Monday, 9 December 2013
OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL. MONDAY 9 DECEMBER 2013
THEME : MOVE ON TO MULTIPLICATION.
MEMORISE : And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1 : 28.
READ : GENESIS 1 : 27 – 28.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: JOB 8 – 10.
Another attribute of a divine midwife is that he or she must be able to earn a reward from God. God rewarded the midwives of Exodus 1 and He is looking for those who can work hard to earn His commendation.
“Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.”
2 John 8
His commendation does not come cheap: it must be earned. The way you are working for Him, can you earn His ‘Well done?’
If you consider His dealings with people in Bible times, you will notice that God loves fruitful people. He loves progressive increases but prefers multiplications. When the servants who received five and two talents returned to their master, with a double of what they received, they got the same level of commendation (Matthew 25 : 14 – 23). God loves multiplication! In Genesis 1 : 27 – 28, immediately after creating Adam and Eve, He commanded them to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. These are stages in growth. God wants you to start by bearing fruit, and then move to the stage of multiplication of the fruits so that you can eventually dominate the earth. Many of us stop at bearing fruit which should be our starting point. It is time you moved up to the stage of multiplication. If you were winning a soul to Christ per month, now win 10 souls or more to Christ per month, but do not stop there. Lead them to the believers class to disciple them. Follow them up and ensure that they are doing what you have done. In other words, reproduce yourself in them so that they too can do the same. As this chain continues, a time will come when your spiritual children will be in different parts of the world, taking the world for Jesus. Thank God for the past years of winning minimal souls. Increase your efforts and become a mentor to your converts, and they to their converts down the line. If we can take this up and be committed to 10 souls monthly for a year and mentor them to the point of each getting their 10 souls, in less than five years, we would have reached out to the world. Arise and start your chain of converts today!
ACTION POINT :
A convert you win today can lead 100 souls to Christ. Go for your 10 souls this period.
Physician heal thyself: Pastor Chris Okotie’s Bombs Catholics, says they will go to Hell
The music star-turned preacher has a word for over 1.3 billion catholics globally from his church pulpit yesterday Sunday service.
“All Catholics in the world will go to hell because they worship Satan and are led by an Anti-Christ Pope who is a friend to the devil”, Nigeria’s controversial preacher and former presidential candidate, Chris Okotie, told his congregation on Sunday, leaving members bewildered.
“They don’t believe in heaven. They believe in purgatory, the purgatory that they invented,”
Fifty-five year old Okotie, while preaching in his Household of God Church in Ikeja area of Lagos on Sunday, said the Catholic church is “a counterfeit church set up by Satan” and that Catholics “bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus’ body.”
Pastor Okotie stressed: “They are not Christians and have never been.”
Pastor Kris okotie and former wife
“They don’t know Jesus. They believe that when they eat bread on Sundays, they are eating the body of Jesus. It’s ritual,” he told his stunned congregation.
According to PM News, Okotie said Pope Francis is an Anti-Christ who does the job of the devil and that time is fast approaching when the Catholic church will pledge allegiance to Satan.
“The pope is an Anti-Christ and the Catholic church will soon declare for Satan. This is the end of times,” Okotie erupted.
He advised members of his church to come to the rescue of Catholics and evangelise them. This, he said, was not out of disrespect but out of respect for the word of God.
He said those who know the truth should bring it to those who do not know it in the Catholic Church.
Okotie said one of the Catholic most revered Popes, Pope John Paul 11, surrendered the Catholic Church to Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus Christ, instead of Jesus himself. He said even the current Pope Francis has also done same.
He said Catholics are not Christians and do not worship the same Christ that he preaches in his church, at least the one spoken about in the Bible.
Okotie said he did not write the Bible but it was clear to him that those in the Catholic church were lost and were heading to hell fire.
“That church, the Catholic church has been there for Satan and at the right time, they will declare for Satan,” Okotie said.
Okotie who has been married twice and divorced also twice said a beauty pageant will take place in his church next Sunday to select the most beautiful woman in his church.
He also said that Nigeria’s famous preacher Prophet T.B. Joshua is the son of the devil and his followers will go straight to hell.
But funny enough, in recent years, the same Pastor Okotie has been saying that God has anointed him to be the President of Nigeria. That prophecy has not come to pass in 2 presidential elections that he participated in
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WHY I DON’T PRAY TO MARY – BY Will Graham
What a wonderful woman of God. Her faith, her obedience and her whole hearted submission to the will of God never cease to amaze me. Down and throughout the ages few saints have been as sorely tried and tested as she was; and yet through it all, she remained faithful to the God of Israel and to the Son she so problematically bore.
No Bible loving person will fail to be moved by Mary’s God-centred love; but at the same time, no Bible reader could ever fall into the trap of turning Jesus’ mother into a quasi-Saviour like figure to whom we must pray and intercede earnestly (and through whom we have access to the Father). Such thinking is a blatant distortion of New Testament faith. So do I pray to Mary? No, I don’t. Why don’t I pray to her? Let me offer you a bouquet of reasons.
1.- One, I don’t pray to Mary because Mary isn’t God. The Bible makes it crystal clear that prayer is to be directed to God and God alone. The Bible strictly prohibits the deification of any creature in the stead of God. I can’t help thinking how horrified mild Mary would have been had she realized that so many billions of biblically ignorant ‘believers’ would use her name to usurp the authority of the Almighty.
Roman Chatholic prayer
2.- Two, I don’t pray to Mary because there is only one mediator between God and man. Who is that? Let Paul reply in apostolic tone: “The man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). The early church nowhere taught the doctrine of co-redemptrix. Of course we don’t deny that Mary played a vital part in God’s redemptive economy- after all, she birthed the very Son of God in Bethlehem!- but to say that she is a bridge between us and God is to do away with the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus’ blood is the only access a Christian has to the presence of the Father. And only means only!
3.- Three, I don’t pray to Mary because Mary was a sinner just like me. Mary’s joyful testimony gives witness to this awakening truth: “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:47). Mary called God her Saviour because she too needed liberation from sin. Mary was human, all too human. She had felt the cold bite of sin and stood in need of the saving grace of God. Mary was no sin-free saint. She shared our fallen human condition and thus disqualified herself from any potential calls to prayer-answering ministry.
4.- Four, I don’t pray to Mary because Mary doesn’t listen to me. Mary has spent the best part of the last two millennia caught up in the fullness of celestial bliss. Her gaze has been fixed on the triune Godhead and she has been praising His infinite beauty to ecstatic excess ever since she got to glory. The things of this present world matter very little to her now. She is with Jesus. She joins voices with the angelical host to sing anthems of praise unto her King. Mary doesn’t pay attention to our prayers. She doesn’t have a cell phone any more. And at any rate, if she did have one, I very much doubt she’d turn it on.
5.- Five, I don’t pray to Mary because Mary would want me to pray to God. If I truly want to honour a person I love, the best way is to honour someone they love. If you want to make me happy, speak well about my family, my friends and my loved ones. In the same manner, if sister Mary were still with us, she would take supreme delight in knowing that we love God with as much passion as she does. As a truly Spirit-led woman of God, she would tell us to pray to God, to look to God and to trust in God (never in anyone else).
I hope this short list of five observations (and the list is by no means exhaustive) should shun us from ever thinking of kneeling before the mother of God’s only Son. Mary is not be prayed to. Yes, we admire her faith. Yes, we thank God for her ministry. And yes, we marvel at her exemplary life. But Mary is not to be sought in prayer. God is to be sought in prayer. Any prayer that is Mary-directed is foully offensive both in the nostrils of the Almighty God and an affront to the legacy of a quite wonderful woman of God.
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