-Pastor Sam Adeyemi at Recharge Conference 2021, Global Impact Church on the topic: ‘STRATEGIC ACTION’.
Welcome to this session of Recharge 2021. I know it’s been an awesome experience already and I am glad to be here.
Thank you Pastor Yemi and Pastor Bimbo for having me here.
Oh! What an amazing conference it is this year and I appreciate you both, I must say that. I bring greetings from my left ventricle, Pastor Nike sends her love, we love you both passionately and daily we recognize and celebrate God’s phenomenal grace on your life, grace for leadership and it is global and we love your whole family and I am grateful for what God is doing right here at the Global Impact Church.
This is a governmental Church and God is raising people here that are exactly influence for Jesus Christ in all spheres of life. God bless you all leaders, workers and members of Global Impact Church.
If you are a part of this Church and all you do right now is to attend, you are not fully committed yet, you need to press in, that is where the blessing is.
You know in a Church, you serve on two levels; at the first level, you come in and your focus is on what to get from God. But I tell you, there is a higher level because Paul the Apostle says in Acts 20:35, that our Lord Jesus Christ said that, it is more blessed to give than to receive and of course when you give, you receive.
So when value goes from you, value will come back to you. Invest your energy, invest your time, invest your resources in God’s work. Invest the money, invest everything in God’s work. Show commitment and God will show His commitment to you. You will rise without limitations.
It doesn’t matter what is going on in your environment, I want to promise you that. You know, it doesn’t matter what is going on in your environment, the truth is; the problems, the challenges of our world become your own opportunity to prosper this season.
In spite of all the darkness in our world right now, all that is going on in our country, the violence and everything, the insecurity, the uncertainties, I prophesy in the name of Jesus, this is your best season so far in Jesus name.
Amen.
John 2:5-9 (NLT)
If you like to give this a title, it will be ‘Strategic Action’. Strategic action, second half of the year, whatever it is you’ve been dreaming about for this year, this is the season for execution, this is the season for fulfillment. I remembered many years ago, I asked God a question because I felt like I was stagnating, I felt like things were not moving quite well for me, you know, I felt like I was stranded and I was asking God, how do I move to the next level, how do I make a shift?
What is my next level, how do I move on?
He told me to go on the media, to teach people on how to succeed.
So, I went about starting a radio broadcast, that was almost 27 years ago now when I started the process. It was actually just about exactly 27 years ago, when I got that instruction, I got that vision.
My point today was about what I did after that. I mentioned, I remembered in the Church that I pastored then, I was about to do my teaching on Sunday and I just mentioned, oh by the way that God gave me this vision and I believe God will make it come to pass, that I am going to be teaching through a broadcast and from that moment onwards, there is a shift. Right after the service, two young men walked up to me and said, oh you mentioned something about the radio broadcast, I said yes. Can we see you?
You know for a few minutes, I said, sure, come over and then they asked me, so share your vision with us. Describe the idea. I told them, and they introduced themselves and both were staff members at one of the leading advertising agencies in Nigeria at that time. One was deputy creative director, the other was the production manager.
So we began the preparation, I will jump some of the details. What I want to get to was the meeting where they informed me how much it would cost, you know for airtime and production for the first quarter. When they mentioned it, I almost screamed. Why because I had no idea where to get the money from but instantly, I told myself inside, don’t say anything. You are the one teaching these guys faith and you tell them that with God, all things are possible, so you can’t tell them here that you don’t have money.
So I kept it to myself and afterwards, I got home, I was thinking about it. I have to employ all the principles of faith that I knew up till that point.
So I wrote it – ‘Radio broadcast, 120,000 naira’. I think I wrote it on a small paper and stuck it on the wall in our bedroom, so that I could see it everyday because I had already learnt then that once God gives you something in form of your imagination, He is giving it you, it is just a matter of time, it will happen in the physical.
Long and short of it, one day, we were getting close to when we needed to pay the money and there was nothing. I woke up in the morning, I was praying and saying; Holy Spirit, how do I get this money. The Holy Spirit said your money is in town already, your money is around already. He said, it is the devil that is keeping it from you. I said what???
I just jumped off from the bed and begin to pray; satan, I break your hold from my money. In fact, I was gesticulating, I was praying upon that, I was breaking. I break your hold upon my money in the name of Jesus. I prayed and prayed and prayed until at one point, I just knew there was peace in my spirit, there was peace in my heart that I have the money.
