God sends people to us to meet our different needs. A leader ought to understand how God provides in this way, so that he does not drive away the people God has sent to him. That would be a mistake! You must go further and develop all the provisions that God has made for you. May you not miss anyone God has sent to be a blessing to you!
- A leader recognizes men of God who have been sent into his life.
Failing to recognize the contribution a man of God has made to your life is the ungratefulness that attracts many a curse. Notice the contribution of Elisha to this woman’s life.
Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant, my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil.
Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.
And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.
So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.
And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, there is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.
2 Kings 4:1-7
Elisha was an agent of prosperity to the widow. Through his ministry, her oil was multiplied, her bills were paid, her sons were delivered from slavery and her life was changed forever.
One day, I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attending a Kenneth Hagin conference. In the middle of the conference, the Spirit of the Lord told me to honour Kenneth Hagin with an offering. But that night, Kenneth Hagin himself described how prosperous he was and how much money he had paid as tithes that year.
I thought to myself, “This man will not need my measly offering.” But the Lord showed me how important it was to honour him, no matter how small the offering was. The Lord showed me how I had benefited from Kenneth Hagin’s ministry.
God showed me how every car I had, the house that I lived in and the money I had, had come through Kenneth Hagin’s ministry. He showed me that even the ability to travel to Tulsa, had somehow come to me through the ministry of Kenneth Hagin. As I thought through my life, I realised how true it was. God had anointed me through his ministry and everything I had, had come to me because of the anointing I received.
You see, a prophet is an agent of change! A prophet is an agent of prosperity! A prophet is an agent of promotion! God had sent a prophet into my life. It was imperative that I honoured him as a way of saying thank you.
- A leader recognizes the importance of the brothers God has given to him.
God can bless you through your brother, even your little brother. You may want it to be some other way but God can choose to use your own brothers. Even more humbling could be the fact that God would use your brother whom you despised, ridiculed, teased and rejected. This is what happened to Joseph’s brothers. They had to accept the provision of God from the brother they had despised. Humble yourself and become someone who can receive God’s provision through your own brother.
And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father’s household, with bread, according to their families. And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.
Genesis 47:11-13
God can bless you through different people. Some people are blessed and prosper by marrying into a prosperous family. Unfortunately, there are people who do not want to accept this fact. It punctures their ego to accept that their lives have been changed because of their spouse. This attitude leads to ingratitude. Do not be ashamed if that is the way God chooses to lift you up. God can bless you through a person!
theaol@ymail.com
By Dag Heward-Mills