Beautiful Beginnings from the East

Beautiful Beginnings from the East

Barbrah Orchard

Beautiful Beginnings from the East

Copyright © 2015 Barbrah Orchard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN:978-1-742845-53-1 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

DEDICATION

In the memory of my loving, supportive dad Mzee late Silver Mugobera Gimanga. He was my role model of wisdom. The powerful words he planted in me contributed a lot to who I am today and will be remembered for eternity.

And most of all, to Jesus Christ my Lord and Saviour, through my best friend, the Holy Spirit, together we managed to finish this project.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my wonderful husband Shane Orchard, who un-conditionally has continued to love, support and believe in the call God put in me.

To Fruitful Mission Centre Church in Uganda, who have always encouraged, supported and allowed me to pastor them. You guys are amazing.

To Agape Church Family and Apostle Phill Spence for his knowledge and devoted support of Establishing Fruitful Mission Ministries in Australia.

To Apostle David and Dee McDonald for discovering me and their support in coming to Australia which took my ministry to the next level.

To my spiritual parents, pastors John and Jessica Wandera, who I was honoured to serve under for a number of years and through their great ministry, God allowed me to come to Australia.

To two of the most loving and supportive great leaders and friends I know, Pastors Alister and Lois Lowe of Lighthouse Care Ministries, who spent hours on editing this book and made it readable. God bless you.

And finally to my fellow fighters, the Pastors of Budadiri East, my home village. Pastors of Sironko District, Pastors of Mbale District, Pastors of Kampala and outlying Districts who are great men and women of God. These men and women have endured and pushed, Uganda to the level of where it is today in the Kingdom of God.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. WALKING ANTI-CLOCKWISE

Obstacles of Revival

The Source

Competition and Strife between the Leaders

Greed

Pride

Zeal

2. BEAUTIFUL BEGINNINGS

How do we set Beautiful Beginnings?

The Voice of Jesus

3. BUDADIRI EAST PASTORS

Why did we choose This Church?

Hatred

Division

Greed

Pride

It’s Never Too Late

Mountain Timber

Self –Seeking

Law and Grace

Who is Leading You to the Promised Land?

The Source of Money

The Fear of God

The Blessing of Esau and the Blessing of Jacob

4. MONEY

Casting Your Bread upon Many Waters

Everyone Needs Money

Fighting for One Another

Giving by Faith

Begging

If You Don’t do it Now Then You Will Never be Able to Help

The cost of partnering with God

Revival is in you

5. REPENTANCE

Plumbline

Seven

6. LORD, WE COME TO YOU, NOT, I COME TO YOU

Sharing the Anointing

Sharing Burdens

Why a Dowry is paid

Building Churches

7. THE LATTER GLORY OF THE LATTER HOUSE

Command Your Son to Work

A Woman Fights for Her Son to Have a Second Chance at Life

8. GOD COMES AT LAST

When the Latter Gory is Present Even Our Governments Will Turn Back to God

Signet Ring

9. IDI AMIN STARVED PEOPLE

The Glory Can’t Be Contained In One Place

10. THE LATTER GLORY FROM THE EAST

The characteristics of the people from East:

Donkeys and Horses

11. THE COST AND THE CHALLENGES

12. THE VISION FOR THE BUDADIRI EAST PASTORS

Ezekiel’s Ministry and Deeper Insight

A Vessel

A Servant

A Friend

A Child

The Difference between a Holy Spirit Led Church and a Church That Depends on Their Knowledge

13. THE LAST PERSON

Not All Last Persons Win the Race what’s Gone Wrong?

INTRODUCTION

When I gave my life to Christ and joined a local church, I noted that the term revival was the language of every Pentecostal Church. As a new Christian, I had lots of imaginations about revival since I didn’t have any idea of what it meant.

Surprisingly enough, even the neighbouring nations like Kenya and others, also predicted that revival would start from their churches.

Pondering a lot about where exactly revival was to start from, I realised that it was not this enormous picture everyone was waiting for. God’s desire is every church to turn back to Him and start walking in humility and obedience to His word.

