only God is the focus of that purpose. It therefore means that purpose comes from revelation and not study or observation.

For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: (Acts 13:36)

Again it is God who determines whether we have served our purpose or not. Like I like to say He is the only one with the marking scheme.

Knowing the battles we are supposed to be fighting in our life will determine the kinds of victories we will enjoy. Forgetting or seeking relief from them is the precursor of our defeat. Sadly, that defeat is determined by the holder of the marking scheme though people in fellowship with Him are able to get glimpses of that defeat.

As an example Jonathan knew that his father’s season was over and so he had no crown to inherit. But he was content with serving the right king as God had changed the season.

I repeat; when Saul lost the purpose for which he was anointed as king, sin, all kind of sin became inevitable.

We can learn the same from David. When did he sin?

The first time is when he remained at home during the season kings went to war. He was thus left by his army to laze around and the devil had a very easy time leading him to sin.

The other time is when all wars had ceased that he started wondering how big his army was.

Manasseh was a product of ease after Hezekiah was added 15 uneventful years. We don’t see any war, any challenge, any building. The only thing we are told is that his heart became proud. We are also told he became insensitive to his posterity when told about the captivity his son would invite from his rebellion.

What can we learn from this?

We must be at the forefront of what God has called us to, consistently. We must be actively pursuing the vision God gave us without wavering. But above all we should be receiving our marching orders continually as our Lord seeks us to walk in victory and only obedience guarantees His kind of victory.

We will certainly get into sin once we lose touch with that.

Can we contextualize this for our times? Of course we can.

Many times God will give someone a great vision that he will pursue with utmost dedication. It then actualizes and starts bearing fruit, so much that he will require to get to the upper echelons of the structure to oversee its functioning. He gradually loses touch with the vision as he becomes the CEO of a structure that his vision created having no real contact with the vision as had been presented from heaven as he has become the ‘papa’ instead of the hands of the vision.

He will then start joining hands with other papas, many times without knowing their vision or even how or where they were got from. But that then becomes his circle.

Let me give an example.

A pastor is given an order to start a church in a desperate side of a desperate slum. Since he is following the orders of the Lord of the harvest, the church experiences exponential growth in a short time necessitating the planting another and then another in different slums or even the same slum. The speed is so fast that he is unable to even hear from God as the needs seems so urgent.

Of course everybody notices this. Other pastors crave that type of success in church planting and he is the new expert.

They therefore request that he hands over the churches to other pastors as he is created for greater impact as a church planting expert. And again the speed is so fast there is no time to consult with the Lord of the harvest as this new need appears so urgent and all those pastors couldn’t be wrong.

He therefore becomes a church planting executive, teaching pastors how to grow churches out of the desperation of the slums.

He is then given a new title, a new status and of course proper incentives so that he takes this new role.

Like Saul before him, things have gone so fast that he has been unable to know what it is the headquarters really wanted. It therefore becomes increasingly difficult to pray about any new offer he is receiving especially as the packages being offered obliterate the initial struggles and sacrifices he required with his initial step of obedience.

Of course his circles must change in line with his new status.

What does he live for at this point?

One thing that happens is that, like Saul, his prayer becomes an abomination to God who had called him. But it also becomes increasingly difficult for him to pray as, like Saul, he has gone so many steps without knowing what God wants from him. Where does he start with praying? Of course I am talking about personal prayer, what Jesus called the prayer closet.

The second thing is that he is surrounded by success once he loses that vital link to his Lord. He also has myriads who can swear by their lives that he is at the perfect place God needs him and will not only pour their all into that but also fight with all they have to protect him. And we also see that with God. Or do you not remember a whole priestly city was annihilated because they had ‘refused’ to report sedition that was a fiction of the king’s head?

Getting into actual sin is another very present possibility. And it will depend on the circles he moves with. By actual sin I am talking of these very open sins like adultery that are openly against their profession. I have heard very sad stories of very senior clerics who are whoremongers because the secret liaisons they have in those hovels (many times five star hotels since they have the money) cannot be hidden from all the hotel staff, some who are even bribed to swallow their disappointment with the ‘man of God’ instead of exposing it.

But even without getting into actual sin, he will have already been disqualified from the ministry God had called him to. This of course means that he will be running on his own fuel instead of the anointing of the One who had called him. Chances are very strong that he will, like Saul, look for an enemy who most probably would be the one the ministry he had rejected was given to, many times because the upstarts are pursuing it with ‘nothing’ and he had rejected it when it was fully packed.

How many zealous young men are being broken down because the spiritual leaders they have looked up to all their lives are doing their best to kill what God is asking them to do? I remember once talking to a minister friend of mine about the command I was pursuing after God gave me the word and he simply said that God cannot give such a command. Was it unbiblical? Of course any word God gives me starts with His word. But I think it rubbed him too roughly he was unable to hide it.

In short, his experience had led him to dismiss any word he disagreed with irrespective of whether it was scriptural or not.

Think of a young person saying that he had saved sex for marriage. You can’t imagine the rage, even hate, that meets them from other believers who had decided to throw in the towel in matters sex. You will be led to think that abstaining from sex until marriage is the ultimate sin. You may realize that some of the ones stoning him are shepherds.

You see, when you lose your focus there is only one way to go, down. That is unless you genuinely repent. That is why Saul is the example God has given us.

Or look at this believer that had sunk deep in sin and like the prodigal came back to themselves. They then look for an opportunity to testify what God had done for them and the so far they had strayed.

