Where’s The Light?

… this present evil world Gal. 1:4

Have you ever looked out at night? What do you see? Darkness, of course. I am sure this is no news for anyone. What might be news is that the darkness you see out there at night signifies the spiritual condition of this present world. In the Bible, evil is equated to darkness. And the physical darkness that we see in the world is an metaphor or symbol of the spiritual condition of the world. The earth rotates on its axis and we see both light and darkness, signifying the two kingdoms of God and the devil. But in this present world that we live in, the sun has not risen yet. That is why the Bible talks of

“the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12)

In the spirit, the present world is under the rulership of the rulers of darkness. The world is under deep darkness. If you want to know just how evil this present world is, just look out into the night. You will see only darkness. In the spirit world, much, or all of that darkness resides in the heart of man.

But there is something else! At night you see the stars. Bless the Lord for the stars, for they are they that brighten the night (the moon does not). Have you ever gazed up at a starry sky? It is incredibly beautiful.

We are like the stars. We bring light to this present world. How? Through our works of righteousness. In the spirit, the church is the only light in this present world. The sun has not risen yet. When our Lord Jesus Christ comes the second time, then the sun will have risen. Then this present world will run from His presence. The light chases away the light.

At present, as I said, we are like the stars in the sky. We are the only light that shines in this darkness.

Unfortunately, the church today is not shining brightly. I know I will have my critics; but I have to say what needs to be said, namely, (and I need to write it in capital letters) THERE IS REALLY NO MORE CHURCH IN THE WORLD TODAY, JUST A GLIMMER.

How can we say there is a church when what is called “church” today is full of anything and everything (too much to enumerate here) other than the beautiful fruit of the Spirit that shines in darkness; the works of righteousness; fruit that can only be had through an identification with the denial of self, the sufferings, death, and resurrection of Christ; Christ living in us.

How can we say there is a church when the true gospel, the gospel of the cross of Jesus is not being preached in church? On the contrary, we find that the most popular gospel in the church today is that of which the Apostle Paul spoke:

“For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:22)

God’s people run after miracles, signs and wonders, while others seek after intellectual understandings of scripture rather than desiring the inner work of the cross. But what did Paul preach?

“But we preach Christ crucified… Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor. 1:24)

Christ crucified is the real power and wisdom of God.

Judge ye yourselves. Should the church preach any other gospel other than

“Christ crucified”?

Then there is neither power nor wisdom of God. If it preaches anything other than Christ crucified, the church  will never shine like the stars in heaven. It will never bear the fruit of the Spirit – which is the true “light” of the world – without the cross working in her. Look at the Corinthian church. They had all the gifts of the Holy Spirit: so much so that they overlapped each other during ministry. But they had no fruit of the Spirit. They were carnal Christians, babes in Christ.

If we are to grow and become mature in Christ and reveal the glory of Christ in us, we must bend ourselves under the cross and allow it to do all it needs to do in us (breaking us) to the end that all the works of the flesh in us might be crucified and that Christ in all His glory might be seen in us!

[There is really no more church in the world today, just a glimmer]

A Gospel And A Life – Part 2

1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

When the Apostle Paul set out to write 2 Corinthians chapters 11 to 13, he set out to accomplish the greatest mission of all: to prove how the gospel of Jesus Christ worked in his life. This is the greatest accomplishment that any man can accomplish this side of heaven: proving the gospel of Jesus at work in him. Let us not forget the gospel that Paul preached.

“But we preach Christ crucified…” (1 Cor. 1:23)

Simple and clear. Paul did not preach any other gospel. Paul did not try to bring up any ‘smart’ doctrines or anything to show how clever or intelligent he was. Nor did he try to show how ‘powerful’ he was. Paul wanted to show the power of Christ.

Any other gospel other than the gospel of the cross will produce false ministers of the gospel – the kind of fellows that we talked of in Part 1 – who in turn will turn out unproven Christians under their watch. Paul therefore set out to prove that the gospel of Jesus Christ was at work in his life. He gave the example of his own life as proof that the true gospel of Jesus Christ was working in him.

So how did the gospel work in Paul?

The gospel worked through Paul through weakness!! Hallelujah to that! The gospel worked through Paul allowing himself to become weak. The gospel brought in Paul a broken man. Paul would gladly boast of nothing of himself except his weaknesses.

“… of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.” (2 Cor. 12:5)

The “infirmities” Paul talks about are his sufferings for the sake of the gospel. The sufferings for the sake of the gospel are the mark of a true servant of Jesus Christ.

This is according to God’s will, for Jesus says in Revelation3:19:

“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten”.

Paul rejoiced in the rebuke and chastening of the Lord! It was his only joy. That’s so different from us.

Paul lays out his sufferings in 2 Cor. 12:23-33.

“… in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft… 27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness… 32 In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me:  33 And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.”

An apostle let down through a window in a basket!

Paul was hounded and pounded. And here Paul lays down the challenge: “If anyone wants to boast in the Lord, let him boast as I have boasted – in his sufferings for the gospel!” This was proof that Paul was a minister of Jesus Christ.

That seems incredible enough, but what is even more important was the reason for Paul’s sufferings. In Colossians 1:24 Paul talks about the reason he endured his sufferings:

“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church”.

