Why Sit Here Till We Die?

You might have read the story.. the story of 4 lepers who 'won' a great battle for Israel. You remember them?

Israel was under siege and the situation looked bleak, in modern terminology, inflation was high as food prices kept rising, water was hard to come by and people had started taking drastic measures just to survive. If my memory serves me right, people went to the extent of eating their own children. Yes, it does serve me right  for we are told the story of a woman who cried out to the king asking for his help.. she had agreed with a neighbor that they would eat their children and they started with hers but the next day, her neighbor hid the child they were supposed to eat (check 2 Kings 6&7).

So the story goes that the king blamed Elisha the prophet for some reason.. the prophet gave a word saying the following day, food prices would fall drastically (ha! how we wish this was true of our time). Of course you had some people who didn't believe this word. But what I would like to draw to your attention is the attitude some 4 lepers had. These 4 lepers were sitting at the entrance to the city and they said to one another 'why sit here till we die" (2 Kings 7:3). This was their logic, as lepers, they were considered to be outcasts in Jewish society, hence their sitting at the entrance to the city.. there was no food in the city and no one to look after them. If they just sat there, they would die of hunger.. outside the city was the enemy's camp.. if they went out, they would be killed but maybe they might be able to forage some food. Hence, why sit here till we die, when we can go out and perhaps find mercy in the eyes of our enemies and be given food. Rather than complain about their situation, these 4 outcasts, who had every reason to complain, decided to go out and do something.

What am I driving at? If we look at the situation in Malawi right now and to varying degrees this can apply to other countries around the world going through an economic downturn, we can easily get discouraged and start complaining. I for one went that route for some time. I had initially told myself that I wouldn't complain but slowly I found myself joining the crowd and complaining, pointing out all the things I felt were going wrong. In fact at some point I very nearly wrote a blog post aimed at criticizing the leadership, had it not been for the wisdom I received from a friend.

This past week, as I began praying again for the nation, I remembered all the good things that have been spoken concerning our land, all the prophecies that have been made and also just what the word of God says. Paul in Acts 17 says God has determined the times and boundaries of our existence and the psalmist says "The LORD [is] the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant [places]; yea, I have a goodly heritage." (Psalm 16:5,6). This encouraged me, despite all that was/is going on about us, as long as it is God who has determined the times and boundaries of our existence, the boundaries or lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. And for me, this translated, Malawi is a pleasant place, that is the TRUTH for that is what God's word says. Regardless of all that is going on about me, I dwell in a pleasant place. You can add more scriptures that speak the same.. for example, the famous Psalm 23 says the Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want, He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters... and everything else it says, goodness and mercy follows me all the days of my life, He anoints my head with oil, my cup overflows... notice these are not promises.. this is a declaration of what God has meant to be our portion.

And to cap it off, there is that scripture in Jeremiah 29. Yes the famous verse is verse 11 but before God makes this great declaration, consider verse 7. God tells the Israelites to pray for the city they were in for in its prosperity would be their prosperity, in other words, if the city prospers, so would they. This is regardless of the fact that they were in captivity and they were under leaders who did not fear God and as the stories in Daniel show us, they were living with a people who would do anything to ensure that they did not live by their faith. Yet they were to pray for it, not complain that they were in captivity or that God had forsaken them. In fact, He says, yes you are in captivity, your circumstances are not pleasant... but I know what I am doing, I know the plans I have for you and these plans are not to harm you or destroy you, they are for your benefit, for your prosperity, to give you a great future. Boy, am I encouraged by these verses... when I consider what is going on about me in light of these scriptures, I get excited. 

But there is something I must be doing. I should not be complaining, I should be praying for the prosperity of the land. I should be praying for the purposes of God to be fulfilled.. for His kingdom to come, His will to be done... that is my role. Moreover, I am priest right (1 Peter 2:9) and this means I ought to intercede for the land... if I find fault with the leadership, what am I to do.. pray (1 Timothy 2:1-4) because, the heart of the king is in the Lord's hands and He directs it as He does the water course (Proverbs 21:1)... so why sit here till we die?

