Thank God for 2012

The Lord has been My Shepherd this season of 2012. As it comes to an end, it is my joy to thank God for His faithfulness in all aspect. He has given us good health, provided and protected us. More so, I am grateful that He has renewed my heart. I welcome 2013 with a great expectation of good tidings from the LORD in His Kingdom.

Be silent for a prayer.

"Faithful father, open the eyes of your servants so that they can see you, preach true gospel and stand firm against deceit. Guide us with your wisdom that we may not error, but remain true to your word. Amen."

Christmas

Although the birth of Christ has no scriptural demand to celebrate, it is a spiritual reality to adore. It amazes how God could take such a lowly position. It is a wonder how he could be borne of a virgin, in a place worse compared to where street family give birth. It makes me see how messed up I am without Christ. It helps me to realize how hopeless I would be if He never came.

Now that he came and took my position, to die on the cross and take the wrath of God for my sake. Mine is only to repent and live the life of repentance as I wait to see him in his Glory when he comes for the righteous. Not only that, but to reign with him. Glory to God in the highest.

Young people In Church Don’t Need an Alternative

I have listened to most pastors who seem to show a lot of concern for the youth in Churches. I love their passion and how enthusiastic they take action to bring young people together. In most cases, such pastors will do a lot to make sure that the youths are kept in Churches and never wonder out there in pubs, the likes of Carnivore (Nairobi) and others that give these youths fun.

The Churches on their part have developed and are still developing new strategies that ensure “young people”, as they are called, get fun in the Church and not outside. This is quite protective and good for young people, the youth. It means that if they were to go for dances outside there, the church on its part will organize dances (alternative) for them and "gospel artists" invited to 'changamsha vijani na midundo yao' (to excite the youth with their beats).

Most of these gospel artists know it all, when it comes to music. They have learnt the skills that keep their funs in flames of love to music, and music alone. Actually, cheers to our local artists in this. But here arises the challenge, the music have no gospel at all. A lot of the music is simply rhythmic words coated with a few Jesus-words inside. And sometimes even the Name Jesus is mentioned only in vain.

When you search between the lines of the songs, you get nothing. However, the beats are nice and take youth crazy. I am sure that many will not agree with me here, but truth be said, what gospel are we getting in the current gospel music we listen to these days, played by Kenyan artists borrowing from the streets of United States?

This is just one part of the alternatives that the youths have been given which they partake of. Most youths, for sure, love music and not the gospel. They go to Carnivore to listen to artists playing. Many times, they do not go there to drink, but only to see a popular artist, who has become a celebrity, doing what he knows best. Once they are there, they get tempted to drink and find themselves messing up. They first get drunk with music, before turning to hard drinks (simply the opposite of soft drinks).

Ask yourself a question, what if they were listening to the artist playing in their local Church. The environment may not be conducive for drinking alcohol, except for some rogues who still come with these drinks to church compound and end up leaving that place staggering. The biggest challenge is that when people are drunk with bad music, they end up doing bad things no matter the environment.

Some of the dances in Churches have attracted bad things in the past, and even today continues to do so. Condoms have been found littered in Church compounds. Someone would wonder how the Church turned to Carnivore Restaurant where Condoms are allowed and even used. This is a big problem that Church leaders, so called youth pastors cannot explain away.

Did this form of alternative help your youths? Some, having moral conscience and who are superstitious can avoid doing such unspeakable things in the Church compound. But they avoid simply because of morally and superstitiously influenced conscience and not because they love Jesus. They were told by their parents and they also heard of it from pastors that the compound is a holy ground where unholy things must never be done, at least by us.

I want to believe with all of the same minds that our youths do not need an alternative. They need a solution and the solution cannot be found in an alternative. If you are sick you need a doctor, but a good alternative to the pains you are feeling is basically pain killers. However, pain killers are not any close to a solution. If it is a cut, the solution is that the doctor should dress up the wounds after injections to inoculate you against tetanus, and other dangers. That is a solution to your problem; it will sort out the pains ultimately by healing the wound.

In Christianity, Jesus Christ is the solution and not an alternative. Church is not an alternative to going to the pubs, but those who have found Jesus and trusted in his name gather in Church to fellowship with brethren. Youths can continue their hideous ways, but when they get Jesus who is the solution, they change. The old ways will be gone and the new will have come. Christ is the savior of them who believe that he is the son of God who takes away their sin (The Gospel of John puts it well, please read it). Finding faith in Christ is finding life and life eternal.

Now what the youths should get therefore is nothing close to an alternative, but they need Christ, the life giver. They need the Holy Ghost who convicts us to righteousness and who counsels those who believe. When gospel artists give them music coated with a few Jesus-words, they are simply rendering the youths an alternative which has totally no positive impact. When they are drunk with this alternative, they will easily turn to alcohol, sex and other illicit things that are simply complimentary to the alternative. These things, like the Kenyan "Gospel music" just sooths young people with nice beats.

