“And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.”
Luke 1:80 NIV
The narration of John’s story is more than an entertaining narrative; it leads us into the understanding of the mystery of godliness and God ordained purposes. I believe it explains perfectly, the subjects of consecration , parenting, purpose, holiness and the perfect will and time of God. John’s life was unusual. Rather than living a “normal” childhood, he seems drawn to spending time alone in the wilderness.
As a child l loved playing with dolls. I had one glass doll called Khethiwe. She was my favourite ever. One day when my mom was shifting things and spring cleaning, she accidentally dropped Khethiwe and she broke into half. I had to use cello tape to tape her back together because I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Some of you loved playing mama and daddy. I remember we used to even cook mud and pretend it’s food. Sometimes we would play outside till late and our parents came to look for us and found us dirty and even very hungry but we were busy being children. John was different.
John lived a consecrated life. He separated from the crowds and lived a life devoted to God. God has been pressing it in my heart to pray for children. So much bad influence from social media, television, school, there’s so many arrows against children. I believe that every parent should be extra careful about what their children see and hear. So John was protected from some external influences and the teaching of the world. Because of the way he grew up, this made his soul hear clearly the voice of the Lord. I’m not saying lock your children up or send the to the bush, you catch the drift right? Cool.
John never made any public appearances before time. I know some people have been walking with God and it seems as if you’ll never be that great man or woman of God publicly impacting lives. Wait for the appointed time. There are things God must teach you first, there are things to unlearn, we need to be fine tuned to hear the voice of God, wait. Others may seem to have gone ahead of you, I’m sure there were people teaching that time while John was in the wilderness but he was the one chosen to break the prophetic silence. He had to be groomed first. The weight of your assignment determines your training. It determines what your training looks like and how long you will be trained.
He was not brought up in the schools of the prophets, nor in the academies of the Jews, or at the feet of any of their Rabbis and doctors; that it might appear he was not taught and sent of men, but of God. He actually had no correspondence with Jesus, he had to point him out by the spirit. This leads us to our lesson today. John was strong in the spirit. Am l strong in the spirit? Are you? Or are we stronger in the flesh? Stronger in canality? Is it all muscles and flex or are we spiritually inclined and led? Yielded family are we yielded?
To be strong in the spirit is to be weak in the flesh and by this I mean, those who are spiritually strong have weakened the flesh. The flesh wants lights and buzz and entertainment. The spirit wants consecration, prayer and intimacy with God. The flesh wants fame and recognition, the spirit yields to God’s leading and gladly remains in the secret place until it’s time to appear before Israel. Some of us appeared before time and thats why our message is not changing lives , we are teaching from the well of the flesh.
The child John grew. A child that refuses to grow up is an abnormal child. We cannot remain as babies. We need to be able to decode when Holy Spirit says to withdraw into the wilderness. Grow up! Grow up! Grow up! For how long are we to feed on milk when the solids of the Word remain a mystery? Are we still stuck on the debates about whether we can choose our gender or not? My dear, that’s just basics of scripture. There are deeper things that need us to grow up and have big boy digestive system to stomach the Word. If you keep quitting your training you need to grow up. If you keep making public appearances and no secret place, you need to grow up. If you are a flesh defender, you defend sin and immorality, you need to grow up! Church of God, let’s GROW UP and be SPIRITUALLY STRONG.
And no. You don’t have to normalise the ways of the world. What’s normal to us is what God says to do even if the world may think it’s crazy.
“I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.”
Hebrews 5:11-14 MSG