YOU CANNOT CONTINUE TO LIVE IN SIN AND EXPECT TO SEE THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR.
THERE IS SOMETHING MORE GLORIOUS THAN BEING MADE WHOLE AND THAT IS YOU BEING THE VESSEL THAT GOD USES TO BRING HEALING
THE MOST GLORIOUS OF ALL VICTORIES IS WHEN YOU WIN WITHOUT FIGHTING
- Pastor E.A. Adeboye at the Opening Night of Kingdom Life World Conference 2021, The Redeemed Evangelical Mission.
Hallelujah!
Lift your voice and magnify the Ancient of days. Let Him hear you praising Him. He is the unchangeable changer. There is no one like Him. Thank you my Father, Glory be to your holy name.
🎶What a mighty God we serve, Hallelujah. Heaven and earth adore Him. Angels bow before Him, what a mighty God we serve.
King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Ancient of days. The beginning and the ending. We worship you, thank you for 40 years of excellence, 40 years of anointing, salvation, miracles, breakthrough, glory, signs and wonders. Accept our thanks in Jesus name. Father during this Convention in the lives of all your children, do something extraordinary. Show them the power of your glory. Anyone connected with this Commission one way or the other, let this Convention mark a new beginning. A new beginning of success, joy, breakthroughs and a closer walk with God. Father please let it be so. Church Gist. Every one of your children who will cry to You this evening, give them an Anniversary Miracle that they will never forget. I commit the Set-man of this Commission and his family into your hands, you have done mighty things through their hands in the past years. Do greater things, the kind of heights they never thought they would reach, beginning from tonight take them to that height. I pray that in Your kingdom none of us will be missing, Thank you Father for in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
Let somebody shout Hallelujah.
I want to thank the almighty God that at long last I can be back. I have said it before and I don’t mind repeating it, I have many sons and daughters but my friends are very few. There are less than 10 in number and one of these few people who are less than 10 in number is Bishop Mike Okonkwo. All my children are aware of this. There is another thing I have said before which I want to repeat again in case you have forgotten. I said when some people come to me and say “Sir, we want you to write a reference for us. Tell people about us”. For some I will write and say well, this fellow who has applied for one thing or the other says he is a child of God. Church Gist. Which is another way of saying I am not sure but that is what he says. Some people will come like that and I will write and say this fellow is a child of God without any doubt. But there are some very few people who if they come to me and say “please Sir we need a reference”. I will take my letter headed paper, I will sign at the bottom and say “write whatever you want”. One of such is Bishop Mike Okonkwo. Oh Yes! You need to give God the glory for that. One more thing, you know my sermon won’t be long. I am a mathematician x+y=z I have finished. TREM was born in 1981, I became General Overseer in 1981. So it’s two celebrants meeting together today. So when my trusted friend invited me to this year’s celebration I said how can I be absent. We are celebrating together.
- Every one of you here for this Convention, this will be one Convention you will never forget.
Of course, behind every successful man, there must be a woman. If nobody knows that I should do so. So please help me celebrate Mama. Someone passed away, a General Overseer and they were looking for who would succeed him. They came to me because I had a connection with him and they said he has a son who is also in ministry, they said the only problem is that the wife of the son we are not too sure of her. I said in that case forget him. Church Gist. If the woman on the side of the man is not solidly on the side of God and you put that man in charge of any ministry, that ministry is finished. A successful ministry without any doubt is based on the support of the wife. Mama, I celebrate you.
1 Corinthians 15:41
Tonight I will just be clearing the ground, as from tomorrow the big boys will come. They usually push me forward because being the smallest of them all, if I make any mistake they will correct it. The theme of our Convention is Exceeding Glory. Two powerful words. Glory is the noun, exceeding is the adjective. So I will start by defining glory in the language of a market woman, what everybody can understand. When the big boys come they will give you the theological definition. Church Gist. There are certain words you think you know their meaning, until they ask you to define it then you discover you just assume you know it. For example, if I ask you what is distance. Distance is the gap between two points, good! so what is gap? Gap is the distance. Or your child comes to you and says “Baba what is time?”. Time is that thing measured in hours, minutes and seconds. Papa I didn’t ask you how they measure time, what is time?
