Helpers of our joy

Messages for April 2016: Our Month of unspeakable Joy
Message for the 17th of April 2015
Theme: Understanding the importance of the Joy of the Lord

Topic: Helpers of our joy

Introduction: 2Cor.1:23-24:

“Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth.

Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand.”

Last week we were looking at the benefits of joy in this series and we established that the joy of the Lord is so valuable that each of us should desire to flow in it. In our text here, we saw Paul referring to himself and Timothy as helpers of the Joy of the Church at Corinth. This means there are people and things that can help our joy. Another aspect of the importance of joy we are going to be looking at in this series therefore is the helpers of our joy. What are the things about life that help us to become and remain joyful so that we can continue to experience the benefits that the Joy of the Lord brings? We will look at some of them today to provoke us to research more from the word of God to find more hidden treasures that would help us in our quest for walking in the joy of the Lord.

The following are some of the helpers of our joy:

The word of God: The word of God is the revelation of what God says or imparts to the heart of men by the Holy Spirit. They are either written down like the scriptures [2Tim.3:16, 2Pet.1:19-21] or spoken to us directly in our hearts either audibly – Jn.15:11 or by the inward witness – Romans 8:16. The result of this is that the joy of the Lord is released into our hearts to confirm that it is God who has spoken to us. When Jesus spoke to his disciples in John 15:11 about bearing fruits for the father, he brought this truth out clearly in relation to the connection between the joy of the Lord and bearing fruit in the kingdom of God. He said he spoke these words to them with the intention that His joy might remain in them and that their joy might be full. This makes the word of God a major helper of our joy because it not only gives you joy, it makes you full of joy.

Another helper of our joy is The Holy Spirit: He is not just a helper of our Joy for being God; He is the oil of Joy. In Isaiah 61:3, he is referred to as the oil of joy and has the capacity to destroy everything that causes a person to mourn. In other words, the Holy Spirit has the capacity in his ministry as to oil of joy to eliminate depression from the life of a person and replace it with divine strength. Like we saw last week, the joy of the Lord is our strength. Therefore, the oil of joy comes to strengthen us for the journey of faith and empowers us to take the journey to the end without weakening. In John 16:13, we are told that when the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide us into all truth. When we are guided into all truth, we are guided into all the revelations of God. Therefore, we are guided into unspeakable joy because the truth revealed to us as we saw in the previous paragraph, causes the joy of the Lord to remain in us and makes us joyful.

Hope: This refers to the expectation of something good to come in the future. When we were looking at the definition of joy, we established that joy is the passion or emotion excited by the expectation of good. The expectation of good is hope. Where hope exists, joy is inevitable. This is why the bible tells us that the feet of those who bring us glad tidings are beautiful [Rm.10:15]. A major instrument that is used to convey hope is glad tidings. When that happens, people become joyful. For instance, in Acts 8:5-8; we are told that when Phillip took the gospel [or glad tidings or good news] to Samaria, the people received Christ and the result was that there was great joy in that City. Thus the preaching of Christ to the Samaritans helped them to come to a place of great joy. So if you want to be an instrument through which God would help people to rejoice, preach Christ to them.

Faith: Another helper of our joy is faith. Faith is acting on the expectation of the good resulting from the promise of God revealed to you. This is why Apostle Paul said in 2Cor.7:4 that they were joyful in all their tribulations. They were acting in faith on the word that the Lord Jesus Christ taught them in Matthew 5:11-12 where is said that they should consider themselves blessed when men shall persecute and revile them and even say all manner of evil things against them for his sake. He further said that they should rejoice and be glad in these circumstances for great is their reward in heaven. Thus every time our faith is tried through persecution, is a time of opportunity to rejoice. When we take advantage of this, it would help our joy.

People: People help our joy in various ways. As we saw in the previous paragraph, they can help our joy by persecuting us if we would maintain the right attitude in trials. On the other hand, they can help our joy by influencing us to be joyful through what they say to us and how they treat us. In John 15:11, the Lord told the disciples some things to cause His joy to remain in them and cause them to be joyful. There are some people who share the revelations of the word of God with you in such a way as to trigger joy in your heart in unimaginable ways. Remember that one of the main instruments God uses to bring us joy is revealed knowledge and he can convey this knowledge through human vessels. This is why Apostle Paul and Timothy referred to themselves as the helpers of the joy of the Church at Corinth. See 2Cor.1:1, 23-24.

We will stop here for today believing God for grace to be given to each of us by God to seek Him for more helpers of our joy from His word. Access to this grace was freely available to man until the devil came in to mess things up by luring man into sin which resulted in his separation from God [Gen.3; Rm.3:23 and 6:23]. Thankfully, the Lord Jesus Christ already came to solve the sin problem for us. However, we are required to embrace His sacrifice by believing in Him and receiving God’s free gift of salvation through faith. See John 3:16-18.

