My dear ones, the Covenant is a faith formation project. We have thousands of testimonies where the Covenant has brought immediate solutions, but fundamentally, the Covenant is meant for formation in faith. It is a project through which a person is trained in faith.
If you ask what the Covenant is, it can be defined simply in this way: before receiving a blessing, a person usually has to pass through certain spiritual areas. Some people receive blessings without passing through any of these areas, but the issue is that after a while, they lack the merit to truly experience what they have received.
Receiving a blessing and having the merit to experience that blessing are two different things. No matter how many blessings we receive, they are of no use if we cannot truly experience them. Therefore, what we are meditating on today is how to receive a blessing and, at the same time, how to obtain the biblical merit to truly experience it.
Whenever the Lord speaks, He says, “Abide in my love” (John 15:9).
But what happens to many people? When they face an isolated spiritual need or a serious life problem, they make the Covenant, receive a solution, and then go their own way. God goes His way, and they go theirs.
This is what truly happens to many people. A crucial issue arises: a debt, an illness, a family problem, or some other kind of crisis. They quickly take the Covenant, receive the blessing tapped from it, achieve their goal, and then forget the matter. God goes south, and they go north. No faith formation takes place there. No real formation happens.
The problem is that these instant graces and immediate blessings are often given to newcomers or to non-Christians who come for the first time. If someone comes to Kreupasanam with a very serious issue, God may act immediately and bring peace to that situation. But some people take advantage of this and treat the Covenant merely as a daily tool to get what they want.
When you do that, you miss the greater privilege of becoming a competent partner with God.
What does it mean to be a competent partner? This is a Covenant, and the most graceful aspect of the Covenant is not merely the blessing itself. Its greatest privilege is the status to which it elevates you. That privilege is far greater than the blessing.
For example, if you do not have a life partner and are seeking one now, you must understand that God has an answer for every single issue. When we listen to these testimonies, we realize that for every problem a person experiences under the sun, the Covenant has a solution. That is what the wide variety of testimonies proves.
We hear testimonies from people from all walks of life. If you listen to the Kreupasanam testimonies, you will realize they are not limited to Alappuzha or Kerala. They are global testimonies. I myself have traveled to seventeen countries, and the lives, living conditions, and needs of people in those places are entirely different from ours. Because of this vast difference, the testimonies we receive are truly global in nature.
Therefore, wherever we are and however we turn to the Covenant, the Covenant responds according to our needs. It is like rainwater harvesting: no matter how you place the storage tank, it gathers the rainwater. But some people make a mistake. Because they lack understanding, they focus only on the blessings.
My dear brethren, please do not do that. The privilege of the Covenant is far greater than the blessing.
What does this privilege mean? Let me explain from my own life. Even if God does not grant me a single blessing, I have the privilege of this priesthood, which itself is a Covenant relationship. I do not need any other blessing, because I am not merely doing a project with the Lord. I am in a bilateral agreement. I am a partner in an agreement with God.
In truth, it is the same for you. This is a golden opportunity: to become God’s co-worker.
1 Corinthians 3:9 says, “For we are co-workers in God’s service.”
This is one of the statuses we receive in the Covenant. We are God’s co-workers. Therefore, we are working on a project together with God. You must carry this realization even when you go out to distribute the newsletters. In God’s intention, you are a co-worker with Him.
It is a mutual partnership in life. When we go out to work, God becomes a co-worker in our daily affairs. When we go for an interview, we do our part, and God becomes our companion. From what we have understood all this time, there is not a single blessing outside the Covenant. The Covenant is that complete.
In the past few days, we heard about Elizabeth Jeena, who has many testimonies. One of her testimonies is about how she was healed of all her illnesses. They are wonderful testimonies of healing from severe sicknesses through the Covenant items. But that is not what I intend to focus on here. She was miraculously healed from those diseases, but at first her life was all about resistance and survival.
When she finally overcame that, another issue arose. Even though she had survived, she had no means of livelihood. Earlier, she had no way forward because she was a patient battling illness. She overcame that through the Covenant, but after that, she had no source of income. Even for livelihood, the Lord has His own way. How God saves us is often through unknown paths and mysterious ways. He saves us through paths we have never walked before.
