COUNSEL TO PIONEERS (IF YOU ARE STARTING A NEW THING) – 2

When I came into ministry, one of my dear ones was concerned about my welfare and she said to me, “Well! As a pastor, you will be getting invitations to preach and I am sure that with the honorarium, you will be able to keep things going”. She even began to help me calculate how much I can have on average monthly. It seem as though I needed to be well positioned and branded so I can be getting invites for speaking engagements.

This is slippery ground for many pioneers- the temptation to think that relevance is in the volume of posters that carry your image. You are tempted to be everywhere and you begin to network with men because like they say ” Your network determines your net worth”. Beloved, set yourself free from that pressure.

What do you do? First, know whether you are a “Deborah-Order Pioneer” or a “Jael-Order Pioneer”. Deborah went out of her dwelling to contribute her quota to the war against Sisera!

Then she sent and called for Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, “Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded, ‘Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor; take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali and of the sons of Zebulun; And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go!” So she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh.
Judges 4:6‭, ‬8‭-‬9 NKJV

Deborah-Order Pioneers can respond to invitations with “I will surely go”. It is in their template of calling. But if you have a Jael-Order of Pioneering, do not get envious that no one has invited you and begin to scheme your way to get invitations.

If you have the Jael-Order, Deborah pioneers are not your standard. Learn all you can but stay where God has placed you. You are as relevant as your submission to the will of God for your life and ministry.

Jael-Order Pioneers must be content with staying in the calling of God for them. Sisera will meet them in the place of their calling:

“Most blessed among women is Jael, The wife of Heber the Kenite; Blessed is she among women in tents.
Judges 5:24 NKJV

How many Jaels have abandoned the tents because they saw the exploits of Deborah? As they ran to copy and join Deborah, they missed out on their Sisera Moment of Glory.

If you are not careful, you will run around like Esau and miss the timing of your blessing because everything you are looking for in the bush is accessible at home if you are patient enough to raise what God had blessed you with.

Deborah eventually sang about Jael. Jael stayed in her place. If you begin to hustle and copy and you leave your ordained space because you want to make a name and “roll with the big boys”, you may have mistakenly erased your name from the list of divine relevance.

The invitations you seek will pour in when you have built a work. No one invited Nehemiah until the work was well-advanced, but by then, Nehemiah had learnt to focus. He knew that some invitations are mere distractions and nothing else. If the work dies in your hands, the invitations will vanish and God will not be happy with you also.

Sit down. Build the Work. You are in ministry and not into hustling. The increase is in the calling.

Sit down! Yes! Sit down. Build your tent. Milk the cow. Sharpen your peg. Sisera is coming. You are Jael!

temilOluwa Ola, Eruwa