WASTED CONNECTIONS (2) 

21 Give my greetings to each of God’s holy people – all who belong to Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you their greetings. 22 And all the rest of God’s people send you greetings, too, especially those in Caesar’s household.

Philippians 4:21-22, New International Version.

1. The Distance of Love 

You have just read some of the closing lines from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, greetings from the many “brothers” who were with him in Rome; among them, “especially those in Caesar’s household.”  Paul wrote that letter from prison in the capital city of the Roman Empire.  At the time of writing that epistle in AD 62, Paul had already spent two years there. 

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WHO TOUCHED ME? 

In junior secondary school, my biology teacher taught me about osmosis, how a region of higher solute concentration pulls water molecules to itself from a proximate region of lower solute concentration through a semipermeable membrane.  For example, how a full tube of pure water, the bottom sealed with a semipermeable film, standing in a half-full bowl of salt water, gradually loses its water to the outer surrounding of higher concentration.  It is nature’s voice, saying that something would usually move from one sphere to the other, depending on the relative energy concentration in each sphere.

During one of Jesus’ many missionary walks down the streets of Capernaum in ancient Galilee, with an excited multitude thronging behind Him, a woman made up her mind to attempt a psychic connection with Him by contact just with His clothes – not Himself.  She had had a defiant disease for twelve years, and had resolved to seek a spiritual solution to her physical crisis.  She pushed through the rowdy throng, quickly touched His clothes in a way that none would notice, then as quickly attempted to withdraw.  Unknown to her, her touch had set off an alarm in the realms of the spirit.  Jesus stopped promptly, turned around, and with a quizzical expression on His face, asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30).  As far as the disciples were concerned, that was a very stupid question to ask in the midst of such a rowdy crowd with everyone jostling everyone else for vantage space.

Her touch was not the only touch that Jesus had had that day.  Some folks from the crowd might even have shoved Him, but her touch was different.  It was purposeful, and it took something from Him: something precious, something spiritual, something felt.  Mark you, what she touched was just His clothes, not Himself, yet the contact was sufficient to connect with His power bank.

Every touch is not a greeting, even if it might seem so.  Some physical touch is spiritual in nature, and like wires conducting electricity from a source to the load, it takes something or transmits something.  Hands are spiritual conductors by which good and bad might be tapped or transmitted (Deuteronomy 34:9; Matthew 19:13-15).  For that, spiritual elders are wont to warn their followers to mind their hands and their heads (1 Timothy 5:22).

There is a psychic science by which energy might be mined or transmitted through hands in contact with bodies or with other materials connected to those bodies (Acts 19:12; 2 Kings 4:29).  If Jesus had not been spiritually sensitive, He would never have known that anything left him through a woman’s apparently casual touch on a rowdy crowded day; he would never have known why His battery was suddenly flat at a crucial next bus stop just after so much glory and energy at a previous charging point.

On one very strategic mission, Jesus advised His disciples to be cautious and “salute NO MAN by the way,” so that, through some fortuitous handshake, they did not drain what they carried before they got where they were headed (Luke 10:4).  The Twentieth Century New Testament says, “do not stop to greet any one on your journey.”  Wasn’t Jesus the highly-anointed Son of the Almighty God?  Weren’t the disciples ‘well-fortified’ by Him?  What was He afraid of?  Or what did He know?  What spiritual science was that?

Prophet Elisha himself once sent his servant Gehazi on a similar mission with a similar instruction to salute no one on his way, while he carried his master’s staff (like the contact garment of Jesus) on a crucial healing mission (2 Kings 4:29-31).  Unfortunately for Gehazi, it didn’t work.  My suspicion is that that greedy servant did not obey his master’s instructions.  He must have stopped somewhere to close a ‘prophetic seed’ deal with a gullible parish client.  That mischievous nature was to play out in the next chapter when his greed pushed him to chase after Naaman the Syrian diplomat, for favour that his master had refused.  Long after Prophet Elisha was dead, his osmotic powers were still active – the life force in his dead bones, on contact, still transmitted life to the dead (2 Kings 13:20-21).

Africans are not unfamiliar with diabolic folks fishing for menstrual pads and human hair at rubbish dumps – for voodoo.  Osmosis is true in spiritual terms also.  Sometimes something is gained or lost through a touch, a direct or indirect touch, sometimes apparently innocuous, in a rowdy crowded space.  May the glory of God insulate you this day from evil hands, but open you to His transforming mighty Touch. Amen.

From The Preacher’s diary
October 20, 2023. 

