What You Hear In Private...

The function of many ministries and ministers today unfortunately has become a need and desire to speak about a God they have not had any prior interactions or dealings with. What we preach and declare publicly must only lay credence to what we know and fraternize with privately. Many ministers today have developed a penchant towards becoming public figures who are experts at soothingly and charmingly communicating principles and precepts which on the hind sight appear to be in tangent with biblical views.

Their intention often is not a Christ centered one since they basically have no message honed directly from Him to propagate. It’s important for us to know that preaching in itself is a skill and an art anyone can become conversant with if they apply themselves properly to. Being acquainted with the prime ideology of the bible and the Christian faith merely is enough for any Tom, Dick and Harry to claim they speak on behalf of God.

Jesus’s own words in Matthew 10:27 KJV which reads;"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops" sets the actual tone for what it takes to be assigned the arduous task of speaking on behalf of God as an intermediary. First and foremost, one must endeavor to have an existing proactive relationship with the God who sends. This relationship becomes the groundwork upon which an ongoing communication between the one who sends and the one being sent is initiated. Just like in our traditional African setting, the linguist is only mandated to reecho and transmit the very words of the king in the manner in which is originally communicated to his hearing. In secret, the preacher or minister becomes abreast with the intentions of God and is equally mandated to transmit those intentions in the manner in which it was communicated without tweaking it for their own purposes.

Preachers are intermediaries who assume the use of the divine instrument of hearing to pluck into the divine communications of God at every given point in order to accurately relay the proceeds of those interactions to the public and God's people. And so in essence, as ministers and preachers, our core responsibility would then be to transmit the full scope of Gods will verbally or non verbally to the people that hear us. How then does one become conversant with the will of God if they can not hear God or have not heard from Him entirely? Isaiah 50:4(b) MSG puts it this way; "He wakes me up in the morning, Wakes me up, opens my ears to listen as one ready to take orders." The one who chooses to stand as a representative of God to His people must be willing to have the ears that hear and faculties always willing to receive instructions and orders from God. The beginning portion of Isaiah 50:4 speaks of the tongue of the learned( disciple) and having the ability to speak a word in season to the heart that is weary.

This sums up the point that in order for one to speak in a manner that accomplishes God's will and purpose over a people or community one must be empowered to know by the charge and insight of hearing from God. Anything other than that would only be a futile attempt for one to disseminate their own agenda. The story of Apostle Paul during one of his last missionary journeys being taken captive to Rome in a ship paints a vivid picture of what it means for the minister or preacher to be a man or woman who privately hears from God. After Paul’s caution to the centurion of the impending danger that was ahead of their voyage was ignored in favor of the skill and mastery of the ship owner, it became obviously clear that the voyage was bound for eminent calamity and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. But then Paul stood up with boldness and confidence though in chains and declared to them in Acts 27:23-24 KJV "For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Cæsar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee."

The fountain of Paul’s certitude and confidence was banked on his private interaction with the angel of God which gave him an exclusive doorway into God's will for the members of the ship's crew. The preaching of the gospel is not merely an adventure of literary gymnastics or show off, it’s a daily commitment to positioning oneself to constantly hearing and knowing what God wants for His people at any given time. What transpires in private is the bedrock of what becomes public.