“INVITATION TO PREACH” IS NOT YOUR SOURCE
I was visiting an elderly one some years ago. I was still in the early days of full-time ministry. She was really concerned about my survival. She began to ask questions like, “How will you get paid especially in a place like Eruwa?”
As I was still wondering the best way to answer, she said “Well, by the time you get invitations to preach four times a month with an average of twenty thousand as honorarium, you would have about eighty thousand every month. At least, you will be able to take care of yourself.”
She said it out of genuine love and I did not even know what to say. I simply kept quiet.
One of the strange mindsets that you must never allow as a minister of the gospel is thinking that an “Invitation to preach” is your source. You would have started a decline on a dangerous slope that ends in frustration.
If you think this way, you will be lobbying for places to preach. You will fight friends who you have invited but have not invited you. You would be taking invitations based on the permutation of who will give the highest honorarium. You will be angry when you visit a place as led by the Lord but the honorarium is lesser than the sacrifice you have made. It is a slope that you should run from if you would not become prey to a free fall.
It is the error of Balaam. Your calling is stirred by the size of the gift. It propels you to enter into places that the stamp of the Lord is not upon.
It is an error of Gehazi. You will see “big men” as your opportunity to be richer. They will become meal tickets and not souls indeed. You will run after them and construct prophecies, build needs and share tales that will draw pity for you.
Do not be caught in this web.
Listen, God is an employer that does not owe his labourers. The labourer is worthy of bid wages. Are you really labouring or are you lounging? The amazing thing about the one who employed us is that you cannot do eyeservice. You cannot pretend to be praying and studying while all you did was sleep. Your employer does not slumber or sleep.
Dear full-time minister, sit down to build training manuals that generations you do not see will still need. Sit down to plan every single meeting that the Lord laid on your heart. Stop executing things like a mediocre. Take time to sharpen your edge. Sit with those two disciples and train them like they are twenty thousand in a stadium. Impact lives. Build men.
Take your eyes off men and invitations. God is your source. It may not look like it but it will pay off in the long run. That “small work” has a huge advantage.
Dear Wale, Dear Philip, Dear Sola, Dear Emeka, Dear Bola, Dear Ignatius, Dear Florence, if the Lord has called you to the ministry full-time, take heed to the ministry he has committed into your hands that you fulfil it.