This life – laid down on the altar of sacrifice – produced the kind of person that God could use, one that could do the whole will of God. Such an one would love Christ’s church as Christ Himself loved it. Such was the man, Paul. He loved Christ church as Christ Himself loved her and gave himself for her.

In 2 Cor. 12:9, Paul writes:

“… Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

What “power” is Paul talking of here. Is it the power to lord it over God’s people?

No, on the contrary, it is the power to give of his life for God’s people sacrificially. The power to do all he could so that others could be built up in the Spirit. The power to lay down one’s life.

With such a man God was well pleased. Need we wonder, then, why Paul was given the mandate to preach the gospel throughout the known world and to single-handedly write half the entire New Testament?

[Recently sighted…]

Grow!!

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ… 2 Pet. 3:18

Oh, to grow! We are to grow in the Spirit. We are not to remain the same. Notice that to grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ is to grow in grace. The two are inseparable. You cannot say you have grown in the Lord Jesus Christ because you are now a bishop. Our claim to knowing Jesus solely rests on the fact that we have also grown in His grace.

This scripture challenged me greatly especially in my relationship with my wife. Now, there is no doubt at all in my heart that my wife is a rare gem. I consider her one of the most beautiful of God’s creations. She is amongst the regal women of this world (“Regal” means royal, majestic, stately, noble, according to my Thesaurus. My wife is all these. She has an incredible love for people.) I am very sure of the fact that, if it were men giving out wives, I would not have been in the race to ask for Flo’s hand in marriage. Had I come forward, the whole world would have had a long, hearty laugh. That’s a fact. In the natural, I am not the kind of guy who should have married Flo.

But the Bible says,

“Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.” (Prov. 18:22)

In other words, it is God who gives men wives. So, God gave me the woman I should never have had. End of story.

That’s the warm part. But now to the cold facts.

Regal she may be, but my wife is also my ‘iron’. What is it about her being an ‘iron’?

The Bible says,

“Iron sharpeneth iron…” (Prov. 27:17)

She is my sharpener. She keeps seeing all those weak points in me, and God has singularly created her to iron them out. In the early days of our marriage, she was especially enthusiastic about that job. She never wasted a moment in showing me the many creases in my character, after which she went about trying to straighten me out in the best way possible.

That was hard enough in itself. To say that I did not accept her chastisement would be a stupendous understatement. I kicked  and fought. But it did not end there. Regal she may be, but my wife is as human as the next. And to err, they say, is human. So, sometimes she erred and saw things that were not there. And she wanted to iron them out as well. She wanted to iron out things that were not there in me!

That was when my patience absolutely ran out. I was never one to take such injustice lying down. And so the mother of all battles would ensue. Mostly it was fought in the dead of night. Its details are yet to be de-classified.

As I got older, I decided to ‘grow’ and so I changed tactics. The trick, I realized, was to keep my mouth shut, and so I kept my mouth closed much of the time. But I closed my heart also. She would talk and talk… and I would keep my cool. I thought, Oh, what peace! What was I thinking all this time, making a scene? How so peaceful to just sit in my corner and watch her yap and yap!

One day, I attended a regional conference where our elder, Brother Miki Hardy, was preaching, and I heard him say, “I have purposed in my heart to never hold a grudge against my wife.”

I remember thinking, ‘I will never arrive there.’

Remember I am talking about the condition of my heart towards my wife whenever she tried to tell me something that grated against my pride or my rights. I am not implying that we lived a ‘war-torn’ life, no. Being the kind of woman she is, I believe I have enjoyed an incredibly happy marriage, in spite of myself. I am talking about those trying moments… the moments that tried my heart.

Anyways, one day I chanced upon this scripture.

“But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

I was sure I had never seen that word, “grow”, in the Bible. It seemed new to me. I mean, I had given up even trying to get out of the rut, and I had accepted the fact that when Jesus came back to earth, He would find me in exactly that state. But I consoled myself that Jesus would understand…

But, reading that scripture, it dawned upon me that we are commanded to grow. God commands us to grow. That means to stop moaning and to get up and move!! In the army, when you moan about how difficult an exercise is, they drill a bullet right next to your calf, and they promise that the next one will be on target. And they mean it.

But this scripture also means that God recognizes our weaknesses and our helplessness, and that He is there to help us grow in grace.

It was then that I stopped moaning. I stopped moaning, and I began working at growing. And, ever since then, never have I found a more delightful occupation. To grow. To grow in grace.

I know in my heart that I have now reached the place in my life where I could say, as Brother Miki once said, that I will never close my heart to my wife. I have purposed that in my heart. Not that she is perfect. But I have found the impossible is possible, for with God nothing is impossible (Lk. 1:37).

Does that mean I no longer react? Hardly. Does that my wife has stopped sharpening me? By no means. She is still my ‘iron’. As a matter of fact, she does not seem to be aware that I have changed and she digs into me even more. And – and I now know this is God’s doing – she keeps making those fallible ‘errors’. God allows her to see things in me that are not there. God allows it because He wants to see how I will react.

