The third session of WAFBEC 2014 Day 5 was steered by a first time guest speaker Pastor Andy Osakwe. Pastor Andy Osakwe is the Senior Pastor and General Overseer of Summit Bible Churches Worldwide with headquarters in Abuja. As announced, his ministry has a bible school which is the only bible school in Nigeria accredited by Rhema Bible School.
Luke 4:4, Acts 9:32 & 14, Matthew 28:18
His message ‘Control’ was founded upon Gen 1:26 where God gave Adam and Eve the authority of delegation and designation. Since God delegated control to Adam God no longer had control of the earth nor the garden which was now Adam’s to keep. To keep means to guard, Adam shouldn’t even have allowed the devil to enter the garden because God told him to keep the garden.
Unfortunately, Adam did not fully exercise his control, the fact that Satan entered the garden is proof of this. Pastor Osakwe stressed that if Adam had taken control Satan had no business in the garden in the first place! Adam lost his control by giving his authority to Satan, but Jesus came to restore that to mankind.
“Certain things must be in place before Jesus comes”, he said, “..the church has to be in control to reflect the full glory of Christ. We were given a note of warning as to how we take control. For Satan, perceiving what Jesus came for, tried to hand it over to Jesus on the condition that Jesus worshipped him. But you can never get control by GIVING in to Satan, emphasised Pastor Andy, for “whatever you obey you become a slave to. The end does not justify the means”.
We know Jesus did get back the control as seen in Col 2:15 by His death and resurrection and since we’re heirs with Christ we’ve also been given this control. As Christians we need to lead our nation to its prophetic destiny by taking control. Jesus’ mission was to take back control and the first thing He did was to demonstrate control. This is the whole message of the bible; Man had control, then he gave it away and Jesus restored it back to us.
Don’t let life’s situation, people, sickness, money control you. When you take control you will be persecuted especially by religious Christians because religion doesn’t like having people in control. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to you. Jesus gave us more authority than Adam had.
Even though the devil will contend with every revelation we have but praise God we have the victory through Jesus.
Pastor Andy Osakwe brought the message to a close by listing a few of the things we have control over; dreams, decisions, thoughts, affections/feelings, moods, conversations, expectation, climate, demons, money, what we see, to mention a few.