The
average Christian believes that God by the leading
of the Holy Spirit should be in absolute
control of his/her life and family. He also desires that this should be his
personal experience. Our major challenge now becomes how to describe what we
believe to be the basic features of the home where God is in control. What do
you think will be the sin qua non of
that family where God is pleased to dwell?
Take
some time off to think through this issue before you continue.
In the home where God
rules by the power of the Holy Spirit, there will always be at least an agent
of God living there. An ambassador of some sort through whom the Holy Spirit
carries out God’s instructions.
God’s work depends on
vessels that He can trust to be there for Him when He needs them. People who
take delight in taking instructions from Him only and deferentially report back
to Him the happenings in their environment. Such yielded and praying vessels,
cannot do anything without the express permission and guidance of God. That's
the Bible definition of undivided loyalty.
This of course is a high
calling, especially in a marriage setting, because if for instance such a
person is joined to another who does not maintain such a vibrant relationship
with God, there is bound to be a constant gbata-gbata1[1] in
that home because according to Amos 33,
two cannot walk together unless they agree. But remembering that Christianity
is a race and a battle and not just a bed of thorn-less roses will help.
God cannot reign anywhere
on earth, (that is, exercise the power by which He rules) without the agency of
an ambassador.
He initiated the marriage institution and
therefore respects couples, but He chooses to work with us at the individual
level, at a time, for maximum results. So in any family unit, He looks out for
an ambassador, one who best fits His requirements of unalloyed loyalty. God
looks out for at least one in the pair, a bridge-head of sort, to accomplish
His aim in every home. He can use one spouse but how lovely when the pair
becomes a worthy and yielded instrument in His hand. And even when this miracle
of perfect union happens, God still works on us individually:
Even though God works with
the couple, He still prefers to perfect the individual because a defective raw
material they say cannot produce a premium product. God wants to perfect you
before marriage and after wedding He still continues the sanctification process
till He gets you into His desired shape so that you will perform His desired
tasks for His pleasure. Make no mistake about that, God is always after His
pleasure and that is for our benefit for when God is pleased with an
individual, nay a couple, divine bliss manifests.
God works with one person
to maximize his /her divine capabilities and when two persons growing under God
ideally unite, they expand their potentials to an infinite proportion.
GOD+HUSBAND= 100%
GOD + WIFE = 100%
GOD + COUPLE = a[2]
One can do it, but God
knows that a couple is His primary choice for a complete home and His perfect
creation.2.
Having said that, we must note that;
Your spouse does not need to walk with you for
you to make heaven, but there is no end to what God can do with a yielded
couple walking together with Him in love.
So who in the union do you
think is best fitted to be God’s ambassador in the home? When God created Adam,
He was satisfied in the works of His hands. The same was true with the creation
of Eve, both of whom He created in His own very image.3But then, they were still work-in-progress even after their
wedding.
As a married couple, God
allows us some healthy leverage to operate on our own as individuals. For
instance, He neither reproved Eve for talking with the serpent alone nor condemned Adam for allowing
his wife to do so. His reason for not being happy with her I believe was her
coming so low as to hold such a determinative conversation with a serpent and
not being repelled by the fact that it questioned the integrity of God, casting
aspersion to His Holy name.
Because God recognized
their individuality, in His judgment, He handled them first separately, then as
a couple4.
He was hard on Adam because he failed in helping his spouse when he noticed her
missteps, for part of God’s mandate for us in marriage is to help redirect our
mates back to the path of God when we
notice they begin to walk contrary to His purposes. This we ought to do in love
without [3]acrimony, hostility, impatience,
intolerance, prejudgment or sometimes the narrow-mindedness that usually accompany such redemptive works, which
attitude exacerbates an already muddled
situation. What are we saying? In all situations, we should make the word of
God the only lamp to our feet and light to our path: And our Lord Jesus our
only role model5.
And the question of who best should work with God in our marriage I believe is
an issue that spouses must answer for themselves without recourse to their
partners. For the real question is:
§
How
do I want to walk with God?
§
And
how do I want God to walk with me as a person?
Amos 33 again argues that two [you and God]
cannot have any meaningful relationship unless there is a binding agreement. So
who among the two of you do you believe that God should work with in your
family?
If you think that you are not God’s chosen vessel for that union, then
you will be ill-equipped to function
appropriately, and maybe, just maybe,
that’s why things may not be working according to God’s in your home: Because of the presence of an
impersonator.
