Month: October 2023

Don’t be left behind | By: J.O. Lawal | Date: October 29, 2023 | Series: From Pastor’s Desk | Number: Vol. 12, No. 26

Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be yours abundantly from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I gladly welcome you to the transition week between the months of October and November 2023. My prayer for you is that you will excel in all the will of God for your life, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now one of the things that represent the will of God for your life that you need to excel in handling is your devotion to supporting those feeding you with the word of God with your material things. Look at what the word of God says about that: “Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor.” (Gal 6:6NIV)

Who must share all good things with his instructor? Everyone who is being taught in the word of God! In other words, there is no one that is being taught the word of God that should be left out in this. Instead, every one of them must be involved. And does every one of us being taught the word of God have the ability to be involved in giving from our material things to those who are teaching us? Yes, every one of us being taught the word of God has the ability to support those teaching us with our material things.

How is that so? It is so because God does not expect us to give to them what we do not have but from what we have. Paul, speaking about how to give to please God to the Corinthians, says, “For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.” (2Cor 8:12NIV) Did you see that? Our willingness to obey God is the first thing He is always looking out for in our dealings with Him. So, as long as we are willing to obey His command to support those feeding us with His word with our material things, He will be pleased with us.

But being willing to give to them is not all that He requires of us; He also wants us to be actually giving to them. He does not want us to be saying, “God sees my heart that I want to give to you. It is just that I do not have.” Instead, He wants us to give to them based on what we have and not based on what we do not have. That means regardless of how little our resources may be, He still expects us to give to them and not make excuses. That is because as long as the willingness is there, whatever we give to them will be accepted by Him, based on what we have and not based on what we do not have.

Now we all know that God knows what every one of us has. So, He knows what we can afford to give to support those feeding us with His word, regardless of how little our resources may be. It is, then, up to us to obey Him and give to them or to disobey Him and hold back for ourselves whatever we might have given to them. But also keep in mind the fact that He cannot be mocked or deceived by us, as far as giving matters are concerned. It is what we sow that we will reap – we will not reap what we have not sowed. In other words, God will not reward us for what we have not done for Him or His servants. (Cf. Gal 6:7)

Remember the widow of Zarephath. God knew that all she had in her house was just a handful of flour and a little oil in a jug. Yet He commanded her to prepare a meal for His servant, Elijah, from it. And observe that He did not ask her to go and borrow to get food for Elijah or to wait until she became a millionaire to before she would give to him. On the contrary, He asked her to give him food from the little she had at the time. Why? As long as she was willing to obey God, the very little she was giving to Elijah from the little she had would be pleasing and acceptable to Him. (Cf. 1Kings 17:8-24)

Thankfully, that woman obeyed God. And because she did, God rewarded her with daily miracles of renewal all through the period of the famine that the land experienced at the time. How? Everyday she realised that her flour and her oil were simply replenishing themselves, so that they could not be used up until the famine was over. That, of course, is amazing to know.

But what if that woman had not obeyed God, simply because what she had was little? Would she and her son have been sustained during that famine? No! And what would have happened to Elijah? God would simply have found some other means to take care of him, as He had been doing before. So, God will take of those He sends to minister to us whether we care for them or not. But we will surely not be rewarded by Him for what we have not done for them. Don’t be left behind, then, in giving to those feeding you with God’s word. My prayer is that you will not miss those miracles that are meant to happen in your life through your generosity to them, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Have a splendid week.

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Fire in my Bones Youth for Jesus

Title: Know when to keep quiet|Fire in my bones

Post author By Pastor J.O. Lawal
Post date October 27, 2023
No Comments on Title: Know when to keep quiet|Fire in my bones

fire in my bones

Date: November 01, 2023|Series: Youth for Jesus|Number: Vol. 6, No. 24

“But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.”” (2Kings 18:36NIV)

Who were the people that remained silent and would not reply who was talking to them? It was the Jews under the reign of King Hezekiah. Who would they not reply? It was the commander of the army of the king of Assyria. And why would they not reply this man? They would not reply him because their king, Hezekiah, had told them not to answer him.

Now why would Hezekiah instruct his people not to answer this man? It was because answering him would not solve the problem at hand but only escalate it. As the account goes, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria at that time, had sent his commander with a great army to the land of Judah for the sole purpose of possessing the land and its people. And this commander began his campaign by first threatening the people and ridiculing their king and their God.

In fact, at some point, he began to address them in Hebrew, so that his threats and words of annoyance would sink into their hearts more readily. (Cf. 2Kings 18:17-35)That being the case, Hezekiah suspected that some of his people might become provoked by this man’s words and decide to answer him. And that was exactly what the man wanted. He wanted to provoke the people to respond to his threats, so that he would have an easy reason to attack the land. Then all that Hezekiah had been doing to avoid going to war with the Assyrians would have amount to nothing.

As the account further shows us, the army of Judah at that time was actually no match for the Assyrians’. That, of course, was why Hezekiah was doing all that he could do to avoid any kind of direct confrontation with them. And in doing this, he went as far as giving the king of Assyria all the gold and silver that he could lay his hands on in his treasuries. He even took things from the temple of God in order to appease this ruthless king. (Cf. 2Kings 18:13-16)

Nevertheless, Sennacherib would not stop haunting and harassing the nation of Judah. Why? He was bent on possessing it for himself. And he only needed a little insult or provocation from the people to attack them. This was why Hezekiah commanded his people not to answer the commander of his army whom he had sent to insult them.

