Heavenly Father, the Maker of earth and heaven, we want to say a big thank You, even though we are convinced that there is no amount of thanksgiving that we can offer that will be sufficient. You have done so much for us; You spared our lives, You give us joy, You give us health, You give us strength; and as if all of that are not enough, Lord, You give us hope, today we can confidently say that our tomorrow will be alright, Lord, please accept our thanks in Jesus name.
All we have come to do today Lord is just to say thank You; Lord Almighty God, whichever way we are able to say it, whichever way we are able to register our gratitude, Lord we ask that You will accept us and You will accept our worship today in Jesus name.
Let our sacrifice of praise and worship come unto You Lord as a sweet smelling savor in Jesus name. We pray for all Your children who have been faithful in the payment of their tithes and the giving of their offering all year round, Lord Almighty God, You will bless them more and more, unto them You will open the heavens and You will cause them divine turnaround.
And I pray for those who have not been paying that this year will mark the beginning of a new beginning in their lives, and as they begin to apply themselves to divine instruction, Lord Almighty God that there will be ceaseless flow of Your blessings in their lives in Jesus name.
Once again we commit all the activities of this year unto Your hand, beginning from now till the end of the year, Father, let everything be led and directed by the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus name. We pray that no man shall be praised, but only You shall be praised, only You shall take all the glory, only You shall take all the honor, only You shall take all the adoration, in Jesus wonderful name we have prayed. Praise the Lord! Praise the living Jesus!!
Before you sit down, firstly I want to bless the Almighty God for this very rare privilege; it’s a privilege for us to be here, it’s a privilege for us to be alive, painfully as it sounds, it wasn’t everybody that shouted ‘Happy New Year’ is alive now, today is just seventh but I’m sure you know what we are talking about, we are not rejoicing over them, the truth is that our prayers are with the bereaved but reality is that we are here all by the grace of God, so it is not something that we have to take for granted and for that, we return all the glory, honor and adoration to God in Jesus name.
Secondly, on behalf of myself and my wife, we register our profound gratitude to you all; you have been very wonderful people, very supportive people and we appreciate your showers of love and kindness during the yuletide period, from Christmas even till this new year, you’ve expressed love to us (both in cash and in kind) and it’s not something that we want to take for granted, we are not ingrates and the truth of the matter is that we are not entitled to what you have done, it’s just by your kind generosity and benevolence that you have reached out unto us and it’s something that we take very strongly and I want to say thank you to everyone of you, if I have my way, I will continue saying thank you but I’m sure you would not want that, so we say thank you and God Almighty will bless you in Jesus name.
Lastly I want to rephrase what I said here during the watch night service that don’t be despaired, yes, there will be challenges, the Bible says in this world, there will be troubles, there will be tribulation and all sort, it says but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world and be careful of prophecies that you buy into; there is something I want to do and I shared with one of my uncles about a few days ago, (I told my wife about this) and he said ha pastor, we will pray along with you, he said in fact, I will pray and reach back to you with prophecies concerning the project, I said I don’t want your prophecies, I only want your prayers.
The Bible says the testimony of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of Prophecy; this is our year of divine turnaround, you will experience it, I will experience it, we will experience it in the mighty name of Jesus. Be wary of prophecies, there are many of them out there, they are not from God; we’ve listened to them several times in the years past, nothing happened, so don’t let any prophecy scare you, if anybody prays with you and say don’t worry, I will revert with prophecy, tell them you don’t want prophecy.
The Bible says say it to the righteous, it shall be well with you, and I stand on this exalted altar this morning, I prophesy into your life, health-wise, it shall be well with you; economically, it shall be well with you; maritally, it shall be well with you; emotionally, it shall be well with you, in the mighty name of Jesus.
If this is the only thing I’m able to do today before baba comes on board, I think I’m satisfied; you need to have it and run with it, God has not given us the spirit to fear but of power and of a sound mind; I’m not here to pastor people who will not sleep because cockroach has entered into the house, if cockroach enters into your house, kill the cockroach; if a bat strays into your house, kill the bat.
Those days when I was in Magodo, one night (I don’t know whether we opened the window), a bat just strayed in and my wife told me, I said let me go and sleep, she said you want to sleep, I said what can bat do to me, praise the Lord! We are carrier of God’s power, and at the end of the day I killed the bat; nothing will scare you this year, but draw nearer unto God; the Bible says if God be for us, no man can be against us, so it’s on this note that I want to say good morning to you and happy new year to everybody, have a pleasurable ride, no shaking in the name of Jesus, God bless you!
Psalms 67: 1 – 7, “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah. 2 That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. 3 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. 4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.
