Topic: God’s Business: The Only Work for Man

Text: “And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Luke 2:49 NKJV

 

These were Jesus’ first words in the Gospel according to Luke. At the age of twelve, Jesus was moved by divine compulsion to do the Father’s will, He had a commitment to His Father’s vision and His own mission. He was engrossed in it that He could sit three days in the temple with the leaders of the temple, listening and asking them questions. Questions that could help Him do His Father’s work, live for His Father’s glory and execute His Father’s purpose. We are here to do God’s will (Matt 6:33), and that His will is love to us and all; advancement of His kingdom (Dan 2:44), sanctification of His children through His Son, Jesus (2Pet 3:9); and ultimately worship from all peoples (1Cor 10:31, Rev 7:9).

For Jesus, He declared a necessity to be in the Father’s work- “I must be at my father’s business” Are we Christ-like? Would it not change our lives a little if we felt this must as Jesus felt it? We feel that we must be about the business of our family and career; but we too often regard our Father’s business as something for secondary attention, to be taken up or left according to convenience. There is too often no must in our case. We find it written about Christ that “He must need go through Samaria,” (John 4:4) and He Himself said, “I must preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 4:31); and again to Zaccheus, “I must abide in thy house” (Luke 19:5); and again, “I must work the works of Him that sent his.” (John 9:4) — indeed, He is about His Father’s business. Do you and I feel this Divine “must” as we ought? Is necessity this laid upon us? (1 Cor 9:16). Let us stop being Marthas, who are cumbered about much serving, rather than Marys, whose whole souls go out in love to the Master (Luke 10:41-42). Let us abide with our Father, knowing Him and loving Him more. Let us live for Him and be His true Ambassadors. Let us do away with all excuses and get involved in His mission. Let it be clear by our words and actions that we are “about our Father’s business.”

This same Jesus when He emerged from Nazareth, eighteen years later, the Father was able to say of Him, “Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). May the Father be able to say that about us!

Reflection:
-How do my daily actions reflect a commitment to the Father’s business?
-In what areas of my life can I prioritize God more intentionally?

Prayers:

• Heavenly Father, ignite within us a passion for Your business that surpasses worldly pursuits.
• Grant us the wisdom to discern Your will in the midst of life’s distractions.
• May our hearts be attuned to Your voice, and our actions be a testament to the love and grace You bestow upon us. Help us to share this with others.

 

Bolarinwa Oluwole

Ag. Director MELR, NEMA

Topic: Heart for the Harvest… Bringing Him Pleasure

Text: Jesus said, my food is to do the pleasure of him who sent me and to make his work complete (John 4:34, BBE)

We are celebrating the Month of Missions. It is easily predictable that each time mission is talked about, the focus is about the unreached, the unengaged, the lost, the unchurched etc. While there is nothing wrong with that, the primary goal of mission is to bring God pleasure among all peoples. We can do every form of activity such as outreaches, mission support, discipleship, training, church planting etc but as long as it does not bring God pleasure, we have missed the mark.

John Piper says, Mission exists because worship does not. That is simply amplifying what Jesus says, mission exists because God is yet to receive pleasure from all peoples. Worship brings God pleasure. As we mark this year’s month of missions, the pursuit should be about the Lord receiving maximum pleasure from our obedience to His eternal purpose.

 

Let’s take some time to reflect. What would you say is your passion and pursuit? No man was created to live for himself. If the life goal of Jesus, himself God, was to do the pleasure of him that sent him, then there is a whole lot to reconsider. Jesus wasn’t pursuing the “success” of his own ministry. He was not after what comes to him. His singular purpose is to do the pleasure of him that sent him. As long as God is satisfied, he is also satisfied. It was that commitment that took him to the cross. There is no ambiguity. God must receive the fullness of pleasure.

