A weekly Devotional by Gbile Akanni

A CHALLENGE TO ARISE

“And when these lepers came to the utter-most part of the camp, they went into one tent and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household. So they came and called unto the porter of the city, and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians, and behold, there was no man there, neither voice of men, but horses tied, and asses tied and the tents as they were. And they called the porters; and they told it to the king's house within…” 2Kings 7:8-11 KJV

The things that God wrought with His divine power and intervention, these lepers were hiding them. They did not know who terrified those Syrians and pushed them out. They just went and met it and they sat down to eat and drink. For your joy to last and for you to have an ever-increasing joy as a Christian, you must go beyond the eating, the drinking, the collecting of silver and gold and hiding them. You must get to the realm of sharing and the realm of service. If you do not do that, those issues that seem to be conquered will become fresh battles. When a man does not see the vision of investing his life, to raise others that are still sitting in the region of ignorance and darkness, he will enter into problems. It is not only sorrow that kills.

Even happiness can kill when there is nobody to share it with. Imagine that something good happened to you, and your wife and your children are not around; your close friends are not around to share the joy with you! You want to laugh, but if you laugh and there is nobody to laugh with, you will look like a psychiatric patient. People will grab you and take you to the hospital because you are laughing to yourself. Once you do not share your joy or sorrow it has the same result.

The lepers came to this realization and they said to one another, “We do not well.”

They got a correct assessment of their lives. If good things have been happening to you in the past few days and all you could do is to come again to eat and drink and to gather silver and to gather gold and raiment and to go and hide it, you do not do well. When God visits a man and brings him into deliverance, He does it so that it can become a testimony, a witness, so that others can benefit and come to know the Lord who helped you.

What the Holy Spirit is doing with you is good, but there is this other side that if we do not take note of, the things we think are so wonderful to us will become sour again. They said, “if we tarry till the morning light some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come that we may go and tell the king’s household.” God wanted to help those lepers so that His glory will permanently manifest in their lives.

God wanted to change their destiny that they might have a name and a record in God’s book of chronicles. Thank God they responded. I pray that you will respond also. Indeed the time we are in now is a time of good tiding. And I want to say to you, respond to the challenge of telling the good news of God. If we hold our peace, some mischief will come upon us. Part of the weapon of our warfare is the shoe of readiness to announce the Good News. But if we do not put it on, some mischief will come upon us.

Some years ago, I was a teacher in a secondary school. The school had very matured boys and girls. I also discovered Male teachers posted to that school use to jubilate. Their reason was because of the girls in the school. It was common practice among the teachers and the boys to keep fighting over the girls. Students could gang up and beat up their teacher. And when I got into that kind of school I wondered what to do. The only thing that God said was “Preach the Good News. So I confronted these students with the word of God one after the other and some repented. Thank God some of them are pastors today. Some of them are in different professions and they are standing for Jesus. There were times when there were uproars in the college and nobody could discipline the students. The teachers had lost their integrity. The principal would then call me to help and the students would submit. The Good News that you share will protect those things that God has decided to bless your life with.

In another school, I discovered that since evangelism was not allowed, the boys grew up so wild that they would enter into teachers’ homes and rape their teachers’ wives. Do you know that the boys that we do not have time to preach the gospel to in the schools, are the boys that carry guns as armed robbers and harass us in our houses? We do not well. If we tarry, some mischief will come upon us. Even the Church will not be safe if we tarry. If we tarry with the issue of spreading the Good News of what God had done for mankind on the cross of Calvary and shy away from confronting men with it, trouble is coming. Politics can never change men; only the message of the cross changes people and makes them reasonable. As I watch the situation in our country, churches and their pastors are becoming more sophisticated and materialistic instead of reaching out to the lost with the gospel.

The lives of pastors and ministers are also not safe at all! As we keep collecting and changing raiment, we are not safe. Some preachers invest a lot of money exorbitantly on their garments rather than on souls. Such preachers think that God’s prosperity is for their personal consumption. No! It is God’s investment for the gospel that we have discovered by the grace of God, even our cities, our towns, will no longer be safe for us. As I watch the new trend of Christianity in our land, I am forced to conclude, “We do not well, we do not well.” Some mischief will come upon us if we tarry.

Let me tell you, it is nothing glorious that a man of God now has a retinue of body guards and security men. It is a mischief. You know what we are saying by that, is that our God is not able to protect us! I see us shouting, “touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm.’’ We claim that scripture with ignorance, not knowing that those men that God gave those command about were not pot-bellied. If we tarry at this, some mischief will come upon us; the society itself will reject us. There is urgency about this matter.