In recent times I have heard the phrase “open borders”. With me, it is “open heart”. I have brought up all my arsenal and placed it near the only place that matters – my heart. My heart ought to never shutter again – be it against my wife, nor against anyone else.

Granted, there is more to the Christian life than just relationships. But I believe the area of relationships is especially trying. That said, however, as believers, we are to grow in every area of our lives. We are not to keep glorifying our weaknesses. But we are to move on to maturity.

Fact: on the day of reckoning, Jesus will not ‘understand’ our lack of spiritual maturity.

Paul – A Model of God’s Character

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. Phil. 4:9

How can this be? How can God allow such words by a man to be inscribed into His holy scriptures? The man is talking about himself here! Indeed, it would appear he is boasting.

But the Apostle Paul, who it is that is speaking here, was no mere man. And his boasting was no ordinary bragging. Everything that he wrote in the Bible was approved by the Holy Spirit before it was even written down.

At any rate, a person would have to be either grossly egoistic or painfully ignorant to even hint at downplaying the significance of a man whose writings God allowed to make up for more than half the entire New Testament. Not only so, but Paul was he who was chosen and commissioned by God to bring about the revelation of the gospel of God’s grace in its absolute entirety and clarity to the church. Were it not for Paul’s writings, we would not understand the gospel as we do today.

And yet, amazingly, neither of these two things comprises the most important fact about Paul. The most remarkable thing about the Apostle Paul is that he lived the words he wrote. In other words, he lived the very life he preached and, in so doing, Paul became a model of God’s character and God’s grace. This is the single most important thing that sets Paul apart.

Make no mistake: preaching the gospel is extremely important. But whatever we do for the gospel’s sake we do it to the end that men and women may change and live the gospel. Living the gospel is the single most important thing that God is looking for in our lives.

Now, living the gospel might sound easy – until God pries the scales from off your eyes and you discover there are not too many people who can quote Philippians 4:9 for themselves with any sense of conviction. I am sure you would need to search far and wide indeed to find a single person who can perfectly fit the words that Paul writes about himself here. This is not a judgment on anyone. But the Bible makes it abundantly clear that not many people are willing to accept the crucified life. If, on the other hand you can find a man or woman who lives such a life, you’ve hit gold. You will have found someone you can follow, for such a person will lead you to Christ. And Paul was such a man.

Actually, when it comes to talking about his life, Paul does so extensively in his epistles. But his is no ordinary talk. Every word that Paul wrote he wrote under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Today, we will consider just one scripture among many, where Paul talks about himself. This scripture is a goldmine.

“16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. 17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. (1 Cor. 4:16-17)

Notice Paul talks of his “ways which be in Christ”.

“Ways”. What a strange word! I believe this speaks of his entire manner of life. His ways, he says were conducted “in Christ”!

I cannot comprehend the boldness that Paul had. For here he is telling the Corinthians that he will be sending Timothy to remind them of how he lived and walked among them according to the gospel of Jesus Christ that he preached to them. I wonder what Paul wanted them to remember about him?

Personally, there are many things that I as a preacher would wish people not to remember about me. Many times my ways were not “in Christ”, despite my belief to the contrary. May the Lord be merciful to me. But Paul’s ways were all in Christ and he had nothing to fear. What a price he must have paid to arrive at such boldness!

And it was not just to the Corinthians that Paul took his ways which were in Christ. It is recorded in the Bible that he took these same ways to all the churches that he set his foot in – “every where in every church”.

What an incredible feat this was in the Spirit! It is through such insights that we can begin to appreciate the greatness of this man, Paul, in the Spirit.

Unfortunately, people ‘export’ all kinds of things to God’s churches. A couple of decades ago, someone brought the ‘Toronto Blessing’ to Africa, and people were laughing in churches like crazy. Today, I do not hear of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ any more. Where did the ‘life’ of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ go? Why did the laughter, and the barking, and the drunkenness not endure? It is because these things were not “in Christ”; they were not of Christ. Whatever is not of Christ cannot endure the test of time.

But Paul’s life, which was in Christ, and which he lived thousands of years earlier, is still with us. And it gets sweeter and more powerful the more we get to know it.

Paul did not go ‘slaying people in the Spirit’ in the churches. Rather, he took to them his ways which were in Christ, and these endured. And they will endure to the end.

Unfortunately, false doctrines like the ‘Toronto Blessing’ and other deviant doctrines are all that most preachers can bring to God’s people. The result is that, at the very least, believers are not taught the cross, they have no example to look up to, and they end up living a grace-less life. At the end of all the hype, they find themselves fighting a losing battle against depression, anger, pride, envy, lust, division and every work of the flesh because in essence these believers are products of preachers who have no “ways” of Christ in them.

Even worse, however, is that these doctrines damage people spiritually in other, more sinister ways.

Much too many preachers today have nothing of Christ in their lives to show to God’s people.

Today, God is looking for preachers who will bring their “ways which be in Christ” to the churches.

To be fair, the ‘Toronto Blessing’ caught God’s people when there was no spiritual father in the church. But that has been the problem of the church throughout history: the lack of a spiritual father within the church. In such an atmosphere, anything goes.

The church’s spiritual father is the apostle, and the apostle reveals the crucified Christ to the church. He does this through showing them his ways which are in Christ!