I got the urge to go out of the office and the Holy Spirit just drop in my spirit, ‘drop by to pray for so and so’, a business lady in Church who was having challenges, so I just stopped by on the way to the Church office and pray with her.
As I was heading out, she said, oh Pastor, you mentioned something about a radio broadcast sometimes ago, I said yes. She said how far with it?
I said oh, they said it is about time to pay for airtime and they said it is so, so amount. We are trusting God for that. She said, oh, I need to make my own pledge now. So she wrote something on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope and when I checked the letter, it was the full amount for the airtime that she pledged. I know the state of her business, so I absolutely was not expecting anything.
Some days later, somebody came into the office, another lady and she said, oh it is about the broadcast. My husband and I decided to invest in the broadcast. She gave me an envelope, I checked what was in it, I almost screamed, you know, but it was more than the total amount for airtime and production for the first quarter.
Remember, this was many years ago, we did not have a phone line then but I have a phone line in my office, I called my brother, shared the testimony hot, hot but this is the lesson that I learned from that experience and I have not looked back.
The resources came in after I took action. So let’s go back to our original story.
The wedding at Canaan of Galilee. So while Mary run to tell the people around; pay attention, whatever He tells you to do, do it.
Why did she have to encouraged them on the action part, the execution part?
Because most people don’t take action and their biggest barrier is in their mind. The barrier in the mind is usually formed by the lack of resources. The resources showed up for me after I took the action not before. This is remarkable.
He who waits for perfect condition will not get anything done (Ecclesiastes 11:4). This is how the average person thinks. We want to move from maybe the house to work, or to somewhere else or to Church. Let say there are three traffic stops or four of five on the way, some people will never leave home except they have the assurance that all the traffic lights agreed at the same time. Congratulations!!!
If that is the way you live your life, you won’t leave home and I am telling you why most people don’t take action. They want to be sure everything is going to be okay. You will never get that assurance.
You deal with the first one. In fact, you don’t have to see the first traffic light before you leave your home, am I right?
Even the first one does not need to be great, leave your home anyhow. When you get there, if it is green, you go. If it is not green, you just wait a little bit, it will turn green and then you will move to the next one and you deal with the situations as the come.
One of my billionaire’s friend told me something a short while ago that made me appreciate and realise why he is a multi-billionaire.
He said, ‘I deal with things the way they are,’ instead of wishing I have my vision, I have my dreams but then, I don’t let anything stop me from taking actions. He said, in Lagos, if I must be somewhere, if I really need to be somewhere and there is traffic, I asked, how much time will it take me to get there, he said, when I know it is four hours, then I just take off four hours before I need to be there, I don’t have a problem with that.
I factor the problem, the challenge along into the situation but it is not going to stop me.
He said when I was at the university, he said my classmates used to tease me, he said because if I was leaving the hostel and it began to rain, he said I will not stop.
He said I will just walk, I will go in that rain. He said the worst that will happen, was that I would arrive at the class drenched and he said people will be laughing at me, he said but I got to class and I will take my class.
That day, I thought that is one of the secrets of this gentleman, not recognising obstacles and that’s what faith is to be to the believers.
That is what we are supposed to do. After God has spoken, what God said is your reality, not the physical happenings around you.
When I was leaning to play golf, I learned another lesson there, a similar one. So, I was playing round the holes. At a particular spot, I wanted to hit the ball but noticed two tress standing in front in me. I looked at the tress right in front of me and I was supposed to hit the ball to go beyond the trees.
So I turned to the coach, I said, can you see these trees? He said Sir, what trees?. I will never forget that day. He spoke to me in Yoruba language, he said Sir, ‘se ri igi ni? Kosi gi now. E’gba nkan ti e fe gba(Can you see any trees? There are no trees now. Just play what you what to play).
In other words, he said, Sir there are no trees, can you see any trees, just play what you want to play. I said okay. So I hit the ball, the ball went straight and hit one of the trees. The man bursted into laughter. He said, Sir, I know what happened. It was the tree that was on your mind, the obstacle. Thank You Jesus.
Why it can’t work, the difficulties, that is what is on the mind. That is what paralysis the average person from taking actions. I have never forgotten that day, so when I face an obstacle, I am supposed to take action.
I remind myself, can you see any tree, there are no trees. So the guy now explained to me that he had changed the golf club I was supposed to use. The one he gave me, lifts the ball high over obstacles. So he said, the fact that my focus was on the tree, that was exactly where the ball was going to go. Don’t ever forget that.
