Enough of the Excuses!

I had an interesting conversation with a wonderful child of God the other day that I would love to share the lessons of the conversation with you. He started off by saying just like many of us that he has received the call to preach. Actually, this call is a call to all Christ followers and not to a particular group of people as Christ said in Mark 16:15 – “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation”. However, our pulpit for preaching may differ from one to the other. No matter how we go about it, we ALL must go out and preach the good news once we are His followers. Back to my conversation, the young man told me he would love to go but he needed to have a platform, he needs to register the ‘ministry’, have great equipment to project the message. According to him, his target audience is the youth and he believes that the gadgets and their production will greatly attract them to his ‘ministry’. It sounds great but it missed the point of what God is making in telling us to go into the nations and preach the gospel. 

Indeed we live in a time of hype and great technological advancements but these are to be treated as aides and not the main point or reason for our message. It is indeed sad, when you hear people say they left a church because the sound was bad or they joined a church because the sound was good. This premise has caused so many ministers to run after technical gadgets to the detriment of the word of God. No matter how good the technology is it cannot manufacture anointing! These gadgets were made for us and not the other way round. They must NOT be used as the indices to judge if a church is anointed or not. This mindset must be purged from our hearts so as not to miss the purity, clarity and power of God’s word. Sometimes, I wonder if John the Baptist was living in our time, would we listen to him. The Bible says he was living in the wilderness, dressed in camel’s hair (oops, the smell!), a leather belt round his waist and his food was locust and wild honey! Incredible! Yet, he was backed with so much power from on High that people rich and poor left the comfort of their sleek and comfortable homes to go listen to him. Friend, there was no amplifier, yet his message rang out; he did not do one miracle that would have been put on the social networks, yet people thronged to him and Jesus called him the greatest man of God! Your preaching the gospel in whatever circumstances you find yourself is not predicated on some technology or availability of some means but solely on God. He has mandated us to go and He promised He would be with us; we have no option than to go. The time is short and Christ is almost here to take up His saints. The instruction from God is to “GO”! Our pulpits may be the kitchen table, the streets, our desk in class, our office tables, the coffee machine, the elevators, the corridors in our offices and schools, the malls, the saloon, the market place, no matter where we find ourselves, God has provided ample pulpits for His saints to preach the good news of the Kingdom to all nations. Enough of the excuses, it is time to go! May the Lord bless you as you respond.