In this time, God is not looking for resources, for the case of Malawi, He is not looking to see how He will get the IMF to get their credit facility back on track.. all He is looking for are men and women who will bend on their knees and take responsibility over the things that happen in their land. You see, He has made us into a kingdom of kings and priests.. and Paul in Romans says we are to reign with Christ in this life.. how do we do this, we reign through prayer.. we know the popular 2 Chronicles 7:14... God is looking to you and me to take responsibility over what happens in our land. This might be Malawi or wherever you are reading this from. You are the solution to the challenges facing your land..

During the past weekend I learnt that, in every generation, God always seeks for a people who will establish His will. Decay and apostasy begin to come in when such a people are not available. In every generation, what happens to the next generation is either the result of the success or failure of its predecessor. God has given us a responsibility and we begin to take it in the place of prayer, prayer for the land and the people of the land.

Will you stand up and take your place? Or will you just sit here till you die.

Joy Unspeakable

I have read and heard of so many stories of conversion, but this one quickly ranks among the top of the most interesting if not funniest conversion stories. What I would like to highlight though, is the joy that the conversion brought both to him, his family, the church and the community and also the impact such a conversion had among the membership of the church. It is not enough to just go to church every Sunday, the crucial thing is whether you have had a personal experience of God.

Here is the story of the conversion of the Victorian pastor William Haslam taken from (W. Haslam, From Death Unto Life: Twenty Years of Ministry (Teddington, 2006), 42.)

"So I went up into the pulpit and gave out my text. I took it from the gospel of the day—'What think ye of Christ?' As I went on to explain the passage, I saw that the Pharisees and scribes did not know that Christ was the Son of God, or that He was come to save them. They were looking for a king, the son of David, to reign over them as they were. Something was telling me, all the time, 'You are no better than the Pharisees yourself—you do not believe that He is the Son of God, and that He is come to save you, any more than they did.' I do not remember all I said, but I felt a wonderful light and joy coming into my soul, and I was beginning to see what the Pharisees did not. Whether it was something in my words, or my manner, or my look, I know not; but all of a sudden a local preacher, who happened to be in the congregation, stood up, and putting up his arms, shouted in a Cornish manner, 'The parson is converted! The parson is converted! Hallelujah!' and in another moment his voice was lost in the shouts and praises of three or four hundred of the congregation. Instead of rebuking this extraordinary 'brawling,' as I should have done in a former time, I joined in the outburst of praise, and to make it more orderly, I gave out the Doxology—'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow'—and the people sang it with heart and voice, over and over again. My Churchmen were dismayed, and many of them fled precipitately from the place. Still the voice of praise went on, and was swelled by numbers of passers-by, who came into the church, greatly surprised to hear and see what was going on. When this subsided, I found at least twenty people crying for mercy, whose voices had not been heard in the excitement and noise of thanksgiving. They all professed to find peace and joy in believing. Amongst this number there were three from my own house; and we returned home praising God. The news spread in all directions that 'the parson was converted,' and that by his own sermon, in his own pulpit too.... So clear and vivid was the conviction through which I passed, and so distinct was the light into which the Lord had brought me, that I knew and was sure that He had 'brought me up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a Rock, and put a new song into my mouth.' He had 'quickened' me, who was before 'dead in trespasses and sins.'... At the end of this great and eventful day of my life—my spiritual birthday, on which I passed from death to life by being 'born from above'—I could scarcely sleep for joy."

No Quarry, No Glory

One of the lessons I learnt early on in my Christian walk is the principle/concept of preparation. For any man or woman that God will use, He will take them through a process where He prepares them for the task He has set for them. Throughout scripture we see examples of how God prepared or trained His vessels. In the Psalms David says, “You teach my hands to war and my fingers to battle”.

David himself, was first a shepherd boy before he became king. As a shepherd he learnt how to stand and fight against the odds. He killed lions and bears, this experience helped him deal with Goliath and this was what introduced him to the whole of Israel. From fighting with Goliath, he became a famous warrior, well known in the nation of Israel such that songs were written of him. These songs got Saul jealous and he began to see David as a threat. As a result, David had to hide from Saul who sought to kill him. During his time in hiding, the Bible says he drew to himself a band on 300 men who were considered useless to society, and he trained these to be warriors named among the best in Israel. These men killed giants like David, one is known to have chased a lion to cave and killed it, others went behind enemy lines just to bring water to David. 

