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Psalms 124:7; &
1 Corinthians 16:9
It is good to pay good attention to the message of today because it will give you keys to use.
Psalms 124:7 (KJV)
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are escaped.
That verse talks about breakthroughs. The soul has been held in a cage in the snare of the fowler for a long time. All of a sudden, the snare broke, and the captive escaped! That is what we call a breakthrough.
1 Corinthians 16:9 (KJV)
“For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries.”
The great door, which is effectual, is breakthrough.
Now, listen carefully. Without a breakthrough; you remain where you are; & you will crawl into an unknown grave.
If you are reading this message and you are a young person, a single breakthrough could catapult your name globally. A single breakthrough can remove all the poverty from your family line.
A single breakthrough can put an end to long-term problems. Jacob knew that he was not in the place of blessings. He desperately needed to leave that place and move to the next level. One day, heaven presented him with an opportunity.
A representative of Jehovah was passing by. Jacob grabbed the angel and said, “Unless thou bless me, I know you have the capacity. I know you can help me. So unless thou bless me, I will not let thee go.”
And so the battle started. The angel said “Jacob, let me go.”_ Jacob said,”no! Unless thou bless me.”And the battle went on. And that single night was when Jacob prayed his way from Jacob to Israel.
Many of us are still sitting down in the tabernacle of our Jacob. We have not moved into the tabernacle of our Israel. That night changed the story of his life forever. A single night can change your story. This is a serious matter._
The wrestling went on. That is why he was called”wrestling Jacob.”So the wrestling continued until it was getting to be daybreak, and the angel said, “Okay, okay, what is your name?”And he replied”Jacob. “Then the angel said, “You will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you fought with God and prevailed.”That was his breakthrough.
Without that breakthrough, you would never read anything again about Jacob in the Bible. That breakthrough was necessary. Blind Bartimaeus was begging by the roadside. One day, an opportunity presented itself.
And like I always teach you here, God’s greatest gifts to us are not in things but in opportunities. For example, since you are here tonight, you cannot see the celestial beings around us who came into this service before you arrived. You do not know them.
You cannot even tell whether they are sitting beside you, and then you are asked to pray. But you now take it lightly, not knowing that your angel of breakthrough is by your side and that you are not serious.
It is always a sad moment when there is a service like this and everybody is praying and you see the heavenly messengers come in, look at a row of people, and move away without touching anybody.
Then they move to another row and touch just one person, either by laying hands on them, removing something from them, or depositing something. And then they quietly leave that person, looking around again.
Then suddenly they see another serious person, whom they go to. And it is a delight when sometimes they see a serious person, and they rush to that person in numbers, like seven or eight at once, to help the person, and all this is during the prayers.
So, God’s best gifts to us are in opportunities. Blind Bartimaeus asked questions.”What is happening? Why is there so much noise?”and they said “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”
And he ran mad immediately. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” If somebody is shouting on the street and people are saying, “He is disturbing us; it is too much,”that would show you the level of his shout. Without a breakthrough, you remain where you are.
I do not understand how somebody like me would have passed through the university when I was admitted, because when I was admitted, the school fees cost sixty naira, but my father did not have two naira.
He had to start borrowing to pay the school fees. So, if he borrowed to pay the first school fees and was finding it difficult to pay them back, the future was bleak. But fortunately, I knew how to pray on time.
All of a sudden, I was offered a scholarship.
That was the breakthrough. With the money from the scholarship, I paid off the debt of my father, and from then on, he did not pay a kobo again until I left the university.
Everybody needs one breakthrough or the other. Our walk with God is a journey of ups and downs. But the agenda of the Almighty, which I am not afraid to tell anybody, is that we should move from strength to strength and from glory to glory.
God did not say you should go from demotion to demotion or from failure to failure. He said”strength to strength, glory to glory.”But He was careful to tell us that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.(Ecclesiastes 9:11).
You need God’s help. A divine help. If blind Bartimaeus had not cried` out that day, he would have died a blind man because Jesus never passed through that place again. He was on His way to die.
A lot of people would pass through church, but church would not pass through them because they did not grab the opportunity. They did not take it seriously.
How can you be coming to a place like this and you hear, “O God, arise, and let my enemies be scattered!”and you open your mouth and begin to pray the prayer, and they are looking at you from heaven and saying”If we answer this prayer, this man will just scatter to pieces, because he is annoying heaven.”
You come to a place of prayer, a place of power, and a place of opportunity, and you are playing with sin. You are committing fornication and saying it is a mistake. You are annoying God. You are not a witch, and you are not a wizard.
Incantation, you do not know. Juju, you have no idea. Fetish power, you do not know it. The only friend and power you have is God, and then you are annoying that God. And then you expect that His angels will come into a place like this and get to you? No! Capital NO. That is how people joke with opportunities.
I got a letter two weeks ago. I first laughed before I shook my head. The man said he was living in the same house as his mother, who was working with the late Prophet Obadare.
He said he used to go there, and he did not think there was anything special about the man. But since he got to MFM, he found out that the G.O. had been mentioning his name.
He then realised that he was in trouble and that he had messed up the opportunity to meet with that great man of God and ask him to lay hands on him and pray.