 

We must be driven by the same commitment and ambition. God must receive pleasure through us. It must become our food. In other words, it must be our passion. By the latter, it means something we do without needing any form of motivation. Many would not be involved in God’s work unless they are certain of what is there to benefit. Such can never bring Him pleasure.

 

Reflection:

Think about your relationship with the Lord, would you say you have a consistent commitment to bring Him pleasure?

Prayer:

• Ask the Lord to increase your passion to love Him and to bring Him pleasure.
• Ask the Lord to help you do away with other passions competing for His love in your heart.
• Receive grace to be consistent in pleasing Him.

Dr. Adeoluwa F. Olanrewaju

Director of Finance and Admin., NEMA

Topic: Hearts for the Harvest: Removing the Ashes, Rekindling the Fire in our Hearts

Text: John 4:34

Passion in the hearts of men is likened to burning fire. This fire is not burning materials but the impact of its presence or absence is seen by all. One of the visible aspects of Jesus’ ministry is His passion and burning desire to accomplish the Father’s business. As crucial as food is, its presence or absence did not deter Jesus. As weakening as fatigue is, this still did not reduce the passion of Jesus. The reason Satan sends the arrow of discouragement, lack and disappointments in the direction of a believer is to quench the fire of his passion for God. One passionate man will help advance the kingdom of God than one thousand passionless and fireless Christians.

In accomplishing the business of our Father as echoed by Jesus in John 4:34, one thing is needful. We must remove the ashes of the fire that burned in the past and seek to keep the fire burning. The presence of ashes limits the intensity of the fire. God’s command to the Levites in regards to sustaining the fire on the altar was to remove the ashes. See Leviticus 6:9-12.

Ashes represent past glory; the exploits of yesterday. But we cannot dwell on the past forever. It is time to take our journey forward (Deut. 1:6). If the task of completing the Father’s business must be fulfilled, we must appreciate the exploits of the past but allow them to be in the past so that we can move forward. Territories have been conquered, glory to God. Now, let’s move forward. The question should be, what next? A complacent church is a dangerous church. Such a church is an enemy of revival. Complacency kills the fire of revival.

It’s time to rekindle our fire for evangelism and missions. If we have truly maintained the fire we started with, we shouldn’t have been here. Let’s begin to burn, the way we were burning in the days of revival. It is time to go back to our first love (Rev. 2:4). It is time to rekindle the fire that discouragement and competition quenched. Remove the ashes of the former glory and rekindle the fire for the new glory.

Finishing the task demands facing your front. Every day we are tempted to look back in order to measure the miles we have covered. To continually look back and building monuments will hinder the completion of the task. See Philippians 3:13-14. Keep pressing until the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our god.

Prayer:

• Appreciate God for the fire He ignited in you in the past and how that has yielded so much impact in the body of Christ.
• Make a commitment to leave the glory of the past behind and trust God for fresh fire.
• Remove the ashes that have beclouded your fire and has reduced its impact.
• Ask the Lord to rekindle the fire of evangelism and missions in your life.

Ezekiel Atuluku,

Lead Pastor, Portals Christian Centre, Abuja.

Topic: Heart for the Harvest: Passion for finishing

Text: John 4:34

The great commission is not an eternal enterprise, but it has eternal consequences; it is the result and impact of it that is eternal. Time itself is not an eternal creation of God. There was a time when there was no time, and there will still come a time when time shall be no more. The popular verse of scripture in Matthew 24:14, the Bible says “and this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come”. Every messenger of God has a vital part to play in taking the witness of the gospel of Jesus unto all nations, finishing that task is very vital in fulfilling destiny.

