Be focused — Prophet Cherub Obadare

Hallelujah. We have God. We have open eyes. Oh, let the angels. We have just sang it. The question is, is our heart really ready? It's one thing to sing it. It's another thing to have it in a reality in our lives. The word of God changes. In fact, it's the oldest book you can ever find, and it's the latest book. Ever updated book you can find. And so, when you expose yourself to it, it changes your life. Hallelujah. Father, we thank you. Blessed be your name. We trust you this morning that you will open our understanding, that you give us light, that you'll turn our life around. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Give Jesus a big hand. Hallelujah. Let's take our seat. I welcome everyone of us in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray the Lord will open our understanding and give us a better light in the name of Jesus. Let me quickly pass this comment. I discovered that some of us came in late who are leaders this morning, heads of units and others. Please, hence forth, we should know when you come late, you are not supposed to take any part in what you are doing. If you leave it for those who come early, please, it's important we note that. Lord, we help us in Jesus name. Um, I want to help us, um, see, and I am trusting the Holy Spirit to help me see equally from our previous teachings, The Lord has given us a theme this year. And one of the theme he has given us, one of the things he has said to us this year is that the year is the year of consecration for us. Year of consecration. And we, we understood that consecration is separation unto God. It's not just consecration. You are consecrated to him. You are separated unto him from something to him. You are moving from one thing unto him. There's an habit, there's something, there's there's an attitude, there's something in you. You are moving from that stuff and getting yourself separate. Lately, I was reading Andromas book. And Andromas said something interesting. He said there are things that are not sin and they are carnal. It is not everything that is called carnality that is a sin. There are things that are of the flesh and basically it's not a sin. It's just a distraction. Anything, can I talk to you? Anything that distract you from God, some things are not sin. It could be your job. Is it Is it a sin to go to work? Talk to me. It's not a sin. Anything that distracts a man from God is called carnal. And so, the Lord has one of the prayer I've been praying, you know, personally is that God, help me not to miss out of what you have for me as a person, for the body of Christ in this new decade, in this year 2020. And what God is going to do in the next 10 years starts from now. And God has given us an open check. It is left for you to draw out of what he has given you, or you leave it, or you just, you know, let it be. So, the question is, are you willing? How How how serious do you really want to draw out of the treasures that the Lord has opened unto us? There's no limit to how much you can draw. But you are to decide, you are to determine how much you can draw. The Lord will help us in Jesus name. How to keep focus. We are going to be looking at another series from now. We have looked at consecration, and we saw that consecration is the will of God, as we saw in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 um verse 7 says, "For God has not called us unto uncleanness." If if I can have um the 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and from verse 7. By now we should know that scripture offhand. You know, uh for the last few weeks now, I've repeatedly mentioned it, "For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness." So, we are called. We are called. And one thing I want us to understand this morning, please everyone listen to this, this is very important, that the first call of a believer is not to serve, is to minister to God. Your first call, most often we we we rush into service when we come to God. We rush into doing something for him. But the first call on a believer is to first of all minister to God and be in his presence. So that when he bridge on you, enough of him when you enough of him, you are able to serve him and serve people whatever you have. We easily substitute service to God to be ministering I mean service for to be um ministering unto God. There are two different things. And so the first call is to minister to him, to him in holiness. He said, "I saw 24 elders with their crown casting their crowns, casting their crowns, singing holy, holy, holy." The Lord will help us in the name of Jesus. And so, from what we have seen in 1 Thessalonians will be will be serious now. We've seen sanctification. We've seen that our spirit has been purified. The day you got born again, your spirit is as pure as the spirit of Jesus, even now. You might have made mistakes. You might have done some things wrong, but your spirit has been seal. Say after me, say, "My spirit have been sealed." I will show you a few scriptures this morning to show you the position of your spirit. There's nothing that can There's no amount of sin after you get born again that can affect your spirit again. Your spirit has been sealed by the Holy Spirit. And you know, it's important we equally understand that the spirit is that side where Christ is fully dominant. As you