You will expect a celebration. Or won’t you? Yet they will find many friends and family so up in arms against their testimony. All because they have exposed what these others were unable or unwilling to face in themselves. They can’t appreciate repentance because they have refused to repent. They simply accepted their sinfulness and moved on like we like to say, without realizing there is no moving on with sin.

I haven’t followed the Kanye West’s conversion and its resultant ripples. But I won’t be surprised that the most vocal of his critics are scared that his conversion is genuine. You see it will show their Christian lives as hollow and shallow.

Why? We are not the ones who save. We neither hold the standard of that salvation nor have the list of those who are saved. The only thing we know is that there is joy in heaven over one sinner repenting.

Why then are we up in arms when one sinner repents?

We have lost sight of our enemy and must therefore create a new battlefield.

In simple terms we have backslidden like King Saul. We therefore must develop new rules for the Christian faith that will be consistent with our backslidden state.

Comfort will many times be the culprit.

Let me close with this verse that many people find difficult to associate with Sodom.

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. (Ezekiel 16: 49, 50)

We say lack of exercise leads to a buildup of flab. That is exactly what happens in the spiritual realm when we lose touch with a consistent and committed relationship with God, especially listening and obeying His voice.

The Press Blocking Spirituality

And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press. (Luke 19: 3)

I posted sometimes ago about the press blocking people from getting to Jesus.

I was then looking at the negative press fighting the faith.

Today I want us to focus on ‘positive’ press and the damage it can and does do to the faith.

Have you ever asked yourself why a media house run by a Muslim has award winning Gospel shows on Sundays? Have you ever wondered why the most morally corrupt media houses run excellent Christian shows then? Do they get saved on Sundays? Or do they trash their editorial policy on Sunday?

Has Mammon become a believer and started worshiping Jesus? Has the pursuit of gain been overtaken by spirituality? Has their pursuit for base cravings all of a sudden become spiritual?

You see, I am in a way a child of the media. I was trained in a media school, worked in a media house and have been exposed to media in many fronts, even church media.

Look at these verses.

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1: 15, 16)

And this other one

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. (James 3:12)

What am I implying? I am sure you are wondering.

You can’t be an enemy of the cross during the week and all of a sudden become a spiritual nurturer on Sunday. Your agenda during the week is the same during the weekend.

What changes is the tactics. You serve the same master but simply widen the net to catch different fish.

How many couch and bedside worshippers do we have these days? Who do they worship? Yet they in the past they were consistent and committed members of churches.

You see, the devil is complete if he can get you to only relax in your personal devotion to God or break the littlest commands of the Gospel.

He does not succeed only when he has made you become sexually immoral or denounce Christ.

Let me give a few scenarios.

You used to wake up at 3 a.m. to pray but nowadays you wake up at the same time to follow a prayer master do their act, amening everything they say as they seem so deep and connected.

On Sunday afternoons you used to go home and hold hands with your spouse as you bonded in prayer and fellowship. Now the only thing your hands do is stretch out to claim and catch what the TV prophet is releasing to you. There is no time even for chit chat as that flow cannot be interrupted.

You used to leave early to church to help in the many aspects of the ministry before the congregants arrive. Now you can’t leave because there is this hot gospel program that is so rich and empowering that you simply can’t leave before it ends.

You used to fellowship after the service for hours on end. Now you will leave even before it ends if the preacher does not keep time because there is a program you must watch.

You used to enjoy a brunch or two during the week with brethren but now you simply do not have time as it has been taken by this or the other fresh anointing program on telly.

You used to reach out to the needy in society but nowadays they are a text book topic as you have no spare time to look around. What with the great Christian programming of these great stations?

You used to browse through Christian bookshops and libraries for spiritually healthy books and you have a very rich library at home yet you now have no time at all to read as your TV and net have more than enough spiritual content for any spare moment you have.

You used to enjoy reading through the Bible at least once yearly but nowadays you are fixated on what the superstar teaches as you totally agree with it.

I have not even started dealing with radio and internet forums.

How much are you in touch, leave alone in control of your spiritual life?

When others are the ones making your spiritual life flow and thrive, it is very likely that you have no spiritual life at all, or that your spiritual life is fake.

And that is what the media fights to make us.

I have enough friends running those shows who will be mad at me for saying this. But let me also throw a challenge to them. Has God told you clearly that what you are doing produces healthier believers? How many of them have responded to God’s call to the unreached out of that platform?

The media exists for profit and other agenda that growth in spirituality will kill or at the least limit.

It therefore stands to reason that the same media will have spirituality as an enemy that they will focus on neutering. And what better way than spiritualizing itself. Then the spiritual will think they have a very powerful ally just like Samson thought about his darling Delilah.

The biggest problem with the media in spiritual affairs is that you will completely lose control. They will set the agenda and simply run with whatever suits them.

Of course the ones running those shows are for the most part spiritually bankrupt characters whose only qualification is their popularity or excellent sound or diction. Some do not even read the Bible yet they will be your alternative for church.

They are paid for holding a crowd captive with whatever trash they produce as the same crowd will be used to convince advertisers to fund the program. Or have you ever asked yourself why people must call in, text, even use social media to show they are following? Then they give prizes for answering easy questions and bet by just sending your number.

They are simply using your feedback to look for money and not interact with you. Those rewards and prizes are simply bait.

Have you ever heard someone running those programs reminding you to hurry so that you are not late for church? Have you ever heard someone ordering you to switch off your TV to get ready for church?

The only thing you will hear is, ‘before you touch that dial or switch …’ They lose when you take responsibility for your spirituality, even your life.

Do not allow them press you out of a rich relationship with Christ.