Come let’s praise the Lord (come let praise the Lord) He is Jehovah (tell Him of His Faithfulness), He is El-shaddia (tell Him of salvation), come let praise Lord, praise the Lord, for ever and ever, the Lord is He is same, He never change, from eternity to eternity, He will be my God. Praise Him, Jehovah, Praise Him El-Shaddia 2x.// What shall I say unto the Lord, all I have to say is Thank You Lord 2x, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord all I have to say is Thank You Lord,
Heavenly Father we say Thank You, Thank You for Your faithfulness, Thank You for blessings, Thank You for Your love, Thank You for Your kindness, Thank You for Who You are, blessed be Thy Holy Name for ever and ever and ever Amen!
Today is Friday, can I here someone shout alleluiaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I want to hear some excitement from you, can you offer shouts of praise to the Lord this moment, I am not asking for money, I not asking you for your time, but I am going to ask you to make some exciting movement to the glory of God your Maker, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Ancient of days, the beginning and the End, the One Who is and is yet to come, come shout alleluia to Him,
Get excited, the reason why you are feeling heavy recently is because you have not dancing or shouting unto the Lord, so can you get on feet and make some steps to the glory of the Lord. (Pause). Praise the Lord.
I am excited, I don’t know about you? But I see you are excited too. Hi, get excited, no matter what is going on around you, get excited, you cannot remove it by being moody or by looking sad, but you can by being happy, by laughing through it, by honoring God with those tears that may be running down your cheeks, He know it all, and each of those tears do not fall to the ground, Your angel collect it and present it before the Throne, heaven is giving attention to it right now,
So get excited before your God Who is God for ever and ever! Amen!
Beloved, I have you taken time to consider what am going to share with you now. God created the heaven and the earth. He made them ‘Male and Female’. God gave live but the consequences of our sin brought ‘death.’ In the contemporary, we have two sides to a coin.
So you see from the analysis we just made, You discover you are either a male or a female, You are either here on earth or in heaven except if against life, you chose death than you have registered your name in hell for hell is real as heaven is real also.
There is no controversy about this, if you are still engaging in argument on this, I advise you to get something better to do with your time because that argument will not remove the fact that heaven and hell are real. (I am stopping here for now because am going somewhere).
Now let’s get down to it. Do you know that you can choose to be happy or sad? Do you also know that you can chose to serve God come what may or fail to do so. Same way, you can choose to get excited before your God, honour Him with praises and worship all through the day as you go through those routine of yours or you chose to do otherwise?
So permit me to say that life is full of choices. It can be good or bad depending on you now. Your choice will always have a greater impart in your life and the lives of those around you. Do you know that you can decide to get up from bed and go about Your chores or lie down on your bed all through the day and heaven will not stop for a second?
So is Your choice to wake up in the morning and worship God or ignore Him and get going through the day until get stuck and you remember that God can help you at that moment and you offer prayers that will open your door at that moment and You get going still?
Beloved, where am I going? I want you to know that your choice of today have a greater effects on you as the days go by. So looking around you now, can you answer this question honesty “how do I get here?”
I get worried when I hear people say, I will not be in service today because am not feeling good or put in another way “am feeling sick.” May I ask you a question? When are you supposed to be in church – when you are sick or feeling well? This bring to fore that many people in this category are yet to know who they are in God and Who God is.
If you are sick or took ill, you will be in the hospital but as long as you are not on the hospital bed and it is service time, the right place you must be is in the house of God, doing what you know best to do “worship and praise” and you will never go the same way you came. Why am saying, because I know if you are in a living church; a living God will be there waiting for you to heal you. The Great Physicians is there with healing in His wings. Beloved there is still balm in Gilead.
And the beautiful thing about this choice you made is that even the devil knows that even sickness will not keep you back from service, so he will not waste his time trying to keep you on bed on a Sunday morning. Praise God.
Having said all that. In our teaching today, we have this subject “choice” demonstrated to us. The first choice is between the Two kingdoms – the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. We will also be encountering two great men at the bible days whose choices made the difference in their life, their final statements when it time to take a bow from this part of eternity.
Come along let get going:
Two Kingdoms
GOD’S
SATAN’s
One represents the spiritual, the other the material.
TWO CHOICES:
Between the eternal, and the temporal
One choice offers a life of peace and purpose.
The other choice leads to a life of self-centeredness and emptiness.
God’s Word makes the choice clear:
- “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
- “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:24)
Indecision is not an option:
“The person who vacillates [between faith and unbelief] is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for let not that individual be supposing that he will receive anything from the… Lord, [being] a dubious, undecided man, vacillating in all his ways.“ (James 1:6b-9 – Wuest Translation)
Actually, you and I have already made our choice — either by:
Design, or
Default
TWO CONSEQUENCES:
Eternal life leading to heaven, or eternal death leading to hell.
In making decisions of a spiritual nature, the battlefield is not the intellect, but the will.
… the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, and if any was not found written in the book of life, he will was cast into the lake of fire (Rom 6:23; Rev 20:15). The bible is so clear about heaven and hell, so the choice is ours to make-–where to go! Either way has work attached to it to back it up.
Remember today is our Practical Christian Living session and we are going to examine two great men that imparted the Word in the bible days King Solomon in the Old Testament and Apostle Paul in the New Testament.
Paul said “I do not say that I have already won the race or have already reached perfection. But I am pressing on, striving to lay hold of the prize for also Christ had laid hold of me – Phil 3:12. And his counterpart King Solomon said in Eccl 1:14-18 – I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of Spirit. Also read the following to have fuller understanding of Solomon’s world – Eccl 11:7-10; 12:1, 8 -12.
As I said both ways have works attach to it- but our God will at the end bring all works under judgment. Eccl 12 vs 12). So let’s continue:
Two Men Of Passion
King Solomon and the Apostle Paul.
The difference between them lay in the focus of their passion:
Solomon’s passion was directed away from God by his affection for unbelieving foreign women:
“His wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God.” (1 Kings 11:4)
Paul’s passion, by contrast, was redirected from self-righteous legalism toward knowing Christ:
“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:7, 8)
Solomon expended his life on pleasure:
“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” (Ecclesiastes 2:10)
Paul, by comparison, invested his life in making Christ known:
“We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom. To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy… ” (Colossians 1:28, 29)
HOW DID THESE TWO MEN OF PASSION END UP?
Solomon became bitter and disappointed in his old age:
“I hated life… [and] I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun… ” (Ecclesiastes 2:17a, 18a)
Paul, however completed his life with a profound sense of accomplishment and anticipation:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day… ” (2 Timothy 4:8)
TWO QUESTIONS:
(1) Where is the focus of your passion? On yourself, or on the Glory of God?
(2) How will you end up? Like Solomon, or like Paul?
Beloved, Paul at the end said “I have fought a good fight, I have finish my course, I have kept the faith; hence forth there is a laid up for a crown of righteous, which is the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to only, but unto all them also that love his appearing- 2Tim 4:7.
While King Solomon said “then dust will return to earth as it was; and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher; all is vanity – Eccl 12:7-8
The cards are laid on the table, therefore think on these things and give answers to them, till we meet again next week, God willing.
I love you and God loves you too, so make wise and good choices that will earn you eternal life.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