are seated now, the the holiness in your spirit the the purity in your spirit is the same purity. You don't have a lesser purity of what Christ has. You are as pure as Christ in your spirit. And man is made of three components: spirit, soul, and body. As pure as holy as Christ is now, that's how holy you are in your spirit. Because in your born again spirit, when you were born, you were born of another spirit entirely that came from God. As that spirit cannot be contaminated. You may have wrong thoughts in your heart. It cannot it cannot interfere with the spirit. Your spirit has been sealed. Hallelujah. Praise God. I want to read to you uh Ephesians 1 and from verse 13. If you can give it up to me here. Ephesians 1:13. Let me show you something. "In whom you also trusted, after that ye heard the word of God, the gospel of your salvation. In whom also after that ye believed, after you believed that Christ is the son of God, after you believed that he died and resurrected, what happened? You were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." Now, what part of you was sealed? Your spirit. It's just like how many of you have seen Gesha? You know, after the production of Gesha, and they put it in a can, they seal it up so that the airborne um you know, viruses cannot penetrate. That's why they can import it months on the on the sea and not even we have it. It has been sealed. So your spirit is sealed. And so that's why the Lord communicates through your spirit, because your soul can be contaminated. Your imagination can be corrupted. The things you see on movies, the things you see, you hear people say can corrupt your soul and get your soul so vulnerable to the devil. But, God, the Bible says those that will worship God will worship him in spirit. And so your your spirit came alive when Christ said. So, as soon as you believe the Holy Spirit became the seed. So, presently, no matter what you have done in the time past, your spirit is not affected. Your spirit is not affected. That's why till now, even when you go wrong, God still ministers through the spirit. You still hear God speak to you. And at times, you will not hear because your soul is too far from the spirit. Because the soul is the bridge between the spirit of a man and his body. And so, when you allow sin, the deceitfulness of sin hardens the soul of a man. Hardens the heart of a man. And the man becomes insensitive to God. So, even when God is speaking so loud as I am speaking in his spirit, he may not hear. That's the danger of sin. When you are a believer and you are still committing sin, you are hardening your soul to become insensitive to the voice of the spirit. And that's why you have to say something told me, it's not even sure if it's God. Praise God. And so, that's the position of the spirit. And we'll be able to see that now, you know, we've talked about consecration, a corn onto holiness. And we said equally, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians Do you know why I'm teaching this? We are starting another series today. So, I want to bridge it. Are you with me now? We're going to be having a flow of these teachings. I'm trusting the Holy Spirit as he gives to me, I teach on. He said, "For you should know that your body is the temple. Where does your spirit reside? Both your body both your soul and your spirit, your body is the container." He said, "Therefore, you should you should you should you should let your body be sanctified. Let your body be presentable unto him for use." Because if God is in your spirit, he needs your soul and your body to make full use of your entire personality. And so we have talked we have talked about the consecration of the body. We saw, as Paul began to speak in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, he said, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." And as soon as we he we speak, he will speak. He said, "He said, therefore, avoid fornication." And we went to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. We began to see, what is it about fornication? And we saw that that word Apostle Paul used, fornication, covered variety of sexual perversion. In says, homosexuality, lesbianism, all kind of sexual perversion, addiction to pornography, you know, masturbation. He said, he said, all of these sexual sin affects the body. Apostle Paul began to explain the danger of this sin. He said, every other sin is without the body. I mean if you have heard that before in the scripture. And I I began to wonder that um it's one of the reason that the devil uses these sin. It's like it's everywhere. Even in in churches today, it's not it's not even seen as anything wrong again. Churches today, a pastor will come and tell you that he's just divorced his wife. And said, um we just have this agreement with Mama. And all It's not It's not It's nothing. The devil is at work strongly because he knows God needs the body. And I said something when we started this series. I said, "Let's be careful." This year, as much as God is giving us vision about what he wants to do, the devil has a plan also. It's the devil will not look at you just No, no, no. You you have made up your mind 2020, my year of consecration and you feel the devil just look at you and say, "Leave him and let it be." No. I want you to know today the more you make decision about getting close to God, the