SOME PEOPLE DID NOT COME TO CHURCH TODAY BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT WE HAD TRAVELED TO THE UK
GOING TO SEE A MAN IS A MISERABLE WAY TO GO TO CHURCH
HUMAN BEINGS ARE MORE GENEROUS WITH CONDEMNATION THAN COMMENDATION
ONE OF THE MAJOR ISSUES THAT WE HAVE IN OUR GENERATION IS LOVELESSNESS WHICH IS THE MOTHER OF WICKEDNESS
IT’S A LOVELESS, HEARTLESS PERSON THAT WOULD WANT TO GET WHAT HE WANTS AND DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU GOT
IF THE MATTER OF LOVE CAN BE TREATED, WE WILL HAVE A BETTER WORLD
WE LIVE IN A GENERATION WHERE SOMEBODY WILL PULL ANOTHER PERSON DOWN AND CLIMB ON HIM ON THE GROUND TO RISE
THERE IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN FEELING AND HEALING.
LOVELESSNESS PLAGUES PEOPLE WITH THE IMPOTENCE OF FAITH.
THE PRESENCE OF LOVE PROVOKES THE PRESENCE OF GOD FOR GOD IS LOVE.
THERE ARE THOSE WHO ARE ‘PRACTICING MALICIOUS PEOPLE’, THEY LIVE BY IT AND ENJOY LIFE BY IT.
IF YOU ARE A SOWER, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO BE A BEGGAR.
EXISTENCE IN LOVELESSNESS EQUALS EXISTENCE IN LIMITATION.
GIVING NORMALLY PROVOKES A HARVEST EXCEPT WHERE THERE IS NO LOVE.
WHEN YOU FAIL TO WALK IN LOVE, THE POTENTIALS OF YOUR LIFE BECOME LIMITED.
IF YOU PRAY IN TONGUES AND DON’T WALK IN LOVE, THAT TONGUE IS FAKE
IF GOD SCREAMS AT YOU THE WAY YOU SCREAM AT YOUR SPOUSE, WILL YOU SURVIVE IT?
YOU CANNOT POSSESS GOD AND NOT POSSESS LOVE
NOTHING ELSE CAN CONVINCE GOD OR THE devil THAT YOU’RE GODLY EXCEPT THAT YOU’RE LOVING
– Dr. Pastor Paul Enenche on “THE PLAGUE OF LOVELESSNESS” || Power Communion (Midweek Service) || Glory Dome, Abuja.
I welcome everyone here tonight in Jesus’ name. I know that there are some people who expect us to be in the UK by now, right? Church Gist. So, those who come to Church because they want to see Pastor, some of them may not be here right now. But, that is a miserable way to go to Church. You don’t go to see a man, you go to see God – “they looked up to Him and they were lightened and their faces were not ashamed”. Psalm 34:5. Church Gist. The kind of people that see results in life are people who do things, not for men to see or with man in consideration but with God in consideration.
In the university in those days, I used to tell people, I said, if for any reason Church is closed for 10 years, God forbid, I didn’t even know there was something called covid that was going to come, I was talking like this 30 years ago. Church Gist. I said, if the Church is closed for 10 years and at the end of 10 years, they ask Church to return, how many people do you think will return back to Church? Those were not the days of the internet or anything like that. Only very few. Church Gist. The only people that you will see back are those who have a personal relationship and an encounter with God, people who know God. Not people who are following the crowd to do things, people who know God for themselves and I think that we need to come to that point so that whether anybody was there or not, you have an appointment with God and you must keep that appointment. Church Gist. I congratulate all of you for being here and for having your appointment with God irrespective of who was around or not around in Church. Congratulations! Because most times, we only hear when we don’t do well, we don’t hear when we do well. Human beings are more generous with condemnation than commendation. Church Gist. But now, receive your commendation.
– give the Lord the Praise!