What was Elizabeth Jeena’s situation? While she was attending the Kreupasanam retreat, I said during the retreat, “Your agency’s name starts with K, so you may proceed.” That message was communicated during the retreat.
Many such messages come. While we are attentive, we receive many messages. If it is a message meant to be shared, I will say it. If it is a personal message for me, I keep it reserved. If it is a message meant for you, I deliver it.
But then some people immediately think, “So many people are going for jobs. So many people are going through agencies. How can anyone know who this K is? This is just like shooting blindly into a flock of birds.”
Shooting into a flock of birds means firing randomly, hoping one shot hits something. That is not how the visions of the Lord work. We must always pay attention. Even when a message is spoken publicly, the true recipient receives an inner conviction from the Holy Spirit at that very moment. That is how communication works in the spiritual realm. The Lord communicates in ways we cannot even imagine.
If I say “K” before a thousand people, what happens to the true recipient? Immediately, the Holy Spirit gives that person an inner conviction: “This is speaking to you.” That is what we call inner conviction.
My children, never act in doubtful faith. Because people do not understand spiritual science, some act in doubtful faith, thinking, “Maybe Father said this about me.” They act on a whim: “If it works, good; if not, so be it.” Do not do that. That is called doubtful faith.
Doubtful faith says, “Maybe Father was speaking about me. O God, please let it be about me and not someone else.” The Bible strictly warns us against acting in such doubt.
Why do we study the Bible? Not merely to study history, but to understand the ways of God. We must learn how to deal with God and how to receive His messages. To know how to receive even the smallest message, my children, place your hands on your chest and pray: “Lord God, it has been a long time since I took the Covenant. Through the paths desired by the Covenant, I desire to grow into true spiritual enlightenment. O God, through this retreat, anoint me with profound convictions.”
You must say to the Lord, “Lord, I want to learn about You. I want to learn Your ways. I want to walk with You, and I want to understand Your language.” This is about spiritual communication.
As Psalm 19:2 says, “Night unto night reveals knowledge.”
God can communicate with us at any time and without limits. Whenever communication comes, one thing must be kept in mind: even if a thousand people are sitting here, the Lord may be intending that message for one person. Or perhaps He intends it for three people. Sometimes at Kreupasanam, it has happened that one message was meant for seven people. It was called the “Golden Seven.” Did we not receive such a message? How many people gave testimonies about the Golden Seven! All seven people received the same message, and that very day or week, the blessing was dispatched to them. It is that powerful.
So, my children, try to pass through this spiritual process. What is the Covenant fundamentally? The Covenant means receiving the Promise. In the Malayalam word Vakku, meaning Promise, God has placed Danam, meaning Gift. The specific gift for my life is released through my Covenant. This is what Covenant life truly means.
Sometimes we may receive the Promise suddenly. For example, if some people stop their studies after the eighth standard, the government allows them to directly sit for the tenth-standard exam after a certain age. They may have stopped studying in the eighth standard, but when it is time for marriage, everyone asks about their education. Then they feel the need to study, and the government has made a provision for them to skip the ninth standard and sit directly for the tenth.
Similarly, after completing Pre-Degree, there are provisions for some people to study for Master of Arts (MA) after a certain age. They can write the exams and get the degree. But there is an important issue here. A tenth-standard student or an MA graduate should have gone through an educational formation. If they bypass that formation, they may have the certificate, but not the true standard.
This is the problem. We cannot approach God with such shortcuts. The blessings we receive in the early days through the Covenant must be converted into a profound divine-human relationship. For that, all the procedures of the Covenant must be carefully fulfilled.
God has set four procedures to properly receive the Promise of the Covenant. First, we must pass through the Red Sea. After crossing the Red Sea, we enter the desert. After the desert journey comes the River Jordan. Only after crossing the Jordan does Jericho appear. These are procedures in the process of the Covenant.
Some people pass through all four stages beautifully. As they complete each stage, they are strengthened. They grow stronger in their relationship with God. This healthy Covenant life is what God intends for us.
