Tag: counsel

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Fire in my Bones Youth for Jesus

She missed her opportunity | By: J.O. Lawal | Date: January 26, 2022 | Series: Youth for Jesus | Number: Vol. 4, No. 37

“And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.”

(2Sam 6:23NIV)

Why did the Spirit of the Lord move the writer or writers of 2Samuel to inform us that Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death? It was because He wanted us to see why she had to live and die without having any child of her own?

And why did Michal live and die without having any child of her own? Was it because she could not get married? No! She got married. She got married to David, the man of God. In fact, she was his first legal wife. What, then, was the problem with her? Why could she not conceive for her husband, not to talk of have her own child? Was it because her husband had health issues? No! Her husband was fine. In fact, her husband had several children from his other wives. (Cf. 1Chro 3:1-9)

So, the problem was with Michal. She was the one that was barren and could not conceive. But we do know from Scriptures that she was not the only barren woman in bible days. There were other barren women that are mentioned in the bible. Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, Manoah’s wife and Elizabeth are all familiar bible names. These ones were barren for years too. Yet they were all cured of their barrenness. In other words, they did not die without having their own children.

Why, then, was Michal’s case different? Why was she not cured of her barrenness? Was it because there was no cure in the land? No! God was always there with them in the land. And He had already told them that as long as they were serving Him, He would cause His blessings to be on them, so that none of them would miscarry or be barren (Ex 23:25-26). So, though Michal was barren for years, the blessing of God was able to take away her barrenness, especially since the whole nation at that time was being led by David to truly worship God.

However, that did not happen. God’s blessing did not work in favour of Michal to take away her barrenness. Why? It was because she missed her opportunity to receive it. As the story goes, the very day God’s Ark was brought into the city of David and placed where he had prepared for it, he went back home to bless his household. Interestingly, who was the first to come out and meet him? It was Michal. And what should she have done when she came to him? She should have knelt down to receive his blessings. That, of course, would have been the end of her years of barrenness.

Remember that the bible shows us that Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, was cured of her barrenness because her husband prayed for her (Gen 25:21). And a similar thing could have happened to Michal, if she had received her husband and king’s blessings that day. At least, the man actually came home that very day with the inspiration of the Spirit of God to bless his household. But did Michal, his wife, humble herself to receive his blessings? No, she did not! Instead, she took the moment to accuse him of embarrassing himself before the whole nation, all in the name of worshipping God. Therefore, instead for him to bless her, he just walked pass her to go and bless other members of the family. What a shame! (Cf. 2Sam 6:20-23)

Now this remark, which we have as our opening bible text, is added at the end of the story: “And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.” That shows that the reason she did not have any child to the day of her death was that she missed her opportunity to be blessed to be fruitful. Why did she miss it? It was because she despised her husband and king, who was bearing God’s authority to bless her and cure her barrenness.

In like manner, there are people today who, like Michal, have missed or are missing their opportunity to experience God’s blessing to be fruitful in certain areas of their lives because they are despising those sent by Him to them or certain authorities placed by Him in their lives. And unless such people’s eyes are opened to see what they are missing or have missed, so that they may humble themselves before God and obtain His mercy, they may die without ever experiencing His blessings and provisions for them in those areas of their lives.

So, if you are one of those who take delight in despising authorities or spiritual leaders because you feel they are not dignified enough for you, this is a call for you to repent and humble yourself. Otherwise, God’s blessing to experience certain things you seriously desire to have in life may never find expression in your life.