Matthew 24:12. The Lord bless His Word in Jesus’ name. Tonight, I am speaking on the subject, “THE PLAGUE OF LOVELESSNESS”. Objective will be understanding the situation of lovelessness in our generation, second, we shall be understanding the consequences of lovelessness and third, we shall be understanding the cause or origin of lovelessness. Church Gist. Like you know, it is our month of The Light Has Come and Glory is Risen through Positive Character. Many times when character is taught, we just go generally, “do the right thing, don’t do wrong thing” and so on. Tonight, I want us to go to the root of issues and we are going to deal with that for the time that we have at the rest of the month. Church Gist. One of the major issues that we have in our generation is lovelessness, that is, the mother of wickedness. You know that a major crisis in our world today is the crisis of lovelessness. Love is in short supply in our world today. I can say without equivocation that the major challenge of our world today and the Scripture also lends credence to that is the challenge of the bankruptcy, the shortage and scarcity of love in the earth. The outcome of this lovelessness is characterlessness and unrighteousness. Romans 13:8-10. That is, if you can observe love, you don’t need to remember the commandments. Romans 13:10. Church Gist. So, what is the outcome of lovelessness? Lovelessness equals lawlessness. If love is the fulfilling of the law, to be loveless is to be lawless. Lovelessness is the way of viciousness, ruthlessness, characterlessness. Church Gist. It was lack of consideration for the other person that made this man to take his money. Until we treat the matter of love, we have not been able to touch the matter of character.
– if God is speaking to somebody here, say a loud Amen!
I will like you to understand this issue of lovelessnes. Somebody carries someone’s bag, that bag carries an international passport that has an American visa inside, a UK visa, that bag has an ATM card that has money inside it and other very critical documents plus cash of 100,000. Church Gist. This thief carries the 100,000 and throws away the rest of the things. For this person, what is most important is not the cash, you’re almost ruining the life. I know of people who are applying to the US embassy now because their passport got lost or something and they have to start from the scratch and produce all manner of evidence. Lovelessness. It’s a loveless, heartless person that would want to get what he wants and doesn’t care what you got. Church Gist. That heartless, loveless person took the innocence of a young lady violently and aggressively and left a battered human being maybe for the rest of her life except for God’s intervention. Lovelessness makes a man to have a quarrel with another person and that quarrel led him to take a whole life. What is happening now is not just the life that is taken, it’s the collateral damages. That is what is called the iniquity of sin – the sin is the action, the iniquity is the collateral. Church Gist. The real thing is not that somebody was killed, the real thing is that the woman has become a widow, a child has become fatherless for the rest of his life, he doesn’t know who to look up to as a father figure anymore. A friend is crying because his friend has been snatched by his side by a wicked person. Dependants are crying because they don’t know who will pay their school fees anymore. Church Gist. This killer is not considering these damages. A student is made to repeat a whole year because he refused to bribe the lecturer. He didn’t buy the handout. If it’s a man, he buys, if it’s a woman, she gives herself and because you didn’t do that, this man is not thinking that this child is thinking, “I am wasting one more year, my mates have gone”. Church Gist. The parents have to pay one more year school fees. That’s why the matter of love must be treated so that character can be treated. Am I communicating?
Young lady was talking to me the other day, she said, “men are wicked oh”. I said, “what happened?” She said she was stranded, every of the people she asked for money was asking for her body. Church Gist. She said, “so, I cannot get anything without somebody asking for my body? Men are wicked oh”. What you will think about is, if it was your daughter, sister or somebody that was stranded, that was in need, will you be happy for somebody to make demands on them iniquitously before the need is met? Church Gist. Are you see the relationship between the love and the character now?
