ARE YOU THE ONE WE ARE WAITING FOR - BRIAN KAGORO

[Music] good morning fearless the world is a kingdom which consists of many kingdoms and the house of god the church is a kingdom every kingdom is run on the basis of certain principles it is not possible for you to achieve any authority to achieve any power to achieve any influence in a kingdom unless you understand its rules or you defy its rules so i work largely on five things i'm a lawyer by training but i also work on issues of leadership development strategy i have a passion for music and worship and i also have my

hands in business so i work with governments trying to help with the formulation of policies but i also work with citizens trying to get them to speak up on issues that affect them i began my activism as a young student and at the time all we wanted to do because we were young and angry was to make sure that the government is accountable i've come to address you today on the subject how to be brave but let me start off before i get carried away and just link to the story of david that was shared

on the first day the bible tells us if you read in first samuel chapter 17 that david was just a mere shepherd boy and non-entity so bravery is not the preserve of experts you can be a no body and still kill giants tear lions apart and bears apart even with your bare hands i wanted to suggest that unless you understand the following things about david and the following processes you'll not understand anything that i say number one that david grew to understand and to know god and he became intimate with god and god's feelings so

david knew what god felt about certain things and god david was not afraid to be vulnerable before god that's why he composed worship songs can you imagine alone looking after a few sheep who are you writing the songs to do you think sheep understand songs but that is how you get prepared your moment of shining happens in obscurity many of you have wanted to shine before your obscure moments of preparation and what i've learned in my own life is what is done when no one sees is what becomes authentic when people are looking so so

half of what i learned reading things is i learned that no one changes the world without an idea number one christians are lazy to think we think that faith means we should not think but there is nothing that makes a person of faith not think the bible says my mind my thoughts are higher than your thoughts and my ways are higher than your ways but it also says we have the mind of christ and what is the mind of christ the bible says that christ was god and that means god was all-knowing omniscient god was

omnipresent and all-powerful there is something in your thoughts if applied to the world around you has the capacity to transform it and let me tell you why so i began i stopped despising my own thoughts no matter how little they are why i realized that every global idea was once a local idea the guy who made the light bulb started off in his own garden the guy who made the telephone started in their own garden the software developer started somewhere in a garage and so if you have a garage and you if you have a

head it is possible to transform any sphere in your life so i i started i started respecting my own thoughts because the source of the thoughts were not me because the bible says i have the mind of christ so i started voicing out i was so proud and i thought i was afraid pride sometimes makes you shut up because you think everyone is talking rubbish pride sometimes make you judge everything everyone is saying pride sometimes makes you not show up if it is not you speaking but god speaking through you what are you afraid of

so in the life of david david goes to see his brothers i'll be very quick about it the first thing he asks is what shall be done for the man who kills this man goliath and the bible says that they say to him he shall be given many riches and he will be made the king's son-in-law number two he says to his brother is there not a cause right number three he asks who is this uncircumcised philistine who defies the armies of the lord of hosts now every challenge in your life whether it's a giant

or immediate or a flying thing or a fear every challenge in your life requires you to ask those three questions is there not a cause so i realized for me my cause was fighting injustice and i began in my country with others and we're just young kids out of university and we started when we're at university but it is when we left university that we understood the power of faith so we started standing up for certain things and you know when you stand up sometimes the state invites you to be their guest so in my

short life i ran a radio station called voice of the people radio and it was bombed in 2002. by bomb i don't mean they threw a petrol bomb they bumped the whole thing there are many things that i've done and it is not these things because if i keep sharing these things you may be impressed by the activity and not understand the principles okay number one you have to have a cause ask yourself what is the cause but a cause could become just mere anger mere activity unless if you couple it with your faith the

bible says without faith it is impossible to please god that means a jihadist can have a cause that means a xenophobe or a hater can have a cause but if you're a child of god your cause has to be informed by your faith and your values is there not a cause and what can i do by faith faith now therefore faith is the substance of things the evidence of things and what are those things you can't run a cause without a clear picture of what the better situation should look like it is not enough to

want to smash dictatorship because as i have learned in my own country you can remove a dictator what results is not democracy it's a vacuum that another evil man or woman will feel but the bible tells us that faith worketh through love [Music] and and the bible then tells us in first corinthians 13 love is what come and say it with me love is kind love is patient it suffers long it does not boast it's not vainglorious it does not seek its own and so on and so forth let me tell you kenya has no

problem with tribalism africa has no problem of tribalism kenya has a problem with love why because the bible says there's neither jew nor greek male nor female in christ so if tribalism is still a problem in the church it is not the manifestation of the diversity of god's creativity in manifesting humanity that is the problem the problem is your interpretation of god's creative abilities how you made some tall and metallic black and others slim and brownish i i want you to understand this because in my own life i then decided that beyond being a christian