Yes! You.
For if you are the chosen of God for that home, then, you are God’s instrument to
bless your union as you work for His honor and glory. You will be the one God will be looking up to for the
advancement of His will in your environment. For whenever He wants to manifest
tolerance, kindness, understanding, love, or sacrifice He will look for you as
His unprofitable servant whose desire is to do his/her part in filling the [4]whole
earth with the knowledge of the glory of God , as the waters cover the sea6. Whatever He wants done
in your environment, God will look for you as His ready and willing instrument.
Adam may have been created first but that does
not make him morally superior to Eve. I am one of those who believe that men
and women are morally equal even though I do not believe that God is the author
of feminism as an ideology. I still
believe that women should in no guise be considered either subordinate or
inferior to men. God may have foreknowledge of what we will eventually be even
before we were conceived but that does not say that He decided in advance who
among us will be His agent in all situations especially in my home. God in His
omniscience knew before creation that a close associate of the Messiah will
betray Him, but there was nowhere in the Bible that Judas’ name was mentioned
as the very one who will betray Jesus. Judas was not created to betray Jesus
rather at some point in his inglorious life he became a traitor for personal
reasons best known to him7. As
moral agents we are responsible for every action we take otherwise God would
not have any ethical justification as a just judge. So the person that the cap
fits is the one that allows the cap to fit his or her head. Doesn't this cap of God’s ambassadorship fit
your head? And if it does why won’t you choose this day to allow Him use you to
fulfill His Divine counsel in your home?
In that home where God is in charge, there is
at least a vessel ready to be used of Him. A vessel that recognizes that he/she
is incomplete and that his/her mate is equally an unfinished instrument in
God’s hand yearning and striving for perfection. A vessel that is content in
his/her contentment in the Lord.
Biblical Illustration
So who is this vessel of
honor and what are some of his/her characterizations? And how can we identify
God’s battle axe in a family setting? We
are going to use biblical narratives as illustrations, to see how some select
biblical characters juggled family life with the will of God in their day and
what we can learn from them. How did these couples grapple with God’s ultimate
aim in creation?
…For the earth will be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.6 NKJV
In other words, God’s aim
as stated thus is for the whole earth to be saturated with the knowledge of His
glory. Everyone should have a comprehensive knowledge of God and consequently
maintain a lifestyle that will honor and glorify Him. That is God’s just
desire.
§
He
wants this done first, in your life:
§
In
the life of your spouse:
§
In
your home:
§
And
then, extended to the whole earth..
§
He has chosen you to be
His change agent: Why not accept that offer if you have not done so yet, so as
to fulfill your divine mandate. God has a comprehensive plan for His creation
and a composite strategy to accomplish His purposes. That strategy is centered
on man and his heart which incidentally was[5]
aptly described in Jer. 179
as deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Ironically, this same
warped heart is the primary organ for God’s work. But then He promised thus:
I will take away your stubborn heart
and give you a new heart and a desire to be faithful. You will have only pure
thoughts, because I will put my Spirit in you and make you
eager to obey my laws and teachings8. CEV
He seeks to transform the
man through sanctification by His word, in the family setting9. Some
aspects of the lives of a few Bible characters in their home settings may help
clarify some of these issues for us. How did they live to fulfill God’s aim of
saturating the whole earth with the knowledge of His glory? What decisions did they
make individually and as couples: And how did their choices impact their
spouses, family members and God’s entire plans for His creation? Then, what possibly
we can learn from them?
1. Adam And Eve.
When God came down in Gen. 38
to heal the family of Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit in
disobedience to His commandment, He treated both of them as separate entities,
not as a unit which they were.
There was an unreported
issue in the Family of the Adams and God came to solve that problem, even
though they had covered the self-inflicted festering ulcer of their sin with
band aid, hiding their heads in the sand, enacting the proverbial ostrich
treatment. When [6]God
came, He addressed them one on one. And notice, He did not start with asking
what the problem was or who did what. To Adam he went first, and then to Eve.
He did that because as moral agents either of them had the God-enabled
individual capability to stand in the gap and save the family from the fatal
consequences of their sin. But often spouses end up looking for the scapegoat
to hang, forgetting that they rise and sink together. God thinks differently. I
believe He started with Adam not only because he was the head of the family but
scriptures gave us an editorial report pointing to His reason.