A young lady walks into home that there was peace. Man loves his wife and love the children, she steps in there and determines that she needs the man more than his wife and children. Church Gist. Long story made short is that after a while, she pulls the man away to herself. One woman told the story to me, she said, a strange woman took her husband. When she calls the husband’s phone, it’s the woman that will pick and she’s with the woman for almost 21 days now. She said, “what you’re doing, is it correct? You’re a woman oh, you have taken another person’s husband like that”. Church Gist. You know what the woman said, “if you don’t beg me, you won’t see him for the next 6 months”. That is man quarantined (laughs). The woman is to blame but the man is too ‘mumicious’. Under hostage. The woman is now lamenting, “this is the husband of my youth. We suffered together. When we were suffering, you were not there”. The children can’t see their father in the evening and the woman has the heart to keep another person’s possession like that. That is the loveless generation. Church Gist. If the matter of love can be treated, we will have a better world. Romans 13:10. I have so many things I could have said; we live in a generation where somebody will pull another person down and climb on him on the ground to rise.
What are the consequences of lovelessness?
1. Hurtful and lawless behavior
When a person is loveless, that person is lawless, behavior is hurtful Romans 13:10. Lovelessness is the absence of consideration for human emotion, where somebody can’t care for the feeling of another person. Church Gist. Careless of the emotions of the other person! When we begin to deal with causes of lawlessness you will see many things.
2. Lack of divine presence and manifestation 1 John 4:8
This is a straight line equation, the presence of love provokes the presence of God for God is love. Show me a family where you can find love in that family you can find God. Love between man and wife, love between parent and children, you will find God. Show me a Church where you can find love, in that Church you will find God. Show me a department of the Church where they are not quarreling, disorganizing each other and having camp formation, in that department you will find God. Church Gist. The presence of love provokes the presence of God, the absence of love is synonymous with the absence of God. I don’t care how much you pray, I don’t care how many hours you speak in tongues and I don’t care how many times you are present in Church when the doors of Church are open, if you lack love in your heart, if you lack forgiveness, you walk in bitterness and unforgiveness; you are cantankerous, jamming heads together, you don’t know what is called the presence of God. So the presence of love provokes the presence of God and the presence of God compels the actions of God. If God is present He would work Mark 16:20, John 2:1. So if you want to see God at work in your life, let love be at work.
One of the things I know is that in my heart God has put a very very heavy deposit of love for Himself, love for people. My wife is aware, most people around me, they know. There are situations I encounter that it is only God who prevents me from shedding physical tears – You have seen me cry many times for issues of people. One day, somebody was telling me, I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, I almost cried while the person was talking. Church Gist. Then the Holy Ghost will just caution me that if I cry now, the person will misinterpret it, that Pastor is crying because the situation is not possible; that this thing cannot be handled, that was what restrained me that day for that particular one. When we place hands on people like this, it’s full of passion. Many times I touch the person like this he says: ‘I have shoulder pain, it disappeared’. Not one, not two, plenty times! He says: ‘You are not aware of what was wrong with me at all, you just patted my back and the neck affliction disappeared’. There is a connection between feeling and healing Matthew 14:14 – What you feel determines what can be healed. You want to see God at work? God present with you? You must avoid the plague of lovelessness and we must embrace the life of love.
3. The impotence of faith
The potency of faith is guaranteed by love. Faith worketh by love 1 John 4:8. How many of you know that God is love? If God is love, anywhere you find love you will find God. Can God fear? Is there anything that makes God afraid? Whenever I stand and I preach brutally against witches, wizards, occultic powers oppressing people, against negative situations, atrocious situations in our nation and all those kinds of decree, fear is zero. If you find God, ask Him! Church Gist. Zero!! Because there is a passion, there is a fire in your heart, passion for deliverance of people, the passion for the people to be free, to be saved, to be helped overwhelms every negative emotion of fear – It swallows it up 1 John 4:18.
When you walk in love, real love for God, love for man, you walk in a fearless realm, you walk in a realm that is doubt and unbelief excluded. Let me tell you one more thing, now God does not know impossibility – True or false? Mark 10:27, if with God all things are possible and God is love, so walking in love is walking in the realm of all possibilities. Church Gist. 1 Corinthians 13:7. In the heydays of the healing revival I heard that Oral Roberts would carry a little baby in his hand, maybe deformed, blind or something. He said when he is praying with passion, he would ask himself the question: ‘If this was my child, how happy would I be for this child to be in this condition? And how will I pray for this child?’ Then he will pray with all the fire he possesses and that affliction will be reversed on the spot because it was faith that was powered by love. Am I communicating?
