Yes isn’t this a relevant question to ask ourselves since Nagaland claims to be a Christian State and the Naga national movement has given to itself the slogan Nagaland for Christ. Just for a moment think about it again—do we know God? Not in the way that many of us may answer this question i.e. we all may say that we have a Church, we have been baptized, we worship there every Sunday, we listen to the Pastor and pray and that we are sincere and committed in paying our tithes and offering. So by doing all these things, can we still say that we know God. May be for some yes but for many so called Naga Christians the honest answer could be a no. Perhaps we are all confused about what we are supposed to know and do about our Christian faith? We need to find out more about this question. During the recently concluded crusade and seminar on grace entitled Grace Awakening—A time for renewal organized by the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) one of the speaker Michael Eaton from England, Kenya gave a powerful and inspiring message about the need to know God and have fellowship with God. His message centered around 1st John Chapter 1and touching on themes like word of life, walking in the light and confessing our sins.
Knowing God is as simple as to have true friendship and fellowship with Jesus Christ. We have to walk with Jesus in our daily lives and to hear His voice and obey His command. The problem with our Christian faith is that we want to be identified as having a religion that will guarantee some sort of respectability and support system. And so our Christianity is about the outer demeanor—of putting in a lot of style, noise and hype but completely lacking in substance and the knowledge of what God really wants from us. As Eaton mentioned, Naga Christians must be clear about the Gospel and work towards bringing back the fellowship with God. More importantly, if Naga Christians want to have fellowship with God then we must look at Jesus, the son of God and not at the Church or the Pastor. This seems to be a basic flaw in our Christian practice of putting our focus on the things below i.e. our human designs like the Church or Pastor but not on things above where we actually need to connect. Having fellowship with others in Church is part of our worship and there is nothing wrong in it. However to really know God we need to have personal fellowship with Jesus—to talk to Him, listen to His voice and to let Him guide us. Obviously sin is a barrier and hindrance to knowing God and having fellowship with Him. Even our political leaders are now saying that Naga society is in need of a total reformation. Know this that our society will change for the better only if we start to know God, to put our trust in Him and let Him come into our lives. Naga Christians must start to relate with God through abiding fellowship. Let us take the opportunity of the coming Christmas to really know God and to walk in His ways.
