Valentine's Day Bruhaha

Just last Saturday was Valentine's day and even though it was celebrated low-keyed (most likely due to the fact that our general presidential elections were supposed to hold on that day but then got postponed), people still went out and celebrated the holiday. Of course Val's day is associated with eros love - between a man and a woman, (even though the origin of the holiday has nothing to do with that kind of love and so there is the giving of lots of flowers and chocolate and deflowering too in many quarters). Christian organizations and churches also use it as an opportunity to teach the truth about love and its true origin, God. This post is prompted by a picture of a young lady's dressing that I saw on Facebook that made me exclaim, Ahhh!

The Change We Need

Throughout history, influencers of society have discovered that the power they wield lies in their ability to communicate their values and concepts to the people effectively. Once people can grasp the concepts and ideals they are passing across, then it becomes easy to change their behavioral patterns and habits. No matter how powerful an idea, concept or value is, if it is not properly communicated, then there's no change. Those who attempted to present their message in such a way that it produced change had to understand the framework of the society i.e. the culture that they lived in. To be more effective communicators, they had to understand the cultural framework of the time in which they lived. Martin Luther, the 17^th Century reformer said this with regards to the translation of poetry

Whoever would speak German must not use Hebrew style. Rather he must see to it-once he understands the Hebrew author-that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, "Pray tell, what do the Germans say in such a situation?" Once he has the German words to serve his purpose, let him drop the Hebrew words and express the meaning freely in the best German he knows

It is this same principle that some translators of the bible follow, when creating new versions and I believe this same principle is what individual Christians and any local body of Christ should adopt in bringing the change into our societies.

The Gates Of Hell

In recent times I have been asking myself a lot of questions and a certain burden for the Church (the Body of Christ) particularly in my native country Nigeria. One story that I heard, which sparked some of these questions, was about a young Christian lady, who was in an office where some money had been stolen and no one knew who the thief was. A member of staff suggested that all the staff would be subjected to a test, by a juju man, assuring the owner of the company that this fail-safe method would reveal the thief. This Christian lady followed the other members of staff to the place and allowed herself to go through all the rituals the man said were necessary. I asked myself a simple question, how come this tongue-talking, Spirit-filled, church worker couldn't provide any solutions to the problem at hand but instead submitted herself to such base things? Couldn't she have “activated” a gift of the Spirit? That is what leads me to the reason for this post.

Recently I heard a prophetic teacher say something about a very popular scripture. What caught my attention is that I had never considered in this light he was bring before. Matthew 16:18, 19 says:

“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. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

I have always seen that scripture as the Church trying to defend itself against an onslaught of the kingdom of darkness. However when you consider that the keys of the kingdom of heaven has been given to the Church, to bind and loose God’s desires on the earth, then it gives you another outlook. In fact Jesus describes the church as advancing (keywords: BUILD MY CHURCH), which is obvious that we are the ones attacking and not defending. At the time Jesus spoke these words, the gates signified the group of people who determined the course of a society (its language, way of life, education, etc). In fact it was the Romans who invented this ekklesia, which was their way to change the culture of a people, to resemble Rome, without using force but by infiltration.

Secondly, notice the word used here is gates (plural) which means that the forces are not singular. Over the years, what we as God’s people have focused on is trying to bring the influence of God into our society by taking the religious mountain. We conclude that if people can attend church, we can easily penetrate our culture. If we do more prayer and fasting, hold more worship concerts and revival meetings, then our society would be aglow for Jesus. What we are not aware of is the fact that the things that influence behavior (and culture) are more than these Christian activities. I’m sure we may have heard about the 7 mountains or culture shapers namely, Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, Family, Religion and Economy.

Over the years our strategy, in my own observation, has been to get Christians heavily involved in the church community and environment, hoping that this would prepare them to take over in the other places of influence. What we have seen, from experience, is that our guys enter into the Arts & Entertainment Mountain and get swallowed up completely leading to choir directors coming out to say that they are now inspirational singers and not gospel singers anymore. People from the church enter politics and are swallowed up by the corruption in that mountain and you wonder if this guy, who ran for senatorial seat in Abuja and was an active worker in the church you both attended, is still a believer in Jesus and His ways of doing things.

