Commitment
COMMITMENT | Rev. Oluyinka Ahove | September 24, 2017
I have never heard anybody say their business pays more than God or anyone say when they were sick their job healed them. Or that they could hear or see or walk and can talk because they work for so so so and so.
God pays. And that is why God demands quality service.
John 15:16
We live in the times where commitment seems to be a rarity. It’s really scarce to see people committed to their church or marriage or kingdom of God. Very few people really understand these days what commitment is.
Commitment is what brings the best out of us and delivers the best to us. God Himself demands commitment from us. Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment. And He told them the first is to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and said the second is loving your neighbor as yourself. With this God is saying love me with all of your heart. When you love with all your heart that is commitment. When you throw everything into it. Today relationships are fake. All a façade. Most of our relationship today is when it is good, am in but when bad, am out. But God requires us to give all. When God says I will never leave you nor forsake you, even when you do wrong or disobey me, that is total commitment. When Jacob left his father’s house to flee after duping his brother and father, Jacob taught he was free and will go and start afresh elsewhere. But God still met with him and told Him I will bless you but not yet because right now you are still messed up. So if you think you have some bad habits or whatever, God is saying I will never leave you nor forsake you until my plans come to pass in your life. He told Jeremiah, I knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. I planned your life before you came here. You are only here to run the plan. It didn’t shock God that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. He knew they were going to do it and He already prepared a way He would deliver them. That is why the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth was laid. Jesus came to act out what had already been taken care of in heaven.
So in John 15:16 Jesus was at the tail end of his time on earth and was talking to specific people: his disciples. Disciples are those who have decided to discipline their life by what the teacher says. SO when we say we are disciples it means we have decided that His teaching will guide our life. Write this down. SO Jesus was telling us in John 15:16
- I Chose You You Didn’t Chose Me
He told them they didn’t choose Him that He chose them. And this is significant because if they thought they are the one that chose Him then they could give Him a half-hearted commitment and be casual about that relationship and fill it with leftovers. So He needed to make that point clear. Because many of us serve God with the erroneous understanding that we chose Him. When we think that we chose something we feel we have the total right to make a decision over that thing. When you choose and buy a bag it is your choice. You chose it, not the seller. But when you get home and find you don’t like it you let it go. This is the kind of commitment we present to God sometimes. Halfhearted, without regard, with ignominy. But He said He will be committed to you rain or sunshine. If you fall I will pick you up. If you mess up, am willing to clean you up. When Jesus chose you He never consulted disappointment or discouragement. Sometimes these strangers begin to rear their head. It happens even when before marriage someone cautions you but you insist on the marriage then after the marriage and something happen you walk out. Just a little bump on the road you lose commitment. Thank God that God is not a man that when we are unfaithful He is still faithful. Waiting and trusting that you will see the light and come back to Him. Just one little bump on the road some of us back out. He chose you, you didn’t chose Him. It happened to Jacob who served twice for many years for a wife and was cheated even in business because he himself cheated someone. Then he heard his brother whom he cheated was looking for him and he panicked. But all these are about God’s pronouncement over his life. God waited for him to come full 180 degrees. So no escape. God brought Him to the point he wrestled with Him. This is commitment because God had said I will not leave you. Now he got to the point when he himself said to God, I will not leave you. God brought him to a place of total commitment to Him. Eventually, his relationship with his brother Esau was restored. At the tail end of his life when he met his grandchildren he was pleased and bless them and crossed his hand over them putting his right hand on the younger one and the left hand on the elder. Because he understood that it was grace that brought him to where he was. SO check your commitment to God.
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus explained that no man can serve two masters because you will love one and hate the other. So God is saying you cannot serve God and materialism, Mormon. So it goes beyond money. Serving Mormon means spending your strength and energy on that which does not promote the kingdom. You cannot serve the kingdom of God and also be serving materialism. You will be unfaithful. There is no grey area. So if you are not offering a full commitment to serve me with everything I have given you and serve me with it, you are unfaithful. Whatever else has your attention is materialism, whether it is your job or wife or business. God categorized them under materialism.
Your commitment will make you the head. If you look at Joseph by the time he became prime minister, even though he was not the king, yet he was the one making decisions. He was the head. The Bible says when the Holy Spirit came on the people the Bible says they were together breaking bread and the people were afraid of them. Now tell me how many people are afraid of you? In those days they were afraid of the Jesus people. Why? They were afraid of the power they carry. But when you and I are living without a commitment to God we live like a tail. Because the power will not flow through a dirty engine. Ask yourself how many people have come to know Jesus because of you? Beloved, power flows through relationship. When brethren dwell together in unity the anointing flows. Now you count how many people you have come in contact with and how many of them have come to Christ. The reason is because what is ruling today is intellectual and religious spirits and some of us even joins in this conversation. That is why someone comes with a problem and you say “ah my own problem pass your own”. This the response of people with no commitment.
What is the purpose of the chosing?
It is to bear fruits. To bear fruit presupposes that you already have seeds. He will not ask us to bear fruit if He has not given us seed. So when you have seed then you must plant. So you have the word, testimonies and you have the Holy Ghost. You have love. To love people so they will not go to hell. We are to spread love and compassion and look at someone and say, I have to speak to this person about Jesus. Many people are running into the church but not into the Kingdom of God. Jesus never preached the church but the kingdom. Church started after Jesus left. The Pharisees didn’t want people to follow Jesus. They wanted the people to follow them. Beloved that is why God said there will be disappointment at the last day. Many people are bringing people to church for ceremonies or dedication of organ but not to the kingdom. These people leave after service and that’s the end. You don’t see them anymore. The reason is because the primary motive of the invite is for the ceremony not even the kingdom.
What will you say No to so you can say Yes to God? So you have an assignment. Not fulfilling your assignment is worse than death. We know that death is not final. There is a day that the account of people will be opened. Some sing He Has gone to build mansions for me. Where is the material for building the mansion? The fruits are the materials for building the mansion. When we get there we will find so many uncompleted buildings.
May we be counted faithful.
Your Fruits Must Remain
This is the other thing Jesus told them. If the fruit is going to remain then there must be total commitment to the fruit. You don’t stop until your fruit abides. So to those people who got to heaven we did this and that…God is saying your fruit did not abide.
So where is your fruit? Is it abiding? Everyone of us is a fruit bearer. He has provided the seed. You have ability the capacity and the personality. So go and bear fruit and ensure your fruit abides.
Psalm 12:1
David was saying the faithful have failed. No commitment. As Christians we cannot be living life the way the bible say of some people that they will be lovers of themselves. The truth is that a lot of us are doing something or the other because we are looking for something in it.
He said every tree that will not bear fruit I will cut off. From today let your relationship with God cease from being a casual relationship. Let us throw ourselves into it because He will never fail. If we really check our level of commitment and imagine if God’s commitment to us was like that what would have happened? If we are Christians, let us be Christians that are bearing fruit and in the way we are committed.
What are you committed to do?
All excuse that is sin can hide itself in reasoning.