i was also a pan-africanist and i know that christians worry about this because they say uh we're a new creation a brand new man behold all things are passed away well for goodness sake your black skin is still there and try and go through the border you still encounter the problems associated with it do you get what i'm saying but my skin is not my badge because my identity is deeper so why did i become an africanist and it's important because i began to say when god wanted to do anything important he used africa if

you doubt me in the story of joseph in the bible when israel and god's plan of a nation could have been decimated god ensured that joseph was sold into slavery and ended up in africa and it was in africa that joseph lent the art of governance how to govern properly i don't know if i'm making sense when herod wanted to kill jesus in the first few years of his breath god knew that the best necessary school was in africa that's why i believe that jesus understood love so when jesus was about to be crucified when

jesus was about to be crucified no one else could carry the cross they needed an african man when the early church needed a revival they needed an ethiopian eunuch and one other african so that they could spread the message no i i haven't come to make you proud of africanness i've come to let you understand that your mission and geography are not separable but your identity and geography are not synonymous so let me explain that your identity is you are a born again christian spirit filled god loving right but your mission if you doubt me

in the book of the revelation of jesus christ chapter two and chapter three god himself who says there's only one church addresses emphasis and addresses the church at thiatera the church he was addressing a geographic church and speaking a universal message so you are not in africa by accident in kenya by accident in madara or korogosho by accident if you are there you better ask the question what global influence must i do from madari so i realized it didn't matter where i was born so i started doing things not for local but for global so

some of the things we started doing was creating models some of the things we started doing is getting together putting together ideas because those who have ideas run the world my people and can i see christians whose ideas have changed kenya here if you are here in this room your ideas have changed kenya have changed how governance has been done in kenya have changed how economics is done in kenya or how social protection is done in kenya or how church is done in kenya if your ideas haven't as yet influenced your passion and emotion or

your emotiveness is insufficient to do the will and the purpose of god so i learned a scripture which is ecclesiastics 9 15 that says there was a city which was besieged and then a poor and then what happened there was a poor wise man in the city who rendered advice and he was not remembered one of the challenges i found out is i had a lot of ideas and i have a comrade of mine here we had lots of ideas and we're always backing them from the sidelines trying to speak truth to power no no

no no i don't do that anymore you know why because it occurred to me that jesus said before he departed all power in heaven and earth is given to me i'm giving it to you there because they go ye therefore so which are the power there's i am the power i said i am the power you are the power you are sitting here some of you are more than the number of people that elected your mp and yet you spent two weeks trying to see your mp so one of the things i've learned in what

i do is you don't just mobilize voice you mobilize idea you mobilize platforms and you demand from power now it's not disrespect john the baptist said go and tell herod where was john the baptist he was in the wilderness go and tell you said john the baptist said go and tell herod but the second thing that john the baptist did is that he sent jesus a question that i would like you to answer with me in matthew chapter when he asked jesus a question are you the one or should we expect another now you don't

know how rude that is do you realize that when they were still in the womb the babies recognized each other and jumped for joy for each other luke chapter two do you realize that do you realize that it is john who baptized jesus john chapter 1 and said this is the son of god i saw heaven open and the spirit descended like a dove and he comes to matthew chapter 11. i don't know what he had smoked and he says go and ask him are you the one or should we expect another i was asked

that question by a friend of mine in my life are you the one or should we expect another jesus understood what john was asking he said go and tell john the blind sea the lame walk the death hear the dumb speak jesus was saying i'm doing my mission i'm doing my vision and there are results there's fruitfulness i realized that i was talking a lot and there was no fruit i was being quoted in newspapers i was being quoted some of you are on twitter a lot you're talking you've been followed but there's no influence

there's no change there's no transformation are you the one or should we expect another so so my friends i learned that any man or woman who wants to influence anything has to stand strong on their values being walk will last you for a short time because as those of us who are above 45 what was work during our days looks tired now okay but let me tell you something that you need to know authenticity will last for a long time now if you are not the authentic version of yourself you can be walk all you

want until you are woking so i learned to be authentic if you don't drink don't drink in order to belong if you don't smoke don't smoke in order to belong if you don't womanize don't womanize in order to belong if you don't swear don't swear in order to belong right you can look nerdy but there was a nerd in the bible called john the baptist who went out into the wilderness was not up to fashion because they were leaning a nice clothes those days he was wearing leather have you ever tried to wear leather in

