It’s our month of Strengthened Faith and on Sunday, the word of God came to us, positioning us to grow and strengthen our faith, Pastor began the service with an exhortation to be conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as a standby, she charged us to enter the week with confidence knowing that we would not make useless mistakes or enter into unnecessary problems and knowing that the Holy Spirit is our standby against such occurences.

She went on to charge us on the need to constantly prophesy into our lives and our situations showing us in the word how God taught the prophet Ezekiel to prophesy, God took him to a valley filled with very dry bones and instructed him to prophesy to the bones, he also taught him how to speak to the bones and the words to say. We learnt to apply this to our lives, to speak to situations and declare what we want to see happen. We saw that as Ezekiel prophesied, there was a noise and a shaking and the bones began to come together, proving that when we speak the word, something begins to happen where it needs to happen, and just as it started with a noise and a shaking before the bones began to connect, there could be a time delay after the word is spoken before there is a full manifestation but something is definitely happening. Pastor made us understand that God made everything and he teaches us in his word that when we talk to things and situations, they would respond, she taught us to be aware that we are responsible for the outcome of our lives, and so rather than complain about situations, we ought to prophesy to the situation and declare what we want to see.

As the sermon progressed, Pastor explained why two Christians can speak the same thing, yet it seems to work for one and not for the other, she made us understand that the only reason this can happen is because the latter did not believe. We saw this evidenced in Matthew 17 where the disciples of Jesus had failed in their efforts to cast out an evil spirit from a boy, Jesus coming down from the mountain and seeing the situation simply commanded the devil out and the boy became well, the disciples were surprised because Jesus did nothing different from what they had done and when they asked him why they couldn’t cast the devil out, his response was simple, it was because of their unbelief.

Pastor went on to show us from the words of the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:1 that we have the same faith he had, the very same faith with which he healed the crippled man at the beautiful gate, with which he raised Lydia up from the dead and by which his shadow healed the sick, Roman 12:3 also shows us that every Christian received the same measure of faith. Pastor however taught us that for our faith to bring results, it needs to grow and get strengthened, we saw that on many occasions, Jesus qualified the faith of those he encountered, some as little faith and others as great faith, the word of God also qualifies faith as either weak or strong, we learnt that the way to increase our faith is by listening to more and more of God’s word and that as our faith increases, the way to strengthen it is by using the word of God when situations arise contrary to our expectations. Pastor charged us to be deliberate in speaking and holding on to what God has said about us after which she led us to prophesy into the week.

You will be tremendously blessed by this message, visit pastorebi.org to download and listen to the audio and instagram.com/pastorebiVL for the video.