Today's message for the New Month's Programme At Calvary Army Bible Church - Warfare Tent - Monday, August 1 2016.

Message by: Pastor Joseph Seveho Gabriel - Senior Pastor.

You will be blessed as you read in Jesus name (Amen).


Topic: PREPARATION FOR LAUGHTER
Text: Proverbs 16:1
The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD

Preparation is very vital to the success of any endeavour in life.

If good communication exists between a couple (husband and wife), even if they don’t have money, people who see them outside will think they are millionaires. Communication is the fountain of milk and honey; it’s the fountain of good things in a family. When there is good communication between the altar and the congregation, there would be a militant church that is strong, virile and undefeatable. But when there is a communication gap between the altar and the congregation, the product will be weaklings, mixed multitudes and spiritual cankerworms that will eat up the strength of the church.

If you find anyone on the road laughing on his or her own, what would you say has happened to that person? Nobody laughs for just no reason. Why? It’s because laughter is the outcome or fruit of some certain things. Kings laugh, subjects laugh. The educated laugh; the uneducated also laugh. Something produces laughter and that laughter is the culmination of all they have done. Laughter is borne out of something and as well, anger or a moody situation is created by something.

Having grown up in a palace, there are times the king will leave his throne and sit down with even the servants in the palace playing local games with them. His happiness and his sitting down to crack jokes or play games in his palace with his wives, children, chiefs and servants helps to breed trust and foster unity the more amongst them.

God also laughs in heaven.

From my observation from the last lap of the 19th century up till now, I have discovered that majority of Christians no longer study their bible. During the tail end of the apostolic era, it’s on record that the disciples were referred to as the ones who turned the world upside down. Even though many were uneducated amongst them yet the knowledge of God was real, the power of God was greatly evident and signs and wonders was a daily occurrence amongst them. However, this generation is devoid of the power of God coupled alongside His signs and wonders. We have elite intellectuals on the pulpit as G.O’s (General Overseer – church founders) who only use intellectual knowledge to lead the congregation but are devoid of the experience of the power of God. That is why no president, traditional ruler or anyone is afraid of them. This is not supposed to be so. God doesn’t play religion because He didn’t give us religion; He gave us relationship with Him.

It’s painful to see a woman go to the altar to get married and yet is not prepared for family life. Her mindset is programmed wrongly because her parents have been pampering her since childhood without adequate preparation for motherhood – such a woman can’t be a good wife. Ability to be a good wife is not dependent on having two big oranges on your chest neither is it being dependent on having a big backyard. A good looking chest with a beautiful backyard and a beautiful face without the right attitude towards life is a wasted womanhood. The same goes to men who are running after money, cars and a good house in order to attract a woman without having what it takes to be a father and take up all the responsibilities of fatherhood.

The woman was taken from the rib of the man and not from his head. No matter how educated a woman is, she doesn’t have the potential to administer the home. It’s a relegation of position, a turning upside down of destiny and a conversion of Godly roles that has made women want to seek equality with man in the home, workplace and nation. God has not given the rulership of any family, community, city or nation to a woman. The key to the rulership of any domain is given to man.

Many men who want to get married base their choice of a wife on intellectual compatibility, beauty, social acceptance, wealth and many other physical conditions. Know it today that if you choose a wife based on anything rather than spiritual compatibility, you are building your future on a very wrong foundation. You should therefore be ready for the crash of that marriage in no time.

Lack of preparation makes you labour without any meaningful result. Before the devil came into human environment to cause havoc, he had already planned and strategized on how to go about his deadly assault. God is also a master planner who plans everything He does and already had all things in place before He created them. God has a plan for your life. However, the execution of that plan is highly dependent on the level of your preparedness to embrace that plan in its entirety.

Anything you do without planning, you are definitely planning to fail.

God never wanted human being for any laborious servitude. It was when man was deceived that his labourious servitude began; fruitless labour also began as God cursed man saying, “You will eat from the sweat of your labour.” From that time on, man began to labour without any meaningful result to show.

