Text: Mark 10:28-31
Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
I saw the picture above online. It describes President Bill Clinton greeting an evacuee after Hurricane Katrina, at the Houston Astrodome on September 5, 2005. In the background is, then, Senator Barack Obama holding Clinton’s jacket.
In previous posts on pathway to kingdom greatness, we’ve seen that our master Jesus taught that the pathway to greatness is service.
Why and how?
1. Life is governed by divine principles; the law of cause and effect operates in all spheres of life.
2. The miraculous is only a periodic intervention of divinity in the affairs of humanity when humanity is helpless and confused. I believe in miracles; however, to base our lives on the miraculous and exceptional alone will make us very irresponsible.
3. Prayer is not an alternative to initiative and responsibility as most Africans have come to believe.
Principles of Life
1. You reap what you sow.
If you sow service to humanity and society, humanity and society will reward you with service. This can be portrayed in the lives of Luther King Junior, Nelson Mandela, Indira Ghandi, etc.
2. When you identify a purpose in life, and put in your best, there is a corresponding release of people and provisions to help you fulfill it.
3. Until you think beyond your immediate needs and challenges, you can’t get and grow beyond your immediate needs.
I drove my Bishop as a medical doctor years back. In 2015, his son, married, was now driving me to go and preach in the same church in his own car. A much better one than I used in driving my Bishop.
The young man, Kirk Joseph Idika, that I taught in Sunday School many years back hosted me in Australia in 2014. Another young man I taught in the same Sunday School offered to host me in South Korea in 2015.
Many students I used to speak to in various universities in the eastern part of Nigeria have hosted me and introduced me to great ministries all over.
When I had no suits, I was giving out suits to pastors. Not long ago, a young man gave me 24 pieces of suits in 2 years.
I set up the church school, in the branch where I was worshiping in Aba, Abia State, and ran it very successfully. Now I run mine well.
God will not owe any man.
I was in Ethiopia in 2003 to do mission work with my money. I slept on a chair the first two nights and was in the remotest part where they still use carts for transport. The old pastor said a prayer for me, that for agreeing to come to Ethiopia, God would bless me when I get home. That marked a great turning point in my ministry.
Let’s cultivate the spirit of service in our churches, work places, and politics.
God create in you and I a bigger heart to serve.
God Bless You.
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