All of this was a time for preparation and testing for David. You see, although Samuel anointed him king over Israel when he was quite young, the fulfillment of this waited for the death of Samuel and several years in the wilderness for David, during which time he learnt not only to lead men into battle and rule over them, but he also developed a relationship with God. During this time he wrote many of the Psalms that we read today, Psalms that reveal the nature of relationship that David had with God. His time away from the throne also reveals the respect he had for God’s anointing and his understanding of loyalty to leadership.

Another example is Moses, who spent 40 years as a shepherd, away from the comforts of the Pharaoh’s palace in Egypt where he was brought up. It was during this time that he was made Israel’s deliverer. You will recall that the key question he was asked when he tried to stop an Israelite who was beating his countryman was “who has made you leader over us?” He did not have an answer for this, until God sent him back after calling out to him from the burning bush. In that 40 years he learnt how to survive in the wilderness, he learnt patience for he dealt with sheep. When God called the Israelites His sheep, Moses had an understanding of what this meant. Also only as a shepherd was he able to better relate with his people. Remember he grew up in the palace, but the Israelites as described by Joseph, were shepherds by profession. And so he was able to relate with them.

We can point to so many others. Jesus for example who was obedient and grew in wisdom and favor with God and men in the 18 years we hear nothing of Him (the last record of Jesus as a child is the story we hear of Him being left at the temple, possibly at the age of 12, we next hear of His baptism at the age of 30). We also have Paul who went away to Arabia for 3 years where he was taught the gospel by God Himself. We have so many examples.

In our own times, we know of great men and women of God, who had to go through the process of preparation before they come out to the public. Gbile Akanni for example writes that when he got the call to preach and teach, God told him that he was on probation but that he would still have to continue with the teaching of the word. 10 years after being told this, is when God told him that he had graduated. Meanwhile, in those 10 years, he had continued preaching, thinking along the line that his probation was over, yet God waited 10 years. We can share similar stories of many of our favorite preachers who did not just arrive on the scene without God taking time to prepare them.

It is the same with you and me today. Do not despise the time of your preparation, do not rush to just fulfill what you feel is your calling without first waiting on God to finish His work in you.

You see, in the Old Testament we are told the story of how Solomon built the first temple. In the account, we are told that there was no sound of a hammer at the construction site because all the stones had been chiseled and properly shaped at the quarry site. There was no noise at the construction site.

Peter says we are living stones being built up into a holy temple and I believe God does not want noise at the construction site. He wants us to be properly chiseled and the quarry site so that He just fits us into our place at the construction site which is the area of our ministry. For the same Peter says we are a royal priesthood which means our service/ministry is to God and Paul says the fivefold ministry is there to equip us for service to God. And so God wants to smooth out our rough edges before we enter public ministry, He does not want the world to hear the noise of His chiseling at the construction site. Allow Him therefore to prepare you. Jesus took 3 years to prepare the apostles, grant Him time to work on you. Do not rush, do not be impatient, wait on Him, allow Him to make you as He made Moses. It might take 3 years, maybe less, or it may take 10 years and maybe more. Entrust yourself to His hands, after all, He is the potter you are the clay.

 

Know this, if you do not spend time at the quarry site, there is no glory at the construction site.

Calling On All Men

Last night we had a cell meeting at home welcoming us to the new are we have just moved to. It seems they do things a little differently than we did in our previous cell and it looks like it will be interesting. Anyway, I will not dive into the details of the differences as that is not the subject of my thoughts today. Rather they concern a subject that is very important for our times but which I am a bit apprehensive to dive into because of my inexperience and also because I myself am in the process of learning more about it. The subject is Biblical mandhood. A friend has been asking me to jot down my thoughts on this and I have been very reluctant, but last night’s proceedings have ignited something.

At the cell meeting, we did a Bible Study on 1 Peter 3:1-7. Immediately I turned the scripture I could almost guess where the discussion would be headed. That portion of scripture gives instructions to women on how they are to relate with their husbands and in the last verse, verse 7, it deals with how men should treat/relate with their wives. Discussions on such scriptures are almost 90% of the time focused telling women what their place is and what they ought to do in the family. Very rarely will men be addressed.

