MAJORITY OF THE STARS YOUTHS SEE AS ROLE MODELS HAVE NO CHARACTER TO GIVE THEM
THERE IS THE CHALLENGE OF THE ABSENCE OF POSITIVE ROLE MODELS FOR THE YOUTHS IN OUR GENERATION
WE NEED SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE WHO HAVE CHARACTER, INTEGRITY; WHO HAVE WHAT TO OFFER TO THE YOUTHS
MY BIOLOGICAL FATHER TOLD ME SOMETHING THAT CHANGED MY LIFE. HE SAID “I WAS 18 YEARS OLD WHEN I STARTED BUSINESS. YOU ARE 18 NOW. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?”
SOME OF MY BRETHREN GOT ANGRY WHEN THEY HEARD HIM SAY THAT BUT IT PROVOKED ME TO MAKE SENSE WITH MY LIFE ON TIME.
OUR ELDERS ARE GROWING OLD BUT THE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE NOT GROWING UP TO TAKE THEIR PLACE.
A LIFE LEFT TO CHANCE HAS NO CHANCE.
IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING IN LIFE, YOU WILL NOT LIKE WHERE YOU WILL END.
VISION IS A COMMANDER OF PROVISION.
WHEN YOUR HEART IS EMPTY, YOUR FUTURE IS EMPTY.
IT IS BETTER TO LIVE BY CONVICTION THAN TO LIVE BY CONSENSUS.
TO BE DRIVEN BY THE CROWD IS TO BE DROWNED BY THE CROWD.
IF YOU CAN’T IMAGINE IT, IT CANNOT EMERGE.
GOD IS LOOKING FOR PACESETTERS AND TRENDSETTERS.
– Dr. Pastor Paul Enenche on “THE CHALLENGE OF YOUTH LEADERSHIP AND HARNESSING OPPORTUNITIES GOD’S WAY” || Youth Leadership Summit || Tanzania Apostolic Invasion – Day 2 || Dodoma, Tanzania || 23rd June, 2023.
I will read Genesis 41:39-44. I am aware that this is a Youth Leadership forum and I am convinced that everyone who is here today at every age will benefit from what I am about to say. Church Gist. The topic is THE CHALLENGE OF YOUTH LEADERSHIP AND HARNESSING OPPORTUNITIES GOD’S WAY. To simplify it, the challenge of Youth Leadership and harnessing opportunities God’s way, I am going to look at 4 objectives.
1. We are going to understand youth leadership challenge.
2. The qualities that position youths for leadership and these qualities will position anybody for leadership.
3. The opportunities that come with leadership potential. Any where there is leadership potential, opportunities come with it.
4. How to handle those opportunities God’s way because there are those who mismanage opportunities.
What is the leadership challenge among the youths? Church Gist. There is a serious leadership challenge among the youths in our generation. I classify the challenge in 3 ways:
1. The challenge of the absence of positive role models for the youths: positive role models and mentors for the youths of today are lacking. A lot of youths have music stars, movie stars, movie super stars as role models and mentors and there is nothing wrong with that except that the majority of the stars they see as role models have no character to give the youths. Church Gist. Most of them have marital disasters, personal life disasters, perverted lifestyles. These are the people that the youths are modelling themselves after. So you see youths behave in ways and you are wondering; they dress in ways and you are wondering; they act in ways and you are wondering. They tell you, ‘but this person is behaving like that and he is successful.’ So we need successful people who have character, integrity, we need stars on the top who have what to offer to the youths.
– There are people here among them that God is raising right now!
We have a musical family: my wife, my children, all of us have by the mercies of God we have the grace of God to minister in music or instruments. One of my children had a music minister mentor. She liked her singing, she tried to sing like her and was always listening to her songs. Until one day I asked her how is that your music minister you love listening to? She said she no longer listens to her. Church Gist. I asked why and she said “She had her first child out of wedlock. I thought that was a mistake, she had the second child for another person out of wedlock. I thought that was a mistake. She now has a third child for somebody out of wedlock.” This is such a big person musically and I think one of the persons she had children for was her drummer or something. I can’t listen to her any more. That is challenge number 1 of youth leadership.
Challenge number 2 is the absence of leadership development among the youths. Youths that are not interested in developing themselves as leaders but distracted by superficial things. In this world of the internet, the world of Facebook, Instagram and chatting all the time. Church Gist. Doing all manner of things that do not lead them anywhere. Clubbing and all sorts of things. That is challenge number 2.
