A NEW CREATION (Part II)

By Odon Bulamba (25th July, 2003)

(One of the branches of the great salvation)

Your body’s like a car: How will you drive it?

As you know a car has wheels and I told you last time that wheels are round. If you have square wheels I don’t know how your car will work and if you have diamond shaped wheels I don’t know how your car will go. Imagine you have a car with square wheels, how can it work? You will feel it can turn but you will feel something at each corner. And you will not find it easy to drive or feel comfortable. Our cars must have round wheels. To drive a car you are not called to be a mechanic or an expert, even if you are only 16 or 17 you can start driving a car. You can even teach a 7 or 8 year old and your car will accept this child. So when we are called by Jesus and when we give Him our lives, Jesus gives us the responsibility to drive our bodies. Whether you are a child or an adult, you can drive your life and you can control your life or your body. But only if you respect the rules and if you don’t, this is a problem.

Mechanics can drive but people like you and me can drive too. Many people today say that I am not a pastor and I am not famous so this is why I cannot drive. I am still very young to do Christian activities, or to practise the Word of God, but this is not true because the bible says that every person can drive his own car according to God’s Word. If you don’t drive your car and if you say you are not a mechanic, I think tomorrow you will not be a mechanic either. But if you drive and you learn how to drive you will know how to check the oil etc. But if you don’t drive, that will be nearly impossible to know it. This is the first part to have peace in your life; you must know how to drive your body. And you will drive your body according to God’s Word. But you must know the rules.

What does the Word of God say about my body? I can take a car and go on the road, but if I don’t know the road code I will fail. A man came from the desert to NZ and he was given a car and the traffic light was red but he just carried on because he thought that it was normal because he didn’t know anything. And someone else who came from Hong Kong did the same thing. Because in Hong Kong the red colour is the colour of joy and when you see red you jump for joy, so he had an accident. For us too, if we don’t know the code to drive our bodies we will be in confusion and maybe distress will be called joy and we will have an accident.

What is the road code? It is something very simple and cheap in NZ but it costs life too. When people talk about the road code you will see they are simple rules for the road but if you don’t apply them, you will be sorry for yourself and may lose your life. We print books and the book is sold for $20 and they say if you want to be safe on the road you must read this book. The police don’t have the time to come and help you, your Mum and Dad won’t come and tell you what to do but you must make the effort to read your book and then practise it.

You are not allowed to drive on the road if you haven’t passed your test and the test will be nothing else but what is written in this book. And why do we lose our time to read novels and other books when we don’t find time to read the Bible. In all the offices in NZ when each person comes in the morning they bring with them magazines or newspapers and everyday people read them but how many people read the road code that is the Bible? And how many people remember the rules of this book? You might be busy with something else or other situations and you might not have time to read the Word of God. I can tell you that Jesus will not come from heaven to push you to read the Word, never. The angels will never come from heaven to make you memorise the verses, never.

The test is the temptation and when temptation comes, no body will help you, you will be alone in the same way when you are tested for your driver’s licence, you sit the test alone. You are given questions and it’s up to you alone to answer them and if you scratch the wrong answer, you can’t cover it anymore. So if you know it, you know it and if you don’t, that’s it for you. Out of thirty-five questions only three mistakes are allowed, more than that and you will fail. And if you haven’t read it or studied it, how many mistakes will you make? Maybe thirty because you will do it by chance and you will scratch and find the wrong answer and this is it for you. So you will waste your money, your time and you will have to learn and start again.

Jesus too is pushing us to book this test, our names are already written and our appointments made and we have already paid the price. Because we have already given our lives to Jesus, how will we do it if we don’t know the Word? To know the Word of God is very useful because if you know this Word, you will be able to practise it without any problem.

One day I talked to a man of God and in everything this man would run to his wife and say, ‘today I saw this and that’. Everything he would see he would tell his wife. One day they were praying and God revealed something and he said that this must stay just with you. And the man thought, my wife and I are one, there is no problem if I tell her and he went and told it all to his wife and God reproached him. It is written in the Bible that you cannot talk about everything you want. And he said this is not true I have never read that. But this does exist in the book of Nehemiah and we have already read it here so there are things that you are not allowed to tell your wife. And there are other things that wives are not allowed to tell their husbands so you will not be a stumbling block for your husband or wife.

