Heroes of the Kingdom

By Theodore Andoseh

The world is going through a cyclone of uncertainty, and nothing resembles the normalcy we have known for so long. Nothing at all! Health and moral crises are soaring. Legislatures are enacted in open revolt against divine institutions like the family and the right to life. Armed conflicts are claiming lives at unprecedented rates. The enemy seems to point all his weapons against the Gospel and the Church.

Amid this chaos, we are God’s chosen to live in a time like this. A day for the champions—when conventional battle strategies are almost useless—is upon us. The time for complacent Christianity or ritualistic religion is over. God needs heroes!

Heroes of the Kingdom outlines features of ordinary people in the Bible and in church history who took up personal responsibility in the face of life-threatening crises and changed the course of history. They stood their ground, persevered by faith, experienced spiritual victory, and received divine approval as they faced dire scenarios with a level of spiritual dignity.

This book is edge-of-the-seat reading for anyone burning to impact others for good and advance God's kingdom agenda on earth with boldness and courage. You will be significantly inspired through the life of the man after God's heart—David: he attained spiritual greatness through established heroism in character, leadership, worship, battle, and more.

Could it be that you are the champion that God has prepared to silence the enemy today or soon?
Would you choose to place Christ over culture and conviction over comfort?

Arise, and become a Hero of The Kingdom!

• Language: English
• Publisher: ZTF Books Online
• Release date: Apr 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005368722

Theodore Andoseh

The current leader of Christian Missionary Fellowship Internation

Book preview

PREFACE

The message in this book was delivered at the Youth Leaders’ Retreat in February 2021 in Koume, Cameroon.

In a context where the enemy’s weapons seem to be all set against the Gospel and the advancement of God’s kingdom, the Lord needs men who will cooperate with Him distinctly and give Him a chance to conquer. God needs heroes. The author says: "For every challenge out there that seems to be so intimidating to defeat the people of God, God has a person already in the Church. That is, for all the challenges out there that life and satan can thrust against the Church, that seem most likely to succeed, God has already anticipated His own champion, even if he is not one that we all know… Who are you? How do you know that you have not been prepared for a time like this? Like Mordecai told Esther,

‘Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?’ (Esther 4: 14).

We send out this book with prayer that each person who reads it will not only desire strongly to be a hero for the Kingdom of God, but also work towards spiritual greatness as defined in the book.

1

GROUNDS FOR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

I heard you praying that the Lord will grant you transformations and encounters. It is a correct prayer, but it is also a wrong prayer. Correct because without God, all this is useless. Wrong in that you may be addicted to emotionalism such that your spiritual life is like taking marijuana for a high: Going from one high to the next high, and that is what you feel is the Christian life. If you do that, you will just remain a carnal spiritual baby throughout your life. And it is a general tendency for those of us of the African race to be emotionally oriented and to value the emotional. There is little thought, little planning, little development, little cultivation, little sustainability. So if you are looking for an encounter with God like the drug addict is looking for the next needle so as to have some magic happen, after which your nose will elongate, then it is a wrong expectation.

HOW TO MAKE SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

God builds on what he has done. When God has moved your heart, that first massive invasion of the presence of God must be built upon. Without that, there is no growth. That is why many people have stunted growth. They are not growing. They are sizzling for experiences: God touched me on my neck, God touched me on my back, God touched me on my chest … A sensual God? He is not like that.

Pray, and banish emotionalism as a basis of spiritual evaluation. We tolerate it in babies but not in leaders. We intend to build leaders, not bebelac ¹!

There is a song:

Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart,

I will praise Him.

Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart,

I will praise Him.

We are commanded to praise the Lord in season and out of season:

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus (2 Thessalonians 5:18)

So the person who composed this song is a blasphemer. He is singing a wrong spiritual experience. That is not how the spiritual life is built. And that is why your faces are looking down because you have not taken your next dose of ‘the encounter with the Lord’.

You are also feeling low because you have been accumulating sin and you have not yet repented: you insulted somebody, you were rude to another person, you were fastidious, you snubbed that brother… you think that it is purity. You liar, you know in your heart that you snub only those you don’t want; the other one that you want, do you snub? just write down all the sins that you remember, that you have not yet repented of, so that your countenance can change, so that you may look like a believer that we will recognise, with the fruit of the Spirit, not like a beast.