Everyone has a different concept of Revival. It became a favourite song of many churches worldwide. However, the challenge remains, who is worthy to start revival and how?

The promise of revival belongs to everyone, just as all athletes are cheered on to win a race, but, the decider is the finishing line. Many people are stuck in the waiting mode, not considering that every waiting period has an end.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

God didn’t say that revival would start from heaven and then circulate the earth. It must first start in us and then spread out through us. Jesus called the twelve and discipled them, before He sent them out as apostles to the ends of the world with the gospel of the kingdom.

In the past, we have seen many people claim to have held revival meetings, but because they themselves weren’t revived, much concentration was put on building names other than God’s kingdom. We cannot expect to change others if we ourselves are not changed. We can only give what we have. Once we change, then we can become role models of revival to the world.

You can read about the pastors of Budadiri East in the foothills of Sironko Valley districts in Uganda, who decided to come together as one voice called by God and commissioned by Jesus Christ, irrespective of their different ministry names.

What God is doing through them as a result of staying in God’s presence is enormous. After realising that they had all heard the same call and that they couldn’t get anywhere until they decided to unite their various callings into one common objective.

Looking at what I witnessed God do through them, I decided to call this book Beautiful Beginnings from the East.

May you be blessed by God as you continued to read through this book? Amen.

CHAPTER ONE

WALKING ANTI-CLOCKWISE

1Chronicles 16:30

Tremble before Him, all the earth. The world also is firmly established, it shall not be moved.

Daniel 10:10

Suddenly, a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my knees and on the palms of my hands.

Children rely on their parents for everything. When they need anything, they look to their parents. When they stumble over obstacles and get upset, they run to their parents. But when they mature and start work, they start thinking of how they can live independently. In fact some children, when they grow, develop negative attitudes towards their parents. They forget the nappy changes of their parents. Such children, when they leave home, don’t look back. Irrespective of that, however negative they become, how powerful they get or how old they are, they always remain children to somebody. When people ask the number of children someone has, they don’t ask of how many doctors, lawyers, prime ministers etc., but they ask the number of children. The same is true with God. He is a Father. It doesn’t matter how powerful and famous someone may become, He wants that person still to rely on Him.

In most cases, when we seek God to bless us, we are willing to do whatever God requires of us spending time in prayer and reading His word. But soon as we are blessed, the blessings crowd out our appearing before God. We find ourselves too busy travelling here and there and doing other things. We have become gamblers in the kingdom instead of being heirs of the kingdom. God is not looking how busy we are for Him, but He wants us to be busy with Him. He wants us to remain His children forever.

You find many people, especially young preachers, saying, God has called them to start a revival. They think revival is about roaming around in disobedience, quoting scriptures to people rather than humbling themselves at the feet of Jesus.

God has called every single person to start a revival. However, revival can be achieved if we learn to walk anti-clockwise in the presence of God everyday so that He himself may lead us clockwise. To live anti-clockwise is to tremble at His presence while turning back to Him every second of the way.

The reason we are still waiting for revival is everyone is striving to go clockwise in our own strength without God’s guidance. As everyone is engaged in striving forward to bring revival, God is also saying, Come on, don’t miss the point, revival is between me and you.

Our perception for revival has caused us to reason how to solve the puzzle, at the same time serving out of expired seasons.

It has got to the state that the more Revival has been preached, taught and prophesied, the more the church of Christ has become stubborn and complacent. While the church is being defeated in these areas, the devil is making a stand advancing against the church in every area.

Looking at the Church from a spiritual view point, is like a boa constrictor that coils itself around its prey stifling the life out of it. The devil has choked the Church from understanding the true purpose of God.

In the eighties up to mid-nineties before the revival massage became popular, people had God’s fear and reverence. You could look at a reverend or pastor and see godliness in them. You could walk through a church and feel the holiness of God’s presence. Today things have changed, revival has produced more thugs and robbers in the form of sheep that desire to live clockwise lives. Revival has also given people the freedom and the right to live any way they choose without being convicted of sin.

