All you who are thankful and grateful to see the last Sunday in November shout hallelujah! The choir already preached the sermon, your Pastor already encouraged you; the choir is assuring you that there is nothing that God cannot solve, Luke 1:37 says with God, nothing shall be impossible; in Job 42 after all that Job went through, he said there is nothing that God cannot do, that God can do all things, and the Bible says nothing is impossible for them that believe, amen! It is because you believe this morning that you are here; there are so many places that you could have gone to.
And so Father God Almighty this morning we want to thank You; we thank You that you are a reliable God, You are a dependable God, You are God that can be trusted, You are the help of the helpless, may Your name be forever magnified in the name of Jesus. It is from You that all blessings flow, in You there is no variableness neither shadow of turning; the Bible says You are not a respecter of persons, what You have done before You can do again; Almighty God, I lift this congregation up to You in the name of Jesus, and I’m asking Lord that in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth You will give them a word for a solution for their challenges in the name of Jesus.
More than they know, You know where everyone else is hurting and You can visit them at the nick of time, let this be their day of visitation in the name of Jesus. Thank You Almighty God, blessed be Your holy name, in Jesus matchless name.
Your Pastor has this (I don’t know what to call it) of calling me in an emergency, I thought that I would just go to church on Camp this morning, listen to sermon from somebody else and be blessed, but here I am; I’m happy to be here because like I’ve already said, there’s nothing God cannot do and there’s no mistake with God, if He made it possible for me to be here this morning, He will use me for His glory in Jesus mighty name.
Your Pastor told me that your theme for this month is Divine Help, you have come to the Help of the helpless, (Divine Help), because if He doesn’t help you nobody else can help you, blessed be the name of the Lord; but he has also asked me that I should use this Divine Help now and marry it with Vision 2032, that was the first problem I had, how can I manage these two, how do they relate, but thank God for the Holy Spirit as I continue to seek His face and to say to Him, how do you want to merge this two so that it can bless the people who will hear it, I think He has given me a word for you, blessed be the name of the Lord.
1st Samuel 17:12, after God had given the children of Israel victory, Samuel positioned a stone of help which is called Ebenezer; we should be grateful that we come to the God who is able to help us; still in that Job 42, the Bible says no plan of God can be frustrated, no purpose of His can be thwarted, so I’m certain that that God can help you and I and today He will help us in Jesus name.
In spite of all that has happened in Nigeria from January to now and also globally, we are still here this morning, is by the help of God; so many people we started January 1 with, we are not ridiculing them, it’s not because we are better than them, it is because God has shown us mercy, the mercy that brought us to this level will continue to help us in the name of Jesus Christ.
God has kept us alive for a purpose, we are here today by the grace of God because God still has assignments for us and we will fulfill God’s purpose in the name of Jesus; every trading in blood that says our original destinies will not be fulfilled, it’s already made of no effect by the power in the blood of Jesus. So we have assignments, that’s why we are here this morning because if God didn’t have assignments for us, the day He saved us, He should have taken us home but He has kept us and we give Him praise, but one thing that I want to stress this morning is to encourage you: we grumble, we murmur, we complain.
I was talking to your Pastor before I came here, I said me, at this stage I don’t want to grumble anymore, I don’t want to complain anymore, I don’t want to murmur anymore, I just want to be grateful and thankful, blessed be the name of the Lord, because you may think that your situation is the worst that you can imagine, if you will listen to somebody else’ story you will begin to dance or start to roll on the floor to thank God for how far He has brought you; there is somebody else that is always worse than you, some people woke up this morning they don’t know where the next meal will come from, even if you have not eaten, is because maybe you’re obeying the rule that we don’t eat before we come to church on Sunday (in those days, I don’t know about now), so it’s not that you don’t want to eat, you want to wait until you get back before you settle down to eat, blessed be the name of the Lord.
So there’s a whole lot that we have to thank God for; going back to the text, because I want to pick certain things this morning, this is a sermon of encouragement, certain things this morning that you need to be thankful for, that you need to be grateful for, because if God had not helped you, you wouldn’t be here this morning, (I said that a few minutes ago) so like Samuel, from time to time we need to pause so that we can position our stone of help in thankfulness to what God has done, in thankfulness for His help and in thankfulness for how far He has brought us, He’s not finished with us yet, our best days are still ahead of us in the mighty name of Jesus.
Another thing that I should tell you before I forget is the salvation package, if you are born again, you will know how I come to that stage, but I’ve come to a stage that I am convinced whether anybody believes me or not that the God who brought me to this morning is not about to abandon me, it doesn’t do Him any good maybe I’m blackmailing Him if I say that because sometimes when I come to a tight corner, I go in the room and I look up and I look down and I say God, in those days when I used to speak to the devil, my baby who is now going to about 50 – my last born will say where is the devil? I’ll say he’s right here, these days I have no time for the devil, I talk to God, I say ‘God, here, You, me, don’t disgrace Yourself o, I’m sorry to talk like that because if You don’t show up now, if anything happens, even God knows the people that surround us, it’s when all is well that they begin to say mommy well done, mommy this that, if anything should go south, they will say what about all the prayer that she’s praying, they will say so, you may not believe me and then they’ll say she’s shaking her head, somebody said we shake our head like concrete mixer, hallelujah!
So God’s name is at stake in the matter if you are genuinely born again, I will come to the other people later, I’m talking now to genuinely born again people, it’s not that you have one foot in church and then you have another foot elsewhere, it will not work that way and it does not mean that you’re already perfect, you are a work in progress because God sees your heart, if He knows that you belong to Him, He will not allow His name to be brought into ridicule, so I want to assure you again and again and again that it does not matter what you are facing this morning, it does not matter what challenges followed you from January to November 24, the help of the helpless is here, the God with whom nothing shall be impossible is here, the God who will never fail is here and if you belong to Him and you are called by His name, He will move heaven and earth to help you in the mighty name of Jesus.