In John 17:4, Jesus reported back to his father “I have glorified you on earth: I have finished the work which you gave me to do”. John 19:30 says, “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost”. The one talking here is the Truth and the Life, he cannot lie, if he said he finished, then he finished. In John 20:21, he told us “as my father sent me, even so sent I you” if the father sent him to finish, then he hasn’t sent us to start and stop half way. We have a mandate to finish, don’t give an excuse that you did your best, if your best didn’t finish the job, then that best wasn’t good enough. One of the frightening statements of Apostle Paul for me in all of the Epistles is in 2Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”. Three terrible things in righteousness, Paul, the Apostle confirmed, he did there:

1. He was not just fighting, but fighting a good fight, the right fight;
2. He finished His course, 100%, completed the task;
3. He kept the faith. Ah!, many have lost the faith in the course of the fight to finish. This, for me, is the summary of finishing and finishing well.

For the Nigerian Church today, the task of reaching the remaining 43 Unreached and least evangelized tribe stares us in the face. I read from the NBTT Nigeria- global alliance document, “There are about 700 languages spoken in Nigeria. 325 of these still do not have even a single verse of the bible translated. About 30% of them are becoming extinct, even though Nigeria was among the first countries in Africa to form a national Bible translation organization. So much is being done but we have not yet finished. The Joshua Project report indicates that there are 7,248 unreached people groups out of the 17,281 people groups in the world. Wycliffe Global Alliance reported in 2023 that only 3,658 out of the 7,394 languages spoken in the world has any portion of the Bible translated in their language, just 736 have the full bible. What exactly are you doing to finish the remaining task?

Prayer:

1. Lord help me to discover my assignment in bringing your glory to the hearts of men across the nations.
2. Burden the heart of your church, especially in Nigeria, with the finishing mentality. Create the hunger to pursue and the appetite to complete the task of reaching the unreached.
3. Grant us the wisdom and strategy to acquire speed and bind our hearts together in unity to maximize strength.

Pastor Victor Idakwoji

Director of Mobilization and Networking, NEMA

Topic: Be at our Father’s Business.

Text: John 4:34

Our theme for this month of mission emphasis is apt: “Heart for the harvest”. It is imperative for whoever would be successful in harvesting souls unto the kingdom to have a heart of the harvest. Harvesting begins with the heart of the harvester. Little wonder Jesus says in Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. The question is how do we treasure the harvest? Is the harvest of souls unto God’s kingdom our priority?

Beloved, the Great Commission is a commission to go and harvest the nations into the kingdom by preaching the gospel of salvation to the saving of souls. How have we obeyed the commission? It is a commission that demands our commitment and we cannot be committed to something that does not appeal to our heart. In John 4, Jesus was initially tired and hungry. However, everything suddenly changed when He had an encounter with the Samaritan woman. The question to ask is: What brought about the change? The heart of Jesus. What was his heart? To do the will of God and to completely finish his work- John 4: 34.

He treasured harvesting souls into God’s kingdom above his physical comfort. Suddenly tiredness and hunger vanished as He engaged Himself with the woman. Beloved people of God, the harvest is here with us. The nations are brought closer to us just as these Samaritans were to Jesus. Let us put away all constraints and get souls harvested into God’s kingdom. In Proverbs 10:5b the Scripture says “He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.” Jesus would have just gone to sleep because He was tired, exhausted and hungry. He rather chose to do the will of God by reaching out to the woman. We must not be sons who cause shame as we busy ourselves with other things at this time of harvest. Let us not go to sleep but rather be at our duty post harvesting souls into the kingdom.

May God help us to seize the moment and harvest souls into His kingdom. His grace shall be sufficient for us in Jesus’ name.

Rev Dr. Samson Oyeshola Oyekale
Zonal Chairman, NEMA Southwest and President, Missionary Purse Ministry Int’l.

Topic: Heart for the Harvest

Text: John 4: 34–35

 

John 4:34–35 come at the end of Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman. The disciples returned having gone to buy food. She goes back into town to talk about who she had met. Jesus is having this conversation with the disciples. They’re saying, “Hey, we have bought the food you sent us to get, now you can eat. He says, “Oh, I’ve eaten. I have much better food than you’ve eaten. My food is to do the will of him who sent me, to finish his work. Basically, he was saying, what sustains me is obeying the father, accomplishing his will, doing the mission he sent me to do. Then he says, “Open your eyes and look. There’s so much work to do. There are so many people,” Who are in need of the grace and mercy of God, the living water that Jesus has come to offer.” So Jesus says, “This is food. This is sustenance. Giving your life, making this living water known to those who are thirsty.”