There are many words like that we just assume we know and yet we can’t define them. One of such words is glory. What is glory? I am sure you think you know but define it in a way that a child will be able to understand and then you discover that you don’t have the definition. Church Gist. The dictionary will give you something very funny. I am not trying to teach philosophy or advanced mathematics but whenever you find a word that you can not define, look for the opposite and when you find the opposite, you will find it easy to understand. If you want to define life, think about death which is the opposite of life and then you can take it up from there.
What is glory? Proverbs 3:35 gives us the definition by giving us the opposite. It says the wise shall inherit glory but shame shall be the promotion of fools. ‘The wise’ is the opposite of ‘fools’, glory belongs to the wise and shame belongs to fools so what is glory? Glory is the opposite of shame, Period.
- This is why I am starting by decreeing in the name of the One who gave us the theme of this year’s Convention that there will be no more shame in your life.
Glory is the opposite of those things that cause us shame. What are those things?
Disease. You cannot see anyone shouting “Brethren help me praise the Lord, I have HIV/AIDS” or “I am so excited, I tested positive to Corona Virus”. You won’t hear that. Sickness and disease cause shame.
- That is why during this Convention every one of you with sickness and disease are going to be healed.
Another thing that causes shame is poverty. Whether you believe it or not, poverty causes shame. During the Millennium celebration, they built a Dome in Britain and one of the things they wrote inside is “when money is speaking, nobody checks the grammar”. The meaning of that is if you are rich there is an element of glory associated with it. When the poor man is talking people will say “shut your mouth. Who asked you to talk?” Poverty is related to shame.
- I decree in the name above every other name, you will not die poor.
Another thing that causes shame is demonic oppression. There’s no one who can come to the front of the congregation and say “Somebody shout Hallelujah, my brother or sister has just gone mad”. There is nothing glorious in being demon-possessed. Church Gist. Defeat causes shame, if you don’t believe me remember when the Green Eagles won the World Cup, there was a motorcade to welcome them from the airport all the way to TBS where they were received. Not long after that they went to play and they lost in the opening rounds. Nobody knew when they came into the country.
You have a rough idea of what glory is now, then the word ‘exceeding’ that one came from the text I read to you, that there are categories of glory. One glory of the sun, one glory of the moon, one glory of the star and then when you gather stars together you will still see that stars differ or exceed other stars in glory.
So let me take some of these things that cause shame and explain glory. For example, healing is glorious. In Mark 2:1-12 when they brought that boy that was paralyzed from the neck down to Jesus. You know the story of how they had to break the roof, when that boy was healed. When he was going carrying what carried him in, the Bible said they glorified God. To be healed is glorious but there is something more glorious than to be healed, that is to be made whole. Church Gist. Luke 17:11-19 tells us that there were 10 lepers who cried to Jesus for healing and he told them to go and show themselves to the Priest and as they were going, they were cleansed. One returned to give glory to God and Jesus promoted him from being healed to being whole. When you are healed there is always a possibility of a relapse but when you are whole that thing is gone forever. When God healed Namaan it’s not just enough that his leprosy was gone. You know leprosy had a way of cutting fingers, toes and leaving all manner of sores on the body. He wasn’t healed, he was made whole. The Bible said when he was coming out of the water, his skin returned to be like that of a newborn baby. To be healed is glorious and to be made whole is more glorious. There is something more glorious than being made whole and that is you being the vessel that God uses to bring healing.
In Acts 3:1-3 there was this boy who was born crippled and Peter got there, took him by the hand and he was instantly made whole. Everybody started looking at Peter as if an angel had come down.
- May I pray for someone here tonight, you will not just be healed, you will not just be made whole, after this Convention any sick fellow you touch shall be healed.
There is something more glorious than laying your hand on the sick to heal them and that is when you don’t need to come near the sick to heal them. For example, in Acts 5:14-16, the Bible tells us that other Apostles were performing miracles but there was this case of Peter his own was exceeding. It was his shadow alone that was healing the sick. How beautiful will it be if when you walk in the market every sick fellow gets healed. You enter the hospital and everyone there gets healed. That is what we are talking about – exceeding glory. To let you know that God can make that available to you I will just tell you a small story. I am sure you have heard it before.