If you have not yet received this free gift, you can do so right away by saying the following prayer out loud in faith and you shall be saved:

Heavenly Father,

Have mercy on me a sinner. Today, I believe that Jesus died for me and you raised Him from the dead for my Justification. I therefore declare that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and from today, I renounce the fatherhood of Satan and embrace Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Thank you for this father in Jesus’ name! Amen.

Congratulations! For more information and resources that would help you grow in this new life, please visit our website at www.kingdomheirsministries.org and our blogs at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com and follow us on twitter at alero_nanna and on face book on www.facebook.com/flourishinggirl www.facebook.com/khmii2015; www.facebook.com/thewellbeingcenter. Or www.facebook.com/kingdomjointheirsfamily email:  jointheirsfamily@gmail.com.   

Remain on top of your challenges in Jesus’ name!

What are the benefits of the Joy of the Lord?

Message for the 10th of April 2015

Theme: Understanding the importance of the Joy of the Lord

Topic: What are the benefits of the Joy of the Lord?

Last week, we began this series by looking at what Joy is and we took the time to establish that it is also part of our entitlements in the covenant of grace. In explaining what Joy is, we also saw some of the characteristics of joy that distinguishes it from any other thing like happiness and natural zeal.

Today, we shall be looking at what we stand to benefit if we take advantage of this great grace of the joy of the Lord. Please understand that this great gift of God is meant for our good and part of the mystery keys of the kingdom of God that enables us to exercise dominion on earth until Jesus returns. No matter how much grace God makes available to you, your ability to take advantage of it is limited to your awareness and understanding of it. If for instance; you own money in the bank and are not aware of it, while the money will always be yours, you could remain in abject poverty if you are not aware of its existence and how to cash it. While looking at what joy is last week, we saw how it comes and from that we can gather that it is a gift of God and we can also generate it by staying with God until His word is revealed to us. John 15:11 and Isa.11:1-2.

The benefits of Joy

The word of God reveals the following benefits of joy among others to us:

1.     The joy of the Lord is what makes your service of God acceptable in the kingdom especially when all your service is done joyfully. For instance, for your offerings and tithes to be acceptable to God, you have to give them willingly and cheerfully because God loves a cheerful giver [2Cor.9:7]. In truth, any kind of service you render to God must be joyfully done otherwise it would not be acceptable to God and therefore not be rewarded. This is because in God’s kingdom, only acceptable service is rewarded [Heb.12:28]. When you do not render service to the Lord joyfully, you risk serving your enemies in sorrow; lack, want etc. see Deu.28:47-48.

2.     The joy of the Lord is a fruit of the recreated human spirit that proves your new birth status. With the joy of the Lord in you to the overflow, the enemy of our souls cannot mistake you for one of his own because this joy keeps him and his cohorts off you and yours just like fire keeps off wild beasts and prevents them from harming you. See 1Pet.1:8; Gal.5:22.

3.     The joy of the Lord empowers us to bear fruit because the absence of joy causes barrenness. In Joel 1:12, we are told that everything around us can dry up and wither away if joy is not present in our lives. This is quite serious as there is an unleashing of the spirit of depression on people these days due mainly to lack of fulfilment rooted in their refusal to embrace the great salvation provided for them by the Lord. See Heb.2:2-4. The antidote to a situation like this is first to get saved and then make a choice like the prophet Habakkuk to rejoice in spite of your circumstances. Hab.3:17-19.

When Israel did this in 2Chron.20:1-24, their enemies were smitten before them by God. All they had to do was to cart away the spoils from the war they did not fight.

4.     Helps us to bind the any kind of strong man no matter how long they had afflicted us and our loved ones: Without joy, we cannot render acceptable praise to the Lord. When we render praise that the Lord accepts, we can bind the strongman. Believe me, joyful praise is a sure means of binding the strongman; disarming him and spoiling his house – Luke 11:21-22; Ps.149:1-9.

5.     The joy of the Lord is the strength of the believer in all walks of life. Neh.8:10. Remember that last week; we established that joy is a gift of God and that he delivers this gift to us by the Holy Spirit in His manifestation as the Spirit of might[Isa.11:2]. This explains why the joy of the Lord is our strength. It provides us strength that enables us to deliver on the favour that God brings our way. For example, if you are favoured with a good job and lack the strength to accomplish it, the favor given to you would lose value and you may never have another chance at it again. So the spirit of might which presents in unspeakable joy provides the drive or momentum required to stay on the work until it is completed. This is what Joseph had going for him that made him become prime minister in Egypt and delivered on his job eventually with excellence. See Gen.41:38-44.