Just like Jesus told His disciples, we need the eyes of His people, the believers in Jesus, to be opened to see. The spiritual eyes need to be opened to see the vast areas that still need to hear the gospel. Some are close to us and some are far from us. Unless, our eyes are opened to see like Jesus saw and sees, our hearts will not yearn for what His heart yearns for. It is when we see that we will have burdened heart to do what he did.

The time for the harvest is now, not tomorrow or later. We need to develop the kind of heart that Jesus has. A heart for the harvest will not be deterred by hunger, possessions, other cares of this world and neither would it be at ease in Zion. It would forgo all to win a soul for the Kingdom. Open your eyes, the fields are ripe for harvest. There are people in need of salvation in Christ all around us right now.

Prayer:

• Pray that our hearts will be moved by what moves the Master’s heart.
• Pray that we may respond to the ripened harvest with obedience and the willingness to go.

Dr. David Umune

Zonal Chairman, NEMA Southeast & President, The Evangelizers’ Team Ministries International

Topic: Take Off the Barrier

Text: 2 Kings 5:1

 

Naaman did exploit. He was a great man. Naaman was a man of rank. He was a man who brought glory to his nation. He saved his nation and God helped him. BUT He was a leper. He needed help and he needed God as much as his people needed him. You are needed today for His Kingdom service. The question is, do you have a limiting “But”?

 

We cannot win the world by being timid, weak, frail or feeble. As a believer, nothing should stand as a barrier in serving the Master. If we are to conquer the devil, we must remove every limitation of leprosy like Naaman did and face the duty. Having a heart for the heart and then carrying a “but” aren’t compatible.

 

May we stand up and stand out for the Kingdom. More people are dying. There is a need for rescue. May the Lord redirect your step this year to be valiant for Him and for His Kingdom. It is no time to carry impediments around. There is still more exploits to be done. The good news is that Naaman got rid of the limiting leprosy. We must get rid of every limitation confronting us as well.

 

It is no time to find excuses for the “but”. It will limit your relevance in what the Lord wants to do through you. Are you a pastor, missionary, minister, believer etc. Have you identified a limiting “but”? The Lord is willing to help you but you have got to open up to Him. A potential harvester having a “but” is a major barrier to the harvest. Don’t be the barrier.

 

Prayer:

• Ask the Lord to open your eyes to any barrier in you limiting your relevance for the reaping of the harvest.
• Ask Him to help you to take away every identified barrier.
• Make a commitment to serve the Lord diligently.

 

Gabriel Barau

Executive Director, Go International, FCT Abuja

Topic: Sending our Best for the Harvest

Text: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34)

 

I recall having a discussion with an elderly man that I saw on his farm. He was harvesting his yams while two of his grandchildren who accompanied him to the farm were standing and watching him remove the tubers. I asked him why he would not sit back and allow the young teenage boys do the harvesting. His response got me thinking: “This is the expectation of many months. It needs to be done diligently and with experience. It is not a task just for anybody”, he said.

As we reflect on the text for this year’s month of missions, what caught my attention was the disclosure by Jesus that he was sent to finish “His (God’s) work”. In other words, when God was to conclude the labours of redeeming man, He did not send just anybody. I imagine the host of angels in heaven and perhaps other heavenly beings; God did not consider anyone else to be saddled with this task except the Lord Jesus. He was heaven’s best and God found it very convenient to send His best. Imagine a heaven “without” Jesus. God wasn’t bothered about heaven “losing” him to the earth. There is an expectation on earth and only the best could get it done.

