Let somebody shout hallelujah! How many of us are happy to be alive? You are excited to see today and you want to give God praise for sparing our lives. You know grace is a God’s factor in the race of life; the Bible tells us that the race is not to the swift nor the battle for the strong, it’s about time and chance, but that time is actually grace; there are more than a million people with whom we shouted happy new year together at the beginning of the year, but today, quite a number of them are no more.
Yoruba would say, eni to kan lo mo, those who are affected are the ones that will know what we are talking about , but here we are in the presence of God this morning hale and hearty, and it is my prayer today that God will find our sacrifice of thanksgiving worthy of acceptance in Jesus name.
So I want to implore every one of you, whatever we ask you to do – in fact the Bible says whatever your hands findeth to do, do it with all your might, and I can assure you that every one of you will be blessed mightily today in Jesus name.
[Music]
Almighty Father once again we just want to say thank You; the truth is that our heart is filled with gratitude, sometimes we don’t even know how to go about expressing how we feel, but the fact remains You have done so much for us: You save us, You preserve us, You kept us this far, we are alive today not because the devil wanted us to be alive, we are alive today not because the enemies wanted us to be here, but we thank You because in the battle for our lives, You won and You gave us victory, Father accept our thanks in the name of Jesus Christ.
Thank You for the first month of this year, thank You for the second, thank You for March, thank You for April and thank You for bringing us to this fifth month, the month of grace, our month of unmerited favor, we know You will show us grace in every area and we know Your favor will locate us, accept our thanks in the name of Jesus Christ.
Lord Almighty God, whatever is committed unto Your hands You are able to keep it, therefore this morning, we commit everything concerning us, everything about us unto You, Father please take pre-eminent in Jesus name; have Your way in Jesus name; like never before, see us through this month in Jesus name. Guide us jealously, make us untouchable, increase the tempo of our joy and the measure of our rejoicing in the mighty name of Jesus.
And as we worship and praise You every day every moment, let our praise come unto You oh Lord on daily basis as a sweet smelling savor in Jesus name. And by reason of it Father, You will load our heaven in Jesus name.
I pray for all Your children who have been faithful in the payments of their tithes and in the giving of their offering, Lord Almighty that You will take care of them. Unto them Father, You will bring unto fulfillment the declaration of Your word even from Genesis to Revelation in Jesus name; make them a delightsome land and let Your name ever be glorified in their lives.
Father once again we pray this morning, come along with us in Jesus name; have Your way in a very special way, encounter us and bless us mightily, in Jesus wonderful name we have prayed.
God will encounter you today in Jesus name,. I want to say good morning to every one of you, happy new month of May, the month of our unmerited favor. The things that you do not even merit, the things that you don’t qualify for, the Lord will honor you with them all in Jesus name. It will be a pleasurable right into glory; you will ride into the wave of His grace in the name of Jesus.
And like I said, grace is a God’s factor in a man’s life; the difference between prosperity and failure is grace, I pray that grace will find a strong expression in your life this month in Jesus name. So I want to encourage us, please be courageous, be focused and be conscious of whom you serve, and that God will continue to back you up in Jesus name.
I can assure you that grace will strengthen you this month; grace will reposition you this month; for those who are weak, you will be strengthened; the sick will be healed in the mighty name of Jesus. And for those of you that are thirsty, you will be satisfied and you will testify in Jesus name.
By the grace of God, tomorrow we’ll be having our first prayer chain for the month of May and the theme for tomorrow is Under His Cover. When you are under God’s cover, you will become untouchable; when you are under His cover, nobody can uncover you; I look forward to seeing every one of you tomorrow; time is 6: 30, as we come together to pray, the Lord will bless us all in Jesus name.
2nd Samuel 24: 24, “And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver”. This morning as we serve you the first course, I’ll be talking to us on “Offering Your Best to the Highest”.
Offering your Best here means giving your best, and when you talk about the best, you talk about the top of the range in terms of quality; and when you talk about the Highest, you talk about the highest, and God is the highest in this context, the uncreated Creator, the unchangeable Changer, the Alpha, the Omega, the One that was, the One that is, the One that is to come, the One to whom all power belong is the highest.
Brethren, we serve a God that is magnificent, we serve a God that is magnanimous, we serve a God that is benevolent. In other words, our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is very active and responsive. He is the God of the living and not of the dead, according to Mark 12: 26 – 27; Jehovah is His name, praise the Lord! Jehovah is the name of our God; He has promised that when we honor Him, He will in turn honor us, as captured in 1st Samuel 2: 30, when you honor the Lord, He ensures that He honors you.
In 1st Samuel 2: 30, it says “Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed”. So what we are trying to bring out here is the fact that God honors those who honor Him; our God is a living God, He’s not a dead God, and because He’s a living God and not a dead God, He responds positively to our goodwill and acts of it.
