I hate pastor Thuo. He said something that hurt me, something so deep that lodged a painful lump in my throat. A thing we used to call in high school ‘kiwaru’
This is what he said.
“If you throw a stone in town, you will either hit a deejay or a photographer, these people are so many.’
Pastor Thuo, I need a public apology, I need an apology in the billboards, the dailies, the TV and magazines such that when I throw a stone I just hit an apology from you.
I happened to be both a deejay and a photographer but I ended up being a writer. I don’t know how these complement, maybe I will turn up to be an usher or a monocotyledon cremator. Or maybe even a hairdresser, who knows?
Are we talking about sex again? And am I going to write about it? I only write about this because my mother is not reading it. I heard my grandma is on WhatsApp, soon she will encroach into humanity and stumble on one of my blogs and what will follow will be hours of advice on how to improve the presentability, grammar and how to relate to my audience. (I guess you were thinking otherwise) #MyGrandmaCoolerThanYours thanks to Google.
“God wants you to find him.” Pastor Thuo affirmed. He says that once we seek God there are two things that we are assured we will have, goodness and mercy. He says this quoting from Matthew 6:33
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you
He talks of how we have delved into sin and how sin is crouching at our doors as he explains what the Lord was telling Cain in Genesis 4:7
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
He goes on to talk of the challenges of modern relationships the first being;
1. The casual nature of our faith
He talks of how we take our faith lightly. He says that if our foundation is wrong then our building will collapse. He also says that most people are going to church to look for spouses and not God. This complements what pastor Earnest said in season 1 of this series that we should rush to please the Father and when someone catches up with us we should introduce ourselves.
He talks of how he thought he would marry his wife after dating for 6 months but ended up dating her for 6 years and 2 months. He advised the congregation that we should find ourselves defined along disciplines of faith e.g. through prayer, fasting and fellowship.
2. We have lost the sense of shame and guilt
He asks, “How is your physical relationship? Is it above the neck, the waist or the knees?” He talks of how we involve in sexual activities and we get no sense of guilt or shame, we do not feel that we have sinned against the Lord.
He talks of their times when one would just touch a girl and they would not step the podium for a duration. He prays that God helps us recover our senses of shame and guilt. He quotes from Proverbs 4:23-27 that says;
23 Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
24 Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
25 Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
26 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
27 Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.
3. The ease at which we touch
He talks to the ladies in the house and tells them that there are things that are preserves of their husbands. He uses the point of the loss of shame and guilt to explain this. The loss of shame has made us touch obscenely in public. It has made us do things that were a taboo before in public.
4. Exposure to what is explicit
The Bold and The Beautiful. The very program that would make my mother frown when its theme song sang is what was used as an example. He says that we have been exposed to explicit content in a very easy way. He narrates a story of how when in high school, a group of form fours has one tape that contained explicit material where they could watch after midnight when all other students had retired to sleep.
He talks of modern sitcoms and movies that are both explicit and blasphemous but we as Christians pretend to skip that and watch the rest.
5. We lack a Godly model
Giving an example of my all time favorite sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, one that I watched from season one to seven, Thuo speaks of how we usually laugh at things that are usually condemned e.g. When someone makes fun of being gay, Jesus jokes etc. This is an excerpt from How I Met Your Mother when Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) explains to Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) about the Three Day Rule
| Barney: | Jesus waited three days to come back to life. It was perfect! If he had only waited one day, a lot of people wouldn’t have even heard he died. They’d be all, “Hey Jesus, what up?” and Jesus would probably be like, “What up? I died yesterday!” and they’d be all, “Uh, you look pretty alive to me, dude…” and then Jesus would have to explain how he was resurrected, and how it was a miracle, and the dude’d be like “Uhh okay, whatever you say, bro…” And he’s not gonna come back on a Saturday. Everybody’s busy, doing chores, workin’ the loom, trimmin’ the beard, NO. He waited the perfect number of days, three. Plus it’s Sunday, so everyone’s in church already, and they’re all in there like “Oh no, Jesus is dead”, and then BAM! He bursts in the back door, runnin’ up the aisle, everyone’s totally psyched, and FYI, that’s when he invented the high five.That’s why we wait three days to call a woman, because that’s how long Jesus wants us to wait…. True story. |
Thuo says that Godly models are not applauded. He continues and says that it is funny that the shorter a girl’s dress is, the more expensive it is. He is also saddened by the fact that virginity is treated as inexperience in the modern society. He also talks of how we have idolized people because we have let them occupy where the streams of our lives flow.
“The eyes are the entrance to your soul, WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING?” He asks
2nd Timothy 2:22
Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Thuo explains the difference between flee and pursue
Flee – run away from a situation or danger in an unorganized way.
Pursue – organized and structured running
I loved Pastor Thuo’s sermon, it taught me how to flee from evil desires of youth e.g. sexual immorality, idolatry etc. and I was amazed of how it complements James 4:7 that says;
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
So, I flee from evil desires and the devil flees away from me. Pastor Thuo, I think now I can let the stone joke pass, that sermon was just on point. Why don’t you join us for more of these and many other sweet and powerful sermons? We fellowship at Nairobi Cinema on Tuesdays at 5.30pm.
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Image Credit: Pixabay CC0