See, Hezekiah knew that responding to this man’s threats and insults would not solve their problem in any way. Instead, it would only make it worse by bringing quick destruction upon them. The only one that could solve their problem at the time was their God whom the man had been insulting. He, then, was the person they were supposed to be talking to and not the man. And when they talked to Him about the matter, He answered them and turned all the threats of the commander of the Assyrian army into empty and useless threats. (Cf. 2Kings 19)

What is the lesson for us here? Well, it is that we must know when to keep quiet and not respond to people’s arrogant words or threats. Look, there are times that we may come across human opponents or enemies that we clearly do not have enough education, power, influence or money to defend ourselves against.

And these ones may deliberately be provoking us to say or do things that will give them a reason to attack and hurt or disgrace us. Our wisdom at such times, then, will be to be quiet and refuse to respond to whatever they say or do to us against us, however arrogant or annoying it may seem. That is because responding to them will simply make matters worse, something that we ourselves will know, if we are not foolish or reckless. Not replying such people in such situations, however, does not mean we are not to take any step towards defending or protecting ourselves against their nonsense. We must take steps towards doing that.

But our most important step will be to talk to God about what they are doing and let Him rebuke them for us. How He will rebuke them, of course, is up to Him. But we can be sure that if, instead of trying to fight a battle we cannot win, we will entrust the situation to Him, He will handle it for us. And when He is done, we might find ourselves asking, “God, have you not gone too far in dealing with this?”

Tags alaythia bible church, christianity, Faith, Fire in my bones, wisdom

FROM PASTOR'S DESK 2023 Pastor's Desk

Don’t settle for anything less | By: J.O. Lawal | Date: October 22, 2023 | Series: From Pastor’s Desk | Number: Vol. 12, No. 25

Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be yours from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer. Welcome to another week of the month of October 2023. I pray that your heart will always be strengthened never to settle for anything less than what God wants you to have and enjoy in life, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

One of the things we see in Scriptures is that God does not force people to embrace and enjoy His provisions for them. If we will not accept what He is offering us, He may not do anything to make sure we have it. And if we also decide to settle for anything less than what He wants us to have, He may not do anything to make us have everything He wants us to have.

For instance, as we are shown in the bible, when King Jehoash of Israel went to visit Prophet Elisha before he died, he showed himself as not passionate enough to experience the height of victory God wanted him to have over his enemies. As the account goes, Elisha had told this king to get a bow and some arrows to shoot. Why? Was it to entertain himself? No! Rather, it was something spiritually symbolic. As Elisha pointed out to him, the arrows he would be shooting were the Lord’s arrows of victory over the Arameans. (Cf. 2Kings 13:14-17)

Until that time the Arameans had been terribly oppressing the Israelites. The situation was so bad that Jehoash’s later father was left with only fifty horsemen, ten chariots and ten thousand foot-soldiers – the rest of his army had been utterly crushed (2Kings 13:7). So, if the land would be delivered and established in prosperity again, they would need to have victory over these Arameans as many times as necessary.

But it would take the miraculous for that to happen. God would need to step into the situation and give them victory over and over again for them to be completely free from the oppression of the Arameans. Why, then, did He not go ahead and give them all the victories they needed? Did He not care about them enough to do so? Or must they pray to Him before He would show that He cared about them?

Well, to answer these questions, God really cared about these Israelites and wanted to set them free from their oppressors. And as we see in the story, He was not even going to wait for all of them to gather to pray to Him before He would do something about their situation. However, He did not want to do anything about their matter without first letting them know that He was the one at work. Otherwise, they may give the credit meant for Him to themselves or to some dead gods. That was why He told Elisha to inform their king about it before it started happening.

In like manner, there are times that God may have to show us some of us some visions or dreams or send some prophets or angels to us before He does certain things for us. And this is so that we will know that the success, healing or protection we are enjoying is not a product of chance or anything we have done for ourselves. Rather, it is a product of His good works in our lives.

Furthermore, God wanted this king, Jehoash, to see how passionate he himself was about subduing his enemies and establishing his nation in peace and prosperity. So, He instructed Elisha to tell him to shoot those arrows of victory over the Arameans. Unfortunately, though this man knew exactly the implication of what he was doing, he shot only three arrows and stopped. That means he was satisfied with defeating the Arameans only three times. (Cf. 2Kings 13:18)

But would defeating them only three times be enough to permanently destroy the yokes they placed on the Israelites? No! Even Elisha, who was neither a soldier nor a politician, could tell that three back-to-back rounds of victory over the Arameans was not enough to give them permanent peace. They would need like five to six consistent rounds of victory over them for that to happen. Sadly, for some reasons, the ruler of the land, who was also their representative before God, decided that three rounds of victory was enough for him. And God approved it. He did not even tell him to go over the process again. He simply sealed his choice.

In the same vein, if, maybe because of fear, laziness or failure mentality, we too should go for anything less than what God wants us to have, He may just let it be. But soon enough we will realise that anything less than what God wants us to have will never be sufficient for us to experience the peace, rest and fruitfulness He wants us to enjoy in life. So, in relating to God, don’t ever aim for anything less than what He wants you to have or what you truly need. Otherwise, you may forever feel sorry for yourself for doing so.

Have a great week.