The darker days are behind us. The new season is here.
Often, we feel certain kind of nervousness when we cannot visibly see anything happening in our lives.
Remember Exodus 32 and how God held Moses back. The Israelites begged Aaron for a golden calf and ended up worshipping it.
How could this happen? And how could Aaron - a man of God - let it happen? What made him succumb to peer pressure, and go along with their ideas. What weakened him - a man who stood by the side of Moses - to the degree where he gave up fight, and effectively stepped out of leadership position, relinquishing the control to his people?
Clearly, he did not have an iron spine built inside him. The hallmark of a leader is leadership. A leader leads. A leader gets the road directions from above, and goes with them, with his people following him.
If the leader does not lead, there may be various reasons for it. Some legitimate, the others not.
So, what are the legitimate reasons.
In Exodus 17:2 we can see how Aaron and Hur helped hold the hands of Moses up, when Moses grew tired.
Exodus 17:12 ► |
When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up— one on one side, one on the other— so that his hands remained steady till sunset. |
First, they used a stone, then Aaron and Hur stepped up and helped minister strength to their leader Moses.
Leaders are also humans like us. They need to be ministered too! They may be ministers, but they have their needs, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. And it is up to us to help uphold them, so that they would not collapse from exhaustion, or due to heavy warfare against them.
And then, there are reasons which may not be so legitimate.
Aaron was a leader too. He should have known better. And yet, for some reason, he allowed the peer pressure to overcome him, and then there was no more a leader. Aaron failed to lead in the absence of Moses.
Even if he was maybe afraid of uncertainty, and he failed the test of time as a result of it, he should have known better. But he allowed the people to erect an idol, and bowed down to it with his people, and with his blessing. That was peculiar.
But Aaron lacked in iron spine. Of course, he could repent (which is not a slamming word, but just indicative of a point of enlightenment or understanding, and then a return to the previously known values). But at this moment, his leadership was lacking. He allowed his people to lead him, instead.
An idol may be anything. It does not have to be of gold or stone or any other physical substance. It can be cowering down and bowing to human opinion. Saul lost his kingship to it. Aaron succumbed to human peer pressure.
We may want to be a leader, but the thing is that leadership comes with challenges. People mock you in Internet in these days. Take e.g. Brian Simmons, with whom I have had a few conversations in the past, for he happened to lead a certain Panama tribal ministry where I knew a certain younger minister whose family had translated the Bible into a tribal language.
He has been experiencing a series of attacks in these days. Why? For heeding to the call of God to translate the Bible, for incidentally, he is educated enough to be fluent in biblical Hebrew, and Aramean language, and Greek.
We had a conversation about the Song of Songs.
Some years, in fact, a couple of decades ago, I was asked to teach the Song of Songs to the church. I cannot take any credit for the original material. Someone had written a book, or a teaching material about the Song of Songs. Now, I took it to God and prayed hours and hours in spirit or in tongues of the spirit, for these verses and words, and Holy Spirit opened the Word. It was so rich, that at times I could not proceed more than a couple of verses at a time. It blessed both myself and the hearer, and we experienced a mini-revival where Holy Spirit had told people from more traditional backgrounds to come. They came and what they heard, must have blessed them, for they invited their friends and aquaintances. Until it came to an end due to higher level decision. I was told that the teaching session was no longer going to be conducted at the church premises, for an hour before the main Sunday service, but was going to take place in a remote suburb, in a flat of one church member, in a rather inconvenient time. It was challenging to the people, and yes, we know that hunger motivates and makes people go to places. But some places are easier to get to, and the others are not.
But back to Brian Simmons and his Passion bible translation.
He followed what Holy Spirit had asked him to do. He was a leader who went first with this call.
Initially, there were the fellow believers who believed in the divine infallacy of the KJV.
A fun fact. The Authorised KJV Bible was translated here, a few miles from my current residence. In Hampton Court. (Look it up, if interested).
Then he persisted and continued with his bible translation work, and the fruits were there. People took it up and loved it and used it. It ministered to the reader and blessed the church.
Until now, when another cohort emerged with a petition to remove the Passion translation from the Bible Gateway. I let this fall on deaf ears, for it did not really concern me personally, although I noticed it as a fact. Then, next, a respected bible teacher and a former pastor writes in her social media that the Passion translation is New Age and so is the minister behind it.
How did we come to this point?
Now, a leader has a choice here.
He can whether choose to pursue and continue the path ahead of him. Or, call it quits.
A leader with iron spine will continue, the way Moses did. (Remember, it was not so very easy for him, when everything went well, the people cheered, when they faced some troublesome times, they were ready to stone him to death!)
Talking about the practice of stoning to death - we can kill with our words and attitudes. Matthew 5:22 tells us not to call anyone a "raca" or a fool. It equates anger coupled with such words as something worth of divine judgment and hellfire. It speaks of the gravity of such utterances and attitudes while we know that Jesus bore the judgment and conquered the hell for us. (And yes, by so doing, He also provided the provision for us, to the believers, via enlightening our eyes of understanding and helping us understand where we have missed it, and then turning and doing it better in future!)
But the fact is that God is not happy when His people who are called by His name go around, spouting nonsense, and downright brandishing their spiritual swords, fighting their fellow believers. This does not come from the Spirit of God, but of another which operates from the footing provided to him, based on our carnal, fleshly nature.
Ephesians 4:27-29 New International Version
27 and do not give the devil a foothold. 28 Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
There are certain traffic or road directions given to us as believers, for a godly walk. And, we can walk whether according to flesh, or according to spirit. Galatians 5:16-21.
Our spirit is newly created in the image of God, with all the commandments of the Bible decoded into our spiritual DNA.
When we walk according to spirit, we do not yield to our fleshly, carnal nature. But when we choose to go with our natural substance, the soul, or our body, we end up being in league with the enemy of our soul. Then we co-operate with the demons and the demonic, instead of the Spirit of God.
And yes, we do not die. God is not vengeful. He has said that the vengeance is His in Romans 12:9, but when we continue reading, He explains His thought. This is the vengeance of God. It is rather different from the idea of a vengeance in the mind of a natural carnal man.
Romans 12:19 New International Version
19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We can see that the burning coals are not indicative of a negative, but a positive outcome. A natural mind sees the judgment as a positive.
But still, the judgment was judged over Jesus, on the Cross.
He did not come to judge, or condemn, but to help and save the world, us as believers when we err in our Christian walk, included. John 3:17. 1 John 1:5-10.
Mark 4:28 ► |
King James Bible For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. |
Isaiah 43:19 ► |
Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. |
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