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Below are excerpts of a sermon preached by Emmanuel Makandiwa on Sunday, April 30, 2017.
Jesus came to provide abundant life to us and if we do not have it, it does not mean that God is not interested in giving it to us, but it means we are not yet interested.
It means we are not yet ready to receive and embrace it, yet that is what He came to provide.
Inasmuch as God created us in His own image and likeness, one thing that makes Him outstanding and different from us is that He has a certain desire most people do not have.
God enjoys finding pleasure in Himself and you can see it by the comments He gave after He finished creating everything, for He continuously said “this is good”.
God likes to enjoy His work and creation; that pleasure has to also be found in us, especially if we are designed in His image and likeness.
We have to desire and enjoy pleasuring ourselves. There is a life that is greater and another one that is inferior, but you make a decision to attain a life that is greater. There is a path that one needs to follow to attain a life that is greater.
You have to understand that God wants us to be happy; His desire is for His people to be happy. The problems hindering most people from attaining a life that is greater is that they simply do not know how to deal with pain.
To most people, pain is not something strange. You have heard about pain, you experienced it and you know what it is, but not many people really know how to deal with it, how to correct it and how to replace it with something that makes them happy.
That is the reason why a person can have the same pain for 20 years. It is not because the person enjoys pain, but he simply does not know what to do to get rid of it.
You cannot have a life that is greater if there is pain in any part of your being. Pain needs to be dealt with, not to be ignored.
Pain has to be dealt with because it is a communication. I personally regard pain to be the most ignored voice of God.
It is continuously being ignored by people on a daily basis. Regardless of being good or bad, you need to understand pain as an agent, an angel sent to you by God to notify you of something gone wrong.
Not having a good life is a very painful experience. The Book of James teaches us something very important. “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him,” (James 5:13-15).
In the scriptures above, we have different kinds of people; the afflicted and the joyful.
It is not just about prayer here, the scripture makes us understand that there is always something that can be done by the afflicted to get rid of his affliction.
There is something you can do today or tomorrow that can always remove your current experience. Knowing that gives you energy because you would know that you are going through something that can be dealt with.
If there is an affliction in any part of your life, there is something that can be done.
Let the afflicted pray. If you are sick, find the mature in the spirit who can deal with your sickness. They can lay hands on you and anoint you with oil then you recover.
When you are sick before recovery, you have to find out that there is somebody more capable and well equipped to get rid of your pain. You have to consult the person before he can deal with your pain.
The pain in your physical body can leave you the day you want it to leave provided you identify the people who are qualified to deal with that pain. When you hand over your pain to such people, they can remove it for you.
When people go to church, it is not just to worship God, but so that their pain can be removed. You should not feel bad when coming to God because of pain that you would want Him to remove.
There is nothing wrong with that because God specialises in removing pain; that is His job.
If anything goes wrong in our lives, we come to God. Whatever pain you have, identify somebody who can help you come out of your pain. It is wrong to say that we only come to God to worship Him.
If we say that we would make God a selfish God, who only thinks about Himself. People do not just worship God for no reason; there are benefits associated with that.
We come to Him because He blesses, heals and gives us hope. We serve God because of what He can do, not just because of who He is. Our God is a doing and powerful God. He delivers us from our afflictions; that is why we serve Him.
There are three things you have to understand when you are dealing with pain in order for you to attain a better life.
The first is pain identification. You have to identify pain by finding its location.
Where is the pain located in your life? The second thing is pain description and the last thing is pain correction or pain removal.
If you do not understand these things there is no greater life you can attain.
If I am to ask you to share your pain with me right now, are you able to tell where it is located? If God is to remove any pain from you now in a location you do not know, you will never be grateful to Him.
You have different locations; remember that you are a spirit, you have a soul and you live in a physical body. These are three different areas and you have to know where your pain is.
Are you afflicted spiritually? There are people like that who are afflicted spiritually, but physically they have a lot of money. They are not sick physically, but they are bound spiritually.
You need to identify your pain, is it in the spirit or in your soul. If you are not born again it means your soul is under affliction. Is your affliction in your physical body? Are you sick physically?
Online Reporter