A young man told me a story some time ago, how that he was an armed robber – Robber, Indian hemp, everything, he was moving up and down as a robber. He said one day they went to a State in the North, I think Kano State to rob but every time he returns home, the mother says: ‘You are wasting your time, you are a Pastor not a criminal’. Church Gist. He will say: ‘What are you talking about’? He will dash out of the home again. One day, they went to rob somewhere, they killed everybody only him. He said he jumped out through a fence, how he moved from this side and landed on the other side only God knew – It was an unjumpable fence. The faith of the mother working! Faith that worketh by love! ‘Any other child can be a robber and die a criminal not the one I gave birth to’, the faith that worketh by love!
There are so many people today wondering why prayers are not answered and faith not working. You know why? Too many people are in your heart, you have locked too many people in your heart. You can’t talk with this one, you are quarreling with that one, you can’t greet the other one, they shouldn’t mention the name of the other one where you are and your faith became impotent. Church Gist. How is it for an impotent man to cause his wife to have conception? Faith is absolutely impotent! So when you are walking in love, you are functioning in the interest of your faith and I’m sure that the Just shall live by his faith. So when you are walking in love, you are working for your life because there is a time when you will need your faith to live. Lovelessness plagues people with the impotence of faith! Things can’t move because love which is the nature of God, which is the nature of all possibilities is lacking, so things can’t be possible. Doubt is rearing up its head here and there, unbelief, fear because the faith that worketh by love is lacking.
4. The ineffectiveness of the giving covenant 1 Corinthians 13:3, Genesis 8:22
So if you are a sower, you are not permitted to be a beggar. If you are a sower, you expect harvest. 2 Corinthians 9:6-7 So to sow is to reap! Am I communicating? I think that is a Bible Law Luke 6:37-38, Acts 20:35. Giving normally provokes receiving, giving normally provokes a harvest except where there is no love 1 Corinthians 13:3. Church Gist. Your giving holds no value without love, your giving attracts no profit without love. Isn’t that a serious matter? I am a tither, I am a giver, I am a Kingdom practitioner but I have a problem with my wife that nobody can solve – You are wasting your time, wasting resources. ‘I am a foundation member of the Church! Even when the Glory Dome was being built, I gave half of the money for the roofing and I am a practicing malicious person, I enjoy the lifestyle of malice’. How you say: ‘He’s a practicing lawyer’! There are those who are ‘practicing malicious people’, they live by it, they enjoy life by it.
Do you remember one woman? Where we lived one time? You have never seen such a woman, whether she drinks. ‘Children say: Good Morning’, she says: ‘Shut up’! What is good about the morning? Her children that she gave birth to don’t near her! That is a ‘practicing malicious person’. You see? There is more to God than just give and it shall be given to you, God is too deep. Church Gist. Am I communicating? You keep this law, you break this law, it cancels. Am I communicating at all? Giving body to be burnt means martyr oo, that means they killed you – You came to a point where you could be killed for your faith and yet you didn’t love people. It’s a paradox! How that is possible is hard to think. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to waste my giving and waste my investment in the Kingdom through loveless, malicious, hateful behavior. Profit is an economic word, ‘He holds no profit, no returns’. It is not profitable, it’s a waste of venture, it was a wasted investment.