5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. 6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. 7 God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him”. May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing of His words in Jesus name.
Today by the grace of God (like I said during the watch night service), I will be talking to us on “Praise: a Key to Divine Turnaround”, but before I progress into the message, I want to talk briefly about the Sunday school today; by the way, the Sunday school broadcast as usual has been shared and posted to our platforms, so make sure you reach out to the platform, listen to the Sunday school, it’s for your good.
I don’t know how many churches are doing what we are doing, and we do it, it’s being posted mostly by 5:30a.m on Sunday, so every Sunday, you have the opportunity to avail yourself with the Sunday school even before the church service. Most times, that is the first thing I listen to as soon as I wake up on Sunday morning just to equip myself and of course to get myself ready for the day, and the subject matter of today fortunately is in line with the message, it’s about gratitude, and of course when you talk about gratitude, you are simply talking about gratefulness which of course we are going to talk about.
And I need to let you know that gratitude is a command by God Himself, and why did God command gratitude? It’s so that you can reap the benefits of same because there are many benefits that are inherent in gratitude; when you show gratitude, you will receive more. For example, when you show gratitude, it boosts your confidence and the man who has treated you nice also will be very happy, and you know the Bible says a merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bone.
There is nothing that can be as painful as being nice to somebody and he just walks past you and says ‘how now’. It has happened in the past, somebody was doing his PhD program and he needed money, it was in a foreign institution, they needed $7,000 and out of that $7,000, I was abroad when he called me and I decided to credit the account with $2,000, and by the time I came back, he said ‘how now, pastor’, I said me, how now, just like that, after getting $2,000, you are telling me how now. The pastor that was with me, my friend Oladele, I said pastor, can you see? He said hey, that one held his head, and of course after then I’m not sure that individual got much from me anymore.
But if you have said ‘thank you’, then there will be that much motivation to do that; so when you say thank you, it goes a long way, so gratitude has a lot of benefits and we will discover as many of them as possible in the course of this service. So I want to appeal to everyone of us, this summary will not help you, go back and get a full blast of it, it has been well packaged, well delivered and it’s meant for you, so you can enjoy it after the service, you can enjoy it in the evening, you can listen to it over and over again.
The gratitude as packaged in the Sunday school today, the focus is on God, but like I always say, you need to make it applied because how many of us have seen God in the past? If you say you’ve seen God, we are not going to quarrel with you because you are the one that knows what you see; if anybody says I saw God, God revealed Himself to me, I’m not going to quarrel, I have no basis for that, but I will keep quiet and be looking at you, say whatever you need to say and go, it’s as simple as ABC, God bless you, so go back to read and the Lord will bless you in Jesus name.
So like I said, today I will be talking to us on “Praise: a Key to Divine Turnaround”. Praise, just like gratitude is a warm approval or admiration of something good or commendable; it is the expression of one’s respect and gratitude towards a higher Being (when we talk of a higher Being in this context, we talk about God ) or a benefactor’, especially by way of proclamation or by way of song. Biblically, praise refers to lifting God up; it is a joyful recounting of what God has done for us, the offering of grateful homage in words or songs as an act of worship or as an act of appreciation.
Praise and thanksgiving go hand in hand as thanking God and offering appreciation for who He is. Praise is the acknowledgement of all the wonderful righteous deeds of God and Psalms 18: 3 made it abundantly clear that our God is worthy of praise. It says “I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies”, so in other words, praise comes handy for those in bondage, praise is a potent tool in deliverance; you want deliverance from enemies, we have seen examples in the scriptures over and over again how the weapon of praise has brought about deliverance. Praise can conveniently be said to be an instrument or a weapon in warfare.
Now, there are seven ways in Hebrews to praise God;
Number one, in the Hebrew word, they call it “Towdah”, you find that in Exodus 27. Towdah simply means deep worship, profound praise or gratitude.
Then you have what they call “Yadah”: Yadah means acknowledgement and reference, just like I did before the commencement of this exhortation, I recounted all that you have done and of course, I put it on record because every act of kindness, every act of benevolence must be duly registered so that the benefactor can be motivated and can be happy that he has done something nice. So when you talk about Yadah, you talk about very deep and profound worship just to the praise of our God.
You have what we call “Barah”, lighting is also another form of worship and you have “Shabach”, that means worship, gratitude, appreciation in loud tones, you don’t do it in a quiet tone, you do it so that everybody will know. And let me tell you this, as this is deserving to our God, so also is deserving to all the people around us; the reason we call and some people will not pick our calls again is simply because of the display of the act of ingratitude.