6.     Joy facilitates access to revelation: in Isa.12:3, the Holy Spirit reveals to us by the prophet that joy is the bucket with which we draw from the depths if revelation from God. It takes revelation knowledge for one to gain access to the top in life. This is why Apostle Paul who was so distinguished among his peers said in Gal.2:2 that he went up by revelation. See also Deu.29:29 and Prov.20:5. Understanding is only available to us by divine revelation which we receive on the platform of joy.

For want of time, we will stop here today. Next week, we shall continue this series by looking at helpers of our joy. Meanwhile, Access to this grace was freely available to man until the devil came in to mess things up by luring man into sin which resulted in his separation from God [Gen.3; Rm.3:23 and 6:23]. Thankfully, the Lord Jesus Christ already came to solve the sin problem for us. However, we are required to embrace His sacrifice by believing in Him and receiving God’s free gift of salvation through faith. See John 3:16-18.

If you have not yet received this free gift, you can do so right away by saying the following prayer out loud in faith and you shall be saved:

Heavenly Father,

Have mercy on me a sinner. Today, I believe that Jesus died for me and you raised Him from the dead for my Justification. I therefore declare that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and from today, I renounce the fatherhood of Satan and embrace Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Thank you for this father in Jesus’ name! Amen.

Congratulations! For more information and resources that would help you grow in this new life, please visit our website at www.kingdomheirsministries.org and our blogs at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com and follow us on twitter at alero_nanna and on face book on www.facebook.com/flourishinggirl www.facebook.com/khmii2015; www.facebook.com/thewellbeingcenter. Or www.facebook.com/kingdomjointheirsfamily email:  jointheirsfamily@gmail.com.   

Remain on top of your challenges in Jesus’ name! 

What Joy is

Messages for April 2016: Our Month of unspeakable Joy
Message for the 3rd of April 2015
Theme: Understanding the importance of the Joy of the Lord
Topic: What Joy is
Introduction: As we enter into this season of great influx of souls into God’s Kingdom, there is no better way to take off than being given the opportunity by the Lord to both enjoy his unspeakable joy and learn and understand it so as to guarantee the harvest He is giving us. His joy will also help to preserve this harvest until His return.
For us to enjoy His best for us therefore, we must take the time to not assume knowledge of the joy of the Lord but to carefully learn and understand how it works. This would help us to take advantage of this great grace for our benefit and the glory of God.
What then is Unspeakable joy? The two key words here are unspeakable and joy. Let us take them apart to define them for clarity purpose.
Unspeakable is that which defies expression in words. For our purpose here, it is the joy that cannot be described but must be experienced to know it.
Joy on the other hand is the passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good. It is that which causes joy or happiness. It can also be defined as enthusiasm.
While all these dictionary definitions try to define joy, their definition may not truly describe the joy of the Lord especially when it is seen as something that is a result of the acquisition of something good. In this case, it could pass for happiness if the thing acquired is material and transient. The joy of the Lord goes deeper and stronger than that. The following qualities help to show what the joy of the Lord is.
Qualities of the Joy of the Lord:
It is a spiritual gift of God given to the redeemed. It is therefore not a material thing and not dependent on tangible things to flow and be expressed through a person.Isa.61:3 and 1Pet.1:8.
Joy is a fruit of the recreated human spirit and therefore can be nurtured and can grow. Gal.5:22
Joy is a supernatural mystery that proves the existence of faith in the heart of a person. 1Pet.1:8 and Rm.4:20.
Joy is a spiritual force that can be described as the strength of a believer in Christ. Neh.8:10.
Joy is the energetic assurance of faith that sees you believing God from the time of promise to its actual manifestation. 1Pet.1:8 and Ezek.2:2.
Joy enables you to maintain a staying power in an energetic and expressive way resulting in the creation and sustenance of momentum irrespective of conflicting physical occurrences. 1Pet.1:8 and Jn.15:11
Our right in the covenant of Grace:
Everyone who is born of God has certain entitlements as God’s child that distinguishes them from the world. One of the entitlements we have received in the covenant of Grace cut with the Lord Jesus Christ through His body and blood is joy. See John 1:16-17 and Jn.6:53-54. Joy is one of the proofs of the existence of eternal life in a person. See Gal.5:22.
How joy comes:
It is given to us at new birth as part of the package in our redemption. This makes it a gift of God to us. Isa.61:3.
It is imparted to us through the infilling of the Holy Spirit – Ps.45:7 and Heb.1:9.
It is released into us by the word of God spoken to us. This is why any time you hear the voice of God, one of the proofs that it is God speaking to you is that it leaves you joyful no matter the adversities around you. John 15:11
It is imparted by the revelation of the Holy Spirit of the light in God’s word. See Jer.15:16.
It is a product of answer to prayer by God. See John 16:26.
It is a product of divine visitation. Jn.16:20-22 
When we are filled with the joy of the Lord, we enter into a realm where we cannot be defeated because the joy of the Lord is our strength and nothing can defeat the strength of the Lord which is also called the spirit of might. See Neh.8:10 and Is.11:2.
Access to this grace was freely available to man until the devil came in to mess things up by luring man into sin which resulted in his separation from God [Gen.3; Rm.3:23 and 6:23]. Thankfully, the Lord Jesus Christ already came to solve the sin problem for us. However, we are required to embrace His sacrifice by believing in Him and receiving God’s free gift of salvation through faith. See John 3:16-18.
If you have not yet received this free gift, you can do so right away by saying the following prayer out loud in faith and you shall be saved:
Heavenly Father,
Have mercy on me a sinner. Today, I believe that Jesus died for me and you raised Him from the dead for my Justification. I therefore declare that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and from today, I renounce the fatherhood of Satan and embrace Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Thank you for this father in Jesus’ name! Amen.
Congratulations! For more information and resources that would help you grow in this new life, please visit our website at www.kingdomheirsministries.org and our blogs at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com and follow us on twitter at alero_nanna and on face book on www.facebook.com/flourishinggirl www.facebook.com/khmii2015; www.facebook.com/thewellbeingcenter. Or www.facebook.com/kingdomjointheirsfamily email:  jointheirsfamily@gmail.com.   
Remain on top of your challenges in Jesus’ name!