These are consequences of lovelessness, if nothing will make you run away from bitterness, hatred, maliciousness and wickedness, these should. The most comfortable place any child should be is in the presence of his father or mother. Father, children not comfortable in your company? Something is wrong with your paternity. Children not comfortable in your company? Something is wrong with your maternity. I’ve heard a young girl told me, she said: ‘When I look at that woman I doubt whether she is my mother! I can’t believe that except that they claim that this woman is my mother’. Church Gist. Another one, this one was pregnant for nine months, the mother didn’t ask once: ‘How are you doing? How’s your pregnancy? When are you delivering’? ‘I had terrible gynecological complications, this is what the doctor said’, no statement, no response! Okay’! Only time she will call is: ‘Will you send me some money, please? If not that people said that woman is my mother and there is some resemblance in our face, I will say it’s a lie, maybe she found me from somewhere, maybe she took me from another person. Am I communicating? What life is that? And people are doing all of these kinds of things? The same mother and father you can’t talk to each other because there is a challenge and you are clapping and 🎶 Praise the Lord! Oh! Sing!! Praise the Lord! 🎶 (Laughing). It profits nothing!
Declarations: Don’t waste your life. Do things that are profitable. Walk in love and do things that are profitable!
As far as being offended is concerned, the only person that would never be offended is somebody who is already in the grave. People you love will offend you, people that hate you will offend you, people you have helped will offend you, people you have assisted will offend you. Church Gist. Everywhere you go, offense will stare you in the face, it is to make the choice that you can act but I refuse to react according to how you expect.
5. The limitation of life’s potentials
When you fail to walk in love, the potentials of your life become limited. What you can become becomes limited. Why do I say so? God made man in His image Genesis 1:27-28. God made you in His image and God is love. What is the meaning of that? To realize your potential you must walk in love. To become who God made you to be, you must walk and live according to the nature of your creation. We were created with a love mold not a hatred mold and existence in lovelessness equals existence in limitation. When you see a bitter person, there is more to his life than what is there. When you see a hateful person, a malicious person there is something. I used to know a young man, this guy had problems with everybody. Church Gist. Everybody was against him, he had complaints about everything, even Church; any Church he went to, it has a problem – That guy had great potentials, cleared his GCE, did very well in Sciences – Physics and Chemistry everything, cleared all of them. You know those Biology, Physics, Chemistry, their aspiration is to become a medical doctor and all of that, he had that capacity. He stepped into one of those courses, he was withdrawn, stepped into another one! Ah! Till today, if you engage him two minutes he will report somebody to you, I can actually bet with you. If he doesn’t report somebody to you under two minutes let me give you some money.
When our baby Deborah was a baby around 5 years old, the man came to our house. She ran to me and said: ‘Daddy, I don’t like this uncle’, because the face wasn’t likable. The kind of person I’m talking about where he is working, he has problem with everybody. Church Gist. He will send long text message, long email – ‘In my new working place, I found two witches there’. Anywhere they gave him accommodation he has problem with the people, till now my guy is not married, 50s, all the girls must be witches. It’s a limit! It just limits your life’s potential – Energy, potentials, possibilities limited with bitterness. The wings you should be using to fly crippled by unforgiveness. And it’s a good thing because these things are practical. If you suspect any witch, will you follow any vehicle? What if the driver is a blood-sucking demon? Church Gist. Or the doctor or midwife you took your wife to deliver is in the occult and they ask him to bring the blood of newborn baby and you took your wife there. What of the restaurant you went to eat, do you know what they put in the food? You know? We walk by faith.
You know? In our fifth year Medical School going to sixth year we did a project on culturing of microbes from places. Our own was to go to a restaurant and take culture from the plate that was already washed and from food that was already prepared which was what we did and we took it to laboratory and checked it and found Streptococcus faecalis inside clean plate that has been washed in the restaurant in the market. Church Gist. Streptococcus faecalis is what you’re meant to find in faeces. So, all of us, we are living and surviving by faith. I couldn’t believe what we saw. What? That’s how life is. Even if the driver was an occultist man, he can’t kill you, you’re not killable. If he causes accident, only him will die, he will suck his own blood. I believe that God knew all these things, that’s why he said that we shall eat deadly poison. God saw all these things ahead. He saw that a time will come when somebody who didn’t wash their hand well from the toilet came and cooked food (Laughing), you ate and you’re not aware but God preserved you.
