Three Days in Boot-camp 2011     
  Raising God’s Army

Always, it started in the twilight. When the sun had started dozing and the stars were not yet awake. All we saw in the horizon was a gray cloud. Every day, for three days, 25^th till 27^th February, we marched into the training ground like soldiers. We were the new recruits, the would-be “world changers.”

The Word of Faith Christian centre, Kano, Nigeria, was filled with an atmosphere of expectation as we eagerly awaited  the General, Rev kola Ewuosho to mount the commanding post.  Speaking with the assuring poise of a spiritual war veteran, Rev. Kola gave us the drills in four instalments.

First, he introduced Jesus Christ to us: His life, philosophy, purpose and kingdom. Also part of the introduction was the place of the church in the society, prayers and general knowledge of Christianity. The concepts of the fear of God (that conditions our hearts to relate with God) and the love of God, and how to balance both were basic components of the introductory phase.

Next, the foundation phase:  “The foundation is the revelation of who Jesus is,” he said.

We are amongst other things, a product of our past.  Our point of view of life is influenced by how we have been programmed in our formative years. Since the fall of man, sin, among other things, was programmed into our foundation like a virus. That’s a faulty foundation. No matter how long we’ve gone, we can go back to adjust it. This is good news.

Sin destroys, pollutes and perverts. Sin is more than external disobedience to God, and more than an outward manifestation of something wrong.  It is an internal revolt against God. Its gives Satan the permission he needs to operate in our lives. It speaks; it educates and develops people in its own ways.

God knew, and showed us in the Old Testament that it is humanly impossible for man to overcome sin without the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the redemption that comes with it. He sent His Son to shed his blood on the cross so that He can accept us, despite our sinful nature.

Jesus came for divine exchange, as a divine pattern, and to show us the father heart of God. This is the foundation of Christianity. Jesus is the solid foundation that we should build our lives on. We must allow the word of God to lay a new solid foundation in our lives. Any knowledge that is against the word of God is junk.

Everybody needs revelation. Jesus never said he would build his church until Peter got the revelation of who Jesus was.  Likewise, if we want to build on the foundation that had been laid, we need revelation. Nobody can be in the army of God without a revelation. This revelation is beyond intellectual comprehension.

The spirit of man is a faculty that has the ability to know what the natural mind is too limited to know. God must open our spiritual eyes to the hope He has called us into, to the inheritance he has inside us, and to the power that is at work toward us. This is the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. There is an investment in our lives that we may not be aware of.

 One of the signs of victorious living is allowing The Holy Spirit, through the voice of our spirits, to educate our mind. God designed us to be spirits, gave us souls to give expression to our spirits, and put us in physical bodies to live.

Everybody has a calling and unique relationship with Jesus. And every part of the body has a function, even the smallest part. We should take full advantage of this relationship through commitment, involvement and complete obedience to the word of God.

If our lives must count, we can’t afford to look at others. That means we must know ourselves. To build a consciousness of who really we are in Christ, we need meditation, confession and the continual practice of the word of God.

But in addition to knowing ourselves, we must know Satan, our enemy. Satan uses the sinful nature of our flesh and religion to outsmart us. For every truth in God’s word, Satan has a religious and a flesh version of it.  If we don’t believe in the simplicity of the gospel, we will believe in the deception of Satan through sin.

A chain is as strong as it weakest link.  We need to keep sin out of our lives. A soldier in the God’s army must have a permanent hatred for sin. Without sin, Satan has no authority over the army of God.

God’s soldiers are fighters with internal fortitude to resist the devil. Unlike the Israelites, as God’s occupying force we should not allow the giants in the Promised Land to intimidate us.

Though Jesus Christ had been preaching the message of the Kingdom of God, the first mention of the Church"" was a declaration of War. Jesus never thought of building his church to be a happy club.

Jesus wanted to build an army of people that the gates of hell cannot prevail against. No doubt, the gates of hell will attack God’s camp, but surely it will fail because Jesus had won the battle before it even got started, and he has given us the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Our human abilities cannot stand the fire from the realm of the spirits; it is only the revelation from God that can sustain us in the days of adversity. Though, the revelation that Peter had did not stop him from being natural, or being spiritually immature, that revelation held him in spite of his immaturity. If we can catch the revelation, even if our humanity fails us, we will still stay with Jesus. Revelation has a staying power when our humanity fails.

 After the foundation phase, then the maturity phase: This is the stage of character formation when we begin to build on the foundation that had been laid based on the Word of God. Love is l what maturity is all about; that and self-denial, self-discipline, endurance, faithfulness, integrity, boldness, humility, tolerance, unconditional forgiveness, obedience and absolute sense of security in God.

Being mindful of natural things hinders true spirituality. As God soldiers, we must deny ourselves and carry our cross to follow Jesus. We must run the race set before us. We must believe in God as the absolute source of our lives. There is no aspect of our lives that God is not interested in. In His overall program for our lives, He had catered for everything we need.

 

Mature Christians are able to handle criticisms and corrections without bitterness. They are dead to self but alive in Christ. They are no more children; they are the responsible sons of God. At this stage, we get conformed to the model of Jesus as God’s ultimate standard, patterning our lives according to God’s nature. We would give because we love God, and not out of fear or obligation.

Finally, the manifestation phase: This is the stage of fruitfulness and destiny fulfilment. Here, we are royal ambassadors of heaven, or like a riot squad because we would have grown into full stature of Christ. We would have risen above the opinions and commendations of men. With unshakable spiritual identity, when we enter any territory, spiritual forces align themselves with us. Here, there is more pronounced manifestation of the gifts of the spirit and demonstration of the power of God.

At the end of our training, Rev. Kola Ewuosho sent us out into the world to “do the work of evangelists; to pray, to plan, to execute, and to preach the gospel of Christ with wisdom.” So we marched out, fully kitted with the whole armour of God, and with our hands raised high, chanting, “We are the soldiers of God. Satan, watch and see as we destroy your kingdom.”

Quoted Bible Verses:

·         Mt 16 vs. 13

·         Eph 1 vs. 15-23

·         Eph 2 vs. 10-20

·         Eph 3 vs. 17

·         Luk 14 vs. 28-33

·         Col 1 vs. 9- 20

·         2 Cor 10 vs. 3

·         Exo 20 vs. 20

·         James 1 vs. 17-25

·         I Pet 2

·         1 Cor 12 vs. 4-12

·         Rom 12 vs. 1

·         1 Cor 14

·         Act 8 vs. 4-8

·         Mt 28 vs. 18-20

·         2 Tim 4 vs. 1-5

·         John 3 vs. 16

·         Rom 3 vs. 23

·         Rom 6 vs. 23

·         2 Cor 4 vs. 3-4

 

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Published 17:01:54 02.03.2011