Sometimes God just commands don’t say and you don’t say, that is all. Micah 7:5,6. So we cannot speak at anytime with what ever we want and even with your own wife sometimes God says no. This man broke the law because he lacked knowledge and when we don’t know, we will break the law. This is why we are called to always read and learn the Bible; if you want peace in your life you must always read the Bible. And you will find the solution and if you don’t find time to read the bible you must know you will drive your body in a carnal way and your thoughts will drive your body. In your decisions you will not even think of God and this is the biggest part in the great salvation; how we can control our body and know how to lead our body.

Even if you have been justified, even if you have life, even if you have new birth and you have all that you have, but if you don’t know how to drive your life, every thing that you do is useless. If you don’t know how to control your body all that you do is useless.

The bible says before taking the gospel everywhere you must start with Jerusalem. Jerusalem is myself, and yourself. So when you speak about the Word of God, are you talking about yourself? When you meditate on the word to share with others do you start with yourself? If you don’t start with Jerusalem, I don’t know if you will take it outside of Jerusalem. Many people to cover themselves say that Jerusalem is my family and so they get isolated. But we must start with ourselves first. Jerusalem is the holy city and we are the holy city of the Lord.

We must practise this Word in ourselves and take the Word outside and woe to the disciples who didn’t leave Jerusalem. Jesus died and after his death we don’t hear about these disciples anymore, they have totally disappeared and maybe because they didn’t start with Jerusalem. They would rather start preaching in other cities and this was breaking the law. If you find the stop sign on the road it doesn’t mean give way, it is different. Because the stop is yellow and give way is white. Those two signs might look the same but the colour is different and it is the same with Jesus. When He says, ‘practise this’, don’t tell Jesus I thought you meant this first. If he says start with this, you are not allowed to start with something else, other wise we might do something useless. We must be careful to know how to drive our bodies.

So here in NZ people really try to have a better diet and they want to lose weight and they eat regularly and they calculate the calories to the point that everybody will have a good body. People will go to the gym and they will be healthy but when it’s about spiritual health we are the first ones to give up the battle, we don’t want to be in good shape spiritually. You will see that most Christians on the earth they are fat (spiritually) and can’t run and are very lazy and don’t find the strength to work for God but they are the first ones to eat fish and chips (spiritually). And they eat a great quantity and for us too when it’s about eating sin, our appetite is big but when it is about eating the Word of God, we eat very little and sometimes we say we don’t want to eat.

We are called with Jesus to rebuild our peace. To rebuild your peace, take the signs in your car and you will see that through that you can learn a lot. If you break the law, police will arrest you whether you have a Mercedes or a $100 car; the law is the same for everybody. You can be a prophet or a simple Christian, it is the same law. If you drive 150km/hr with a Mercedes or with a Volkswagen we will both have the same fine, we will both be punished the same way. Don’t be deceived if you think you are higher, if you say I am an evangelist I can do anything I want. No with God it is different. You can say I have been saved for four years and you started yesterday so we are not the same but with God if you break the law you are both the same. This is why the Bible says Elijah and others had the same body as us, he was the same as us. The difference was that they were very careful to apply God’s Word and God would bless them in everything they would do.

Someone who has a car, he knows that after some time he must go and get a warrant of fitness, whether my car is in good shape or not, I must go. You must control everything when you have a warrant of fitness, is everything all right with you, is everything ok with your life? And the mechanic will control your car, your registration must be paid because you use the roads of this country and you must know that you have a divine registration and after it is due, it expires. So don’t go like that but pay again so you can carry on with your life. And you know that you cannot change the colour of your car without telling the police. Don’t change the colour of your faith; don’t change the gospel you have received because many people do it. Today they are Christians, tomorrow they are Buddhists they believe in another faith because the Buddhists said they could help.

The gospel is harsh and the Word of God is heavy and not easy to practise unless you ask for God’s help. If you want to practise God’s Word ask for His help. If you want to do it with your own strength, you will not do it. So for those who want to persevere in the Word, they must ask God for help. This is why Jesus said I will give you the Holy Spirit and He will lead you and the Holy Spirit will teach you things to come. If you have the Holy Spirit it is time to tell the Holy Spirit lead me; this is the secret to peace. Maybe next time we can talk about war and how vehicles were used for war and what is the war we have with our bodies.