There is a huge lesson here for the contemporary Church. If we must finish this task, we must identify and be very willing to commit our best to reaping the remaining harvest. The commitment and consecration of missionary sending has been to send the best. The nature of the remaining harvest keeps changing. They (the harvest) are now scattered across the globe. They are not necessarily the uneducated restrained to remote villages. Many of the unreached are now found in corporate offices. They are in the parliament. They are scattered in the market places. They are prominent in the sports world as well as in the academic. They are not dull nor naive. They are very sophisticated. Billions of them “live” on the internet. To successfully reach them, we must release the Church’s best. We should not keep them warming the benches on Sundays and during mid-week services. They should be released. Imagine the Church in Antioch sending forth Paul and Barnabas in obedience to the demand of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:1-2).

Where are our own Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Philip, Stephen etc? We have withheld the warriors to the pews and sent the weaklings to the battle field. We consider it “promotion” to retain the men of valour in safe abode while deploying the weaklings to the battle fronts. The enemy we confront understands the battle at hand. God sent His best and so must we! The earnest expectation of all creation in a time as this is the extension of the blessings of redemption to the ends of the earth. This is no rehearsal or friendlies. We must get our best enlisted.

Reflection for Action

– As a Church Pastor or Ministry Leader, who is that potential best that has been kept on the bench? What is the Lord saying to you today?

– Are you the best that God is looking for or has been asking to be sent?

We will be happy to guide you in making the decision that will profit God and His kingdom. Talk to us today! Check the cover pages of this devotional for contacts you may speak with.

Prayer:

• Lord, help us to develop a heart for the harvest like yours.
• Make our hearts willing to release our best for the reaping of the remaining harvest.
• Help us yield in obedience as you lay demand on us to be sent.

Dr. Adeoluwa F. Olanrewaju

Director Finance and Admin., NEMA

Topic: Heart for the Harvest: Jesus Our Perfect Example

Text: Matthew 4:12-16

The Holy Scriptures are replete with examples of several men and women both in the Old as well as the New Testaments who had a heart for the harvest of souls into God’s Kingdom. However, amongst these several examples, there is one Person that is unequalled in His passion, zeal and willingness to sacrifice for the lost. I am talking of the Man, Jesus Christ our Lord. In the passage above, we read of a major decision our Lord Jesus Christ took because of His heart for the harvest. Jesus Christ was originally from Bethlehem which was a small town in Judea in the southern part of Israel. Due to the threats against His life as a child by King Herod, an Angel of the Lord warned Joseph, His earthly father, to take Him and His mother and to flee to Egypt. Upon Herod’s death, Joseph brought the child, Jesus Christ and His mother back to Israel but instead of returning to Judea, he settled in Nazareth of Galilee in order to fulfill all that had been written about Jesus the Messiah long before He was born. (Read Matthew 2:13-23).

In the today’s text, Jesus had spent several years growing up and working as a carpenter in Nazareth, after He had assumed the identity of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, He took a major decision because of His concern for the Unreached. The Bible reports that ‘…leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast…That it might be fulfilled…The people which sat in darkness saw great light.’ My Lord Jesus left family and familiar territory for the unfamiliar in order to reach the lost and in order to rescue those dwelling in spiritual darkness. Because of His heart for the harvest, my Lord Jesus paid a major price.

Having lived His life as a great visual aid and example for us, Jesus now calls each of us to emulate Him. Each of us should be ready where and when necessary to relocate geographically in search of unreached tribes. A genuine heart for the harvest means a genuine commitment to drop all personal ambitions to pursue the salvation and discipleship of ethnic nations. Having a heart for the harvest means we are ready to engage in concerted prayer so that strongholds of sin and unbelief can give way to righteousness and faith. Speaking of Jesus, the Bible said: ‘He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.

Finally, a heart for the harvest would mean a willingness to employ our financial and material resources towards supporting the missionaries who will go to dwell among the unreached. There is no doubting the fact that both the global and the Nigerian Church have been endowed with much wealth. Unfortunately, less than 5% of our wealth is deployed towards cross-cultural missions in order to reach the dark places of the earth speedily.

