By Odon Bulamba
We are going to share the Word of God and I will try to go
here and there to put all of this together.
Last time I talked about carrying your own cross and if you want to
follow Jesus, you have to carry your own cross. Then I talked about Hannah who
wanted a child and all she went through which is part of carrying your own
cross: when you have a problem and people think differently.
Today I will talk about the cross of Easter and our cross we
carry.
When Jesus was arrested, He was given a cross to carry and
was forced to carry it and had no choice.
Although, He was tired, although He fell, they told him to stand up
again and keep carrying your own cross. We don’t know how good the path was or
if He had to go up hills but it was a long day and a big challenge for the Son
of God. Carrying your soul is not a joke, it is quite hard and challenging.
Looking after your soul you will feel God’s pressure and God
forcing you and you may fall down, feel tired, feel thirsty but God will push
you and the Word of God will push you to encourage you to stand up and carry
your cross (soul).
By Jesus carrying the cross we have salvation and when you
say that you don’t want to carry your cross (soul), you may destroy that gift
of salvation. By carrying the cross, people
were watching Him, stoning Him, some were mocking and others were against the
whole story. When you become a
Christian, some will mock you for becoming a Christian and we start to hide our
Christianity because we don’t fit in society.
For Jesus, He had to take it to the last point because he
knew, “if I fail this mission, the whole humanity will fail. I was sent to redeem humanity”. You and I were also born for a purpose, we
have a mission and the first mission is to look after your soul (carry your
cross) and then save people.
Jesus went to Golgotha and now we are going to
Golgotha. We will reach a place where we
are exposed in front of everybody. Jesus
was nailed to the cross that He carried.
When you accepted Jesus in your life and you started the journey to
Golgotha and the whole world looked at you and knew you were a Christian, then
temptation will arrive. People will tell
you, “if God is in you and on your side, why does this and that happen to your
life? Tell God to remove you from there,”
and you will be nailed to your cross (soul) and you will not be able to be
detached from your soul.
When you are doing things, think about your soul first. If I steal $5 I will kill my soul. My hands are nailed to my cross (soul) so they
can’t move to steal. If my feet want to
take me somewhere wrong, I have to remind myself not to remove my feet from the
cross or I will lose eternal salvation.
Jesus said, “Father forgive them”. When you become a Christian, the first slogan
must be forgiveness no matter what people do against you regardless of whether
they have said sorry or not. Pray for
them and don’t wait for them to come back to you. Forgive first, regardless of what they did
because people can do things against us without knowing what they are doing.
Because of the love of your cross (soul), you have to pray
to God for those you love for salvation so they can be next to you in the Kingdom
of God. How often do you pray for your
neighbours, colleagues, your enemies to sit in the Kingdom of God?
Jesus said, “today I will see you in the Kingdom of God with
me”. Pray for all of Hamilton, New
Zealand, the world to have salvation, to see them one day in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus said, “Women, this is your son and son this is your
mother”. Truly, the mother of Jesus was
not the mother of that disciple but Jesus was meaning that we should treat each
other as our parents and children. The
way you love your children, you should love others. When your children make mistakes you don’t
say that you will never talk again but you repair things and miss each other
and pray for each other and try to live in unity as a family. We should live in love and consider each
other as family, like your own child.
You feel like you can’t change the love you have for your son and they
will remain your son forever. He can
deny me or not but he is my son and it can’t be changed, it is a gift forever
and those beside you, you should love as a son forever. You should treat others in this way.
Jesus said, “My Lord why have you forsaken me”. Sometimes we feel like God has forsaken or forgotten
me. Where are you God in my life? I am
crossing this situation and I feel far from God. When we feel this way, do we shout to God, “Lord
wake up, and don’t forsake me Lord, be present every step of my life”. God is like the air in our lungs, we breathe
Him in and out. If we can try to stop
breathing, we can’t. Breathing is
effortless and costs nothing but your body needs it more than anything.
God wants you to have Him in your life every second of your
day, breathe in and out God, when you talk, sleep, walk and when you are doing
everything, think about God otherwise you will die.
Jesus said, I’m thirsty.
When you are taking care of your soul, you must be thirsty for the Word
of God. How often do you feel thirsty to
pray, worship, or talk to God in a personal way? When you are not thirsty, ask yourself, why
don’t you drink enough these days. One
time I was sick and the first thing my doctor asked me was, “how often do you
drink water?” The doctor encouraged me
to drink 10-15 glasses of water/day. It
sounded a lot but the doctor said it was what I need or I will kill myself and
I will destroy all that God has given me.
The doctor was from South Africa and he said to me, “if your
body is a temple of Jesus, why don’t you look after it. He gives you clean water and clean cups. Consume that water because at home, we fight
for that water. Sometimes we see frogs
coming from our taps. Here we play with
water and misuse it”. We have the Word
of God in our hand in New Zealand but we don’t use it. We avoid it while in other places to find a Bible
is a problem and you can’t afford a preacher.