…And it was not Adam who was deceived
by Satan. The woman was deceived, and sin was the result10. NLT.
Eve was the one deceived. And she became
contaminated; somehow as usual she also infected her husband who was her only
source of help. So it was only rational to start resolving the issues with the
one who should have a better understanding of the situation, even though he too
goofed. Just as one person introduced the fruit, one can also make the
difference. I believe that was why God sought them out: For healing. God is a
healer, but you must desire to be healed, and by Him too. And not only desire,
you must cooperate with Him for any meaningful result. Their failure is now history because the
consequences of their choice live with us till date.
We may have the free will to make our routine
choices but we do not have the luxury of determining the dynamics or the
consequences of our actions. That is the prerogative of God. And every decision
we make counts for eternity.[7]
It could be scary to know
that we will give account of every choice we ever make. So it calls for caution11!
What would Adam or his wife have done and how do you think the God of a second
chance would have responded?
·
How
should one whose heart is completely yielded to God respond on conviction of
sin? Contrast that to this couple’s response to God.
·
How
do we usually respond when something we think has been taken care of suddenly
spills over: And why?
·
What
kind of cock-n-bull stories do we shamelessly tell ourselves whenever we decide
to go contrary to God’s command?
·
How
did Ruth for instance, respond, when she was told that her continued refusal to
approach the king may jeopardize God’s plans for her life and the endangered
people of God and why?
The Bible said in 2 Chro. 169
…For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole
earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him; In this you have done foolishly;
therefore from now on you shall have wars." NKJV.
…Whose hearts are fully committed. NIV.
…who faithfully obey Him. CEV
…given themselves [8]completely to Him. NCV
All that God is looking
for on earth is a yielded heart, not a perfect one. A heart in spite of human
imperfections desirous to do God’s will.
After removing Saul, he made David
their king. He testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse. A
Man After My Own Heart; He Will Do
Everything I Want Him To Do12. NIV. Emphasis
mine.
The implication is that if one refuses to make
his heart completely committed to God, yielding to the leading of the Holy
Spirit and not to what he thinks is right or what society says, such a person
the Bible calls a fool. And unfortunately, foolish actions spread like gangrene13.
Corporate Transformation Is Contingent Upon
Individual Transformation At The Heart Level.
In any family where there
are these insidious but salient hostilities gnawing at the fabrics of unity,
check well, there may be some foolish conspiratorial schemes going on, behind God’s back.
Decisions and actions that vainly seek to
sideline basic biblical injunctions cannot be tolerated by God.
In the home, God seeks at
least one person, better still the two of you, to empower and impact not only
your nuclear family but the entire earth. That’s His ultimate aim. Adam failed
in spite of God’s good will, most probably because he was still very angry with
his wife whom the Bible said was deceived. [9]
Unforgiving
spirit is like an Ebola virus in the heart. It defies any cosmetic treatment
that most of us apply, while seething with anger like Adam14.
"It was the woman you put here with me," the man said. "She gave
me some of the fruit, and I ate it." CEV. Emphasis mine.
So you took it from her
and ate?
See how we like Adam
foolishly attack both God and our spouse. Believing we know more than God we
end up in fool’s paradise, bringing untold hardship to posterity.
2. Isaac And Rebekah.
The story of this couple’s
intrigue and folly is found in the
following verses.Gen.2521-23; 2746-285 Let
us consider what happened in this
nuclear family: What did God say to them, and what where the challenges they faced in trying to actualize God’s dream in
their lives and circumstances.
And the Lord said to her:
"Two nations are in your womb, Two peoples shall be
separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the
older shall serve the younger15."
NKJV
I think Isaac understood
what God said but for certain obvious reasons he glided unto the path of
disobedience. May be he believed that
somehow he could outwit God. So he tried to execute his sinister plans of
passing on the mantle of divine leadership to someone the Bible described as
immoral. That is incredible!
How could one so worldly and materialistic that he would sell
his birthright for material wellbeing be trusted with God’s mandate and the
consequent blessings?
Or, could it be that Isaac’s wife did not tell him what God said
about the boys when they were in her womb?
Assuming it was so, what did she achieve and what do we achieve
by playing the lone-ranger like Eve?