When God delivered the children of Israel from the Philistines, Samuel positioned a stone of help which he called Ebenezer, so we also are to be people who celebrate God’s work in our lives, is because we focus on the things that are worrying us currently that we are not grateful for what God has done, and I want to advise you to do something that I do very occasionally when I come face to face with a challenge because I’m not the kind of Pastor that will tell you that I have no problem, the only thing that I can assure you of is that God will never ever leave me in my problem; He made a way in the Red Sea, and at every turn in every situation under every circumstance, He will make a way for me and He will also make a way for you.
So like Samuel, we also should celebrate God’s work in our lives, you know the generation that came out of Egypt, the moment they came out they forgot God’s hand in their matter, when they saw a little problem like this, they started talking out of order and most of us are like them because we are now just focusing on the on the present challenges, we are not remembering what God has done.
I said I brought you a sermon of encouragement this morning, the songwriter says ‘count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done’, beginning from today 24th of November, count your blessings and begin to praise God for them, begin to put your stone of help at every point where you see that God has come through for you, and as you begin to give Him praise, you begin to give Him thanks and worship, it is in that that He will do what is it you are looking up to Him to do in Jesus name.
The Bible says He inhabits the praises of His people, by putting a stone of help –your Ebenezer, you are thanking Him for what He has done at that point in time; this was what Samuel did and this is what we should do, we must remember we must always set down the Ebenezer stone so to speak and declare with joy how good God has been to us. They didn’t carry you into church this morning, you walked with your two legs, some people have two legs they cannot walk, they have to push them around, we are not ridiculing them like I said; you woke up this morning you open your eyes and you could see, some people slept yesterday night there was nothing wrong with their eyes, this morning they opened their eyes they could not see.
Several years ago, it must be up to maybe if it’s not up to 60 it’s more than 50, I think ‘71 or ’72, I had a friend, she’s still my friend, she’s about the only friend that I have left that I can call friend, we were in University of Ibadan, me, I didn’t know God that time, she was an edge better than me, she used to go to some fellowship, we used to call them SU (whatever that meant); and normally from Queen where we go to lecture is far, so we wait for each other and we go in a group so that we can joyfully go in a company.
We woke up one morning and my friend could not talk, I’m telling you true story, your Pastor knows her, she was dumb, she was not born dumb o, she was a French student and she was dumb, for the next 6 months she couldn’t talk, she went to UCH almost every week, they examined her from the crown of her head to the sole of her feet – every tissue every organ, they said there was nothing wrong with her but she couldn’t talk – 6 months, and we that time ah, sometimes it’s better to be ignorant because won ni ti eti o ba gbo yikin, inu o n baje (I don’t know how to say that in English), we didn’t know the gravity of the matter and thank God she could see and thank God she could still read, so when we want to talk to her we wrote a note and she wrote back to us what the reply was – six solid months; her mother was frantic, she was all over the place and we didn’t know because we were not mothers then, so we didn’t know what mothers suffer and then we’ll be laughing and making fun of her ‘ah, she has become dumb, when is she going to talk again’, she was the bulk of our jokes, but like I said this morning there is a help of the helpless who can fix every situation, with whom nothing is impossible.
As she went suddenly dumb, we were coming back from lecture one afternoon and she called one of our names, ah, we said this dumb girl have spoken o, we were rejoicing and then we just drove straight to the mother’s place, she was rolling all over the place, she knew what God had done for her. The God who makes the dumb speak, whether you are dumb physically or spiritually, today you will speak in the name of Jesus, and whenever you speak you are going to decree and whatever you decree will be established unto you in the name Jesus.
Anyway the Bible has told us that our puny brain is not enough to understand God, you can’t understand God, He does what He does, He does what He pleases and nobody can call Him to order, He’s the original Kabiesi, He will prove Himself Almighty in your life today. You must remember from time to time what God has done for you and place your stone of help, your Ebenezer.
What are the things that you should remember? If you are born again this morning, remember your personal relationship with God, there is no other relationship that is enduring, that is reliable, that you can count on other than your relationship with God; much as mothers love their children, I haven’t seen a mother that will die in the place of the child, I don’t know but I haven’t seen one and I have some of these funny experiences.
One day I was in LUTH, I went I went for my own business, and there was this woman with a sick child, she’s holding the child, the temperature was I don’t know how high and the child was convulsing and the woman was screaming ‘help me, people’; this woman will scream you will feel the pain in your brain and the doctors kept saying that they’ve done all they could do for the child, the woman kept screaming until the child gave up, she was holding on to the child you can imagine that, but you have a God (if you are genuinely born again) that will never disappoint you; if you have a relationship with Him, it is the best relationship ever that you can have because He’s the most reliable Friend, the Bible says He sticks closer than a brother; your brother can deny you but Jesus will never deny you, so you must be grateful ever for your personal relationship with God, remember, and whether you are going to do it physically or spiritually, put a stone of help and begin to thank Him for the salvation of your soul, it is the greatest miracle that anybody can ever give to anybody.
If I was not born again, that day in March 1981, I would have died 40 something years ago and gone straight to hell, it is that relationship that kept me going and coming, it is because of that relationship that I’m here again this morning, remember what God has done for you.