The challenge to us, the church, is that exactly what Paul says here – a life lived “in Christ” – should be what every preacher and every believer have to say of themselves. This is the core of our salvation: the life we live, the words we speak, the spiritual deposit we impart to others; and the way we relate to people, especially believers. This can only be a life founded upon the revelation of the cross in a person’s life. When we are crucified with Christ, Christ lives and proves His works in us, as He did in Paul’s life. Paul makes this clear in Galatians 2:20:

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Notice, “the life which I now live in the flesh…”

We ought, first and foremost, to ask ourselves the question: What kind of life do I live?

We can only live a life of grace and true holiness when we have crucified our flesh on the cross. Any other way is mere religion and it will not produce spiritual fruit in our lives.

The Challenge To Obey God

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Rom 8:13

The first man to die was Adam, and here scripture gives us the reason why he died. Adam died because he followed after his flesh rather than obeying God. This scripture also brings us to realize that what has always troubled the church then and now is the flesh. Much as we would love to blame the devil for the church’s woes, yet it is far much safer to stay with what the Bible says; and here the Bible states that the real enemy of God’s church is the flesh. If that is the case, therefore, there is no doubting the fact that every other gospel preached has missed the mark, except one – the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ, as it was revealed to the Apostle Paul – “For the preaching of the cross… is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). The revelation of the cross of Jesus Christ is the singular gospel that has power to deal death to the flesh, and to enable those who are called by God to inherit eternal life (Gal. 6:14).

To find ourselves even beginning to understand this revelation is an indescribable grace!

Now, before we go on, let us make sure that we understand perfectly clearly what the Bible means by the word flesh. The Bible itself gives us the meaning right here in Romans 8:13: the flesh, it says, are “the deeds of the body”. Again, the “body” mentioned here is not the physical flesh and blood body that we know of. Rather, it is the innermost part of man, his soul. In Bible language, the “body” is that unregenerate nature of man.

A list of the body’s “deeds” is written down in Galatians 5:19-21:

“19 … adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

These are the things that the Bible refers to as the flesh. They are the things that we absolutely must put off from our hearts in order to enter heaven.  God has given us His Holy Spirit for this very purpose.

The Holy Spirit is more than sufficient for this task while, on the other hand, on our own we are completely useless. So what is our role in all this? Our responsibility is to humble our wills to the working of the Holy Spirit and to allow Him to deal with these “deeds” in our hearts. To carry a humble heart is the singular greatest responsibility that man has before God.

I find it interesting that many born-again believers think that they will enter heaven with their carnal ways just as long as they have done some things on the outside… fulfilling some church roles, or obeying some laws and regulations.  And yet, throughout scripture, we find that the singular condition for us to be ushered into God’s heavenly Kingdom is for us to put off the old man of the flesh and its lusts by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There are people who will counter that this “requirement” implies works rather than grace. But no. This requirement is not of works nor, indeed, can you do away with the flesh through works. There is no power that can defeat the works of the flesh, except one – the power of God, the Holy Spirit. But God has given us this same Holy Spirit to come live in us. The power of the Holy Spirit, which saved us in the first place, is even more capable of dealing with our sinful nature.

Living in sin or appeasing the flesh is therefore a denial of the Holy Spirit’s power in your life.

That is why the Bible insists that we must be transformed. In other words, the Bible reasons, seeing God has given us His Holy Spirit, there is no reason for a believer to not be transformed into the image of God’s Son Jesus Christ, for which very purpose God has given us His Holy Spirit!

The church wants to ride the sugar train of the flesh and also inherit God’s spiritual Kingdom? No way! And yet today, increasingly, Christians want it that way. They want to sing “Glory, glory hallelujah!” and raise a racket in church while embracing the lusts and passions of the flesh. But God is more interested in us putting off the carnal nature in us than in our singing. God is more interested in a pure heart, for example. He is also interested in us living a morally pure and holy life. God is interested in a heart of mercy, and a heart that can easily forgive. There are many things that God is interested in, and they can only be found in us if we have crucified the flesh and allowed the Holy Spirit to cleanse us.

Paul in Galatians provides us with a list of the things that please God in a man.

“22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (5:22-23).

Such people – people who have crucified their flesh – are free! They are free from any laws. You cannot even tell such a person, “Obey God!” because he has already obeyed Him by putting off the works of the flesh. Praise God!!

Many believers have been taught spiritual warfare, to war against the devil. They boast in being able to confine the devil in the bottomless pit and many other places. But few know how to defeat the flesh. Incidentally, I haven’t read anywhere where it says that if you confine the devil to the bottomless pit you will go to heaven.

But the cross of Jesus Christ teaches us exactly what is needed to please God: it is the mortification of the flesh. Moreover, through the revelation of the cross, when it comes to the devil we learn that, once we have defeated the flesh, we have in effect defeated the devil (Eph. 6:10-18). He cannot touch us.

The Bible is an interesting Book because it does not use half-way words like “maybe” or “probably” or “just might”. But when the Bible says that we will die if we live according to the flesh, it means just that. When God told Adam he should not eat of the fruit that God had told him not to eat for he would die the minute he ate it, Adam thought God had said “just might”. But God had not said that. When therefore Adam ate that fruit, he died immediately.

