—— By Pastor (Prophet) Raymond Abban
Offerings and Sacrifices is God’s way of blessing his children and nobody is coerced to do it. It is good to give willingly and not be disgruntled because there is no blessing in giving grudgingly.
Isaiah 1: 19-20 “If you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land but if you refuse to listen and rebel against me, your enemies will destroy you” says the Lord.
The first step to a fruitful life and a breakthrough is Obedience. There was a testimony by Daddy G.O “ He went for a special service to preach and he prayed to God saying “ whatever happens at the service I would say thank you. After the service everyone was saying how powerful it was but Daddy had forgotten to say Thank you to God, while he was getting into the car the person closing the door slammed the car door on his hand and he asked God why he had to suffer that much pain after a wonderful service. God reminded him of what he was supposed to do. Right on his way to the elevator He thanked God and the pain left”.
The problem with the church is most of us serve God because we need God only few people serve God because they love God, we should be able to serve God for the love we have for Him irrespective of our needs. We blame people for our misfortunes but we have to acknowledge that only God has the power to help us. Obeying God is the key to our success.
An example is the story of Abraham in Genesis; God shows up at the door step of this man and told him to leave his father’s house and go to where He would show him. The life of Abraham is an example of someone who obeyed God’s instructions to the point of losing the trust of his wife and son for a greater glory with God. Abraham actually gave up the Isaac in his life to obey God. Most often we find it difficult to give up the Isaac in our lives but we want to share in the blessings of Abraham. We put our work, our selfish interest first before God; these represent Isaac in our lives.
Moreover, to obey God, you don’t have to understand Him, you just have to obey. If we all have to understand God before obeying Him, we would not be where we are today. God has plans for us, but He doesn’t give us the itinerary up front and that is where our faith and blessing lies. When you obey God, you do not have to get to your destination in order to receive your blessing, God blesses you while you are on the journey. Abraham already became blessed with his cousin Lot as they journeyed to Canaan. Note that God is not an Airline that gives you your flight and connection details up front. He wants you to believe Him through the journey, if He gives you an itinerary then you don’t need Him anymore. I used to believe that man can help me, but I understood not too long ago that the people I think have the power to help me they themselves require help from somebody else, which means everyone of us need help, but how do we get to the place that the help we need will come to us? It’s only when we can obey God.
When I graduated from University and decided to become a Pastor, my Uncle told my father that “Is there is no other job this boy can do than become a Pastor after having a degree, what he said made sense to my father and probably made sense to me, but I just understood that all I need to do was obey God. I tell you today, if I have followed the degree I had, I would not be where I am today. I would not have been to all the places I have been and I would not have been sharing the word of God with you today. If we can bring ourselves to a place where we don’t understand God but obey Him, then we will have brought ourselves to a place where we are blessed and our enemies would not understand why.
Some of you because you are running late for work and God says give me 10 minutes of your time, you would not because you are too scared to lose the British pounds coming to you and you wonder why you are having problems at work. The problem is that we are too conscious of what man has to say than what God has to say about us.
Men always want a second opinion before obeying God; you do not need a second opinion when God instructs you. Most often we struggle when we listen to man. It is not just in sacrifices and blessings that we need to obey God, but in our everyday life and in little things. Obeying God is not as simple because the things God would instruct you to do is like foolishness and troubling to man on most occasions. God can’t be reasoned out. He is not interested in what man’s logical thinking. What He says and His word is more important than any other view.
When God asks for one and you give him five, He may reject it. When He asked for five and you gave Him one, He will still reject it. The act of God is not for it to be convenient for you, but that you will be able to obey Him at what He says. The instruction God has given is for you to obey but not to boast or show. “If you can obey then you will eat the good of the land ….”. Only one man has given so much to God than most of us will ever give God in a life time, Solomon gave so much more to God that God came down in His glory and asked what he would like Him to do. When we give to God it gives God the opportunity to meet our needs and not His need. God doesn’t need anything from us. Until you are ready to sacrifice Isaac there is no proof that you are ready to give everything you have to God.
When you obey God, it causes God to change rules in your favour, In the case of Abraham, God swore by His name to bless Abraham. We need to learn to obey God at any cost. What you can’t give you can get, if you can’t do give it, don’t expect to get it. Obedience comes at a price, it is not cheap. Been obedient to the God that pronounces the blessing on Abraham is a criteria to claiming the blessing upon Abraham’s life. Some of you have done very little for God but you are loud about it. David could not build a house for God because God said there was too much blood in his hands but David requested to provide all that will be required to build it, thus God called David a man after His own heart because the man thinks of Him more than he thought about himself.
When you are Obedient to God, your enemies can fight you all they want but you will still be on top; your enemies can try all they can, yet your breakthrough will still come.
Prophet Raymond Abban is of Raymond Abban Ministries (Ghana).
Delivered on February 9th at RCCG Everlasting Father’s Assembly, Leeds