PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

Did you hear that, the time and hour we are living in today is very critical and as such it is high time for each true and real child of God to wake up and out of our spiritual sleep and face reality. Now is the time for final salvation or deliverance because it is now nearer to us than in the generations past or in other words it is nearer now when the safety of life on earth is under such dangerous treat as it was in the time of the bang, in the time of the flood and in the time of Babel; times on earth when the life or existence of true humans was at the verge of being extinct out of the face of the earth but Christ assures us and said fear not, I am with you alway. A new week at the start of a new year; a time to look forward and not back. A time for a true change of mindset and perhaps, our challenge as Christians is always to remain vigilant and ensure that we are focussed upon God’s will in and through our lives. Here in House of Joseph, my home and a house of prayer, it’s our habit to pause briefly at the start of the day and light up a divine candle and say a simple prayer. It reminds us of our dependence upon God in all circumstances of life realising that God first. Leaving the Christmas and New Year holidays behind, I feel in need of a fresh impetus to remind me of my commitment to live everyday with Lord Jesus. I am all too ready to get on with life and lose sight of God. Simply to accept things for how they are rather than ask God how I am to respond in the times on which I live. This prayer provokes me to remember who I am and who I serve and whose own I am. I trust it will be of great encouragement and value to you as you step into a new year knowing who you are, who you serve and whose you are! Lord let this divine candle of light which You are, enlighten me in my difficulties and in my decisions! Lord let it be Your fire for me, to burn out of me all pride, selfishness and impurity. Let it be Your flame Lord, to bring Your warmth into hearts that deserves it towards families, neighbours and all those who meet and are against me. Lord let You become the God hearth in the life of my community bringing welcome and warmth to friend and stranger alike. Help me to continue my prayer in everything I do this day and always. Through the grace, mercy and safekeeping of You our Lord Jesus Christ!

Here we are again with ‘in spite of’ and not ‘on account of’. Each morning, with a coffee within reach, I consult yesterday’s to-do list. I commiserate or celebrate according to how much was achieved, and then create a new list for the day ahead. Life is busy, being busy and I will admit I even have lists of lists! But sometimes it helps to step off the treadmill and remember what we are called to and who has called us and try to ask questions like does He who called us have a purpose for calling us? God has a plan for our lives! There are things only we have been distinctively designed and destined to do; there is a race that we alone can run. We should realize that since there are things only we are distinctively designed and destined to do and accomplish; it there means that if another is covetously placed to do it, the system will fail. As we explore themes found within the Book of Philippians. I believe we will be inspired again by Paul’s sense of calling and by the consistent friendship of the Philippian church, who Paul encouraged to be faithful in their own calling despite the challenges they faced. Do you ever forget that you have been called by name? What does it mean to know that Lord Jesus has a plan and a purpose specifically for your life? Consider that calling again and pray that God will renew and re-establish His vision (and His to-do list) for your life in the days ahead. This re-establishment of the Lord vision and His to-do list for your life in the days ahead is very essential especially those who have lost sight of why they are on earth.

Happy New Year! This is the only moment in the year when the world exclusively focuses on time and expectations. Today media beams firework displays from various capitals around the globe, chasing the dawning of a New Year. The partying of New Year’s Eve may give rise to questions as to what this year ahead might hold for us. Who had heard of Covid-19 this time last year? Speculations here and there with no element of certainty anywhere even in the midst of those who profess to be Christians are not even sure of themselves and their surroundings! But the true sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty; the called, know of one thing that is assured, they have the true word of God in all circumstances as He said: ‘I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you,... for your welfare and for your peace...’ if the Lord said that He has a plan and thought for you, then why are you not rest assured, why do you still plan for yourself, why do you still worry? Today can prove downbeat following midnight celebrations. If you are feeling downbeat, you are feeling depressed and without hope. A public holiday for some, in other places like in Britain and even in our current Nigeria it marks the end of what, for the majority and those in leadership, is a long drawn out festival. Yet, a festival that has largely lost any significant purpose beyond extravagant self indulgence based on wastages of divinely given resources. Lord Jesus once again excluded from His own birthday celebration –with little or no room in our hearts. In reality do we have the aims and objective of the true meaning which God has in mind when He God took flesh in other to teach us how to live life on earth, have we learnt? It’s often said that to aim at nothing is a sure guarantee of success. God wants us to know from the verse above that without a true divine plan, life drifts away from us. I look back and wonder where on earth has the year 2020 gone? New Year offers a useful landmark in the panorama of our life. Panorama hears means an unbroken view of the whole region surrounding our life. Standing on the threshold of a New Year, many of us pause and reflect upon the purpose and significance of our life to date. Evaluation of our life so far is a very essential thing to do so that you will know if you are drifting away from reality or not. Good news! God has a plan for each one of us. The challenge for all of us is always in discerning or divinely finding out what that plan and thought of God is. Our first step in finding out God’s divine plan and thought is always to acknowledge the plan. Even if confused, such a simple acknowledgement declares that we are looking to or for God. No matter where we find ourselves, God never gives up on us. So when we are in a situation that threatens our life if we call out on the Lord God, God’s promise is that there’s a hope and a future for each one of us. With a fresh year ahead of us, hope alone can stir our hearts and minds and renew our pursuit of God. Join me in my pursuit of God this year, and let’s spur each other on as companions learning to live every day with Jesus Christ. Safety does not just mean being shielded from Covid-19: a friend has had Covid-19 and is struggling to recover. It means that regardless of the risk beneath us are God’s everlasting arms. We remain safe and secure in compromised circumstances. It’s only believing in Lord Jesus Christ that will save us and keep us really secured and safe.

