WHEN YOU PURSUE GOD, HE PLACES SOMETHING IN YOUR HAND FOR A GENERATION –
- Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo at COZA Sunday
- You are here on time and in time, you are here on a purpose for a purpose. Strike when you are young.
- It is those who are not busy that look up to talk about other people. There is something in God that you also have been called to do. Get busy and pursue it.
Ecclesiastes 12: 1- 4.
We are in a generation that don’t appreciate and understand the power of their generation. Young people have been trivialized, marched upon, looked down upon, and they’ve been packed on a side in this generation. As evil as that is, young people have started to receive that signal as their status quo.
Now, any gathering of young people is tagged as an unserious one. It is only the body of Christ that trivializes young people. When they were in Egypt, after negotiating for months, ‘Let my people go that they may go serve me’. Pharaoh is a spirit that represents the devil.
You know what Pharaoh did? He said, ‘Let the older people go, leave the young people for me’. If Satan understands and believes in young people, why don’t you believe in young people? And why don’t you believe in yourself?
When Dr Myles Munroe came to meet some people who had governed Nigeria before, one of them was former President Gowon, he was in his 20’s when he was the president of Nigeria. Do you know how President Obasanjo was able to become president twice in his lifetime? and he is still bouncing right now. Because he started early, he was a president in his 20’s. What about President Muhammadu Buhari?
We are just shouting, ‘This people are not willing to let us to do stuff’. Listen to me, they have given you a mindset, a paradigm, and you also have believed it.
They saw us as grasshoppers and we were also are as grasshoppers in our own eyes. By your decisions, by your pursuits, the way you handle things, are you really ready for what God has prepared you for?
I was checking the Bible and I found out that most people we read about in the Bible were not old people. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were teenagers, those people purposed in their heart to follow God.
There is no old man that can do well right now who will not have a young person guiding him, because the world they were prepared for is different from the world we are in right now. David was not married when he brought down Goliath, he was still a teenager when he was pushing to wipe out tax from his family, because he asked, ‘What shall be given to the man who brings down Goliath?’.
Samson was anointed as a young person to save his entire nation, but you know, what caused his mess-up is what you are still moving with right now. You see an average young person, somebody who is gifted, you will see him disconnect from those he is supposed to collect the baton from.
He is disconnected from his father, he is disconnected from mentors, he thinks he is a self-made person. One of the assignments of Jesus is to turn the heart of fathers to the sons and the heart of the sons to the father. You may be a sharp arrow but you can’t fire yourself.
Do you know how old David was when they said that Saul slain a thousand, David slayed ten thousand?
He began to save his nation. Not many young people are thinking of their nation.
Many of the young people who are against the government is just because they are not able to benefit from the government at the time. Jesus was born in a manger, he was born in the most despicable atmosphere, the government of his day hated him, yet He loved his nation and laid his life down for the Jewish people.
You are here on time and in time, you are here on a purpose for a purpose. It is time for you to strike when you are young.
Dear daughters in the house, sisters, don’t go out with a man because he is old. Age is not what tells when a man should get married. Money is important, but money is not what tells when a man should get married. I go to so many places, I go for events, I go for weddings, I go for meetings, I go to pray on properties, I go to visit my mom.
Where I am going determines who I take along. When a man asks you out, ‘I want you to follow me on this journey?’ You should ask, ‘Where are you going?
If he is going to a swimming pool, you can’t wear maxi. If he is going to play golf, there is a way you must dress, you wear your evening wear and your hat on, because you are going to sit pretty, and people will say, ‘Ah, who is that young lady’. You must find out where he is headed for.
Even to my colleagues, it is after you are a successful pastor, you are on a pedestal, your wife suddenly feels swallowed, and she thinks, ‘I have another passion’, that’s one of the reasons for divorce in pastoring, because suddenly she wants to go to the States and you are called to Nigeria, you didn’t discuss it. It is travesty for you to be in the middle of your marriage and say, ‘Sweetheart, what should we live for apart from this job?
And there is no passion, there is nothing you are striking, there is nothing you are living for.