Challenge number 3 of the youth is the failure to mature. We have young men and women that have remained childish for years. Our elders are growing old but the young people are not growing up, they just consider themselves as children permanently. Church Gist. When most of the elderly people are walking forward and they are looking behind them and nobody is following them and there is such a vacuum behind them. I believe that tonight, by the things that God will be speaking to us, I see the vacuum being filled.
What are the qualities that position a person for leadership? These qualities pertain to everybody. I am going to draw from the life of Joseph and the life of David. Those were youths that impacted their world in their young age. Joseph was only 30 years old when he began to rule Egypt. He was 17 years old when he was sold into slavery and began to influence the land of Egypt. David was 17 years old when he brought down Goliath. There are many 17-year-olds, 21-25 year old people today who are still spending on their parents for survival, who are still heavy burdens at home but I believe it is changing right now. Church Gist. Something my father told me that changed my mind, he said: “You children, I was 18 years old when I started business.” He was very influential. He had a solid business. Transportation buses, luxurious buses. He said he was 18 years old when I started business. You are 18 now. What are you doing with your life? Some of my brethren got angry when they heard such things but it provoked me to make sense with my life on time. I am going to look at 10 qualities out of the life of Joseph and David that can make anybody a leader.
1. The life of vision.
That is seeing beyond the moment, seeing tomorrow today, considering the ultimate instead of being consumed by the immediate. There are people who are so absorbed by the immediate that they don’t have any plan for the future. Church Gist. It is saying to yourself Who am I? Where will my life be in the next five years? Where will it be in the next ten years? Where will it be in the next twenty years? I want to say four or five things to you about vision.
1a. The vision of today determines the reality of tomorrow. What is not your vision today cannot become your reality tomorrow.
1b. What you mind determines where you end.
1c. What you don’t see coming will never come. If you don’t see it coming it will never come.
1d. A life left to chance has no chance. If you live your life to chance, that life has no chance. It is a life lived to vision that is guaranteed of a destination. If you don’t know where you are going, you will not like where you will end. If you don’t know where you are going in life, where you are going in your assignment, you will not like where you will end. Church Gist. A wise man by the name of James Allen said “You cannot travel inside and stand still outside”. If you go forward by vision, your life will go forward with motion.
In Abuja today, God built for us through us a 100,000-seater auditorium, some of you have been there before. It is incredible, it is awesome if you see it. It appeared like an impossibility. I called the architects and I showed them my vision to build an auditorium that can seat a 100,000 people, let there be no pillars inside and let me be able to see everybody at once. They went and brought the concepts about 3 to 6 drawings and we chose one of them that was like the vision. Church Gist. Constructions started, millions of dollars, the money was not available when the building started but vision is a commander of provision. Everywhere there is vision, it will command the provision. Don’t think of what you have first, think of what you want and then what you want will take care of what you have.
-What do you see coming? That is what shall come your way.
While the brothers of Joseph were whiling away their time at home, he was busy dreaming about the future.
-What are you dreaming about? Are you dreaming about the future? Or you are regretting your past?
Listen, what does not cross your mind cannot cross your life. If it cannot cross your mind, it cannot cross your life. If it does not occur to you, it cannot occur for you. Church Gist. If you can’t imagine it, it cannot emerge. When your heart is empty, your future is empty. It takes a loaded heart to have a loaded future.
What are the characteristics that position a man for leadership?
1. The life of vision
2. The life of conviction
You must be a man, a woman of conviction not a person that is easily movable by what is moving everybody. Joseph was a man of conviction, he knew what he wanted. Church Gist. David was a man of conviction, when he came to the battlefield and his brother Eliab said, ‘What are you doing here’? David said, ‘Leave me alone! Is there not a cause? If you don’t see any reason why I need to bring down this man, I see reason! Conviction!
I’d like you to note the following about conviction:
2i. Until you take a stand, you cannot stand out in life
To stand out, you must take a stand. It is better to live by conviction than to live by consensus. There are so many people who don’t have the mind of their own, they are waiting for people to do things before they know what to do, they are waiting for people to say something before they know what to say. Church Gist. Listen to this, to be driven by the crowd is to be drowned by the crowd, lost in the crowd! No voice! If your life is under the control of the crowd, very soon your destiny becomes buried in the crowd.
