This is the amplification of a presentation to the Charity and Faith Mission Church by Pastor Sibongile Sithole. On the occasion of preparing for the 2023 prophetic word by General Overseer Titus Sithole.
As we enter 2023, it is essential to do so with appropriate encouragement and inspiration. The oncoming 365 days, 12 months, 52 weeks, and 8760 hours define years that measure our times as humans in human space. In these different measures, we insert our moments of joy, sorrow, disappointments, success, greatness, objectives, and ambitions. To some of us, performing within 10 seconds can make us the most outstanding athlete ever; to others performing within 90 minutes can make us the greatest soccer player of all time; to others, a three-hour examination paper can define a lifelong career; and to many others, a time-based performance can determine them into posterity depending on the outcome.
In this quest to put into time performance, we will succeed and have our lives defined. Our success or failure might be the snake that bites us to many deaths we are unaware of. You might be bitten away from poverty by the success you make or be bitten into it by your failure. You might be bitten into disappointment or breakthrough by the partners you choose in business, marriage, or any endeavour. You might be bitten to result in the death of sin in your life or bitten to the birth of evil within a particular time slot you chose to act. In all these instances, you would have to be in situations where snakes are inside your time to bite you. All of them would bite you and deposit various poisons to either kill or make a life for you within the period.
How do you ensure that the snakes that bite you kill in you what you don't want and keep you alive for your lifelong journey composed of time-bound slots and opportunities? In answering this question, Pastor Sibongile reminded us of Israel's children's experiences during the exodus. As they were en route to Canaan, the promised land, one of the challenges they had to pass through was to deal with venomous serpents they attracted to themselves. These serpents were venomous and would kill at first bite.
The Bible teaches, as Pastor Sibongile taught, that as the children of Israel were experiencing the hardships of the exodus, they started questioning God's wisdom to liberate them from Egypt. The realities of the exodus and the battles they had to fight made them start missing Egypt, and they asked Moses, "why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"
How they questioned God invited His anger and wrath, for God only brings death when angry. God let loose venomous snakes, and they killed some of the Israelites until they repented and petitioned God through Moses to save them. They went to Moses and submitted to the authority of God and said, "we sinned when we spoke against God and against you. Pray that God takes the snakes away from us". Because they acknowledged that they had questioned God, God heard their cry and instructed Moses to act.
God said to Moses, "Make a snake (out of bronze) and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then whoever was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake lived. The Israelites moved on and camped at Oboth.
This act of looking at the snake on the pole changed the meaning of the poison from the snake. The faith in what God told Moses altered the course of events, not the bronze snake on the pole. For the first time, the journey to the promised land included those bitten by snakes continuing instead of dying. The Bible says they moved on and camped at Oboth. Oboth is a campsite after the ordeal with serpents. At Oboth, the children of Israel started to see the snake in the pole as the source of life after being bitten by the snake. They went on to worship the snake on the pole.
Every-time people were bitten by a snake, they looked at the snake on the pole. The problem started when people began to believe in the snake and not in the God that gave Moses the instruction. The memory of the experience with serpents made them be stuck with the snake on the pole and lose sight of the need to move on, even beyond Oboth. The biblical meaning of Oboth includes a dragon, which means camping at Oboth and not moving on would result in you being more dependent on the dragon than God.
The lesson from Pastor Sibongile's teaching is that as people, we are easy to believe in what God uses to heal us than believing in God himself. As we go through life, serpents will come our way, sometimes because we have invited them through our actions or inherited them from a generational curse. Because God knew us before we were born, "for he created our inmost being; he knitted us together in our mother's wombs", he will put into the path of our lives snakes on the pole for us to look at when we are bitten by serpents".
Our parents can be the snake on the pole to help us through childhood challenges. When we have needs, they can be what we have to look at, and the serpent bites will mean nothing. However, our parents cannot replace God, whether alive or dead; they are just there to facilitate us into the world so that we can grow into whole beings and children of God. We come through our parents but not from them; we are creatures of God who knitted us in their loins and wombs. Once we grow enough to understand God, our homes might be Oboth which we must move on from to new camps that God has prepared for us.
Our successes can be the snake on the pole. Our disappointments can be the Oboth we need to move away from. Our careers can be the Oboth. To move on, we must remember that God created the plagues to get us out of the captivity of sin. We must know that God opened the Red Sea for us to pass through. We need to know that God led us through the desert.
We need to know that when other nations heard of our greatness, it was the greatness of God they heard about. In entering 2023 triumphantly and heeding the prophetic theme of being great again, we must know that our greatness will be good to the extent that it is consistent with what God has ordered. The Bible teaches that the steps of the righteous are not only ordered by God but only through Christ can we do all we desire.
For as long as "we praise God because we are fearfully and wonderfully made; and believe his works about us are wonderful", we need not rely on the snake on the pole to deal with the venom of serpents but look to Him that is the Christ for our Salvation to deal with the serpent even before it bites.
Amen, thanks MaGO, for the lesson. I wanted to amplify it further.
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