THE CALL TO PRAYER

The Dream

It all started about two weeks ago as I slept in my room and dreamed a strange dream; there I was in the living room of a high rise apartment, the place was not familiar so I cannot tell which area of the country I was in.

The scene was like a house fellowship as it was clear we shared the same faith….suddenly I heard commotion on the ground below and when I went to check through the apartment window, I saw a riotous scene with a large crowd of youths armed with dangerous weapons and charms as far as the eye could see, on a wild rampage, I could hear there animal cries punctuated with screams of terror and pain from innocents in there destructive path.

I turned to my hosts in alarm and pointed out the scene below, no one reacted, I met with casual shrugs and some mumbled responses to the effect that it did not concern us and that in any case we were safe from any sort of harm.

I ran to the door leading outside to check the locks as I had observed from the window that the mob had broken down our compound gate and poured in like molten magma destroying everyone and everything in its path.

One of my hosts explained to me with a high degree of condescending confidence that the door was a cast iron bullet proof security door and that nothing could gain entry into the house I went to the locks to check and opened the door, that was when I heard it….loud whoops and clanging of machetes on stairwells and banisters, they were coming up very swiftly I could make out shadows of the approaching mob, I quickly closed the door again and applied the jam lock mechanism then I stepped away from the door and turned to my hosts with a look of fear on my face, which quickly turned to surprise as my hosts where still comfortably seated and showing no sign of alarm whatsoever, once again I was told to relax, some of them even started to smile at me with looks reserved for the patently ignorant.

By this time I had moved to the kitchen area looking frantically for a way out of this strange apartment, that is when I heard it, loud banging on the security door by the mob…I ran back into the living room and we all watched with baited breath as the worked on the door. Then as suddenly as the banging started, it stopped…there was deathly silence and then to our collective horror, we heard someone working a key into the door and slowly and confidently turning the lock.

The door swung open without any extra effort…we were all transfixed…rooted to the spot, the mob did not rush in, instead a young man with a mean cruel expression twisting his young features swaggered into the living room. You come here! He said to one of us, we were all still very much rooted to the spot and the one he beckoned to stood up from the settee and walked like a sleepwalker or a lamb to the slaughter towards the mob man, the mob man guided him out the door and looked at the rest of us then burst into laughter as he walked out the door with his captive.

Before he closed the door on the rest of us he did a strange thing, he stuck his GSM phone unto the door, gave us a knowing look and promptly swung it shut, we were stung out of our collective shock by the screams of horror and pain that came from the other end of the door…our friend was suffering a fate worse than death and we knew that the mob man would pick us up one by one at his pleasure.

It was then that every one sprung into panicked action, we started looking for an escape root, our secure fortress had just turned into a death row prison in the twinkling of an eye and we didn’t know who would be next…as we scrambled to unhinge the louver windows in the bathroom in a frantic effort to escape this hell on earth I woke up with a start.

The Interpretation

The dream was so real and I was so scared, my hearth was beating very fast, I could still taste the palpable fear in my mouth. I reached for my pillow and started praying into it like my life depended on it, I asked God questions and frantically tried to rebuke every spirit of anything contrary to peace in my environment etc….when I tired myself out, I lay on my bed it was a working day, all my prayers hadn’t taken up to 20 minutes….i had to get to work, the clock had started ticking and that cloying stress inducing feeling had started shorting out all other thoughts in my brain, as I lay there confused and apprehensive…

Then I heard it…Gods voice, I don’t know about you but when I hear God I know its Him, its not special sounding or anything (deep Barry White type like in the Moses movie or serene angelic but scary sounding like we usually associate with spiritual beings), just a normal sounding voice in my head…He said I should study Isaiah 66 and asked that I set up a Prayernet and that was it.

I understood Him clearly; many years ago I had this idea to set up a prayer network that would use the bridging power of the internet to create unbroken prayer chains that would run 24 hours, 7 days, 4 weeks, 12 months all year round praying without ceasing, I knew the secret was in the minutes, if I could get a lot of people to spend ten (10) minutes every day praying for a specific issue, all I needed was enough people to do that by requesting them to choose a specific ten minute time band i.e. 8 to 8:10am every day; with enough people getting involved, the whole day would be covered and a prayer 24 hour chain would be formed with 10 minute links.

Approximately 144 ten minute segments exist in a 24 hour day (like beads on a rosary).