Number two: remember the community to which you belong. Everybody is saying everything about the church, don’t help them to complain, if you belong in a church it does not matter what is happening in that church, God has His 10%, let everybody else not be good but if you have a 100 people there, 10 of them will belong to God, God will take His 10%, those that are in the church that are genuinely born again can help you in whatever way they can help you and there are so many ways they can help you, some of the time when you talk of help now you’ll see their mind jumps to money, there are so many things money cannot buy, but again as I keep saying, if it was not because of the people who took me under their wings when I came in 1981, I would not have developed to this stage, so be grateful for your church community, be grateful for the people that God surrounds you with; some of us we don’t do anything but criticize our Pastor, ‘his own is too much sef’, if there’s something that is wrong with him pray for him, God has not made a mistake to put him over you; the person you are sitting next to, you don’t know when she will be able to help you and she’ll be the only person around, be grateful for your church family.
Thank God that you belong in a church that at least you can say this one is a Christian, they may be calling themselves Christians we don’t know, it’s only God that sees the heart of men but out of a 100 people in a church, God must have His 10%, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Be grateful for your career. In the days when we came out of University, we used to block the people who want to employ us, by the time we finish exams they will be coming to harass us in UI to interview us, we’ll be telling them we haven’t rested from the exam, when we finish we will come and do interview and some of us have three four five jobs before we came out of University, now if a graduate has money to buy Uber to drive we should be grateful, some of them are vagabond now, it’s not out of their own making, is because of what the world has become, they are jobless, they are homeless, those who are not homeless, is the parents that sent them to school that are now feeding them, it should not be like that.
So if you have a job and they pay you salary regularly at the end of every month, put your stone of help, your Ebenezer, every day you wake up, thank God for your job that you are not just walking the streets of Lagos, nothing to do; you go to this church you tell story they give you rice; you come out from there, you go to another one they give you garri, that situation will change in the name of Jesus Christ.
Thank God for true friends, because these days, most friends are fair weather friends, the only people you can call your friend are those who will stand by you through thick and thin, so if you have a friend like that don’t play with that friend. This my friend I was telling you that went dumb, it’s been a while they had wanted to finish her because they saw where she was going; we left University, she went to work for the federal government and she was a permanent secretary before she left, hallelujah.
I said to her that look, I must confess I’m jealous of you and I was really jealous of her I must tell her because now, today she’s in Dubai, tomorrow she’s in Canada, the other day she’s in the United Kingdom because she has retired and nothing is holding her down, so she’s reaping the fruit of her labor; e e ni sise fun elomin je, e e ni kole fun elomin gbe, awon omo yin o ni di omo olomo, if it was not because I’m still stuck here because of people like your Pastor, ‘I must come and preach’, I should have japa long ago, hallelujah, but I keep telling everybody I said to them, I said well, I don’t know maybe that’s why God kept me alive so I should not put my children before God, let me just do for God and at least once a year I can go on summer holidays and go from country to country too like my friend and spend maybe at least two weeks enjoying my family, e e ni kole fun elomin gbe loruko Jesu.
So if you have God as your Savior, if you have a church community where they care about you, if you have a job to go to, you are not walking the streets of Lagos, if you have reliable friends, be grateful. You have a family, some of you will say my husband is not good, that’s what I used to say, he’s not good, he’s the worst of the husbands; some of you are talking like that, some people are looking for husband 50 60 they are nearing 70 now they can’t find their husband, at least he will be good with one thing; you have a husband, you have children, you have a home, anything that is not good – even the good things need prayer, but those things that are not good, it is your business as a child of God, (I said at the beginning I was talking to just the children of God now), it is your business to thank God for your family – your wife, your husband, your children, members of your household that are making life easy for you.
I used to tell people, in those days I was so very finicky, when I travel and come back, I will start cleaning from upstairs to ground floor; these days if I wash my toilet myself, I wash this one then I wash the bathtub, and by the time I finish I’m sweating, hallelujah! It’s because of my age, I’m not old yet but I’m sweating. You have people who surround you, they sweep the floor, they mop it, they clean the kitchen, they wash the plates, they wash the clothes, they iron it and you still say they are not good, if you are my age try putting your clothes in water, wash it, by the time you finish, you will realize how your body will react, praise the Lord!
If God has put you in a family, leave those things that are not good, pray about them and be grateful for the things that are good. If you are born again, some of you, the way you talk concerning the children that came out of you is terrible; you look at your child, you carried this child for 9 months, after you gave birth to the child you knew what you suffered and you say ‘ah, if I even knew that this thing is in your father’s family I would not have married into this family, they say it’s your grandfather that you resemble – your paternal grandfather’, instead of looking at your child and prophesying into her life, your own business is not what the great grandfather or the great-great grandfather looked like, this is your son, tell God what you want concerning him because God’s promise concerning you and your children is that the children of the righteous shall be delivered, so if he’s not the kind of child you are looking for now, tell God what you want, give God back His word, omo yin o ni d’akobata f’egbe.
He said that wherever He positions them to function (Psalm 112: 1 & 2), they will be mighty in the land, that’s what He promised you; He said whatever they touch will prosper. First of all, thank God that you even have a child before you start talking katakata, every word that is not of God that you have said is revoked in Jesus name.
I said it at the beginning that you have life, and because you have life you are a work in progress, God has not finished with you yet, your best days are ahead of you, all those looking at you and saying what will you amount to, by the time you blossom, they will be falling on their faces in the name of Jesus Christ. But in all of these situations, put your stone of help, blessed be the name of the Lord, hallelujah!
