Based on Bishop Abioye's Message
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| Stanley Chuck |
Covenant is unique and important to
God. God does not break his covenant (Ps 89:34). That is to say He respects the
covenant and keeps it. He holds in high esteem the covenant.
It
takes power to get wealth and it is God who gives power to get wealth. For He
says, I am the Lord your God who gives
you power to get wealth. One of the characteristics of divine prosperity
and covenant wealth is that it is sweat-free.
The
covenant teaches us to labour. But labour is limited, so the kind of covenant I
speak of is not the one you can labour because it is the blessing of favour
that makes you outstanding. The children of Israel laboured for four hundred
and thirty years in Egypt yet they were poor. It was until favour came that
their labour was transformed. Labour was converted into favour. A young lady
came to town with less than a thousand naira and her talent and faith in God.
She presented a CD documentary to an organisation that turned her into a millionaire.
So don’t joke with God nor doubt the testimonies he gives to people. It doesn’t
take God time.
The
first step to breaking the barriers of poverty is by your vision. Vision means
seeing beyond the immediate. See beyond where you are; see beyond the economy
of your nation. To have a vision is to bring the future to the present; to see
beyond the environment you are. Vision usually motivates you. It breaks the
barriers of poverty. It changes the way you think. It makes you stop thinking
like a beggar, but like someone who knows where he’s going to. God
calls Abraham the father of nation and he refused to take gift from Abimalek.
He said; I am a father even to you
Abimalek. So always think of the future.
As
a business man, you don’t try to cheat your partner. As a worker, don’t change
figures in your office in order to get rich. See yourself, always, as a
dignified Christian. You are too big for the bribes you take and the cheatings
you do for the sake of getting wealth. It is the spirit of poverty that makes
people cheat in offices and in government. He begins to ask what he will eat when
he retires. That is because he lacks vision.
It
is how we think that results to the spirit of begging for aid as a nation. I’ve
never supported debt cancellation because I believe that a man should pay if he
owes. The nation of Israel in 1995 owed a foreign debt of 20.8 billion USD, but
by 2002 they cleared their debt. They believe they are lenders and not
borrowers.
Prosperity
is a natural sequence to mental activity. Mental activity is the root of actual
productivity. When you are sound mentally, you become practically productive.
Realise that God never made a rich or a poor person. He made all equally naked
– a common factor in creation. The difference between the rich and the poor is
the choices they made after a while. Poverty and prosperity is a choice.
There
is something that makes the difference and it was found in Adam. When he was
naked, nobody taught him to cover. It was his brain at work. Your gain is
determined by your brain. Put your brain to work if you want to see gain in
life. Poor minds beget poor pockets. Rich mind will always create wealth.
Riches begin in the mind. You can’t have a rich mind and live in a poor house.
The poverty of your environment is as a result of the poverty of your mind.
Nigeria
suffers from poverty not because there are no enough resources. There is
virtually no state in this country that does not have unique natural resources.
There is enough in every state to gather great resources to build the economy
of the nation. The first capital that is needed is the human capital – human
resources and not natural resources. You may not have hands but your rich mind
can work things out for you. I’ve seen a man on a first class flight that had
no hands. So it not your physical hand but your mind.
God
believes so much in man and has invested in him. I love the saying of Bishop
Oyedepo that the reason God gave you
brain is that you can give Him rest. When your brain is at work, your
prayer is reduced. Sometimes we pray over the things we can do. Some of the
things you pray to get, someone else is using his brain to get it. God created
man and entrusted so much abilities in him. That was why he gave Adam the
privilege to name the animals. The truth is that many of us may wait endlessly for
God. Proverb 22:2 is a proof that God made both the rich and the poor equally.
He has put enough in you to make you stop lining up for jobs. Men and nations
are rated according to their brain power and not natural resources.
Things
stop working for you when you stop using your brain. Take for instance the
lives of Joseph and Daniel. They were in situations where things seemed to stop
working for them, but their brains never stopped working.
Don’t
put your brain in chain even when there are chains in your hand. If you’re
confined in a room, don’t confine your brain as well. God gave you brain to be
able to travel mentally; it says, deep
calleth deep. There is no farther place in life than in your mind. You can
make the farthest journey with your brain at work. The deeper you think, the
more resources you gather. Your brain is the unlimited destination, and you
can’t finish harnessing the resources in it. The oil of a nation may dry up,
but ideas of the brain of men can never dry up. Your greatest associate is
inside your head. Joseph was put in a prison but his brain became his associate
and he kept working with it. Your mental capacity has a way of enhancing your
confidence.
How to access your mental
empowerment
PPray and think: pray to
God for help but open your eyes to see the environment.
A man should not sleep all night. Day unto day speaketh, but night unto night
showeth forth knowledge – Psalm 19:2. Those who sleep all night will fail
all day. Daniel’s vision was revealed to him at night. Most times God shows us
what to do during the day at night.