Text: Luke 19:12-26
Minister: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O MFM Worldwide)
Let me caution straight away that anybody who is allergic to strong praying will not enjoy the prayers of tonight. It is for those who are interested in strong praying, the kind of praying that Jacob did and the angel had no option; he had to ask him “what is your name?” And he said “I am Jacob”. And he said “you shall no longer be called Jacob” and from that prayer meeting day, the destiny of Jacob changed. And from that day we began to hear ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ – Just that one day transaction.
===> I see somebody here today: The power of God shall move you from your Jacob to your Israel, in the name of Jesus.
So, get ready for the prayers we are going to pray here tonight. They are non compromising prayers. In our text we read an interesting story that is heavily loaded with lessons. Jesus made a very dangerous statement that says “The Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him, but Woe unto him that betrays the Son of Man. It would have been better if he was not born” meaning that a person can come to this world in vain. For that purpose, I want you to raise up your right hand and pray like a giant spiritual soldier. Pray with the spirit of ‘enough is enough’:
===> Powers assigned to make me come to the world in vain, you are liars, die in the name of Jesus.
The first lesson you can pick from this passage is in Luke 19:26 which says that what you have can even be taken from you. There are almost fifty sermons from this story we just read. I am going to try to preach all fifty that this passage is telling us. The parable is really loaded with messages.
The parable is telling us that:
– you do not really have anything. Everything belongs to the Lord.
– the more risks you take, the more opportunities you will have. Faith is a risk. So when you do not want to take risks, you lose opportunities.
– the more opportunities you have, the greater your chances of success. This is a very serious matter. Most of the times, God’s best gift to us is opportunities, not in material things; and if you lose the opportunity, it is a tragedy. Your coming here tonight or watching us online is an opportunity given to you by the Lord. You either make use of it or not. All that blind Bartimaeus had was an opportunity. He just heard that Jesus was passing by and he started.
– when gifts are buried, it is a tragedy. It would be a tragedy if after you have left this earth, you get to heaven and they line people before you and say “you have the gift to deliver this person, that person, that person, but for some reason you know, you buried it. You did not use it”. You said somebody said something that got you angry and that is why you buried it? It is a tragedy.
– whatever God gives to us, He trusts us with it. No matter how little, He is giving it to us.
– our gifts represent our abilities.
– the principle of opportunity is a chance to grow.
– life is a journey in responsibility. It is an adventure in responsibility. He gave them one pound each. It was their responsibility to trade with it, make profit with it and declare the profit to their master.
– what we do with what God gives us, reveals how we view God. If you know that God will come and ask for returns, you will use what He has given you better. Your gift may be something you do not consider as a gift. You may be a beautiful woman or a handsome man. It is a gift. Or a knowledgeable person? A gift. A brilliant person? A gift. An orator? A gift.
– whether we believe it or not, whether we like it or not, whether preachers are preaching about it or not, a day of accountability is coming. Everybody will account. The Bible says ‘we must all stand before the throne of judgment to give account of what we have done, either good or evil’. That day is coming.
– what we have, we must use. Or we will lose what we have. If you do not use it, you lose it.
– who you follow determines what follows you. If you come to a house of God like this, you follow Jesus. You follow the teachings, the prayers. It will determine what follows you.
– laziness is a destiny sinker. That servant said “you gave me one pound, so I tied it in my napkin and kept it”. Laziness did not allow him to work.
– you can see opportunities as a burden or as a blessing. God may open opportunities to you and you see it as a burden. This is a serious matter and I want you to understand.
– your gift has the power to change your life. It was one pound given to that man which made him governor of ten cities. Your gift properly positioned and used, can change your life.
– we must invest what we have been given. If not, it shall be wasted.
– there is no such thing as a risk free life. Those willing to risk nothing actually risk losing everything. The Bible says “the lazy man saith there is a lion in the street, so he will not go out”.
– he who does not learn from history will often repeat the history.
– you can make a difference with your life if you make the most of the opportunities God has given to you.
– whatever opposition you are facing today indicates your strength, not your weakness. Satan does not attack what is worthless.
Are you doing anything for God? Certainly, if it is God you are doing it for, there will be opposition. There will be those who will not like you at all. There will be those who want you dead, because of what you are doing for God. So if there is something you are doing for God and the enemy is not opposing you, it is doubtful whether it is God you are doing it to. Which of the men of God did they not oppose? Jesus looked at the Israelites and said “which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?” You must understand this very well.
