|
 advertisement
|
have not written an article in a long time (was even wondering if that part of my assignment is over), the book I’m writing has also been on hold (don’t like that), because I have been consumed with fighting against the decline of morality not only in America as a whole but at the wall-position that God posted me to watch, which is Omaha, Nebraska.
The last six months has taught me great lessons, first that the moral decline in America is not because of evil itself, but because good people have let evil prevail, that the decline in America’s morality is an indictment on the body of Christ. I also discovered that I’ve been teaching biblical principles (spiritual truth) to those who cannot comprehend it, who tries hard to understand spiritual principles, emotionally and intellectually, hence high and low, emotions without real change. No time has the state of the American church been more revealed to me than this past year (last six months of 2012).
The American church has lost its bearing (there are remnants), rather than seeking and sticking with Christ the Olive tree, we are busy seeking everything else, which ordinarily when we are obedient get added without much effort. In other to be popular, hang with the right crowd, be on TV, etc. we have compromised our God and His truth, the devil has allowed us to be religious without power, we are now achieving so much in our strength, we have reduced God’s supernatural power to owning luxury cars, an airplane or a large congregation and following. The gospel today is now a ME gospel, not going and disciplining men, our character as believers is not raising Christ up, so He can draw “men” to Himself.
In the current (managed) chaos, I believe firmly that it is incumbent upon every individual who have accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, not the majority who serve with emotion and intellect (and reason their way out of biblical instructions) to take an inventory of our generation and decide to stand for Christ and His righteousness in the midst of ME gospel within and Political Correctness from without.
There is an old proverb that says “a leader is not made but revealed, especially under pressure”. As the American church come under increased pressure to be politically correct and compromise truth, the whole world is seeing what we are made up off!To stand for God’s truth in a generation that is politically correct, it is important to know who you are and that you know your God? The three Hebrew young men, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego knew themselves and they also knew their God. After Pentecost, the Apostles knew who they were in Christ, and they knew who their God was. What made the three young men defy Nebuchadnezzar in the face of death, what made Peter, Paul and the rest of the disciples defy the Sanhedrin council and other leaders, was the assurance of who they are in Christ and confidence in the God they serve.
God has created, gifted and called each one of us uniquely and both the gift and calling are irrevocable (even if deployed negatively). God created us as tripartite beings, with a spirit (separated from God at birth), a body (includes our five senses) and a soul (that includes our mind, our will and our emotion), all three function together to create a unique person.
These three beings interwoven determine who we are, for instance – as a product of Nature and Nurture, our body and spirit has directly effect on nature, while the body and soul has direct effect on our nurturing. The genetic composition of our parent (or generations ahead of us) determines our physical nature, personality, physiology etc. while our sin nature is a product of our spiritual inheritance via the first Adam (fall in the Garden) - thank God for the second Adam. Our nurturing comes from what we learn (take in through our senses) as children or young adult and store in our brain (amygdala, hippocampus etc.), and we (through the frontal cortex) refer to these stored experiences through our lives.
Knowing the above explain why it is absolutely important to God that we raise our children with the fear of God. The generation after Joshua did not know God, so they paid dearly for it, through the leadership they chose. Unanimously, experts in raising children, child psychologists, pediatricians etc. agree that the best lesson in life for a child is what he/she sees the parent demonstrate, not what the parent say, which explains the chaos in our world today. Over 75% of black chidlren today are born in a single parent home, in America - married couples in their first marriage are now minority, and we are wondering why our kids are shooting each other? In the midst of these chaos, the same statistics show that kids raised in a two-parent (Mom/Dad) home do way better emotionally, academically and spiritually.
At some point in our lives, what some call age of accountability, we will all have the opportunity to determine who we are, we’ll have the opportunity to accept or reject Christ (spiritual transformation), and we’ll have the opportunity to be transformed by renewing our mind (hippocampus) by lining up God’s truth with whatever we’ve been taught all our lives.
We are all a product of our nature (physical and spiritual) and nurture (family of origin and community), to know ourselves we have to confront ourselves, what are the values we’ve been raised it, are those values compatible with God’s eternal truth? Please note that this has nothing to do with being raised in a “Christian” home, I have discovered that many who say they serve God, do so more from an intellectual and emotional basis, not from a spirit and truth basis! You know this when “Christians” start to rationalize and second-guessing God’s word, when they compromise what they’ve always believed for a loaf of bread (wealth, fame etc.), they’ll even intimidate the person trying to live for God as fanatic, intolerant or judgmental.
The value we live-by, the will to utterly trust and obey God and what we eventually do under pressure determines who we are? Do you find yourself compromising God’s word because someone gave you an intelligent alternative such as “the Bible should change with time” or “God’s love tolerates immorality?” We must come to a place where we are confident in the value system we have chosen, Daniel in Babylon was, Esther eventually got to that point, Deacon Stephen was and Apostle Paul sure got to that point, considering want he went through on his journeys, in Jerusalem and in Rome.
The confidence you have in your value system only come from you knowing the God who gave you those vales, there are many examples of confidence in this God, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, flat-out told Nebuchadnezzar, “we know our God, is able to save us from your hand, but even if He chooses not to, we will still not bow? Moses spoke with a burning bush “representing God” and saw a side-view of God (that almost blinded him), yet he had the confidence to go back to a Egypt where he was a fugitive (wanted for murder) and demanding that Pharaoh let God’s people go, an act that would collapse Egypt’s economy? what Gut!
As God gave Daniel the revelation of what is to come, and the trouble that lies ahead (I believe we are seeing some of them in this generation), he said in Dan. 11:32b “but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits” (NKJV). When we know our God, or put in another way, after accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, and our spirit man is re-birth (born-again) then we connect with the Holy Spirit, who then bear witness with our spirit. This leads to an assurance, a peace that transcends human comprehension, courage (lack of fear – phobic fear), because we simply believe God, Jesus Christ His Son and His word.
This type of faith and trust in an unseen God is an anomaly in our generation, some have suggested that believing is seeing, some have suggested that if we can’t explain something, then it is a myth, even within the body of Christ, many believe that human intellect surpasses the power of the Holy Spirit (simply because many have bastardize the who/function of the Holy Spirit)?
As a young man, I heard my Mom pray many times that the God of her mother “Dorcas Abegbe” should answer her prayers, then later she’ll say “the God I serve – the God of Olalonpe”, it took a while for me to get her concept, at some point God was her mom’s, then that God became hers. Today, the God I serve is not the God my mother knows herself, but the God she introduced me to and I now know myself. Many of us, are serving the God of our pastor, the God of the man of God we like or love, the God of our parent, the God of our denomination, etc., we will never know this God intimately, nor obey His words, nor lay our lives for Him, until He becomes our (my) God.
We live in a time and a generation that we as individuals cannot afford to be complacent, we live in a world where what is bad is now good and the Bible is now a hate book in many countries (and “Christians” agree), we live in a generation where our leaders (political, religious etc.) are hypocrites, who say one thing and do another, they lack integrity, yet we excuse them because we personally like them or one of their policies benefit us, even though they point their finger at God and covet God’s wrath on the land?
This is the time, that as individuals, we seek to know ourselves and our God, so we can stand for God’s truth in our generation, regardless of the cost.
I pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal more than the words of this article to you, and please pray for me as I seek to hear God for direction.
Remain Blessed
