Some Personal Questions Answered

When I was first confronted with this question, my default answer was, “No, I love God. I love His ways. I am not controlled by Laban.” But as I delved deeper into what this question actually asked, I realised that there are actually so many areas of our lives where it seems as though our answers to prayer are delayed, but actually its the world system, through our thinking, our values, our worldview, and our emotions preventing us from fully accessing the things God predestined for our future. 

We recently celebrated the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and it brings me great comfort knowing that because of what Jesus did on the cross, all of God’s promises to me are “Yea” and “Amen” – the blessings of God can be the commander of my life. 

Laban wants the best of what God has put in us to serve Him, to work in the world system – but I refuse to live my life subject to the ever-changing world system and its standards. I choose to walk in my redemption, knowing that I am furnished in abundance for every good work that comes from serving Him. 

Laban has been caught out in my life, and because of that, the enemy will no longer be able to deny me my destiny. God is all about restoration, and words can’t explain the magnitude of, through His mercy, being reconnected to our purpose and assignment that we were born for. We live our lives in the world system for years, all the while thinking because we pray a prayer here and there and go to church once a month, that we are walking in the fulness of what God has for our lives, but instead we are being fooled into thinking that way by Laban himself. It’s only once we encounter God for ourselves and we allow Him to divide the light from the darkness, that we get to a place of knowing just how far off we have been. All I can say is, “Lord, have mercy on me”. 

As believers, we often think that because there seems to be no consequence, we can make whatever choice we want to. God was so kind to us that He gave us the ability to choose, but as born-again believers, we are to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit, enabling, within our inner man, a Guide and Helper to make choices that bring glory to God. 

We need to realise that our choices carry eternal consequences. Laban is a spirit that works through our personality and choices, making it crucial for us to give up ourselves to be renewed by the Word of God, recognising that our bodies are a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Yes, God gave us a personality and the ability to choose, but He knew that within our own strength, we would always miss it. Therefore, He gave us the Holy Spirit, our Greatest Gift, so that we are equipped from within to not be limited and bound by our personality and choices that are always influenced by something. 

As spirit-filled born-again beings, we are free from the constraints of our body and soul, and free to be directed by God and the words that He spoke to predestinate our becoming.

I would dare to say to you, “You may think that you are a believer, but you are merely a Christian.” You may ask how am I able to make a statement like that. Pastor John clearly states in his book that a Christian is merely someone who experiences salvation, knows they are going to Heaven, and has a general faith in God, but they care more about the things of Laban than they do about the things of God. On the other hand, a believer is someone who takes the Word of God and lives it daily and walks in the principles of the Word of God  – being a spirit-filled person living for God all the time – whether it’s going to the shops or standing behind a pulpit. Just like king Nebuchadnezzar commanded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to bow to his golden statue, so to Laban wants us to bow to the provocations that will relinquish our trust in God, but we need to be determined, just like these men, to rather burn for our belief and trust in God, than bowing to the things this world puts before us. 

We see in the 24th chapter of Genesis that the focus of the servant was to wait for God to speak, making a choice to stand and wait there until He does. As Christians, we need to give patient consideration to the choices we are making, allowing God to speak in all things, because His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways higher than our ways. 

We have gotten into such a religious mindset that we quote scriptures left, right, and center, taking them out of context to defend a stand we have chosen to make, using it to make our conscious feel less convicted, but we need to realise that although we may not be making a stand against God, our neutral position of doing whatever we want to do, keeping God in our back pocket, is a direct interference with the plans and purposes of God. 

We are to allow the Word of God to produce within us a humility so that we might not find ourselves in our own entitlement, skipping law and order to gain status and provision for the building up of the kingdom of “self”. 

Do you have an empty space in your heart that no matter what you do, you can’t find something that truly fills it? That is the part of your being, built into you by God Himself.

Part of what the world system has ingrained in us is to always take things as a given and think that blessing will just be naturally ours, and because of this, we often don’t recognise the importance of having a birthright. We need to have a shift in our walk with God to press for the true blessings and inheritance, and not only be content with what is left. God did not create us to live a life on the bare minimum. God’s way of life is blessings like wine pouring off the mountains – and because we are seated with Him, this is our life too.