Can you now hear the truth, recall that the word of God told us that God warned Adam and Eve saying, ‘the day that thou eat of the tree that I have warned you not to eat, thou shall die’ and they ate it, this is why the truth of God’s word said, ‘as far as this world is concerned, you have died, but for the called and redeemed, God’s word said, ‘your new and real life is hidden with Christ in God’. Are you making effort to see that this claim is fulfilled in your life by living your life according to the dictates of the Scripture and the Gospel? Another way in which the Word (Jesus Christ) who lived among us changes our lives is by releasing us from a preoccupation with ourselves worldly. A further consequence of Lord Jesus dwelling at the centre of our life is that we will know what it is to have an unhurried heart. An unhurried heart is one who is moving, acting, or making things to taking place without haste or urgency, which is why you hear people say that there is no hurry in life. The Igbos put it in this way saying ‘O ji nwayo eje a digi emeru ahu’! Lord Jesus approached life responsibly, passionately or lovingly, honestly and decisively, but also with a calm, gentle and confident spirit. Comb the Gospel records and never once do you find Him in a hurry or acting dishonestly in life. One commentator said this about Lord Jesus: ‘He was never hurried, never flurried and never worried.’ Flurry means suddenly doing many things at once under commotion or excitement. You can agree with me that this is the attitude that characterized human behaviour, hurriedly and suddenly doing things in commotion and in excitement, is it not? So as we are celebrating the divine birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us begin to make efforts to try and emulate the way He taught us how to live on earth so that we will be truly called His. Yet another consequence of the conquering Christ indwelling us is that we receive strength to live ‘in spite of’ all odds. In spite of means without being affected by any or the particular factor mentioned in the cause of living our life. Today contrary to our living our life ‘in spite of’; many of us have strength to live life ‘on account of’, that is you use on account of to introduce the reason or explanation for doing something, but not strength to live ‘in spite of’. So from this explanation you find out that there is a huge difference in living life ‘in spite of’ and in living life ‘on account of’. Living life in spite of spur you up to seek for and receive strength from the Holy Spirit but living life on account of makes one to seek for an explanation or reason why he or she has to live life the way he or she is living life. Do you now understand? Is this not what we do? So please let us learn how to live life ‘in spite of’ because it is only what will make you depend on God receiving strength to forge ahead from the Lord Jesus Christ by learning from His examples of living life on earth. When our circumstances and surroundings are favourable, and life is going according to plan and how we want it, we can carry on, we carry go as we use to say it. But life is not always like that, rosy as people wants it to be rather life is interwoven with trials as a check. There can be moments of huge disappointments, distressing situations, failing moments; moments when we miss the true end and scope of life and cruel reverses which come to us because of our erroneous lifestyle and lack of knowing how God guides us by His word. And that is when we are tested to the very core of our being. If what we have is merely an echo or figments of our imaginations of our surroundings then it fades away and disappears. If what we have comes from the depths within us; from our inner being–where our Lord Jesus life resides –then it holds us safe and steady and secure. From what we have thus learned from above; one writer said that there are three types of Christians: the rowing boat type, the sailing boat type, and the engine-driven type. The rowing boat type is the person who makes a show of being a Christian but, when under test or trial, prefers to rely on his or her own strength instead of receiving strength from God. The sailing boat type depends on the winds. If the winds are with them, they get on, but if not, they make no progress, they are opportunistic. The engine–driven type has a strength and resilience that is constant –they go on whether or not the winds are favourable knowing that the Lord God is on the lead and He knows where He want to lead you to. It is true that these types of people know that one can go faster when the wind is behind them but, nevertheless, they go on –wind or no wind. They are not self –dependent or circumstances -dependent, but they are God –dependent. And being God –dependent they are, in turn, dependable. This type of people knows that God created, He keep providence and He knows all the places where the providence are so He leads them there. In life please do not ever try to do anything that will change the course of God’s plan and purpose for you because this is what many people are suffering without knowing, hence the English man will say that you are the architect of your own fortunes. Receiving this inner strength from Christ indwelling to go on when life is against us is one of our greatest necessities. To those who understand what it means to be conquered by Christ’s love, and have His power within, it is a working truth that only they can talk of the experience. They receive this inner strength to forge ahead in life from Christ by both grace and their ability to live and practice the word of God and so they can talk about it. But because the rest people receive strength only from grace, to them it looks and appears like magic and so they don’t understand it.