It was Martin Luther King Jr. that said, ‘The one who does not stand for something will fall for anything’! Your generation must know your stand. What do you stand for? When your name is mentioned what comes to the minds of people? Listen to this, if you don’t have the mind of your own, your generation will not mind you. Have you seen people when they say, ‘Don’t mind him, he is not important! What is that one talking, don’t mind him’! If you don’t have a mind, they will not mind you. And listen to this, if you don’t have the mind of your own, you will end up living your life by the direction of other people’s minds. That is what happens today.
Oh! This is how everybody is walking today, let’s walk like them, alright they have changed the walk it is to the other side now, okay let’s walk like that. Oh, this is how everybody is dressing now, will just walk about naked – People are just waiting for what to follow. Church Gist. One day, I wore a dress and put a pocket square like this and one man said to me, ‘This is no longer reigning, people don’t put this in the pocket anymore’! So I asked him a question: ‘Who determines what reigns? Who is the determinant of what we wear? I told him and said, ‘If it is not reigning, I will reign it’!
-God is looking for pacesetters. He is looking for trendsetters, He is looking for trailblazers, He is looking for road pointers, he is looking for those who will take the lead and then others will follow. Church Gist. And if you are like that person here say a loud Amen.
Is anybody getting anything at all? That is why leaders are very few, people of vision are very few, people who stand for something, not easily bowed by people’s opinions, they are very few. Most human beings are human opinion dependent, they are dependent on what do people say, what did they say. Most human beings are approval addicted, even if they are doing the right thing and people say that it is not right they will abandon it because they want people to be happy with them that is the way of irrelevance. That is the way not to matter in life. God is looking for people who are ready to take a stand even if they are going to stand alone.
3. The life of the fear of God, simply the life of Character. The fear of God is the foundation for wisdom. Psalm 111:10. The fear of God is the foundation for wisdom and wisdom is key to leadership. Proverbs 8:16. Church Gist. Leaders, they have wisdom and the capacity to stir affairs. I would like you to understand also that character undergets authority. If I ask you a question; what is king of the birds? The Eagle. Church Gist. What is the king in the jungle? The Lion. You know the eagle? It does not eat anything that is filthy. It does not taste corruption. That is what makes it a leader in the air. The eagle is from the same family with the vulture but the vulture is always eating dead things. Church Gist. That is why the vulture has no place near leadership. For the vulture, the more smelly, the better for it. For the eagle, if it is not fresh, it won’t taste it. If any of you see an eagle in the dream tonight, that’s a great dream. Church Gist. If you see a vulture, that’s a nightmare. What is it that made a vulture a reproach? Lack of character. What is it that made the eagle royal? Character.
Do you know that the eagle is hooked to one mate for life? The Lion too eats only fresh food. Let me say this to you, don’t forget it for life; until your character is under your control, your future is out of your control. Church Gist. If your character is not in your control, you cannot say ‘no’ to what you must say ‘no’ to. Then you don’t have a control of your future. Anything can happen anytime. If you can’t say no to bad money, if you can’t say no to the wrong relationship, if you can’t say no to the wrong things, that was the challenge of Samson. You don’t have the control of your tomorrow. Church Gist. It is when your character is in control that your future is confirmed. When your conscience is defiled, your influence is denied. Defiled conscience, denied influence. Reckless living equals a reckless future.
– somebody say Amen.
4. The life of financial integrity. The capacity to possess character in the area of money. Church Gist. This is not a message that most people want to hear but, hear this; financial integrity is the way to the destiny of authority. In the house of Potiphar, Joseph was put in charge of the properties of Potiphar. Genesis 39:5-6. The Bible said, “and there was nothing that was missing”. Nothing was missing under the watch of Joseph. Financial integrity is the way of a destiny of authority. Church Gist. On the other hand, financial crookedness is the way to the destiny of wretchedness. Luke 16:11. This is how I understand it; until you can be trusted with finances, you can never be trusted with reality – the realities of life, the realities of your destiny and your future.
You know when Adam ate the fruit, God said to Adam, “all the fruit of every tree here, eat all of it but there’s one tree, I don’t want you to eat it. The day you eat it, you will die”. Everything, 99.99 percent, eat it, 0.01 percent, don’t eat it. Church Gist. Adam was deceived, he ate what God asked him not to eat. Do you know what happened to Adam? God said, “what happened? Did you eat what I said that you shouldn’t eat?” Adam said, “yes”. He said, “Alright. Get out of the garden. Move. Don’t eat anything again. Both the one I said you shouldn’t eat and the one I licensed you to eat, you have lost all of it”. Church Gist. So, I told our Church, “you can eat the fruit you’re not meant to eat and lose the garden you’re meant to have”. All that you ate was just a fruit and what you have lost is a whole garden. You lost a garden because you ate a fruit. What a transaction. What a loss. Anything that is not yours does not add anything to you, it takes things from you. Church Gist. Anything that is fraudulent is not an addition to destiny, it’s a subtraction.
