HIS MASTERPIECE

READ: 1 KINGS 19:19-21

If you ask an artist, he will tell you they have showpieces but beyond that, they have something better – the masterpiece. A showpiece is a great work of art but a masterpiece is unique and eternal. A masterpiece is a priceless treasure. God wants you to become a showpiece. But beyond that, He wants you to become a master piece – something of inestimable value. Are you prepared for it? However, there are certain conditions you must satisfy to become a masterpiece. First, you need to be totally consecrated to God. According to 1 Kings 19:19-21, after God called Elisha, he never looked back, not even for one day. He was completely sold out to God.
Second, you must be unspoilt and unspoilable by success. Elisha had had his fair share of success in farming before the Lord called him. He managed that success very well. After he became the national prophet, and God used him to perform great signs and wonders, he still found time to go regularly to the mountain top of God’s presence to recharge his battery. He managed his spiritual success very well. It is easier to manage failure than success. For the one at the valley, there’s only one way up. But if you are on top, there are several angles you can go. Elisha spent years under Elijah. The latter was a rough man yet Elisha served him for years before becoming the masterpiece.
According to our reading, because Elisha managed his success perfectly well, the anointing followed him to the grave and remained potent years later to the point of raising a dead man to life. Some Christians particularly ministers have no future in the ministry because of pride. The trickles of the anointing which they are receiving get them tickled to the point of wanting everybody to hero-worship them. Do you love the praise of men? It will cost the praise of God. To remain relevant in God’s plan, you must remain 100% humble, submissive and dependent on God. Humility and pride are two contrary attributes that can play a key role in your walk with God. While the former provides you an empty container for God to continue to fill, the latter provides you an already filled container for God to take from. You are not yet your best. Whatever you are now you can be better. You are worth all of God’s investments. Remember He wants you to be His masterpiece. Your action, response and humility will determine how soon you get there.

MEMORIZE: JAMES 4:6 –But He gives more grace. Wherefore He says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

QUALIFIED FOR HARVEST?

READ: GALATIANS 6:7-9

We do not have anniversaries every day. Normally, an anniversary is a period of feasting. The preacher who will preach on that day will preach a very pleasant sermon. Your harvest is coming. God wants you to prepare for a harvest according to Genesis 8:22. It says: “While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” One law that is the most powerful of laws, and has its tentacles spread into every facet of human endeavour in the law of harvest. According to our reading and Hosea 8:7, a harvest is far bigger than the seed that was sown to produce it.
2 Corinthians 9:6 says your harvest is directly proportional to the amount of seed sown. This accounts for why many poor people remain poor. Besides, the harvest is always of the same seed producing it according to James 3:12. Whatever you sow is exactly what you will reap. The question is: What are you sowing? Sometime ago, I was about to travel to Kenya for a conference. My lovely wife said since I had never been there before and was not sure of the kind of food they will serve; she would give me a treat, so that even if I ate nothing for that whole week, I will always recall I had a great meal at home.
She prepared my favorite pounded yam with one large chicken and set the table for me to eat before heading for the airport. Just then some of my friends came from Ibadan. Boy! Were they hungry! They went straight to the table and leveled the mountain of pounded yam. It was too late for my wife to prepare another meal so I travelled. Do you know that every day of the conference somebody came and invited me out? And wherever we went, they served me chicken. If we had not sown that meal I would not have had such a harvest. Many of us want a harvest. We desire and pray for it. Harvest is not by mere desires or wishes. Harvest is not just by praying and fasting. If you truly want a harvest, sow what you want and at harvest time you will reap what you have sown. Sow big, reap big. Sow money, harvest money. Sow clothes. Somebody sowed some ties to some needy brothers. At harvest time, he reaped ties – better ones. Sow pieces of land and you will reap them in prime areas. This principle works always except in a trial of faith situation, when harvest is temporarily delayed.

MEMORIZE: JAMES 3:12 –Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? Either a vine, figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

OVERCOMING GRAVITATIONAL PULL

READ: LUKE 24:49-53

“Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).
Jesus not only operated in the Law of Resurrection, He is the Law of Resurrection and the life. When God wanted to reverse the three fold ministry of Satan and restore all that he had stolen, killed or destroyed, He sent the Law of Resurrection and life in the person of Jesus Christ. If you receive Him into your hear and let His law govern your life, He will recover your loss, quicken your dying parts and restore things destroyed. To what extent are you benefiting from the operation of the law of resurrection today?
“And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out their sight” (Acts 1:9). The law of resurrection is stronger and more powerful than the law of gravity. No one can go up and stay up without falling down. When the law of resurrection operates in your life, you will continue to rise without coming down. Just as Jesus ascended without falling, you too will defeat the law of gravity and ascend in every area of life without falling. If you keep rising and falling in your Christian life, the law of resurrection is yet to fully operate in you. If you take one step forward and two steps backwards in academics, work, business, etc., it shows something is hindering the law of resurrection from subduing the gravitational pull of the enemies. Check your life and ensure the law of sin and death is not responsible.
One glorious morning – it could be noon, evening or night – the trumpet will sound. Jesus is our fore-runner in the rapture. He heard a trumpet call for His return home and even though He was still speaking with His disciples, the law of gravity bowed to the law of Resurrection as He ascended. On the day of rapture it will be our turn. After the ascension of Jesus, the law of gravity went into serious research and discovered that sin is very heavy. A sin is a weight while righteousness is very light. To be raptured, you must be very holy – very light. So it brokered a truce with the law of sin and death to operate in as many believers as possible. When the trumpet sounds, the law of gravity will triple his efforts to prevent any ascension. Only believers who operate in the law of resurrection will overcome the gravitational pull. If the law of sin and death is still working in you, there will be no rapture. Make amends now.

MEMORIZE: ACTS 1:9 –And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out their sight.