All our goodwill – and when you talk about goodwill, you talk about the totality of what we do, the totality of our service, the totality of our acts of giving, the totality of our act of service to God and of course they all constitute an act of faith because we do whatever we do, for instance, we are here today as an act of faith; we believe that we are in the presence of God and the truth of the matter is that by faith, we know God is in our midst because the Bible makes it clear, it says wherever two or three are gathered in His name, (it says) in their midst He will be and He will grant their heart desire. I pray today that God will grant all our heart desires in the name of Jesus Christ.
So whenever we honor God with the best of our best, God also honors us in return, He gives us the best of the best.
Brethren, I want to say this morning that it is impossible to put God first and yet become the last, praise the Lord! God is not wired that way, when you put God first, He also puts you first; in fact, the shortest way to being first is putting God first, and it’s like that because God is too faithful, God is steadfast and God is gracious. A songwriter says He’s too faithful to fail, God is too faithful to disappoint, from generation to generation, God remains God; and I pray today that that same God will prove Himself in your life, in my life and in our lives in the mighty name of Jesus.
All through the biblical history, we discovered that all those who honored God with their ultimate best did not only get His attention and respect, but also received abundant blessing. All through the biblical history, all the people that were recorded to have given God their best did not only get God’s attention and respect, but they were all mightily blessed.
Abel, in the Book of Genesis 4: 2 – 5, purposefully gave God his best, and God respected and accepted his offering. “And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering”. My prayer for every one of you today is that God will have respect unto your offerings in the name of Jesus Christ.
We also find in Abraham, you know God demanded from him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, and of course that was the best, the best thing that Abraham had at that point and you know how many years it caused Abraham to wait for the birth of this son, but that same son which represented the fulfillment of a divine promise was demanded by God from Abraham.
And of course Abraham did not hesitate, he sacrificially offered Isaac and God responded by swearing on an oath with a covenant of irrevocable blessing that his seeds will be blessed forever. You can get that in Genesis 22: 1 – 19; when God demanded from Abraham his only son in sacrifice, God was thinking perhaps the guy will come and start negotiating; he will come and start telling God, but You know this is a son of old age, as a matter of fact, having this boy went against the run of play, God, why are You so callous?
But that was not the case for Abraham, he yielded to the divine commandment and God responded, God provided an alternative and of course, He swore to an oath with a covenant of irrevocable blessing. I can stand conveniently on the word of God this morning to declare to you that from now till the Lord’s appearing, you will dwell in blessing in Jesus name.
We also have another example in the woman called Hannah; she gave her best, she had only one son which was a product of prevail in prayers – she prayed, she wept, in fact, at some point, she was mistaken for a drunk, she went through all manner of humiliations but the boy came, and of course, Hannah was very quick to give the boy back to God.
She took the boy back and said this is the boy God has given to me, I dedicate him to the use of God, whatever you want to do with him, take him, he belongs to God. And God responded by giving Hannah five extraordinary children. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus that from today, God will surprise you in the name of Jesus Christ. Whatever it is that you have given, and whatever it is that you are going to give, my God Almighty will respond to it, He will multiply it and give back to you.
In Luke 6, it says give and it shall be given back to you, good measure, pressed together, shaken, that shall men give unto your bosom. In 1st Samuel 2: 21, the Bible says in addition to the son (Samuel) that God has given to Hannah, it says “And God visited Hannah, (today, God will visit somebody) so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before the Lord”.
You see, God will not give you one and take two; and I always tell people, God will not take from you what He cannot replace; so if you have lost anything, if you have missed anything, it is simply because it does not belong to you. The one that will last with you, the one that will give you peace, God will give to you in the name of Jesus.
I was sharing a testimony with him in the morning (before I came out) of certain things that happened at certain times: I had already made up my mind on what to do but somehow pressure came and I changed, in less than three months, God sorted things out.
When David said let Your will be done, you don’t know what he was talking about, if you are sensitive to God as children of God, the best prayer to pray in life is to say Father, let Your will be done in my life, and many of us, the things we are praying for today, if God should deliver those things, your life will be truncated.
Some of the things we are yearning for today that we are fasting day and night, if they should be delivered, you’ll find out that you’ll probably not spend another five years, God’s time is the best; when it is God’s time, nobody can take it away. So whatever it is that you have lost, whatever it is that have been taken away from you, you can be sure that it is not yours, because God will not take from a man what He cannot replace. I stand on the authority of the word of God this morning and I declare everything you have lost, God will restore in Jesus name.
One child given back, five were given back; our sacrificial act towards God in devotion, service or giving will never go unrewarded, Hebrews 6: 10, it says “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister”.
You see, God is not a man – a man can be unrighteous, a man can make a wrong call, a man can pass the wrong judgment but God is not unrighteous, God will not make a wrong call because He’s the Almighty, He’s sovereign, He knows everything, He knows the ending from the beginning. And I pray today in the name of Jesus that you will be sorted out in Jesus name. In every area that you need to be sorted, God will sort you out in Jesus name.
In Mark 10: 29 – 30, the Bible says Jesus Himself promised a hundredfold return in everything we give to further expand God’s kingdom on earth through the gospel, and that scripture says “And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, 30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time…” . Houses, brethren, anything, you will not give in vain in the mighty name of Jesus.