You see, it is only in Heaven that you will know all the things that God delivered you from that you’re not aware of. Church Gist. All the things that the devil planned against you that couldn’t work. There’s no basis going about suspecting everybody, leave you life in the hands of God. Church Gist. Walk according to the principles of Scripture and you will understand that principles are superior to principalities.
– look at somebody by your side, say, “it will not hurt you! it cannot hurt you! It cannot harm you! Just walk in love”.
In conclusion tonight, I will start on the subject, what is the cause of lovelessness? The message was so loaded I decided that bulk of it should come back on Sunday. Church Gist. So, I will stop here and we will continue from here on Sunday. What is the cause or origin of lovelessness? We have many of it and I will mention just one tonight and we will continue on Sunday.
1. Godlessness. When people are Godless, they are loveless for God is love. 1 John 4:8. You cannot possess God and not possess love. Church Gist. How many of us know that as long as Adam and Eve were in the presence of God in the Garden, there was no calamity? The first calamity that happened at creation happened after man had driven man from His presence in the Garden. Genesis 3:23-24. So, man left the presence of love. Man was pushed out of the presence of love and he tarried outside the presence of love and gave birth to children outside the presence of love and the firstborn became a killer outside the presence of love. Genesis 4:8. Church Gist. That was the first time that person killed person in Scripture. It happened in Genesis and it happened with man driven out of the presence of love. Where love ends, there, hate starts. Where love ends, there, wickedness begins. Godlessness.
I want to say this, don’t let anybody deceive you, you measure your Godliness by your lovingness. To be Godly is to be loving. Church Gist. Nothing else can convince God or the devil that you’re Godly except that you’re loving. Nearness to God equals fullness of love. Many times, I’m coming out of my closet, smiling with my arms wide open and I’m opening to my wife to come and receive my embrace. If hugging can cause problem or there’s ‘hyper hugemia’ my people would have been suffering from it. I’m coming out smiling and my wife says, “go back there, just go back to where you’re coming from and remain as sweet as this”. Church Gist. You’re just lying when you say you know God and you don’t have love, it’s a lie. I don’t care what is your title. Whether the title is Pastor or Deacon or Bishop or Head of Department of prayer band leader, whatever be your title, if you don’t know love, you don’t know God. Church Gist. I can’t understand, you carry hand and slap your wife, how? If fight is worrying you, can’t you go to the motor park? There are many people there looking for fight. You’re screaming until your wife is vibrating, if God should scream on you like that, will you survive? This is my own thinking: my relationship with my family should give them an idea of how God looks. Church Gist. I told my children, “don’t ever shrink back to ask me for anything you want. You need it and I have it, you don’t beg for it. You don’t have any reason to draw back”. Do you know why? Because I don’t want to go before God and beg him. Church Gist. I want to be able to walk to God with boldness, He’s my Heavenly Father and I should be able to ask Him for anything I need and He should be able to do it for me without me shrinking back. I should be able to step into His presence and enjoy His presence.
Once in a while, my wife comes into the closet and she sits down, I asked her one day, “what are you doing here?” She said, “I want to partake in this anointmosphere”. There are people, wife near them, who dash monkey banana? “What are you doing here?! You came to ask for something and you can’t respect my privacy?” Church Gist. Godliness is God-likeness and to be like God is to be like love. I’m not saying you’re weak, when it’s time for correction, you can’t correct, no, no. My wife is aware of the two sides and you don’t want the other side.
– somebody say Amen.
It is delusion to claim to be Godly and be hateful. 1 John 4:16-20. Please, proceed and be God-full by being loved-filled. Confirm your Godliness by your loveliness. Church Gist. lovely, loving, lovable, pleasant personality to hang around because you’re exuding over and the nature of God and everything around you is feeling and experiencing it.
– it’s a new day for you!
From this moment forward, begin to measure your Godliness by your loveliness and lovingness not by the length of hours you prayed in tongues. Church Gist. Actually that praying in tongues is meant to enhance your love life because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. We will look at it on Sunday. Church Gist. If I pray in tongues and don’t walk in love, that tongue is fake. Romans 5:5.
—PRAYERS
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