March 2020 - Our Month of God’s Glory & Beauty

From Our Pastor's Desk

Welcome to this our new Month of God’s Glory & Beauty, in Jesus name. Revelation 7:12 – “…and they worshiped God, Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen”.

Most attributes of God are far too vast to define. Whether it’s His love, mercy, righteousness, judgment or His glory and beauty. His glory is far two vast & complex to comprehend, let alone define perfectly.

His glory is His infinite perfections. His glory is His full weight of His nature, His full measure, full importance, nature, value, capacity, quality, ability, extent, or significance. All of His goodness and faithfulness, all of the “I AM” statements He makes about Himself, all of His power and king-liness, all of His creativity, holiness, righteousness, wrath, and love, all of these things make up His glory.

Glory is not one thing: it’s all the things about God! His glory is Jesus Christ, who is also the "beauty and brightness of the Father's glory" - Hebrews 1:3. Throughout the scriptures, God calls His people to know Him, to glorify Him and to reflect His glory. 

This Month of God’s Glory & Beauty, we will know Him more intimately, & encounter His glory. He will reveal the fullness of His glory & beauty to us and in us, as they fall upon us, in Jesus Name.

Amen

Limited By Our Mindset - Part II

From Our Pastor's Desk

A limited man is a restricted man who suffers in the midst of plenty. Though he may see or know where he belongs or what he should attain but find it difficult to get there.

Limitation makes a man to suffer in the midst of opportunities and possibilities.

We looked at 3 types of limitations last Sunday –
(1) Set to protect us, (2) Set by others to prevent us,  and (3) Set by circumstances/situations.

The fourth one are limitations set by yourself through your mindset,  thinking you amount to nothing, you can’t do  it. Because of your skin color, your accent,  language, economic background, gender  etc.

That’s a mindset of limitation, mediocrity,  inferiority complex, low self-esteem.  Low self-esteem can  have a very negative impact  on the quality of one’s life.

It makes one feel more insecure and to take fewer risks, which in turn means that personal and professional growth opportunities are both limited.

Low self-esteem is losing confidence in yourself, in who God says you are and in God. When He already said in Genesis 1:26 – “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”

We are created in the image and likeness of the God of heaven & earth, great and mighty. His Spirit lives in us. Theirs is no reason at all to be affected with a “grasshopper” mentality (Numbers 13:33).

Today, I declare you totally free from every spirit of limitation, mediocrity and low self-esteem, in Jesus mighty Name. Amen You will have a great turn-around this 2020. 
Remain blessed. 
Shalom.

Limited By Our Mindset - Part 1

From Our Pastor's Desk

What is mindset? The WordWeb defines mindset as mental attitude, your mentality; your habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

It is this mindset that determines what you see, how you see it. It determines how you see life, the approach you give to it and above all, it sets a limit to what you can achieve.

Limitation, however, means boundary, things you don’t have access to; basically as far as  something can go. Many people have  a mindset of impossibility, negativity, and limitations.

Many times, be-cause we do not  know what our worth is, we limit ourselves.  And the moment you put a limit on yourself,  God is helpless! In our generation today, people who should be counting millions are counting thousands; those who  should be counting thousands  are counting hundreds and those who should be counting hundreds are counting tens or even lower units because often times, this is borne out of ignorance. 

Mental restriction is the worst of all restrictions. While God called Gideon, a mighty man of valour, He called himself the least in his father’s house (Judges 6:11-15).

While God gave the spies the assurance that the land to be spied was already theirs irrespective of the size of the present occupants, unfortunately, ten of them likened themselves to Grasshoppers (Numbers 13:33).

Work on your mindset. Read books that will nullify your faulty paradigms and re-tune your mindset from negativity to positivity. Go and make a difference, in Jesus mighty Name. Amen

You will have a great turn-around this 2020. 
Remain blessed. 
Shalom.

Appreciate God's Blessings

By Bro Jeremiah Epidi

Ephesians 5:20  Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

No doubt, God blesses everyone but many take their blessings for granted. As Christians, we too can be affected by this unappreciative spirit.