Copyright © 2022, Reality Desk, a ministry of Alaythia Bible Church –This material is the sole property of Reality Desk. It may be copied for personal non-commercial use only in its entirety free of charge. All copies must contain this copyright notice. Please direct any questions you may have to pastor@abcministryng.com or call: 08037592851 (WhatsApp Number: 07085711280)

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Fire in my Bones Youth for Jesus

Wait for your time | By: J.O. Lawal | Date: December 01, 2021 | Series: Youth for Jesus | Number: Vol. 4, No. 29

“Then Jehu drew his bow and shot Joram between the shoulders. The arrow pierced his heart and he slumped down in his chariot. Jehu said to Bidkar, his chariot officer, “Pick him up and throw him on the field that belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite. Remember how you and I were riding together in chariots behind Ahab his father when the LORD made this prophecy about him: ‘Yesterday I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, declares the LORD, and I will surely make you pay for it on this plot of ground, declares the LORD.’ Now then, pick him up and throw him on that plot, in accordance with the word of the LORD.”” (2Kings 9:24-26NIV)

There is an adage in Yoruba, which when translated in English, says, “Until a child is holding the sword of judgment firmly in his hands, he wouldn’t be making certain enquiries about what was responsible for his father’s death.” And that is often the case in judging wickedness. Until someone has some measure of authority and power at his disposal, it does not matter how unhappy he is with the wickedness going on under his watch, he may not be able to effectively deal with it or judge it.

Now such was the case with Jehu, an Israel’s army general that was later anointed by God to be king in place of Joram, son of Ahab. As we see in our opening bible text, on the day that this man began to judge the wickedness of the house of Ahab, he reminded his chariot officer that both of them were with their master, Ahab, when the prophecy came that he and his family would certainly pay for the innocent blood of Naboth that they had shed. That indicates they too were not happy about the wickedness and bloodshed that characterised the reign of that man.

But could they do anything about the wickedness of his household at the time they were serving him? No! Why? It was because they did not have the authority or power to do so. And why did they not have the power or authority to do so? It was because it was not yet their time to have it.

However, the moment Jehu was ordained by God and also instructed by Him to make haste to judge the house of Ahab, he lost no time at all in doing so. Why? He knew that he had God’s authority and backing on this one and was bound to succeed. And he did succeed.

But then, you know that it was possible for some people who knew Jehu while he was still serving Ahab to have castigated him for not doing anything about his master’s wickedness or to even have associated him with his master’s wickedness. And that would be because they did not understand that even if someone is a lover of justice, there are things he cannot judge unless he has the authority and power to do so. And if he should dare to judge such things without having the power and authority to do so, he will most likely pay very dearly for it.

So, if you know any godly person that seems to be acting weak or docile in his position of authority, don’t be quick to judge them. That is because they may just be dealing with situations that they have no power, authority or wisdom to handle. And will God, then, be happy with you for condemning or judging them for something He has not given them abilities and opportunities to handle? I don’t think so.

Solomon says, “Don’t be surprised if you see a poor person being oppressed by the powerful and if justice is being miscarried throughout the land. For every official is under orders from higher up, and matters of justice get lost in red tape and bureaucracy. Even the king milks the land for his own profit!” (Eccl 5:8-9NLT) Did you see that? A lot of times, the number and ranks of those involved in making justice impossible in a place may just be too much to imagine. And without God’s backing, favour and authority, if you try to maintain justice in such a place, you may just end up perishing in a den of lions. (Cf. Dan 6)

Therefore, if you are passionate about maintain justice for God and man where you are, and you should be, if you are truly a child of God, then, be sure God has already delivered to you the authority, power and people to do so. Otherwise, wait for your time. Yes, wait until God bestows on you the authority and power to judge wickedness and maintain justice where you are, for that is only when you will succeed in doing so. And if you are wondering what you should be doing before that time, then, I will tell you this: First, be praying that God will hasten His handling of the authority and power that you need to judge wickedness and uphold justice to you. Second, continue to use your position now to promote whatever measure of righteousness it permits you to promote.

And may God strengthen you and make you alive, well and ready when the time comes for Him to use you to set right whatever is wrong in your world.

