Bishop David Oyedepo at WSF Leadership Empowerment Summit
(Part I)
- You labour to build your faith.
- You labour to engage your faith.
- Don’t just believe the testimonies, follow the same steps.
- Lack of access to vision makes you an old man even at the age of 20
“I thank God that James chapter 2 is in the Bible, otherwise, people will just go and sleep.”
What we don’t expect, we are not qualified to experience. There is no environment or situation that can make the Word of God of no effect.
All we need is light. Testimonies are ordained to enlighten us, to walk into the fullness of God’s agenda for our lives (Isaiah 8:20).
- May the enlightenment from these testimonies help every Cell and every Cell Minister to take responsibility and experience supernatural growth and replication in Jesus precious name.
The first question that will come to quite many people is that, “what is in all this for me?”
God has not asked the seed of Jacob to seek Him in vain.
“What is in all this for me? What am I to take home from this? What profit is this offering me?”
Every true engagement with any commandment of scriptures supernaturally advances the individual: For in the growth of His Church lies the glory of the engaging saints. You can’t engage with God in the growth of His Church and not grow. You can’t seek the Kingdom of God in truth and in deed and have nothing to show.
WHAT IS IN ALL THIS FOR ME?
Honour:
The young lions may suffer want and hunger, but they that seek to please God, those that seek to be co-labourers with God in the building of His Church, He honours them in return. (Psalm 34:10).
When God honours you, no devil can dishonour you (Proverbs 14:28, 1 Samuel 2:30, John 12:26).
Favour:
One encounter with favour is worth much more than a lifetime of labour.
- Joseph found favour in the house of Potiphar, he became an heir of that family.
- He found favour before the eyes of the keeper of the Prison and he became a star of the Prison as an inmate.
- He found favour before the king; he removed his ring and his robe; put upon him. Joseph enjoyed that for 80 years. He lived to be 110. Church Gist He began to reign in Egypt at 30.
One encounter with favour just turned his entire life around.
*Expect such favour to come hitting you this year.
Just like there are no private revelations in scriptures, there are no private testimonies in scriptures: No private revelations in the Kingdom; no private testimonies in the Kingdom.
- Every testimony is a pointer to your heritage and my heritage in Christ IF you are interested; IF I am interested.
- God does not force His blessings on anyone, He keeps knocking on your door, “are you interested?” (Revelation 3:20).
Response: Yes, Lord, I am interested.
God: Okay, follow the same steps.
What God has replicated in this Church is the testimony of Yonggi Cho. I never saw him, up till now, before God, we have never met but I believed the hand of God upon him. I devoured all I could find about him. I plugged my faith into it.
interestingly some fellows came from that Church one Sunday morning and said, “this Church is exactly like our Church.”
I said, “that is the truth.”
I believed in that testimony, it got replicated with us. I became his student since 1985: studying, collecting and engaging with the things that I found. Church Gist
2010: we were here, we engaged with the material, ‘Building Successful Home Cells’ and our Cell system jumped up. It just jumped up.
The testimony you receive and believe, you are empowered to replicate. You’ll have to receive it, you’ll have to believe it before they can be replicated in your life.
I believed the testimony of Kenneth Copeland: the grace of abundance that he operates within. I loved the hand of God upon him, so I went in search of the secret that he must have found; I found it in 1982 and I am walking in it today, because I received, I believed the testimony. It drove me to locate the secrets of Kingdom Prosperity and it is now an asset, my own personal asset.
But we have a problem here:
- “Is it that brother, the cells are not that many. Okay, if they are many, they are all 2 or 3 members.”
How do you know? Were you attending all the Cells? Because you don’t want to do anything.
Let me tell you this:
FAITH IS WORK. That is where many charismatics fail. They think faith is asking God, “come and do this. God, are you there, do this one too? God, come here.”
Hebrews 6:12
Don’t be slothful: faith is work!!!
Yes, I believed in that testimony, but you see (engaging in) fasting, prayers, going out, following up. You can’t replicate without engaging the forces at work behind that testimony.Church Gist You cannot replicate it.
“Lord, come and do that. I know God will do it”: that’s why many people are where they are today.
They won’t do anything, “Lord, come and do it. Lord, come and bath for me; come and cook for me; come and set the table; come and prepare my bed.”
Can you imagine praying that prayer, “Oh Lord, prepare my food”: you will die of hunger. He provides the food, you do the cooking. You work before He provides the food; He won’t provide the food if you are not working (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Everything about you and me in the Kingdom calls for taking responsibility. I can’t repent on your behalf for you to be saved. It’s not possible. You have to repent by yourself so you can be saved as an individual.
Many young people since the revival broke out, were born into the revival but can’t tell when they were saved, so they keep nursing them and nursing them because you can’t teach a dog to sing: No.
If any man be in Christ; it’s not be in Christ on his behalf, old things have passed away; all things are become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Faith is Work!!!
We labour to build faith, we labour to engage faith (Hebrews 4:1,6,9, 11). It is all labour.
These testimonies that were represented to us will just be mere entertainment if we refuse to engage the forces part of those testimonies; they never get replicated.
I thank God that James chapter 2 is in the Bible, otherwise, people will just go and sleep
“Show me your faith without your works” (James 2:18)
HOW ‘WORKY’ IS FAITH?
Ask the Paralytic man (Mark 2:4-5). Faith in action (Mark 2:1-12).
Ask Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-47, 49). He worked his faith until his faith in action caught the attention of Christ.
Faith is work: Do you know what it means for a blind man to go to the Pool called Siloam (John 9:7). He has never seen any pool in his life, how will he know the one called Siloam?
It’s left to him, “excuse can you assist me to the pool called Siloam?”
“I can only help you to a point, I am not going that way.”
He got his way there and got his sight back.
Faith is work!
Too many layby people in the Body of Christ:
- You better come out of that place. Come out of that place, it is not safe.
When you stop working the work of faith, your faith becomes dead (James 2:26).
James 2:18
Abraham was 114 years of age when he worked into that realm of sworn blessings after 3 days of long trek, mountaineering (Genesis 22:3, 16-17). You don’t encounter sworn blessings sitting down, you take a long faith trek to get there. - There are many giants! Many giants will rise this year from the WSF platform.
- Many Ministers will be turned to great surprises to themselves as they engage with God wholeheartedly, faithfully and result bound: “not I tried”; No, you will get it. You must get it and you will get it.
A Cell replicated 5 times within 6 months: what did they do, find out what they did?
Receive their testimony as real because a prophet is not without honour except in his own country, among his own people (Mark 6:4, 6).
That cuts across all levels: Top Business Executives, young and upcoming individuals. It cuts across all levels.
I told them yesterday at a forum, “God is not bound by calendar years.” Moses was a young man at 80, so he saw a vision. Everybody walking in visions and revelation is a young man in the sight of God (Joel 2:28). You may call him an old man by your own calendar, but he is a young man.
Abraham caught a vision of the Lord at 75. He caught another one at 114: he was still a young man.
- Access to vision makes a young man. Lack of access makes an old man even at 20.
“I don’t even understand”: he is an old man. As a young man, you don’t understand. When will you understand?
“In fact, I don’t know what to do!”: young man. That’s an old man.
The good news is you can’t truly have a heart for God and not make strange marks on the earth.
- Many will make outstanding marks this year among our operators.
That is the way it works and it will work for you. It must work for you.
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