If ever there was a time to reflect on what to look out for in a leader within the body of Christ, it is now. If for nothing else but to give us a plumb line by which to measure our response to the noise going on around us.
A name is a very important thing. When a people is taken into captivity, their names are changed… to disconnect them from their identity, their generations and the tools to their prosperity and to connect them to their captors. Changing a name is not a light matter and is indeed a tool of spiritual capture and enslavement…
so what is so important in a name that this was among Gods first instruction to man? See before God put man into the Garden of Eden, he assigned names to the larger foundational elements of His creation; He named a thing and in so doing defined its function for all time. The pattern emerges
Often I have asked, where Gods heart is in the matter. It is Jesus who says, ‘come to me all you who are heavy laden’… and I have seen the weight that those that have come out to me carry. The self-hate, the self-erasure the insecurity… they have been fighting so hard just to exist within themselves, I have no heart to add the weight of shallow prejudice on their backs. Truth be told, I want to hug and hide you in places where nothing can come at you anymore, where maybe, Jesus can do what he intended to do when he invited us who carry heavy burdens to come to him. Yes I include myself in this story because I also carry the kind of identity shattering brokenness, it’s just that these things show up in different ways and we really aren’t that different. I believe strongly that God will move in big ways within this and many other marginalized communities because, that’s who He is.
I first posted this on Facebook after some time in reflection after I noticed 3 posts on different platforms speaking about witchcraft in the church. Where on one level this witchcraft presents itself as the okaying of occultish ways in the church, on another level it is more sinister in the way it is ingrained…
The prophet Elijah is known for speaking truth to power. The truth is, that things are not well. The fathers have spat on and cursed their children, the children have run away from home and only come back to destroy and take what they were denied in their youth. And here remember I am talking to every parent, every father in the land, every leader who has had people or a people entrusted to them. Take a break from finger pointing and take a long hard look at yourself. Hard conversations need to be had
Was my coming into this world such a terrible burden and you couldn’t bring yourself to admit it? I get it, there’s a way a man is expected to be… but a child always sees beyond the veil of expectations despite the lack of language to express it.
is that belief system really yours or is it what you found and because you have known nothing else it becomes what you identify with? And what happens when you start asking questions? …men wear their titles without their function they simply have no capacity to Pioneer, reveal, advocate for, establish and instruct people who are young in the faith and they are also less likely to shepherd (lead, feed and protect) people in their pursuit to know and experience Jesus Christ for themselves. Without these functions at work, people fall prey to manipulation by the word of God towards further aggrandizing of men. No wonder then that hard questions are frowned down upon…
The sad part of this situation is that the endemic silence of the church over times past when her voice was needed the most, and then followed by a slow and steady dilution of the word and reverence for the word and for the name of Jesus, have played a major role in the mockery… The other thing about this wave of mockery is that it is a sign of the times both within the church and outside the church
I was on a small pathway under the cover of scrubby trees between a block of classes and the library, it was my last year of campus and my last attempt at ending the miserable beating of my heart had just gloriously backfired….