I was visiting a nation outside the country and when I got to the airport I found out there was one of my sons who normally would be there to receive me and he wasn’t there. So I asked about so and so and they said “Sorry Daddy he is very sick in the hospital” so I said can we pass by the hospital on the way to the hotel? Sure we can. I was told on the way that this fellow had cancer of the highest degree. In that hospital, they have a special big room where they put people who cannot survive. Church Gist. When they put you in that room they are just telling you that we are just waiting for the man who will take you to the mortuary. That is where they placed my son. So I got permission and they said “you can’t harm him because he is already gone, so go” and I went in there and I prayed for my son. There were several others in the same room and in some places abroad you don’t pray for people unless they ask you to. Otherwise, they will sue you. Thank God for Nigeria. So I prayed for my son and I left, it was a Saturday. By the grace of God, the following Wednesday, they discharged my son.
That is not really the point I am about to make, the point I am about to make is that on that same Wednesday, everybody in the room when I came in was also discharged. They call that exceeding glory.
- In the name of the one who called me, the one who called Bishop Mike because it has pleased the Almighty God to bring me here today, every one of us will go back with our healing.
The opposite of poverty is wealth. It is a glorious thing to be debt-free, there is nothing glorious about being a debtor. Like you find in 2 Kings 4:1-7, in the story of that widow who was destitute the creditors came and she had nothing to pay with and they said if you don’t get us our money by tomorrow we will sell your sons. Creditors have unbelievable power over debtors. They can chase you out of your house and sell it. Church Gist. It is a shameful thing to be a debtor. When God had intervened in the life of that widow, I could imagine when the creditor came the following day and she was able to say to them “How much do you say I owe you, take your money” and she still had enough to live on for the rest of her life. That is glorious.
- In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, you won’t enter the new year with debt.
It is glorious to be debt-free but it is more glorious to be rich. 2 Kings 4: 8-17 tells us the story of the Shunamite woman, the Bible calls her great. The greatness was tied to her being rich. Here was a woman who saw a man of God passing by and said “I must feed you, you must come to my house and eat”. Church Gist. The man of God tasted the food and kept coming back because the food of a rich woman is not the same as the one ravens will bring to you. This woman also said she was going to build a house for the man of God and she had the resources. There are many of you here if God provides you with the resources you will want to single-handedly build a church at least in your hometown.
- That is why I am saying once again, you won’t die poor.
There is something more glorious than being rich and that is being wealthy. A rich man is somebody who can put some money in savings but a wealthy man, if he takes his money out of your bank you will shake.
2 Chronicles 22:14
David said to Solomon, I wanted to build a church for my God and He won’t allow me but He told me that you are the one that will build it. But let me tell you, I won’t let you spend a kobo of your money. I will pay for every bit of it.
There is something more glorious than being wealthy and that is being prosperous. When we talk about wealthy people, they are wealthy people but there are WEALTHY PEOPLE. 2 Chronicles 1:6-15, Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings to God in one day. Church Gist. I am sure the Priest must have said to him, “Your Majesty, are you alright?”. If you offer seven cows you have done enough talk more of 1,000. The blood of animals was just flowing. The ability to do what you want to do without any calculations because the money is there.
There is also something more glorious than being prosperous, the Bible calls it flourishing. A good example will be found in 2 Chronicles 7:5. The second time Solomon was going to offer a sacrifice to God, he offered 22,000 bullocks. He wasn’t satisfied with that so he added 120,000 sheep. That is called flourishing.
You have heard me tell the story of the wife of an Emir of one of these Arab countries who went to Harrods, the biggest supermarket in the whole world and shopped for three days and at the end of the 3 days, she called a servant and said “get me a plane to take my goods home” because there were many. The servant said, “Okay ma, I will go and get one of the cargo planes to come”. She said “cargo planes? For my goods?”. Church Gist. “Go and buy a brand new aeroplane and remove all the seats. They went and bought a brand new aeroplane and threw away all the seats, took all the goods home and she didn’t open any of them for three years. She wasn’t shopping because she wanted anything, she was shopping because she was bored. Now, you have a rough idea of what we mean when we talk about the word ‘exceeding’.
There was someone else who went to the owners of Harrods and said “I want to buy Harrods” and the owner said “are you crazy, do I look like someone who wants to sell?” he said, “name your price”. This man didn’t come to shop for three days, he bought the whole thing.
- In the name that is above every other name when they begin to talk about people who are flourishing in the world, they will name you as one.
