I want to thank Pastor Paul Adefarasin for the honour and privilege of speaking from this elevated rostrum of creation- from whence the word of God has gone out into the nations of the world, transforming lives and destinies.
The ministry of House On The Rock is a work I am well familiarized with through the profundity of the grace bestowed on me in my gifted capacity.
I do periodically engage in banters with Pastor Paul on many matters of the Realm – spiritual and temporal. As I’ve said on several occasions the uniqueness of House On The Rock is the sheer horizontal dimension of the manifest grace of God upon the ministry. We see that grace in manifestation in the record numbers at The Experience, as well as the magnificent architectural splendour of the Rock Cathedral.
This evening, we express our gratitude to the Father of Lights in whom there’s no fluctuation of energy or the similitude of alternating currency, for the corpus of revelation called the Gospel. And tonight I declare by the unction of his Spirit that the grace which appertains to this ministry, and my ministry be manifest here tonight. Your horizons shall be expanded and possibilities shall be a common denominator in the realities of your existence on earth. I speak as a symbol of the covenant of God with his people.
Because I am confident of the quality of teaching emanating from this pulpit we shall be taking things up a notch this evening. Abysus abyssum invocat – deep calleth unto deep.
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Tonight I’m going to be talking about possibilities. It is a subject God is very much interested in, he being the Alpha Code and Omega Code. He created all that we see from nothing. He is therefore the auctor and opifex of the concept of possibilities.
If you’re ever going to attain anything in life, if you’re ever going to achieve anything great, if you’re ever going to overcome the natural limitations of your denudating environment you must believe in possibilities.
There are those in this auditorium tonight in whose heart God has placed great dreams. But they wonder how it’s ever going to come to pass. Tonight is your night.
There are also those tonight in whose circumstances doctors have made a pronunciation of impossibility with the imprimatur of professional finality. They are looking for medical miracles. Tonight will be your night as well.
And there is that young man, and that young woman wondering about how he’s ever going to make it, wondering how she’s ever going to amount to something. Possibility is coming your way.
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I mentor quite a number of young people and just the other day one came to see me. She is generally adjudged successful in her line of business but she came to see me because she needed a word of direction, if you like a word of wisdom.
I asked about how well her business was doing and she laid out a litany of initiatives. Quite impressive by business school standards I must say. But there was something missing. I didn’t hear anything bold, courageous, bodacious or audacious. I felt the initiatives were incremental in nature, that she could achieve them without a sweat. She laid out a vision of metric incrementalism. This I considered a contradiction in terms. A vision cannot be incremental.
I told her to go back and dream. That she should then come back and lay before me a big, bold, hairy, consequential and tectonic vision of the scary sort- the type that’ll make ears tingle, and make hearers imagine she needs medical attention of the psychiatric variety. She looked at me like I needed medical attention myself, of the psychological variety. Here she was laying down what would ordinarily impress many consultants and there I was telling her to up her game. To me she had stopped prophesying but she didn’t know it. A vision is a prophecy in pictures. Oh, but I knew what I was talking about. You see, I’d read scriptures, meditated on scriptures. In Joel 2:28 the Bible says: “And it shall come to pass that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”
We therefore must ask ourselves, Has God poured out his spirit upon all flesh? We know the answer is yes from the Biblical account of Pentecost.
In response to the charge of inebriation leveled against the disciples when they spoke in tongues, Peter explained to the multitude that what they were witnessing was that which was prophesied by Prophet Joel. That the strange glossolalia was the epochal signage of God’s new social contract with mankind. That Pentecost was the fulfillment of God’s promise to pour out his Spirit upon all flesh.
If you can speak in tongues tonight we have yet another proof that God has poured out his spirit upon all flesh. It follows therefore that you are dispensationally empowered to dream dreams, to prophesy, and to see visions. Dreams belong to the realm of fantasy. Dreams belong to the realm of the inexplicable. Stop thinking small. Stop defining your vision by that which you can easily and readily accomplish. The reason we hamper our ability to dream is because we are concerned about how to accomplish those dreams. We define our dreams by that which we can accomplish and of course the bigger the dream the more difficult it is to accomplish, and so we edit the scale of our dreams to fit our material and mental capabilities. But the Bible is very specific about the division of labour in the dream enterprise. Envisioning is your responsibility, fulfillment of dreams is God’s responsibility. He has the strategic capability to make your dream come to pass. For a dream to come to pass there must be a strategic alignment of wonderful coincidences. It requires a complex programming algorithm. You don’t have the capability to strategically align wonderful coincidences. Only God does. Do your part, let God do his part. Stop limiting God through inferrable, deductive reasoning.