Why do you think this patriarch disobeyed God: And why do
children of God, knowing the omniscience of God and the dynamics of their
relationship with Him still attempt to deceive Him? Could it be lack of true
knowledge of God, or the evil one snatching the seed away? Or the pressure of
afflictions and persecutions? Or better still the fault of the deceitfulness of
riches? On which of these altars do you sacrifice, in dare situations? Or you
don’t?
What happened to the son
of Abraham is a serious warning to all of us.
Anyone who believes he can outmaneuver God
soon discovers that he has been the fool. And it could be fatal.
If one contrasts Rebekah’s
heart attitude to the Word of God as she positioned herself to be used by God
to save her family, with that of her bush meat-loving husband, who irreverently
hatched an avoidable absurdity in his own nuclear family, which resulted in
Rebecca and Jacob resorting to an extreme method to try to correct his crass
decision the [10]result
will be obvious. But let us get the facts right. Rebekah lied and cheated her
blind husband. That is despicable to say the least, but what do you do in such
a desperate situation where a man who is not only physically blind but
spiritually too, is at the brink of plunging the whole family and God’s plan
into a bottomless sinkhole. She was in a desperate situation and so took an
extreme action, and God honored it. Her method for saving a daring situation
was unethical and not commendable but like Hagar she faced a perilous dilemma.
Pray not to fall into these ladies’ shoes because like Uzzah who unwittingly
tried to save the Ark of the Covenant from falling, you may not survive it. Mr.
& Mrs. Ananias who tried a fast one on Apostle Peter were frowned at by
God.16. I don’t know what happened to their
after that encounter. The heart, the Bible says is terribly deceitful only God
comprehends it17.
The question has always
been; why would Isaac of all people or anyone else do such a gutless thing,
instead of submitting to God’s gracious authority? The answer is sin: An offence primarily
against God, no matter who is the immediate recipient. Sin is when anyone for
whatever reason fails to conform to any law of God. Sin is the transgression of
the word of God.
The
essence of sin is when a man prefers anything other than God. Anytime anyone
chooses anything first before God or even attaches anything to God that is the
heart and soul of sin.
In 1
Cor. 1622 The Bible sternly stated that:
If anyone does not love the Lord, that
person is cursed. Our Lord, come! NLT.
It is as bad as that. It means that there is
something other than God that gives him satisfaction and joy. It was John Piper
who said and I quote:
The truth and beauty and worth of God shine
best from the lives of saints who are so satisfied in God that they can suffer
in the cause of love without murmuring….God is most glorified in us when we are
most satisfied in Him.
Nothing gives God most
pleasure than when we are most satisfied in Him rather than His gifts because
satisfaction is a correlate of value. Quoting John Piper again he wrote:
The value of God shines more brightly in the
soul that finds deepest satisfaction in Him
The man God uses is the
man after God’s heart, the man who will not be satisfied with anything outside
God; who will be prepared to do everything God says, even if it means walking
in to the lion’s den or singing his way into a fiery furnace without weeping
and wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth, as a song writer once put it.
Isaac preferred flesh like most of us most of the time rather than God. If
there is such a thing that you prefer rather than God, then the sin of Isaac
and Eve has found a disciple in you. And that could very be a stairway straight
to hell.
Isaac loved flesh more than the word of God; but remember, Esau
was his first born son.
But do these reasons
justify his trying to circumvent God’s authority in his home, even though he
was the head of the family? A true ambassador’s [11]considered
priority is first the will of God, if it means perishing, well and good, after
all Mat.633
is non-negotiable. It was the love for God that gave Ruth the impetus to
abandon her own life in other to take care of her aged mother-in-law. David
refused to kill King Saul and secure his own safety and throne just to give God
pleasure. Rehab, the harlot of Jericho, played in this honored league when she
saved the Joshua’s spies18. That is the common denominator of
all those whom God had ever and will ever use.
Isaac ran into the same
problem as his father Abraham when he was asked to banish Ishmael to make room
for the covenant son. It was a tough decision for Abraham. Self-sacrifice has
always been a tough decision for man. It was to his credit that Isaac made up
eventually and approved his wife’s decision.19
3. Abram and Sarai.
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt
to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. And it came to pass,
when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife,
"Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it
will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, 'This is his
wife'; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my
sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because
of you." So it was, when Abram came
into Egypt, that [12]the Egyptians saw the woman, that she
was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to
Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house. He treated Abram well for
her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female
donkeys, and camels20. NKJV.
We
said that In That Home Where God Rules by the leading of the Holy Spirit, that
there will be at least an agent of God living there. An ambassador of some sort
through whom the Holy Spirit carries out God’s intentions.
