Programme: Tuesday Prayer Meeting
Date: Saturday, 23rd January 2024
There are different levels of receiving a minister. Through my experience in ministry, I have seen diverse ways in which the Lord chooses to behave in and through ministers. In places where a minister feels his audience cannot take much, the Lord may choose to grant a lot of grace and utterance; this is because of how they received the minister in their hearts. On the other hand, in a place where a minister assumes the people can take much because they are spiritual giants, the minister may end up being disappointed and feeling frustration. One then comes to realise that the Lord cannot do much through a minister than how the people receive the minister.
This is a protocol in the spirit. The Lord Himself will be limited in a minister who is not received by the people. The people may say good words and give accolades to the minister, but the Lord sees their hearts. Also, the people may not have the resources to take good care of a minister, but their hearts may be receptive enough to allow the Lord to break the protocol of the minister to reach out and bless them.
The brethren in Canada received our parents in a commendable way. The things taught there are things that people may wait for years to come into. We should pray and be properly positioned to receive our parents in the Lord.
Mark 6:3-4
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”
A prophet always has honour except in his own country and in his own house. These are the words of Jesus Himself who has the highest expression of prophetic sight, grace, wisdom and spirit; this is the conclusion of His observation. This could directly apply to our country, Nigeria, and our parents in the Lord, but we pray against it.
Some years ago, the Lord dealt with my heart concerning loving, believing, and reverencing His servant and our parent in the Lord, Reverend Kayode Oyegoke. This was amidst a crisis and a time of vulnerability which may cause one to doubt God’s servant. I began to consider and evaluate God’s servant in my imperfection, according to certain indices of what should and should not happen around a man of God. The Spirit of God spoke in response to my thoughts, “He is My messenger”. If someone else had spoken this, I may have thought that they reached this conclusion because they were not aware of the knowledge I had gained through proximity to God’s servant. The words from the Spirit of God comforted me and strengthened my resolve.
Satan fights ministers like the servants of God, Reverend Kayode Oyegoke and Reverend Helen Oyegoke. The Spirit of God told me again some years after that experience to believe His servants. The Lord told me that He would measure my humility by how much I revered His servant.
At Gombe outreach two years ago, we had a lot of breakthroughs. I saw Daddy and Mummy Oyegoke minister in a way I have not seen them minister in Lagos or any other place before. What I noticed was that it was due to the honour given to them; not just the outward honour but the hearts of the people towards them. The love and honour was much and it convicted others who experienced it. Healing gifts were manifest, and people from all over the world called and testified to the peculiarity of that meeting in Gombe. I told them that I observed it was due to the honour they gave to our parents in the Lord and the way they received the servant of the Lord and the handmaiden of the Lord in Gombe.
We run the risk of falling snare to this scripture in Matthew 13:57 that a prophet is not without honour except in his own country. We have to trust God to be deliberate, otherwise we will be hearing of our parents' breakthroughs when they go out and we will be subject to eating the crumbs of these breakthroughs when they come home to us. The Lord will not be stuck in utterance, as our parents will grow, people will grow and the kingdom will come. The Lord who said God's servant's base is in Lagos did not necessarily say that he must preach the word in Lagos.
For instance, the best of Haginites, if judged by continuity in the spirit, were not people in America. The core of Haginites are fathers now in their 70s and 80s. The honour and reverence with which they held Kenneth Hagin and maintained for decades, even when he was not there, is commendable. Kenneth Copeland and his wife listen to messages of Kenneth Hagin every night before they sleep; it is the last thing they do daily. This is a high honour considering that Daddy Hagin has gone to be with the Lord since 2013. People who really used Hagin's grace were not those in his city, Tulsa, Oklahoma; they are people in far places. The fruit of a prophet is the reward that the prophet comes into, and we likely do not know the reward that Kenneth Hagin came into because the core of his calling was to bring the Lord back. The likes of our parents in the Lord and his contemporaries in the 80s, just by listening to Hagin, were able to connect something else.
It will be beautiful that we trust God to make sure that the word of our Lord Jesus does not come to pass in our lives concerning a prophet not being without honour except in his own country. We ought to trust God for us not to be on the negative end of what Jesus said. It has to be a heart thing. I do not know the best way to say it but for us to just pray. The Lord has hung the blessing of this generation on them, and it will be our undoing not to maximise this provision.
Humanly speaking, they say proximity or familiarity breeds contempt. It will take a supernatural heart that the Lord will continually help, and that will continue waiting on the Lord, for us to really make a journey of what the Lord wants to do; not to be familiar with their words, their person, demeanour, frame, appearance and language. The Lord told our daddy in the 80s to love everything about Hagin. This is the Bible. In just a matter of time, the heart will journey the other way if it continues to find faults in a minister.
We pray that the Lord will show us mercy. We are not saying that we want to be the only ones that the Lord will speak to; our own allocation is more tricky as people staying in the same country as our Daddy, Reverend Kayode Oyegoke. We are around him and he has a frame that can make one easily despise him. He is simple and he relates with everyone on their level, and the Lord may not change this. We do not fill forms or go through protocols to see our parents; they will not even allow this as it is not who the Lord is.
People can become familiar with their parents in the Lord, and anyone can become like this in 10 or 15 years time. We are at a very high height and a fall from this height is deadly. This admonition is not to put fear but to trust God to guard our hearts so that we can receive again. As the word of God grows, their itinerary will grow as well; this is the least the work will be. Jesus wants to save the world, not Nigeria alone, and the allocation for Nigeria will get thinner and thinner with time.
Believers' convention prayer has decreased from 3 months to 6 weeks over the years, and it may grow even shorter; we need to maintain our allocation. If we drift now, may it not be that the best of God will be when our parents go abroad, such that people abroad will want to keep them while we will want to send them. We pray against this.
We will trust God to love them in our soul and spirit; we will love God in them, and we will want to keep them and take things of Jesus in them. We will see them as messengers of the Lord to us; and in every place familiarity is setting in, the Lord will deal with us individually, and deal with our thought life concerning them.
Blessings!.