When through Prophet Elijah God declared during the Syrian siege that the price of flour and barley would drastically crash within 24 hours in Israel, the king’s principal officer, a captain in the army boldly proclaimed through deductive analysis that even if God opened the windows of heaven and rained down food the laws of economics could not be upturned (2 Kings 7:3). He forgot about the God who specializes in strategic alignment of wonderful coincidences. God made the Syrian army hear the sound of a great army. They fled away because they heard the thundering hooves of chariot horses and a huge army. They thought the King of Israel had hired Egyptian and Hittite mercenaries in huge numbers. They didn’t know and couldn’t know that what they were hearing was the Fourth Infantry Battalion of angels having a routine drill in Heaven. That it had nothing to do with them. They ran away in haste abandoning their supplies and provisions. And that was how the price of wheat and barley crashed within 24 hours. There was too much supply chasing demand. Your God has the capacity to strategically align wonderful coincidences to bring your dreams to pass, even if it means creating cinematic sound effects. We worry too much about the mechanics of the word of God, and that hinders our faith. Can you imagine Mary worrying about how God was going to genetically engineer immaculate conception? All the angel told Mary was she would be with child and she believed. God loves simple faith. Zechariah on the other hand wanted to understand the mechanics of a miracle. He needed what scientists call proof of concept. “By what shall I know and be sure of this,” he asked Angel Gabriel. He was concerned about his reputation. God appropriately struck him mute. It never occurred to Zechariah that God’s reputation was more at stake. I mean this was an angel of God he was talking to, not a shaman!
Stop trying to figure out the science of miracles. Exercise simple faith. When God gives you a vision just thank him for the fulfillment. And begin to work in the direction of your dream. God has an artistic knack for making declarations that are inexplicably brought to pass. In Isaiah 48:3 he states, “I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.” His word will not drop to the ground. He watches over his word to perform it (Jer.1:12). God is a performer! I am asking you this evening to stop measuring God according to the limitations of your capabilities, to stop limiting God to your capacities, to start dreaming again, even if the circumstances say otherwise. The federal budget has nothing on God. Neither do those stupefying economic statistics or the rebasing of the economy. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, old men shall dream dreams. And if old men shall dream dreams it’s never too late to dream. Start dreaming again. That dream you packed up into the attic of your heart deeming realization impossible, dust it up. That vision gathering dust in your pantry of forgetfulness, bring it out. All dreams are possible to him who believes. Your job is to dream. God’s job is to strategically align wonderful coincidences to bring your dream to pass. That’s his specialty.
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Two millennia ago, our Lord Jesus Christ laid down an impossible vision. It was a big, hoary vision. We call it the Great Commission. He said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” (Mark 16:15, Acts 1:8). Great vision. There was only one problem. None of the disciples had a global experience and none had ever functioned in a complex executive capacity. These were provincial gentlemen, some mere fishermen. And they lacked the intellectual pedigree for such an assignment. But the God who strategically aligns wonderful coincidences had a joker. His name was Paul. He had “coincidentally” made contact with the Church at the martyrdom of Stephen. In Stephen he witnessed the persecution he himself would undergo for the sake of the gospel, for God would promise him persecution. He never knew he was in tutorial class.
The emergence of Paul of course caused no small consternation among the unsophisticated disciples. And Apostle Peter in one of his letters expressed a common complaint about the elevated dimension of Paul’s epistles. In his exact words, “There are some things in those epistles of Paul that are difficult to understand, which the ignorant twist and misconstrue to their own utter destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).
The earliest disciples did not create any administrative structure for the consolidation of the great commission. It was Paul who drew up the church organogram, and it’s still in use today. They didn’t even document the history of the gospel for many years. Paul had written six letters before the first gospel was written. And they were surprisingly conservative. Even though Jesus had instructed that the gospel was to become a global phenomenon, and the Spirit had portended this by gifting the disciples with the tongues of the nations of the then known world at Pentecost, they didn’t get it! The tongues at Pentecost indicated that the gospel must be “glocal” that is, global and local- glocal; not unlike the corporate strategy of HSBC, the world’s local bank. That was the idea. Peter failed to grasp the import of the prophecy he quoted at Pentecost. God was pouring out his Spirit upon ALL flesh. They resisted the prophecy until God forced the hand of Peter. They were nationalistic. And even went the persecution of the Church dispersed the gospel into the corners of the earth they still didn’t get it. They could not discern the obvious move of God. Their minds were closed. It is important for you to be able to read the move of God from the obvious, and the obvious includes trials and persecutions. What are the obvious things in your life saying? What are your trials saying?
