Pethach - The Season of Open Doors

The principle behind giving to God for many is a form of lottery someone promises them that God will either double or quadruple whatever they staked or gave to him to meet an urgent need.

Sometimes the returns offered are one million percent higher than the amount given, I have been to such services several times the words of the preacher with which he would stir the audience were usually well rehearsed and practised. He will start with two or three testimonies of how someone in dire need gave and the person received a return on investment that was too dumbfounding to mention then he would pick three or four examples in the Bible Abraham gives to Melchizedek, David saying he will not give to God an offering that costs him nothing, Abigail gives to David to secure her place in the palace and that "God loves a cheerful giver" scripture.

Getting people to give in a church service is a special duty that only a few ministers can comfortably and expertly carry out. Stirring the people with words is not a skill for novices, the stirrer must also be anointed to a certain degree and must be a rich minister whose lifestyle would be flamboyant enough to create the impression that such a person didn't get rich naturally.

There is an anointing that makes one rich at work in the ministry of such a minister the poor cannot inspire the rich to give. Jesus sat in the boat of a fisherman who caught nothing all night and confidently told him to launch his boat into the deep at sunrise. The fishes had no business on the surface at that time but at "Thy word" Peter did what he was asked to do and the words of Jesus produced fish out of nowhere to the extent that the nets began to tear with the haul.

The young boy with five loaves of bread and two fish went home with twelve baskets of leftover fish and bread because he invested his lunch and deserved to go home with such a healthy return on his investment then the congregation will be told to drop what they had planned to give and pick something better. It is a seed of faith, the choir will be encouraged to sing, the offering basket will be passed, the seed of faith will be collected, the prayer of faith will be said over the offering, and the giver shall then receive the blessings from the minister collecting the offering.

The same process applies to seed collection. Members are told to tie a seed to a particular purpose a prayer request, a project, visa collection, getting pregnant, getting married, etc Hanna made a vow in Shiloh that if God would give her a son she would give the son back to His service God heard her prayer. A vow or covenant seed moves God.

Testimonies will be shared about the effect of such a seed, It is like playing the lottery. The dopamine is stirred and the gambler throws in his lot. Tithing for many follows the same principle.

In the case of tithe, however, there are curses for those who refuse to give it according to those who push it as the means through which there will be meat in the house of God. Nobody wants devourers like palmer worms and locusts to devour their blessings. God then becomes a tax collector of sorts who forces his children to give to him or damns them with poverty and failure. Those arguments or persuasive speeches that many ministers have used over the years to compel the church to give to God are not wrong. The mindset behind it is the problem. Manipulating people to give to God stems from the assumption that people do not hear from God. It is dishonest and it is contrary to the principles of the kingdom. You don't need to stir anyone to give or to employ gimmicks like shaking their hands or anointing them with oil because they can afford to give a certain amount.

The most ridiculous is the categorization of believers into those who can give a certain amount which is then reduced gradually until it gets to the lowest denomination, gimmicks that had brought ridicule to the altar over the years. Many are defiant and continue to engage in such practices. What it however betrays is that such Christian establishments are not raising Christians who can be moved by the Holy Spirit to do His will, I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of the church of Jesus Christ being moved by men and not by the Spirit.

When God moves people to give, they give the right way and for the right reason No cajoling is necessary. There was no reference in Scripture where Jesus or any of the apostles offered anyone sweet words in order to part them with their resources.

People always give according to how they are moved by the Spirit. It is true that some of those who got stirred by the words of men come back sharing their testimonies. The pastors who stir people to give also see these testimonies as proof that God approves of their method, God is not in the business of stock exchange, those who gave got blessed but they short-changed themselves in many ways.

If indeed they are believers, they are already blessed by nature and need not solicit any more blessings from God through their giving. That mindset makes a slave out of a son, and the relationship between the giver and God becomes transactional.

The mindset becomes warped, imagine an unbeliever who believes he must give to God to be blessed financially but refuses to give his life to Christ so that he can become saved and redeemed from his sins.