When someone has treated you nice and all you can say the next time you see him is ‘how now’, the person when you call too will say ‘how now’, because life is just in two ways. So in Shabach, you make it loud, you let people know about it, it’s not something you do in secret and that\s why when you treat your people nice, they will tell people around you, help me appreciate this man, help me appreciate this woman, he has done very well. In fact, for the fact that you make it loud, that person himself will have a sense of satisfaction that what he did has impacted somebody; when you keep quiet, honestly speaking, you are denying the grace of God upon your life, you are denying the value that ought to be given, something that ought to follow that kind gesture is denied because the person that did it has not been given the corresponding value of seeing the impact or appreciating the impact of what he or she has done.
So in Hebrew, a shabach is a way of appreciation, it’s a way of praise in a loud tone, in a loud form and I want to encourage us, as we come to the presence of God today, being the first Sunday of the year, let’s make our praise loud, make it loud in Lagos, make it loud in Lekki, let God Himself hear from above that you are grateful.
The next one in Hebrew is Zamah, that one is the expression of joy in God’s presence with your instruments, Psalms 150 is my reference, it says praise God with strings and cymbals, praise God with everything, and there it says let everything that has breath praise the Lord; let all the living in the house praise the Lord this morning. That’s why we have the drums, that’s why we have the keyboards, that’s why we have the talking drum; when you express, you put the totality of these together in expression of our gratefulness to God, in the Hebrew word, that’s what is referred to as Zamah.
And of course you trust, even in our local villages, when a VIP visits, the kings and all the rest will roll out the drums, they will celebrate him, you are doing like your grandfather used to do, you are the original son of the soil, and by the time you start doing that, the man will begin to shake his head, then he begins to think about the next thing to do.
Many a times we don’t even know how to get things from people, you know when you praise people, they do more, when you praise God, He does much more and don’t forget that we are all created in God’s image, so like God like we are, if you treat people with disdain after they have been a blessing to you, you will reap the benefit of disdain; my prayer is that none of us will reap the benefit of disdain from today in Jesus name.
Then the other one is called ‘Halah” in Hebrew; you have it in Arabic and you have it in Hebrew. Halah simply means to celebrate and bless God boastfully; it’s along the line of Shabach, you do it and tell somebody I know what my God can do.
There is a song we used to sing those days, ‘I am dancing in the Lord everyday’, ‘I am boasting in the Lord everyday’, ‘I am shaking in the Lord everyday’; that is halah in Hebrew, you do it, God looks at you and God is happy and when God is happy, His people will be happy. I pray today, God will make you happy.
Then the last one is what is called “Tehila”. Tehila is a songs of praise to God, it means to shine, praise, and being boastful (just like halah) to your Creator. In Psalms 145: 1, it says “I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever”. One interpretation says “I will exalt You God, and I will bless Your name forever and ever’; verse 21 says, “My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever”.
Brethren, God deserves our worship, so praise is a very vital tool for divine turnaround; you want a divine turnaround in the year 2024, you must engage praise; you want to move forward speedily and progressively in year 2024, praise must be engaged because it’s a potent and restorative tool, it changes us for the better by refocusing our affections, realigning our priorities and restoring our hope. This year will be a year of restoration and recovery to every one of you under the influence of my voice and the families that you represent in the name of Jesus.
When you praise, your spirit becomes more pliable, open, receptive to receiving God’s Holy Spirit. I pray that all through this year, the Holy Spirit will partner with you. Look, when you are in partnership with the Holy Spirit, everything will work out fine; you can’t be in partnership with the Holy Spirit and fail; you can’t be in partnership with the Holy Spirit and stumble.
I pray that this year, you will not stumble, I pray this year you will not fail in the mighty name of Jesus; everyone that has dug a pit for you will fall into that pit in the mighty name of Jesus. No weapon fashioned against you will prosper; no weapon fashioned against your children will prosper in the mighty name of Jesus. And this year, the breeze will blow you favor, it will blow you peace, it will blow you joy, it will blow you success in the mighty name of Jesus, and like I keep saying, nothing dies in your hands this year in the mighty name of Jesus.
What are the benefits of praise?
Number one, praise facilitates access to God, Psalms 100: 4 is our witness; it gives you access to God, you can’t praise God and be shut out. It says “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name”; as a matter of fact, praise on its own is a key, it opens the gates of God, I pray that this year, as you make praise a tangible item on your agenda, the gate of heaven will be open unto you.
Number two, praise brings the presence of God; if you want the presence of God, then you praise God, Psalms 140: 13, “Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: the upright shall dwell in thy presence”; you cannot praise God and will not be a carrier of God’s presence, the surest way to attracting God’s presence this year is the way of praise.