How much more do you think we shall die spiritually if we fail to deal with our carnal natures? Much more so, I am sure. And yet believers walk about with this mindset of testing God. For that reason, many believers today are dead spiritually, and the Bible declares that some have even died physically as a direct result of choosing to walk in sin (1 Cor. 11:30-32).

That is why we must crucify the flesh. I believe that the first business of the church is to put to death the deeds of the flesh. The power of the Holy Spirit is readily available to us, and we grieve the Holy Spirit when we ignore Him. Even worse, of course, is that when the church fails to take the way of the cross, it fails to grow and become the bride that Christ is awaiting.

The church today appears larger-than-life, and yet it is all a façade. Before we boast of our mega-churches, we must crucify the flesh. God is not really bothered about the size of someone’s church.

Before we sing “Glory, glory hallelujah!” we must crucify the flesh. I haven’t read anywhere in the New Testament where it says that I have to absolutely sing “Glory, hallelujah!”, but I certainly have read that I need to crucify the flesh if I hope to one day make it to heaven.

This is our challenge to obey God.

The Plurality of God’s Grace – Part 2

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Rom 5:10

Conceiving and giving birth to a child is one thing, but raising up that child to become the person you want them to be is a different matter altogether. But, whereas in the natural the child-rearing part is the hardest – in most cases it is an absolute nightmare; and the world is littered with the relics of many a failed mission in that regard – yet here scripture declares that God, through the gospel that so powerfully reconciled us to Him, is able to bring us to maturity with the same certainty that He reconciled us to Himself in the first place.

As much as our reconciliation with God is a miracle beyond words, yet the work of the cross in us is an even more incredible feat, guaranteed to transform our lowly lives of sin into powerful testimonies of the holiness of God. What a grace!

The second part of this amazing scripture states: “…much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Notice the “much more”. That should encourage us.

Initially also, notice that the Bible makes it clear that there is the reconciliation, and then there is the salvation. In other words, what we normally call “salvation”, the Bible calls “reconciliation”. We say, “I am saved”; the Bible says, “No, you are reconciled with God”.

According to this scripture, salvation is a process that we are undergoing right now in our earthly lives. Scripture here is equating salvation with perfection. One day, our salvation will be completed. The gospel is working in us to perfect us.

Now, let us put this into proper perspective. The first thing we need to acknowledge is that the gospel is a living Entity. The gospel is actually Christ Himself. So when the gospel works in us, it is actually Christ Himself working in us to produce in us His own character, the character of God.

Unfortunately, there are some believers who live so much in the natural they are completely unaware of the profound work that needs to happen deep in their spirits. Instead, they concentrate on superficial things.

How do we allow Christ to work in us? It is when we allow the work of the cross in us. It is when we accept tribulations, hardships, trials and persecution for the sake of the gospel. The channel through which Christ comes to live in us is the channel of suffering and death. Through our acceptance of His death Christ comes into our hearts. And when Christ comes, He comes with His life. Christ’s life in us will save us. In other words, it will transform and perfect us.

Heaven is not waiting for immature babes. Once God calls us, He gets to work in us because He does not want to spend eternity changing nappies in heaven! Have you ever noticed that, even though there are hundreds, probably thousands of deaths occurring daily in the world, yet it takes an awful long time to hear about the death of a saint. And in nearly every instance when a believer dies, people’s hearts can testify that they have died in victory.

God is busy working to mature and perfect us here on earth, that we may stand before Him perfect.

We can hereby conclude that the two-fold purpose for which Christ came to earth and died on the cross for was:

1. To reconcile us to God through one single act of repentance; and
2. To perfect us in the Spirit through the work of the cross.

So what should be our response to such enormous grace? We readily and joyfully accept the reconciliation part. How about we cheerily begin working on the salvation/perfecting part, which is the reason we are still down here on earth?

Paul says in Colossians: “… 28 Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: 29 Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:28-29).

We cannot wait for the work of perfecting to happen in heaven. The power of the cross is there purposely to work in us now. Do not hold onto your life. Allow the cross of Christ to break and humble you.

[Below: The Master, through the cross, is putting our lives in order]

Christianity Is A Call To Suffer

25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:

26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? Lk. 24:26

Notice that Jesus tells His disciples here that all the Old Testament spoke of His sufferings. All. Not one prophet did not speak about the sufferings of Christ.

More importantly, though, notice how Christ’s sufferings are tied up with the glory to come. In other words, for Christ to enter into His glory, the door that He had to pass through was sufferings!

It is incredible how carnal – how un-spiritual – the church today has become. We have no vision of the eternal glory. Less so is our perception of the road we need to take to arrive at that goal.

Nowadays, the church is full of prophets and other ministers who prophesy about what God’s people are going to enjoy once they believe on Christ. I remember, many years ago, I went to a lunch-time fellowship in the city and I heard one of the most famous preachers of that time saying, “God is about to give you that Mercedes Benz that you have been praying for!”

And the hall was packed full of God’s people.

In retrospect, now, I cannot understand the logic of that statement. A Mercedes Benz! What does a Mercedes Benz have to do with the Kingdom of God?

That’s how far today’s ‘prophets’ have gone from hearing from God.