Yet from last night, it was interesting to note that although 6 of the 7 verses dealt with women, it was the men who had a punishment for not abiding by the scriptures. The women are told to submit and to have godly character, and there is no repercussion to their disobedience to the exhortation, yet for the men we are told that if they did not abide by the scriptures, then their prayers would not be heard. 

Now, instead of men taking time to seriously consider this, most will concentrate on the larger portion, yet the one that addresses them has got very serious consequences. I always find that interesting. Or indeed a study on Ephesians 5:21-32, men will concentrate on the portion that says women must submit and forget the huge responsibility that Paul gives them.

As a man or rather I should say as a male myself, I am often challenged by these scriptures. I am currently reading 2 books, “The Dignity of Manhood” by GbileAkanni and “Maximised Manhood” by Dr. Edwin Louis Cole. Both authors agree that being a male is a matter of birth, one has no say in this, but being a man is a matter of choice and it is something one must commit themselves to. This is because God has given males a very huge responsibility that only men can take up. Hopefully in the near future I will write a study on the scriptures concerning men, but today let me just point out a few things and these were also spoken at the Bible study. Mind you, I am not discrediting the role of women but I just want to highlight a few things.

A careful look at the lives of some of the most successful women will reveal that their father’s played a significant role in putting them on that path for success. For those in Africa, it was their fathers who encouraged to proceed with school and not be given away in marriage or take part in some of the cultural practices like coming of age ceremonies that are known to have cut short many girls’ progress in life.

Fathers also determine the type of man their daughters will marry. It seems like men who abuse their wives are setting up their daughters to suffer the same abuse in marriage[1]. Studies have shown that for the girl child her greatest and most effective cheerleader is her father or a father figure in her life. This goes against the traditional thinking that the girl child belongs to the mother while the boys are for the father.

These are just studies done by people reflecting the importance of having men take their rightful place in society beginning first in the family. Men have been said to be the providers for the family, but I believe this provision has been narrowed down too much to such financial provision. Men ought to provide vision for the family, they ought to provide spiritual guidance as well as discipline and focus. It is interesting that the Bible refers to men as being the head of their wives. All the instruments of discernment, of hearing, of sensing and coordination are located in the head giving a reflection of the role men are to play in the family.

You will note that I have concentrated on the family. This is because the family is not only the first institution established by God, it is also the basic unit of society. If you break the family then you have destroyed the whole of society. By focusing our attention on women, we are really failing to see the root of a lot of the problems in our society which is men who have not taken their rightful role and are carrying out their responsibility. If men arose and took their rightful place, a lot of the problems we face today would not be there. 

Men want women to submit, but are unwilling to submit themselves first under the headship of Christ. They want women to revere them, yet they do not revere God. If men did the things they want women to do with respect to their relation to God i.e. if men submitted themselves before God and revered Him, then they would be able to take  up their responsibility for the benefit of the whole society.

So to the men reading this, are you ready to take your place and stop pointing fingers at women? First do what is required of you, choose to be the man God has called you to be.

With the above said, I should be telling you of some meetings designed specifically for young men in the coming weeks.

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[1] This actually got me thinking about what Jacob did with his Uncle’s flock when he was cheated from his share. Jacob had the sheep and goats mate where they came to drink and they would see a reflection of the pealed almond and poplar trees that were now stripped. As a result of this, they bore offspring that was stripped. I guess that is what happens where the reflection we see in the family as children becomes a reflection of our family when we grow up. Of course God is gracious and such cycles can be and are broken.

THE THIRD SPACE

In Acts 17, we are told the story of Paul in Athens the Greek city many of us are familiar with. In this city he engaged 3 people groups: the religious or what we would say today are the church goers, the business people in the market place, and finally  the intelligentsia and those who would sit and develop policies for the city. Os Guinness has distinguished the 3 groups as representing the 3 spaces of society, with the church being the first space, the marketplace as the second space and the intelligentsia and policy makers being the third space.

For the Christian today, the emphasis has been on the first space as many consider this their area of calling or the only ‘space’ where they can serve God. As such the church has developed a lot of programs and requests the participation of members to serve in these programs. If one is not serving  in the church or  in any of these programs, they are at times considered to be second class or weak Christians. That is the general perception among Christians, in order to show how Christian you are, you must serve in the church or minister in some way.