What you fix your mind on, that exactly is what is going to control your action.
So back to Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her advice; ‘you see that man, do whatever He tells you to do’. She said it because she knew that by the time He would give the instruction, they would have barriers in their minds.
Fetch water into the water jars, a set of water jars can take 20-30 gallons of water. The same man without tasting what was inside said, take some of it, bring it to the master of the ceremony…, the water changed to wine.
I know that by natural assumptions, to believe that the water changed into wine in the pot, I don’t believe so. That is the kind of thinking that encourages us to want to stay at home until all the traffic lights turn green. No, no, no. I don’t think so. Honestly if you have gone down that road before, you will doubt many, many times.
What if it doesn’t happen, what if? That what if it doesn’t work is the question Satan uses to paralysis us with fear and that is what stops us in our tracks but I have learn to ask the other question; what if it works, what if it turns into wine, what if I get the contact, what if they say yes? Hallelujah!!! Thank You Lord Jesus.
Strategic action needs to follows strategic instructions from the Holy Spirit. Let me give you some bits of advice. You know why this is important?
We are in a new season, things have changed, there is a lot of breakthroughs in the realm of the Spirit. God is raising a whole new generation right now.
Honestly, listen to me God is rising a whole new generation right now and it is the people that;
- have the capacity to hear from God
- will take action based on what God has said that will break you into a new level.
Somebody is sitting here today, listen, honestly in the next five years, you will be a multi-billionaire. I can say that because I have seen it happened. - In the name of Jesus, you will not need to work harder, it will be grace, it will just be the Holy Spirit telling you exactly what to do and you obeying the Holy Spirit and you will see the results.
- Five years from now, somebody will be running a massive industry. Somebody here will become a billionaire. If you have never seen one million naira in your account before, get ready. I have thousand of people crossing that level in the next one year in the name of Jesus Christ.
So my advice, you want to take strategic actions:
- Be willing and open to try the unknown. That willingness and that openness was what Mary provoked in the waiters and waitresses at the wedding. A lot of people are not willing to try and then many are open to try, simply because they’ve never hear it before. They are not familiar with it, they are not used to it.
When I started the radio broadcast, I have never worked with anybody that works there before, I knew zero about running a radio broadcast, absolutely nothing. If you claim the blessings of Abraham, you have to be willing to take the strategic action that Abraham took.
- Don’t focus on your resources, focus on your resourcefulness. Focus on what you can get out of what you have. Don’t focus on what you have, focus on what you can get out of what you have. That focus means that you’ve got to shift from the use of your physical eyes to the use of your inner eyes, the use of your imagination. That is when you give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to change your life.
Your physical eyes deal with current reality, deal with the physical world. If you are going to work with the Holy Spirit and you are going to be able to take strategic action that will change your life, you’ve got to use your imagination and focus on your resourcefulness, your ability to recognise potentials.
The potential for your next level is around you already. What you have will always contain the potential for what you want. Your next level is already in your life but you need spiritual eyes to recognise the harvest in the seed.
You have to shift your belief system. You use the resources you have to define yourself, oh what a colossal mistake that is. It is the potential inside what you have that is the real definition of your capacity. I read many years ago, somebody said we can count the number of seeds in an apple but we cannot count the number of apples in a seed. Hallelujah.
Don’t focus on your resources, focus on your resourcefulness, your ability to uncover the phenomenal value in what you have already.
- I prophesy in the name of Jesus Christ, you will never be stranded again. As far as resources are concerned, you will never be stranded again.
- If you are going to be taking strategic action, the kind that turns water to wine, who you know matters. What mattered at the wedding at Canaan of Galilee was that Jesus Christ was there and that the mother of Jesus Christ recognised the value of Him been there.
Hang around people that have resourcefulness. You know why? They will help you to prime your eyes open, they will help you to uncover your value.
Jesus Christ was and will continue to be the King of resourcefulness. Whatever He tells you to do, do it.
- I pray for you today, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the power of the Holy Spirit will come on you. Whatever is it around you that holds the potential for your next level, I prophesy your eyes will be to open to recognise it in the name of Jesus.
Your network matters. People that have closed minds cannot help you. People whose imagination had been shut down cannot help you. They won’t help you to see nothing, they will only help you to see the reality and give you sympathy.
