As Malta and the Christian world prepare to enter into another Holy Week of religious celebrations, my appeal is to let us enter into the true spirit of what God did for us through His Son Jesus Christ. Let us not allow statues, picture frames, icons and other man-made works of art dictate our lives in this extremely "religious" and traditional environment in which we have been brought up.
God is a living spirit and we truly worship Him in the Spirit and in the Word, says the Bible. Moreover, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament we have been warned time and time again not to create such idols in the first place and worse still, adore them!
God is a jealous God and the moment we set up and give worship to an idol by lighting up candles to it and praying and bowing in front of it, that idol is being cursed as God will not accept second best. Are we creating curses upon ourselves? Are we living up to our true Christian faith or are we living in a quagmire of traditional, folkloristic, ritualistic and religious customs without any intimate and loving relationship with God?
Jesus came precisely to break these cultural and religious customs which were and are still acting as barriers in establishing a personal, intimate and living relationship with God through Him. So are we doing the opposite of what Jesus preached and did? Are we truly reflecting and questioning our behaviour or just repeating what nanna and nannu did?'
How many of us went to see the film The Passion of the Christ and are still full of anger and lack of forgiveness, and without a true intimate and living relationship with the Father? Let us wake up and remove the shackles of this babyish Bambin mentality which many are embracing, and mature in the Lord. His name is not Bambin. His name is Jesus Christ, the Eternal Living One.
The bottom line is that sicknesses, curses and demons are only cast out through the blood and the name of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in the Name of God the Father and nothing else. Let us go to our true Christian roots and emulate the first Christians and cleanse our Christian faith with the Blood of the Living Christ.
I am sure that my appeal will be treated by the majority as just another voice in the desert but only God is my judge and I only seek to please Him and not popularity.