Message
Years ago, when my Father in the Lord was alive, he sent a pastor to start a parish in Osogbo (a town in Western Nigeria). The parish began to prosper, and the pastor felt that since he planted it, he could turn it into his own ministry. He removed the signboard of The Redeemed Christian Church of God and put that of his new ministry. When Papa heard about it, he appealed to the pastor to retrace his steps, but he refused. He said, “What do you mean? I am the pastor here. I started the work. The people are my sheep.” Papa said, “But we ordained you, and sent you here to start the work in the name of The Redeemed Christian Church of God. More so, you are not their saviour. The church belongs to the One who saved them. It is not yours or mine.” However, the pastor stubbornly insisted. Then, Papa said, “No problem, shall we pray?” As they prayed, a wind blew as if it was going to rain, and by the following morning, the pastor was covered in leprosy from head to toe.
When the King of kings owns something, don’t take it as yours. When you do, you are toying with fire. The pastor in the story I shared above thought he could take what belonged to God and go scot-free. When someone has exclusive rights to something, no other person can claim ownership of that thing. God has exclusive rights to the earth, its fullness and all its inhabitants (). This means that He is in charge of the earth and oversees all that happens in it. In , when the man that Jesus called the rich fool talked about his soul as if he owned it, he lost his life that same night.
Just as God doesn’t share His ownership of the earth, He doesn’t share His glory. His glory belongs to Him, and anyone who tries to steal it from Him will get into big trouble. When God does anything through you, be quick to return all the glory to Him because it does not belong to you. In today’s Bible reading, Nebuchadnezzar attempted to attribute God’s glory to himself, and he became a beast in the forest for seven years. God touched his heart and replaced it with a beast’s heart, and all his boasting stopped.
Beloved, God is jealous about what belongs to Him;