EASTER MESSAGE 2025FROM ARCHBISHOP AND PRIMATE OF THE CHURCH OF THE PROVINCE OF WEST AFRICATHE POWER TO BREAK DOWN STRONGHOLDS OF THE MIND2 CORINTHIANS 10 :5 “We demolish

  

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”

.Easter is a season of breaking down strongholds which has been built within and without us through the power of the resurrected Christ. 

In him and through him we have freedom and the leverage to excel to the heights promised by our God and father. It is a season of total liberation and enablement from the shackles of sin, oppression, slavery and bondage to the fullness of life promised by God to his people.

 The basis of this liberation emanates typically and specifically from the mind. The Apostle Paul examines the leverage thus “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power love and of a strong mind. 

2 Timothy 1:7Thus through the gift and the spirit of Easter we have boldness, enablement and the fortitude to unveil the deep mysteries of the divine and to walk an informed life worthy of our calling.    

  On Palm Sunday the Church begins the journey of Holy Week. A journey from the crowded streets of Jerusalem to the empty tomb of Easter morning. An exodus from the bondage of sin to the freedom of salvation through the Cross of Christ.

 As Scripture reveals, for forty years the people of Israel journeyed through the wilderness. Their exodus from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land was a time of challenge and testing. God had freed His people, called them ‘Chosen’, set them apart from the other nations, and invited them into a sacred covenant – they would be His people, He would be their God.

 The journey was not easy. Temptations and trials abounded. It was a pilgrimage not only from the oppression of Pharaoh but from the bondage of sin.

 The lure of the pagan nations around them was ever present. The struggle to be faithful always at hand.

 Even when some turned away from God, God remained faithful. The old way of life had to be left behind so that a new way of living as the chosen people of God could be realized. 

The tension between the old and the new was never far away. Jubilation was coupled with grumbling; the desire for the ways of the world was at odds with the desire for God. 

There is a reason why the Church has us recall the Exodus in Lent and Passiontide. The Exodus is not only part of salvation history, it is part of our own story of redemption. 

The journey in faith from sin and death to salvation and new life is our story, our calling, our pilgrimage. God’s people didn’t appreciate all that He had given them until it was taken away. 

We too, in our journey of faith, do not always appreciate God’s blessings until they are withdrawn.

The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate energizing for the new future.  The wrenching of Friday had left only the despair of Saturday (Luke 24:21) and there was no reason to expect Sunday after that Friday.  

There is not any way to explain the resurrection out of the previously existing reality.  

The resurrection can only be received and affirmed and celebrated as the new action of God, a new landmark and threshold for us Christians to transcend beyond the mind and the corridors of the world and the flesh to the mind of the spirit and the mind of Christ.

 Recent scientific and astrological initiatives have unveiled the deep secrets of nature and even beyond nature into the world of the unknown and the inconceivable. 

The endless timelessness and the vastness of the planets is mind bogging and yet in Christ nothing is veiled and inconceivable. 

The victory of Christ on the cross breaks down the strongholds of the mind. When Jesus rebuked Peter after he refused to access the wisdom of the divine, Jesus sought to bring him back to faith and its depths. 

Easter breaks down the patterns of our set minds, customs, traditions and philosophies of our finite world and reveals to us the light and th wisdom of the Risen Christ.

 The power of the resurreceted Christ brings light to illumine our veiled hearts and minds to free us from the bondage and the burden of our sinful world and values to enable us to have the mind of Christ laid bare by the death and sacrifice of Christ.

 This Easter we are called to hurl down, break down and cast away our set patterns and values associated with the flesh, such as hopeless, faithlessness, strife, selfishness, oppression, hate and greed.

The world and the flesh continue to maintain a grip or stronghold against us such that our minds are veiled and unable to grasp the full manifestation and the magnitude of God’s divine glory and power. 

In the resurrection, Christ has won for us victory and the opportunity to appreciate God’s infinite power and majesty. As Christ fought and won the victory for our liberation on the cross, we are called to fight against the strongholds of sin, death and denial. In Christ we have a champion, and we are Prevailers, and our victory starts with the release and the unlocking of our minds. In Christ the strongholds of fear, confusion, anger, frustration, hopelessness has been banished. 

A new era of hope, faith, love, charity and courage has been unleashed. We have victory in the inner man and we are able and ready to take every though CAPTIVE for Christ.Blessed Easter and shake off the Strongholds and let our world and country and peoples enjoy a new wave of freedom from strife wars in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine and the middle east in Sudan and in Ghana in Bawku and other places where there are strife. 

We ask the Spirit of enablement for our King Otumfuoh Osei Tutu for the resolution of the Bawku dispute and for President Mahama for peace and progress in Ghana.MOST REVD DR CYRIL KOBINA BEN-SMITHPRIMATE AND METROPOLITAN,CPWA/ IPG/ASANTE MAMPONG