When you are thirsty, what do you do? When your soul is
thirsty, what do you do? What are you thirsty of?
Jesus said, “It is finished”. What was finished, the torture, the
suffering, the time to be in front of the crowd. Everything with a beginning has an end. Your life has an end and very soon He will
call you back and He will say, “your life on earth has finished”. When it is finished, you commit your spirit
into the hand of the Lord. Jesus will
say, “soul come back to My hand because your time over there is finished”.
How long do you have on this earth? There will come a time when God will say, it
is finished. It doesn’t matter if you have
assets or a degree or if you have good health or you are big or small,when it
is finished, you have to commit your soul back to God.
The day of judgement is coming and your soul will stand
before God and all your actions, attitude and all that you did will stand in front
of God. Although your body can remain
here buried, your soul will take your actions.
What are your actions towards others, God and yourself? How good are you to yourself?
I thought it was too hard to drink so much water, do I
really care about my body. When my soul
needs to read the Word of God and I don’t, do I care about myself. When Jesus says, change your way of living
and I don’t, do I care about my soul. If
you die now, what will you present before God?
He doesn’t care about what you own, He only cares about your soul, the
soul He gave to you.
Remember the story of the man who was given two coins and he
buried them because he didn’t want problems with his master. One day Jesus will say, “I gave you a body,
soul and spirit, now present to me the result.
For 60 years you lived on the earth, what have you done on earth in that
time?” Do I have any feedback to give to
God about my spirit? Do I have a final report to present to God about my
soul? For my body, yes, I used to sit in
church but what about my soul.
Your body is only a third of your existence. You can satisfy your body but you must also
satisfy your spirit and soul.
Colossians 3:12
We who have been chosen by God, God loves us so much and
sent His only child to die for us, He gives to us a clue to clothe ourselves
with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. You can have compassion but it is naked. You can have patience but it might be
naked.
Adam was living in the garden and the evening that he ate
the fruit, God said, “where are you,” and Adam said, “I am hiding because I am
naked”. Adam's appearance didn’t change
but he wasn’t covered properly. When
your patience isn’t covered properly, you have to clothe it. What is the nakedness of compassion?
Jesus was on the cross crucified naked. Adam was naked and God covered him. After bringing Jesus down from the cross,
they covered him.
Here are five things that we should be careful about. We need them to wear proper clothes. I had my shower this morning and chose my
clothes. I have a 4-5 briefcases full of
clothes to choose from. I lay my clothes
out to choose which ones I will wear.
Sometimes I iron my clothes and then change my mind and iron new clothes. Then I wear my clothes and I make sure that I
look nice. Even going to the supermarket,
I must dress nicely because I don’t know who I will meet at the supermarket.
If I meet with my boss, I will be ashamed to look
dirty. We love so much to appear good and
cover our bodies and prepare our clothes.
When we go to work, we prepare something to wear and for our souls it is
the same.
Look at your humility.
Sometimes I am humble but I can’t bear this anymore. Don’t let your humility be exposed, don’t
feel it is stretched and you can’t take anymore but cover it. You have to do it daily, minute after
minute.
If food falls on you, you have to change your clothes. Sometimes people hurt your compassion or
kindness but don’t leave the stain there but put on new clothes. This is the way children of God should
work.
Jesus said, “Lord forgive them, they don’t know what they
are doing”.
These 7 sentences of Jesus, what do they teach us?
Colossians 4, devote yourselves to prayer and being
thankful. It’s not for God to devote Himself
to you but for us to devote to Him.
People are extremely weak in prayer.
God who we call Lord my Father, He is waiting for us to talk to
Him. We try to make our prayers as short
as possible because we have no time.
One time we were praying and in the middle of the prayer the
phone rang and we were all wondering who was on the phone. One time someone prayed for 7 minutes and we were
all unhappy. How long do we take to
pray? It is an appointment with you and God,
you have invited Him to sit at the other side of the table. You should ask God, what should I wear at the
interview, what should I say, how should I work once I am there, show me how
Your Name will be glorified through this job but we don’t, we just ask for the
job.
Levi went to visit a little boy in Hamilton and when it was
time to go home he said he wasn’t ready because of his friend but when I said
KFC, he was ready to leave his friend.
Sometimes we only need God when we need something quick for our
bodies. I want you God because I want
something from You and then we disappear.
Jesus is teaching us today that we have to remember God is God and not a
human being and we have to treat God with respect.
By carrying our cross, we have to remember that we will
stand in front of God one day and there is no one more important than Him. Pray to God to ask him how to support your
soul, how to clothe your patience, kindness, humility, compassion and
forgiveness with nice clothes.