We are constantly being influenced by words, ideas, theologies, temporary and momentary desires and lusts from the system of the world. These are the things that promote the kingdom of darkness. They are designed to make you live in an anti-God way. These spiritual forces are after you and your life to influence you to do things that are setting you will against God. It is designed to prevent you from making an active choice to say, “I want to be spiritual”. 

Eleven distinct characteristics of the Laban syndrome:

  1. Credentials, Accomplishments, and Achievements
  2. Loves Money, Riches, and Wealth
  3. Status and Honour
  4. Savvy and Opportunity Sensitive
  5. Collecting and Using Information
  6. Neutral
  7. Favour for Personal Advantage
  8. Language
  9. Early Warning Systems
  10. Vengeful, Manipulative, and Demanding
  11. Tactics

The first blessing that he received was from the Heavenly Father. The second blessing Abraham received was a blessing of his future. Abraham’s third blessing that he received was a blessing of identity change that was eternal and spoke of the resurrected Christ. If we obey God, we are setting ourselves up for alignment of blessing. 

  1. The Blessing of the Father: This is about the eternal Heavenly Father that’s listening to the words in a man’s mouth and as he speaks these words out under the anointing and the mantle of Almighty God, the whole of eternity takes note of those words and all the angels that are in Heaven and Earth and are at the service of mankind, are then activated to make it come to pass. Without the blessing of a spiritual father in your life, you cannot have the rights that God has already allotted to you. There is no source of life without a father. 
  2. The Blessing of the Future: You receive the blessing of the future when you receive the blessing of your father. This blessing refers to your assignment, which is your charge from God, a responsibility, and your purpose. The source of life has the ability to frame your future. It is in receiving the blessing of the father that your future can be framed and you can receive the blessing of the future. You will only be able to step out into your purpose when you have recognition of who your father is. 
  3. The Blessing of Identity Change: In this blessing of identity change, God sets you free from who you were and blesses you with a new identity – old things have passed away and all things have become new. This is a renewing of your identity. This is about a whole new identity that allows you to walk in a new future. 

The very first time I even heard of the teaching of plantedness was after God took me for Himself. I often thought that I was doing right by God by simply going to church, but after this revelation came to me, it formed within me a conviction that you cannot say, “I’m a believer”, and not say, “I am planted”. We see in Psalm 1 the characteristics of a planted person: 

  1. They are blessed
  2.  They do not follow the advice, plans or purposes of the ungodly
  3. They do not stand submissive to and inactive in the path of sinners
  4. They do not sit down to relax and rest where the mockers gather
  5. Their delight and desire are in the law of the Lord, which is the law of love
  6. They habitually meditate, ponder on, and study this law of love by day and by night
  7.  They are tended by the streams of Living Water
  8. They bring forth fruit in the right season
  9. They do not fade or wither
  10. Everything they do prospers and comes to maturity. 

We somehow think that being a good person makes us a Christian or a believer, but that is the furthest thing from the Truth. We can only grow by the Word of the specific messenger God has called us to. Many times in our lives, we think, “Why is nothing changing?”. Well, as seen in the previous section, you can only get the blessing of the father when you are planted in a place and there is a witness of the divine alignment to that spiritual father, that people, and that local church. It is within this conviction and revelation of WHO your spiritual father is, that you position yourself for the blessing of the father. 

You cannot, however, get the blessing of your future or for an identity change if you do not first have the blessing of your father – both your Heavenly Father and your spiritual father. That is why we stay the same. It is easy to be fooled into thinking that we are changing because many of us don’t know that we live in a body, we have a soul, and we are a spirit being. We mistake the soul for the spirit, thinking that because we are developing in our intellect, or our emotions, or our thinking, that we are maturing, but we are actually just becoming super souls, not disciples. The only way our lives will ever change is when we become planted – we unlock our destiny, our calling, our assignment, and our ministry – it’s our wealthy place, our laughing place, our blessing place, our breaking free from Laban place. 

