Learning To Receive What God Is Giving by Pastor Poju Oyemade: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Learning to Receive What God Is Giving

Genesis 21:10-19

• Sarah told Abraham to cast out Hagar and her son, for the son of the bondwoman would not be heir with Isaac. The matter was grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son, until God told him not to be grieved, and to hearken to Sarah's voice, for in Isaac his seed would be called, while the son of the bondwoman would also be made a nation, because he was Abraham's seed also.
• Abraham, though very rich in silver, gold, and cattle, sent Ishmael away with nothing more than a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. What looks like an ungenerous departure was in fact a spiritual, not a material, transaction. The blessing of Abraham was never a material thing, it was the promise of the spirit, the activity of the spirit inside a person that causes them to succeed wherever they are placed because of what they carry on the inside.
• When the water was spent, Hagar cast the child under a shrub and sat some distance away, weeping, having given up. But before Ishmael left the house, Abraham had taught him what to pray for that moment, the way covenant people are taught what to pray.

Prayer essentially does two things: it brings a person to know clearly what the will of God is in a situation and aligns their will with God's will, and it releases that will to be done on the earth.

The problem is not that people fail to pray, it is that they try to use principles of faith to manipulate God's hand into doing what they have already decided is best, when God has already made full provision for whatever situation is faced.

It was the voice of Ishmael, not Hagar, that God heard, and the angel of the Lord called to Hagar and asked what troubled her. Sometimes intercession for people is what actually saves them in a situation, because someone else was praying correctly on their behalf.

Wells Already There

God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water that had been there all along. Whatever the condition of a life, there are wells of water, wells of opportunity, all around, and the tragedy is not always the absence of provision but the absence of sight.

• Blindness of heart is the worst thing that can happen to a person on this earth. It is better to be physically blind and see spiritually than to see physically and have no spiritual sight, because that condition leads to a life of deep frustration in the midst of next-door opportunity.
• Genesis 19:10-11 — The men of Sodom were smitten with blindness so that they wearied themselves trying to find a door that was right in front of them. Nothing God wants to do is ever far away; what creates the distance is that the inner eyes have been closed.

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Pastor Poju Oyemade

The Covenant Nation

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The interpretation a person gives to the events of their life is the interpretation of someone walking blind through a furnished room, striking chairs and calling them obstacles, when the room is simply arranged and waiting to be seen rightly. Once the light comes on, the same furniture that was being stumbled over is recognized for what it always was.

Psalm 27:4

One thing David desired, to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty and to inquire in His temple. To inquire means to understand that everything that happens carries a reason, and there is a reward in finding it.

Peter could not have known that a night of toiling and catching nothing was a divine setup that would place him in a position to lend his boat to Jesus, opening the door to becoming a fisher of men. Whatever seems to be frustration in the moment can be the exact entry point of what God is doing next.

Job 38-41

When Job justified himself and insisted he had done nothing wrong, God met him with three chapters of questions about the stars, the seasons, the treasures of the snow, questions Job could not answer, questions that established that there are many things shaping the events of the earth of which no one has knowledge.

Grace Works, Not Works of Works

Isaiah 65:1-2

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The Lord was found of those who sought Him not, made manifest to those who asked not after Him, while to a disobedient and gainsaying people His hands were stretched out all day long.

Romans 11:5-6

There is a remnant according to the election of grace, and if by grace, then it is no longer of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

• Grace does not mean sitting down and doing nothing while God does everything. A pilot who lands a plane safely and says "we landed by the grace of God" is not denying his skill, he is acknowledging that grace worked through competence.
• When God opens a person's eyes to build something, that is grace work. Looking at what someone else is doing and deciding to copy it out of ambition is works of works, the labor of a foolish man who wearies himself because he does not know how to enter the city.
• Counsel produces wonders. A person's wonderful works are always the result of the counsel they took. Whoever takes God's counsel in a situation will see God's wonders.

Prayer should be an inquiry: God has already made the provision, and what He has planned exceeds anything that could be asked or thought. Grace opens the door and gives time to prepare, calling the right conversations, the right insight, into a life, so that by the time a person stands in what they carry, it is the work that grace has produced.

Worship, Not Manipulation

Pressing and pressing God for a personal agenda is not the way of prayer. Where a person refuses to respond to what God is showing them, God is able to raise up another, and the very testimony of the one who stayed the course becomes a sign to others. The right posture is to inquire of the Lord and take time to ask what is on His heart, not to arrive with a demand already decided.

An essential part of worship is that it is not my will, but Thy will, be done. Lying prostrate for one's own will and singing over it is not worship.

Luke 12:22-27

Do not be consumed with what is on the table or what is in the closet, for life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, unburdened, carefree in the care of God, and consider the flowers, clothed more splendidly than the best-dressed of any nation, though they neither toil nor spin. What is asked for is not striving to get, but responding to what God is already giving.

The real issue with a distorted teaching on faith was never the principle itself, it was the interpretation, when people turned it into a means of setting their own agenda and pressing God's hand toward it.

Romans 10:17

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing that God has spoken to a person about what He intends to do, followed by that person's response to what has been shown them.