You are a work in progress, don’t use your mouth to sabotage what God is doing for you, celebrate how far God has worked in your life. I tell people I was not like this before, although I have not arrived, God has done a great job and He’s still working on me; when I was me, I used to be a very difficult person, I’m so perfectionist there’s no way you can sweep the floor that will satisfy me, I’m so perfectionist you cannot iron my skirt and I will say thank you because I will see the edge that you did not iron properly, some of you are like that, you are just laughing, hallelujah! The God that is working on me will continue to work on you, and because He’s not a God of unfinished project, every good work that He has started in you, He will be faithful to complete it in the name of Jesus Christ.
So you still have life and they say in the world, where there is life there’s hope, God is not done with you yet, He has a plan, He has a purpose and it is His counsel concerning you and I that will stand, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Finally, we come to your theme for the month ‘Divine Help’, all these that I’ve been telling you about has to do with God helping you, the God that has helped you this far, He has not brought you this far to jettison you, it does not glorify His name; the Bible says you were created for His glory, mi o ni gba iku oniku ku o, mi o de ni ku iku kifa, because if anything happens to me now, they will ask if that’s not the woman that prays, that’s how they shout, we don’t know what they are up to, how is her own like this?
He is the help of the helpless, I want you to believe me when I say to you this morning, your pastor already said it, your choir already sang it, with God nothing shall be impossible, God is able to do all things, He didn’t say some, did you see the trouble Job went through, he can still open his mouth to say God can do all things, God’s purpose cannot be frustrated, God’s plan cannot be thwarted, your own will not be too difficult for God blessed be the name of the Lord!
So you have come to a God that can help you, you have come to a God that is more willing to help you than you are willing for Him to help you, to the extent to which you are grateful, to the extent to which you are thankful, God will continue to supply even the needs that you have that you don’t know in the mighty name of Jesus.
I said I was going to marry it into the 2032 Vision, blessed be the name of the Lord! The God who has consistently been helping us is still here concerning this 2032 Vision, praise the Lord! He has not brought us far in the Redeemed Christian Church of God to abandon us now.
There used to be a very (the word is more than mega, I don’t know what adjective to use to describe that church), I was in that church in 1986 in South Korea, they had I think six or seven services every Sunday, (I’m not sure whether it’s six or seven now) at every service, there were at least 25,000 people, they were members, they were not just who came for food, it was the biggest church on the face of the earth, it was there we went to learn about house fellowship that they have given so many other names in Nigeria, home cell group and the rest of it to grow the church.
Something happened and by the time the devil finished with that church it was something else, that will not happen to you, God has brought you this far to perfect that which He has started in you.
National has told us that we should not forget the 2032 Vision, right now I don’t know 100 and what, but they keep telling us that we have the redeemed presence in more than 100 countries, the God who has brought us to that stage will do for us whatever pleases Him that will bring glory to His name, we will not be put to shame in the mighty name of Jesus, ko ni ri fun wa bi ota se n fe, and I want you to be praying that prayer every morning as individuals, as congregations and as a mission, blessed be the name of the Lord!
But all these that I’ve been saying, I’ve been saying it to born again children of God, because there’s no way that you can enjoy – sometimes God deals with us in mercy, He does for us what we don’t deserve, but in order to be able to access that which Christ died to purchase for you by His precious blood, you have to be born again. Jesus has done a complete work, perfect work, nothing to be added, nothing to be subtracted, there’s nothing you are looking for that you cannot get from God, I am a living testimony that God helps His people, so if you are here this morning you’ve never given your life to Jesus in the sense that you made Jesus Savior and Lord of your life, you confess Him as Savior, you accept Him as Lord and you gave the life He gave you back to Him so that He can help you to manage it.
If you are here this morning, you want to give your life to Jesus and on a consistent basis you want God to be helping you in those areas that I’ve listed and in more areas than that because there is nothing that God cannot do…
[Altar Call]
And so Father God almighty, this morning we want to thank You; we thank You for Your word that has gone out and we thank You that You did not allow it to return void, blessed be Your holy name for the people who have come to You this morning, You are the ever faithful God, You say those who come to You, You will not cast out, I present them to You standing on Your word, receive them in the name of Jesus, make them Your very own in the name of Jesus; with the blood of Jesus, cleanse them from every sin and from every unrighteousness in the name of Jesus; write their names in the Book of Life, and by this evening even today, let them know that a change has occurred in their lives to the praise and glory of Your name in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank You Almighty God!
We want to say Father, I give You praise for reconciling me to You, thank You that I now belong to the best family in the world, wherever I go from this day forward, let Your glory be seen in my life because it is written that You created me for Your glory.
Say Father, as born again children of Yours, You have reconciled us to You and You have made us ministers of reconciliation, as we go forth, Lord God Almighty help us in the assignment that You have given us in the name of Jesus Christ; equip us with power as You promised in Acts 1: 8, power to go for You so that we will be what You created us to be and be what You called us to be, thank You Mighty God, blessed be Your holy name oh Lord in Jesus mighty name.
Your own will not be impossible for God, the God who have helped us, helps us, help other people before us and keeps helping people will help you, by the time you come back next week Sunday, there shall be testimonies of the wonderful help that God has given unto you, blessed be the name of the Lord!
God has been faithful, God has been good, praise Him, thank Him for the salvation of souls; you will build houses, you will buy cars, you will have children, you will have husband, but this is the greatest of miracles – for God to snatch you from hell and transfer you into heaven, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Lord thank You in Jesus name, we give You praise and glory, honor, adoration and majesty as You continue with us, blessed be Your holy name. Don’t forget Your promise concerning us; You say in famine we shall be fed; You say those who trust in You shall never be disappointed; You say we are in the world and we are not of the world, so what is happening to the world should not happen to us, we reject everything that will not glorify Your name in our lives in the name of Jesus, blessed be Your holy name, in Jesus mighty name. Praise the Lord!