Copyright © 2021, Reality Desk, a ministry of Alaythia Bible Church –This material is the sole property of Reality Desk. It may be copied for personal non-commercial use only in its entirety free of charge. All copies must contain this copyright notice. Please direct any questions you may have to pastor@abcministryng.com or call: 08037592851 (WhatsApp Number: 07085711280)

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Fire in my Bones

Learn to get adequate good counsel | Pst. J.O. Lawal

fire in my bones
fire in my bones

Date: August 25, 2021 | Series: Youth for Jesus | Number: Vol. 4, No. 15

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Prov 15:22NIV)

Why was Solomon a great and mighty king? Was it because he was all-wise and all-knowing? No! Indeed, God, as we are told in the bible, blessed this man with wisdom, insight and a breadth of understanding that was as measureless as the sand on the seashore (1Kings 4:29). But that is not to say that he knew everything and needed nobody’s counsel or advice to succeed in life or as king. Only God knows everything and needs nobody’s counsel or advice to do anything (Isaiah 40:13-14).

But man is not God. Man is man, however wise or knowledgeable he may be. So, he is limited in many ways and will, from time to time, need the counsel and support of others to thrive in life or to escape from trouble. And one of the things that will show that he is wise and understanding is his recognition of the fact that he does not know or understand it all – he needs the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of others too to perfect his own. Otherwise, he is a fool, even if he or some other people think of him as wise.

So, Solomon, in his wisdom, says to us in our opening bible text, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” Have you ever failed at anything you were so sure you would succeed at? If you have, do you know why you failed? Well, even if you do not know why yet, Solomon is telling us here that one major reason people’s good plans or projects fail or fall apart is that they do not get adequate counsel or get counsel at all.

See, when we allow others to counsel us about what we want to do or about a problem we want to solve, whether through their direct words of mouth, books or audio or video recordings, we are able to see the loopholes, errors, impossibilities, possibilities or opportunities we are perhaps overlooking. And this enables us to make better informed decisions. But when we act like we know it all and do our thing, then, the surprises we get may end up being what will drive us to seek the counsel we ought to have sought before.

Therefore, before you make any major decision in your life, get counsel, adequate counsel. Meet or listen to as many people that are informed or highly experienced about the matter that you can listen to. But then, you must also understand that it is not every counsel that is good for you. Some counsel is bad and dangerous enough to destroy you. So, you need to be able to distinguish a wise and good counsel from a bad and destructive one.

Some people have all kinds of counsellors around them and that are ever ready to give them free counsel. But because they lack the wisdom of the Spirit to recognise what counsel will do them good and what counsel will destroy them, they are often embracing the wrong counsel and making life harder for themselves. And when they are done failing at something, they would say, “But I sought people’s counsel on this before I did it.”

Now what such people do not know is that success or salvation does not come just by taking counsel from people but also by taking the right counsel in its right amount from them. What was the difference between Solomon and his son, Rehoboam? It was the ability to distinguish a right counsel from a wrong and destructive one (1Kings 12). And if you want to possess and increase in this ability, give yourself to the word of God. That is because it can be trusted to make even a simple and naïve heart wise enough to distinguish what is good and profitable from what is bad and destructive (Ps 19:7).

At any rate, learn to seek and to take the right measure of counsel for every major step you are taking in life. That may just be the difference between success and failure for you or between salvation and destruction.

Copyright © 2021, Reality Desk, a ministry of Alaythia Bible Church –This material is the sole property of Reality Desk. It may be copied for personal non-commercial use only in its entirety free of charge. All copies must contain this copyright notice. Please direct any questions you may have to pastor@abcministryng.com or call: 08037592851 (WhatsApp Number: 07085711280)

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Others wisdom for living

She despised him in her heart

“As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.” (2Sam 6:16NIV)
 
It was a great day for King David, the day the Ark of God’s Covenant was brought into the place he had prepared for it. So he danced before the Lord with all his might (2Sam 6:14). Why? It was because he was appreciative of all the good things He had done for him. He was just a common shepherd boy, when the Lord sent Prophet Samuel to anoint him king instead of the then ruling king, Saul (1Sam 16:1-13). And a few years later, he was not only sitting on the throne of Israel as king; he was also privileged to set up a place in his city where the Lord’s Ark would be placed.
 
