One day you will die, then what?
Ever wondered what happened after death? This is a video dramatisation of the story of Kenneth Hagin who died as a young man and came back to earth. He lived into his eighties subsequently but this experience radically changed the course of his life. It may be the answer to the questions you’ve been asking.
Fulfilling divine assignment – angelic encounters, thought provoking
Failing to fail no more
People do not fail in life because they fail at things but because they fail at learning from their failures. What do you do when you fail at something? Do you sit down, recognize you have failed and critically assess the situation to see where you went wrong and what changes need to be made in you to achieve success the next time, or do you get self defensive and try to put the blame everywhere else rather than at your own door? When you do not confront your shortcomings you will not overcome them and they will trip you up over and over again. As a pastor you will often see where people’s wrong moral choices and character issues have taken them, but will you point it out?
In church people often play defence games. A pastor in their eyes is someone who hugs them and whispers sweet nothings to them even as they dig their own graves. A word of truth Read more
God who?
It seems to me that God being omniscient is in no way unreasonable in requiring that we believe Him even if it means disbelieving all else. And perhaps it is the concept of Him knowing all that we have failed to grasp. Or perhaps it is more than that, it may be that the whole personality of God remains a mystery to our generation. Is it possible to know all there is to know about God? Most certainly not, or He would cease to be infinite.
Yet there is more that we can know than we imagine. God delights in self disclosure and revelation. He gave us the Bible. He repeatedly told people to write things down. Why? So we could come back to them later and discover more and more of God. Yet we know so little. It is indeed a malady that afflicts our generation, the lack of meditation on the Person of God. Consequently we know the words, we can reel off the attributes, but to what extent have they penetrated our psyche and transformed our perspective of God?
God wants to be the centre of our attention, Read more
Prayer Retreat – Beyond the excitement, lessons learnt
It’s been two weeks since we returned from that awesome prayer retreat in Versailles, we left there exhilarated, reinvigorated and tremendously happy. We also came away with lasting lessons that will endure when the excitement has abated. We learnt :
1. that God is pleased with prayer, and will make it happen when we pursue it. We searched high and low for a place for this retreat and on the eve of our departure had to give up the monastery we were meant to go to, but at the very last minute another place opened up to us in Versailles and it was truly a godsend.
2. that God will empower us to pray if we are willing. the people went beyond what they thought themselves capable of; the first day we started prayer at 6am, at 2pm when i wanted to stop to give them a break, they said oh no, are we stopping already? We finally broke at 3.30, returned at 4.15 and went on till 7pm, had dinner, rested and were back from 10pm to 3am, rested and were back at 8.30 the next morning.
3. that prayer is the believer’s natural habitat; as we went deeper and deeper, it came easier and easier, Read more
Unchanging Standards
One day, someone I had spoken to a few days earlier at an international organisation came to invite me for lunch; they had been surprised to learn that I was a committed Christian and a Minister. They wanted to talk about God. So we went for lunch, they asked me many questions, one of them was on the church’s position on prevailing sexual mores. I was very clear. They wondered, should the church not evolve with the times?
My answer, if the church were a social institution, indeed it would and ought to, but if the church is a divine institution following the principles of God, then those principles are eternal and immutable and will not be altered to suit the whims and fancies of every generation. He then went on to tell me about a Bishop who had almost brought him to faith in Christ and years later had now become extremely liberal in his approach to scripture and scriptural moral values. Even though he was not yet a Christian, it confused and surprised him.
That is the dilemma the church faces today. Must we Read more
A raised eyebrow never killed anyone
Lord, give us some grit. Lee Grady in an article recounts his recent visit to Pakistan and an encounter with a Pakistani pastor that affected him deeply. This pastor oversees 900 house churches of approximately fifty persons each, and lives quite modestly, even by third world standards. He showed him several parts of his body that bore scars of gun shots, beatings, and physical assaults of all types because of his faith in Jesus. He spoke of the numerous attacks on Pakistani Christians, of miracles and healings he experienced as he ministered in the open air to crowds that were mostly non-Christian.
Believers in some countries experience great persecution, they are targeted by the state and radical opposing groups and yet they continue to hold fast to Jesus and thrive. The Read more
AUTHOR
pastor bola olivia ogedengbe,
The Theophilus Company,
ABBA HOUSE, Paris,
see profile-
