God Wants You Fat & Happy

Uneducated, Spirit-Filled

Lopua, a Toposa tribesman of approximately 20 years, is currently enrolled in Kenyan Primary School (5^th grade, according to U.S. standards). Give this young man a two-digit multiplication problem, and you can take tea while he’s working on it. Start reading aloud from one of the Gospels, however, and he’ll throw you for a loop by quoting the passage and telling you the book and chapter reference.

Although I am an advocate of education, by no means do I hold that it is a necessary prerequisite of effective, Christ-centered ministry. When the opportunity arises for a tribesman to be educated, I praise God for it, knowing God will use it for His purposes. But what if that tribesman is not as academically-minded as another? Does it imply his service to the Lord will be of less value? That his influence in certain realms will be diminished? When speaking with both Lopua and Lorot, Mark and I are reminded of Acts 4:13, where it is said, “Now when they (rulers of the people and elders) saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

Lorot and Lopua

Of greater importance than head knowledge is heart posture. If you have the prior without a proper form of the latter, the results of your ministry will be a pile of works to burn.

“Most of us have just enough Bible knowledge to make us dangerous.” (Justin Peters) This is how heresies begin – with those who know what sounds Biblical in principle but who don’t know the Bible. They expect divine revelations outside of the Scriptures and accept their own vain imaginations as Spirit-inspired.

But foundational to all our secular and spiritual academic ambitions should be the spirit of the Bereans who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed….” (Acts 17:11, 12a) Notice, “many of them therefore believed.”  What is the key to effective, Christ-centered service? Receiving the word with eagerness and examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things (whether taught to us by doctrinally-sound pastors, spewed out by televised false prophets, proclaimed by false teachers behind podiums, or written to us in best-sellers) are really so.

“God Wants You Fat* & Happy”

That’s what the 'prophets' say….

In June, Mark and I spent a great deal of time exploring the roots and origins of the Health & Wealth Gospel which permeates not only American “Christian” media and churches, but also Kenyan pulpits and public forums. This isn’t the Daniel Boone kind of exploring – trying to find a new land to settle in. It’s more like the exploration of a neglected minefield – studying the pattern of landmine burials and learning how to recognize each explosive tip. In our opinion this is a suitable description of Prosperity Gospel in whichever field it is found. (And I believe there is hardly a field where it has not been planted.) The hidden and secretive, yet explosive nature of heretical teaching is precisely what Peter warned us about in 2 Peter 2:1-3.

What’s so dangerous about a minefield? Well, if the mines were easily visible above earth, it wouldn’t be half so dangerous, would it? You could just take your jolly steps around them without a second thought. The fact that these explosives are buried in a mound of good soil is what’s dangerous. If our earthly enemies are so clever as to plant them in this way, how much more clever is our spiritual enemy?

As we have begun studying more deeply the contrasts between Christ’s Gospel and today’s Prosperity Gospel (which is actually an ancient distortion of the true Gospel [Note Gal. 1:6-10]), the Lord has opened up unusual doors for us to share with fellow Kenyans who are struggling to understand some of Christ’s commands in light of the teaching of renowned Word of Faith preachers and “prophets.”

While Mark was at work one day, a man began questioning him about the teachings of healing taught by the Word of Faith movement (that it is always God’s will for us to be healed; that healing is as easy to attain as salvation itself; that the cause of perpetual illness is our lack of faith). The Holy Spirit quickened Mark’s mind to recall what we’d been studying the night before, and he was enabled to share it over the course of a couple of hours as the men worked together.

The following day I attended a Women’s Bible Study with some Kenyan friends. One of the ladies was struggling with her confusion over a certain false prophet who recently visited our town. “The prophet said God spoke to him and told him not to read his Bible or pray for seven days,” she shared with the class. “He was awaiting a vision from God…. But I feel confused. Why would God tell someone not to read the Bible or pray?” The answer? “He WOULDN’T.” We ladies then spent considerable time in 2 Timothy and 2 Peter, and in discussion not only of this man but also of several others who hold the same pagan-origin teachings.

Pray that the Lord will grant us more opportunities like these 

to “speak the truth in love” so that we (and our countrymen) 

"may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves 

and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, 

by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (See Eph. 4:11-16).

May you find your greatest treasure in Christ Jesus. 

In Him,

Mark Philip & Darah Olayo

*Fat in the African sense implies both health and wealth.