– you carry a treasure that intimidates your enemy. You may not know, but that which you think is little in your hand is intimidating to the enemy.
– your mountain is only as tall and strong as you make it yourself.
– the unprofitable servant in our passage here lost everything by doing nothing. That servant faced the master and said “I know you are a hard man”. The master did not deny. The Lord too is a hard man. Moses gave eleven excuses why he would not do the work, God cancelled all. When he eventually said “I cannot speak well”, God said “okay no problem. This is Aaron. Whatever you want to say, Aaron will help you echo it”.
The man who saw the burning bush, who saw his stick becoming a snake should have said “Lord, I am a stammerer, heal me.” At that level God said “okay, I hand over your right of speech to Aaron”. The Lord said “out of the hands of those who do not have, they will take what they have and give to those who have”. A very strange passage. What is the Bible trying to tell us? Is it saying the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer? What it is saying is that if you do not trade with what you have, He will take what you have and give it to those who already have.
When a person has a house, there is a stronger possibility he can have more. Same with a car. So if you are not careful, He will take what you have and give it to those who already have. That is why we need to pray for ourselves, our different countries. Imagine somebody goes to the market and sells all sorts of fruits, working hard in the sun to make money. Then after working hard to make the money, he then takes the money to go and buy a phone, manufactured by nations that are already richer. They are taking from those who do not even have to give to those who already have. We can go on and on but this is not our topic for tonight. But these are lessons to pick up from this one.
But what we are saying is this: We do not determine what we receive in life. You cannot control who your parents are, where you are born, the day you will be born. I know if I ask people here now “where will you like to be born?” People will say “definitely not here”. But you do not have a control over it. You do not even have a control over the family you are born into, the city you are born in or the country you are born in. You also do not control the experiences you have gone through. You have to grow up to control those experiences.
Some people are born into a rich family. Others are born into a poor family. Some start well, Some start poor. Some start bad. What I am trying to explain to you tonight before we start praying is that, the issue is not what you have but whether you will change the value of what you have. If you are here tonight and you have invested in a business and it failed, you need prayers seriously. Because the issue is not what you have in your hand, but whether you will change the value. There are some people that no matter how much you give to them, once they invest it, it is gone. They cannot change the value of what they have. This is a very serious matter.
===> I am praying for somebody here: every desert arrow fired into your hands, business, career, I command them to backfire in the name of Jesus! (A sevenfold amen).
God can even give somebody divine acceleration. (1 Samuel 2:6-9). It is one of the strongest prayers we have to pray here tonight. In life, you run as far as what is running after you. The man born in the city may sometimes be sluggish, dozing while reading his books, instead of sitting down to study he is running after girls, but the man born in the village will run faster. His condition will give him acceleration. This is a serious matter. A man pursued by a lion is different from a man pursued by a dog or a rabbit.
When you look around and no helper, no graduate in your family, no house, no rich man, then something is pursuing you. You have to run, and your speed is represented by those running after you. So, in life, you do not control where you start, but you can control where you end. This is why I want you to listen to me carefully as from now on. These people were given talents and some traded with the talents and profited, some did not trade with it. What is a talent? Because in other passages of scripture, we keep seeing the word talent. A talent is:
– an endowment.
– an ability.
– a capability.
– a capacity.
– an expertise.
– a flair.
– an internal gift.
– a genius gift.
– competence.
– potential.
A talent can be any of these ten things, but the heaviest is potential. Potential is:
– what you can become that you have not yet become.
– what you can do that you have not yet done.
– Where you can go that you have not yet gone.
– your unused strength.
– your untapped power.
– your unrealised ability.
– your unrecognised gift.
– the sleeping giant within you
– Your unsung songs
– your unwritten books.
– your unread manifesto.
– that thing in you awaiting discovery.
Let me say this again loud and clear: you do not control what you are born with, but you can control the value you give to them. One traded with his talents, made five more. Another traded and made ten. When you are trading, you are doing two things: you give up what you have and take up what you do not have. When you go to school, you give up ignorance and take up knowledge. That is what trading is. You give up your sin to get the righteousness of God. There are many examples of those in scriptures who traded what they had for what they did not have. Joseph traded prison for rulership. Esau unfortunately traded his birthright for a plate of food. Esther traded ordinary life and got royalty.