I have met many in life, who never fail to send in their tithes and offerings to church so as not to incur God's wrath and lose their jobs or their businesses but who do not want anything to do with God and the reality of the Christian life. There are several ways by which the grace of God can be abused.

We should be wary of all of them, treating believers as if they are outsiders to the faith they profess renders them powerless and confused as to who they are and what their identity in Christ has made them. Telling someone he is no longer the child of the Blessed one because he didn't give is not only ironic, it is ridiculous. God is the Blessed one and every one of His children is blessed by virtue of their divine birth and supernatural inheritance in Christ Jesus. The blessings do not need to be provoked with offering or seed or tithe, it is theirs by the nature of their status in Christ.

Many of us will be unhappy if our biological children come knocking on our door every morning with a small gift in order for us to give them their pocket money or food for the day. Jesus told us that we act as if we are more righteous than God when we give our own children bread instead of stone and fish instead of snake but act as if God will not give us any blessings unless we bribe Him. It is a pagan mindset, a Mammon mindset the right mindset a believer must have is the mind of Christ.

The Lord instructs him or her on what to do and how to do it he obeys, the advantage of this is not only in the growth and confidence of that believer in his or her accuracy in hearing from God, it also establishes a relationship between the giver and the one who has instructed him or her to give.

The founder of TBN once shared a testimony that was etched in my memory till tomorrow. He said when they wanted to start the television station, they couldn't raise the money but it was something he sincerely wanted to do and something he believed God wanted him to do so he prayed and God gave him the opportunity to invest in a global satellite. What he wanted was a local TV station and he couldn't even raise the funds to make that dream come true. The opportunity to invest and take off on a global satellite was huge and the cost was huge. He said he prayed and wrote to many churches for support but none of the churches saw the importance of investing in such a project in those days.

Most of the churches were poor and the ones that were not poor couldn't justify spending that kind of money out of their budgets. He said he continued to pray until the day of the deadline for payment, he was supposed to pay by noon on that day and he spent the morning in prayer.

Sometime around 10 am, he decided to take a walk while praying, talking to the Lord about it and asking him to intervene in securing the satellite license. He said he got to a pier, not too far away from the satellite company and a man approached him, a short man in a fez cap who he had never met before in his life, the man greeted him and said "Are you not the man who wanted to put the gospel on satellite? I was about to travel on one of the ships when the Lord told me I should come and give you this cheque to support the satellite project. The man handed him a cheque and it was for the exact amount he needed to get the license, he said he barely said thank you as he began to run to the company.

He got there in time to pay and complete the paperwork, he said it was after this that he realised that the man said he had attended an Orthodox church. A church whose members he felt didn't even know the Holy Spirit! That is how the Spirit stirs us to give naturally, people don't want to part with their money or any other substance. If the Lord stirs them to give, they know they are obeying the Lord and this boosts their confidence in their walk with him.

If another man stirs them to give, they take the word of that man and "tap into" or "connect to" the anointing of such a man rather than to God Himself.

These two mindsets spell the difference between a Christian who is walking with the Holy Spirit and maturing daily and a baby Christian who can still be tossed here and there by the winds of doctrine.

PS: We need 240 doors for the next stage of our project in Pneuma City One door costs 175,000 Naira to buy I am not soliciting for offering or seed or whatever, please when we did the roofing and the windows of the project, many asked me why I didn't inform them. To be candid, I didn't remember.

This Open Door project started last week and we have already bought 80 doors. I have no doubt the next thing I will be sharing is the testimony of how God sorted it out. God is the one who laid the foundation and built the project to this point, I have never had a sleepless night over anything the Lord instructed me to do. He has never denied us anything in order to give us anything. As Shola Allyson Obaniyi will say "If he did it to this point without my help, he would complete it to His Glory alone" If the Holy Spirit stirs you to be a part of it, you know what to do, I am not offering Holy Water or Holy Fish or Holy Net or Holy Magnet in return. Please a cent by the Spirit is of more value to the project than a billion by the flesh when doors are opened, it is not the gift that steps in through it, it is always the giver (I have been looking for where to hide this line) Unless moved by the Spirit to give, please just pray for us, Thank you.

-GSW-