A passion for His fame!

Before you start reading this article, I strongly encourage you to stop reading and reach out to God in a passionate prayer and ask Him: Father, please speak to my heart through this article and change my life in what you would like it to be, for the glory of Your Name. If you have done that, you are now ready to read. Just keep your spiritual ears open as you read and hear God’s voice as He gently speaks to you about this subject and areas where you need to change. Let’s go on with the teaching now.

One of the revelations that really grabbed my heart, regarding the TV ministry, as well as in general, was the need for us as Christians to be passionate about the glory and the spreading of the fame of God’s Name.

THE BEGINNING OF MY PASSION FOR HIS NAME

I loved the Lord for many years prior to what I will share below and I had a passion for souls and for people in general. But it was only from a certain time in my walk with God that God put a strong passion particularly for His Name to be lifted high, His fame spread throughout the world and His works revealed to people in order that they believe.

I was in a meeting with Carlos Anacondia from Argentina and he shared a story how their intercessors started to pray and claim the media for Christ in their city. As a result of their prayers, one night, when one of their crusade was televised on a less popular channel, all other major channels in the city had technical faults and could not air around 7 pm at night! The only channel people could watch that evening, in prime time, was the channel that was broadcasting live their crusade.

As a result, people became aware of the crusade, of God’s healing power and many left their homes and went to the crusade grounds, some even in their pijamas, because they did not want to miss out and wanted prayer for healing. Many people got healed and saved that night!

This was the beginning of the seed for a TV ministry in my heart. Until then I did not believe in the power of TV ministry, I thought it was too impersonal and not very effective – till I heard this.

HE DESERVES A LARGE PLATFORM

I then started to pray for the same thing – God, give us the media, we claim it for Christ! Thoughts started to form in my heart regarding this and a burden was born in my heart:

Why should the devil have the biggest voice to spread his thoughts and his evil? Since God made the earth, wouldn’t it be logical that God should have the biggest voice on the earth, so His message is given to the whole earth? Shouldn’t we fight for the glory and the fame of God’s Name on the earth?

We pray: ‘Hallowed by Thy Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:9)

From this prayer, we can detect that God’s desire is that His name will be glorified. If His kingdom should come on earth as it is in heaven and His will is to be done on earth just like in heaven, it makes sense that He should have a wide and large platform to reveal His good news and to show His mighty works on the earth for all to see.

I started then to ask God to give me a passion for His Name to be glorified, to be lifted high, to be great before the world.  This prayer was answered and I ended up having a burning zeal for His Name to be known, glorified and respected by all.

I felt I wanted to do anything He wanted me to do, in order to achieve this. My name did not matter anymore, I wanted His to be lifted up, I did not mind being in obscurity in order to make His Name famous. Big name ministries did not impress me anymore, there was no place for competition with His Name and the glory of men became unimpressive.

PASSION FOR HIS FAME – WHAT HE WANTS AND SYMPTOMS OF OUR FAILURE IN THIS

He then directed me to some really powerful Scriptures in Malachi chapter 1. In this chapter God deals with His people’s lack of respect and honor for His Name and the symptoms that showed this. God is trying to reason with them to bring them back to a place where they will ‘hallow’ – treat as sacred – His Name.

Let’s have a look at the Scriptures that reflect this:

“A son honours his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And you say, Wherein have we despised Your name?” (v6)

God starts by appealing to His position in His relationship with us: Father and Master. A father usually deserves to be honoured and a master to be feared. Here He unpacks His expectations on what attitudes He wants us to have towards Him, and what He feels He deserves:

1. Honor
2. Fear

He is then concluding that when honor and fear is missing among His people, He is despised.

SYMPTOMS OF WORSHIP NOT PLEASING TO THE LORD

 1. WORSHIPPING WITH UNCLEAN HEARTS AND LIVES

We can see from the passage above that His people didn’t quite feel the same way about it, they were blind to their own sin and in their mind they were treating Him well. Yet He is the one who defines the terms and He goes on unpacking this to them and opening their eyes to see their failure. Let’s look at this:

“You offer defiled food on My altar,
But say,
‘In what way have we defiled You?’

By saying,
‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’
And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice,
Is it not evil?
And when you offer the lame and sick,
Is it not evil?

So what is God saying here? He is unhappy because they are offering sub-standard sacrifices of worship. How does this reflect to us as Christian believers? Defiled worship is what God is referring to, worshipping God, coming to Him with prayers, praise and worship with unclean hearts, hearts where we still love sin and hold unto it. God says in Psalms that:

“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear (me)” Psalm 66:18

God is saying through all of these verses that He expects us to be worshippers in spirit and in TRUTH. Truth is when you have nothing to hide, sin, by its nature, is anything we would feel ashamed of, anything sinful that we would not feel comfortable to lay bare before other believers. If we feel we have to hide it, chances are it is a secret sin and it is not truth, if you feel you need to deceive others about it.

Another way to despise God is to complain and feel that He is asking too much of you and it is too hard:

“But you profane it, In that you say,
‘The table of the Lord is defiled;
And its fruit, its food, is contemptible.’
You also say,
‘Oh, what a weariness!’
And you sneer at it,”
Says the Lord of hosts. (verse 12-13)

If you can see in the passage above, It is not God saying that the table of the Lord is defiled and what it is on it is contemptible, it is the people, the priests of God, who were saying this!

To relate this to the New Testament church, God is saying:

2. UNGRATEFULNESS AND DISCONTENTMENT with God’s blessings

We don’t like what God is giving to us (the fruit, food from His table was contemptible in their eyes), it is not good enough, we want more, better blessings.

3. COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PRICE WE NEED TO PAY TO SERVE HIM

” You also say, ‘Oh, what a WEARINESS!’ And you sneer at it,” Says the Lord of hosts. (verse 13)

This gets reflected in us complaining about His requirements of us in His service, how hard it is and how burdensome it is. It is desiring a life of comfort where not much is requested of you verses willingness to suffer for His sake in doing His will. It’s loving your comfort zone more than loving God.

God Himself says His commands are not burdensome and His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The path is difficult and narrow and there is suffering in denying ourselves and opposition from the devil and the world, but He empowers us to do hard and difficult things by His grace in such a way that they do not become burdensome, hard and heavy on us.

Their attitude is in direct contrast with the commandment of the Lord which says:

‘Serve the Lord WITH GLADNESS’ (Psalm 100:2)

 GOD’S DISPLEASURE WITH UNCLEAN WORSHIP

Then He goes on to make a parallel between God and how we treat people:

Offer it then to your governor!
Would he be pleased with you? verse 8

He is appealing to our sense of respect for fellow human beings in authority to emphasize our need to not get over familiar with Him to the point of disrespect and slackness in our worship.

He is then going on to say that He cannot accept this kind of worship:

I have no pleasure in you,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“Nor will I accept an offering from your hands. verse 10

The solution to all of this is repentance:

“But now entreat God’s favor,
That He may be gracious to us.” verse 9

GOD’S HEART CRY FOR THE FAME OF HIS NAME

And now it comes the cry of God’s heart on how He desires His name to become famous in the world, via a display of holiness in His people:

“For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down,
My name shall be great among the Gentiles;
In every place incense shall be offered to My name,
And a pure offering;
For My name shall be great among the nations,”
Says the Lord of hosts.” verse 11

See the emphasis above in verse 11, that His Name shall be great NOT JUST AMONG HIS PEOPLE, BUT AMONG THE NATIONS.

His people are the ones who need to serve God with purity and be the ones to actively make His Name famous among the nations. He doesn’t just want us in the church to know about how great He is, but He wants us to display it to the world in a pure way, that will not cause others to despise His Name.

This is one of the reason we do not allow fundraising directly on the channel – we don’t do it, and we don’t allow any ministry to do it. There are so many dodgy ways of fundraising and so much manipulation that have caused God’s Name to be mocked among the nations.

I know there are pure ways to raise funds for God’s work, but once you open the gate and offer the freedom for this practice, it is very hard to control what others do and very hard to control HOW MUCH they do it. Some programs have become half about fundraising and half God’s Word.

A lot of people in the world have been given the impression that Christian tele-evangelists are all about money and this has turned many away from God, so God’s directive to us has been to not allow it at all.

Let’s hear another one of God’s cries about how His Name should be viewed among the nations:

“But cursed be the deceiver
Who has in his flock a male,
And takes a vow,
But sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished—
FOR I AM A GREAT KING,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“And MY NAME SHALL BE FEARED AMONG THE NATIONS.” Verse 14

God is sharing His disappointment here with His people who bring to Him sacrifices that are unclean, not befitting His position of being a GREAT KING. He is basically saying: you despise Me, you treat me like I am no one important, you devalue Me in your eyes and in the eyes of the nations by the way you carry out your worship in your day to day life. You promise you will serve Me and will love Me with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, yet you don’t keep your promise, you deceive Me!

And again, His heart cry comes through this verse:

“And MY NAME SHALL BE FEARED AMONG THE NATIONS.” Verse 14

What this is leading us to believe is that our worship will affect others in choosing to honor and fear God or not. It is saying: others will see the way you worship God by the way you live in your day to day life and will impact them in deciding whether to fear and honor Me or not.

Just like God said to David, after He committed adultery and murder:

“BY THIS DEED YOU HAVE GIVEN OCCASION TO THE ENEMIES OF THE LORD TO BLASPHEME” 2 Samuel 12:14

And just as the apostle Paul describes us:

 You are our epistle written in our hearts, KNOWN AND READ BY ALL MEN;  clearly YOU ARE AN EPISTLE OF CHRIST.” (2 Cor 3:2-3)

CONCLUSION

God is teaching us through the above that, because He is a great King, because He is our Father and our Master, He deserves and expects from us to worship Him with our lives in a way that brings honor and fear for His Name and makes His Name great amongst all men.

He explains the symptoms in our lives that show our failure in this regard, which are: unclean worship while holding unto sin in our hearts, ungratefulness and discontentment and complaining about the price we need to pay to serve Him.

He wants us to be passionate and not passive about how His Name is viewed in the world – among the nations – and to do something about it. This is our aim through television ministry, to make His Name famous among the nations, through pure programming represented by pure servants of God and to make His Name great by displaying the power of God through testimonials.

Are you actively passionate for His Name and His fame? Where do you need to repent? What can you do to make His Name great among the nations? Can you start by writing down and sharing your testimony? If you use the contact form on this website, you can send us your testimony and we will be able to display it on this website for all to hear the mighty acts of God that He did in your life.

If you can film your testimony with a digital HD video camera and a clip microphone, or if you already have a testimony on video, we can air it for you on TV in India and Philippines to millions of people.

As people read and relate to your story, God’s fame spreads across the earth and people will have more reasons to believe in Him as THE GREAT KING!

Looking forward to hearing from you on how you are planning to put this message in practice!

God bless you,

Marilena Fackerell