How can these youths get the real solution? We need preachers, therefore to preach the Good News of the Kingdom. Honestly, Good News will never be good to a non-regenerated heart. It will always be opposed by them; people will turn to pubs and leave the Church. Should this be the preachers' worry and therefore stop preaching the true gospel and turns to entertainment simply because he or she wants to keep many in Church? Or should the preacher continue to preach the Good News to all who remain in Church trusting God to increase the number and even bring back those who have run away? I wonder.

Most Churches are currently working hard to see how they can achieve the goal of entertaining everyone. The true Gospel is not entertaining, but drives people to true repentance. This is what we need to be right with God. When we go for entertainment, we are simply going for what our hearts desire, yet the heart of a man cannot be trusted because it is always desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).

Pastors seem to be more obedient to the desires of a man’s heart than what God wants of a man. We all must turn to God in repentance and he will forgive us our sins. John the Baptist did not sooth the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to him for baptism, he let them know that they must “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). This is a requirement for all.

I know that the tares and the wheat left to grow together is a good excuse that many Pastors give for entertaining all evils in Church to retain those they fear would run away back to the world. However, we must also remember that the tares were similar to the wheat in appearance. All are grass family which looks like wheat. Tares also adapted to the environment where wheat was growing.

All who come to Church must adapt to the requirement of church, they must not bring the world with them to Church, neither should we bring to them something that they left out there because by missing them they would go back. The worldly may not be willing to live according to the Gospel requirement, but the Church should not bend the rules to accommodate anyone. Those of Christ will remain in Church and will do the will of God as commanded them.

If tares don’t find the food among the wheat, they wither and for this reason, they have no option but grow in the same soil, produce bad fruit though, and at harvest will be uprooted and thrown outside or burnt with fire. When the tares wilt, it is the joy of the farmer because the real wheat is not the one wilting. This is probably a rough analogy, but anyone who wants to leave like the world should remain in the world and do worldly things out there. Once you join the family of Christ, and repent, you have no option but to keep the fruit of repentance as your daily dedication to serve and worship God.

Anyway, my belief is that the Good News must be preached, no matter what. It is not the work of the preacher to convert any or to keep people from running away from faith. His work is simply one, to preach the word and pray to God to keep his people. God’s people will never be lost. He is able to keep them and no one can snatch them out of His hands (John 10:29). If the youth you are preaching to are of God, they will hear the message and it will change them for good.

By this, they will keep producing fruits of repentance and God himself who has saved them will keep them to the end. This is the promise to all believers and I have never seen anywhere where the preacher is tasked with the work of sustaining the flock of God in faith to the end. Just to preach the word through which they will be really shepherded.

The Gospel demand has been and will remain repentance. We must repent brothers and sisters. We have no option. The Lord will come for a clean and a pure Church, not given to entertainments, but to worship of the Most High God, the Almighty father of all creation. He alone must be worship and none other deserves worship. Jesus Christ who is seated at the right hand of God is interceding for us. Let us go ahead as the called of God to preach the Good News of the Kingdom as unadulterated word of God. Amen.

I Have A Problem With The Old folks Who Lead The Church Today

I honestly struggle with how older church leaders are handling gospel ministry. Today, most of the people who went ahead of us believe that experience is what you need to be in ministry. They claim that a young man should sit back and wait until he learns lessons that would equip him with experience before he or she can get involved in ministry work. There are a number of questions that one would want to start asking. However, I wish to ask that we keep cool as I give a few things I have heard from older people who lead us.

Just as a reminder to all who are reading this article, it is meant for all young people who believe that the time to serve the Lord is now. To start with, have you ever indicated to some of your mentors that you wish to go out into ministry, maybe just to hear their advise on how to go about it? Normally, some ministers will take enough time to ask you quite a lot of questions, many being quite honest in deed while others are rhetorical and discouraging.

In reality, when we talk about the question on experience, one wonders where this experience would come from if there is no practical aspect in which you are involved to make you get this experience they talk about in the same church you currently fellowship. Somehow you are asked to sit and watch. The challenge with watching is that you may be listening to a gospel that make no sense at all.

The other challenge being the fact that you cannot rise up and correct the menace in the church considering that you must never point fingers at “the anointed one of God”. Another problem is that, you are not given any chance to practice in the same environment. Now where will the experience come from? If you are not allowed to practice, the preaching of the true gospel you believe how will you gain experience.

According to these  leaders, you will acquire experience through listening to them. I may ask, is there any student who came from an institution of learning with experience? You may graduate  with skills and knowledge, but not experience. You may have spent more years than others sitting under lecturers, but only to get the qualification with which you can go out and begin to acquire experience in the same field. 

I am sure that someone will wonder why I put the part of “the anointed one of God” above in quotes. My reasons are broad. One, if anointed of God, why persist in teaching errors? Why seems to be unwilling to work with others practically except in theory? Why involve people only when they seem to agree with the false teachings you feed the church? Many other questions come in this list, but it is vital to have these for now.  

Proclaiming the gospel is a command to all believers, some as teachers, prophets, evangelists, pastors while others doing it as apostles (probably not there today???). We need to do this today without wasting time. But if you want to do it, you are always told how young and less experienced you are.