This is why I compare it to passing the tenth standard. If someone who failed the eighth standard somehow attempts the tenth standard and obtains a certificate, that is all they may have. When asked to sign their name, they may only scribble something meaningless. But it should not be like that. They must have the true standard of a tenth-standard student.
In the same way, when we speak of renewing the Covenant four times, the person must reflect the spiritual standard of that fourfold renewal. This is where the problem arises. The process remains incomplete because the procedure is not followed. If you have renewed the Covenant four times, the culture of that renewal must be visible in you.
The first stage is the Red Sea. After our forefathers left Egypt, the greatest challenge they faced on the way to the Promised Land was the Red Sea. The Red Sea was the hurdle before the Promise. In the same way, this Covenant is our path to receive God’s promises. So what is the spiritual processing that happens through the Red Sea? What does God intend by it?
The Apostle Paul tells us that it signifies deliverance from sin. Therefore, when you complete a stage of the Covenant, your sins must have decreased. That is the core issue. But after completing a stage, some people end up in the desert without ever really crossing the Red Sea. They try to bypass it with superficial actions. They have no real connection to the Covenant because they fail to fulfill what that stage demands. They move forward without fasting, without humbling themselves, and without true repentance. Let us take the Word of God regarding the Red Sea.
1 Corinthians 10:1 says, “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.”
1 Corinthians 10:2 says, “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”
So baptism is the true intention here. When the Word says our forefathers passed through the sea, the ultimate purpose of that crossing was baptism. What does baptism mean? It means the washing away of sins.
This spiritual baptism must occur at a certain stage in the Covenant. That is the procedure I mentioned. There must be a baptism in your mindset, a baptism in your approach to life, and a baptism in your sinful actions. If none of these transformations happen, and people enter the Covenant only to tap into blessings, they will eventually face a crisis.
That is why they become unworthy to experience God’s grace. They are constantly filled with unrest. They create unrest, strife, and discord wherever they go. Wherever they are present, they stir up issues and create toxic environments.
Today, I feel deep sadness about this because human beings are generally prone to carnality and spiritual lethargy. This carnality is like a disease. You know those massive ships, don’t you? At the bottom of huge ships, barnacles and shipworms attach themselves. They cling to the hull, grow larger, multiply, and eventually create holes in the ship.
In the same way, people who constantly involve themselves in spiritual activities can suffer from this “shipworm disease.” If you keep renewing the Covenant without paying attention to its true depth, you will start taking it for granted. You will say, “We have heard all this before. This is how it always is.”
This spiritual disease is very common in Kerala today because people hop from one retreat center to another. Some have gone to the same retreat center ten times. By doing so, they can become infected with spiritual barnacles. Assuming they have heard it all before, they continue to indulge their sinful nature and negative character. So even if they go through the outward procedures, the true inner transformation of the Covenant process does not take place within them.
When our forefathers passed through the cloud and the sea, they were baptized. This is what the Word of the Lord teaches us. This spiritual baptism must happen in the early stages of the Covenant.
My children, when you hear the words of the Lord, receive them with humility. As divine truths are revealed to you through the Word, give thanks and joyfully receive the spiritual food the Lord prepares for you. If you receive it with joy, the Lord will continue to provide for us and train us.
One thing is certain: wherever we go, as the Lord faithfully keeps His Promise, we will be able to show the sign of God. Everywhere we go, we are with God.
In the past few days, a person named Aniyamma Francis shared a testimony. She is from Bharananganam and runs a business in Sharjah. She has been running that business in Sharjah for twenty-eight years. It is a huge, multi-million-dollar business, but she presented it so simply and calmly, as if she were running a small betel nut shop. She spoke as though she were running a tiny roadside stall.
What I noticed most in her testimony was her statement: “Wherever I go, Mother is with me.” Usually, we might think someone is speaking about her birth mother. But that was not the case. She was speaking about the Blessed Mother with profound intimacy.
There were other things she said that I loved. For business people, spiritual life is always very difficult. They need to earnestly seek and receive grace. But many business people do not receive grace even when they ask for it. Why? Because they do not walk through the paths of grace.