45 degrees celsius temperatures and he was eating locusts and honey and the bible says crowds came from the city to him crowds will follow authenticity so many young people don't understand this you can have an instant hit so i like david i was made a partner in a law firm at the age of 26 or 25. there were three of us made partners from a self a guy called nick radnick who ran something called liquid telecoms and two other guys so i felt very special if you're a partner in a big law firm at the

age of 25 there are people who had been my tutors at university who were not partners in law firms david moved from being a shepherd boy immediately into gibeah into souls court he was promoted in one day and then afterwards the persecution came saul who he had been playing music for and demons were leaving was trying to javelin him he had not done anything wrong i started suffering the sort of jealousy that you find in the marketplace i come to say to you that early promotion should teach you that the road is going to be

long if you've made your billion early please prepare for the rest of the road in life there are seasons cold season hot season rainy season and so on and so forth the one thing i learnt in morocco is that be like a tree that changes its leaves with each season but its roots are never never changed right so what are your roots or what your roots are will determine how you perform in adversity how you to perform in the midst of authority and how you perform when david left saul's court he was running away he

was in a cave at a place called adullum if you study the bible you understand it's a salty place right it's a bitter place and david was looking for friends and followers on facebook and on twitter and the bible tells us that those who were in debt discontented and almost depre depressed right distress god gave me distressed people and i was stressed with god because i was used like david to hanging out with cool people i used to have a good job and i won't say where and ministers would phone me i would meet with

heads of state and then my job changed and my wife who was here yesterday says sweetie what happened to all your friends because the only people that came to our house were asking for money or they were asking for and the lord began to tell me something david understood that the people who are written off later in the bible as the mighty men of david were made in a cave when he himself was depressed your depression your loss your rejection your fear is the premise for you to harvest god's talent for your life let me

tell you something the bible says the righteous as bold as a lion it's not possible to be bo to be bold and courageous if you're not righteous you can have bravado you can stand in front of a tank like tiananmen square it's not courage the writers are as bold as a lion your righteousness and your bravery or your boldness are inseparable you cannot live as though there is no god and want to show the courage of a lion you will perish and be no example to anyone no book would be written about you you'll be

a foolish man who died in defiance of an authority are you the one so jesus the bible says something interesting my friends he says god never neither sleeps no slumbers in my career i've been fired out of jobs three times three times highly accomplished lawyer well respected and they say your post is now abolished or we don't need you here before anymore or they start doing politics and they take your budget and you know i'm no longer wanted here and each time you want to cry like david what have i done i feel like you've

forsaken me and the lord is saying the roar of vision and the road of transformation of society will go through the valleys and the mountains the rivers and the wilderness from egypt to canaan there's a wilderness in the wilderness they are bitter waters and in the wilderness there are snakes that bites and but all one thing that you have faith in is god makes a solution at mara he threw a branch into the water right when the snakes were biting he raised up a brazen snake on a wood and said look my friends i wish

i could tell you that for you to be great things won't be bad but i would be lying to you so what i've come to say to you is simple simple simple are you the one you can't be fruitful without an idea you can't have an idea without a god inspiration you can be inspired by your ancestors and everybody else right if you want but the inspiration because i'm talking to children of god a god inspiration means god knows the eternity of the idea i stopped trying to be successful i had been a partner i'd

been a director i've been everything else i stopped trying to be successful i started focusing on being significant many people i meet want to be successful to drive a nice car have a nice house buy property do all those things my brother says what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul when you get into heaven the bible says jesus will ask i was hungry you did not do this i was naked you did not do this he won't care about the lexus you drove it's important to drive a

lexus or a mercedes the last thing i want to say to you about timidity and fear the bible says god needs sleeps no slumbers but if you read in the book of matthew 8 verses 23 to the bible says and then jesus went into the boat the disciples followed him and he slept have you ever read that and he slept and they were worried because there was a massive storm and the boat was filling with water and they said master master wake up we're perishing and he woke up and he addressed two things he said

he rebuked the storm say rebuked the storm and then he asked them a simple question you cowards and you of little faith cowardice and littleness of faith go hand in hand they're twins if you are a coward that means you have no faith can i repeat that again it's natural to fear but if you are a coward that means you have no faith in the god who said i will never leave you no forsake you goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life if the bills are making you afraid so i

got to a stage where i was afraid and i tried to fix my own career i tried to fix my own thing so in 2003 i think i was part of the world economic forum 2004 young global leaders we're the first court with jack ma and all the great people there right and then in 2005 i was on sam yale fellowship and i've been on many of those fellowships and i began to think maybe that's what god is making me prominent i want to tell you god told me you're just like a monkey in a

cage at a zoo the world is using your talent to show like samuel when they'd removed his eyes the philistines made mercury of him right until samuel got the revelation hold the pillars and pull them down say it with me hold the pillars and pull them down so i don't want to hear you say you are world economic forum this i don't want to hear you i can say that because i've been that what i'm asking is what pillar are you holding to pull down the vestiges of evil in africa down what pillar are you

holding to pull down the vestiges of evil in your society down what pillar are you holding in business what pillar are you holding you can have money and success my brothers and sisters i realized that god wanted to do something with africa in this age where the west has become less religious and where religion has become hyper commercial everywhere else the last frontier is here if we don't defend that frontier and if we don't become faith without prejudice if we don't become faith that's loving if we don't become faith that transforms societies remember the scripture

that says judgment begins in the house of god your judgment will be that you did not do anything with the power reposited on you may you always flourish but keep asking yourself every day it's not the promotions you get it's not the accolades you get are you the one or should we expect another god bless you [Music] you