Like the ancient  Israelites, we could become ungrateful and lose appreciation for the blessings that we have received from God.

Numbers 21:1-7. On the contrary,  the apostle Paul  keeps stressing the need to thank God for blessings received.

Typical is his expression: “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”Eph. 5:20 “

As we look forward to God in our month of multiple blessings, may we reflect joyfully on our blessings and be moved to follow the admonition of apostle Paul cited above, and as we do this, God’s blessing will overtake us, in Jesus mighty Name. Amen.

You will have good success this 2020. 

Remain blessed. 

Shalom.

Be Fruitful...and Multiply

From Our Pastor's Desk

One of my favorite themes in the Bible is God taking something small and making something ginormous out of it.  God took a handful of dust and made a man.  He took a rib and made a woman.

He took a sling and a stone and made a giant-slaying machine.  Luke 9:16-17 Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.

And  they did eat, and were all filled: and there was  taken up of fragments that remained to them  twelve baskets.

The disciples  worried — we only have five small loaves and  two fishes! Whatever will we do?? Five loaves  and two fishes could never feed the multitudes in  the natural realm! But we have a  God who is in the multiplication  business!

He works on an entirely different mathematical equation than we are accustomed to — He takes the little we offer and turns it into more than we could fathom! How often do we feel as if we have little to offer?

The Lord is interested in everything we have to give, even if it seems minuscule to our eyes!  Let’s not be afraid to offer up our gifts, talents, abilities, accomplishments and material things that we may find insignificant.

They are not! When we give up even the littlest of things to the Lord, He brings forth an abundance! Jeremiah 30:19  And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be  few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.

As we release our seeds to our God in faith, may He multiply back to us that we shall not be few, in Jesus Name. Amen

You will have good success this 2020.

Remain blessed. 

Shalom

February 2020 - Our Month of Multiple Blessings

From Our Pastor's Desk

Welcome to this our new Month of Multiple Blessings, in Jesus name. Revelation 7:12 – “… and they worshiped God, Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen”.

In Luke 9, Jesus desired to feed the multitudes that thronged after Him. They were tired, hungry and thirsty. With compassion, the Lord asked the disciples what they had as food. The disciples worried, we only have five small loaves and two fishes!

Whatever will we do? Five loaves and two fishes could never feed the multitudes in the natural realm!  But we have a God who is in the multiplication business. He works on an entirely different mathematical equation than we are accustomed to.

He takes the little we offer and turns it into more than we could fathom.  Luke 9 showed one lad’s lunch became a buffet for tens of thousands in the hands of the Messiah. 

In this month of Multiple Blessings, our God is set to bless us in manifold, multiple returns. We serve a God of multiplication. As He did in the past, He will do in the present and the future. Rejoice.

Isaiah 61:7 - “For your shame ye shall have double…” Where others have failed, we will excel; the good things others lack, we will have in abundance; and when we ask the Lord for one thing, He will give us in multiples , in Jesus Name. Amen 

The Hand of the Lord

 From Our Pastor’s Desk

Ezra 7:6 – “This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request,
according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him”

This verse of the scripture is both informative and instructive.

While the children of Israel were in a seventy years captivity in Babylon, there came a time that God decided it was time for them to return back to the Promised Land.

 Just like Moses during their ancestors’ captivity in Egypt, it was Ezra that God chose to lead the long, dangerous,  difficult almost a thousand mile journey.

Even though it would be a daunting, dangerous journey with snakes, beasts, enemies, highway bandits etc posing as threats, Ezra refused the Babylonian king’s help to send his troop for protection, declaring that “the hand of the Lord his God was upon him”

Ezra 7:9-10 – “On the first day of the first month he began his journey from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him.

For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel”

As we learn from Ezra today and do like him to seek the law of the Lord, do it and teach it, may the Lord’s good hand rest permanently upon us, in Jesus Name. Amen

You will have good success this 2020.

Remain blessed.
Shalom.