Of course the early apostles had issues with Paul’s globalization agenda. And even when they admitted that God was moving in a global direction they had reservations about non-Jews being admitted into the Kingdom. When they finally acknowledged it was God’s will to break down the middle wall of partition they made admission conditional. The people were to abstain from sexual immorality. They were to observe dietary rules. For example they could not eat rare steak. They couldn’t taste blood. These disciples found it hard to shed Judaism. When we insist on our past defining our future orientation we critically hinder the move of God in our lives. We restrict the expansion of our spheres of influence. Let the past be. Our salvation proves that different eras in our lives can exist in different dimensions. Old things are passed away the Bible says. Time is not a continuous flow. Time is not linear. Stop limiting God.
To complicate the challenges faced by the great commission the men to whom it was committed hardly travelled. They weren’t exposed to cultural diversity. They were used to ethnic homogeneity. And leadership skills were grossly lacking. They didn’t even understand organizational values. They didn’t understand teamwork for example. Just a few months back they were brawling over eminence- who would sit on the right hand of Jesus. One or two even brought in their mom to influence Jesus. These were adults! And they had no sense of mission or succession. Peter had gone back to fishing. As soon as Jesus died it was all over as far as he was concerned.
And they didn’t have a sophisticated legal framework with which to relate to governments, not even in their own nation. Paul could appeal to Caesar. He was a lawyer. He knew about fundamental human rights, understood the legal system but not them. So tell me, how were these disciples going to take the gospel global?
But here we are two thousand years later and the gospel is being preached in Nigeria, as it is all over the world. What happened? How did the great commission come to become? How was it fulfilled?
The secret surprisingly lies in a well-known word called Righteousness. I’m going to show you certain dimensions of righteousness tonight but that implies I have to upset some theology. I said I’m going to upset some theology.
Now I know we’ve been taught that righteousness is right standing with God; but that is not stricto sensu righteousness. That is the RESULT of righteousness, it is not righteousness. And it only captures the demand side of the righteousness equation. It does not capture the supply side.
There are two types of righteousness recognized in Heaven. The first is constitutional righteousness. The second is jurisprudential or legal righteousness. No other type of righteousness has efficacy in Heaven. Self-righteousness is not recognized for example. It exists in vacuo without legal authority. It’s actually illicit and illegal.
God is righteous. This is a constitutional, political and biological reality. His DNA is righteousness. You can’t separate righteousness from God. It’s who he is. His righteousness confers certain rights and privileges on him. It’s inherent. God has sovereign rights. Those rights are the basis of his political power. As sovereign God can do and undo. No one can question him. He exercises absolute power. That power is discretionary and it has the force of law.
As sovereign he defines the law, he determines what is right and wrong. Whatever he says is right is right, whatever he says is wrong is wrong. He is not bound by our moral code, or standards, which we must be honest is a shifting goal post. What was immoral yesterday is a fundamental human right today. You have to distinguish morality from righteousness. Many people don’t know the difference. They’re confused. It’s why they think their morality will take them to heaven. There is a difference between morality and righteousness. What is moral may be unrighteous before God and what we consider immoral may actually be righteous before God. For example the laws of morality dictate there should be no preferential treatment. We are all created equal by God; yet God grants his favour to Christians. That’s partiality if you ask me but is it righteous? Yes! Why? Because God says it is! Every time you ask God for favour you’re asking to jump the queue. You’re saying you don’t want to be bound by chronological order. And God grants your prayers. Why? Because sovereignty overwrites the laws of morality. The laws of morality came about from the political crisis in the Garden of Eden. It’s the minimal standard of societal regulation. That’s what Paul said. As soon as man ate from the tree of conscience- the tree of knowledge of good and evil, morality kicked in as a modulator and regulator of mankind through the instrumentality of sin consciousness. Conscience is sin consciousness. God doesn’t want you to be led by conscience. He wants you to be led by his Spirit. As many as are led by the Spirit are the sons of God.
Conscience is a deficient regulatory mechanism. It cannot give positive direction. Your conscience cannot tell you if you should apply for another job for instance. And it’s always relative. Conscience is useless if your alternative choice is not sinful. There’s no sin involved in not applying for another job for example, so conscience is useless. But it can make you feel guilty for slapping someone. If there’s no sin or moral issue at play conscience is a useless guide. Apart from that there’s a major design flaw in it. The individual can switch it off, permanently. You can sear your conscience, obliterate it. How can what you’re stronger than be your guide?
Am I saying we should have no morality? Of course not! I’m just saying the standards of righteousness are far higher than the standards of morality, and that morality is a stop gap measure, like an emergency light that comes on when electricity supply is cut off. Because we were cut off as a race from the supply of the Spirit of God morality took over. Now the light is come into the world. There is a light that lights every man. It’s came into the world. Thy word is a lamp for my feet, a light unto my path (Psalm 109:105).
