ACCORDING TO GOD’S SERVANT, BISHOP OYEDEPO, YOU WALK BY COMMON SENSE, YOU RUN BY PRINCIPLES BUT YOU FLY BY INSTRUCTIONS.
THE CONTINUITY OF EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE AND THE EFFICIENCY DEPENDS ON YOUR ABILITY TO BUILD SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES AROUND IT.
THE MOMENT YOU DO NOT SYSTEMATIZE ANY OPERATION AROUND YOUR LIFE, INCONSISTENCIES AND COMPROMISES WILL BE INEVITABLE.
- Apostle Joshua Selman at Koinonia on ‘STRIVING FOR MASTERY’ (PART THREE)
(PART A).
Hallelujah!
Lift your hands to Heaven, bless the name of the Lord. Bless Him, give Him thanks, give Him all the praise and all the glory. We exalt You God, King of kings, Lord of lords.
PRAYER:
- Lord, open my eyes and give me a destiny encounter by Your Spirit.
Father, we bless You, from everlasting to everlasting, may Your name be praised and exalted in our midst. We have come tonight to hear You speak, we have come to be transformed, we have come to encounter Your Word and Your Spirit. Visit us tonight, give us encounters that last, in the name of Jesus we pray.
Glory be to the name of the Lord for giving us another opportunity to be changed, to be lifted. The Bible says, they go from strength to strength, as many as appear before the Lord in Zion. Not as many as who desires strength but those who appear before the Lord in Zion.
- May God take us from glory to glory!
The house of God is among many other things; the house of God is a place of spiritual illumination; it is a place of revelation. The assignment of revelation is to empower. Empowerment in this Kingdom comes on account of light. If you lack spiritual illumination, you will not be able to be empowered, nor will you be able to rise. The Bible says, the path of the just is as a shining light that shines brighter and brighter (Proverbs 4:18). Church Gist. So, every time we are here before God, it is important for us to know that this is not just a cinema where you come to watch movie, this is not a theatre where you come to watch performance; this is God in the midst of His people, coming through His Word to change, to transform, to heal, to deliver and to lift. That means, by the time you are saying, “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” a wiser you should be the one speaking, a more empowered you should be the one speaking, a more audacious you should be the one speaking, a more enlightened you; you cannot be the same person who prayed the opening prayer and then, shares the grace. It means that, God did not do anything in your life and tonight will be no different in Jesus’ name.
I want to specially appreciate all the workers in this house; I just thought to do this very sincerely. Leading a large ministry like this requires more than being anointed; you must have willing hands and hearts. You cannot imagine the things that happen to make every Koinonia service a wonderful experience and I want to thank every worker in this house. When we were coming and I saw our security people in the rain, happily moving around, I said, it has to be the love of God that constrains a man this way. This is not just leadership tradition; I mean it from the depth of my heart. I have taught you here that, not everybody thinks you are a big deal, not everybody thinks that you are that important or deserving of their commitment and participation and if and when you do find people who can inconvenience themselves and bend over backwards, you must have the discernment, humility and unashamedness to celebrate them and recognize them as many times as possible. So again, thank you very much all the workers and leaders, the Lord bless you and honour you in the name of Jesus.
Tonight’s teaching will be a cure for inconsistencies and compromises of standards. Tonight’s teaching will produce predictability and sustainability to your results in the name of Jesus Christ.
STRIVING FOR MASTERY (PART 3)
We are looking tonight at the power of systems and structures. This is a three-part series intended to empower us. Church Gist. The goal of this series is to make our Christian experience richer and to make our results predictable. It is God’s desire that we move past the realm of shadow boxing and the realm of trial and error to a point where we can lay hold of eternal life and be able to communicate the things of the Spirit with precision, clarity and then, command results that bring glory to the name of the Lord.
In part one, we looked at the foundation and we saw the spirituality of life. We said how that life and living is spiritual in its entirety. The Bible does not leave us in the dark as to the fact that, this visible realm came out from the invisible realm (Hebrews 11:1-3). When Jesus manifested, the Bible calls Him the express image of the invisible God. So, the realm of the spirit controls and governs the physical realm. The physical realm is helplessly a slave to the realm of the spirit. When you want to adjust realities, you point of reference becomes the realm of the spirit first in order of priority (2 Corinthians 4:18). There are things that are seen and things which are unseen and the Bible says, both of them are realities. Just because it is unseen does not mean it is unreal.