As I said, this idea in one form or another had been locked in my head for years, I just didn’t bother to pursue it, I fell back on the lazy Christians argument No time, Not enough money, Not enough details etc….Now God was bringing it to my notice in the most frightening way.

When I read Isaiah 66, the whole mystery fell in place; the whole chapter is divided into three segments

1. Verse 1 to 4 : God is berating his people and asking them about worship pointing out that the significance of worship is not in the physical building but the state of one’s heart…He uses the analogy of those that daily bring sacrifices to the temple and states that their offerings might as well be defiled and meant for idols due to that fact that no one “trembles at His word or hear His voice”

2. Verse 5 to 13: Has God talking about what He can and will do for His children if only they will lift up their voices to Him and seek His word/will/way. He uses the analogy of Israel as a birthing mother who delivers instantly even before the birth pangs and associated pain has had time to kick in…in essence He can meet our needs even before they are processed in our brains as needs but our attitude to worship hinders Him.

3. Verse 14 to the end: He speaks of a future when the nation of Israel (the church) will become the sought after mountain that all nations will go to obtain wisdom and direction…God is sharing His vision for the Church on earth with us.

In summary the dream was speaking Gods message to us, we think we are secure, we care only for self, the enemy is at the door with a key to our lives, yet we no not that this is so, we talk but we don’t pray, when we do pray we ask God to give, give and give some more, when we worship Him it is with an expectation that He will pay us back in Cash and Kind, when we reach out to our fellow man, it is because we believe that it gives us access to Gods lottery for blessings, His word is only useful to the extent that we agree with it fits into our neat plans for the future, time is running out, we focused on our immediate environment and ignored the territorial spiritual governance structure that we as His children should control in the place of intercessory prayer….He calls us still to lift up our voices in intercessory prayer for this Nation…He wishes us to claim our inheritance and put the devil and his deluded evil structure in its place, under our feet.

The Call

After days of meditating on Isaiah 66 and running around to start Prayernet Nigeria I have finally figured out the dreams interpretation. I am not a rich man; I am trying to survive in Lagos like everyone else but the dream and its message hits me like a sledgehammer because I realize that all these years that I pursued happiness on the Rat Race called life, I worshipped idols and not God.

To figure out whether you are an idolater is simple, just answer this question: ARE YOU HAPPY? Be honest with yourself, I am asking this question in the assumption that I am referring to a follower of Christ, a borne again tongue talking Christian or just a very devout believer.

How many of us can say we are happy, by this I mean doing and being who we want to be, having what we want out of life at our disposal, loving and being loved by those we love, doing things that bring about that warm glow in the pit of our stomachs and the lump of emerging tears to our eyes when we have done it….own up, who are you and what are you doing….the secret is in the minutes…its not about want you want to do, or wish you could be doing or tried to do at one time like that, its what you do every day, the mundane things you do that have formed your habits and defined your character. Who you really are amounts to the sum total of your daily routines and habits.

We pursue happiness because we don’t have it ourselves yet God expects us to radiate this happiness, it should flow from us like rivers of joy cleansing our immediate environments, we think we can get it from a new job, more money in the bank, a wife, a husband, children and even outright sin. But we are deluded, happiness cannot be found in these things, if they could, God would have written out the Bible with those things as its focus, but guess what, from cover to cover the Bible is about Reconciliation and Relationship (hey…why do you think we have Jesus!!) not accumulation of wealth, pleasure and power check it yourself.

Should we now stop pursuing these things altogether? I think not, but pursuing it at all is a sign that we are not yet close enough to God to understand what he wants from us because He states clearly that we should seek first His kingdom and all those other things shall follow.

I am contrite, I am in the process of making my peace with God, I have launched Prayernet Nigeria (its a Google group presently using an SMS platform for access to GSM phones) my giving time, funds, energy and resources to this project is my own way of restitution for all those years that I pursued the idols of Mammon (wealth), Bal (power) and Ash era (pleasure) and refused to trust God to give me what I was actually looking for; peace, joy and fulfillment.

I ask you this question again, ARE YOU HAPPY? and a follow up question DO YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY? And my advised answer to both these questions is this: seek his face without reservations, seek his plan for you, pray for the Nation in order to reclaim the high places and extend an arm of love and fellowship to your fellow man through whatever means, skills, experience, expertise and knowledge you have. If this doesn’t work, you can make your case in heaven and ask God to pay you back the life He owes you due to the sacrifice you made on earth…I trust that this will not happen for my God will owe no man on that day.

Shalom