So you see that David could be nothing but thankful to God for all He had done for him. And he was not ashamed to express this before others. That was why he danced with all his might before the Lord and before all the people he had made him king over. In short, the more he thought about how far He had brought him, the more he sang and danced before him.
 
All this, however, did not go down well with his first wife, Michal, the daughter of King Saul, who was watching from a window. She had been raised as royalty. So, when she saw the way David was jumping up and down and dancing in the full glare of everybody, she was upset. Why? She felt David was not acting royal at all – he was disgracing the crown by acting the way he was acting before everybody. She may even have said to herself, “My father or my brother, Jonathan, would never have acted like this. They both knew how to act majestic and royal in everything they did. But this David — surely royalty does not suit him at all.”
 
So then, the bible says, “She despised him in her heart.” Think about that. This woman despised a man, who was being nothing but grateful, for unashamedly giving thanks to God. And as the account further shows us, she did not stop at just despising David in her heart. When he came home to bless his household, she also went out, not to welcome him home but to tell him to his face what sort of disgrace he was to the throne of Israel. So, instead for the man to bless her, he did not. Instead, he rebuked her for failing to see that it was God, the one who chose him in place of her father, that he was celebrating. And that was how her barrenness remained stuck to her till the end of her time on earth. (Cf. 2Sam 6:20-22)
 
Now what is the lesson for us in this account? It is that we must never despise, whether secretly or openly, any act of service or worship of others before God. The fact that you feel uncomfortable with the way someone is serving or worshipping God does not mean that they are wrong. And as long as they are not wrong, God accepts them and whatever they are doing for Him. If you, then, despise them and their worship or service for any reason, you will never be a partaker of the blessings and favours of God that are being released on their lives and through their lives. And who knows whether those are just what you need to experience divine liberty from the barrenness you are experiencing in certain areas of your life?
 
Then, even if someone is wrong and contrary to the will of God in their worship or service to Him, and you are quite sure that they are, despising them is not in any way going to help them get things right; it will only shut whatever door of opportunity you might have had in helping them. Unfortunately, in most cases where people despise others because they are worshiping God or serving Him in certain ways, it is not because they are sure those people are utterly wrong; rather, it is often because they are irritated that those people are doing what they are just too proud to do. So, they begin to nurse evil thoughts about them and may even go to the extent of openly criticising them. But as I pointed out before, when you allow the devil to push you to start acting in that manner, it won’t be long before you shut certain doors of your life against fruitfulness.
 
Therefore, guard your heart with all diligence against evil thoughts and bitterness of every kind. And may God keep you from using your own mouth to ruin your life.
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wisdom for living

You can be kept from destructive decisions

“Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.” (Gen 13:10-13NIV)
 
One of the prayers we must learn to offer in life is that God will keep us from making any decision or taking any step that will ruin our future or make a waste of our lives. It is true that we are always making decisions and choices. We make decisions about what food to eat or not to eat, what dress to wear or not to wear, what place to go or not to go and so forth. And even when we refuse to make a decision about something, that is still a decision.
 
But then, there are certain decisions that we make that can impart the course of our entire lives and even other people’s lives for good or for evil. For instance, the choice of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, to visit the young ladies of the land of Shechem one day led to her defilement that same day – she was raped and her virginity forcefully taken. And this, of course, further led to the sacking of a whole city by her brothers, Simeon and Levi. Just one decision, a decision that seemed harmless at the time it was taken, ruined entire lives and generations.
 