Being demon-possessed is shameful, deliverance is glorious. In Mark 1:21-28, the Bible talks about a man who had an unclean spirit and the Lord came in and delivered him and the people glorified God. Deliverance is glorious but it is more glorious for you to be the vessel that God will use to bring deliverance. In Acts 8:5-8, the Bible tells us about Philip who went to Samaria and as he was preaching demons were flying out. That is glorious but it is far more glorious that you don’t need to go there. When you hear someone is demon-possessed you do something like what happened in Acts 19:11-12 that tells us that God performed special miracles, if the almighty God used the word ‘special’ that is the meaning of exceeding, by the hand of Paul. When they come to Paul and tell him that there is someone possessed he will just take his handkerchief and say “take it to that fellow once they see the handkerchief coming they will run”.
- I am praying for you that this Convention is going to change you so mightily that when demons see your handkerchief coming they will run.
Defeat is shameful, victory is glorious. John 5:2-9 tells us the story of a man who had been at the pool of Bethesda for 38 years and then the Almighty God healed him, he said the reason he was still there after 38 years is that he had been defeated again and again. Church Gist. When you win the battle when you are fighting with your equal, that is glorious but it is more glorious when you win when you are fighting against a far superior enemy. In 1 Samuel 17:1-51, David defeated Goliath. There was this giant who had been disturbing a whole nation for days and then this small boy came with his sling and stone and wiped him out. No wonder the whole nation shouted for joy. I believe very fervently that out of this Convention will arise that fellow who will put an end to terrorism in this country.
The most glorious of all victories is when you win without fighting. In Deuteronomy 28:1-2, He said the enemies that come against you shall be smitten before your face. They will come in one way and flee in seven ways. You won’t need to fight, you will just see them smitten. That is exceedingly glorious.
We built a church in America and we had already fixed the date for Dedication. My children phoned me and said a big man in town said over his dead body will the Church be dedicated. In some nations of the world even before you can dedicate your house you need permission. Church Gist. So my children were agitated, we had finished the building but this man said no church will be in his neighbourhood. They wanted to go to court but I said no if he is as big as you claim he should be able to handle the Judge. I said don’t even begin a fast, he had already settled the matter because he said over his dead body.
So they fixed a day for a meeting where he is going to build a case why there will be no church in the neighbourhood because of the traffic problem, noise problem etc. So he was getting dressed he took his trousers and put his right leg in the right place for it and also put his left leg in the same place and he was trapped with two legs in one leg of trousers. In an attempt to pull out the left leg he fell and hit his head against something. By the time they took him to the hospital, he was pronounced dead.
I know you will say “Ah Daddy! You killed him” I never killed anybody, I didn’t even pray for it. The Bible says we are more than conquerors, when you are more than conquerors you win without fighting.
- When you leave this Convention, every enemy that has ganged up against you shall not be there anymore.
I want you to think about Jesus Christ because we can’t talk about glory and not talk about Christ. When He was born it was a glorious night. The mass choir of heaven came to sing at His birth. When He became an adult, in Matthew 17:1-2 He was transfigured on the mountain, the glory of that day was frightening. In Revelation 1:10-17, after He rose from the dead and he visited his best friend John the Beloved on that island of Patmos, he said he fainted. Glory enough to cause your friend to faint.
On the road to Damascus the one who is called the bright and morning star at noontime when the sun was brightest, showed his glory to Saul of Tarsus. The glory of God is so powerful that it will reduce the noonday sun to mere darkness. That glory is available to you, how do I know? Colossians 1:27, in 1 John 3:2 the Bible made a promise that when we see Him we shall be like Him. Church Gist. A day is coming when we will be as glorious as the One who really symbolizes exceeding glory. For you to be able to see Him, the Bible says very clearly in Hebrews 12:14 that without holiness no man shall see God. That day is coming when we shall see Him but will you be one of us? You cannot continue to live in sin and expect to see the bright and morning star.
If you are not sure of your salvation, make sure you get saved tonight. If you are backslidden and have gone back to those things that you said you won’t do again, this Convention is a wake-up call, come back to the Lover of your Soul.
I want you to lift your voice to God and cry to Him, forgetting the person on your right and your left and say “Father before this Convention is over, anything causing me shame in my life, wipe it away”. Go ahead and cry to the Almighty God.
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