2024

The Lord has told me to shake the dust off of my feet regarding Kenya. It seems that the sins of the elite and of the government are also the sins of church elite and leadership. The rot is strong in the land. Turn to the LORD in a contrite heart, with repentance and a broken spirit. Then and only then may you be able to perceive what God may have of you.

I speak this with tears and a broken heart. It is a terrible thing to give over a country to its sins. But, of course, it is also given over to those faithful true servants of the Most High God, to pray on behalf of the nation, identifying with its sins, to take time to lament and repent, thereby bringing about a change of the land and people, in prayer unto the Lord.

Inquire of the Lord, “What might be standing between Kenya and you, God?” Holy Spirit will answer you, giving you understanding and explicit insight, an identification of the sins at hand. Then, you inquire of your own heart, “Has this been my sin as well?” Holy Spirit will tell you. If yes, as most sins are our own in some way, you then have opportunity:

1. to come on the inside identifying with the sins of the land. repenting of them as your own on behalf of the nation. this is what Jesus did for us. identified with our sins in order to free us. We can do the same for our nation.
2. pray this, “God, we come before you in the name of Jesus. We confess God to this sin of our nation (name the sin). We are sorry. We have been causing our own troubles all while seeking you. This is really terrible.
3. “Today we say no more! We rebuke this sin (name the sin) in the name of Jesus, our Living Lord.”
4. “We reach with the strong arm of our Lord Jesus the Christ into our past, all the years of Kenya, it’s land and people, and we uproot this sin (name the sin) from where it first began. Carefully and completely, leaving nothing behind, we uproot all of this sin in the name of Jesus.”
5. “We unwind the chains of this sin (name the sin) from off of Kenya, declaring every link of every chain severed in the name and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
6. “To all authority, assignments, and curses, of the enemy that have been in and over and through the land of Kenya (her lands and people) because of this sin, we say ‘No more!’ ‘Enough!’.
7. “All authority, assignments, and curses of the enemy that have been against Kenya, all things attached to this sin / stronghold, must all go right now to the place where the true Lord Jesus Christ chooses it all to go.”
8. “Lord, what would you have for us in place of this sin / stronghold?”
9. “Ah, yes Lord. We gratefully receive (name what the Lord has for you and your nation) in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
10. Repeat as often as necessary. Undertake the spiritual work on behalf of your nation, identifying the sins and strongholds, then by repentance and confession, uprooting, breaking and cancelling, claiming and sealing, to take what of Kenya has been in the dominion of Satan, bringing it into the Kingdom of God, by which healing and wholeness, the mercy and grace of the Lord, can undertake to free the land and people from sin.

May righteousness reign in the land of Kenya. Amen

2016

I was in Kenya for one weeks time in 2016. It was Saturday afternoon that Pastor David and his fellow pastors and leaders gathered with us in a small village church. I preached on Sulha. I shared that God’s heart has always been coming toward us unto reconciliation and the putting down of all that may be between us and the Lord.

In Luke 15:11-32 we read what has been called, ‘the story of the prodigal son’ but I am convinced that the prodigal son part is not really the point of the story. Rather, the prodigal son is merely the context for the Father’s actions and the older son’s response – both meant to instruct us in the ways of the Lord.

In verse 20 we see the father running toward his son. There are a few cultural things that we must understand in order to get the significance of what Jesus was expressing as he told this story.

1st, important men in middle eastern culture DO NOT RUN (and I have seen this in Africa to this day). Rather, they walk very, very, slowly in a manner of their great importance. Yet, this father ran to his son. This would have been shocking to the listeners of the story in Jesus’ day. The father put off his importance in order to run to his son.

2nd, in order to run the father would have had to lift his skirts and reveal his ankles. Another thing not done in middle eastern cultures. Another part of the shock of the story within the context to which it was originally told. The father threw off his dignity in order to run to his son.

And 3rd, there is some thought that, due to the great insult (and that is an understatement) of the son 1. asking for his inheritance, 2. squandering it on vile practices and 3. ending up in a pig pen (the utter lowest anyone could go in Jewish culture), the ‘right’ thing, the thing of ‘justice’ would have been for the people of the village to stone the son to death before he reached his home.

Yet we see that the father runs to intercept the stones on his sons behalf.

The very same thing that God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus ran toward us to take on the stones.

And then, the party begins. The fatted calf is prepared for a great feast.