Also, as we see in the bible, Lot’s decision to live in Sodom and Gomorrah ended up making him lose his wife and everything else he had laboured for in life as a young man (Gen 19). But when he was making that decision, it looked like the very right thing to do. He saw a legitimate opportunity to enlarge his livestock business by staying in Sodom, and he took it. But he had no idea at that time that God had already marked the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for destruction. So, it was not a matter of whether those cities would be destroyed; rather, it was a matter of when they would be destroyed. And they were eventually destroyed along with everything Lot had. In fact, he barely escaped with his life and the lives of his two daughters.
 
Now remember that Lot was a righteous man, according to the bible (2Pet 2:7). Yet he made a decision that made a mess of his old age and lives of his wife and children. So, righteous people, godly people, can also make decisions that will ruin their lives, homes, future or generations of people. In Lot’s case, it was a moment of greed that led him to make that decision. And in Dinah’s case, it was a little desire for some pleasure that led to her defilement and disgrace. So, a single decision made out of our carelessness, thoughtlessness, greed, unclean desire for pleasure or insensitivity may result in a lifetime of shame or ruin.
 
All of this is why we must learn to always pray that God, who alone knows the future, will continually keep us back from making any such decision that will ultimately ruin our lives or others’ lives, regardless of the pressure to do so or of how harmless it may seem at the time in question. And supposing you are already suffering terribly because of certain decisions you made in the past, decisions which seemed harmless and right at the time you made them. As long as there is breath in you, you can still count on God to free you from the consequences of such decisions.
 
At least, He delivered Jacob from the consequences of cheating his brother, Esau, many years later, when he called upon him in his moment of fear and desperation (Gen 32&33). And He will deliver you too, if you will call upon Him for help. How He will do this I cannot say. But I know that the Scriptures that say, “Anyone that puts his trust in Him will never be put to shame and everyone that calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” are true. So, call on Him now, regardless of how messed up your life has become because of your bad decisions, and He will save you from your fears and shame. (Cf. Rom 10:11-13)
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Others wisdom for living

WHERE IS IT APPLICABLE?

Many read the bible and study the Scriptures, but they have not fully come to terms with the fact that these things are meant to be applied to life. The things we teach, the things we learn in our meetings, are meant to be applied to life. So, we must not just focus on studying the Scriptures, we must also learn how they apply to life.
I wouldn’t know what comes to your mind each time you sit down to listen to a sermon and make notes. Do you consider how and where the things you are learning apply to life? You ought to consider that. As you listen to a sermon, you should be able to say, “This is where this applies.” Or, “I should be able to apply this where I work.” Or, “I should be able to apply this in my school.” Or, “I should be able to apply this in my business.” But if you cannot see how these things apply to life, I am telling you, you are just wasting your time. And that is one of the problems most people that attend schools of Theologies and Seminaries usually have. Nothing is wrong with attending such schools. But the truth is that whatever you get there is just book knowledge. And until you are able to apply it to life, it does not count for anything.
 
And you know that is also one of the problems we have in Nigeria today. Our students learn a lot of things in School, things that they do not know where they are applicable in life. Those of you who are still in school and are reading this, do you know where the things you are learning in school are applicable? In some other climes, they spend a lot of time on finding out where the things they teach and learn are applicable. They keep asking, “Where can we apply this law? Where can we apply that law?” But we don’t do that here. We just read to pass examinations and read to get some certificates. And then when you get out there, they will tell you that you are not employable, because you are useless. Why? The things you have learnt, you cannot bring to bear upon life.
 
So, it is important to know how the knowledge of the Scriptures you have relates to life. It is not in reading more Scriptures. Of course, it is good to read the Scriptures, more and more of them. But this goes beyond reading more Scriptures or memorising more Scriptures. I know there are people who busy themselves memorising Scriptures. I am not against memorising Scriptures. I memorise Scriptures too. But if you don’t know where these Scriptures apply or how apply them to your relationships, activities and all of life, they will not work. It is only the Scriptures that you apply in your life that will produce results.
 
(Adapted from ‘The essence of Christian living in the world’, a Sunday 20th December 2015 Sermon by J.O. Lawal.)