I thank God for Bishop David Oyedepo, I will never forget those encounters, experiences that we had and he will make just one statement, just one thing and my eyes will open.
One of the most important that I will never forget was very, very early within the first year of our church, we had an event and then I was telling him about the event, it was successful. He said great. We had this guest speaker and it was powerful – great and in fact a lot of people came – great. Then he said, should I tell you something?
Don’t think that you will ever be able to build that Church on guest speakers. He said that Church will not outgrown you, you bring a guest speaker, the guest speaker brings a crowd, when the guest speaker goes, the guest members will also go.
Then he said, why don’t you become the person that people want to listen to. It’s like 25 years now and I have not forgotten and I will not forget.
He spoke that day not to my resource, not to what I have but my resourcefulness, he spoke to who I could be. He spoke to my potential. Oh my God, he challenged me, I realize that I have the capacity to be a exactly like the guest speakers that I thought will attract people to our church. He spoke to my magnet. Association matters (Proverbs 13:22).
I will tell you why it is important for you to connect with people that are resourceful. I found out one major reason why people don’t act on information and revelation.
If what you are hearing is coming from someone that has not practiced it, the likelihood that you will do it is very minimal. If the information you are getting is coming from someone that had done it, the likelihood that you will do it is very high.
After this service, what are you going to try, what is it that the Holy Spirit is putting in your mind for so long and you did not take any move just because you are waiting for the resources to come. Why have you not tried it?
Let me remind you this definition of faith, faith is acting as if it is so when it seems not to be so for it to be so because it is so. If God is the one that gave you the instruction, it is already a spiritual reality, it is time to push it to the physical.
So we need more power to overcome inertia than we need to maintain momentum, that is what I came here to do today. For someone, overcoming inertia, taking that first step, carrying that first step.
Do whatever He tells you to do. So my number one preoccupation is to get revelation, after I have gotten revelation, my next preoccupation is to act on it. It is not the hearer of the word that is blessed, it is the doer of it (James 1:22-25).
So get ready. Thank You Jesus. Something is hanging in the realm of the Spirit, it is coming into the physical now in the mighty name of Jesus.
Put in that application, make that phone call. Hello, submit that proposal. Go visit that person that you’ve been wanting to visit. Ask for that thing that you’ve been wanting to ask for.
On the other side of your actions, there are miracles happening.
The young man that I mentioned earlier on, the young multibillionaire, he said he gets revelation when I am teaching in Church. So his first deal, he needed money, he needed 20 million naira and he did not have an idea where it will come from.
It was while I was teaching, he said the revelation just came. He got the names of four people and he was to ask each of them for five million naira loan.
He said right after the service, he just stepped outside the hall, picked his phone, called the first one, asked for the five million, the man agreed, called the second, third and the fourth, twenty million naira was complete. Thank You Jesus.
Let me help somebody here, while we were going through this session, some ideas popped up in somebody’s mind, if you know how the Holy Spirit works, my job here today was to provide inspiration because inspiration is the key to revelation. Inspiration takes the human system to God’s frequency, on that frequency then you can capture the images and sound that comes from God. If you know how it works, then when the flashes of inspirations comes, you capture them, you write them down.
Listen, it is not so much my voice that matters today, it is the voice of the Holy Spirit, it is the voice within my voice and somebody has been hearing something right here in this session and I prophesy on you right now in the name of Jesus, the Heavens are open over you.
- I want you to ask God for the grace for action (1 Corinthians 15:10).
PRAYER:
- Heavenly Father, give me the openness, give me the willingness (Philippians 2:13). Give me courage, give me boldness to do it without looking back. Father I trust You that on the other side of my action, there will be a miracle in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
Heavenly Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, I thank You for everyone that is part of this conference today and as one that has enjoyed Your grace, taken action on Your instructions with amazing testimonies, I ask heavenly Father, multiply that grace on everyone that is a part of this session in the name of Jesus.
God of heaven, by the last day of this year, let the testimonies be explosive of results beyond our capacity. We give You the glory, we give You the praise, we give You the thanks. We give You the glory, we give You the praise for honouring Your word.
Thank You heavenly Father.
There is healing in this service.
Lord I thank You because the healing is happening in the mind, the healing is happening in the emotions, it is happening in the physical body, in our relationship.
There is a restoration for someone in their career and we receive all these breakthroughs with thanksgiving in Jesus name.
Amen!