As a result of this, many leave the church on Sunday satisfied that they have done their bit for God, they have served Him whether in the ushering team, the choir/praise and worship team, Sunday school etc. During the week, they no longer serve God but go on about their own business, unless they are cell leaders which means they have at least one more day with the week to serve God. Yet, as I pointed out in an earlier post “A Theology of Work”, Christians spend much more time away from the church, for some this is as many as 6 days of the week since on the 7^th day they are in church and this may only be for a few hours.

Yet, Paul shows us an example. He first went to the church where he preached, but he proceeded also to  the marketplace. Now we are just told that he preached in the marketplace,  but from elsewhere we know that he was a tent maker and at times during his ministry he had plied his trade where he went to preach in order to make a living i.e. to make money to cover for his expenses. I would like to take that angle, from the account we are given of his activities in Athens, I would like to  believe that wherever he plied his trade, he would also take time to preach the gospel and thus serve God. In other words, he took his ministry to the marketplace.

Today, many Christians want to separate their life at church from their life at work or the marketplace (I would define the marketplace as where you work, outside of the church, to make a living). We want to appear to be Christians only at church and we leave God at church and this means restricting our service to Him to the church. The rest of the week we are doing our own thing where we are our own masters. However, a good reading through the scriptures will reveal that Christianity is not to be compartmentalized. In 1 Corinthians 6 for example, we are told that we were bought with a price, we are no longer our own. In Matthew 28:19 we are told to go and make disciples of all nations and some commentaries say the word nations here refers to cultures or people groups and not just people living within a particular political boundary. This would mean the different people groups including the different professions that we find on earth. For the workplace believer, this then means that even where you work, you have a mission field. 2 Corinthians 5 further tells us that we are God’s ambassadors, meaning wherever we go we are to represent God and His Kingdom.

If you are a workplace believer, I want to encourage you. You are not a second class Christian, you have a mission field which is your workplace. You are God’s ambassador to your workplace. Do not restrict evangelism to just what you have on the church programs, do not compartmentalize your Christianity. May your light shine even in the workplace. When Jesus said you are the salt of the earth, He meant the whole earth. You are in that profession to represent the kingdom of God, ministry is not restricted to just the church, the first space, go beyond it to the marketplace, the second space.

It is as you function and operate in the second space that the third space recognizes you and invites you as it did Paul. From Acts 17 we are told that, someone heard Paul preach in the marketplace and asked him to come and share this new philosophy of his to the Areopagus where the thinkers/philosophers met. It was these people who generated ideas which the whole city would embrace and live by. They determined the course of culture in the city and based on the influence of Athens, this spread to other cities as well. So Paul was invited to the third space and from there he won some converts for the kingdom of God. In fact I have heard that there was a street named after Dionysius who was a judge of the Aeropagus and one of the converts.

I am saying all this to spur you my fellow Christian to desire to enter this third space. Lance Wallnau in the Foreword to OS Hillman’s Change Agent says “We are praying for a move of God, but what is needed is a move of people from the periphery in the bleachers to the very center of the coliseum floor where decisions are made and culture is produced.” The Church today is praying for changes in the society, nation and world, but to bring about this change God will use men and women who have given themselves by making themselves available to the move of God. God will answer the prayers for changes in the culture through people and these people will have to be placed at those areas of influence. Os Hillman says, “It doesn’t matter if the majority of the culture is made up of Christians. It only matters who has the greatest influence over that culture.” And Lance Wallnau says, “it is a mistake to think that the majority shapes the culture- it is quite the opposite; it is always a remnant at the top.”

What we need in the church today is to develop a kingdom mentality. Jesus came to bring us into the kingdom of God and our duty as Christians today is to ensure that the influence of this kingdom spreads..."your kingdom come" says what has been called the Lord's Prayer. How does this kingdom come but through the agency of God's people, you the Christian. Wherever you are, you are His ambassador, His representative, called to display forth His virtues as Peter tells us (1 Peter 2:9) or to manifest the manifold wisdom of God as Paul writes (Ephesians 3:10). Your excellence in the work place will set you apart, your integrity and work ethic. These should set you apart as they did for Daniel and his friends or Mordecai. This is they way you are going to bring the influence of the kingdom of God to where you are.. for the call to be a Christian is a call to be a person of influence.

I have made it my goal to be a good representative of the kingdom of God and with His help to enter that third space.