The leading of the Spirit is proof of sonship. The leading by conscience is evidence of the fallen state of man. Stop going back to the Garden of Eden. Be alive to righteousness. Stop going back to the mistakes of the First Adam. Jesus has been crucified on the tree of knowledge of good and evil that we may partake of the tree of life. You are of the stock of the Last Adam not the first Adam.
As a sovereign God, God can dispense his favour as he wills, even to the undeserving. It’s called mercy. When God said “Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated”, even before the children were born that’s sovereignty. He can like any Facebook page he wants. When God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, just to display his power that’s sovereignty. He said he raised up Pharaoh for one and only one purpose: to get PR mileage! He has mercy on whom he wills and he makes stubborn whom he wills. You can’t question him (Rom. 9:17-20). If you don’t understand sovereignty you can’t understand God. The Bible won’t make overall sense to you.
But here’s the genius of God. What God did for us in Christ Jesus was to recreate us in righteousness in order to give us constitutional righteousness (Eph. 4:24). That came about as a result of serious legal engineering. Let see the framework.
You see, as you study scriptures you will notice something curious. You will notice there is a very close association between righteousness and the administration of justice.
Psalm 9:8: He will judge the world with righteousness.
Psalm 119:142: Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true.
Isaiah 5:16: But the Lord Almighty will be exalted by justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness.
Isaiah 28:17: I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line.
Isaiah 51:5: My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations.”
Jeremiah 9:24: I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth…”
All through scriptures righteousness is inextricably linked with justice and jurisprudence.
When we say righteousness is right standing with God we are referring to legal or jurisprudential righteousness. We were sinners. Sin is a capital offence. The wages of sin is death. Through the vicarious liability of Jesus we were absolved of criminal liability for sin. And so we gained a “right standing with God.” But God didn’t stop there. You see, in spiritual biology who you are is determined by your material particular. Adam is called Adam because he was made from red dust. Eve is called “woman” because she was made from man. We are called sons of God because we were recreated in the Son of God. We are called righteous because we were made from righteousness. Your creative material determines who you are. In recreating us in righteousness God gave us constitutional righteousness, just like himself. As he is, so are we. And so when we say we have right standing with God we are saying in effect we have legal immunity from criminal prosecution for sin.
But God did much more than that. We are not reformed criminals. We are sons of God. We have righteous DNA.
Now inherent in God’s righteousness is possibilities. You’ll see that in a moment. Because his righteousness is political it permeates his sphere of influence- Heaven. They don’t understand impossibilities in Heaven. It’s an anomaly. There’s no time there, therefore there’s no time lag between thought and manifestation. In Heaven you can’t say “I am coming.” You say “I come” and you appear. God never said, “Let there be light. The literal translation reads: “And God saith, ‘Let light, be; and light is.” Time is not a dimension of Heaven. There is no morning or night there. And you function according to the dimension you live in. it’s because we live in a time dimension that our language has words like “coming” and “going.” These are time lag words. The people in Heaven don’t understand the time lag between thought and manifestation.
The righteousness of God permeates Heaven we had noted. But the scriptures tell us we can draw that ambiance down.
In Isaiah 45:8 the scriptures declare: Drop down, ye heavens above, FROM ABOVE, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created it.
The King James Bible did not do justice to that scripture. Let’s read it from the Amplified Bible:
“Let fall in showers, you heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness [the pure, spiritual, heaven-born possibilities that have their foundation in the holy being of God]; let the earth open, and let them [skies and earth] sprout forth salvation, and let righteousness germinate and spring up [as plants do] together; I the Lord have created it.
In other words, locked up in the righteousness of God are possibilities. And the operating system of God’s possibilities is available to us. All we need is to draw it down. How? The word is nigh thee and in thy mouth and in thy heart, the word of faith which we preach.
And so like Isaiah we decree here tonight, that the pure, spiritual heaven-born possibilities whose foundation is in the holy being of God be manifest in this auditorium tonight. I decree the fructification of dreams. I decree the germination of seeds in the womb. I decree medical miracles. I decree the healing of cancer. I decree the lifting of depression. I decree that the prisoners be set free. I decree the expansion of businesses. I decree professional promotions. I decree the germination of salvation. I decree the possibilities of God. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, they kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. My Father, let your will be done here tonight. Manifest your presence. Manifest your power. Manifest your clout. Manifest your grace. Manifest your mercy. Rain down your righteousness tonight.
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Delivered at House on the Rock, The Rock Cathedral, Lekki, Lagos
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com