The reason Aniyamma’s testimony stands out is that her work in Sharjah involves building warehouses and either selling them or renting them out. By warehouse, I mean large halls. She builds them or stores other people’s goods in them for rent. It is a good business, but even if we say it is without much headache, there is tremendous competition in places like Sharjah. I have gone there to lead retreats, and I know there is intense competition in every field.
There is competition in business, and there is competition in education. When we apply somewhere and do not receive admission, why does that happen? Either someone has better marks than us, or someone has better recommendations or influence. There will always be someone ahead of us.
Because of this, God has operated a single path for us to walk on. What is it? “Not by merit, but by grace.” That is why we must come to the Covenant. There will be competition in every field in this world. But God has made a way for His children. There is an easy entry, God’s own way, a divine path.
What I always advise you is this: what matters is having the merit to rejoice in God’s ways. Some people come to God’s ways out of necessity, get their things done, and then return to their worldly ways. That may work for a short while, but it will not last long.
Therefore, try your best to tune your life to walk through God’s ways. If you mix a little hypocrisy, a little deceit, and a little truth, you cannot move forward with God like that. You might be able to do that with your earthly father, especially in property partitions.
A father may have a sharp memory, but if he gave you a piece of land in the past so that you could take a loan, he might forget it later and divide the property equally without taking that into account. You could say, “Dad, you already gave me that part.” But would you say it? No, you might not. Even if you have taken the Covenant, you might remain silent.
So a thief remains a thief. This is the issue. When we deal with God, we must be very careful. We cannot simply hide things. If you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will prompt you: “Did your father not give you that ten cents of land sixteen years ago to take a loan? Is that not true? Should you not say it now? Otherwise, will your younger brother not receive less?” If you remain silent, what are you doing? You are deceiving your younger brother. Meanwhile, you may have renewed the Covenant eight times, but you still deceive your brother in the same way. God’s ways are purely and strictly God’s ways.
Earlier, I mentioned Elizabeth Jeena. What was the word she received? When I said “K,” she received inner conviction that the agency she needed to select began with K. That very week, she got that agency, completed the procedures, and now she is in Germany. It happened so quickly. In the Lord’s hands, everything works with incredible speed. He takes note of every matter.
Regarding correction and conviction, when we come in prayer, whether we read or listen to the Word of God with sincere prayer, if the message is truly meant for us, we will receive deep inner conviction. Even if a thousand people are seated there, God directs that message to the specific person for whom it is meant. If doubt arises—“Is this really about me?” or “Maybe it is not, since there are so many other people here”—then that message is not for you, and that moment has passed.
This is how we must discern the Word of God. If the message is truly for you, it will strike you instantly like lightning, and you will be completely convinced.
Let us take Romans 14:23: “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.”
The core issue here is that doubtful faith is wrong. It is sin, and we should not act on it. If you act with the mindset, “I do not know if this is right for me, but let me just try and see what I can get,” you are acting in doubt. You should not do that.
Let us also take 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, and exhort, with unfailing patience and teaching.”
In this spiritual journey, our senses play a serious role. When it comes to hearing the Word, you must guard your senses. When you go to church, people may stop you and tell you all kinds of things, true or false. You do not know whether those words will benefit you. You must make a firm decision not to listen to anything useless.
Whether it is gossip from your sister-in-law or rumors about someone’s daughter eloping, you must never use the ears meant for the Word of God to listen to such worldly things. The mistake people make is eagerly lending their ears to gossip, asking, “Oh really? What happened next?”
By doing so, you take ears consecrated for the Lord and use them for the world. This is a grave issue. When the ears and tongue meant for the Lord are used for worldly matters, you fundamentally become a worldly person. Even if you have renewed the Covenant ten times, if someone who lives completely outside the Covenant comes and speaks idle things to you, and you lend them your ear, you automatically fall to their level. That is why the Bible tells us to separate ourselves from such people. Does Jesus not speak of the blind leading the blind? There must be a distinct separation.
Those who have made a Covenant with God must not participate in the schemes and gossip of those who live for worldly gods and give no importance to the Word of God. If you clearly show that you have no interest in their conversation, they will go their own way. They only speak to you because they sense you are interested. That is the only kind of talk they know.
Therefore, our relationship with such people should be strictly limited to what is absolutely necessary.