Then he was asking the G.O. in the letter to help him recover the prayer the man of God should have prayed for him, to which the G.O. replied that, sadly, the opportunity is gone. He did not grab it when he should have.
I am praying for somebody here: the power that wastes opportunities will not prosper in your life! in the name of Jesus.
So His agenda is for you to go from glory to glory. Our life here on earth is a journey. But between the mountain top and victory, there are valleys.
The Bible talks about the valley of the shadow of death. It says,”Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”(Psalms 23:4).
Meaning that there is evil in the valley. Evil is present in that valley. So in between victories, there are struggles.
Unfortunately, just like 99.9 per cent of those who come for services here do not see the heavenly beings who worship with us, they do not know sometimes how close they are to breakthroughs. But our enemies know how close we are to the border of a new land before we do.
For some, when the breakthrough is close, the enemy brings a beautiful lady along, and the man who has been behaving all along now sees this beautiful lady and starts to misbehave.
And something is saying to him,_ “Brother, beware!”And you know, once the Holy Spirit is talking to you and you are shutting Him down, He will leave you to yourself, like the Bible says: As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the LORD shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity.”Psalms 125:5 (KJV)
So he will not know that the reason they brought this beautiful lady to him is because they have seen a breakthrough around the corner and they are saying, “How can we stop this man?”Or the enemies may decide to use a co-tenant to rile you up and cause you to get angry so that you miss the breakthrough that is on the way if you are not discerning.
This is what happened to Hannah in the Bible. Her breakthrough was just waiting for one word from the prophet of God, a word from the priest of the Almighty.
So they thought of ways to prevent her from getting that breakthrough. They decided to use the priest against her, but she saw them masquerading.
So when Eli said, “How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee,” she said,”no, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD.”
What the priest said was enough to annoy aybody. But she responded well, and the priest said, “Go in peace; the God of Israel has answered your prayers.”But she would have missed it if she had not been careful because the enemy had set a trap.
I am praying for somebody here: every trap that the enemy has set at the edge of your breakthrough, every manipulation at the edge of your breakthrough, every attack at the edge of your breakthroughs, I kill them now, in the name of Jesus!
Shout a twenty-one fold amen
The Bible says, “For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries.”This is where the battle comes because, by the rule of heaven, whosoever asks receives. Whosoever seeks, finds. Whosoever knocks, the door is opened to him.
So when you pray for something, spiritually, 99 per cent of the time, there is a response from heaven, but it is that place where the enemy battles people and steals what they are supposed to get. This is a very serious matter.
I shared something with you many years ago. In a church where we used to go in Akure, there used to be a woman. She would come to church very early, before everyone, and clean up the chairs.
In those days, we used to have 5am service everyday for about an hour or so. So, this woman would come in, arrange the place, and sweep because she was seeking the fruit of the womb. She kept doing this for a while.
Unfortunately, she did not have the miracle of open eyes, and one morning, after she was dressed to leave, the devil came to her.
“See yourself. Every day you go and sweep for other people’s children. Has God answered you? Stay at home today. You can go tomorrow.” She was not like Hannah.
So she stayed back that day. All of a sudden that day, as the service was about to close, there was a prophecy that said,”Brethren, hear the word of the Lord today. I brought three children to give to my daughter, who has been cleaning this place. Unfortunately, she is not here, and it is written that the word I have sent shall not come back to me void. So since she is not here, heaven has decided to give the children to other people.”This was how this woman failed woefully to win that battle.
I am praying for somebody here today: every battle at the edge of your breakthrough must scatter! in the name of Jesus.
What am I trying to explain? The enemy knows how close we are to breakthroughs. When your name is announced in heaven, you will not hear it here on earth because most of us here do not see or hear anything.
But the enemies hear. And they start plotting about how to stop it. The enemy knows more about our strengths than we do. The enemies know more about what God wants to do for His people than even God’s own people do.
They know this because they have access to the spirit realm. So before breakthroughs, there is always a hard battle to fight.
Sometimes it is a cleverly disguised battle. There are couples for whom it is the day they are fighting that the woman should have conceived. But the enemy knows this, so it is during this period that they will fight.
At the time of passing exams, fighting starts. At the level of someone going for a promotional exam or something that will move him forward, that night masquerades will come, offering evil materials, and if such a person does not know how to deal with them, the person collapses at the border of that breakthrough.
When you have had breakthroughs and a new breakthrough is coming, there is always a harder battle to fight. At every new level of breakthrough, there is always a new enemy. That is why we always tell people at Bible colleges that at every new level, there is a new devil.
So if you are a pastor and you have 100 members and you are fighting one devil, when the membership increases to 200, a new devil comes up. When it gets to 1,000 members, another devil will show up. So right at the edge of breakthroughs, there is a new battle to fight.
We will continue this message at the strategic meeting tomorrow.
PRAYER POINTS
- Book of remembrance, assigned for my uncommon breakthroughs, open by fire! in the name of Jesus;
- Powers that hate my existence, die! in the name of Jesus;
- Strongman, at the edge of my breakthroughs, what are you waiting for? Die! in the name of Jesus; &
- Witchcraft powers, marine powers, at the edge of my breakthroughs, die! in the name of Jesus.
God bless you in Jesus name