Welcome to the month of April 2016: Our Month of Unspeakable Joy!

1Pet.1:8; John 15:11; Heb.1:9; Isa.61:3
It is often said that momentum is a leader’s best friend. I can say from my experience that this is so very true. Momentum is the energy that enables a leader to run with the vision without burning out even in the midst of adverse situations. It is the drive in a leader that impacts on the institution or group they lead. God did not leave us to ourselves in this wicked world. He said He would not leave us comfortless but would return to us. He kept his word when on that great unusual day of Pentecost, at the upper room; He visited the 120 disciples who were awaiting his visitation. On that day, the Church was born. God’s longtime dream of finding a place of rest in the heart of man was actualized.
Since then, we have had the privilege of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In His office as the Spirit of might, He releases the oil of joy into us that enables us to rejoice with what Apostle Peter describes as joy unspeakable full of glory! Joy is the fuel that powers the believer with supernatural ability for accomplishing the unaccomplishable by natural standards. The result of this is usually described as a miracle.
Many have confused joy with happiness and have ended up experiencing a roller coaster life because happiness is a transient feeling based on circumstances around us that we like. Joy on the other hand, is spiritual energy supernaturally imparted to us by the Holy Spirit and the revealed word of God. I want to describe joy as active faith that enables a believer to stay believing with the right attitude until the manifestation of what they have believed God for. It is the other side of the peace of God. Joy and peace work together to bring a balance in our faith walk.
The joy of the Lord is so powerful that if we allow it to stay with us, we would never experience depression. Due to the supernatural grace of joy, the spirit of depression is cast out cheaply.
In these evil days when men’s hearts are failing them, the antidote for depression and all that make men’s heart to fail is the oil of gladness. The oil of gladness has the ability to take away mourning of any kind from our lives. It is what energizes us to offer sacrifices of praise [when physical circumstances resist praise] because it dresses us up with the garment of praise taking away all the ashes of our lives.
This grace is so beneficial for keeping us in faith until the soon return of the Lord that we must spend time this month to understand it. To this end, this month, we shall be looking at a series I title: “Understanding the importance of the Joy of the Lord”. This grace is however a spiritual virtue that is only accessible to the redeemed as one of the keys of the kingdom [see Mt.16:19]. If you are yet to make Jesus Christ he Lord of your life, you cannot take advantage of this grace yet until you do so. Should your desire to do so now, please say the following prayer out loud in faith and you shall be granted access:
Heavenly Father,
Have mercy on me a sinner. Today, I believe that Jesus died for me and you raised Him from the dead for my Justification. I therefore declare that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and from today, I renounce the fatherhood of Satan and embrace Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Thank you for this father in Jesus’ name! Amen.
Congratulations! For more information and resources that would help you grow in this new life, please visit our website at www.kingdomheirsministries.org and our blogs at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com and follow us on twitter at alero_nanna and on face book on www.facebook.com/flourishinggirl www.facebook.com/khmii2015; www.facebook.com/thewellbeingcenter. Or www.facebook.com/kingdomjointheirsfamily email:  jointheirsfamily@gmail.com.   
Remain on top of your challenges in Jesus’ name!