We are living in a modern world, where everything is tap and go. It is instant. Life has been simplified for almost everyone, but on top of that, the enemy has also modernised his tricks to fit in the church.

Today we are competing to live modern lives but someone born tomorrow will see this in the past. Life is so demanding. Modernity is very good, but if not lived with godly aims, it will trap many to turn away from God.

To live anti-clockwise life enables us to find God and have fellowship with him. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. Everything in this world comes and goes but the word of God stands forever. It’s like a public transport transferring people from one destination to another. In order to enjoy God’s ride, we have to sit facing Jesus. Let’s not be confounded with worldly things like we are here forever, but use the world to accomplish the purposes of our God who called us.

Obstacles of Revival

Revival is God being thoughtful of His people that they may repent and turn from their wicked ways so that He may forgive them, heal the land and show himself great.

In Genesis 8:21 we see God speaking in His heart never again to curse the ground for man’s sake, though the imaginations of man’s heart are evil from his youth. And He said He would never again destroy every living thing as He did. When we continue reading the chapter we find that after God saying those words, He made a covenant and made the rain bow to be a sign.

It’s clear that God is a God of covenant and He keeps His word. That’s why we see however perverse and wicked the earth has become, God has never destroyed it. Instead, He lets the enemy increase bondages on people, with the proviso He will free them when they turn back to Him. People ask questions like, "If God is powerful, and why does He allow the devil to control His people? The devil has access to control people but when they turn back to God He sets them free.

Jeremiah 29: 10

For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place.

The place God has prepared for those who turn to Him is, His presence. Every moment we come back into the presence of God we get refreshed, restored or revived and when we stay there we become sources of revival.

The Source

I come from the surrounding region of Lake Victoria where the source of the Nile is located in Uganda. I see many explorers and tourists come from all over the world to see the source that produces the mighty river Nile. The River Nile is a blessing to many nations and has a biblically historic background.

When you become the source of revival, you don’t make posters and advertisements for people to come and be a part of it. They will just flood in every time they hear about you because you carry the presence of God.

When you become the source of revival, you will be like a rotten carcase whose smell attracts all sorts of insects, birds and animals from a distance.[Positive – honey]

The biggest challenge the church has is that it has been easy to return to the presence of God but very hard to stay in it. It’s been easy to call down revival while failing to maintain it. It is simple for many to become Christians but not many have understood and obtained their Christian rights and inheritance.

I say this because I come from a background of a nation that saw and witnessed revival and the presence of God. As a nation we sought and called out to God until He came down. The fame of His presence in Uganda was heard all over the world. Our neighbouring countries were so amazed at what God was doing in Uganda. The favour of God covered our nation so specifically that some people could sense what was happening from the borders and the airport.

One time I met a Jewish man and when I told him that I was from Uganda, he said to me, are you from this small country that started a new religion spreading over the whole of Africa like fire? I was so amazed at the way the man spoke about Uganda.

Besides that, as time went by, the move of God began to subside. Christians lost the respect and the trust they carried in our nation. They began to be seen as thieves and all other ungodly-like images. The question is, where did we go wrong?

It’s easier to know and remember when you are turning back to God than when you walk away from Him. That’s why God wants us to walk anti-clockwise to maintain fellowship with Him while He cares for our future responsibilities.

I believe we lost the presence of God because after seeking and finding God, we stopped going back to Him and started focusing on how to acquire things.

King Saul started out with God. He had God’s favour and presence before he went into battle. But when he arrived and saw a great deal of plunder, He ignored God’s voice and traded it with his lustful eyes, ending up being rejected from being a King.

The bible says the voice of a king commands. Everybody does qualify to Kingship level. The downfall starts once a person forgets the purpose of God and starts focusing on acquiring material possessions. Their Kingship is traded from the voice of God with perishable things, just as Esau traded his birthright with food.

Once we turn back to God’s presence, He lifts us above to become the light and the salt