26

Psalm 73: 26 (NKJV)

My flesh and my heart fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I was getting distressed that I was growing less and less confident about sharing my faith. It seems that I have spent the last few years unlearning more than learning and I am growing more and more cautious of revealing my inadequacies as God’s counsel. I am sometimes disheartened that almost all Christians want to teach, sometimes more than they want to learn. How many times do we see ministers of God attacking and contradicting each other every week? I every so often find it confusing how unaccommodating the Christian community can be. I recently watched Pastor T Mwangi recounting his old days as a clubber and how he now has deep remorse for all people who frequent such lodges. When asked if there was anything he missed about his past life, he surprisingly said that there was. He believed that his friends at that time were more genuine.

Such a statement may be unexpected, particularly coming from one of the biggest apostolic voices in Kenya, but it is something that even I relate to. I believe my closest friends are those I knew before I decided to follow Christ. I am thankful that some of them are now born again and are now a source of fellowship. Especially because I have not been very lucky with many church friendships. There is often a generalized expectation of conformity at the expense of building accommodating relationships amid shortcomings. You may be surprised how common backbiting, slander, and gossip are in the church for a community. I once attended a meeting with fellow believers where 30 minutes were spent talking about the shortcomings of others. I was once tempted to stop going to church or listening to sermons because I found the contradictions too glaring. But soon I realized that the greatest teacher is not around us but within us.

But what is spiritual maturity really? It is a quality exemplified by Jesus that is a central goal for all Christians, but do we understand what it truly is? I recently read a book by a Catholic priest that explains the threefold markers of spiritual growth; a deepening communion with God through prayer, a growing hospitality towards others, and becoming content and confident in solitude. But I'll pose my question again because of a concern I will delve into shortly.

My goal as a medical doctor is to assist my patients in attaining optimal health. Early in my med school, we were given a universal definition of health as a state of physical, psychological, and social well-being. But when I embarked on my master’s degree, I was triggered to think critically about the definition. Is there any point in time when someone is in a perfect state physically, psychologically, or socially? In the real world, there is always a struggle concerning some and all these dimensions. From that perspective perfect health is unattainable. But then shall we consider all people sick?

Guidelines for hypertension, for instance, outline that anyone with a blood pressure of over 140/90 is sick with hypertension and should be treated. But a person with a blood pressure of 130/85 is still at higher risk of dying than a person with a blood pressure of 125/82, and so on. So why was it decided that a person with a blood pressure of 140/90 is sick while one with 132/82 is not? Science says it has to do with the normal distribution of complications among hypertension patients and the percentile where a high rate of mortality associated with the disease was established. But even in some situations, this becomes contradictory. Studies done in Norway found a prevalence of hypertension of up to 85 percent among certain demographics, this being among the highest in the world. Nevertheless, the country has a life expectancy of 83.21 years, still the highest in the world. The more you think critically about what health is, the more questions that arise from it; and so is with spiritual maturity.

I once attended a party with a few Christian friends and at some point, we all began sharing our testimonies about how we came to know Christ. A friend of mine shared about how after getting born again, she experienced church hurt and slowly slipped back into her former life. One Sunday morning after smoking marijuana and drinking all night with some male friends, she decided to attend church. Coincidentally that Sunday the church had invited a prophet who gave several congregants accurate prophetic words and the counsel of God about their lives. Then, this young lady saw the prophet walking towards her and she became very troubled because she thought the prophet was going to out her. She believed she would be told something like “God says you are going to hell!” Instead, she was told, “God says He loves you so much and there is nothing you can do that will ever change this.” It was the acceptance she felt that day despite her shortcomings that made her rededicate her life to Christ.

