Repentance And The Church — Yes!

God has called us to come to Him with a broken and contrite heart. He wants us to come to him with a repentive heart as only then is He able to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Sometimes, however, we may go to God and repent of our sins, but find that our situations have not changed. It may be that the sins of our forefathers are hanging over us. As a result, we have to bring the sins they committed and did not confess, before the Lord. Why? Because God does not forgive sins that have not been confessed. As the bible says in Genesis 34:7 — “Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” 

Repentance to rid ourselves of habits, weaknesses, or an ongoing situation has a particular process. This is a repentance prayer to clear the fountainhead or the root of the problem.

God is Calling Us To Repentance

Repentance Prayer

Repentance to clear the fountainhead has different levels of sin.

1. The sin that you can confess to God alone and He will forgive
2. The sin that you have to confess to another person (eg. to your spouse in marriage)
3. The sin that you have to confess to your pastor
4. The sin that you have to confess to the church
5. The sin that you have to confess to the nation

God will not forgive sins that need to be confessed to another person, to the pastor, to the church, or to the nation unless the confessions are first done accordingly. Meaning you have to confess it to someone else, to the pastor, to the nation BEFORE God will forgive you.

So it depends on what type of sin was committed to determine the level of the repentance and if /who the confession needs to be made to. For example, if it was a national sin – something committed against the nation, then you first have to confess and repent to the nation before God will forgive that sin.

For E.g. After David sinned, he had to repent openly to the elders and then to the nation.

“Only what you don’t know will kill you. The truth will set you free. The devil knows this, so he doesn’t want us to have knowledge because he doesn’t want us to have power,” Ugandan Apostle, Dr Daniel Bantambuze warned.

The devil does not want us to have knowledge of how spiritual dimensions work. And so the onus is on us to spread the word. The Apostle noted that our generation will be judged severely for not preaching the gospel because of the trend our forefathers set as they would walk on foot for miles to spread the gospel and provoke the gospel in the hearts of others. Now we have so many outlets eg. zoom, social media, etc, and no longer have to walk the miles — yet we do not spread the gospel.

God’s Truth Will Set Us Free

Connection to the Spiritual Realm

Our umbilical cord is the only thing that can be used to connect us to the spiritual realm. The umbilical cord is that thing that keeps pulling you back from God.  If you are still connected through the umbilical cord you are still connected to the gate.

So you have to disconnect by going back to what happened in the past by your forefathers. Go back to the zero point and then take it to God in repentance.

Behind every weakness and addiction in your life is a gate. Most of the things we see as our weaknesses are not innocent. They have a gate and are a result of something that happened in our past. Sometimes you find yourself doing the same thing over again, each time you reach a certain level in God you are pulled back. This is because your spiritual umbilical cord has not been severed.

Remember that the devil does not fear the anointing and doesn’t care how anointed you are. So even though you may be anointed as long as there was an opening that has not been closed in your life he will use that. As long as he was invited in, no matter how long ago. As long as you are still connected through the umbilical cord he will have control of you.

David and Moses were anointed but the devil did not fear them.

David was a womanizer based on how he was conceived.

Moses had a lot of anger (he needed to confess this but he didn’t). So because of anger Moses had the ability to kill, he struck the rock in anger, and in anger, he broke the tablet with the 10 commandments. The driving force of his actions was anger!

Free Yourself From The Grip Of The Enemy

Gates need keys to open them. So Jesus in Matt. 16:19 promised to give us keys – these were keys to everything you need in life.

But the devil has taken possession of some of those keys. And so we need to find out who holds those keys and where they are. These are keys to marriage, keys to health, keys to wealth, keys to worship, etc. But until we can claim back those keys and unlock the gates we will not be able to walk into our full destiny.

The keys are also mentioned in Revelation 20:1-3, Isiah 22:22. Revelation 9:1, Luke 11:52, Revelations 3:7.

As mentioned in Gates and Spiritual Mapping the three major gates where major activities take place are the birth gate, marriage gate, and death gate. Halloween connects you to the gate of death. We have to close that gate!!!

God sometimes reveals things to you through dreams. And whatever God reveals, he gives you the power to crush. This is one way of knowing what you are up against, thus allowing you the opportunity to sever the tie the enemy may have on your life. Resulting in the severing of the umbilical cord.

But whatever you don’t know you cannot defeat.

“Give Me Altars And I Will Give You Nations”

 

God says, “give me altars and I will give you nations.”

Gideon (in the book of Judges) had to deal with the evil alters of his forefathers before God could use him.

Dr. Daniel said God revealed to the church leaders in his country of Uganda to give Him altars and He would give them nations. As a result, they started raising altars across the country.

He explained that each altar served a different purpose and had different approaches based on their purposes. But God wants us to reach the level of raising national altars.

National Altars

National altars are what will impact and change the nation.

“If you are able to change the mindset of leaders then they are able to change policies,” Dr. Daniel said. “If churches begin to raise altars they will bring change to the nation.”

God is using prayer altars to change and raise up nations.

Prayer Altars Can Change Nations

Levels of discipleship of a nation

Dr. Daniel said we have to begin to step out of the level of the local church and community church and step out of our small boxes — outside of our church walls and unto the territorial level. Because God wants to use us to deliver territories!

There are five different types of churches:

1. Local Church — When you are at the level of the local church your prayer is focused on me, myself, and I. This is usually the stage you are at when you just got saved and starting your journey with God. After you have graduated from this level you will move on to the level of the community church.

2. Community Church — At this level, you are more forced on serving the community and are integrated into being a part of that community. So your focus is taking care of the operations of the community. From this level, you then move onto the denominational church level.

3. Denominational Church —  The purpose of the denominational church is to transform peoples’ minds to start forming a habit that will become contagious to changing nations. This is where your actions begin to impact others and you begin to influence others to follow you. So the denominational church is seen as a habit or behavioral church.

4. Territorial Church — This is bigger than the community church and bigger than the denominational church. This is where you take the battles to the territories. This is where you take your eyes off the small battles of the communities to the altars. So here you take the battles to governors, officials,  top leaders, etc.

5. Missionary Church —  At this level, you would have won the battle at the territorial church and can now take the battle bigger — to the nations of the world. So you now take the battle to other countries.

Since God wants us to focus on changing nations our aim should be to move from the level of the community church to the level of the missionary church.

And as we aim to rise to the level of the missionary church, there are four (4) stages of the journey we have to go through as Christians.

God Wants To Take Us From Local Church to Missionary Church Level

1. Equipping — As soldiers, we have to be trained and ready for deployment.
   “For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Ephesians 4:12. We have to be equipped to deliver God’s people.
2. Provoking — Stirring up in us a desire to get deeper and deeper in our walk with God as we are lead to discipleship.
3. Envisioning — Having a clear vision of who we are in Christ and what our mission is bout. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Romans 8:14. We have to be willing to be deployed. But we cannot be deployed without being equipped.
4. Commissioning — “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood”, Acts 20:28. We have to take dominion over principalities and powers so we can enforce the kingdom mandate.