The joy of social media is that as soon as I got home last night, President Zuma’s decision to replace David van Rooyen with Pravin Gordhan only four days after appointing him as the new minister of finance was all over most of my networks.
Rooyen was set to succeed previous Finance Minister, Nhlanhla Nene, who was unceremoniously removed from his post last week Wednesday. The minister was dumped because (according to most analysts) of “doggedly sticking to fiscal discipline and refusing to budge on many of the president’s risky investment plans.”
The timing of it all has sent the country into shock and the rand (the South African currency) has since been devalued by over 5% resulting in an R11bn loss by the country since Nene was fired.
There are many things that I’d like for my country and at the top of the list would be for it to be run/ruled fairly, for justice to be upheld and for us to thrive because we walk and make decisions according to the principles of God.
My heart breaks not only for my country but also for the state of the world right now. A lack of godly principle has led us down a road of disaster, but Luke 18:8a says (Passion Translation), “God will give swift justice to those who don’t give up. So be ever praying, ever expecting, just like the widow with the judge…”
1 Timothy 2 also talks about praying for our leaders: (vs.1-3), “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior…”
This means that no matter what happens it is still not okay to ‘bash our nation’s leaders with reckless abandon’ because it is directly opposed to God’s views. The apostle Paul is basically saying that we need to pray for our leaders so that we can live in a stable society that allows us to focus on worshipping God.
Right now our prayer as South African’s should be for Zuma first – that God would speak to him and lead him. Crying out to God for the ‘justice’ of having him overthrown or removed is not what we are meant to be praying – even though we all feel that a new president would be great right about now.
This principle filters into every part of our lives concerning our relationship with and response to authority (our parents, our bosses etc…).
Actually, the most important act any of us can ever make can ever make when responding to authority is to say ‘yes’ to and give the seat of the throne of our lives over to Jesus. Before we do this, we are the ruling party, and we are inevitably leading the ‘country’ of our lives towards destruction. All of those bad habits that we collect and bad decisions that we make along the way add up and go a long way to evaluating the true gifting inside of us, never allowing us to truly flourish in the fullest of our God-given capacity (we see this happening in our country and many others right now).
Friend, if you feel like you understand and may relate to what I’m saying, I invite you to click on the black banner below so that you can hear a bit more! Don’t go into the new year without knowing that you can be the best that you can be, and that means giving all authority to Jesus!