In a chat with Nigerians from all walks of life on Sunday evening during the stopover, the Vice President noted that the Federal Government was moving as quickly as it could to solve the fuel crisis and reduce the difficulties Nigerians were facing as a result.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has narrated how top government officials under the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan shared 27 billion, part of the proceeds of the sale of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2014.
Four out of every ten people in Nigeria's workforce were unemployed or underemployed by the end of September, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.
What is the status of Jerusalem? Israel set up its parliament in West Jerusalem when the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. The move followed the United Nations’ vote to partition Palestine on the basis of the British pledge known as the Balfour Declaration that paved the way for a homeland for the Jewish people.
Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $34.53 billion as of Nov. 24, up nearly 3 percent from a month earlier, central bank data showed on Thursday. The bank did not provide a reason for the increase in reserves, which stood at $33.58 billion at the same date last month.
By Oludare Mayowa
“The Salvation Army was founded on the principle that a man with an empty stomach doesn’t care about the gospel until he’s fed.”
The outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic and the attendant lockdown imposed by the government to contain the spread of the disease helped opened many church leaders’ eyes to the need to help the vulnerable among them.
Many churches rose to the occasion to reach out to some of the needy among them in response to the widespread hunger and lack that heralded the lockdown among some underprivileged within the territory lockdown by the government.
The palliatives distributed by some churches to their members and some people within their catchment areas provided the succour that alleviated the deprivation among many people during the period of the lockdown.
Those actions also helped the understanding of many of the church members on the true meaning of the Gospel more than the volume of sermon preached on the pulpit by their pastors.
Lending Helping Hands
By identifying with the needy among them, the church was invariably telling their congregations about the love of Christ through practical means and not by mere proclamations.
That singular actions alone must have won more souls to the kingdom and also convinced many that the church also care for their personal needs and was not just interested in taking from them alone.
My submission is that while the actions are commendable, the church needs to do more and not wait till such period of disaster or national tragedy such as the pandemic to respond to the needs of their members.
I am equally aware that some churches have imbibed the practice where they have a standing welfare scheme for their members. However, the process and form should be fine-tuned beyond the tokenism such practice has turned out in some places.
One of the methods church leaders could adopt to teach their congregations on giving is to purposefully set aside at least about 10 percent of their total income for charity activities within their fold and possibly beyond.
A specific team could be set up to consist of respected and credible members who should be assigned to manage such fund and the process of selection of beneficiaries for the give-back programme as a means of evangelism.
They should also have guidelines specifying the modalities for the distributions and accounting for funds in a transparent manner, while intervention should be categorised into primary and secondary with secondary addressing critical areas like health, business support and scholarship etc, while primary categories should focus more on the provision of foods and raiment support to those who are in need.
The question some people may want to ask is why should the church take up the business of charity and reaching out to the needy as a major part of their activities?
This is essential because such is part of the foundation laid by the Apostles when they have to set aside competent and men of integrity like Stephen and the six others to manage the distributions for the people. What followed such action was tremendous growth and multiplications within the fold. This is one of the true Acts of the Apostles, which are great model left for the church to emulate thereby enhance the multiplications of souls in the kingdom.
During the early ministry of Jesus Christ, he also set such examples for his followers on giving to the poor by his feeding of 5,000 and 4,000 people at some points.
Ordinarily, if Jesus had not intervened, the disciples would have sent the crowd away with empty stomach after they have been fed with the spiritual word.
Also, Apostle Paul set a similar example of charity in his ministry by collecting regular offering specifically to meet the need of some members of the church.
Welfare in the church should not be based on tokenism, whereby it is done haphazardly but purposefully to ensure that those who have are shelter to those who don’t.
The church should also take a cue from the early missionaries, who brought the gospel to our shore, it was their acts of giving through many means that led to the quick spread of the gospel to many part of the country and around the world.
Let the church arise and be in the forefront of impacting lives through giving back to the needy among them, and then the purpose of the gospel shall be fulfilled and made clear to many.
“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be … For the poor you will always have with you in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.” Deuteronomy 15:7-11
Significantly, the scripture is very clear about what God want us to do to alleviate the suffering of some people among us and the church can lead the way in this through purposeful giving back to the society, especially those of the household of faith.
Then we can start talking about the impact of the gospel on the people and the church will start seeing changes that truly come from the fresh approach to outreach.#GFD
By Oludare Mayowa
One of my leaders in faith recently wrote a note on a platform we both belong on his experience during the lockdown imposed by the government in a bid to contain the spread of covid-19 and it was illuminating and took me back to reflect on my own past.
“I found out that the dreams I had while growing up were truncated by the leaders that came into my life. I found out that I lost me to them.” This was an extract from the post by the cleric.
What is your legacy as leaders?
I was struck with awe because his experience was similar to mine and I am sure millions of others who had the misfortune of sitting under some leaders who simply manipulated our innocence and naivety to lead us astray and away from our dreams.
When we were taught about faith, we were not told all that we need to know, rather faith was taught basically to enable us open our wallet for them to spend or believe them as epitome of faith.
We were made ‘to bribe God’ so that he can give us the grace to realise our dream, not knowing that our giving was to enable them live larger than life and ascribed their prosperity as a sign of divine blessing and the quality of their faith.
We were taught to exercise our faith and step out in confidence in assurance that our faith will produce amazing result that is beyond our imaginations.
