May God grant you the spiritual discernment, courage, and love to rebuke:
1. The power and position-seeking co-labourers like Joab who hold you hostage because of some unpalatable information they have about you, but which God has forgiven you for.
2. The angry but gifted close associates like Ahithophel, who for unknown reasons decide to switch camps mid-way to follow the evil one.
3. The ‘old prophet’ (and prophetess) who will lie through the nose in the blink of an eye in a desperate bid to salvage his seared conscience, by associating with you regardless of the harm it might do to your ministry.
4. The diabolically audacious spouse who, like Jezebel, has perfected the art using your peculiar weakness or besetting sin to manipulate you, in order to take over the authority that God has given you.
5. The close family member like Athaliah who is biding his or her time to spiritually the younger generation in your flock spiritually so as to be able to arrogate all power to him or herself
6. The seductively close associations in your ministry like Delilah, whose sole allegiance is to their family and tribesmen rather than to Christ, and who will therefore not hesitate to sacrifice your call and ministry in to please them.
7. The likes of Demas in your team who have shown their true colours by abandoning your once-shared godly pursuit, in favour of an unrelenting rat race after mammon and all that it implies.
8. The Judas in your close circle who will boldly and secretly betray Christ over and over again in their insatiable desire for filthy lucre.
9. The morally decadent biological or spiritual child who, like Amnon only care about their fleshly desires and would not hesitate to mortgage your life’s work to satisfy those needs.
10. The presumptuous and desperate descendant who, like Adonijah, cannot wait for you to die before they take over your position and privilege.
11. The arrogant, smooth-talking and entitled spiritual and biological children you love so much who, like Absalom, are devious and hardy politicians plotting strategically and systematically to do you in and replace you as leader.
12. The greedy so-called prophets like Balaam who, for filthy lucre and honour, teach the world how to infiltrate the Church to do havoc by cunningly seducing God’s children to draw them away from their Protective Hedge.
13. May you never become like any of these negative influences in the Body of Christ.