As one begins journeying with Christ, few are told about how complex the walk truly is. In my experience, the spiritual journey is not as linear and straightforward as many people put it. For instance, early in my Christian walk, I listened to many sermons about the potency of prayer and fasting in accessing deeper dimensions of God. Consequently, I once engaged in this exercise for well over 100 days. For the first 50 days or so, I encountered God in such a profound way. But soon after that, almost the opposite happened. I began developing many spiritual attacks and my mental health began to break down. It almost felt that the fast was making the devil stronger, something that defied all the understanding I had about the exercise.

Earlier this year, I also found it hard to encounter or hear God despite how hard I prayed. During that time, I was tempted to think that God was no longer close to me, and I was retrogressing spiritually as compared to how dynamic my spiritual life was a few years back. Many Christians I talk to often find themselves in seasons where they struggle with things they were earlier delivered from. In the aforementioned fast, for instance, one of my prayer points was for God to deliver me from lusts that were slowly creeping into my life. Indeed, I was delivered as I was free for many of the following months. But as spiritual attacks began to intensify later that year, I became very discouraged and frustrated and I developed resentment towards God. This made me momentarily fall back into many things God had delivered me from. It was a very discouraging moment because it felt like I had undone all the progress I had made.

Proverbs 24:17 (NKJV)

For a righteous man may fall seven times And rise again, But the wicked shall fall by calamity.

Sometime back, I also found myself in a professional and spiritual struggle because of bad experiences at work. For over four months, I didn’t attend church because of the hurt, and I also developed a compulsion to quit my career as soon as I finished the current rotation. But then, I had a session with a servant of God with a strong prophetic gift and he began to give me God’s counsel which was a much-needed reassurance that my afflictions did not surprise God, nor did my reactions change God’s mind about His intention about me. It almost seemed like He had factored them into my journey, and they were a vital step towards my spiritual growth. Even though it seemed like I was regressing, I was growing.

The more I progress in my Christian journey, the harder it is for me to relate to preachers who do not express vulnerability. Some preachers portray a hedge of perfection around their lives making it impossible for you to connect with their message. Despite listening to Apostle Michael Orokpo for years prior, I developed a deep liking for him after seeing a clip of him crying on the pulpit for over 10 minutes when preaching about the love of God. Toward the end of the sermon, he reflects on God’s mercy despite his many mistakes by saying; “How can a person like me be an apostle? Even I disqualified myself many times. But mercy said no ” In another sermon, he narrates how he backslid and started clubbing because of the hurt he felt that God had allowed his mother to die. I once listened to his sermon while preaching in Ghana when he said “If you knew half of the things that I have done you will not allow me to preach to you. Your pastor will take this microphone from my hand and escort me out.” This is the truest representation of a Christian’s walk to maturity. It is often marred with slips and lapses. But the wilderness is not just a “breaking ground”, it is also the “making ground.”

One of my lecturers once revealed why he prefers formative assessments over summative assessments. “If a cook does not know how to make tea and you let him cook, bad tea will inevitably be delivered to the table and there is no intervention that can help at that moment. But if you work together with him, allowing him to make mistakes and correcting them immediately, the tea presented at the table will be good despite his inexperience.” Spiritual truths are also learned side with the Holy Spirit. The wilderness is a safe place to fail because failure reveals the tendencies of our hearts and allows us to change. Whilst God is indeed testing us in the journey, it is not a test to condemn, or else no man will ever be found worthy. Rather, it is a test to reveal our hearts to us to trigger transformation. God is not a God of second chances. He is a God of many chances. And if we are honest with ourselves, we need all those chances. Spiritual maturity is not a state, it is a continuous struggle.

And so, when I thought about it, I realized that my distress is not just about sharing my faith; it is an internal conflict about the image of perfection that will I portray if I speak Christ. My journey with Him is not one of perfection. It is a journey of learning, unlearning, and relearning. Will I never know enough to be competent to witness? Will I ever know God enough? Will I ever completely conquer my sinful nature? Not in this dispensation. My testimony is a journey of spiritual struggle. If I am ever going to be confident enough to talk about God, then let it be in vulnerability.