Of people who join church today and leave tomorrow (part 2)

25 May, 2018 - 00:05 0 Views

The ManicaPost

Morris Mtisi Post Correspondent
(continued from last week)

The sense about God is not always sensible. That is why He is God.

Consider this example: To believe that we can wait for Jesus’ second coming to take us home where we shall no more hurt or cry, where we shall not be sick or dead; where we shall forever be happy at His feet but speak of a disease God cannot deal with (if He wishes) is an embarrassing demonstration of a misunderstanding of God the Almighty and the lowest irony in Christian understanding.

If we strongly believe that and understand that reversal from suffering to happiness, from hurting to celebrating, from death to life, how come we don’t believe in the reversal of a condition of any kind of illness? If we seriously believe that Jesus will come to reverse death to life…eternal life, and we say that every day at church, why do we doubt his ability to reverse simpler conditions like illnesses? And even if he does not, for that decision is solely his, what difference does it make? Does his ‘no’ mean he cannot?

Cancer or no cancer, HIV or no HIV, BP or no BP, Blood Sugar or no Blood Sugar (Diabetes), death shall come because God said so. Profound interpretation of this jigsaw-puzzle is that God cares more about the person, not his body. It is not God’s business to heal bodies.

He will if He wishes, especially if He has a reason and purpose. If He chooses not to, the way He openly refused to pull out Paul’s thorn in his flesh, it does not make Him less of a God.

After all He is not a doctor, though He is one and the best of them all. If His person inside…the spirit who is the person inside, is not sick, God is fine with it.Whether one dies of cancer, AIDS, Ebola, Malaria, Diabetes or BP or not, that is our concern not God’s; not the concern of the God who art in Heaven. He is concerned, worried, about sick souls and sinful spirits…not sick bodies.

It is not eventually what kills you that determines your acceptance in Heaven, or is it? Whether you died or were killed or not, whether you were killed or died in a car accident or in war fighting, it is your state of spirit that ultimately matters. We shall all die anyway, earlier or later than others, that is certain, but what churches must be doing is to preach preparedness.

When this happens, because it will happen, sooner or later, this way or that way, how ready will you be to face your God?

How clean will you be to avoid nauseating your Maker? That is what churches must be preaching, not wisdom and knowledge about how to avoid dying which we all sometimes foolishly think is possible.

How I dread being misunderstood! Yet I know how this statement and analogy can be naively interpreted to mean that I am saying we must not be careful about our health. I am not saying anything that simple and that cheap. Not at all!

I am saying man cannot condemn man to death upon his scientific knowledge or wisdom. Man cannot write-man off. Under whatever condition or conditions of illness, no man or woman has the right to write people off.

While doctors and nurses do write people off as they often do, some of these condemned to death defy man’s sense and survive or live within God’s ‘nonsense’.

Man tells man how much long or short he will live. Only God knows that. Doctors do this in good faith, they say, because people must write wills and organise their children and family before they die.

How far can a man or woman born of flesh do this? How far and how much can we be smart about our dying? Where is God’s space in all this? And where do you leave the role of loved ones, friends and colleagues?

How many people ever buried themselves since mankind started dying? Did Jesus, even, bury himself? Did he even buy the tomb in which he was interred? Did he bring himself down from the Cross? Did he even buy the expensive oil which was used to perfume and protect his body? Human beings live for each other. Jesus illustrated this when he died.

He lived human pain and suffering and demonstrated the unavoidable hand of other people in our lives, more so at anybody’s death, big or small.

Even those who have huge funeral policies do need someone to lower their body in the narrow cell, fill it up with earth and put that heavy stone in its place.

It is my prayerful submission therefore that churches must make sure they pray for wisdom and revelation in every speaker and preacher and teacher.

We all want to stand in front and say something, don’t we? But it is important to seriously first pray for wisdom and revelation to speak God, to speak the Holy Spirit, to Speak Jesus and not our own religious whims and overexcitement.

There is serious naivety and narrow-mindedness in churches. Amongst his own disciples, Jesus knew there were simpletons who suffered from little understanding, poverty of reasoning and shallowness of conception. Churches the world over are still full of such people.

They are there with everybody and doing God’s work. They were lucky during Jesus’ days of walking this earth, for he was there to directly guide and lead them.

What do we do today? Keep quiet, look at them and allow them to blur our spirit vision and dwarf our spiritual size?

We must always pray to understand our audiences.

Share This:

Sponsored Links

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey

This will close in 20 seconds