Sulha is a middle-eastern tradition of peace and reconciliation. Literally it is this: imagine that you have harmed me in some great way. Perhaps you came and burnt my house to the ground.

Now, normally, if I am the victim to a crime then I enter into a holding pattern waiting for the perpetrator to realize his or her great harm against me, and to come to me for forgiveness.

Yet, Sulha puts into the hands of victims the power to loose off great harms done against them. So, if you had burnt down my house I would have opportunity to prepare a meal for you.

I would come to you with a meal in hand and in this act I would be stating that I am putting all harms and damage done to me by you to rest. I no longer hold these great harms against you. And we eat together. (Note, even to this day we will not eat a meal with someone that we count our enemy.)

With this lens of Sulha in place, we see that Sulha is all through scripture!

Jacob makes a meal for Laban in Genesis 31:54-55 (after Laban’s horrible treatment, betrayal, and manipulation of Jacob for many years). Sulha

Joseph makes a meal for his brothers in Genesis 43:16, and 43:24-34, (after their gross mistreatment of him, first leaving him to die and then selling him into slavery). Sulha

We see the spirit of Sulha as Hosea continues to love and live toward his wife who was prostituting herself.

We see Sulha as Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman at the well. We see Sulha as Jesus eats with sinners. We see the Sulha as the wedding feast of the lamb. And we see Sulha as the spirit speaks in Revelation 3:20, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.”

In Luke 15:25-28 we read of the older son’s response to the celebration given for the sake of his brother and we see something that should concern us.

“The older brother was angry and refused to go in.” vs.28

The older brother had been doing all the right things for a very long time. He had been faithful, sacrificial, moral, upright, dutiful, obedient, compliant. And yet, his heart had become bitter and hard. He missed completely the heart of his father.

He had been living in the house of his father but did not live as a son, but as a servant. “Look dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours.” vs.31

So is the danger with those of us who have been alongside the Lord a long time. We have honed habits of holiness, of rightness, of goodness, of sacrifice and service. Perhaps we too have lived as servants and not sons and daughters.

We must take care that we do not miss out on the feast, unable to enter into the celebration.

The pharisees missed the feast, “But when the teachers of religious law who were pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” 

How easy it would be, in our rightness, in our self- righteousness to completely miss the heart of the father and refuse to enter the feast.

I am convinced this is the lesson of Jesus’ story.

For myself, after learning about sulha some 2.5 years ago, I spent some months asking myself, “How can I live out a heart of sulha to those who have harmed me most?” And the Lord gave a few opportunities as I waited on his direction and clarity in this.

I’ll share one. About two years ago I had a dream. In the dream the teenager now a man, who had raped me as a child, was standing before me. In my dream I put my hand on his shoulder and declared the Lord’s deep forgiveness over him, as well as restoration and wholeness upon him. And then I woke up. I woke up with an indescribable joy. And even though it was only a dream I count it as one of the greatest privileges of my life.

And I came to learn something through this thing called Sulha. I now know that justice unto me is the restoration of me back to the original image as God created me to be before rape.

And I now know that justice unto the man who raped me, is not the stones of the villagers, but is the restoration of him back to the original image as God created him to be before rape.

Sulha is God’s healing and wholeness and restoration unto each one of us.

This is the message that I shared on Saturday afternoon in a village in Kenya. A number of the men were blinking back tears for some time after the sharing of this message.

May the Lord be praised.

Module Two of CCIM College, Walking in Spiritual Authority, is basically this message of Sulha, of understanding the priority of the Lord, and our participation with this, his great plan of restoration of all things on this earth.

“Wow! What a wonderful and great day I had today by meeting Cyndy! I am spiritually blessed and my hope is revived. I like and admire how Cyndy presents the gospel! I thank God that I am connected to this ministry. After the meeting, my team remained mouth open on the message and they are happy for listening to Cyndy and they say, ‘She is the right person to work with’. Thanks for your prayers to our ministry. Blessings to you.” Pastor David 

I was only a week in Kenya but oh my, what a week! It has become evident that if I had been there any longer than one week that we would have come out of the time with an unmanageable work load.

As it was, one week with eight speaking / preaching times brought about 71 names of pastors wanting to either take our CCIM Course, or teach it beyond themselves to the areas from which they come.

Every bishop, those responsible for many pastors and churches, said to me, “Our pastors are not trained and this has become a weight to me. You are an answer to my prayers.”  

You can find College of Capturing Courage and many more teachings here.