– somebody say a loud Amen.
I want to say tonight that God is calling for leaders tonight who would work in financial integrity and say, “Lord, what you have not given me, I will not touch it”. That’s financial integrity.
5. The life of service: leadership is service. Genesis 40:3-5. Joseph was serving people – the butler and the baker that was brought to the prison. Church Gist. They brought 2 prisoners and they said, be in charge of them,’ and Joseph turned around and began to serve them.
Listen to this: the act of leadership is learnt in the school of service. Until you are a certified servant, you are not yet a qualified leader. Servant to the people, your generation. The ones who don’t know how to serve can never know how to lead. In this world there are 2 people – the David people and the Saul people. Church Gist. David are those who perform functions without position. He is not struggling for a position but he is performing the function because when Goliath was challenging Israel, it is the leader of the nation that should face Goliath. But Saul was hiding, Saul was in the bush, but here comes a young man – he did not have the position but he carried out the function of the leader. There are those who strive for the function, they don’t care for the position. There are those who struggle for the position and they are not interested in fulfilling the function of service. This is what eventually happens: the person with the function will eventually attract the position. Church Gist. The person with the position without the function will eventually lose the position. Saul lost the position; David got the position. So the position will always look for the function and the function will always run away from the man with the position.
There are those who are looking for service and there are those who are looking for status. If service is what you are looking for, you end in stardom but those who look for status end like statues. Church Gist. If you’re going to be a leader, don’t wait for the leadership to come first; serve your way there. Any where you find yourself, serve your way there.
6. The heart of compassion – love for people: it was that love that made Joseph to interpret the dream of the butler and the baker. It was that heart for people that made David to face Goliath.
Listen to this: a heart for people is the way into the heart of people. If you’re looking for a way to enter the heart of people, a heart for people is the way into the heart of people. If you love them, they know and people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. That was what John Maxwell the leadership expert said. Church Gist. People don’t respond to position; they respond to compassion. People cleave to the one who loves them – Matthew 19:5. If you genuinely love them, they can hardly leave you except those possessed with satan like satan himself. You know God is love yet Lucifer left him. So you are going to find people like that. Jesus is the embodiment of love yet Judas Iscariot sold him. So you will have a minority of people who may reward you evil for good. But majority of human beings will respond to your love.
Human traffic flows in the direction of human affection. Pastors of Churches know this. There are those who preach professional messages and they don’t have a heart for anybody and people know. You see, most times when our services close and there are crowds of people on the road waiting for transportation, I will begin to announce to Church people, “please don’t leave anybody stranded by the road. If they are going in your direction please pick them because very soon they will have cars of their own.” Church Gist. We keep on talking like that out of genuine passion. Leadership is a matter of a heart for people.
Let me wrap up here on that point. What God finds in your heart will determine what God will put in your hand. So he gives people to those who have a heart for people. He pulls people in the direction of people who have a heart for people. I came across an experiment some years ago where a Middle Eastern shepherd removed his clothes and shepherd staff and everything he was wearing and a non-shepherd wore the clothes and carried the staff and began to beckon for the sheep to follow and the sheep refused to follow the shepherd with the clothes. Do you know what they did? When the shepherd without the cloth beckoned, the sheep recognized him. Church Gist. That was when it was confirmed that the sheep are not following the dress of the shepherd, they are following the heart of the shepherd. They are not following the title of the shepherd, they are not following the staff of office of the shepherd, they are following the heart of the shepherd. That is why there might be some people in office and nobody cares. The people don’t care for him, if you like call yourself anything, you are on your own because they know who has a heart for them. But today I see somebody leaving here and God is changing them. As you begin to work with a heart for people, God is changing your story.
