Where is the church? Nigeria is presently going through perilous times, dangerous times. The country is being regaled with some weird drama, unexplainable, or better still, explainable but senseless mathematical calculations and avoidable callous deaths. A time as this calls serious inward thinking on everyone who has a stake in the country called Nigeria. We have gone astray as a nation, and it gets obvious as the days go by that ‘Things (Are) Fall(ing) Apart’. The center seems not to be holding and if care is not taken we would all make statements like ‘There Was a Country’ by the name Nigeria. What is the way forward? This is where I bring to the front burner something that has been burning in me ever since the day I first gave my life, but which I never got to develop and pursue. God calls his children to rise and shine. In another context this is a call to rise and resist darkness. John 1:5 says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” I have been listening to two sermon CD’s that I got last Sunday 21st July, in a church service that strengthened my resolve to follow the path that I recently chose for my life. The two titles are “Supernatural Living By The Word”, and “Power To Create Wealth”, both by Pastor Sam Adeyemi of Daystar Christian Centre. Quite a number of the statements I heard were like knocks on my head, and slaps on my cheeks for certain inactions on my part after discovering the secret to survival. There truly is a limit to how far a normal human can go based strictly on his own ability. No matter how great your achievements are, it could have been better with God in your life! Nigeria has gotten to the stage where we all have to re-think our focus of self-development and re-focus on national development. There is a limit to all we can do for ourselves. Already, most residents in Nigeria provide alternate power in the forms of generators, inverters and solar panels, we sink bore-holes to ensure we don’t lack water, we provide security guards and neighbourhood watch groups, we buy cars, not for luxury, but to ensure we don’t wait endlessly for public transport which is inadequate and unsafe anyway. Some ogas at the top have bought private jets to avoid the hassles of normal air travel. But the reality of the situation is that we can’t build our own roads or railway tracks, we can’t build schools just to educate our children, or hospitals to ensure proper treatment. You can’t build your own airports. These are duties for responsible governments. That is why we have to be concerned about those that get into positions of authority in our government. We have to move up from the stage of expressing concern to getting fully involved by deciding who gets there, starting from our local government areas. We should put an end to the era where people are forced on us. It has shown over the years that this is a destructive act. ‘It has been established worldwide that there is a connection between politics and the economy. It is politics that controls the economy. Whoever has the political power will use it to control the flow of resources. The most prosperous parts of the world are the parts of the world where some small elite group does not exercise control over everybody else in the country. There are places where people have freedoms, they have political rights and though the leadership has control over the economy, the people have control over who will occupy the positions of leadership. Most parts of the world that are poor are ruled by a small group of people. Human nature is weak, selfish, so they appropriate the wealth to themselves. We as Christians have a divine responsibility. It is a divine responsibility on our generation to restructure power in our country. The people who benefit from this lopsided structure WILL NEVER change it because their own destinies are taken care of. That’s the essence of the church, that’s the essence of Jesus; to try to create equality in the society. To deliver the oppressed and set the captives free, and change the power structure. Those who hold the power will never let it go, that’s why they took Jesus out. They didn’t like his messages. This has to be the most enlightened generation God raised in Africa and we have to take responsibility to change the power equation! Until you and I are the ones who can dictate who goes into office and who comes out, majority of the people in this country will live in penury and be suffering!! Poverty is destructive. Prov. 10:15. It is cutting people’s lives short around us. There are only very few monarchies around the world that create prosperity for their citizens. Most kings failed in the bible because of the weakness of human nature. More than prayer, this is the most enlightened generation God has raised in Africa and we have to take the responsibility to change the power structure. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. That was the assignment, part of the assignment God gave us. For a nation to prosper it must have a vision, because vision is the key to provision. It must also have values that will undergird that vision. The purpose of government is to create wealth for the citizens. It is a God given responsibility we have to educate people in our nation and all around the world to do what it takes to restructure power. You cannot effect this type of change in the power equation if you are afraid to die. The power equation will not die until you have people who are willing to die.’ Words from Pastor Sam Adeyemi. Where is the church in all of this? John 1:5 says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” We are not saved to fold our arms and be idle, but to resist darkness. Paul fought the good fight of faith and a part of that fight was to resist evil. The more you increase the number of lights around a place, the less of a darkness you will have there. This is the wisdom in planting churches. The more churches are planted, the more forces of darkness will be driven away. This paragraph is from July 24 page of 2013 Open Heavens. We have churches on nearly every street in Lagos, some even have up to 5-6 churches. Yet, there is still so much darkness. The lives/lifestyles of the Christian of today is not impacting on their immediate environment. This must stop. Instead of church planting, the focus should be developing your members. With the war situation we face in Nigeria and the world around us, after effects of corrupt governance, we need good shepherds nationwide, but, there is a dearth of such men. What we have instead are selfish men of God who have turned the church into business models and have perfected the art of filching their congregation. Of what use is a church with hundreds of parishes nationwide if that network cannot be used to improve the lives of the sheep (congregation)? If each parish in a neighbourhood decide to positively influence their environment this would impart positively on the nation. Some would say that the church should not get involved in the politics of the day, but I think otherwise. Why do I think so? (To be continued next week) Tiger Kent
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:44:03 +0000
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