When you faithfully observe all these things and live as God’s competent partner and co-worker according to the Covenant, you must naturally separate yourself from the co-workers of Satan. Because we are co-workers with God, we must separate ourselves from the co-workers of Satan.
We have nothing to lose by cutting ties with them. Sometimes they may come back only to ask for the money they borrowed. If you have it, give it to them. That is all such people will ever do.
There is no need to fear anyone. Instead, realize that this Covenant is the greatest gift God has given us in His presence. We must hold onto it and grow in God.
The Lord will be with us wherever we go, just as Aniyamma Francis shared in her testimony. She said, “Even though I run a business worth lakhs, I do not have a greedy obsession with wealth.” She is calm. She does not have endless greed to make more and more money. She firmly said, “I will never do anything displeasing to God. I have not done it so far, and I never will.”
For a businessperson to say that is tremendous, because many business people engage in ungodly practices. Yet she boldly declares, “I have never done anything ungodly in my business, and even if it means lower profit, that is enough for me.”
That is a true stand of faith. Do you see that the Covenant and life with God require taking a firm stand in every area of your life? But if, in business, you continue to operate as you did when you lived with the devil, and then stand here shedding tears to somehow snatch a blessing from God, your prayers will not work.
This failure happens because people do not even know the ABCs of the Bible. That is why her statement is so accurate. She says, “To this day, I have never done business while setting God aside, and I never will.”
Why do we run a business? We do it to earn a living. Even without crooked ways, God will provide the minimum profit we need. She shared an interesting story about buying land in Sharjah. She needed 150 square feet of space. The going rate was 115 dirhams per square foot. When she negotiated with the real estate agents, she wrote down her offer, saying she would take it for 100 dirhams per square foot. One dirham is about 26 rupees, so 100 dirhams is around 2,600 rupees per square foot.
She made her offer, but the agents laughed and told her it was impossible. Six months passed. Two weeks later, she went back to a real estate expo, and the same agents who had rejected her were there. She had earlier offered 100 dirhams, but miraculously, they were now offering her the space for just 65 dirhams. Those who do not understand God’s ways cannot understand how this kind of business works.
If they had agreed when she offered 100, saying, “Okay, madam, if that works for you, it is a deal,” it would have been settled. But the Blessed Mother did not let that deal happen. That is God’s business. After six months, they told her, “If it is 65 dirhams for that spot, we have no problem giving it to you.” Instantly, the deal was made. If they had agreed then, she would have lost money by paying 100.
The reality is that we often deceive God, cheat others, and try to throw dust in God’s eyes in order to make profit. But when someone takes a firm stand and declares, “I do not want a single penny earned that way,” then the honest money needed for that person and their children to live will be provided by the Lord through their business.
Just the other day, I met a daughter who had renewed the Covenant for twenty-five times. Her testimony is as powerful as lightning. There is no doubt about it. She is a global Covenant partner. Yet I always think that if we do not pass through this inner spiritual processing, after a while it becomes only about numbers. It becomes quantity.
More than counting the number of renewals, the Covenant must lead you to true spiritual quality. You can renew it every three months according to the timeline, but you must achieve the true quality of the Covenant.
So what is this quality of the Covenant? The first is that you must cross the Red Sea. What is the second quality? After crossing the Red Sea, where did they go? They entered the Sinai Desert.
What is the desert a symbol of? The desert is the second procedure. What is its purpose?
Let us take Deuteronomy 8:2: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”
This tells us to reflect on the procedure. It is good to occasionally do spiritual homework and remember all the desert paths we have walked through in the past. What is the purpose of that? It is to humble us.
So being humbled is a core part of this procedure. For a person walking through the Covenant, the first procedure is avoiding sin, and the second procedure is being humbled.
There is a very important reason why the model of the Blessed Mother is placed before us here. If you are unable to humble yourself, you must ask Mother Mary: “Mother, just as the Lord looked with favor on the lowliness of His servant, please humble me.”
People do show humility, but often it is a well-rehearsed performance before God. I have rarely seen true humility in people. For most people, when their ego is touched—and I include myself when I evaluate myself critically—we react. When we are placed in a situation that directly hurts our ego, we are triggered.