I heard one of you praying and saying I thought this meeting would not be held because of the coronavirus pandemic. There is the lazy man in Proverbs who says there is a lion outside. Today, the lion is Covid19; I’ll get infected! No! You will work, you will leave your bed to go out and work.

Pray and put an end to emotionalism and sentimentalism as vectors of evaluation of spiritual experience and growth.

There must be sustainability in your spiritual development. You start and finish. The problem is that many people have many starts and no finishes. The Christian life has two major steps:

The obedience of faith that people call ‘encounter with the Lord’,

The obedience of faithfulness

By faith, you encounter the Lord, and you obey Him from that encounter. So, bring down every encounter with the Lord to that which you are going to obey. If there is that obedience of faith, you will make a leap forward. The obedience of faith produces a leap forward: you gain new grounds; you make progress that is visible and tangible. And it is excellent, often accompanied by great emotions. There is an encounter with God that results into the obedience of faith, with a leap forward; that is, progress. And, like every missile, you need much initial power for a take-off.

After you have done that, there is the obedience of faithfulness: routinising that which was spontaneous. After God has visited you by His Holy Spirit to launch you, or He visits you by a painful experience to launch you, or He visits you by a gripping word, you move on to the obedience of faithfulness. That is, you repeat the initial obedience (of faith) 10,000 times. This obedience is, in truth, without any sensation, or even the opposing sensation. You really do not want to do it again. But with character, you continue to do what you know is the Lord’s will that you know you had received before, keeping to the emotions that you felt then.

When you got the emotions, you knew it was God. After that assurance, if you stop doing what you have been doing because you have stopped ‘feeling God’, you are disobedient, because God has revealed His will to you, and you have abandoned Him. The initial feeling that gave you assurance is all that you need to know God’s will about you and keep to it.

You have big sensations, with much assurance, and you marry that girl. But is it more sensations that keep you in your marriage? At times, you wish divorce were an option. But you stay in there. The flowers that you brought before from your love-sweetened heart, you continue bringing them because that is what you are to do.

Marriage is about faithfulness. When the emotions are no longer here, you may say ‘I made a mistake about God’s will!’ or ‘Was it really the right person?’ Too late for such questions! If after that you get into another involvement with a sister, you will not come back to this church; you will be excommunicated. You stay married! With or without sensations, feelings, negative emotions, or whatever. And if you have negative emotions and lay your hand on her, you will be excommunicated. Marital love is deciding to do good to the other for the rest of your life.

It is the same thing in spiritual experiences: there is the obedience of faith, with great sensations/emotions or great crises for a leap forward. And as soon as you have had those emotions, routinise it through the obedience of faithfulness. By doing so, you will maintain the conquered grounds, you will grow. If you stop, you will have lost both time and the growth you will have had. You would be a criminal.

When I was young, I read C.S. Lewis’ children’s books. In one of them, The Silver Chair, the Great Lion of the Overland, Aslan, his character for the Lord Jesus Christ, met Jill on the mountain. Aslan gave her signs to go and save Prince Rilian. He told her: You are here on the mountain, the air is fresh, there is not much smoke, your mind is sound. Memorise the signs I am giving you, because the valley down is smoky, the air is not as cool, your mind won’t be clear, and you will doubt everything you see. So, Jill, memorise what is certain for you when you speak with me, for you will forget all the sensations and the certainty you have now. Say these four signs every day before sleeping, because down there it will not be as clear to you as it is now here.

On the mountain, things are clear. On the mountain, there is assurance. On the mountain, demons are far off, and there are no temptations. The mind is sound. It is like what you feel in daily dynamic encounters with God: a sound mind, a clear heart, the assurance is maximal. And when you get into the day, those about whom Jesus spoke to you are way different from what you received in the morning. You keep what you received in the encounter, and down in life’s valley, you do what you remember, not what you feel. You serve God with your head, because there are no sensations in life’s valleys: a demon stings, a temptation comes over you, and even your flesh… everything is against you.

How do you make spiritual progress? There is the visitation of God, the encounter with God that leads to a giant step forward in faith, if the visitation is translated into practical obedience. But there are people who have encounters, highly emotional visitations with tears, a flooding joy in the heart, songs flow naturally, but they do not bring it down to practical obedience. After this, there will be nothing to maintain. In the Bible, we are not told how the men of God felt when they encountered God. We are told how they obeyed. When Abraham encountered God, the Bible does not tell what he felt, but what the Lord told him and what Abraham did. Spiritual progress is not built on sensations.