Why Couldn’t Isaac Bless Esau Also?

  1. The Sorcerer and the Preacher 

Not always are words just sounds that we hear or the letters on a page.  Sometimes they are vehicles for transporting entities of a supranatural and supraliminal dimension (John 6:63).  When that is the case, words should be feared.

A sorcerer once met a preacher whom he tried to seduce with his much money, but failed.  Greatly offended by the temerity of that wicked man who thought that the Almighty could be bought with earthly currency, the preacher said, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.”  At once, the sorcerer, himself knowing the value and power of words (as that was his currency in sorcery), pleaded, “Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me” (Acts 8:20-24).  Why?  For those who know, words could be more powerful than the sounds or letters that convey them, and destiny could be helped or hampered by their potency. 

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THREE SAFETY GATES (Part 2 of 2) 

  1. Assisted Escape 

The second aspect of the prayer says, “cause me to escape,” referring to a dash for freedom to be initiated by the person.  Sometimes, God opens the cage and lets the captive use their legs to walk out, or otherwise remain there and perish.  In this kind of deliverance, the subject or the person has a part to play in the eventual outcome.  For example, when the angel opened the iron gates for Peter in Acts 12, it needed the man to get to his feet and walk out of the prison with his own legs.  God ‘caused’ him to escape.  

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THREE SAFETY GATES (Part 1 of 2) 

Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me. 

Psalm 71:2.

  1. Modes of Deliverance 

Our text makes three main statements, highlighting three possible ways or combination of ways by which God might save a person:

  1. “Deliver me in thy righteousness” – deliverance by the mercy of God,  
  2. “cause me to escape” – divinely assisted personal escape, 
  3. “incline thine ear unto me, and save me” – deliverance in response to a call for help. 

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Female Nakedness and the Power of the Male Eye

There are those that say that it doesn’t matter how a woman dresses, because bad men will still lust after a woman after all; that the problem is not the look out there but the heart of the looker.  Such philosophies are generally callous excuses for an obstinate lifestyle. That a bad heart will usually see bad things out there, even in the good, is only partly true.  Some that thus defend their bareness often insist on their right to a freedom of attire, mindless of whom they wrong with their stubborn rights. 

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WHAT IS FAITH?

  1. Perspectives on Faith 

The common conception of faith is that it is an inner power by which we might obtain outer benefits, an intangible force for getting tangible things, a spiritual key to material gains.  To that extent, faith is often proclaimed as a means of getting something.  Such perspectives are quick to point to such verses in Hebrews 11 as state, for example, how “by faith” there were escapes from the danger of lions and fires, how deadly weapons became powerless against the faith-full, how “women received their dead raised to life again” (Hebrews 11:33-35).  Nevertheless, that is merely one side to the total truth about faith in that chapter.  

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TERMINATING THE REPROACH OF FAMINE 

According to the prophet Ezekiel, famine is a reproach, anytime, anywhere.  It is no honour to have no food when you are hungry, very hungry.  It is tough to have to ask ‘help’ to catch a bus to the next stop.  It is reproachful to watch your children cry for food and seem to mock your lack.  It is worse to have to beg the heathen for bread, especially if you had known abundance.  But the Lord says now to you, “And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen” (Ezekiel 36:30).  Amen.

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God’s Beauty Salon and the Language of your Wardrobe

Have you ever come upon beauty products, especially perfumes, with very unusual names such as Seduction, Lust, Passion, Scandal, Savage, Black Night, Vampire, Cobra, and so on?  Some of them with the creepy design of skulls, snakes, and such other eerie stuff?  I have, and I generally refrain from them, because I judge that they belong to the opposite side of my spirituality.  Don’t ask about my experience.  That will be an arresting story for another day.

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LET THERE BE LIGHT

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. 

Psalm 119:130.

Not everything heard enters; only what enters gives light.  Yet not everything that enters gives light; only the word of God that enters does (Matthew 13:19; Luke 8:12).  Everything heard is not the word of God, no matter how much like it it might seem.  That is the irony of so much content but little light.

God’s word that enters “giveth light.”  The Hebrew word for light there is ‘owr, which not only means light but also to shine and to set on fire.  In other words, the residency of His word not only illuminates, it also distinguishes the blazing carrier visibly.  This fire not only illuminates a space and distinguishes the self, it also attracts amazement and dispels predators (Exodus 3:2-5; Acts 28:5).  “…He LED them with a cloud, and all the night with a LIGHT of FIRE (Psalm 78:14).

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