The Sunday News
Itai Chipunza
IN my few years of working with my African brothers and sisters I have noted one common thing in majority of us, we are convinced that because one is struggling there is no progress. We believe if you struggle, an old woman somewhere is sending spells at you to remain poor or uneducated. This is a lie from the pit of hell, in actual fact, struggle means you are working towards something are the change is coming. Like Reverend Mafoti says, no rock can withstand constant hammering.
With the mentality of struggle being evil sitting in the centre of our beliefs, people have developed an unhealthy reliance on pastors, preachers, prophets and other vessels of God. They believe in being prayed for even for the smallest of things. All this is happening in the church of Christ yet Christianity is a way of life that seeks to create independence.
Not from God, but from other people. The objective is to create complete reliance on God and let him be your healer, your saviour, your protector and everything beyond that. This is not to say we must create a society of people that do not help one another, instead it means the objective is to view help from brothers as help sent by the Lord and anything beyond what a brother can do we fight for it in prayer. It is good to get regular prayer from the pastor because he holds a higher office but at the same you have to learn to pray so that you are able to connect to God on a personal level. Prayer is a lot more than just words, it’s a spiritual platform that positions you in line be used by God for various very important tasks and more.
2 Corinthians 3 verse 17
“Now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the lord is, there is freedom”
King Jesus himself came so that we no longer have to rely on anyone else for assistance and salvation but God himself. I am not saying going to the prayer line is wrong, it’s perfectly fine for issues that one needs other children of God to help in praying for, but we need to learn to talk to our father.
We are taught by King Jesus that we can ask for anything in his name and it will be done for us. So it is very necessary to learn how to pray. It is important to dedicate time to learn the best way to structure your petitions when you pray. Also research on all aspects of prayer like fasting, chain prayers etcetera. The fact that we have natured a society where prayer is only for pastors and preachers has given the important growth factor for cults.
Like I always say, a lot of people go to cults every Sunday and don’t even know it. They are told many lies using scripture. The word of God is taken and many interpretations given to it that are false, thus we corrupt the gift God has given us and use it to run cults. If each individual would sit down, read the work, pray and work we would know that we do not need a special man of God in our lives to make it, we only need King Jesus.
John 14 verse 13
“And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father maybe glorified in his son”
Praying is direct communication with God through his son King Jesus. There is no other way to God but through Jesus. You cannot get to God through mother Mary, John the Baptist or any other saint. It is only through Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Learn to pray for yourself and have time to talk to God and meditate on his word. The amazing thing about all this is that God actually wants to talk to each and every one of us and know us personally. The second amaizing thing is, you cannot pretend with God because He looks at your heart, nothing is hidden from Him. The more you do it you begin to crave more and more of his presence and all aspect of your life that are not of God will conform. It is true that for most of us, past generations of our fathers and grandfathers have been involved in a lot of ancestral worship. Some created covenants that affect you today, but we must not forget the truth that Jesus died for you on the cross and purchased you with his blood, so you have nothing to do with those past covenants. The only way to get these things far from you is to sincerely seek God and meditate on his word. Already he stands waiting for a day when you come to him.
James 4 verse 8
“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you cleanse your hands, you sinners”
I assure you, you will see a big difference in your life when he begins interacting with you.
We have discussed bit, but one component that makes every prayer useless when left out is a thing called faith. I read somewhere that faith is not common sense, instead faith is God sense. The simplest definition of faith found in the word is that faith is the evidence of things unseen and things hoped for. This means, if you believe you have it, it is evidence that you do have it.
Have you ever seen people go to extremes in trying to get a response from God? They do crazy things. Some believe for God to hear them they have to be in a pretence form of humility, so when you are in church every one is sort of sad. Humility is not silence and sadness, it is a state of the heart where you put God and others before you. So our pretend type of humility will not prompt a response from God. I normally say I worship a living God. Jesus is not dead, he is alive so church should be a happy experience. Others believe you cannot laugh in church, God himself laughs and we are created in his image, which practically answers it all. The idea my friends not to look humble, it is to have faith. Faith. I do not know how much I can stress this. Jesus said faith in God can move a mountain. What faith does is this.
When you speak something in faith, God says to himself, I cannot embarrass my child who has spoken trusting that I will do it on his behalf. There for he swiftly acts, when you say to someone who is ill, “I command that sickness out of you in the mighty name of Jesus” and you have faith in your heart, God will surely act. Besides embarrassing you, God thinks to himself and says… “My child has put my name on the line, now everyone is waiting to see the power of just the name” so like Jesus said, he will personally stand up from his throne in heaven, he will come down, take that sickness and throw it outside the window and his name is glorified. Pastor Mhone says faith is when you still have pain and you wake up from the sick bed and declare you are well.
Faith is something that you develop with time. The more you interact with God and he avails things to you, your faith will increase. Start small, you can start by having faith in God for high sales in a given day, maybe 50 dollars. Pray about it, then go out to face the day. When he does it for you, you will find that your trust in him will continue to increase. With time you can trust him to finance a conference worth half a million. It’s like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the more it grows. Start with a headache, command it to be silent. Then with time you can command HIV to be gone.
Mark 11 verse 24
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.
Hebrews 11 verse 1
“Now faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance in what we do not see”
Faith says, I am healed in Jesus name yet you still feel pain. Faith says I am rich when you have no money in your pocket. It is the confession of the existence of those things that are not seen. And with time they manifest. When practiced over time it works instantly because the power of God is moved or transferred through faith. The higher the faith level, the easier the transfer takes place. Pray, have faith and work hard. Results will come.