Now there was a Severe Famine in the land that God
promised to give to Abraham and his descendants and what did Abram and his dear
wife do. Why?
What should a true ambassador of God do in an endangered
situation where the very promises of God are threatened? What did Sarai do and
why? What would you as a wife do in such trying times? How did their actions or
inaction affect:
§
Sarai;
§
Abram;
and
§
God’s
plan?
Now listen to the rebuke
and disgrace the friend of God got from an uncircumcised pagan;
But the Lord sent terrible plagues upon Pharaoh and his
household because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh summoned Abram and accused
him sharply. "What have you done to me?" he demanded. Why didn't you
tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' and allow me to
take her as my wife? Now then, here is your [13]wife. Take her and get out of here!
21" NLT
What was the friend of God
thinking when he decided to go down to Egypt and subsequently give out the hand
of his wife to Pharaoh in marriage, receiving
sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants (Hagar), female donkeys,
and camels as dowry? Wiseman that he was, Pharaoh never asked Abram to
return the dowry he paid and Abram went away with all his Egyptian loot including
Hagar who was later to become his misfortune.
It was C.S. Lewis who said and I quote:
It is the stealing of the apple that is bad,
not the sweetness.
Of course sweet apple will
always be sweet, but the contention is how you came about it. The taste of the
apple does not change with the method with which you obtained it but Hagar must
always give birth to the troubler of Abraham’s descendants. She must be a painful
festering wound that will dog his life. Anyone who follows such a compromising
example of Abraham and his dear sisterly wife will surely reap the same
whirlwind that has been chasing them ever after. What happened to Abraham and
Sarah is prevalent in our postmodern society today. It is called Compromise: A middle and caustic
position between two irreconcilable extremes; an accommodation that is bound to
boomerang, especially in spiritual issues, often with disastrous consequences.
What do we do as agents of
God when the very livelihood of our
families are threatened and our spouses propose a plan that may bring immediate
relief but that may also compromise our Christian confession and pitch us
against God?
Let us turn to the erudite
Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis again;
A perfect man will never act from a sense of
duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong thing.
Abram took an astute
business decision but like all decisions contrary to the will of God, he ran
into moral roadblocks set up by God to bring him to his senses, but like any of
us, he rode furiously until he crashed unto Pharaoh’s feet of clay. His wife
fared worse. She became dumb, following her husband’s selfish plot against her.
Why did Sarah accept such a self-annihilating contraption? What was she
expecting from Pharaoh? The steadfast
love of God indeed never ceases indeed!
Eve acted on her personal convictions. She was
persuaded but the Bible reported that she was deluded10.
And Adam was not the one deceived; it
was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. NIV.
Yet even Adam also acted
on his personal conviction. Isaac did the same. At the point they acted, they
believed that they were doing the best they could do. They acted out of duty
giving no place to God’s precepts and pleasure. And that was their Waterloo. Eve
not only became a sinner but inadvertently passed it on to her acquiescing
husband. But if Eve was oblivious and she was, what was Adam’s problem? I do
not believe that she would have even spoken with the serpent if she knew and
believed what God said on the issue. You can imagine that Mrs. Adam, whose
husband had privileged [14]one-on-one
fellowship with God, was not convincingly aware of the mind of God on the only
prohibition in their controlled environment. Do not ask me what else Adam was
doing with her.
How
ironical and yet so true today. And therein lays the danger of neglecting the
spiritual wellbeing of your spouse. We must guard jealously the state of our
mate’s spirituality otherwise he/she will take decisions that will precipitate
preventable punishments on us and posterity. Adam knew that his wife had
goofed, yet he collected the fruit from her and ate, probably to mollify her
but soon after he began to blame her for a choice he made consciously. He even
tried to implicate God in his own blunder.
It goes to prove that when we disobey God in other to pacify our
family members or even other people, it reveals a depth of witlessness that
resonates our state of depravity.
Adam would have saved his
wife and all of us from unwarranted adversity if he had insisted on the word of
God being done in his home; instead he gave in like we do most of the time,
endangering the wellbeing of our loved ones. Achan thought he was doing his
family a favor when he disobeyed Joshua’s command by taking home forbidden
goodies to maybe improve the living standard of his wilderness weary family22.