Only when we face a situation that wounds our ego do we truly know whether we have humility or not. Otherwise, we will never know. We have a superficial, practiced humility that we display in God’s presence, but that is not what I am talking about.
When someone hurts our ego, we often react violently. You know the Russell’s viper, don’t you? They say it can instantly turn and strike. It is more dangerous than a cobra. A long time ago, a viper came here at dawn, right near Mother Mary, and froze there. It was huge, thick, and long. The thing about this snake is that if you touch it, it instantly whips around and strikes.
That is exactly the issue with many people. When it comes to their ego, they act like vipers. That is why the Bible calls them a “brood of vipers.”
When God addresses the unrepentant human condition, the word He uses is “viper.” It has the potential to turn in any direction and strike. So, as we pass through the second stage of the Covenant, the desert journey, the spiritual fruit intended for us is true humility.
True humility means realizing that the other side might also be right. Even if we do not understand it at first, when we realize it later, we should admit it. Sometimes we do not realize it in the moment, but later we do. Yet we do not go and say, “I made a mistake. I misunderstood the situation.”
Why? Because saying it wounds our ego. To protect the ego and avoid bowing down before others, we refuse to admit our fault. These are the very people who have taken the Covenant. That is the core issue. Many “vipers” have taken the Covenant here.
So we must examine whether we are truly going through this procedure. There is a desert: a desert of unemployment, with no shade tree. A desert where admission is not received. A desert where marriage is delayed, property does not sell, income does not come, and there is no place of refuge. This is what the desert means. It does not mean everyone must literally go to the Judean desert. It means our plans do not happen on our timeline and are delayed. A journey that should take one week takes forty years. That is the desert experience.
I have traveled through that physical desert by bus. It took only about eight hours by bus. Even if one had to walk, it would only take three or four days. But for our forefathers, a journey that should have taken three days took forty years.
So if a marriage that should have happened at twenty-eight is still not happening at thirty-four, that is a desert. If you cannot reach a destination in forty days that should have taken four, you are in a desert. If your land is not selling or your job is not coming, you are in the desert.
What must you do there? There is a procedure. You must humble yourself.
Why should you humble yourself? First of all, your very goals may be filled with a massive ego. According to the goals you have set, you are essentially telling God, “I am a child of the King, so God must fulfill the goals I have set.” But in reality, there may be no spiritual connection between you and those goals.
Many times, we create the desert ourselves by setting wrong goals. Imagine a man who studied only up to the eighth or tenth standard, yet stubbornly insists that he must marry a nurse with permanent residency abroad. When will this man ever get married? He is creating his own desert.
Does he ever think about the situation of a well-settled nurse marrying someone with an eighth-standard education? No, he does not. He only thinks about his own desires. If your goals are driven by ego, a desert will naturally form. If there is ego in the goals you have set, and if they are things you truly do not deserve, you must immediately change your goals.
You cannot work with unrealistic ambitions. If you stubbornly cling to them, they will never align with your reality. Everything will eventually come to a standstill, and this desert experience will drag on. Our forefathers spent forty years in the desert, but for you it might become eighty years. You are creating this, not God.
We have looked at two procedures. As we move forward to receive the Promise of the Covenant, there are several elements in the spiritual process. The first is the Red Sea, where we repent and abandon sin. The second is the desert, where we are humbled.
Even if our goals are completely unsuited for us, if an inflated ego drives those ambitions, we must be careful. You have seen the nouveau riche, those who suddenly become wealthy. This sudden flaunting of wealth is often a sign of over-inflated ego.
Someone suddenly starts a company, buys a van, gets a pickup truck, and within three or four months walks around like a massive corporate boss, wearing sunglasses like a cartoon character playing the wealthy owner. Then people around him whisper, “Where did he get all this black money?” The truth is that from childhood he has been competing with his peers. Having lost in those competitions and seeing his friends succeed and settle in different places after old arguments, his ego takes over.
We must remember that behind many of our so-called goals, there are hidden demons draining our peace. Often, these are friends or rivals. We are not the ones truly setting our goals; someone else has hammered these fabricated ambitions into our heads.