All you who are thankful and grateful to see the last Sunday in November shout hallelujah! The choir already preached the sermon, your Pastor already encouraged you; the choir is assuring you that there is nothing that God cannot solve, Luke 1:37 says with God, nothing shall be impossible; in Job 42 after all that Job went through, he said there is nothing that God cannot do, that God can do all things, and the Bible says nothing is impossible for them that believe, amen! It is because you believe this morning that you are here; there are so many places that you could have gone to.
And so Father God Almighty this morning we want to thank You; we thank You that you are a reliable God, You are a dependable God, You are God that can be trusted, You are the help of the helpless, may Your name be forever magnified in the name of Jesus. It is from You that all blessings flow, in You there is no variableness neither shadow of turning; the Bible says You are not a respecter of persons, what You have done before You can do again; Almighty God, I lift this congregation up to You in the name of Jesus, and I’m asking Lord that in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth You will give them a word for a solution for their challenges in the name of Jesus.
More than they know, You know where everyone else is hurting and You can visit them at the nick of time, let this be their day of visitation in the name of Jesus. Thank You Almighty God, blessed be Your holy name, in Jesus matchless name.
Your Pastor has this (I don’t know what to call it) of calling me in an emergency, I thought that I would just go to church on Camp this morning, listen to sermon from somebody else and be blessed, but here I am; I’m happy to be here because like I’ve already said, there’s nothing God cannot do and there’s no mistake with God, if He made it possible for me to be here this morning, He will use me for His glory in Jesus mighty name.
Your Pastor told me that your theme for this month is Divine Help, you have come to the Help of the helpless, (Divine Help), because if He doesn’t help you nobody else can help you, blessed be the name of the Lord; but he has also asked me that I should use this Divine Help now and marry it with Vision 2032, that was the first problem I had, how can I manage these two, how do they relate, but thank God for the Holy Spirit as I continue to seek His face and to say to Him, how do you want to merge this two so that it can bless the people who will hear it, I think He has given me a word for you, blessed be the name of the Lord.
1st Samuel 17:12, after God had given the children of Israel victory, Samuel positioned a stone of help which is called Ebenezer; we should be grateful that we come to the God who is able to help us; still in that Job 42, the Bible says no plan of God can be frustrated, no purpose of His can be thwarted, so I’m certain that that God can help you and I and today He will help us in Jesus name.
In spite of all that has happened in Nigeria from January to now and also globally, we are still here this morning, is by the help of God; so many people we started January 1 with, we are not ridiculing them, it’s not because we are better than them, it is because God has shown us mercy, the mercy that brought us to this level will continue to help us in the name of Jesus Christ.
God has kept us alive for a purpose, we are here today by the grace of God because God still has assignments for us and we will fulfill God’s purpose in the name of Jesus; every trading in blood that says our original destinies will not be fulfilled, it’s already made of no effect by the power in the blood of Jesus. So we have assignments, that’s why we are here this morning because if God didn’t have assignments for us, the day He saved us, He should have taken us home but He has kept us and we give Him praise, but one thing that I want to stress this morning is to encourage you: we grumble, we murmur, we complain.
I was talking to your Pastor before I came here, I said me, at this stage I don’t want to grumble anymore, I don’t want to complain anymore, I don’t want to murmur anymore, I just want to be grateful and thankful, blessed be the name of the Lord, because you may think that your situation is the worst that you can imagine, if you will listen to somebody else’ story you will begin to dance or start to roll on the floor to thank God for how far He has brought you; there is somebody else that is always worse than you, some people woke up this morning they don’t know where the next meal will come from, even if you have not eaten, is because maybe you’re obeying the rule that we don’t eat before we come to church on Sunday (in those days, I don’t know about now), so it’s not that you don’t want to eat, you want to wait until you get back before you settle down to eat, blessed be the name of the Lord.
So there’s a whole lot that we have to thank God for; going back to the text, because I want to pick certain things this morning, this is a sermon of encouragement, certain things this morning that you need to be thankful for, that you need to be grateful for, because if God had not helped you, you wouldn’t be here this morning, (I said that a few minutes ago) so like Samuel, from time to time we need to pause so that we can position our stone of help in thankfulness to what God has done, in thankfulness for His help and in thankfulness for how far He has brought us, He’s not finished with us yet, our best days are still ahead of us in the mighty name of Jesus.
Another thing that I should tell you before I forget is the salvation package, if you are born again, you will know how I come to that stage, but I’ve come to a stage that I am convinced whether anybody believes me or not that the God who brought me to this morning is not about to abandon me, it doesn’t do Him any good maybe I’m blackmailing Him if I say that because sometimes when I come to a tight corner, I go in the room and I look up and I look down and I say God, in those days when I used to speak to the devil, my baby who is now going to about 50 – my last born will say where is the devil? I’ll say he’s right here, these days I have no time for the devil, I talk to God, I say ‘God, here, You, me, don’t disgrace Yourself o, I’m sorry to talk like that because if You don’t show up now, if anything happens, even God knows the people that surround us, it’s when all is well that they begin to say mommy well done, mommy this that, if anything should go south, they will say what about all the prayer that she’s praying, they will say so, you may not believe me and then they’ll say she’s shaking her head, somebody said we shake our head like concrete mixer, hallelujah!
So God’s name is at stake in the matter if you are genuinely born again, I will come to the other people later, I’m talking now to genuinely born again people, it’s not that you have one foot in church and then you have another foot elsewhere, it will not work that way and it does not mean that you’re already perfect, you are a work in progress because God sees your heart, if He knows that you belong to Him, He will not allow His name to be brought into ridicule, so I want to assure you again and again and again that it does not matter what you are facing this morning, it does not matter what challenges followed you from January to November 24, the help of the helpless is here, the God with whom nothing shall be impossible is here, the God who will never fail is here and if you belong to Him and you are called by His name, He will move heaven and earth to help you in the mighty name of Jesus.