We also looked at a few keys that will help us maximize the spirituality of life; the ministry of prayer and then we said, we have to understand and engage the laws and the principles of the Kingdom. Part Two was basically the laws of dominion. We said that dominion in this Kingdom is a resultant effect of your knowing and comprehending the ways of God. Church Gist. There’s a relationship between the ways of God and the glory of God (Exodus 33:13, 18). When you know and understand His ways, inevitably you will experience His glory (Leviticus 9:6). We looked at a number of laws; the law of total surrender, the law of mental transformation, the law of value and contribution, the law of authority, the law of faith, the law of relationships, the law of honour, the law of favour and the law of spiritual empowerment. These are the keys that make for dominion, it is impossible to trade these Kingdom secrets and remain small in spiritual things. These are the laws that help us to contend for mastery (2 Timothy 2:5).
Part Three, today, we’ll be looking at “The Power of Systems and Structures.” I plead with you in the name of Jesus that you open up your spirit because what you are about to learn will change your life in a way that probably you are not prepared for. May the Lord grant us understanding in Jesus’ name.
Ecclesiastes 3:10
I have said it here that, truth in itself does not bless arbitrarily. Just because you are in the presence of the truth and just because you have the truth does not mean you will be changed by it. Truth that is randomly communicated will not in itself produce growth and stature in the believer. For truth to profit you, it has to be communicated holistically and arranged sequentially because the believer is likened to a spiritual house and if you ask any architect and any builder, all of the materials you see here are required in building a house but they are not all required at the same time and in the same quantity. Paul called himself a wise master builder, so just because you have access to truth does not mean you will be able to produce result with it.
God is a God of systems and structures. This is a very important aspect of God that will be useful for our discussion tonight. This means that every time God builds, He builds with the intention to allow what He is building to continue, without Him having to come and build it again. The Bible tells in Genesis that when He made the trees, He put capacity in them to have the seed that will keep reproducing again. Church Gist. God will seldom start a process and come back and do it again, you will hardly find the same miracle happening twice in the Bible. God will initiate that process and create a system around that process, so that any day you want to see that result, you will find out the system that makes for that reproduction.
The realm of mastery is the realm of systems and structures. It was God’s servant, Bishop Oyedepo that said, you walk by common sense, you run by principles but you fly by instructions. You just need common sense to walk, then you need principles to run, but if it has to do with flight, you need instructions that direct you methodically.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
God was interested in the full army from this story, but notice that for a long time, His emphasis was on the bones because He knew that if something did not happen to the bones, that army will not come back. His intention was to have a robust army, but His first port of call was the bones, that life was even useless until the bones were in place. It was not the coming together of the bones that was the issue, it was that they had to be arranged accurately for that army to be formidable and for life to be profitable in those humans; the bones had to look for their places of assignment and stay there.
There are many believers as individuals, organizations, churches who have downplayed the power of systems and structures in being able to effectively live and communicate the purposes of the Kingdom as far as gaining mastery is concerned. Church Gist. The continuity of every aspect of your life and the efficiency depends on your ability to build systems and structures around it. What is system?
1). A system is a set of elements or components that are organized for a common purpose.
2). A system is a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done. It is also called an organized approach to doing something.
What is a structure?
A structure comes from the Latin word “Structura” which means to fit together or to build. Therefore, structure means the way in which parts of a system are arranged. Church Gist. So, systems talk about execution strategies while structures talk of building up or leadership strategies (organization).
No growth process or result is sustainable until or unless it is systematized. That is, whatever you are doing, provided you have not systematized it, there’s no sustainability there. The longevity factor in everything we do is the system that is built around it. To systematize means to make a system predictable by generating a formula or creating an approach.
There is rain falling and for those of us in Nigeria here and many parts of Africa, this is the rainy season and we are having rain and enjoying the showers of blessings. Do you know that there are other parts of the world, people are enjoying the same thing right now simply because a system was created? The moment you do not systematize any operation around your life, inconsistencies and compromises will be inevitable. The staying power and the ability to stay through to your formula and modus operandi depends on your systematizing whatever you are doing.
The advantages of systems and structures:
When there are no systems and structures in your life, you will freelance everything; your emotions will govern anything you are doing and emotions vacillate, you will not be able to produce consistency.