But with the Old Testaments prophets, the singular message they heard from God was the sufferings of Christ. They did not hear any other message. They did not hear the message of prosperity.

In the New Testament, God brought the message of Christ’s sufferings closer to His people, beginning with His apostles. God always begins with the apostles.  He reveals His message to them, then He applies that message to their lives. The Apostle Paul received a singular revelation of the sufferings of Christ for the church. When he went to the Corinthians, therefore, he says, “1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” 1 Cor. 2:1-2

In effect, Paul was saying he received the same revelation of the sufferings of Christ that the Old Testament prophets received.

After He gave him this revelation, God brought this revelation to work first in Paul’s life. In Acts 20:22-23, the Apostle Paul, speaking to the Ephesian elders, says, “22 And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: 23 Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.”

The Holy Spirit did not witness that Paul would suffer in a few cities. No. The Holy Spirit witnessed to Paul that he would suffer in every city. Every city! And so this most faithful of God’s servants walked about with a thorn in his flesh all his life.

That is the spirit that we need to catch. Failure to do so will find us out of league with Christ. We are all aware that after our initial confession of Christ into our hearts, life goes on. What many of us do not realize is that this life that goes on must of necessity be an identification with Christ in the Spirit, in His sufferings and death – towards the goal of eternal glory. In other words, the life that we now live in Christ is a lost life in the natural. It is not a life where we simply rejoice because God has “put food on my table”. The latter – which is all too common today – is too simplistic an interpretation of the Christian life. It is too basic! Ultimately, it is a carnal understanding of the Christian life that we have been called to. Significantly, it is an interpretation that is bound to keep us spiritual “babes” forever. And there is no sadder place for Christ to find one of His children when He comes back!

In today’s tech world there is something called “upgrading”. People are always upgrading from one app to the next.

In the Spirit, too, we need to upgrade. For, since Christ was to be a true Son of God, the Old Testament prophets did not see Him in the Spirit receiving childish things like Mercedes Benzes. On the contrary, they foresaw Him suffering and dying in the flesh. They saw Him in His perfect “upgraded” status. This is the core of spiritual maturity.

Let us pray to God to reveal to us the singular gospel that He revealed to the Apostle Paul, “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Then, and only then can we be sure we are on the right track – the road to the eternal glory.

[Below: In a village deep in rural Singida, a young girl poses for a photograph]

“Absent From The Lord” – Part 2

6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 2 Cor. 5:6-8

Notice, clearly, that the Bible states that when we are “at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord”.

One day, many years ago, a brother and I were walking in the hot, punishing Musoma sun when I made the unfortunate remark that I wished we had a car or even a motor-cycle. The brother kept walking for a minute and then he said, “Y’know, pastor, nowadays we are too soft on ourselves. The early church never even thought of such things.”

I winced at the brother’s words. But on closer reflection, I realized how truly “absent from the Lord” I was. Somehow I was reminded that cars and motor-cycles have nothing to do with the Kingdom to which we have been called, for it is a spiritual Kingdom!

Indeed, when we reflect on the lives of the early disciples of Jesus Christ we find they were men and women who despised their own lives and the material trappings of this earthly life (Heb. 10:32-39). The apostles themselves lived lives that were materially far below even those of the common pauper (1 Cor. 4:9). And yet with all the wealth that was daily being laid at their feet, the early apostles could have lived like kings! (Acts 4:34-37) Which points to perhaps the most surprising fact about these early believers – that this was a choice on their part. It was not forced upon them by anyone. But these Godly men and women knew they were engaged in a war with their flesh and they therefore deliberately chose to cut themselves from this worldly life. They purposed to take up their cross and crucify the flesh in every possible way.

It was not that this scorning of the material life was in itself sufficient to make them spiritual, but they knew it was a necessary part of the road that they were called upon to take.

We reflect on men like the Apostle Paul, who one time commanded his team to go ahead by ship while he himself purposed to walk the long distance by foot (Acts 20:13).

Much more, of course, could be spoken of our Lord Jesus Christ who preached to the crowds from a borrowed fishing boat, and without even the aid of a public address system. And yet this Man, being the Son of God, could have stunned His peers as He flew from one ministry point to another in a post-modern superjet.

Moreover, nearly all Jesus’s journeys were made on foot. Can you imagine that! This was a Man who could walk on water; but on account of crucifying the flesh, Jesus planted His feet firmly on the ground and walked the Judean roads. At one point as He was passing through Samaria, Jesus was so exhausted from fasting and the long walk that He sat by a well to relax and ask for a drink of water. It was there that He met the Samaritan woman, and a beautiful story unfolded.

Space would not suffice to write about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; of Joseph, of Ruth, of Esther, of David, Daniel and the many other Godly men and women who in so many different ways were willing to lose this world that they might gain God’s riches in the Spirit. We see clearly that our spiritual fathers utterly despised the things of this world and this earthly life. They were seeking after a spiritual heritage. They were seeking to be “present with the Lord”.

Unfortunately, it is not so today. Clearly, we in this generation are certainly more “at home in the body” – and “absent from the Lord”. We are a “rights” people. We have so many rights! And we love the soft, comfortable fleshly life.