Another thing that praise does is that it strengthens believers in their relationship and their walk with God; He dwells closely to us when we praise Him and we are strengthened by His peace. In John 14: 27, it says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”.
What did I tell you at the commencement of this, I said don’t despair, don’t let anybody tell you any fake prophecy that will create fear in you, that will shake you, that will make you to begin to doubt, what is going to happen this year? What is not going to happen this year? I have it on good authority that this year will yield its increase unto us; in this year, Nigeria will yield its best unto us. It doesn’t matter what the FX rate is saying, it doesn’t matter what inflation is saying, it doesn’t matter what the rate of food inflation is, it doesn’t matter what the economic proposes or whatever you call it, but one thing I know is that at the end of this year, you will give a testimony of divine turnaround in the name of Jesus.
So like I said, no shaking, have it at the back of your mind, at the end of this year, we will all testify because we will all be here in the name of Jesus Christ.
Another thing that praise does is that it changes you; from glory to glory He’s changing me, from glory to glory He’s changing you. Praise prepares our hearts for God’s work by tearing our attention away from our problems and to His greatness. I pray as you praise God today, He will take your eyes off your troubles in the mighty name of Jesus.
The children of Israel encompassed round Jericho and God said what you are going to do is to praise God and they were looking, what’s going on here? But again, they decided to do it and by the time they started the first round, the second round, they forgot about Jericho and they were engrossed with what God asked them to do, they did and the next thing that happened at the shout of hallelujah, the wall of Jericho collapsed. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus, that every Jericho-like experience that you are confronting, before the end of this month, they will give way in Jesus name.
Praise brings joy and eliminates depression. The major antidote to depression is praise; when you praise God, you overcome emotional issues such as fear, worry, anxiety and of course, ultimately depression.
Psalms 42: 5 & 6 say “5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God:(tell your neighbor, hope thou in God) for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. And of course in Proverbs 17: 22, it says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones”. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that from today, your bone will not be dry.
Praise releases us from the weight of sin; if you praise God acceptably, you’ll find out that you’ll be able to live above sin, and that takes me to the big question, who can praise God? People who pray are people who praise; people who pray for God’s will in their lives are those who rejoice in His work, and those who trust in His promises, and for the record, sinners cannot praise God, it takes only those who have relationship with God to be able to praise God, because the Bible tells us in Proverbs 15: 8 that the sacrifice of a sinner is an abomination unto God.
Shall we rise on our feet; if you are here today, you have not given your life to Christ, I doubt if you will be able to praise Him, and even if you do, only God knows how far your praise can go because the Bible says the sacrifice of a sinner is an abomination unto God.
So this morning, I just want us to bow down our heads wherever we are, it’s a new dawn, it’s a beginning of a new beginning and it will be a nice thing for us to start on a clean slate, it will be a nice thing for us to go back to God in humility and tell God, Father, I cannot continue with these pranks, you have played enough pranks, God, I want to be totally reconciled with You; I want to start with You on a clean slate, I don’t want to miss my blessings this year, I want every time I call upon You, I want You to hear and answer me, because the truth of the matter is that every one of us is entitled to praising God , what makes our praise productive or not is our relationship with God.
So I want you to bow down your head, talk to God, Father help me to perfect my walk with You, that is the simple prayer, help me to perfect my walk with You this year in the name of Jesus. I don’t want to be a problem to myself; I don’t want to be a barrier to my praise; I don’t want to be a barrier to my prayers, all my innermost heart desires, Lord, must be granted this year, but help me not to be a problem.
[Altar call]
Father in heaven we want to thank You on behalf of Your children, they’ve heard Your word, Lord almighty God and voluntarily they have come unto You, Father please receive them unto Yourself in Jesus name. Let Your countenance shine upon them in Jesus name. Forgive their past and write their names in the Book of Life; and I pray for all Your children that have heard Your word this morning, Lord Almighty God, as we praise You today, let Your praise stir up our hearts in the name of Jesus Christ, and by reason of praise Lord, strengthen us in the name of Jesus Christ.
As we praise You Lord today, let our praise pave way for us in the name of Jesus Christ, and every day we knock at the gate, Father Almighty God we pray, let the perpetual open door be open unto us in the name of Jesus Christ, and bless us all through this year, and by reason of this praise and others that we will deploy in the course of 2024, let there be divine turnaround for us and let Your wind blow us favor, let it blow us joy, let it blow us breakthrough and ever more, let Jesus be glorified, in the name of Jesus Christ we have prayed.
