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Sunday Sermon with Apostle Chisal
Greetings beloved nation in the name of Jesus Christ. Job 1:9-11, “So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 I have made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side?
You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely l curse 1You to Your face!” Our worship to God has to be based on a true intimate relationship. It’s unfortunate that worship has been judged by the things that we want from God, of which there is nothing wrong with that because the bible says, ‘ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be open to you’.
We are in a season where material things have come first more than the relationship we have with God. I am not encouraging poverty or lack because such is demonic, but a lot of us Christians we have measured our relationship with God using substances. If you don’t drive or don’t have a house, or are not married, you are considered a not so prayerful person or spiritual person. And we forget that God is a lifter of men. We have seen people judging spirituality by these things, which are good and God is a giver of good things. We have seen a lot people who have backslidden because they have measured the presence of God with things. Some have become discouraged in this walk because they have not acquired properties, marriage, houses and they thought that God is not on their side. One time Jesus said in the book of Mathew 6:33 if, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you”.
So they are called things and they are added as we continue to seek his righteousness. In the days of Job we see that there was a conversation between God and Satan. “Satan answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear God for nothing”. So Satan was saying that the reason why Job was fearing God was because of the things he has acquired or things he has been blessed with. In other ways he was saying he loved God because God had blessed him with a lot of goods, properties and children. So in the mind of the devil many Christians have come to the Lord not for fellowship, intimacy or relationship with God, but because they want what God has. But there is a level or dimension where God is calling the church to, where we should love him whether we have things or not, whether we are insulted, our love for God should be genuine.
You will be surprised when you hear a lot of prayer points of Christians. There is no longer a prayer that expresses gratitude or love towards God. 90% of our prayers or messages are about, ‘God do this for me, if you don’t, I will stop praying and being committed’. We only know one dimension of God which is the hand of God, the hand of provision. Few Christians know the dimension of the heart of God, that which is in his heart concerning the nations of the world concerning his people. So Satan when he was having a conversation with God he was bringing an accusation and information knowing well that a lot of people only go to God or attend services because they need the latest cars, marriage, children, big churches, which is all good. So Satan made a suggestion to God that God should put forth his hand and touch that which he had and Job would curse God. But I am asking myself that how many believers who after being blessed so much, when they plunge down in life, how many will be standing and saying ‘God I love you’ like what happened to Job. Remember Job lost everything including his children and support system. But the man still had the guts to say, ‘my redeemer liveth’.
God is calling us into maturity where we should stop worshipping God with a list of conditions because the apostles served God in good times and in bad times. An example is Apostle Paul and Silas who after delivering that girl who had a spirit of divination, the girl got delivered and celebrated her freedom. But her masters got offended, arrested Paul and Silas, put them into prison where they were beaten thoroughly, and all this after the Holy Ghost had used them. But we see them in the midst of prison worshipping whilst their backs were dripping with blood. How many people who when they are divorced, lost loved ones, got demoted in ministry, having people close to them betray them, how many will still continue to praise him and announce his faithfulness. In Acts 5 we are told about Peter and other apostles who were arrested and put into prison for preaching the gospel.
The bible tells us that while in prison an angel came and took them from the prison miraculously. The next day they were found in the temple standing and preaching the message of life and they were caught and taken before the counsel where they were forbidden to preach about Jesus Christ.
In Acts 5:40-41 it says, “And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” Just imagine you have escaped from prison miraculously by the hand of God, next day you are arrested for preaching the gospel and beaten.
The bible says they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. Sometimes the church doesn’t want to suffer shame, we are so executive trying to keep certain postures, not knowing that in this gospel we have to suffer for it. When we read in Genesis 47:8-9, Jacob the man is that man who is referred to as God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob. When he answered Pharaoah, the man who wrestled with God, the man who bible says is God of Jacob, he says, “And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou
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