Bishops and pastors everywhere seems to have a demand on the called of God that, if they ever come across their ministries, they must meet an obligation of being there under them for not less than three years before being released to start another ministry. This can seem to be a nice requirement on the face value, especially because it seems to be a “security check” on the new minster.

However, I have a big problem with this. Is this a biblical demand or it is just a personal requirement that minsters of the word have coined to ensure they keep people in their folds and not let them go out and serve the Lord with their gifts? Could there be a clearly honest biblical reason for demanding that a servant of God whom God has called must be under someone for a period before launching out. I think that it is a good requirement, but it is not a must, not even a biblical requirement. It is a good practice which should be emulated.

The other challenge I have with pastors and bishops concerns the idea of experience. There are many pastors out here who have faced seriously tough challenges. Some of them having launched out without “good preparation” faced hardship to actually return home. They were forced to close God's service and come back to relax, others for good and some for a time before they go back.

Such pastors or servants of God never find peace from people who seem to feel that they ignored their advice. The preachers who may have wanted them to sit back and wait till they can be allowed to go on their own begin to talk very nastily against them. They claiming how they never listen, begin to mock their lack of wisdom when they needed it most. They say that this young man is seeming rush in making decisions. they want him to stay more, but the people of God are suffering. They want a preacher and no one is willing to send to them one (Romans 10).

This for me is also, lack of wisdom. Church has become a seriously competitive thing where people want to see what so and so will achieve, if he or she pretends to know so much. I thought that bishops and others of the same caliber should be willing to stand with the young ministers who go out so that their work never fail. This to me is because, at their success in ministry the work of God is expanded to the joy of the body of Christ.

Having mentioned the challenges that others went through, but they succeeded somehow, you realize that this forms the reason why younger people must wait until they are old to go out for ministry. Think about a man who goes out with a clab, spear and a machete to fight a lion, but as he comes out of the house hears a cut with loud roar like that of an enemy he was going to fight. Because of fear he comes back and tells people that they must not go out because the lion is just next to the door.

Him carrying the machete, clab and spear stands at the door never going out, but at the same time not willing to let others go either. The scenario is that, the lion will not be fought, unless by the neighbors, but if he is the only family living around it will continue to eat their goats and sheep, including cattle.

He will keep locking the door for people who want to go out to fight and rescue the livestock, and he or she will not go either. He might keep shouting and will do nothing. They will probably loose all the animals they own.

I believe that this the same spirit reigning those preaches who seem to say that young people must just wait until they grow. Ministry being a thing that only forty five years old folks can do, yet they seem to do nothing. As the people become forty five years old, they only have an option of remaining in the same church, their vigor to go out is dying. Once they are old, they begin to say how much lessons they learnt by staying back. That if they went, they would have gone against God's will for them to simply be church workers.

In fact, this word church workers is just a comfort zone word depicting remaining in the same church where you were. You may be doing nothing, but you are a church worker by praying for others and being a member of small groups that you never attend their meetings, but if you do, you keep quite for being full of experience that others lack.

The reason they must just do all things until they gain the same experience. I think that this is evil. The enemy will continue to reign in the outside and no one will go for the fight to rescue the livestock being devoured. I pray for many ministers who seems to ignore the importance of using younger people while they are still young.

If you had a bad experience, should it be reason for others to sit back and never do anything in the ministry because they face the same challenges you faced? I believe that such ministers are better placed to prayerful mentor the people of God who feel the zeal to serve the Lord, whether young or old.

I believe that they can warn them of areas of potential errors so that the young folks can be cautious as they move out into ministry. If it is the issue of lack, what would you do to make sure that this young man whom God has brought your way will not struggle now that you have something to support them. What about being happy because God has been faithful to bring in an army charged with the energy to face the challenges you feared to face.

I have met a man over forty years of age. Having come into a church not his former church and hoping to have a cover to go out for ministry, has been asked to stay longer and probably for more years before he can go out. I have been wondering in my spirit whether it is right to stop such a man. I have been concerned, especially asking myself questions.

If a man over forty years of age is asked to sit back for more time yet he has been in the same church for one year and before them been doing ministry under someone fore more than five years, how many years will I be asked to sit back and wait for an okay from the bishop.

When I got saved I made a covenant with my God, that I will serve him. I know for sure that I should be serving him today which I think I am not doing well. When I hear and see errors, what should I do? Correct? How can I correct the bishop of a church who is the authority of God in that place? I cannot point a finger on the man of God.

It is not right, but it also not right to sit back and partake of the same perversity. If there are fundamental errors, doctrinal and I know it, what can I do? I guess the best thing is to leave this church in question. And I am in the process of exit, not tomorrow but soonest. However, when I leave I must not get to a church and sit for another one, two or more years before I can be allowed to go out and begin preaching the word of God. Life is tough in ministry, by the way. But I think that the best thing is to go out and start, with challenges or not.

And it is seeming to me that I will be going out without the confirmation of the people I have around me now. I have th confirmation from the former ministry (apprenticeship) that something is truly planted in my heart for God. This is not keeping me peaceful. I must preach the word, just only through that will I be able to get peace in my heart. 

I will keep updating this story among others.