But this only takes us far from the Lord. Our only recourse to being “present with the Lord” is to crucify our flesh.

[Below: From the surrounding hills, one gets a beautiful view of Lake Victoria and Musoma Town down below]

The Apostolic and Prophetic Ministries

The father figure is God’s greatest creation. There is no bigger tragedy than for a child to grow up without a father. I know people who will point to so-and-so to try to prove that you can achieve so much without being raised by a father, but I am not talking about achievements here.

Whatever way one looks at it, God certainly had a purpose in putting a man in the house. A father in the house carries authority. That is what he was created for above everything else. And authority brings order.

To be honest, I personally cannot claim to have accomplished even half of what I know I need to accomplish in my house. I cannot even claim to be half the idea of what some people regard as a man (After these two submissions, I am sure my enemies can now sleep in peace).

But one thing I have stone-cold accomplished in life is that my children know that there is a father in the house. Of that I have no doubt. They know the meaning of authority in our house. There are times I have gone to extremes, sure, but it has served in them knowing that there is something called authority in our house.

My wife can scale Mt. Everest and come back, but she can do nothing when it comes to authority in the house. That is my office and even if I am not there she cannot usurp it.

I have been away from home many times and there are times when my wife thought she could “control” our teenage kids. But every time she would try such a stunt, it always back-fired, and she had to call me from wherever I was, even when I was far away in a neighboring country. And all the kids needed to hear was my voice – and order would return to that house.

I am not saying they became angels or anything. Nor am I saying that my children will succeed in life because of that. But my children have always known there is a father in the house. And that has always brought order back to that house even in the worst of situations. If my children refused for me to chastise them, they would become bastards. The Bible says so in Hebrews 12:8.

Today people fear the term “order”. But it is a spiritual term.

(It is in connection to these issues that the Bible says that every woman must be under the authority of a man, and that every man must be under the authority of Christ (1 Cor. 11:3). Anything outside this order is unbiblical.

That is why also there can be no woman in the five-fold ministry because these are ministries of authority within the church. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:11-12: “11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

A woman can minister in many other areas within the Body of Christ, but not in the five-fold ministry.)

A lack of a father in the church has brought about all the chaos and disorder that we are witnessing in the church today.

And the Apostle Paul, speaking with regard to the ministry of the apostle, he writes the Corinthians, “14 I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you. 15 For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” 1 Cor. 4:14-15

Paul was telling the Corinthians that he was their father. He had begotten them in the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of the cross (1 Cor. 2:2). He had preached the singular gospel – the gospel that tells you to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Christ – that only could produce mature sons and daughters in the Spirit.  As a result, they were now his bona fide “sons” – but sons of God’s Kingdom also because Paul was under the authority of Christ.

Paul therefore could “shame” them if it came to that, as he does in 1 Cor. 6:5 and elsewhere, he could warn them; indeed, he could do anything with them to bring order into their lives.

No other ministry can beget sons in the gospel of Jesus Christ except the ministry of the apostle. He alone has been put by God in the church to bring the revelation of the cross in the church. All other ministry are dependent on this ministry together with the ministry of the prophet. Upon these two ministries is the church built (Eph. 2:20). People may beget many other things, I don’t know; but the Bible makes it clear that it is only the ministry of the apostle that can beget sons in the gospel.

Indeed a lack of this ministry within the church, or a lack of submission to it, has brought about so much destruction to the church of Jesus Christ.

I doubt any book exiting would suffice to list all the different things that are going all wrong with the church today. Every one of us is a witness of at least something that is wrong with the church.

The root of this problem is that there is no father in the house. There is no man in the house to bring order.

That is why, if you look carefully particularly on many Christian TV channels, you will find many young preachers today. (In Africa nearly all of them dress the same way). You will find these young men saying and doing the most abominable things in their “churches”; and if you follow them up they will tell you they have their own independent “ministries”.

They have no one they are subject to. They do not know anything about authority, nor submission.

But with the early church, if you saw a young man preaching or pastoring a church, he always had a father behind him. The Bible is replete with these examples. We find Timothy and Titus, for example, and many others.

You wouldn’t have found these young preachers telling their congregations to eat grass, for example, or to bring in all their money so they could live like kings.

No; these were young men (notice, not women) who had been raised the hard way. There was no spiritual frivolousness about their lives. They had a father, and there was order in their lives.

It is high time that the church woke up and acknowledged that it desperately needs the five-fold ministry, and to allow the ministry of apostle and prophet to have their true place in church – that there may be order and growth in the Body of Christ.

As long as this blog exists, it will be dedicated to bringing out the singular apostolic revelation that Christ bequeathed the church, and which the Apostle Paul so ably set forth in his writings and without which there is no true church.

[Below: the twin ministries of the apostle and prophet are the foundation of the true church]

Love Believes All Things!

(Love)… believeth all things… 1 Cor. 13:7

One of the most incredibly precious people that God has placed in my life is a young man by the name Elinty Ibrahim. Recently when I was in Dar es Salaam, this brother came to visit me in my house, and we spent the better part of the evening reminiscing about the first few days when our paths first crossed.