What our spiritual warfare, in the form of prayers, worship, fastings, etc do is actually put angels in operation to disallow satanic powers from taking up the ruling power at the gates (where the outcomes of the mountains are decided). At such a time in our nation Nigeria, what the church should be doing is raising men and women who are like David; their spirituality not only delivers access into the divine but also the taking over of territories and the ousting of the oppressors of the people, Philistia. What the church needs to do is to ensure that men and women of maturity and wisdom get to the tops of these mountains of influence and bring God’s kingdom to bear on the earth or else perversion will sweep the nations and eat up the people of God. The devil’s agenda in the last days is simple, take over the earth by putting people he can control in places of leadership and influence. If he does this, then he can easily legislate and legalize evil and find people who will help him express the lawlessness he wants to proliferate.

How to react when Bible Movies miss the mark.

In recent times there have been lots of releases of bible movies by Hollywood (and there will still be more I believe). Majority of these movies have diverted from the original bible accounts that we have read. Most of them are not accurate and some even out-rightly blasphemous. I've been thinking a lot about our reactions to these movies (and even some other ones) mainly because of their strong influence on culture. I stumbled on a post by Phil Cooke, who is a respected media influence in christian circles (he's the brain behind Joyce Meyer's and Lakewood Church social and regular media campaigns).

Here's the link http://philcooke.com/when-bible-movies-miss-the-mark/    What do you think?

21st Century Lot

One of the greatest impressions in my heart in recent times has been how today's believer is so much like Lot and how different Abraham was from Lot. On the top of the list is the fact that Lot was clearly a believer who lived in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Where Lot lived, people called evil good and good was laughed at. Immorality was the normal and perversion was the sanity of that clime. It was so bad that God wanted to wipe out that entire city from the geographical landscape!

2 Peter 2:6-8 says Lot was vexed constantly by the things he saw and heard every day. It seems that same predicament is what many believers today face. I daresay that there are 4 kinds of individuals who lived in those days. The first I would mention are those who have sold themselves to depravity with no sense of restrain. To this group belong the people of Sodom & Gomorrah. They were so vile (and spiritually dead) that the men wanted to sleep with angels even when they were offered young girls to quench their sexual lust.

Those in the second set are Lot's children and his wife. His two daughters, who if they were living in our times, would be children born into Christian homes, attending the church youth church, etc had boyfriends who were unbelievers! I have heard of christians who are engaged to unbelievers and they don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it! Lot's daughters represent Christians who dine with the devil all week and "date" Jesus on Sundays.

The third category of people are like Lot's wife. Externally Lot's wife was the ideal believer. She stayed away from things publicly recognized as ungodly and did a good work at keeping up appearances. She went to church regularly and never missed midweek fellowship. She read her bible and prayed everyday and was an active person in the church she belonged to. Everyone knew her as Lot, the righteous man's wife. But then her heart was not longing for God but the good things of Sodom. It became evident when they were rushed out of the city by the angels and given a clear instruction not to look back into Sodom. The truth is that many believers are like this today. We must be careful and check our hearts. Are we not in love with the world? Do we have a form of godliness that is completely void of any living active relationship with God?

Then there was Lot. Lot was obviously tired of the state of the place he lived in. Lot was influential and powerful. This is evidenced in the fact that the angels met him at the gate of the city. In those days only the decision makers of a city sat perpetually at the gate/entrance of a city. Lot was also wealthy. He had material wealth at his disposal alongside servants too. Above all Lot was a righteous/holy man. But in the midst of all this, Lot suffered in silence. His influence and affluence did not translate to any impact on the environment he lived in. It was so bad that when God wanted someone to intercede for the city, He didn't even ask Lot, who was meant to be God's emissary in the place. Isn't this the same situation believers find themselves today? With all our big churches and large offerings, how much influence have we been able to exert in the political or even media environment. Just like Lot, most of us believers, on the individual level keep mute. Gradually these immoralities have crept into our so-called guarded spaces. Now we are bombarded, on our own TVs, with the lewd lyrics and soft porn in the name of music videos and all most of us can say is "This is not good oh. When I was your age, we never used to have things like this shown on national television."

The truth is Lot was meant to be responsible for Sodom and Gomorrah. He was so weakened by HIS SILENCE and the consistent onslaught of immorality that he couldn't even raise his influence to impact 10 people in the whole of Sodom and Gomorrah! And that was why God destroyed the twin cities.

The final type of believer in those days is typified by Abraham. (Yes I know I mentioned 4 earlier. Just add him to the list and make it five ok?). I'll be discussing the Abrahamic kind of believer in my next post. Right now, I want to get under some warm sheets. It's really cold. Ta ta!