The scripture that we read, this man went to Araunah, he told him, go, we need to build an altar, go to your threshing floor, prepare an altar for the Lord and the man never argued. As he was going, King David surfaced and he asked King David, what are you looking for, my King? He said we need to build an altar and the man said well, that is what we are trying to say, but we need that altar in your threshing floor.
It’s like in your land where you use for agric and all those things, I don’t mind whatever – the man said don’t worry, if God has a need for it, we will let go. The man now said what should I give? He said whatever that God lays in your heart, as a matter of fact, even if you don’t give anything, I will not bother. And King David said how can I offer unto God a sacrifice that will cost me nothing?
You need something to connect into divine blessing; you need a key to open the treasure house of God. David said, how can I offer unto God a sacrifice that costs me nothing? Then Araunah said whatever you offer, may God accept it and I will accept it and of course, you will enjoy it.
In Mark 14: 3 – 9, the Bible tells us of a woman that was classified – in fact she was duly classified in the Bible as a sinner, but she brought her alabaster box, the best she had to Jesus. In the presence of everyone, she broke the seal of this alabaster box and poured the expensive ointment on Jesus body, and of course some people were complaining that haha, why would this woman, a sinner, come and do this, as a matter of fact, this expensive perfume would have been sold for so much, the money could have been given to the needy.
And Jesus Christ told them, you are hypocrites, this woman has anointed My leg, what she has given is the best, and of course, her sacrificial giving was commended. Though she was criticized, but she offered her best. Brethren, in your relationship with God, people will criticize you: are you the only person there? Your brain has been twisted, you cannot reason properly anymore; they will say all kind of crazy and stupid things about you, but be rest assured that the Man you are dealing with is a great rewarder of good, our God is a rewarder of those who diligently serve Him.
And I want to encourage us today, as you come to worship Him, to keep pouring out your best on God, His payday will soon come, you know God has His payday, praise the Lord, somebody! And I can assure you there will always be a clear distinction between those who serve God and idols. When you serve an idol, you behave like an idol; but when you serve God, the Bible says you move from strength to strength, Psalm 84: 7, it says “They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.”
When you serve the idol, you’ll behave like idol. Idol will tell you don’t speak loud, it will tell you when you go to idol people that don’t speak loud; they’ll tell you when you do whatever you do, don’t look back; they’ll tell you to go to places in the middle of the night, they’ll tell you to go to crossroads in the middle of the night and they say when you get there you should close your eyes, whatever they tell you to do, you’ll do, you behave like them, but in the presence of God you can take any position when it comes to prayer; you can sit down to pray, you can stand up to pray, you can kneel down to pray, you can be walking and be praying, you can be sleeping and be praying, you can be here and be speaking in tongues; they that appear in Zion move from strength to strength. I pray today in the mighty name of Jesus that you will move from strength to strength in the name of Jesus Christ.
So I want to encourage us this morning that we should resolve like David never to give God that which that is not valuable or that which does not cost you anything. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward; God has given you His best, the Bible says for God so loved the world, (in John 3: 16) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
God has given us the best in the Holy Spirit, God has given us the best in eternal life. In John 10: 10, it says the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: (it says) but the Son of man has come to give us life, and life in abundance. I pray today, you will receive life in the name of Jesus. So we should reciprocate His kindness towards us by giving Him our best; the scriptures tell us, God remembers our offering, in Psalm 20: 3, it says remember all my offerings and accept my burnt sacrifice.
There is also a book of remembrance record that has been opened in heaven according to Malachi 3: 16, it says “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.” Brethren, our heavenly Father will never ever forget our sacrificial love; as He did not forget Cornelius’ devotion in the Book of Acts, so He will never forget your gifts and your best that you’ve offered unto Him.
So it is time for us to give God our best, and when I say best, I mean the ultimate best. And I pray today as we offer Him the best, He will receive it from us, He will receive us, He will breathe on us, He will take us to Zion and from there, we will have our strength renewed on daily basis.
Shall we rise on our feet. If you are here and you have not given your life to Christ, I think the best you can offer is just your life and how do you offer your life? It’s by just accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior, and there is danger in not doing this especially if you know you are not in the right course, there is a danger in not receiving it.
In John 3: 18, it says “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God”; so why will you come here this morning and yet go back with condemnation? Why will you be in the household of faith, in the place of grace and you go back with judgment? The Bible says mercy prevails over judgment, so I want to tell you today that the gate of mercy is clearly and widely open.
So if you want to give your life to Christ as we all bow down our heads and begin to sing, pick a song of your choice and begin to sing in appreciation of all God has done for us.
[Altar call]
I want you to just go before the Lord and say Father, thank You for being so good to me; thank You for giving us Your best to ransom my life, from today, I promise to give my best in service to You and to humanity in the name of Jesus.
As I come to You today, accept my sacrifice of thanksgiving, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed. Praise the Lord!
