Welcome
to the Month of May 2017: Our Month of Our Wealthy Places
Pa.66:12:
“… but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. And Lk.16:11 ” … if
therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit
to your trust the true riches?
Recently there was a news
broadcast that rocked the world about the nefarious activities of a fake
prophet from our country in another country. I was amazed at the extent people
could go in wickedness just for fame and money. This brought to mind a resolve
I made as a young minister several years ago as I saw how many people who
started to run well in the ministerial race of life kept losing their places
for different reasons including a lack of focus born out of a misunderstanding
of what true riches are. At that time, I was afraid and did not think I was
insulated from falling just like some of those who started before me had. So I
began to negotiate with God that I did not want to go full time into ministry
any more so that I would not crash like those people. But here is what the Lord
told me that day: “I am able to keep you from falling”! Since then, this has
been my confidence for running the race God has set before me as a missionary.
The beauty of running this race so far is that God has faithfully kept His word
to me. Every good thing our eyes have seen and our hands have handled as a
ministry has been as a result of the Lord faithfully keeping His word to us.
In less than seven years, God has
given us the grace to run beyond our imagination and plant Churches with proper
structure and content in two different countries and have our ministry running
legally in three countries. We have never had to be indebted to any man or
agency doing this because God has consistently proven himself to be our source.
All these have happened because of the grace of God in fulfilling His word to
me from that day He told me that He was able to keep me from falling.
While meditating on the word of
the Lord to me this month, it dawned on me that the reason why we have such a
high incidence of some purported men of God falling into so many atrocities
resulting in the kind of reproach we see on media these days is not unconnected
with the love of money with which some of these fake ministers have become so
plagued as a result of a want of understanding of what true riches really are.
So many have confused riches for money and fame due to the false perception of
these traded to us by the media in publishing the lies of the devil. Apostle
Paul tried to correct this wrong perception over a thousand years ago when he
taught that the love of money is at the root of all evil and that some who have
coverted after it have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. He went
further to admonish men of God to flee these things saying that we should live
godly and contented lives. See 1Tim.6:6-11 which have proven to be a timeless
truth for any man or woman sincerely seeking the true God and father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Prior to the time of Apostle Paul,
the Lord Jesus Christ made a distinction between money and true riches and
proved at every given opportunity that true riches is different from money
through his teachings and life. He also taught that people who worship money
cannot worship God at the same time. In fact in Matthew 6:24, He said that we
cannot serve God and mammon. Also in Luke 16:11, He made it clear that our
faithfulness in handling money would make God commit to us the true riches.
This clearly shows us that there is more to life than material things. In fact
if we do not bow down to the Lord by placing the benefits of our physical
efforts at His feet in worship, we cannot access the true riches of God. This
was the practice of the early Church which was clearly portrayed in Acts
4:33-35 where we learn that God gave great power to the Apostles to testify of
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ by causing great grace to be on them
all. The result was that none of them lacked.
In summation here, I want to say
that true riches are encapsulated in the grace of God. This explains why
everywhere the riches of the grace of God are mentioned in the bible, money and
other material things do not describe it. In Ephesians 1:7 for instance, riches
of the grace of God was a term used to refer to our redemption blessing. Again
in Ephesians 2:6-10, Apostle Paul refers to the riches of the grace of God in
connection to God’s kindness towards us in saving us from sin which we were
powerless to do for ourselves and giving us a place with God in the heavenly
places far above principalities and powers. He has also in his infinite
kindness provided a work for each of us to walk in before we were born. In
other words, God’s riches towards us include His good intention for us to live
on purpose. This explains why many have been driven to self-destruct for their
rejection of this great salvation because man without a purpose is empty and a
rejection of his divine purpose enlists him in the group of failure bound to
happen whether he likes it or not because according to Dr. Myles Munroe of
blessed memory, an ignorance of the purpose of a thing results in abuse.
So man has consistently abused
himself and others because of the ignorance of the true purpose of their lives
and that of others to the extent of commiting so many atrocities including
murder, sexual pervasions and any kind of sin imaginable.
While pondering on the theme for
this month, the Lord led me to understand that our aim for this month is to
show what true riches are from God’s perspective and to bring out its
distinction from money and cause people to understand the importance of going
God’s way. To this intent, this month of our wealthy places, we shall be
looking at a series I tag: ‘UNDERSTANDING OUR WEALTHY PLACE IN CHRIST”. Please
note that apart from Christ, we are nothing because we became cut off from our
source through the sin of our forefather Adam and as such became hopeless and
without God in the world until the Lord came and died for us on Calvary’s Cross
to obtain eternal redemption for us [Heb.9:11-15, 22]. This is why life really
begins with salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Please if you are yet to make this
great decision of receiving Salvation from God which can only come through
receiving Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, this is another opportunity for
you. Should you want to take advantage of this opportunity, you can do so right
away by saying the following prayer out loud in faith and you will be born
again:
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.