When God delivered the children of Israel from the Philistines, Samuel positioned a stone of help which he called Ebenezer, so we also are to be people who celebrate God’s work in our lives, is because we focus on the things that are worrying us currently that we are not grateful for what God has done, and I want to advise you to do something that I do very occasionally when I come face to face with a challenge because I’m not the kind of Pastor that will tell you that I have no problem, the only thing that I can assure you of is that God will never ever leave me in my problem; He made a way in the Red Sea, and at every turn in every situation under every circumstance, He will make a way for me and He will also make a way for you.
So like Samuel, we also should celebrate God’s work in our lives, you know the generation that came out of Egypt, the moment they came out they forgot God’s hand in their matter, when they saw a little problem like this, they started talking out of order and most of us are like them because we are now just focusing on the on the present challenges, we are not remembering what God has done.
I said I brought you a sermon of encouragement this morning, the songwriter says ‘count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done’, beginning from today 24th of November, count your blessings and begin to praise God for them, begin to put your stone of help at every point where you see that God has come through for you, and as you begin to give Him praise, you begin to give Him thanks and worship, it is in that that He will do what is it you are looking up to Him to do in Jesus name.
The Bible says He inhabits the praises of His people, by putting a stone of help –your Ebenezer, you are thanking Him for what He has done at that point in time; this was what Samuel did and this is what we should do, we must remember we must always set down the Ebenezer stone so to speak and declare with joy how good God has been to us. They didn’t carry you into church this morning, you walked with your two legs, some people have two legs they cannot walk, they have to push them around, we are not ridiculing them like I said; you woke up this morning you open your eyes and you could see, some people slept yesterday night there was nothing wrong with their eyes, this morning they opened their eyes they could not see.
Several years ago, it must be up to maybe if it’s not up to 60 it’s more than 50, I think ‘71 or ’72, I had a friend, she’s still my friend, she’s about the only friend that I have left that I can call friend, we were in University of Ibadan, me, I didn’t know God that time, she was an edge better than me, she used to go to some fellowship, we used to call them SU (whatever that meant); and normally from Queen where we go to lecture is far, so we wait for each other and we go in a group so that we can joyfully go in a company.
We woke up one morning and my friend could not talk, I’m telling you true story, your Pastor knows her, she was dumb, she was not born dumb o, she was a French student and she was dumb, for the next 6 months she couldn’t talk, she went to UCH almost every week, they examined her from the crown of her head to the sole of her feet – every tissue every organ, they said there was nothing wrong with her but she couldn’t talk – 6 months, and we that time ah, sometimes it’s better to be ignorant because won ni ti eti o ba gbo yikin, inu o n baje (I don’t know how to say that in English), we didn’t know the gravity of the matter and thank God she could see and thank God she could still read, so when we want to talk to her we wrote a note and she wrote back to us what the reply was – six solid months; her mother was frantic, she was all over the place and we didn’t know because we were not mothers then, so we didn’t know what mothers suffer and then we’ll be laughing and making fun of her ‘ah, she has become dumb, when is she going to talk again’, she was the bulk of our jokes, but like I said this morning there is a help of the helpless who can fix every situation, with whom nothing is impossible.
As she went suddenly dumb, we were coming back from lecture one afternoon and she called one of our names, ah, we said this dumb girl have spoken o, we were rejoicing and then we just drove straight to the mother’s place, she was rolling all over the place, she knew what God had done for her. The God who makes the dumb speak, whether you are dumb physically or spiritually, today you will speak in the name of Jesus, and whenever you speak you are going to decree and whatever you decree will be established unto you in the name Jesus.
Anyway the Bible has told us that our puny brain is not enough to understand God, you can’t understand God, He does what He does, He does what He pleases and nobody can call Him to order, He’s the original Kabiesi, He will prove Himself Almighty in your life today. You must remember from time to time what God has done for you and place your stone of help, your Ebenezer.
What are the things that you should remember? If you are born again this morning, remember your personal relationship with God, there is no other relationship that is enduring, that is reliable, that you can count on other than your relationship with God; much as mothers love their children, I haven’t seen a mother that will die in the place of the child, I don’t know but I haven’t seen one and I have some of these funny experiences.
One day I was in LUTH, I went I went for my own business, and there was this woman with a sick child, she’s holding the child, the temperature was I don’t know how high and the child was convulsing and the woman was screaming ‘help me, people’; this woman will scream you will feel the pain in your brain and the doctors kept saying that they’ve done all they could do for the child, the woman kept screaming until the child gave up, she was holding on to the child you can imagine that, but you have a God (if you are genuinely born again) that will never disappoint you; if you have a relationship with Him, it is the best relationship ever that you can have because He’s the most reliable Friend, the Bible says He sticks closer than a brother; your brother can deny you but Jesus will never deny you, so you must be grateful ever for your personal relationship with God, remember, and whether you are going to do it physically or spiritually, put a stone of help and begin to thank Him for the salvation of your soul, it is the greatest miracle that anybody can ever give to anybody.
If I was not born again, that day in March 1981, I would have died 40 something years ago and gone straight to hell, it is that relationship that kept me going and coming, it is because of that relationship that I’m here again this morning, remember what God has done for you.
