Years ago when I got saved there used to be a great woman of God who led praise and worship as the gospel was being preached. “SANYU SARAH” was her name. Some of her popular songs were: Sirika nze nkubulire lwaki nze nalokoka, nagenda nga naye, Nayimbanga wewaawo and much more.
Her songs helped me forsake all and follow Christ. But these days everything in church is so materialistic. Its all about what’s in it for me. We tell people they shall forsake their old lord as time goes by yet Jesus never taught that to anyone.
Whoever follows must have an immediate forsake just like the disciples. This helps establish the new authority in one’s life. Today people repeat a prayer and we avoid telling thrm the forsake part because it can offend. Pause a moment and say again in vernacular eg luganda, “nze nalokoka”. Say it over and over and behold the power that comes on you to put your old life behind.
Am so tired of religion. Those who preached to us then told us no religion gives life and we believed in Jesus. But now we have a religion we call born again. We’re ignorant of what born again means, but we know the rituals that we think are evidence of being born again.
We have a church hall with loud music. We have stage lighting that makes Aerosmith rethink their stages, we are obsessed with numbers that we literally count every soul that attends our theaters but have no concern of their spiritual well being.
We spend millions in building and maintaining a state of the art building but won’t spend to help those we claim to minister to. In fact we care for those outside the household of God than those inside… why? It makes us appear relevant I hear.
We actually get all cameras ready and take positions before we give food to a hungry child and then that clip alone can help us raise 1million dollars and we use 95% of it to fund our greed. Every service has become a theater show that is well orchestrated to keep the HolyGhost out lest he does His “weird stuff” and offend the big pockets who actually are committed to never change.
We are obsessed with reports every week of whether every move in our service was perfect, but we care less asking whether souls are being conformed to the image of Christ. We hate rebuke and have invented ways of shutting any voice down that speaks against unfaithfulness among us.
By our hypocritical behavior we shut up the kingdom of heaven against men and refuse to change but arrogantly spend millions to preach to them to follow us! Are we sane?
We devour widows and do everything to be seen by men and behold our reward has come.
We fast that God may do a work in the nations but refuse the easy path of simply having faith in God to do a work in our own lives. We strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. We strive to become politically correct thinking the world shall accept us. Are you insane?
Didn’t the owner of the church say you are in this world but not of this world? We say if we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have killed the prophets but consider the way we resist the will of Christ in our congregations!
We have failed to deal with the inside but maintain a great outside. This is hypocrisy the heart of religion. We claim to love Christ and hate the devil but we deny that as we literally keep obeying the devil we claim to hate!!!!
We hope from one place to another and hardly have anyone we can call pastor. Anyone who ministers truth we run from and anyone who tickles us we settle and maintain our sin. Those are some rituals of the born again religion.
You can add more. But its high time we rethought what being born again means. I initiate a campaign to rethink what we claim to be. If you believe it lets arise. #Nalokoka.
It means I got saved from my sins. I have had enough of this religion called born again. I want to see the real thing. The new life and the new Lord of our lives. #Nalokoka
Written by Pr Cyrus Rod. He is the Founder and Senior Pastor of Cyrus Rod ministries Kampala, Uganda.