You will always pay for stealing even in the
midst of the euphoria of enjoying the apple’s sweetness. The apple never
changes its taste because it was stolen but the thief must receive a just
recompense.
Brethren, the steady
growth of our individual spiritual life should not be compromised for any
reason.
Anyone who cares more [15]about his social, academic, political or
financial status than his spiritual wellbeing, has with that choice, also chosen
to step outside God’s environment and so
cannot enjoy the privilege of fulfilling the will of God in his life, and that
unavoidably provides a veritable platform for the devastations that trailh
curses.
The Bible says that:
If anyone does not love the Lord [does not have a friendly
affection for Him and is not kindly disposed toward Him], he shall be accursed!
Our Lord will come! (Maranatha!)23 AMP
Listen to Sarah’s solution
to a situation that arose in the family.
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had
an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, "See
now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my
maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her." And Abram heeded the voice
of Sarai. Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave
her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the
land of Canaan.24 NKJV
There was a problem of barrenness in that home
and the question of a heir had so disturbed them lately that Sarai had begun to
think that perhaps very soon Abram may take a second wife to actualize his
dream and that may cut her off since she has indeed become too old to conceive.
Rational thinking! So, before that
happens she introduced plan B, the use of what she got from Egypt to fulfill
God’s promises to them irrespective of God’s timing. It was Bishop Amaechi [16]Nwachukwu
who was quoted as saying that:
One cannot use the devil’s gift to accomplish
God’s purposes.
Abram heeded the voice of
Sarai without any sign of resistance or reference to God, probably confirming
his wife’s fears. He, like Adam swallowed his wife’s toxic time bomb. And what
was the of the success of Sarah’s plan B? The bursting of the hornet’s nest.
So he went into Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that
she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to
Abram, "My wrong
be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw
that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. “The Lord judge between you and me.” So Abram said to Sarai,
"Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please." And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she
fled from her presence25
He, like Adam swallowed
his wife’s time bomb.
They needed an heir and
here comes Ishmael. So what is the problem again? They got their apple but it turned
sour. God cannot honor any plan that contradicts the least of His laws. It
sounds ludicrous but true that Sarai was blinded to the will of God by her
fleshly desires repeating the error of Eve; she went for the same fruit that
she thought would solve her problems. But like Eve she was deceived. The same
ancient serpent put flashy ideas into her head that never works for anyone’s
good.
Adam accepted for reasons best
known to him, took the fruit from his wife and ate. Abram followed suite. How
could the man who abandoned a settled and successful life at Ur and followed
God, exhibiting such an exalted level of faith unknown in his time turn around,
going down to Egypt and putting up his wife for resale? What was he thinking
when they led his wife away in the bridal procession to Pharaoh’s embrace, most
probably after a sumptuous wedding ball? Why would the covenant child of
Abraham prefer meat to obeying God? Why would a man sell his birthright for
anything at all? Where was Mrs. Achan when her husband was digging up the
ground in their tent to hide his loot? These are questions that resonate so
dangerously close to even my own tent; and maybe yours too.
It is becoming almost impossible by the day to
love God in our postmodern world. But still in the home where God rules by the
power of the Holy Spirit, there will always be at least an agent of God living
there. An ambassador of some sort through whom the Holy Spirit carries out
God’s instructions. There is indeed no option than being that ambassador in my
home. There is no sacrifice so great that cannot be paid to be whom God can
rely upon to be there for our spouses and families. With all the illustrations
that God had so graciously and systematically arranged in the Bible for us, we
have no excuse not to take God by His word anytime, any day.
[1] Gbata-gbata; Igbo for confusion
and trouble.
[2]
Gen.218, 3 Gen.1216-31, 4 Gen.38-19,21-23
5 Psa.119105, Heb.12 1-2
6 Hab.214; 7 Psa.419,
Lk. 223
8
Ezek. 36 26-27; 9
Jn. 1717
10
1Tim. 214
11
Matt.1236, Rom. 1412, Heb. 1413
12 Acts. 1322; 13 Psa. 141
14 Gen. 312 : 15 Gen. 2523
16 Acts. 51-11,2Sam. 61-7;
17
Jerm. 179-10
18 Ruth 18-19, 1Sam.269-11,23-24,Josh.
21-23; 19 Gen.2746-285
20 Gen.1210-16
21 Gen. 121719
22 Josh.71
23 1Cor.1622; 24 Gen. 161-3
25 Gen.164-10