Number two: remember the community to which you belong. Everybody is saying everything about the church, don’t help them to complain, if you belong in a church it does not matter what is happening in that church, God has His 10%, let everybody else not be good but if you have a 100 people there, 10 of them will belong to God, God will take His 10%, those that are in the church that are genuinely born again can help you in whatever way they can help you and there are so many ways they can help you, some of the time when you talk of help now you’ll see their mind jumps to money, there are so many things money cannot buy, but again as I keep saying, if it was not because of the people who took me under their wings when I came in 1981, I would not have developed to this stage, so be grateful for your church community, be grateful for the people that God surrounds you with; some of us we don’t do anything but criticize our Pastor, ‘his own is too much sef’, if there’s something that is wrong with him pray for him, God has not made a mistake to put him over you; the person you are sitting next to, you don’t know when she will be able to help you and she’ll be the only person around, be grateful for your church family.
Thank God that you belong in a church that at least you can say this one is a Christian, they may be calling themselves Christians we don’t know, it’s only God that sees the heart of men but out of a 100 people in a church, God must have His 10%, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Be grateful for your career. In the days when we came out of University, we used to block the people who want to employ us, by the time we finish exams they will be coming to harass us in UI to interview us, we’ll be telling them we haven’t rested from the exam, when we finish we will come and do interview and some of us have three four five jobs before we came out of University, now if a graduate has money to buy Uber to drive we should be grateful, some of them are vagabond now, it’s not out of their own making, is because of what the world has become, they are jobless, they are homeless, those who are not homeless, is the parents that sent them to school that are now feeding them, it should not be like that.
So if you have a job and they pay you salary regularly at the end of every month, put your stone of help, your Ebenezer, every day you wake up, thank God for your job that you are not just walking the streets of Lagos, nothing to do; you go to this church you tell story they give you rice; you come out from there, you go to another one they give you garri, that situation will change in the name of Jesus Christ.
Thank God for true friends, because these days, most friends are fair weather friends, the only people you can call your friend are those who will stand by you through thick and thin, so if you have a friend like that don’t play with that friend. This my friend I was telling you that went dumb, it’s been a while they had wanted to finish her because they saw where she was going; we left University, she went to work for the federal government and she was a permanent secretary before she left, hallelujah.
I said to her that look, I must confess I’m jealous of you and I was really jealous of her I must tell her because now, today she’s in Dubai, tomorrow she’s in Canada, the other day she’s in the United Kingdom because she has retired and nothing is holding her down, so she’s reaping the fruit of her labor; e e ni sise fun elomin je, e e ni kole fun elomin gbe, awon omo yin o ni di omo olomo, if it was not because I’m still stuck here because of people like your Pastor, ‘I must come and preach’, I should have japa long ago, hallelujah, but I keep telling everybody I said to them, I said well, I don’t know maybe that’s why God kept me alive so I should not put my children before God, let me just do for God and at least once a year I can go on summer holidays and go from country to country too like my friend and spend maybe at least two weeks enjoying my family, e e ni kole fun elomin gbe loruko Jesu.
So if you have God as your Savior, if you have a church community where they care about you, if you have a job to go to, you are not walking the streets of Lagos, if you have reliable friends, be grateful. You have a family, some of you will say my husband is not good, that’s what I used to say, he’s not good, he’s the worst of the husbands; some of you are talking like that, some people are looking for husband 50 60 they are nearing 70 now they can’t find their husband, at least he will be good with one thing; you have a husband, you have children, you have a home, anything that is not good – even the good things need prayer, but those things that are not good, it is your business as a child of God, (I said at the beginning I was talking to just the children of God now), it is your business to thank God for your family – your wife, your husband, your children, members of your household that are making life easy for you.
I used to tell people, in those days I was so very finicky, when I travel and come back, I will start cleaning from upstairs to ground floor; these days if I wash my toilet myself, I wash this one then I wash the bathtub, and by the time I finish I’m sweating, hallelujah! It’s because of my age, I’m not old yet but I’m sweating. You have people who surround you, they sweep the floor, they mop it, they clean the kitchen, they wash the plates, they wash the clothes, they iron it and you still say they are not good, if you are my age try putting your clothes in water, wash it, by the time you finish, you will realize how your body will react, praise the Lord!
If God has put you in a family, leave those things that are not good, pray about them and be grateful for the things that are good. If you are born again, some of you, the way you talk concerning the children that came out of you is terrible; you look at your child, you carried this child for 9 months, after you gave birth to the child you knew what you suffered and you say ‘ah, if I even knew that this thing is in your father’s family I would not have married into this family, they say it’s your grandfather that you resemble – your paternal grandfather’, instead of looking at your child and prophesying into her life, your own business is not what the great grandfather or the great-great grandfather looked like, this is your son, tell God what you want concerning him because God’s promise concerning you and your children is that the children of the righteous shall be delivered, so if he’s not the kind of child you are looking for now, tell God what you want, give God back His word, omo yin o ni d’akobata f’egbe.
He said that wherever He positions them to function (Psalm 112: 1 & 2), they will be mighty in the land, that’s what He promised you; He said whatever they touch will prosper. First of all, thank God that you even have a child before you start talking katakata, every word that is not of God that you have said is revoked in Jesus name.
I said it at the beginning that you have life, and because you have life you are a work in progress, God has not finished with you yet, your best days are ahead of you, all those looking at you and saying what will you amount to, by the time you blossom, they will be falling on their faces in the name of Jesus Christ. But in all of these situations, put your stone of help, blessed be the name of the Lord, hallelujah!
