Bringing Heaven To Earth by Apostle Femi Lazarus: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Environment Shapes Every Life

There is a kind of environment people become exposed to, and if they are not quickly helped, they will not be able to do much for themselves.

Years ago my mother told me about a boy she met during evangelism. His mother was a prostitute, and while she was busy the boy wandered about, and people would give him dry gin to drink. That boy was super intelligent, but he was caught in that web. We arranged to adopt him and cover his every need, but the arrangement collapsed, the mother later died, and every effort to trace the boy failed. I still do not know what became of him, because environment has a way of changing people no matter how promising they look.

If you expose promising people to a bad environment, they will turn out badly. What is the root of insecurity? Exposure. What is the root of a heart that expects everyone to betray it? Exposure. It is the reason a person picked from a slum needs something called rehabilitation, to straighten the mind and reintegrate into society. Expose a person to an environment where they smoke, where they drink, where they do all manner of things, and if care is not taken it becomes their normal. It may begin as something they do not even like.

When a Nation Becomes an Atmosphere

Have you heard people say Nigeria happened to someone? But what about when Nigeria happens to a person's mind? We currently occupy one of the most toxic spaces in the world, and we were not born like that. It happened to us. Scroll through your phone and see that children have been kidnapped, teachers killed, schools attacked, and something in you begins to change. When events repeat often enough, you become numb. What would once have cut your heart no longer moves you.

When Israel left Egypt, they stood at the edge of freedom and wept for cucumber, garlic, leeks, and melon. When Egypt happens to you, the effect on you is longer than your tenure of staying there. That is why a person can leave Nigeria and carry Nigeria to wherever they are going. It takes a miracle to bring people out of Egypt. It takes transformation to bring Egypt out of them. A miracle is an event. Transformation takes time.

Exposure to the Kingdom Is Enough

Look at what Jesus did with his men. Twelve of them. One was a thief stealing from the treasury. Peter would deny him and even rebuke him. Thomas would not believe even after the resurrection. In John 6 the crowd left him until only the twelve remained, and he asked whether they too would go. How do you hang the faith of the world on such men and not reach for the strongest? Because exposure is enough.

When Britain came to colonize, the representative of the kingdom, with a few soldiers and an intimidating presence, was enough to plant that kingdom's language, values, and sovereignty for generations. In the same way, expose a child to the slum and the slum is enough. Expose a person to trauma and the trauma is enough. Jesus knew that if he exposed his men to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit was enough. They were weak, few, and doubtful, but if we expose anybody to this kingdom, they ought never to be normal again. The tragedy is that people come to church and go back with no clear sign they met Jesus, because we do not know the kingdom.

In Matthew 6:9 Jesus was teaching them to pray, and he gave them the most important prayer. He said pray, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, Matthew 6:10, let your kingdom come, your will be done on earth. Where must that kingdom come? First into the heart of men. The kingdom-come reality is not first and foremost what you notice in a nation. It is first established in the heart. When it sits there, you understand that you now represent a government.

Come Back Home

Have you read the prodigal son in Luke 15? In a conversation among men, one father said he told his children that no matter what happens outside, come back home. That statement did something to me. No matter your offense outside, come back home. Religion tells you that God wants to kill you. It is the kingdom that introduces him as your Father.

When the son demanded his inheritance, he was effectively saying he had waited for his father to die and the father had refused to die. That is the kind of request that would make any father renounce a child. But when the son reached the pit, something spoke in him and reminded him whose son he was. That thing that keeps saying, remember the son you are, that is the nature of righteousness telling you that where you are now is not where you belong.

Look at Romans 8:1 and personalize it. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. What is that telling you? Come back. Many brothers and sisters who stopped going to church still miss home; you can read it in their comments. Even the person who is quick to announce, I am not a Christian, is often venting because a seed of the kingdom was once sown, and it will not stop speaking. When we have access to people, we sow that seed of the kingdom, so that no matter how far the enemy takes them, something keeps saying there is home.

The Fight of Faith

A friend who is a prophet once called and said he saw me dead. My hand shook on the steering wheel as I dropped the phone, and then the Lord reminded me that the battle is not as important as where you are fighting from. I do not care what prophecy anyone gives you. The real spiritual warfare is not tearing something down; it is the fight of your faith.

The Bible says in James 5:14 that if anyone is sick, let them call the elders, for the prayer of faith will save the sick. Why the elders? Because they are the ones who can pray without being moved. When one of my spiritual sons and his wife both saw the same demon in their home and compared notes, I asked them to turn the camera around on a video call, and I addressed it from a place that does not waver. The difference is not muscle. It is that I pray from a point that is unwavering, where there is no what-if. The labor of faith is the labor to stand in the place where it is unwavering. This is the victory that overcomes the world, 1 John 5:4, even our faith.

We Are Enough

As ambassadors of the kingdom, we do not vanish; we finish our tenure and hand over. Paul said he fought the fight and finished the race. Heaven on earth is not God leaving his throne; it is the one who carries that kingdom stepping into a place so that heaven has come.

When they colonized the world, it made no structural sense for the king himself to go and take each place. The men who embodied the kingdom were enough. So why is God, who is all powerful, counting on us to preach the gospel? Because he plus us is enough. That is the answer the rich man received in the story of Lazarus; there were already men there, and they were enough. So here is the question: why are we enough in the church but not enough in the nation? Our impact is felt only where we choose to shine.

Salt and Light

Look at Matthew 5:13. Jesus called us the salt of the earth, and then warned that if the salt loses its savor, it can no longer tell the environment that it is present. If salt cannot taste, what will sweeten it? How do you season the seasoning? How do you revive the revival? The moment the righteous lose their savor, everything that ought not to be the sweetener rushes in to take that place. If the righteous lack boldness, others with boldness will influence your children with something else.

He said such salt is then good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot. To be cast out is to be called out. When I refuse to shine where I should be, and society meets my absence, they call me out and trample the influence I abandoned. We call it an attack of the devil, but it is scripture being fulfilled.

When the decree went out to destroy the Jews, Esther was told in Esther 4:14 that perhaps she had come to the kingdom for such a time as this. Notice her answer: let the church pray, but if all we can do is pray while no one goes in, there is still a problem. So she said she would go in, and she also needed the prayer behind her. Prayer and influence both matter. The world does not merely need more Christians in high places; there are Christians there already. The question is what has changed. Too often, when believers forget where they came from, they arrive and simply blend in.

If your light shines, men will glorify your Father. If the light is not shining, they will question who your Father is. Evangelism has become harder because people see a church that looks like a sword thrown at them daily, and they vow never to be part of it. It is difficult to preach a heaven whose taste people have never felt. We are all that God is counting on, and the moment we fail, the world is left exposed.

Beyond the Walls

There are three prophetic feasts to pay attention to in the move of God. The first is Passover, the passing from death to life, the feast of salvation, and the body of Christ has known that move. The second is Pentecost, the introduction to power that can make thousands of souls the harvest of a single meeting. But that is not the final stop. The third is the feast of Tabernacles, when the people left their fine houses and camped in the field to remember the wilderness. It is a prophetic sign that the church Jesus returns for must go beyond its walls.

You have light; take it there. Why are you afraid to sit with someone who does not believe in God? Is that not exactly where you are sent? Perhaps the fear that they will convert you is a sign you were never properly cooked. I have sat with people who asked afterward how I could reason with them and not condemn them, and then they wanted to know that version of Christianity more.