August 2024 - The Preacher's Diary

How will God Speak to Me? (Part 4 of 5)

August 29, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Knowledge

Ordained with Knowledge

The third of the three channels highlighted in our primary text is knowledge: “any that knoweth.” So, not only by signs or by prophets, but also by the one that “knoweth,” we can hear God and be saved. The knower could be ourselves or another. In other words, this knowledge that saves could come from a third party or it could be knowledge acquired by ourselves for ourselves. On facial value, it might not look as ‘spiritual’ as what comes from the Prophet, or the signs of God that we interpret to decode a divine message, yet it saves no less.

How will God Speak to Me? (Part 3 of 5)

August 26, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Prophets

This is the channel we are most familiar with: prophets, who stand as connections between God and mortals; persons anointed to be able to see into the spiritual realms, as most others cannot. When people are not sure about the will of God, they usually seek to a prophet of God. For example, it took a prophet to tell David that he was not supposed to build the temple of God (2 Samuel 7:4-13). When the people of Israel wanted to know the mind of God in the closing days of the Kingdom of Judah, they went to Prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 42:1-4).

How will God Speak to Me? (Part 2 of 5)

August 25, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Circumstantial Signs

The experience of Balaam in the course of one business mission provides a handy illustration of circumstantial signs that God sometimes puts in our path to slow us down or altogether deter us from potential dangers, if we would hear. Unfortunately, many times, we think ourselves too ‘committed’ to a people or to a project to hear those signs and save ourselves. Only from hindsight do we rue our losses.

How will God Speak to Me? (Part 1 of 5)

August 22, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Introduction

Heaven has one Broadcasting Station but numerous channels on earth through which its messages are conveyed to us. The following passage puts the many earthly channels of divine communication into their three broad categories: signs, prophets, and sourced information (or knowledge).

TAKING JERICHO

August 16, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

2 And the LORD said to Joshua: “See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor.

3 “You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days.

4 “And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.
Joshua 6:2-4, NKJV.

In the passage above, God was giving General Joshua the strategy for taking the fortified city of Jericho: seven priests with seven trumpets marching with armed soldiers for seven days around the city, making seven rounds on the seventh day.

Suppose there had been only six priests available for the assignment? Suppose there had been eight priests, all of them insisting that they had to be part of the Special Team of trumpeters, especially on the final day? Suppose Joshua had been forced to please everyone, and had allowed all eight or ten ‘volunteers’ on that prophetic march? Suppose, after the fifth day, everyone had become so tired that none could continue the march on the sixth day, or only four priests had shown up? Surely, God would have understood their human frailty and given them the city all the same … or don’t you think so?

If Jericho was already “given,” as God said to Joshua, why did he still have to go through those rigours for those many days? Are there times we miss what Heaven considers already “given,” because of a detail missed? What did God know about Jericho that the marchers did not? What did He know about the city that He did not tell even Pastor Joshua? Why does God sometimes give instructions without explanations? Why does God get particular (even legalistic) about details sometimes?

I have wondered what might have happened if any of those details had been missed or amended, ostensibly to ‘accommodate’ ‘understandable human conditions’? Would they still have had the breakthrough they had, the way and the time they did? Why do some Jerichos persistently defy the loud and long blasts of so many priests for so many days? I have been wondering, and you probably have an answer, what if there had been only six priests … or a mighty army of one million priests … screaming themselves hoarse at adamant fat walls, even when God said the land is already “given”?

From The Preacher’s diary,
October 16, 2017.

Ministers Forum: “IF THOU BE: CALLS UNDER QUESTIONING”

August 7, 2024August 7, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Date: Monday, August 5, 2024
Venue: The Conference Hall, Graduate Business School, St. John’s Campus, Aba Road, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Link to the video…

MINISTERS FORUM WITH PROF. KONTEIN TRINYA: IF THOU BE: CALLS UNDER QUESTIONS

Link to the Forum manual (PDF) (for donation of any amount, if you can)

MF – If Thou Be

SHOULD PRIESTS TAKE DIRECTIVES FROM POLITICIANS

August 4, 2024August 3, 2024 by The Preacher's Diary

Should priests of God receive instructions from politicians? Can a political leader provide spiritual leadership? Does every priest always know what spiritual interventions his land needs? Is every political leader inherently inferior in spiritual matters to every priest?

Generally, we might piously say that politicians should keep to their offices and priests to their altars, but, as the following story will show, whether or not one can influence the other depends on the context, on the kind of politician and the kind of ‘instruction.’