You’re wasting life. Why do rich people commit suicide if money is everything?
You are brought here to make impact; you must live your life beyond yourself.
Life is not just about going to club, wearing designers, I love those things too, nothing is wrong with those things, but you must live beyond those things.
My sister, whatever you want to do for God, do it quickly. My brother, whatever God has brought you to do on the face of the earth, do it quickly. It is time for your fire to rise, it is time for God to use you beyond normal.
Saul of Tarsus that became Paul, who wrote two-third of the New Testament, this guy at a young age was already in the senate of his day, he was a member of the Sanhedrin. Who told you that you have to be old and wasted?
One of the reasons why people cannot handle pastors like me is that suddenly in my generation, young people started starting out life pastoring and running for God. You know those who used to pastor before?
After they had gone into the Civil Service or gone into business and they can’t really remember things, then they now got to Theology School so they won’t be paralyzed at home, after ordaining them, they stand on the pulpit when they are old.
They never saw someone who had a career path, who was called, they didn’t imagine that someone who went to school, who God gave a lot of opportunities and abandon such to come here, can also have to a life. They don’t understand that.
I don’t know what kind of zeal Paul had that he went to the government to go and take authority to destroy Christians because he thought Christians were destroying his nation. There was a King in the Bible Josiah, he was crowned king at age 8, In 2 Chronicles 34: 1-2. If you are serving the Lord, you go on evangelism, people will call you and say, ‘Hey, why are you not behaving like you are a young person?
Do you want to destroy your youth?’
My brother, if you think God wants to use you, get into it now, when your manna is still fresh, get into it now, when you have the opportunity because if you don’t cry out, God will raise other stones and bypass you.
How old was Solomon?
He wrote 1005 songs, he wrote 3500 poems. If Solomon were to live in this day, he would be Professor Emeritus in many fields. He studied plants, he studied animals, he studied different species of things, it all started by his connection with God. All started at Gibeon when he went to the Lord and prayed, ‘Lord, give me wisdom, I don’t know how to go out, I don’t know how to come in, I can’t lead this people if I don’t have wisdom’.
God said, ‘You didn’t ask for money, you didn’t ask for land, I will give you much more’. It all started with his pursuit of God and when he stopped pursuing God, you saw how his life ended. Guys, trust me. Anything you want to achieve all starts with your maker. It is the manufacturer that understands the use of the product.
Ecclesiastes 12: 1 says ‘remember’ because there are things suggesting to you, ‘Forget God!
All this things wey Pastor dey talk, forget!’. I read at some point in my life a manuscript that recorded what powerful people, influential people that didn’t know God said when they were about to die, many died in regret. I can never forget a scientist, he said ‘I see light. Lord, you are real. I never knew.
Why didn’t you prove yourself to me?’. God proved Himself to him. You know how?
The Bible says ‘The heaven declares His glory’; man is without excuse. Psalm 19: 1-2.
Do you think you are just here for your work?
Do you think you are just here for education? for weddings? ChurchGist. Do you think God wastes resources like that?
There must be something bigger than what you have received that you are here for, and regret is ahead of time if you don’t start to pursue it at a young age.
Ecclesiastes 12: 1-4. People are abandoning God, workers are few, you should plunge in because when you begin to seek God at that level, He places something in your hand for a generation. Imagine someone like Kenneth Hagin, what God placed in his hand on ‘faith’. All of us now see faith as ‘Yeah, I have faith’.
Somebody had to receive it, in fact on three occasions, Jesus had to appear to him to teach him what to do, so he can teach the body of Christ. Now, these guys explore God. You were made for God, your primary assignment is to give God pleasure, when you do that, every other thing will be responding to you. It is time to plunge into God. Serving the Lord is not for frustrated youths.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were called the 3 Hebrew Children.
They were 18, 19, 17, and they took a stand for God?
What stand are you taking?
If I check your Instagram, can I see Jesus there? Small things are small things but faithfulness in small things is a big thing indeed. If you are not faithful with little, God can’t bless you with big things.