God needs our testimonies (Part I)

By Odon Bulamba (26 December 2003)

I praise God for the way we meet tonight because it is a grace to meet together and while we are talking together many people are on the road travelling, many people are flying or sailing in boats and others are around the table sharing a drink of beer and others have useless discussions and others play games in the casino. The time of the end of the year is the worst time for the Christian life because this is the time when everyone is excited to do evil.

If you have children at home, these children will be on holiday and you have to know what to do with them and if you don’t know how to control them very well, the children will control the situation better than yourself and this won’t be in the right way. And when you have young people they will tell you that they don’t like staying home and they like to go here and there and where they will go they will drink and smoke and for them they think that this is they way to have fun but this will destroy people’s souls.

As for the adults, when they are on holiday they find a good time to be with their family and friends and they meet together in the night clubs and because everybody needs money to have a good time at Christmas and at the end of the year, that is the time when corruption comes back, the time when thieves rob and it is the time when prostitutes are on the road, all the evils come back at once. All the lost souls, all the demons, they work hard in the month of December because they know that people are free from their usual activities.

Satan knows if Michael goes to work, it won’t be easy to tempt him there because his work will distract him but if he is at home and he has nothing to do, that is the right time to attack him and push him to do something. That is why as Christians we have to pray a lot, especially in the month of December, there are many accidents, many murders, lots of diseases, lots of problems. Sometimes there is also peace but there is only peace for those who look for peace and this peace can only be found in the Lord.

So what do we do normally at the end of the year because it is a dangerous time for the Christian life. That is the time when we must commit our lives into God’s hands and say, God help us, control our lives and our paces so that we might start a new year with joy and blessing. And it is the time when Christians come close to God to thank Him for all that He has done. And when God finds out that you come close to Him to thank Him, it won’t be long before He opens His hand to give you more blessings.

Last Friday we were all here and the servant of God stood up to say this is the time to testify and we were here and we didn’t have testimonies to give God. We couldn’t find anything to tell God about thankfulness. It was as if God had done nothing for us through the whole year and if we are not thankful in the small things, will we hope to have great things. I don’t think so. God was a little bit jealous and He didn’t want that and tonight when I prayed before coming, two verses were given to me and the first one was in I Chronicles 23:30.

We are to stand every morning and every evening to thank and to praise the Lord and when we talk about morning; that is the time when we can see the glory of God or life that is perfect. And when we talk about evening; that is the time when things are starting to get a little bit difficult and sometimes we fall into temptation or sins. God needs praises at that time, God needs to find glory that comes from us but unfortunately we were not ready to glorify God.

What prevented me to glorify God on that day, was is unthankfulness, was it pride, or shame or something else? If I was not thankful for all that God has done for me during the year, what was the source of the lack of thankfulness that I had. If for example I was ashamed, what was the source of this shame? The Bible says that the one who will be ashamed of me in front of people, I will be ashamed of them in front of my Father. Will I be ready to stand in front of Jesus when He will say, Odon I am ashamed of you in front of my Father. I think that will be very difficult for me and what would that have cost us to open our mouth to say God thank you because you kept us this year. Or God thank you because we meet here together, or thank you God because I am alive or thank you God because everything that is around me is going well or thank you God because I have a present or thank you God because this house was full of people that night, there was 1001 things to glorify God about. But unfortunately we were not thankful.

When God blesses, nobody can stop Him. It doesn’t depend on our will, it depends on Him. I’ll give you an example, our sister Ang was barren and with prayer the servants of God prayed for her and Ange was healed and she conceived and today we have the first daughter of Ange. Isn’t it something to praise God for? Last time we were here with Keith and we had prayed to God that Keith would come close to God and little by little God drives him to Himself. It’s like putting a pin on the table and a magnet underneath and when God moves through the system, Keith can feel that he doesn’t want to move but he is already drawn, he can feel the power of the Christian life through our sister and he was here that night and wasn’t it a glory for God. It was a glory!

Sylvie prepared her house, she prepared lots of things for us, we ate, we drank, Michelle and others brought lots of other things; couldn’t we thank God for all these people? If Sylvie hadn’t organised her house for example how could things have worked? And if Michelle couldn’t have taken something or Teresa, what could we have eaten that night?

God was not happy about what happened; so what can we do? It is God who gives birth to the day and the same God gives birth to the evening. When He says here is morning, morning is there. And when it is evening, it is evening. Although human beings find the electric lights, this bulb will never replace daylight. The obscurity in the movie theatre will never replace night. Because what God does is always perfect and what we feel, even if it looks correct it is not correct.

I am going to ask a question, Michael do you pay the power? And if you pay how much do you use per month? About $100. During the day Michael doesn’t turn on the lights because God gives us the sun during the whole day. God gives us a river for the power for the electricity and we don’t pay this river. No body pays for the sun or the power of the sun. Although He gives the light in our house and outside our house, we don’t pay Him and He keeps being good to us, why wouldn’t we be thankful to Him. This was the first thing God needs; our glory, God needs to be glorified by us and He needs us to praise Him every morning.

What does it mean to praise God? What does it mean to glorify God and is there a difference between the both of them? We have to keep studying to remind our hearts and souls what the meaning of praising God and glorifying God is. David said my soul praises God, isn’t the mouth able to praise God? Are my hands unable to praise God but David talked about his soul praising God. And in Psalm 150 it says to praise God with all the instruments. What are these musical instruments, the cymbals, drums and others? What do these things represent, what does this noise mean and why does He want to be praised?

When you praise the king or queen what do you do? You shout. When you make noise and say, long live the king, is it praise or is it glorifying? And when you meet the king or queen and you say majesty and you kneel down what does that mean? Is it praising or glorifying? So we have to know the difference between these two things so we might come forward and glorify God in the right way.

So that day Michael said, ‘who is here to testify’, and everybody would look at one another and some people were there as visitors and these visitors were waiting for others to say something. And other visitors would look around and say the landlord is here maybe he will do something so we have to find this courage to testify for Jesus.

The second verse given to me was in I Timothy 4:4. Do you understand what this means, everything that God created is good and nothing is to be rejected and everything is to be received with gratitude. So how many things has God given to us and we have praised Him and how many things have we rejected? When our situations are difficult, sometimes we reject this difficult situation that God gives us. And when we have lots of joy and are blessed, sometimes we forget to glorify God. Each time, we must receive everything with gratitude. Either a small or big thing, we must say thankyou.