In the course of our conversation, this young friend said something that opened my eyes to see a very astonishing aspect about our God. What God revealed to me through Elinty’s words astounded me beyond belief. It is incredible how we can be saved for decades and somehow think we know God and then one day the Lord opens our eyes to see something so ‘basic’ about Him which we had no idea about! That was exactly what the Lord did with me. Elinty (or ‘Ibra’, as he is popularly known) said something that opened my eyes to see something that had been under my nose all along, but which I had never seen clearly in my spirit.

But before I continue let me first provide a background of sorts…

Three years ago we at CTMI began publishing Brother Miki Hardy’s teachings about the cross and the grace of God in a local Christian weekly called ‘Msemakweli’. Soon after people began reading our articles, a young man in Dar es Salaam called me on the phone and asked to see me. We met at a busy intersection in the city and we just stood there with the traffic swirling about us and I opened my mouth and started sharing the gospel of the cross right there with him. Our meeting was so powerful that none of us contemplated the thought of moving even an inch from where we were standing. I could feel the presence of God all around us.

The young man’s name was Elinty Ibrahim, and he was an undergraduate student at a local university. He was also a member of one of the biggest charismatic churches in the city. Soon after we met, however, he began attending our church services and hearing the gospel of the cross. But his experience was akin to that of a drug addict who is trying to kick the habit. He had been raised on a constant diet of high-powered charismatic teachings (his room was filled with Christian books and publications); and although he now could see something in the gospel of the cross, still he struggled to accommodate it in his heart.

He struggled so much that on more than one occassion he walked up to me after service and told me he would not be coming to our church again. But I loved ‘Ibra’ dearly and I could not bear the thought of losing him. I knew since the day he called me that he had grasped something of the precious treasure to be found in the gospel of the cross.

Throughout this very shaky period of our relationship somehow the Lord gave me grace and I clung to Ibra in every way possible. Sometimes he would claim he did not have bus fare to attend the next service; I would make sure he got the bus fare. Other times I organized for teams of young people to go visit him at the single rented room he was living in. He was my prized possession and I had no intention of losing him.

Today, thankfully, all that is history. The Lord proved faithful and and Ibra finally saw things clearly, and when he did, it was full steam ahead! Today Ibra has grown in his perception of the gospel and he has become one of the most dependable young people in the church. This was demonstrated to me recently when I was in Dar es Salaam and I learned that the local church board had selected him to represent the youth in the upcoming East African regional CTMI youth conference to be held in Mugumu, in the Serengeti. He has become an indispensable part of the church.

I have written all this as a background to what I intend to write in this post, because it is so important…

On this day that he came to visit me Ibra said, “During the days when I was struggling with the gospel what I remember above everything else is your trust in me. You believed in me completely. It was like you could see something in me which I could not see. I had never seen anyone put so much trust in me, and because of that I purposed in my heart that I would not let you down! I know you are not aware of it, but that was the reason I held on.”

Now, my readers must understand that this post is not a PR stunt on my part, nor am I trying to raise my popularity ratings. Actually, I had never even considered the issue in the light that Ibra saw it. I cannot recall ever “believing” in anyone to the extent that Ibra spoke of; I probably did things very much out of a formal routine!

But it was what God revealed to me through Ibra’s words that truly knocked me over. The thought came, ‘If old, rotten me can believe in someone, how much more does God believe in us?’ I had never seen it this way, but on this day I saw it clearly: God believes in us. But I also saw something else. I saw that God does not believe in us the way we believe in people. On the contrary, God believes in us the way a child would believe – with absolute trust. In other words, God has child-like faith in us. And the really awesome thing about it is not that God is stupid, no; but God has faith.

The more we get to know God the more God surprises us – by His simplicity.

In 1 Corinthians 13:7 the Bible says that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. What an absolutely incredible scripture! What incredible strength this love has! Here I can actually see God believing in us fully despite our weaknesses and our failures.

Did you ever realize how difficult it is to believe in people? In fact, the more ‘enlightened’ and the ‘stronger’ we become, the less inclined we are to trust others!! We get to know their weaknesses and their failings, and our trust in them sort of begins to fade away. That is how weak the flesh is. In our human strength we are the weakest of men!

But God is nowhere close to that scenario. Though infinitely much more knowledgeable and stronger than we, yet God comes down to our level, He even gets beneath us and favors us with this incredible trust which we do not even come close to deserving.

And even after He comes to check on us and finds we have blown our chances, He does not say, “How stupid can you get?!”

Instead He says, “Don’t worry, I will clean up the mess. Let’s try this once more.” And He will do that a million more times, as long as we keep out hearts open.

This is grace! This is spiritual maturity. This is love. And that’s who God is because God is love.

I would give anything to be able to have the simplicity – the grace – of God in me. That’s true liberty, that’s true strength. The truly strong man is the man who can believe in all things, as God does, even the weak things.

No wonder the Apostle Paul would preach no other gospel than the gospel of the cross (1 Cor. 2:2). For it is at the cross that such grace can be found. At the cross we learn to put off our body of the flesh, the single stumbling block to living the God kind of life. At the cross we get to know Christ more – the crucified Christ. That is how we get closer to true freedom and true spiritual victory.

[Below: I am proud that Ibra (to the right) is a part of our family]