1). Systems make it possible for everyone who engages them to have the same or similar results. This beautiful structure can be reproduced anywhere in the world where there’s land and you don’t need to carry this building and move with it. Church Gist. All you need to do is to carry the architectural plan, you can even give an architect who has never seen this and he will so reproduce it with digital precision to a point that you can lie down here to sleep and they relocate you to another kind of this, you’ll wake up thinking you are where you left because of consistency of systems.
For instance, the system allocated for salvation, right now we are here listening to God speak to us, there’s a crusade going on somewhere across the globe and anyone who engages that system, the Bible says, for with the heart, man believes unto righteousness and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation even if it is in a plane, land, hole or in the belly of a fish; wherever you engage this system, salvation becomes yours. The same way you saw the anointing flowing, the same way you saw wisdom flowing and the organization built; if you can understand the system, you can reproduce the results.
2). Systems and structures minimize biases and sentiments. If results are depended on biases and sentiments, then there are certain people who may never have it. Church Gist. For instance, Africa, certain well-intentioned believers but thank God that everything that has to do with the Kingdom, in as much as there’s God there that supervises it, He made it systemic so that biases and sentiments would not interrupt our rising to mastery.
3). Systems and structures guarantee sustainability and longevity of results. We don’t have so much of those buildings in Nigeria sadly, but when you travel to the US or Europe, you will see buildings and structures that are 200-300 years old and they are still standing solid because those who built them did not build them to collapse after two years. At the back of the builders, the builders designed that that structure would outlive them and you can still see people buying those homes, not as an artifact; they intend to live there. There may be few adjustments that will be made there, but it will still be there.
I don’t know the oldest business in Nigeria respectfully speaking, I don’t know the oldest organization in this Nation but there are organizations across the globe, including ministries that they would tell you; they are so and so years old; great grandfather handed it to grandfather, grandfather handed over to father, father has now handed it over to son and great grandson and they are still running it with the level of excellence. Systems and structures guarantee sustainability and longevity of results, that includes your spiritual life, finances and every other aspect of your life.
4). Systems and structures make replication or reproduction possible. You can replicate any result when you make it systemic. For instance, the Lord Jesus Christ, the early Church and us today. We were not there when He died, we were not there when He rose but there was a system that He designed and we are beneficiaries of that system to the point that by the election of grace, we can stand today and do the same thing Paul did and all these people and see the same result. We may never have met them as individuals, but even when they left, the system was still here.
5). Systems and structures provide a basis for commendation, correction, promotion and demotion without biases or emotional interference. Even in our walk with God, God does not commend, correct, promote or demote emotionally, there is always a basis for everything He does. Church Gist. When you look at the seven churches in the book of Revelation, every commendation was based on something, every rebuke was based on a standard. If there’s no reference, there’s no basis for commending or rebuking.
If you do not operate by systems and structures, there will be too much bias in your operation; tribalism, gender sensitiveness and all kinds of needless biases will ruin your life and organization. Positive compromises only become profitable when the structure and the standard is in place. There are many leaders in this Nation, respectfully speaking, there are many men of God, leaders in various areas who do these four things; they commend without a reference, they rebuke and correct without a reference, they promote without a reference and they demote without a reference. It is “As I like.” You cannot build anything great with those kinds of sentiments. Church Gist. Before God showed us His mercy and grace, He opened us to see that, based on my justice, you fail. However, my mercy is there and my grace is there. We couldn’t have appreciated His mercy and His grace, until and unless He gave us an opportunity to see how bad we fell. There are many needless battles and pains that are uncalled for, simply because people do not systematize their lives.
God who is love created hell fire and gave everybody an opportunity that even at the detriment of your eternal destiny, God will still respect you if you honour or violate the system. God who is love and merciful, there are people in hell today because they willingly chose hell. No wonder the Bible says, I set before you this day, blessing and curses; life and death. But I advise you that you choose life, that you and your seed may live
For an individual, you must create two kinds of systems in your life basically:
1). A value system or a code of conduct.
2). An operational guide; a modus operandi that is based on your convictions and your priorities.
If you must excel as an individual and rise in every area and dimension of your life, then you must be prepared to know that living emotionally, especially in this day is a risk. For an organization (Church, business, NGO, whatever kind of corporate platform), you must create a compendium of the systems and the modus operandi that run the organization and use it to train your staff, workforce, membership and so on and so forth.
One of the blessings of system is that, everybody cannot be blamed for the carelessness of one person. You are able to allocate responsibilities and allocate commendations accordingly.
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