Indeed, in truth, we confidently step out of the boat to walk on water the same manner Jesus and then Peter did in the scripture. But we were almost swept away and drown by the tidal wave of the sea even when we were not shaken in our faith, as we sank deeper into the bottom of the water.
Still confident that our faith will see us floating back to the surface and in our foolishness, we still hope that our teachers will lend helping hands to rescue us when our faith is no longer sufficient to carry us further.
We were rescued by providence of His mercy, not by our faith or by the helping hands of our teachers who had propelled us to go further regardless of our experiences and the outcome of the experiment.
We came back from the depth of the water to tell our story because of our innocence and not by the faith of our teachers. Our experiences taught us that faith could turn to foolishness if not properly exercised and guided by the instructions from the father of light.
We learnt through the hard way with our experience that it is not faith alone that saved, but faith that is rooted in knowledge of Him who is able to bear us in his hands when the tide changed and the storm ranges.
We realised in moment of time that what our teachers failed to tell us, is that our faith was technically built not on the solid rock but on the assurance of our teachers who had substituted themselves in our eyes for the one who has the power of faith in His hands.
That the principle of faith is guided by the deeper knowledge that comes through the inspiration of the spirit of the creator of the universe and not in believing the miraculous power of our leaders who themselves need to learn to lean on the father of life.
If we had not sank into the bottom of the sea, perhaps we would not have realised the need to seek Jesus and walk with Him.
Our teachers did not tell us that walking on water was not a natural occurrence that could be dare by our ordinary faith.
They failed in their instructions to note the significance of Jesus presence at the scene and His command to Peter on the specific term on that occasion.
They did not reckon with the fact that if Jesus had wanted to make walking on water a natural occurrence for the apostles, He would not have instructed the disciples to enter into the boat to cross to the other side.
They neglect to see that Jesus walking on the water was meant to symbolise His authority over all things and that such authority can only be given by Him alone through His spirit and commandment to those who ask for it.
They did not tell us that our gaze should not be on man because vain is the help of man, but that when we focus on God, the owner of power, and our gaze connected to His face, he will lead us with His power to ride the storm of life.
They glibly show us the example of Daniel in the lion den that it was the faith of the one who was thrown into the den that made him survived the claws of those bestial animals.
In their desperation to make us the guinea pig for their experiments, we deliberately enter into the lion’s cave, with a mind that the one who rescued Daniel from the den would also do likewise for us.
We did not take into account that Daniel did not on his own volition jump into the cave to have a meeting with the lion.
Just like what happened some years back, when a Prophet went into the lion cage at the University of Ibadan zoological garden, we were mortally wounded in our desperations to prove the efficacy of our faith.
They did not tell us that even Jesus did not jump from the pinnacle of the temple when the devil tempted Him to do so, even with the innumerable angels at his beck and call, He recognised the need not to temp His God but spurned Satan instigation.
Their descendants are still following their footsteps till date, pushing more innocent people into the rivers of water; telling them that their faith will make them float in the manner of Archimedes principle of buoyancy.
They are still making more people to jump from the rooftop, in disobedience to the law of gravity as discovered by Isaac Newton.
While we believe in miracles, it’s our firm belief that they are not a daily occurrence that we should base our lives on but that miracles are divine intervention from the one who has the time and season in his hands.
We were once told that too much knowledge wearies the heart, quoting the scripture to back their position, but guess what would have happened to us today that we suddenly find ourselves in the information age, where you cannot survive without knowledge if we had trusted their judgment?
They nearly ruined the salvation of my first fruit, when the innocent child was in a secondary school owned by a religion sect that does not believe in the use of medication and with her expectations that the teacher of the law will practice what they preached alas, that was not to be.
The lid on their hypocrisy was blown open when one of their top leaders in company of some members of the church had an accident and were badly injured and in order not to put a lie to their human indoctrination that forbids the use of medicine for healing, they secretly employed a Doctor to treat their leader while the rest of the people who were also victims of the same accident were left to apply water, line and anointing oil on their own wound to heal.
Seeing their hypocrisy, my daughter nearly denounced the faith until she was brought back to her senses and shown the difference between the church hypocrisy and the efficacy of God’s word.
Am I against the preaching of faith? Am I denouncing the efficacy of miracles? Am I saying that all leaders are not doing the right thing? Nay, far from it, my position is that leaders should recognise the delicate position they occupy and the danger of misleading their flocks with the quality of the word they are being fed, which often is below the required standard.
That they should stop feeding the flock under their shepherd with half baked truth not rooted in the scripture but in human tradition and doctrines.
They should stop teaching their flocks out of selfish interest or based on personal experience but on the truth of the word as stated in the scripture.
The scripture is an encyclopedia of knowledge and wisdom from above which laid out principles governing life with the divine intervention coming to play only when all human efforts failed.
That is the reason God gave the knowledge of medicine to some for healing purposes and only intervene when such administration of drugs fail to yield the desired results due to the counteraction of demonic operations.
That way God had to intervene on behalf of the Israelite when they found themselves helpless at the bank of the red sea where there was no ship to convey them across while the enemies were on their heels to destroy them.
That was the same way He showed up for them when they were thirsty for water in the desert where there was no traces of river to quench their thirst allowing water to gush out from the rock.
That was why God rather chose to open the eyes of Hagai to the oasis within her reach and not create fresh flow of water for her and her son to drink in the desert when she was confused, thinking the end has come.
Spiritual leaders should be conscious of applying the content and context of the scripture in leading their flock so as not to lose their positions and places.#GFD