harder the devil run after you. And you know, we always think the devil come and after a particular victory that we have had over certain temptation, we go back and relax. That's one of the things that happens to us as believers. We go back to relax too often. The Bible said, "And he tempted Jesus in Luke chapter 4." And the Bible said, "He left him for a for a what?" For a while. When we have one victory, we don't know he has left us for a while. You know, we keep celebrating what we the victory we had. Some of us had victory when we were in secondary school. You had victory over fornication. You keep talking about it, not knowing something is you know. The devil is cooking something around. Praise God. And so we went further than to say, "How do we keep focus?" We saw how Apostle Paul began to advise Timothy. He said, "Keep a clear conscience." Keep a clear conscience. We have discussed about, you know, clean conscience, hardened conscience, seared conscience, weak conscience. And we said, conscience is the compass of the the the faith of a man. It's the compass. Your conscience, God witness to your conscience. And you should know that your conscience lies on your mind. And so when God speaks in your spirit, your conscience speaks the signal. Are you with me now? Your that's why some people can kill, destroy people. When they have been cut away from God, they are not sensitive again. So your conscience is that signal that picks what God says. And the Bible says, for some people, like Alexander, they make shipwreck of their faith, because they they they they neglected their conscience. They keep a clean conscience. Keep a clean conscience. Don't make shipwreck of your faith. Because by the time you become hardened to a point, you can renounce what you have pronounced. A man of God that is very popular, if I mention his name, you all know him, but he is not lately his name has gone down. Before, he used to make the eyes of a blind see. The miracles, like miracles. And a a woman of God said, she was there one day when he spoke and opened the ears of four deaf men. She said, she was there. She was seated with her husband at the front row. He was there. Well, a few years later, he was arrested, and they found in the altar of his church the member of his church buried. I don't know if you heard one story once time when um one a man of God called a member to see him in church, and he told his wife where he was going, that, "Daddy called me." Was his own daddy that buried him. And that's why we tell people, you don't go you don't just go to churches. It's not everywhere they put God's beloved assembly or something church ministry, something anything is not everywhere you enter that is a church. You should start understanding the definition of a church. The definition of a church is not the ambience. That they put cross at the entrance does not mean it's a church. It's not the ambience. It's not the structural setting. It's not the robe of the pastor. That the pastor wears a robe does not make the place a church. I've taught us before how to look out for a place. I've taught you before a series on that. If a place is a church, you will know. It's not how they greet you because churches churches training greet us now. Bless you. You are blessed. Celebrity. All of that doesn't make a church a church. They can equally say that in a club. And the wife kept calling the phone. They didn't know that he had a phone in his pocket when they buried him. The phone kept ringing. So she emphasized that this man to so they have to investigate the man and said the demand told us told his wife he was going to so how comes? And people said they knew when that man, I mean the man of God gave his life to Christ. What happened between that time and the time he started burying somebody? Something happened in his conscience. Between the time he gave his life to Christ and the time he got to a point, he could bury a human being. He could. Something happened. And that's why the Bible said we should watch. You said, in these cities, the city is not something you like an application that you download and you just leave it there. It's the life. Praise God. And so, we're going to be looking at how to keep focus on God. Because, um, we get often distracted, easily distracted. How many times have you made New Year resolutions? After February 14th or before February 14th, you know, when you before you know it, you started in January. I'm going to be having three days fast every beginning of the month. I'm going to be reading a book at least every week. I will study a chapter of the Bible every day. There are nice things you said. You really desire because it is in every Christian. There's a yearning God has put in every believer to seek God. In every believer. That's why it is never convenient for a believer to sin. Even though he is sinning, it is not convenient for him. Something in his straggling with something. A believer might be found in fornication, he might be found in covetousness, but he's not he's he's not convenient for him like it is for an unbeliever. He's there's a struggle. No matter how he pretends to be okay sinning, there's a struggle in his spirit. There's a struggle. He might go back home crying. I've seen when we're in school, sisters who will come and cry and cry and say, they call us papa those days. And say, "Papa, I've…