Do you have times when you are stuck with issues that have happened while attending out service, listening to our sermons or life in general? Feel free to share and we will endeavor to get you a response in good time

  • 1. The Fellowship of the Holy SpiritOpen or Close Whenever a Christian meeting comes to an end, we say the Grace: ''May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and forever more. Amen'' What does the fellowship of the Holy Spirit mean? Why do we say the grace? Who do we say it to? Must we say the grace? Thank you.

    These words are taken from 2 Corinthians 13:14. Paul wanted the church at Corinth to enjoy the benefit of the grace that Jesus Christ offered, the love of God the father and communion with the Holy Spirit. This verse also reminds us that God exists in trinity and has played an important role in the development of Christian Theology. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit refers to communion with God which is made possible by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit enables us to experience and enjoy God whilst we are on earth as he gives us insights into the Kingdom of God. In John 14 Jesus comforted his disciples by saying that he would send them the Helper, who would abide (commune) with them and teach them all things and remind them what Jesus had taught them. The Holy Spirit continues to play this role to date. The church picked up the habit of saying the words of the grace very likely because it was a great prayer as well as a loving blessing to pray over each other. When Paul said it, he used the language of benediction, a pronouncement of a blessing on the church. See similar wording in Numbers 6:24-26. But there can be no doubt that he expected God to be the one to make his benediction come true and so in that way it was also an indirect prayer at the same time. The church today says the grace both as a direct prayer or as a benediction towards others and there is no reason to discredit any of them provided there is the understanding that ultimately, it is God who will make the words of the Grace come true in anyone’s life. Although the words of the grace are grand and powerful when understood, there is, of course, no rule that you must say them.

  • 2. Can the Holy Spirit leave a believer?Open or Close

    Good morning, I have 2 questions that I have been striving to understand:- 1. Does the Holy Spirit ever leave a believer once he/she sins or continues to sin? 2. Is there difference between the spirit of God(that was hovering over waters in Genesis and the Spirit that led Jesus to be tempted by the devil) and Holy Spirit? I will appreciate your take on this... Thank you.

    Thank you for those incisive questions. We will tackle the second question first. Although there are many spirits (see the admonition to test the spirits in 1 John 4:1), there is only one Holy Spirit – the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is fully God in the way that God the father and Jesus Christ are fully God. He is therefore the Spirit of Holiness and the only spirit referred to in the Bible as the Spirit of God. Genesis 1:2 refers to the Spirit of God who is the Holy Spirit who was there from the beginning and who created the universe. When Matthew 4:1 speaks of Jesus being led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil, it is making reference to the Holy Spirit. However, please note that it was not the Holy Spirit who was tempting Jesus but the devil. God may lead you into trying circumstances but he does not tempt any man (James 1:13). One should also bear in mind that the Spirit of God was with Jesus in the wilderness sustaining him during his fasting and preparing him for the temptation. In fact, Dallas Willard, a respected Bible teacher says that it is because the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and spent time in solitude with God and fasting that he was able to overcome when he was tempted. With respect to your first question I suppose the thing to bear in mind is that the Spirit of God is God himself. And he acts as God would. God is not pleased by our sin but he does not shrink away from us when we sin. Instead, he offers forgiveness and reconciliation. Sin affects our relationship with the Holy Spirit in the same way we understand it to affect our relationship with the father because the Trinity works through the Holy Spirit. It muddles the relationship we have with God. However, God does not reject us for our sin. He continues to pursue us with his grace and once we repent, the relationship is restored through his forgiveness. We must not think of the Holy Spirit as something that is poured in and out of us like a liquid, or like something that possesses us in the way demons do. The Holy Spirit is a person. He is God and he acts like God. And since the Bible says that no one can say Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3), provided one still recognises the lordship of Christ, the relationship with the Holy Spirit is alive. However, the same verse says that no one speaking by the Holy Spirit can say “Jesus is accursed”. Continuing in sin persistently, knowingly and without caring about the effect it has on your relationship with God hardens your heart and may cause you begin opposing the message of the Holy Spirit. But in this case it would be you who has walked away and not the Holy Spirit who has rejected you.

  • 3. Holy TrinityOpen or Close Hi SaturdayPM, I have a question that has disturbed me for quite sometime. Could I please get a clear understanding of the concept behind the Holy Trinity. What does it really mean? Are there any recommended guides or books that I can read so that i can better grasp this topic? Regards, Roy