God must be the greatest desire of your heart, and He must be your life. God wants to bring divine connections into your life, but He cannot do that unless you are positioned. We need that assemblage of these specific important people that God has aligned us with on our ancient path, for God’s destiny to unfold in our lives. God wants to bring us increase by the people with whom we associate with. Being planted in the House of the Lord is being set in place for His blessings because the right position brings possession. The church is not a building. The church is the vehicle that God uses to bring His purposes, desires, and plans into the earth. The outcome of your destiny depends on your spiritual leader and receiving your inheritance.

Many of us have a Pharisee heart, and we don’t even know it. Pharisees were often depicted as being legalistic and focused on external rituals, sometimes clashing with Jesus and his teachings. The name “Pharisee” is thought to mean “separated” or “distinct”.  

How does this relate to me? When we have served God for a while and we start to get the hang of things, we often become prideful in our discipleship, becoming just like the Pharisees, judging others, and becoming religious. 

The definite characteristic of a disciple is one who follows the Lord with all of their heart. However, your level of consecration can transition to a sense of pride in your performance. You begin to think that your understanding of doctrine is superior, yet in that very thought, the seed of pride is birthed. A Pharisee heart always wants to be right and prove others wrong when it comes to the Bible. They will place their doctrine above relationships. 

The god of self is a big god. If you don’t think that you were born on Earth for God’s reason, then you are already in the Laban syndrome because then you are already so self-absorbed that you don’t know that God called you to this Earth for a purpose that He has in mind, not for yourself. You are about your credentials, your accomplishments, and your achievements, and they are potentially the main source of influence that you trade with in your life.

We see in Psalm 139 that when God created us, He made us so intimately, and ever since, He has been so intimately aware of us. It is foolish of us to think that we are here just by coincidence. Everything that we are and everything about our lives is deliberately and purposefully that way, either by God’s creation or by the world’s infiltration. It is funny for me that God would even end this Psalm with the following words, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me, and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” It is as if God knew that even though He intricately made and formed us, somehow, we would find ourselves in places of who we are, allowing the world to infiltrate our beings, and He even gave us a solution, knowing that would happen – it even happened with Adam and Eve. It all comes back to God. It all comes back to our hearts. The scripture says that where you treasure is, there will your heart be also – but when we read that from the back to the front, we can see that the position of our hearts shows us what we treasure and what we value. It’s no coincidence for me that God would tell us to ask Him to search our hearts. He does not want the things of this world and their effect on us to be the things we find and put value in – and a lot of it has to do with your money and what you do and don’t do with it. 

Tithing is not about the law; it’s about faith, and it’s about your heart before God. If you are not a tither, your whole walk with God is in unbelief. If you are not tithing, you will ultimately be fruitless. Although many wealthy Christians in the church seem to have it all together, they are actually just masters at hiding the chaos in their lives. They are superficial and live in pretense – often even remaining neutral towards the ways of God in the church. When people are going after worldly pleasures and they are pursuing their dreams with evil ways of getting them, chaos follows.

We need to live free from Laban. Believer, you have your covenant with God. You have words, you have faith, you have love, and you have wisdom. All of the things that defeat the spirit of Laban in your life. If your heart is for God and you are ensnared by Laban, God is honour bound to set you free. 

God is faithful and just to forgive our sins, AND FORGET THEM, when we confess them to Him. But the enemy wants to steal from us by always taking us back to our failures and reminding us of past things, bringing back hurt and distrust so that he can keep us in the process of defeat and away from victory.

Jesus has redeemed us from the system of the world. It’s a lie that we have to toil for Laban to survive, but we can only be free if we walk in the rights of our birth in Christ Jesus. If you truly get a revelation of this, you will understand that your life has completely changed forever. You have every right to live like Jesus lived on Earth because His power is in you. Although God lives inside of you, you cannot yet live our all of who He is until transformation happens in you. This transformation is the wrestling that you have with God. 

Jesus’ Name is just as much mine as it is His. How can I say that? Well, the Father created me in His image and gave me the same authority. I am seated in the same seat that Jesus is seated in at the right hand of the Father. Our callings are given in Him; therefore, the only way we can get them is by entering into Who He is. This is what seeking first His kingdom is. This is my service for His Kingdom. It is only once we are found in the Holy Spirit that we begin entering into Who Jesus is and in so doing entering into what He has for us. Being in Jesus makes me walk, talk, and speak like the Father. 

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