Samson traded the anointing and got disgrace. It is unfortunate that some trade useful things to acquire useless things. Tonight, you can trade what you have. If you are sick, you can trade the sickness to acquire healing. If you are a sinner you can trade your sins for the righteousness of God. If you are down you can trade that position and be lifted. This is a very very serious matter. People have left you behind, no matter what age you are. But somebody like Moses started at 80. So it is not too late. You cannot control what you have, but you can give a new value to what you have. You may not like what you have. You may even prefer what belongs to another person. But trade with it so that you can get what you like.
You may think it is too late. No, every point is a point of new beginning. It may even be a new thing if you go to a new school to get educated. You cannot waste your life. Do not waste your time. Like the four lepers in the Bible who said “we do not well. If we keep quiet, we shall die”. And they took the risk. The worst trader of all time in the Bible was Judas Iscariot. He traded his ministry and his destiny for thirty shekels of silver. I have been to many naming ceremonies in my life but I have never got to a place where I asked “daddy, what is the baby’s name?” And they reply with “Judas”.
Judas lost the presence of Jesus, the privilege of apostolic ministry, his participation in pentecost, his place in ministry, and his habitation. The Bible said “let his habitation become desolate”. He lost his place in heaven. Generally, before things are lost, they become loose. Anybody who does not want to lose a golden coin cannot be tossing it up and down in a boat. That is what Samson did, he was careless. Whatever you trade to get Jesus will move your destiny forward.
Are you a profitable trader? Are you an unprofitable trader? The talents, gifts and endowment God has given to you, what are you doing with them? Or have you allowed the enemies to bury you in the dungeon of forgetfulness? Have you allowed the enemies to incarcerated your star in the prison of failure? Tonight is a night to pray, both for gifts you have and the ones you did not realise are there.
How do you become a profitable trader?
– surrender your life totally to Jesus.
– decide to be close to God.
– know your destiny.
– you need to evaluate your current position. If it is not okay, hate it with perfect hatred.
– develop a rugged determination to reposition your life. Use what you have to get what you want.
– practise aggressive and unashamed holiness, because without holiness no man can see the Lord.
– pray yourself into divine positioning.
– work very hard. (John 9:4).
– ensure that your deliverance is complete. Deliverance is like an onion, you peel off one layer at a time. Some may have up to 30 layers, some are just 5. Incomplete deliverance breeds many buried evil things in one.
There must be somebody here who will say ‘Father, I need to pray from my Jacob to my Israel. I need to reevaluate my position. I need to be a profitable trader.’ Use your gifts to depopulate hell fire and populate heaven. This is why today’s prayers will be aggressive because a lot of people have started their life in deficit already and they need to get out and begin to move. Some are labouring under collective captivity, collective evil curses, collective bondage. And the blunt truth is this: if you come from such a family, you alone cannot break the captivity.
The only way is if the family themselves decide to come together and they break it. But if it is just you, you can only individually break it. The Bible says that He will request the sins of the parents upon the children up up the third third fourth generation and have mercy on those who fear Him and obey Him, meaning that even if believers break ancestral yokes upon their lives and they have children who are not born again and children who do not want to pray, the thing will still visit them, although He has broken it from their lives.
This is a serious matter and those are the areas our prayers are going tonight.
PRAYER POINTS
(Put your hand on your belly button)
1. Iniquities of my father’s house, crying against my glory, die in the name of Jesus.
2. Every inherited covenant that has stopped me, catch fire, in the name of Jesus.
3. Every rope tying me down to a dead relative, break! in the name of Jesus.
4. Poison of my father’s house, come out! in the name of Jesus.
(Remove your hand from your belly button)
5. Powers assigned to bury my potential, you are liars, die in the name of Jesus.
6. My talents, what are you doing in the prison of the enemy? Come out by fire! in the name of Jesus.
7. Every tongue gathered to destroy me, destroy yourself, in the name of Jesus.
8. O God arise, increase the shame of my enemies, in the name of Jesus.
9. Every enemy of my next level, you are a liar, die, in the name of Jesus.
10. All star gazers harassing my star, die in the name of Jesus.
11. Any good thing, stolen from my life when I was a baby, I recover them by fire, in the name of Jesus.
MFM H/Q Sermons
LIKE our Page on FACEBOOK
www.facebook.com/mfmsermons
www.mfmhqsermons.wordpress.com