    Dear Roy, Quite a packed question that is! But it is a great question. Being one of the fundamental beliefs of our faith, it is important that we try to understand it. Many people have feared the topic of the Trinity because they have heard that we cannot understand it fully (Which is true. It is after all a description of a God much higher than us). But the fact that we cannot understand something fully should not stop us from knowing what we can. We cannot know God’s love and grace fully, or understand the way he works fully but we still try to understand as much as we can. The doctrine of the Trinity is the concept that God is one being in 3 co-equal and co-eternal persons. These persons are God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit. These 3 persons are in a relationship of love. The Bible teaches that God is love. And for there to be love, there has to be the person loving, the person being loved and love flowing among them. If God is one in the way the Muslim concept of Tawhid tells us, then who was he loving before he created the universe? How could he have been love eternally? If we embrace Tawhid we end up with a God who needs his creation in order to be love. But the Christian God is Trinity and was not dependent on his creation in order to love because there was already love within the Trinity. In John 17:24 Jesus declares that God loved him before the foundation of the world. This is only possible if God is Trinity so that man was created, not because God needed us, but out of the overflow of love in the Trinity hence the words “Let us make man in our image”. Here are some resources: http://dallaswillardcenter.com/ken-boa-the-trinity/ http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity We hope this is helpful. Thanks for writing!

  • 4. GodOpen or Close

    Is it the same God(Yaweh) we worship, our ancestors sacrificed to say when in need of rain and rain came? I need reference from the bible.

     

    Let’s take a look at the ancestors’ worship; what primarily was it and what informed our ancestors of how and who to worship.
    On a very general level, Africans believed in a spirit world with a divine supreme being. The Supreme Being was deemed mighty and removed from creation, though acclaimed to be the creator. The spirit world which was much closer to the people was acclaimed responsibility of every other of the daily issues of life that is sickness, weather patterns, blessings, curses, birth and fertility, etc. This is really a very general and inadequate summary of the African ancestry worship.
     And how about Yahweh, He is the divine Supreme Being who is personal, and who chose to reveal himself to humanity – in a very personal way- Through creation, through conscience, personal revelations ( to the patriarchs of Israel and the prophets), and in our day, by becoming man (Jesus Christ).
     
    In Hebrews 1:1 though the book is primarily written to Jews the writer notes that God in the past spoke through prophets and now He ultimately speaks to us through Christ. ……… Heb1;1In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word……………… In other words Jesus is the true manifestation of God. Jesus said to His disciples that whoever has seen Him had seen God.
     
    John14; 9Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father '? I don't know how to belabor the point that Christ is the ultimate revelation of God to man. And how wonderful that God would live on earth and inconvenience himself on our accord so we would know him.
     
    But is Yahweh the same as our ancestral gods? Of importance to note is that God reveals Himself to mankind in various ways, in the book of Romans and Psalms creation testifies of Him. Again in Romans the scriptures points to the moral value embedded in the human life. This is to show that as He planned to reveal Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, God was still known to man.
     
     As our ancestors admired the African sky and the environment surrounding them, and also the value they placed on the human life as they  related to one another, and right there was a testimony of God's nature revealed to them. Our forefathers worshiped under great trees and great mountains, a confirmation that they believed in the Supreme Being. They had laws governing the human interaction which is basically the value God places on man, passed on to man. God reveals Himself to man even through cultures, everything is a tool in His hands for his children to know Him.
     
    A consistent thing about the character of God is that He has not left men without a witness of Himself. He says in Deut 30:12 that his word is not unreachable and in Amos 3:7......Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. The question is whether we are  open to the revelation of His son Jesus who is the ultimate representation of God, even God Himself or if we are open to other witnesses of God. He remains sovereign on His throne and always seeking men.
     
    We can trust Him to somehow meet our ancestors and reveal Himself and therefore, no one has an excuse. Consider this; Job been the oldest book as per the scholars, is an  example we will cite as per your request to quote the Bible. Think about this man of whom we are told is a contemporary of Abram. They lived in a pagan society worshiping idols. And it is of this man that God testifies that he is an upright man v8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
     
    And Job knows how to offer sacrifice to God, He speaks of keeping integrity of heart 1“I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. And this is at a time when the law was yet to be rolled out, and Job sounds as if he had been sitting and listening to Jesus, at the Sermon on the Mount. How did this happen? This is how we believe that God does not leave Himself without a witness in any generation. And so with Abram, how did he know when the Living God spoke to Him and obeyed Him to a profound future
     
    Therefore by Nature we know He exist20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20
     
     And through the moral code written in our hearts.
     
    14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)Romans 2:14-15
     
    And by His revelation through prophets,  and ultimately his revelation through Jesus Christ!
     
    Having said that, we know that despite God’s efforts to reveal himself to humanity, man has on many occasions rejected him and in some instances gone ahead and created  “gods” for themselves. A great example would be the Israelites who even after seeing God’s wonders in Egypt soon after made a golden calf and worshiped it. Israel would later on be sent to captivity because they forsook the True God and opted to worship self-made god’s despite the true God revealing himself to them in most vivid ways.
     
    What this tells us that it would be difficult to conclusively say that in general the God our ancestors worshiped was the true God of the Bible. What assurance we have is that the God of the Bible did reveal himself to them, as to whether they accepted him and worshiped him or rejected him was their choice to make. It’s possible some of our ancestors worshiped the true God of the bible, while some worshiped other gods, even as it is the case today.

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