Did you hear that: first Jesus is a Greek word for Joshua which is Hebrew; second Jesus Christ means Saviour and part of God’s aim and plan for sending Himself in Lord Jesus to earth is to initiate, introduce and teach the real humanity starting with the Jews how to prevent the failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God and being Godly. Today what we see on earth is the actual failing and missing of the true end and scope of life in the midst of humanity because the counterfeit humanity that results from the Eve-serpent relationship introduced worldliness from the spirit that actuates the children of disobedience. At the very beginning of creation a fatal error was introduced in the gene of humanity through the mistake of Eve’s intercourse with the spirit of Lucifer via the serpent and from thence a beastly character, behaviour, attitude and life pattern was introduced into the life of true humanity hence today you see that it has multiplied and virtually every human either by birth or by induction has this animalistic display of beastly tendencies which is why you see that human rebellion against the Almighty God and His principles have peaked hence you are hearing things like new world order where man wants to completely erase God from being involved in his affairs by creating and formulating things that does not follow divine principles nor conform with the order of God’s way of doing things. In the first attempt of this rebellion called the Tower of Babel, God confused man by introducing diverse language and thus prevented that ugly move of man! On this, the day we set apart to celebrate in a special way the birth of Lord Jesus, how good it is to know that we are celebrating not the birth of a principle, but the birth of a Divine Person. This divine birth is God giving birth to Himself in other to teach and exemplify to man the attributes and divine spirit content of real man different from that of the counterfeit man with his carnal or fleshiness introduced by Lucifer through the serpent’s relationship with Eve. ‘You have an advantage’, said a university professor in China to a Christian visiting the country. ‘In that all the ideas in Christianity are embodied in a person.’ ‘The impersonal laid hold on my heart’, said Tulsidas, the great poet of India. It never does, for the human heart is personal and wants a personal response. That is why when you teach the indwelling principles of Christ to the human heart which is not personal to him, he revolts and rebels! I love repeating the story of the boy who stood looking at the picture of his absent father and then, turning to his mother, said wistfully, ‘I wish father would step out of the picture and hold me in his arms.’ That young boy expressed the kind of deep longings felt by the human heart as we stand looking at the picture frame of the entire universe on which we see God. We who have gazed at the picture of God in nature as impressed, but not satisfied because just like the little boy we want our Father Lord God Almighty to step out of the picture (universe) and meet us as a person. That deep longing and desire for God to step out of the universe and come to us was fulfilled in the Birth of Lord Jesus Christ which we celebrate on Christmas. The good news is that the Father has stepped out of the picture (the universe) as we deeply longed for but yet many of us still do not believe or accept it. This coming of God in the birth of Lord Jesus is the meaning of Christmas. Lord Jesus is Immanuel –God with us. We hold our breath as the person steps out of the picture. Who would dare dream and expect that God would send us His own self in His Son? But He did. Since Lord Jesus is ‘the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being’ as seen in Hebrews 1:3 “He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the [a]out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high”, we look at the character of Lord Jesus and know exactly what God’s character is like. The Christmas Word can, in a sense, become flesh in me. Today and every day I think of Lord Jesus Incarnation and of God’s love for us. The true Christmas spirit is the true Christian spirit –extended throughout the whole year.