Preparation for Gifts (part VI)

By Odon Bulamba (summary only)

What we must do is to show that we are willing to serve God. Whoever we are, if God has chosen us nobody can oppose us.

Gal 6:7, we cannot mock God. We must respect the gift that God has given us and we must respect all the steps. If we try to mock God; woe to us. So the commitment we have is tough. When we first came here to NZ, Hayley said “I want to work for God”, Ange also said it, Michelle, Peter all of us. God was quiet and we went to Him and said, “wake up God we want to work for you”, and God said o.k you want to work so I have given you all gifts and now He is waking us up. He says, “lets’ go it’s time to wake up, You woke Me up and I accepted, now it’s My turn and I will wake you up”. You must go and if you don’t go that will cost you your life. We will be judged more harshly than others.

Hell has 3 dimensions. Rev 20, the 1st dimension is when hell will be open and Satan with all his angels will be thrown into that. The 2nd one is those who said they were Christians but they have hardened their hearts, they didn’t want to serve God and accept Him for who He is, they will say I did this and this in your name but God will say no I don’t know you. The 3rd dimension will be for the pagans.

What about you who committed yourself to God. The Bible says it is better not to commit yourself to God because when you commit yourself to God you swear and God hears that and God never comes back and changes His decisions. If you say, “I am a servant of God, I belong to God and I want to serve you”, when you say, “God I belong to You”, God will do with you everything He wants. For instance if this book was mine I could tear the pages, nobody can ask me why I did that but if you ask me I will say, “it’s my book, what’s your problem, that’s my business it’s my book”. That’s what it is to be with God. We say, “God I want to serve You, make me your child”, and God says, “thank you very much, come closer to Me because there are many souls that are waiting who want to be saved so now you must go”. If you don’t go, God can do whatever He wants to you. Be careful with what we call blasphemy, that is where it starts. You commit yourself to God and then you say no I am not ready to do that.

There is another example in the Bible, Jonah, he committed himself to serve God and one day God sent him on a difficult task but he said, “no I don’t want to go” but God said, “whether you want it or not you must go”. The Bible also talks about the rainbow which was the sign of a covenant, God did that in Noah’s time, and even today we can still see the rainbow. It means that all of God’s covenants are eternal. With God you cannot sign a six month contract, with God you cannot say it’s just for a time, with God there is no allowance, with God you can never say I am already old, remember Joshua, he was 80 yrs old and he said to God I am old now I can’t go, God said stand up and get up you must go, it means that what is spiritual never gets old, so we will never have good reasons to flee.

What are you going to say to God when God will say, “why didn’t you fulfill what I have given you?” Will you say, “sorry God I was tired because I worked hard”? God will say I don’t know anything about physical because I said first seek the kingdom of God, He always takes into account the spiritual needs first.

With God it is not your choice, it’s God’s. His choice has been made quite a while ago and each one of us has gifts. So what we are going to do is see how we can help those gifts be put into practice. Remember, if your faith is little it is time to make your faith grow. It is time to listen to God’s word and meditate on it, there is no other way. You are going to go to work or school, you will be tired and you will say, “no, let me read the Bible tomorrow”, and tomorrow morning you’ll wake up and say, “sorry I’m late I must go to work”, then this becomes a habit and God starts counting. When we say we will read the Bible tomorrow and we don’t do it, we lie and it is a sin. When we promise to pray at 11am and don’t, it is a sin. When we say we will pray for 20 minutes but the phone rings and we answer it and only pray for 10 minutes and don’t catch up, we sin because we have stolen God’s time.

The more you grow spiritually the more spiritual life becomes hard. We are not in control of our lives someone else is. If you have accepted to spread the gospel but stay where you are, you are like stale water.

In certain places in the hills, valleys and mountains there are holes and when it rains, water goes into the ground and some stays on the earth. After 2 days this water will start changing colour, after 4 days this water will stink, after 7 days the mosquitoes will come and when they are there the population will suffer from malaria and nobody can go there because it’s too muddy so will try to find a detour. Why is that? When God uses us and we are in this situation among this water we risk to become a pain for God’s people, we might harm the church of God, people will see us and think it is better to be a sinner like me than to be like him, have you ever learnt something like that? “This one is a Christian, oh it’s 5 times better to be the way I am than to be like him.” This is very serious.


Start asking God to give you a perfect and strong faith, to help you so that your faith can grow, always say to God, “You accepted me with my weaknesses, I admit that I don’t have a strong faith, this is also a weakness in me, help me”.

SUMMARY
- Remember your life belongs to God
- Put spiritual matters first
- Keep your promises with God
- Live in a way that will attract people to you and God

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