Church is not a service, it is people. If it’s too long, or boring, or if a spiritual gift offends you, your focus is not correct. When you come to have an encounter with God, meet, and give out to people, it’s a dynamic living place. If you are coming to a service with a time limit in mind, and scrutinize the preacher’s sermon you might end up very bored. You need a change of mind!
For many years church has not bored me. When I began to go not looking for what I could get, but what I could give, everything changed. When I go to church, I go to give away God’s love, and display His power and His kingdom to others. Before, during, and after yesterday’s service I spent 6 hours dynamically interacting with many wonderful, beautiful and fantastic people. I came back home energized and grateful at the opportunity that God gives me to invest in people’s lives. Some were believers, and some were not believers. For me, people are people. I do not differentiate if they are Christians or not. I feel comfortable with everybody and I am convinced that everybody in this world hungers for the power and glory of God. I am what God made me to be. This is the identity of Christ is me. This is why I know that He is the real deal and whoever rejects Him is seriously missing out on life.
There is one universal language amongst all nations that needs no translation. It is the language of the power and glory of God. I have preached in many Maasai villages of Kenya. I have gone to the Luo towns of Western Kenya where Mr. Obama is from. I have taught in the remote parts of Tanzania and in the churches of Uganda. I have ministered in the Navajo Nation of Arizona and in the unsaved Pueblo Indian Nations of New Mexico. Many times when praying I have not had the luxury of a translator. I have had no communication except to talk the language of the power and glory of God. Kids, teens, young adults, and the elderly have thronged to have an encounter with His glory. Maasai youth have waited until 1:00 AM just to get a word from God. Luos, who speak no English line up in a row of four or five at 11:00 PM to hear a prophecy.
I have seen plenty of people manifesting under God’s power and it’s all been beautiful. Whether Kenyan, Navajo, American, Tanzanian, Ugandan or Apache, I have seen them all weep, shout, scream, shake or bake and get slained by the Spirit. I have seen the demon of AIDS manifest numerously, and baby bound in witchcraft released. I have seen demons talk to me in the Luo language from a woman that was in an unconscious demonic trance. She later awoke. I have felt evil come out of witchcraft powder made out of goat’s feet and later see the whole family who dabbled in it come to God. It’s all been beautiful, majestic and real. As Pastor Ralph so eloquently says, it’s the holy power of the God of the whole universe coming into contact with sinful human flesh. This why I will not apologize for the power of God and any Spirit birthed manifestation upon anyone at any time.
I amazed that people in the USA ever complain about the length of a church service. In Africa, the elderly and pastors ride bicycles for 6 hours, in shirts and ties to come and hear us teach. The Masaais walk for countless hours, sleep on floors, or come with tents, eating corn flour and spinach for five days at a time. There are no Burger Kings or hotels in Maasai land. Whoever comes to a conference stays there.
Tanzanians praise the Lord at night with magical voices in a pitch black church that does not have a gas lamp or candles.
A lady pastor rode 14 hours on a bus without a/c to hear us preach.
Teens in remote Luo land praise the Lord until 4:00 AM by a generator powered keyboard, having no electricity in their village, and rejoiced in song when we rented a generator for them.
I find it a privilege to serve the Lord in all of these places. I find it a privilege to spend five days in the bush, without toilets, electricity or internet or phones, truly relating, laughing and joking with others, undistracted, under the power of a kerosene lamp. Many do not speak English and we do not speak Luo, but both of us speak the language of God’s love.
I find it a privilege to be invited to the Pueblo Indian festivals amongst people who do not know Jesus Christ and whom I hardly understand.
I find it a privilege to preach in a Navajo church and asking the congregation to forgive me and the white man for the atrocities that we enacted, to have the service totally stop, and all of us weep and embrace each other.
I find it a privilege to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night in the bush, flashlight in hand, just to look up in awe at a sky whitened with stars, a perfectly delineated Milky Way , peppered with comets and moving satellites.
I find it a privilege to take a bath in the trees, a bright sun and chirping birds in a leave woven cubicle or with muddy water. I have felt like a real tourist doing that.
I find it a privilege to eat fresh tilapia from Lake Victoria, ostrich and buffalo burgers, chai with raw warm milk from a “just milked cow” , barbequed goat, vegetables “just picked” from a garden, or eggs “just taken” from the hen’s stall, fried meat from a “just slained” bull or warm yogurt, “just made.” I find it a privilege to eat delicious fried bread or taco burgers with beautiful Navajo people or green and red chile with the unsaved Pueblo Indian Nations or amazing elk meat with friends in Santa Fe and drink great Dutch coffee at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
I have found it a privilege to sleep with my wife on a tiny bed in a dung hut in Maasai land with flashlight, toilet paper and bottled water next to us. Also to sleep on hard tough cow hide in a windowless and hot Maasai manata, fire burning inside the house, is a luxury that very few white people will ever have. I have found it a privilege to rub 100 percent deet on my body and bald head against malaria carrying mosquitos knowing that God protects us.
I have felt sorry for my American friends that have missed out on such incredible and amazing adventures.
I thank my God that I have stepped into Ernest Hemingway’s home in Kenya overlooking majestic Mt. Kilimanjaro. No doubt that he wrote “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” from here. I thank my God that I have been to the Indian Ocean, crossed the mighty Nile River, and the Rio Grande, gasped in wonderment at the 19,000 feet Kilimanjaro, been to the painted desert, the Four Corners, seen Old Faithful gush, preached in the middle of Lake Victoria, seen the Carlsbad Caverns, gasp in wonderment at the Grand Canyons under a full moon, ate burgers under the shadow of the Rockies, and slid down the powdery slopes of the White Sands.
I am grateful that I got to talk to Todd Bentley at London Heathrow Airport.
I am privileged that I was the personal secretary to one of the great Navajo men of God globally used in the 1990’s.
I thank my God that I have been on safari with my family, stopped for crossing giraffes, or grazing zebras, or standing ostriches, or closed the windows of my car from roaming baboons. I have seen the running fox in a forest, a giant elk in front of my car, a huge tarantula crawling on my roof, the black widow in my room, rattle snakes on stones, road runners going as fast as my car, beautiful coyotes shyly fleeing, bison herding, or a bear in the distance.
I am grateful that I have been just miles from where Mr. Obama and his family came from and have had a chance to pray for him from there.
These are some of my random Christian thoughts this morning of where the great God has taken me so far!