To achieve them, while his father was asleep, a man secretly takes the property deed, secures a huge loan, and then flaunts a company and a car. But what is the reality behind this? It will take another ten years for that company to make even a single rupee of real profit. Yet he has taken massive loans and bought things as if he had already earned the profits of twenty years of business.
You know how loans work. Wherever you turn in Kerala, loans are easily available. Because there is no real production happening here, car dealers park their vehicles on the roads. If you just ask them how they are, they are ready to bring five cars and park them at your doorstep for you to buy. But after two or three years, they will come and seize everything.
Kerala is the perfect place for arrogant show-offs to eventually get trapped. They want to show off and convince others, “I am not a small person.” And whom are they trying to convince? Their secret enemies: those who argued with them, those they have competed with since childhood. These are cheap games played merely to look big before others.
This is what we call creating your own desert. It becomes an idol in your life. Worldly attachment to cars, obsession with massive houses, marriage, children, a car, and then a huge house—this is the typical Malayali dream. It is not wrong in itself. It is fine. As children of God, you should live decently. But it should not become an obsessive, unhealthy attachment. Just because others are desperate for it, we cannot be like them. You must detach from this idol. That is what the Jordan signifies.
The Jordan is the procedure that follows the desert. The Jordan must be crossed. When the people cross the Jordan, Joshua declares what that crossing means.
Joshua 24:15 says, “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Once you cross the Jordan, you should not obsess over your goals. We must detach from them. We can have goals in life, but only if they are the Lord’s holy will should they happen. When it comes to the material progress of your life, you must patiently wait until it aligns with the Lord’s holy will. You should not desperately push for it just to show off to others, taking loans everywhere and pawning yourself.
Some people do not understand this because they are completely consumed by carnal desires. If you speak to people who are acting crazily, will they understand? They will not understand until they hit rock bottom. For some people, these divine truths simply do not enter their heads. When such things happen, sisters remain unmarried at home, and eventually parents are neglected. Meanwhile, the brother dresses up and runs around with another woman. When you look at their lives, they are left in spiritual limbo.
When we take on responsibilities, some people patiently endure and carry them out. All of this is part of the Covenant journey. When we enter the Covenant, God will provide everything we need in every area of our lives. He will meet us, sustain us, and enable us to reach the Promised Land. But we must go through this spiritual procedure. Only then does God consider it a Covenant of high quality.
A Covenant with quality is far better than a Covenant focused on mere numbers. What is the final stage? Jericho. Jericho is the final procedure. We do not have to fight the battle of Jericho. What does the Lord say about Jericho? He says, “Just walk around Jericho, and I will bring down the walls.” God intervenes at the very end. Once we cross the Jordan and the procedure of the Jordan is completed, God takes care of the rest. That is why it is said, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Where does it say that this is God’s battle?
Let us look at 2 Chronicles 20:15: “Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the Lord says to you: Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them.”
The first stage of the Covenant is the Red Sea. The second is the Desert. The third is the Jordan. At the Red Sea, we cast away our sins. In the Desert, we are humbled. At the Jordan, we cast away our idols and detach from what we are overly attached to. The remaining fourth stage is Jericho. Who fights the battle of Jericho? Nobody does. They simply march around it carrying the Ark of the Covenant. Jericho crumbles on its own. Not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit.
Disclaimer: All content in this article is credited to Dr. Fr. V.P. Joseph Valiyaveettil of Kreupasanam Marian Shrine, Kerala, India. This English adaptation has been prepared as a humble effort to make Father’s Malayalam YouTube sharings more accessible to a wider audience, with the assistance of translation and editorial resources. If Fr. V.P. Joseph believes that any content here infringes upon his rights, I will remove it immediately upon his request.
Many of Father’s teachings were originally shared within the context of the Kreupasanam Covenant and may therefore include references or practices specific to that spiritual journey. Nevertheless, this blog is intended for everyone. Whether or not you are a Covenant member, it is my hope that these reflections, biblical teachings, and testimonies will encourage you in your own walk with God.
I warmly encourage everyone to share this website with others who may benefit from these reflections. May all who visit this page be blessed and drawn closer to God.
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