‘God is in Control and so we Hope’

‘God is in Control and so we Hope’
By Charles Ngoje

In the Third World: We know that governments alone cannot solve all our problems. In the third world governments in most cases are a reason for the many woes that have plagued it for centuries –disease, poverty, illiteracy, feuding among leaders that quickly spread like wild fire into tribal and ethnic clashes and disparities in the allocation of resources or reward of them. And so, keen eyes in the third world have learnt to look to God for solutions. And God has never failed his people. But there is a clique, always a minority, to whom the government is everything. They hope in the government to answer all their problems. They seek to retain political power within their ranks at all costs even when it means sacrificing the poor to gain control of the government. And so we saw the kind of filth and abominable acts that visited Kenya early this year.

Talking of Kenya’s post election woes and I am reminded of a statistics that did not add up. Kenya is famed for being over 85% Christian. The 85% could not inject enough sanity into the quagmire and blind the 15% with their light? No. A lot of the 85% is just but spiritual fat with a very thin lining of spiritual muscle. The same can be said of Rwanda. Christianity claimed 90% of the population a few months before the heinous genocide. And again the logical conclusion is that ‘a Christian turned against another Christian. ‘Teachings of Christ about turning the other cheek…’ …doing unto others as you would have them do unto you…, …love for the enemy,… forgiveness…’ had not been assimilated. They simply entertained the ear but never nourished their intellect. And thus their emotions remained wild and uninformed. With starved intellect and uncultured emotions, a conducive state of the mind and soul for the operations of the evil one is thus created.

But that is true on this side of the Atlantic.

Unprecedented Period: The USA is faced with a unique electioneering period, one of its kind since the birth of the greatest country on earth. The USA to us is more than just a great civilization. It has been the bedrock of modern day missionary enterprise. A great many church leaders have looked up to the USA for training, resources and viable partnerships. The sporadic growth of small churches that dot the face of this continent and other continents are to a larger degree courtesy of the generosity of Christians in America. There are many charitable institutions in Africa funded by American churches and individual Christians. And so when USA’s economy is not doing well, the body of Christ world wide hurts. It is this hurt that makes us think of you during this period of hard economic times and a general elections. These are the two major themes that have flooded the media and peoples minds and to some extent most pulpits –all projected prominently against the backdrop of war against groups of terror.

Standing in the gap in Hope: The Church of America has to remain sober in the midst of all these and provide necessary leadership and intercession. It is time for the warriors of prayer to lift up the country in the belief that in all things God works together for the good of those who love him Romans 8:28.

To the Church triumphant, it doesn’t matter the outcome of the elections on Tuesday –God is in control. He is on the steering wheel. May we not be faint hearted because our hope is not built on shaky foundations but on unshakable foundation. The strength of the sovereign Lord stands overpoweringly against the abilities of human systems. The strength of the government is weaker than the ‘weakness’, if any, of our God. Our hope is in God (G) and not in governments(g).

But how is this? Our hope as Charles Coulson puts it in his book ‘Kingdoms in Conflict, p371’
‘Our hope is in the fact that … It is a Kingdom that comes not in a temporary takeover of political structures, but in the lasting takeover of the human heart by the rule of a holy God… the fact that God reigns can be manifest through political means, whenever the citizens of the Kingdom of God bring His light to bear on the institutions of man. But His rule is even more powerfully evident in ordinary, individual lives, in the breaking of cycles of violence and evil, in the paradoxical power of forgiveness, in the actions of those little platoons who live by the transcendent values of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the Kingdoms of this world, loving their God and loving their neighbour…’

Prophetic Duty: May divine hope drive us towards a stand by word and action against the evils and excesses of our respective societies. To take a stand against abortion and marriage contracts alien to the Scripture. To condemn by word and action greed and corruption. To rebuke those whose feet are too quick to shed innocent blood. To be ambassadors of peace and reconciliation breaking walls that divide and label and seeing the world through the glasses of God. To continue with the evangelisation of the world both local and international. Nothing must stop the Christian from witnessing. The Church has the voice of God for the contemporary society. Our little platoons, are little lights. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ John 1:5

We are praying for you! We wish you ‘shalom’ and prosperity. May your faith in God be strengthened even more! Amen.