Message by Odon Bulamba
Hebrews 4:1-3, “Therefore,
since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that
none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good
news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no
value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just
as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my
rest.’” And yet his works
have been finished since the creation of the world.
The main issue with Christians today is that Christians don’t want to
be careful about the return of Jesus.
They are not praying carefully for the return of Jesus, they are not
even sure whether they will be ready for when Jesus returns. Because they are not careful, the gospel has
no value because the condition for the gospel to be shared is faith must be
combined with being careful. Do you
carefully consider what the Bible says to prepare for the Kingdom of God?
Hebrews 4:7, again he
sets a certain day — “today”—saying through David much later, in the words
already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Today if you hear the voice of God do not harden your heart. Many of us harden our hearts and then we fall
and get lost and justify our actions and believe that God will seek for us. God wants you to be fresh in God, every
single day. Every time walk with God. If not, he may not accept you in the Kingdom
of God and tell you, “I don’t know you”.
Mathew 24: 7-14, Nation
will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines
and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. “Then
you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be
hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the
faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear
and deceive many people. Because of the increase of
wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the
end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole
world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Everything that God has created has two sides, e.g. day/night, tall/short,
big/small, high/low. Once you belong to
one side, it’s impossible to belong to the other side. For example, the north and south
equator. I have been to the equator
where north meets south and it is nice and warm and feels like a nice place to
be. Many people live with one foot in
the north and in the south, they are neither hot nor cold because they do not
want to miss out but God has promised He will spew those out that are warm.
Today sin controls the church more than ever before. Today sin is a friend to Christians. Everything is ok “a little bit”. Now we return to Mathew 24, “nation will rise
against nation”: there is a big war inside us.
In each of us, we have a few different kingdoms and nations and they are
written in Galatians 4: the fruit of the spirit and the fruit of the
flesh. You have a kingdom of peace, a
kingdom of joy, a kingdom of love and also a kingdom of immorality all living
inside of you. The war is coming – a spiritual
war.
When Jesus is talking to His disciples in Mathew 24 He is giving a
spiritual message to prepare us for His return.
Therefore, the wars that Jesus is talking about is spiritual. When the war starts inside you it can be for
example hatred popping up as an idea that comes to you, “that person did s
small mistake, I don’t like them anymore”.
You lose the battle.
Other ideas grow in your mind and you shake like an earthquake because
you have two things to choose from. Every
day we go through wars. My flesh needs something,
and my spirit will say no and I have to make the decision. Therefore, we have to make decisions
carefully or the gospel will end up with no value which is the beginning of
birth pain.
When birth is coming, we don’t know what the child will look like. When pain comes, those around you won’t feel
it. The pain belongs to the person
bearing the baby and they are the only one who feels it. Today mums go to the maternity. In my country, that’s the time to see if you
are strong. In some places you will not
be helped and you will have to give birth alone like animals in the wild who
give birth alone.
When you are in pain, when you have problems and things feel like they
are turning sour, where do you go? Some try
to handle it alone while that is a good time to call for Jesus. We prefer to talk to human beings instead. A midwife is there at the time of birth because
they know how to handle the situation and if you go to Jesus, He can help you
more than people. I’m not saying that
you can’t share your problems with others but that doesn’t mean that you can
relax now and believe they will pray for you, you still have to go to Jesus.
Famine is when there is a scarcity of food. When there is no food, people feel weak and
lose weight. Today the world will say
there is famine in Papua New Guinea and other countries, but we don’t talk
about the famine in the church. People
don’t want to eat the Word of God. It is
like anorexic girls who refuse to eat because they think they look good
skinny. We have food but we don’t want
to eat and it is making us sick, weak, to lose weight and we believe that is to
look good.
The Word of God today has become something that Christians hate. People want to go to church to hear blessings
but not the Word of God. People are
happy to hear preachings about material things only and when it becomes a
matter of spiritual blessings we feel the message is boring, unpowerful, too
long and finally our hearts and spirits are becoming more and more weak. Hebrews 4, don’t be like them, be careful. Come back to Jesus a quick as possible and
don’t harden your heart.
Christians today prefer to go where people are celebrating and eating
and drinking etc and we sacrifice our time with Jesus. Those steps become a danger because you are
between the two equators where we think it is nice and warm and we enjoy. You are at the point of being warm where God
will spew you out. Some stupid people
think they will repent at death but no one knows the tie of death. The grace of God is today and you refuse to
come. I don’t know if you will have time
of grace tomorrow.
Your soul, mind, and body is starving so feed your nations, feed the
fruit of the spirit that is inside you. You
can feed your fruit of love, feed your fruit of joy etc. Love, joy, peace and all the fruit of the
spirit need to grow just like any other fruit on trees. The secret to feeding them is in the Word of
God, e.g. “Be at peace with everyone”, you have to seek peace out and by doing
that you are feeding the gift of peace.
You can only eat fruit that is ready.
You can’t eat a green orange. By feeding
your spiritual fruit, it becomes ripe and you can enjoy them to eat. By feeding your gifts, you win the battle. We also need to recognise the fruit of the
flesh in order to be able to protect ourselves from them. For example, we have a tv program where the
police show pictures of people that are dangerous to warn us to keep away from
them. Sometimes we look at those
pictures and think those people look nice.
Don’t be fooled by the fruit of the flesh, know that they are a
danger. We need discernment to know
which is the fruit of the flesh and which is the fruit of the spirit so we can
stop the flesh and have victory.
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