Winner's Excogitations

A leader in my then fellowship was asked a question by a visiting minister, “As a student of the Bible, who was the greatest apostle?” and his reply was swift; “Apostle Paul”. His answer elicited an immediate reaction in my spirit, by what criteria did he adjudge Paul to be the greatest apostle? Was it because of the numerous letters he wrote? Or the numerous beatings and lapidations he underwent? Or because he almost single-handedly established the gentile church? All these are true and should be enough to make him the greatest apostle, but my issue with that answer is that it is indicative a major wrong in the body of Christ that will soon destroy us if not confronted.

First of, who are we, what have we achieved in our walk with and work for Christ that we think we have gotten to the point where we can begin to rank the pioneering leaders of the church based on the visibility of their works?

Secondly and most importantly, I had always believed that Moses was the greatest man of the Old Testament and my opinion seemed based on the Bible (Numbers 12:6-8, Isaiah 63:11-14KJV); a man worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:14 KJV), the man on whom the whole Old Testament was predicated, a man counted worthy to stand with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration and these are just a few of many things that made this man Moses stand out in scripture. But my belief and assumption was shut down by what Jesus said in Matthew 11:11 KJV, “Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Meaning that prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most important man born of woman was John the Baptist, and this made me ask myself, what John the Baptist did to warrant such a rank. To me, the only significant thing John the Baptist did was to baptize Jesus Christ and usher him into his ministry, and in the eyes of God, this was more important and had more gravity than the law that Moses brought, or the era of the prophets that Elijah ushered in. The aim of this discourse is that we seem to have forgotten that God does not see, judge or think as we do (Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV). And with our human propensity to judge by the visible, we have created a clamouring in the body of Christ for positions and assignments that make our work visible to men so that we may be regarded by them. Apostle Peter speaking for the twelve said in Acts 6:4 KJV “But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word”. The mandate committed to them was setting the church up by prayer. If they had failed in that task seeking instead to travel around preaching, and writing letters, they would have done much damage to the spread of the gospel. Our gospel is not spread by enticing or eloquent words but by spiritual power which is made available by effectual, fervent prayer (James 5:16b KJV). Please let us not get drawn into the trap of comparison, Paul writing said “…but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12 KJV).

LET US BE WISE.

Over the last few months, I began noticing a problem that had always been around but had escaped my attention probably because I was amongst those creating and perpetuating the problem. Listening to an Andy Mineo song recently can’t remember which exactly right now, finally gave words to the problem which I had hitherto been unable to articulate. The words he (Andy) used can be distilled into this statement, “Majority of Christians have taken to making God a crutch”.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a crutch as “something that a person uses too much for help or support”. I don’t want to be misunderstood so let me emphatically state that I am all for total reliance on God, Jesus Christ himself said that without me you can do nothing. The issue I am calling attention to via this article is about a human tendency to laziness and shirking of responsibility, we have even taken this attitude into our relationship with God. In other words, we have taken to foisting responsibilities on God that are entirely ours.

Let me give a few examples of this:

1. Prayer: I heard someone praying using the words, “Lord, pray for your child”. To say the least, I was infuriated. It is God’s purview to answer prayer and it is ours to ask. But asking has gotten so “hard” that we have also told God to ask himself for our needs. Now we are too lazy to even bother asking God for what we need that we just tell God to ask himself.

2. Money (Finances): Since the riches of Christ have been promised to believers, we think we can fold our arms and wait for God to take the result of a hardworking unbelievers’efforts, and deliver them straight to our doorsteps. Or we believe that without any fiscal responsibility on our part, its Gods duty to prevent our resources running out.

3. Health: I was going home from work one day and I heard the advert for a particular health product whose job apparently was to rid our body of the poisonous substances we ingest under the guise of food. What immediately occurred to me was, instead of giving people drugs to remove the “poisons” why don’t you tell them not to eat the wrong food in the first place! Then on second thought I realized that we rather eat the poison and then take drugs that may expunge them. We do the same with God, we eat whatever junk we desire and then saddle God with the task of keeping us healthy. We avoid exercise like the plague and then ask God with tears to give us six-pack abs.

4. Politics: We lament our the pitiable state of our country and spend hours praying for a turn around for the country, yet we fail to heed the call of God to go into the political system that needs a touch of godly values and principles.

These are just a few examples of ideological cancer that betides us, a cancer which says that “if God is to do something, then he’ll do it whether or not we do our part”. I read Isaiah 26 verse 12 which says “… all that we have accomplished, you have done for us.” and this set me thinking, if the Israelites were the ones who accomplished the things, then how was it God who did it? This may seem like a weird statement, but I think it is the correct Christian outlook. For everything God will do, there are parts we must play and if we don’t do ours, don’t expect God to do his.

Have a great day.