7. The acceptance of responsibility.
Do you want to be a leader accept responsibility. Accepting responsibility is doing what others avoid. Doing what others won’t do like David. It is being proactive, not reactive. It is holding yourself responsible for the working of things around you. Not giving any excuse, not looking for who to blame. Listen to this example, where we lived many years ago, the electricity went out and there were many people who were still tenants. Nobody was ready to do it until we realized that if we don’t do it, nobody does it. So we did it. Near our house, there was a dilapidated fence. We realized this fence was near us, even though it is not our house, it is near our house. So we took the responsibility and did the fence. Church Gist. Where our first headquarters based church was planted, when we arrived there, there was no water. There were other people before we came but nobody cared. We took the responsibility and put pipe borne water there. There was no light there, we got two transformers, one for the church and one for that community. There was no road there and there were people there, there were schools there, there were churches there, we took the responsibility and paved the road with asphalt. Millions of naira. Not because we were the only people living there but we saw ourselves as leaders. We are not going to wait for who will do it, we are going to do it.
Let me tell you, responsibility is the confirmation of your authority. If you are not accepting responsibility, you don’t really have authority. Responsibility is the way of possibility. Nothing is possible until someone is responsible. Responsibility brings opportunities. Church Gist. I can go on and on and tell you about responsibilities but we live in a world where somebody is waiting for who will do it. If nobody does it, it will not be done. No! You are not like them. You are the leader so take the lead. Just take the lead and everybody will follow your lead.
8. The heart of courage.
Courage that makes you dare to be different. Courage that makes you to confront what others fear. Joseph moved with courage to dare to dream, David moved with courage to confront Goliath, it takes a heart to make a mark. Most times the gold is for the bold. Proverbs 12:16. Are you looking for the lion share? You need a lion heart. You don’t use chicken heart to get lion share. That is what my father in the Lord, Bishop David Oyedepo said. You need a lion heart to get a lion share. You cannot have the heart of a chicken and have the destiny of a lion. Church Gist. Today I come here with a mantle, every spirit of fear, timidity and cowardice is roasted today. A heart to do what you are supposed to do is imparted on you right now. Courage is the capital requirement for conquest. If anything must be conquered, somebody must be courageous.
Courage is the conqueror’s backbone. I watched a documentary that was shown on BBC and I’m happy that our Kenyan people are here. Is there any of you from the Maasai? You are all the same from the same heart. I saw how some group of lions were eating meat and some Maasai men just walked to them and the lions were looking, ‘What’s happening here’? Church Gist. And these people were still walking straight until the lions said, ‘Oh bros, let’s run’! Because the lions fear those who don’t fear them. And your enemy the devil is like the roaring lion he fears those who don’t fear him, he deals with those who fear him.
Somebody said he saw a vision about the devil trying to attack himself and not me. I told the person and said, ‘Whatever you have seen, I have seen worse that did not come to pass’! I said to the person, ‘It is written, there are many devices in the heart of a man but it is the counsel of the Lord that shall stand’! The Bible didn’t say that it is what the devil wants that shall stand, it is what God wants that shall happen. Church Gist. If God does not want it, it doesn’t matter how many devils want it, it cannot come to pass. And if God wants it, it doesn’t matter the devil that is fighting it, it must come to pass. There are many of us, you would have gone very far in life in many areas but there is too much timidity, too much fear, too much! No courage to collapse the devil.
-But today, something is coming on you!
At the end of this Service, I am going to be praying for a leadership mantle impartation and all the things I mentioned here today, any of them that is lacking in your life, I trust God to release it upon you.
9. The release of potentials and the delivery of excellence
What I’m preaching to you is a one-week seminar but I’m collapsing it into this time because that’s all the time that we have. If you want to reach the top in leadership, you must release your potentials and produce excellence. Church Gist. Do you know the reason why? The best of life responds to the best from man. Until you give out your best in life, you can’t get the best out of life. Listen, life is a fertile soil, what we sow determines what we reap. If you sow mediocrity, you know mediocrity? Doing things anyhow, everything goes, shabby behaviours.
If you sow mediocrity, you reap obscurity. You know what it means to be obscure? Where your life is in the hiding, nobody knows you. But if you sow quality, you reap quality, it is a matter of choice. When you release your potentials, you realize your possibility. Don’t do anything that is not the best, if it is not done excellently leave it totally. Listen to this, raw potential is limited in value. When you carry gold from the earth and you want to sell it, the value is low but after it has been refined in the gold refinery, its value goes high. That refining process is the process of excellence. That potential that you have that is raw, whatever it’s giving you is limited compared to when you can release it in excellence.
10. The help and presence of God
The help of God is behind the making of man. Durable success is the product of the help of God. Church Gist. The backing of God is key to triumph in life Acts 26:22.
-Tonight, help is coming your way!
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