If you don’t prepare your heart, manipulators will change your heart and divert you. After Adam was deceived, he lost the following;
i. His peace with God.
ii. God’s divine presence.
iii. His divine authority.
iv. The protection of God.
v. Divine immunity against sickness.

Adam became a cursed man by God. He will stand before God to give account of his iniquity.

If you don’t make your heart to obey God, no matter how highly placed you are in the church, hell fire is awaiting you.

When God wanted to wipe off the entire earth during Noah’s generation, he sent Noah to prepare an ark for 120 years so that those who believed Noah’s warning could be saved from the impending disaster yet they refused to heed Noah’s warning.

The greater your destiny, the longer your preparation should be. Many people looking for success are not prepared; so also many people preparing for breakthrough are not prepared at all. Sometimes when people pray and pray and pray without any answer of God, you’ll think God is wicked. No, He is not! Many people are not prepared for financial breakthrough. People have had financial breakthrough and have left the kingdom of God because the breakthrough got into their head and they couldn’t control it within the dictates of the kingdom of God for their lives.

Preparation matters for any progress you want to make in life. This is August, what is the preparation you have made for the month? A good pastor looks up to God for divine information with which he will feed the sheep of God. When God wanted to send Moses to the children of Egypt, what did He (God) do? He first of all pulled him out of Egypt and sent him to the wilderness stripping him of all his academic, political diplomacy and intellectual abilities. God prepared him for a greater tomorrow by teaching him how to relate with his people as a sheep using his father in-law’s fold of sheep to teach him humility, patience and perseverance.

Your greatness is not in what you are thinking; your greatness is what God has for you. If you want to become great in life, remove your eyes from whatever information man is passing across to you and focus solely on what God is saying about you.

Isaiah 1:19
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

There are enormous resources in the hands of God but if you are not prepared, you will not get to receive and use them. So many people are supposed to be alive now but because they didn’t prepare the right way, they ran another person’s race, copied another person’s lifestyle and thus died before their time making another person enter into the harvest of their labour after their death.

When God is for us, who can be against us?

Before you engage in battle, prepare for war. Prepare your battle before you fight.

There are some battles that don’t require fall down and die prayer. What they require are obedience to God’s little-little instructions; “Do it like this.” “Go this way.”

A leader doesn’t sleep, he prepares for his children.

2nd Kings 3:15-19
But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him. 16 And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of ditches. 17 For thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. 18 And this is but a light thing in the sight of the LORD: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand. 19 And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones.3


Elisah had no dream, no vision and no revelation. You that always go to prophets for vision, look, they will manufacture one for you. Don’t build your faith around revelations. Elisha had to request for a spirit filled minstrel who ministered to him in music. As the minstrel ministered, the Spirit of God came upon Elisha. This is the reason why I cry out about music in the church – it is a spiritual assignment and not a physical one at all. So many praise worship sessions in churches have now become entertainment galore and avenues for singers and musicians to flaunt their musical prowess with just empty showboating and vain service. There is no regard for the Spirit of God anymore neither is there the sacred honour of God is their musical service.

Preparation of the heart precedes divine intervention. Preparation must precede every celebration you are looking for. Anyone who is serves God and is self-centered will be looking for ego to boost his service. You don’t sing to entertain people, you don’t preach to make people applaud you. You don’t become a worker to serve your self esteem.

Before you go to church, what is the preparation of your heart? What did you tell God before coming to church?

No genuine man of God imposes himself on people; he only gives you instruction on what to do.

The preparation of your heart is very essential to your complete laughter in this month.

PRAYER
- God help me to handover my life to You completely this month. I also want to celebrate, I don’t want to complain.
- Almighty God; as you took over Abraham’s life and led him to where He laughed, take over my life and lead me to the path where I will laugh.
- Hand of God, Hand of covenant, rest upon my life from tonight and take me to the land of covenant.