This year, more than ever before, may we be endowed with the passion and sacrificial heart of Jesus towards the unreached. Amen.

Pastor Tokunbo Salami

Immediate Past National Chairman, NEMA & National Director, Pleroma Missions

Topic:   The “food” versus the Father’s will

Text: Then Jesus explained: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” John 4:34 (NIV).

Commentary: What was the will of the Father for our Lord Jesus Christ? Read John 6:37-40

The priority is the problem here, not the food, what is more important to us as disciples of Jesus? What is more expedient for us as Jesus’ followers will determine how we go about the great commission. Jesus was so rivetted by the joy of doing what the Father sent Him to do, and of finishing the work that He gave Him. This satisfied Him more than his usual and ordinary food. The “food” of delighting in the Father’s will was so great that He cared little about the temporal food of this world.

• The seriousness and the urgency of Christ’s mission are brought out graphically in John 4. Here, the Bible records how the Lord Jesus converted a Samaritan woman at a well. It occurred when He and His disciples stopped to rest from their journey at Jacob’s well. As they were all tired and hungry, the disciples left Him there to go buy food at the nearby city of Sychar. During their absence, a Samaritan woman came to the well, and our Lord took the opportunity to preach to her. This brought about her salvation, and she ran back to tell other Samaritans in the village to come and see the Messiah.

  When the disciples returned with food, Jesus was still talking with her. Not interested in what had happened, the only thing they were worried about was that their Master should have His long-awaited food with them. But Jesus replied that He had something superior to be troubled about. Here was an excellent opportunity to save sinners, and there was much work to be done! He therefore challenged them about our Kingdom Mission being our urgency.

  The disciples saw the great conversion but they scarcely seemed to be thrilled or interested about this. It appears that the spiritually dull disciples, with their earth-bound vision, saw only the recent. Why was this so? Perhaps they were too anxious with the mundane subject of food. All that was on their minds then was that they had bought food for themselves and their Master and that He should now come and eat with them.

  Maybe we can see a bit of ourselves in these disciples. We are oftentimes troubled about the basic necessities of life like food and drink, rest and sleep, health and comfort, clothes and shelter. There is nothing abnormal about being concerned with these things. But when our thoughts and our time are wholly preoccupied with them, then there must be great cause for concern.

  There are more important things in life to be concerned about. Here are some thought-provoking questions:

• Would you sacrifice your leisure time or rest time if there is an opportunity for you to lead someone to Christ?
• Would you sacrifice buying the dress or Shoe you always wanted, to send the money to a mission field in need?
• Would you forgo a day meal to fast and pray for the unreached people groups or Nations?

  Failure to answer these questions positively may show that you are preoccupied with the mundane things of this life. If you are earnestly seeking to advance God’s kingdom on earth, the first thing you need to do is to remove this preoccupation and embrace a sense of mission, a sense of being urgently compelled by a divine purpose. That mission must be as dominant to you as life. This is what Jesus meant when He said in v.34, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work.” To Him, doing the will of God and finishing it was his priority before food and drink. He could not do without them. They were His mandate, and He must realize His mandate! Do you have the same sense of kingdom mandate? The work of saving people from eternal death is part of your mission in life. It is as basic to your existence as food and water. Unless you take this kingdom mandate seriously, you will not see a need to go and bring people to the saving knowledge of Christ or budge out of your comfort zone.

Prayer:

• Dear Lord Jesus, please help me to put your kingdom mission and mandate first priority. Give me the enabling grace to serve and fulfill the great commission, even when it is not convenient or suitable.
• Please, Lord, remove the spiritual dullness in me and give me a sound mind in Jesus name.

Dr Mrs Ada Folajinmi

President, Sojourners Ministry International, Kachia, Kaduna State