You are a work in progress, don’t use your mouth to sabotage what God is doing for you, celebrate how far God has worked in your life. I tell people I was not like this before, although I have not arrived, God has done a great job and He’s still working on me; when I was me, I used to be a very difficult person, I’m so perfectionist there’s no way you can sweep the floor that will satisfy me, I’m so perfectionist you cannot iron my skirt and I will say thank you because I will see the edge that you did not iron properly, some of you are like that, you are just laughing, hallelujah! The God that is working on me will continue to work on you, and because He’s not a God of unfinished project, every good work that He has started in you, He will be faithful to complete it in the name of Jesus Christ.
So you still have life and they say in the world, where there is life there’s hope, God is not done with you yet, He has a plan, He has a purpose and it is His counsel concerning you and I that will stand, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Finally, we come to your theme for the month ‘Divine Help’, all these that I’ve been telling you about has to do with God helping you, the God that has helped you this far, He has not brought you this far to jettison you, it does not glorify His name; the Bible says you were created for His glory, mi o ni gba iku oniku ku o, mi o de ni ku iku kifa, because if anything happens to me now, they will ask if that’s not the woman that prays, that’s how they shout, we don’t know what they are up to, how is her own like this?
He is the help of the helpless, I want you to believe me when I say to you this morning, your pastor already said it, your choir already sang it, with God nothing shall be impossible, God is able to do all things, He didn’t say some, did you see the trouble Job went through, he can still open his mouth to say God can do all things, God’s purpose cannot be frustrated, God’s plan cannot be thwarted, your own will not be too difficult for God blessed be the name of the Lord!
So you have come to a God that can help you, you have come to a God that is more willing to help you than you are willing for Him to help you, to the extent to which you are grateful, to the extent to which you are thankful, God will continue to supply even the needs that you have that you don’t know in the mighty name of Jesus.
I said I was going to marry it into the 2032 Vision, blessed be the name of the Lord! The God who has consistently been helping us is still here concerning this 2032 Vision, praise the Lord! He has not brought us far in the Redeemed Christian Church of God to abandon us now.
There used to be a very (the word is more than mega, I don’t know what adjective to use to describe that church), I was in that church in 1986 in South Korea, they had I think six or seven services every Sunday, (I’m not sure whether it’s six or seven now) at every service, there were at least 25,000 people, they were members, they were not just who came for food, it was the biggest church on the face of the earth, it was there we went to learn about house fellowship that they have given so many other names in Nigeria, home cell group and the rest of it to grow the church.
Something happened and by the time the devil finished with that church it was something else, that will not happen to you, God has brought you this far to perfect that which He has started in you.
National has told us that we should not forget the 2032 Vision, right now I don’t know 100 and what, but they keep telling us that we have the redeemed presence in more than 100 countries, the God who has brought us to that stage will do for us whatever pleases Him that will bring glory to His name, we will not be put to shame in the mighty name of Jesus, ko ni ri fun wa bi ota se n fe, and I want you to be praying that prayer every morning as individuals, as congregations and as a mission, blessed be the name of the Lord!
But all these that I’ve been saying, I’ve been saying it to born again children of God, because there’s no way that you can enjoy – sometimes God deals with us in mercy, He does for us what we don’t deserve, but in order to be able to access that which Christ died to purchase for you by His precious blood, you have to be born again. Jesus has done a complete work, perfect work, nothing to be added, nothing to be subtracted, there’s nothing you are looking for that you cannot get from God, I am a living testimony that God helps His people, so if you are here this morning you’ve never given your life to Jesus in the sense that you made Jesus Savior and Lord of your life, you confess Him as Savior, you accept Him as Lord and you gave the life He gave you back to Him so that He can help you to manage it.
If you are here this morning, you want to give your life to Jesus and on a consistent basis you want God to be helping you in those areas that I’ve listed and in more areas than that because there is nothing that God cannot do…
[Altar Call]
And so Father God almighty, this morning we want to thank You; we thank You for Your word that has gone out and we thank You that You did not allow it to return void, blessed be Your holy name for the people who have come to You this morning, You are the ever faithful God, You say those who come to You, You will not cast out, I present them to You standing on Your word, receive them in the name of Jesus, make them Your very own in the name of Jesus; with the blood of Jesus, cleanse them from every sin and from every unrighteousness in the name of Jesus; write their names in the Book of Life, and by this evening even today, let them know that a change has occurred in their lives to the praise and glory of Your name in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank You Almighty God!
We want to say Father, I give You praise for reconciling me to You, thank You that I now belong to the best family in the world, wherever I go from this day forward, let Your glory be seen in my life because it is written that You created me for Your glory.
Say Father, as born again children of Yours, You have reconciled us to You and You have made us ministers of reconciliation, as we go forth, Lord God Almighty help us in the assignment that You have given us in the name of Jesus Christ; equip us with power as You promised in Acts 1: 8, power to go for You so that we will be what You created us to be and be what You called us to be, thank You Mighty God, blessed be Your holy name oh Lord in Jesus mighty name.
Your own will not be impossible for God, the God who have helped us, helps us, help other people before us and keeps helping people will help you, by the time you come back next week Sunday, there shall be testimonies of the wonderful help that God has given unto you, blessed be the name of the Lord!
God has been faithful, God has been good, praise Him, thank Him for the salvation of souls; you will build houses, you will buy cars, you will have children, you will have husband, but this is the greatest of miracles – for God to snatch you from hell and transfer you into heaven, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Lord thank You in Jesus name, we give You praise and glory, honor, adoration and majesty as You continue with us, blessed be Your holy name. Don’t forget Your promise concerning us; You say in famine we shall be fed; You say those who trust in You shall never be disappointed; You say we are in the world and we are not of the world, so what is happening to the world should not happen to us, we reject everything that will not glorify Your name in our lives in the name of Jesus, blessed be Your holy name, in Jesus mighty name. Praise the Lord!
