Isaac Boluwatise

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

– Pro 14:34

The task of salvaging the nation rests on those who practice righteousness.

The emphasis on Sunday, 1st November was on nation building.

Pastor stated that the journey to the future is not just a personal one, it is also a corporate one. While there was a personal undertone to the future of Israel in Canaan, as seen in the importance of individual choices (Num 13), it was also a corporate one.

He said we could limit the discussion of the future to the ultimate one, but that we haven’t because of its implications. While looking forward to a future with the Lord forever, we cannot be oblivious of the future here while this earth remains. Smith Wigglesworth in his lifetime posited that preparation for heaven should be as for the next moment and for the future here, as for 100 years from now.

Pastor said we must consider our corporate future because such disposition offers people a window of opportunity to make a difference and to secure their own future. Those who have made significant difference in the past and in the present are those who think more about the need of others than theirs.

Israel invited reproach by the practice of sin while Phinehas’ zeal for God stopped God’s fury on Israel and earned his lineage an everlasting priesthood. A nation is built by righteousness.

Whenever the devil wants to destroy a people:

1. He gives them a serious occupation with destructive sins or unrighteousness. Pro 14:34. Num. 23:20-21 showed they had escaped the curse because, God did not observe iniquity or wickedness in them; This He did not because they were not allowing sin to remain with them. The drive for fellowship with God doesn’t allow someone to continue in sin – Num 15:22-29; 15:30-31.
2. He uses wrong teachings put stumbling block in people’s way – Jude 1:3-4 and leads them into presumption (Rev 2:14) as against the need to warn them of the need to maintain their place and walk before the Lord.
3. He also mobilises his agents to put stumbling block on people’s way.

We must salvage our corporate future by raising a people who will stand in the marketplace, against unrighteousness that brings reproach to a people. The use of the word shows how the sinful disposition can turn the will of God to lift a people to reproach or judgement on the people. Jude 1:5-6 shows that God’s good plan can be messed up by those who take it for granted.

He said It is time to build a new Nigeria: where people will operate with royal mentality to maintain their honour; where they will salvage our existing corrupt system.; where the future of the nation becomes a priority for them; where the government is influenced by righteous voices and participants; and where there is desire to see nothing else but the glory of God filling the system.

We can salvage the corporate future of our nation by becoming ‘Phineases’: who are zealous enough to give God His place in their lives; who will stand out by refusing to be defiled by the trend in the land; who will stand against, rebuke and judge iniquity in the land to bring God’s mercy on the nation; and who will, with their selfless disposition, build a nation where righteousness without compromise exalts.

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 

– Rev. 22:3

Christ has … redeemed us from curses, room should therefore be given no more to curses.

On Sunday 25th October, Pastor continued with the challenge to everyone to go headlong for his or her purpose by not being ignorant of one of the tools the devil uses to destroy. Christ, he said, has come to give life in its fullest. While God uses blessings to advance you, the devil uses curse to devastate.

Taking cue from the week before, he emphasised that both blessings and curses are channels of supernatural power; that travel on the wings of words and believers should not be ignorant of this.

With reference to Pro. 26:2, he pointed out that curse has its cause and there are no accidents about it. Its presence on earth began with the fall of man and it was to limit man from fully realising the blessings that began his existence. He said believers should not overlook negative happenings in their lives. Every time such is identified, he said, God’s word should be used to uproot them.

The causes of curse include: practice of wickedness; deceitful dealings; inflicting pain on the helpless, on God’s servants that watches over us and on our spouses (wives); dishonour for God and self-will; dishonour for the good and carefree violation of God’s laws.

God’s laws, he said are tools for blessings. Everyone, he said has a choice between life and death, curses and blessings. You can choose the ways (words) of God which are catalysts for blessings. You can refuse and refute curses that you possibly have given room to intentionally, unintentionally and carelessly.

Christ has come to redeem us from curses, therefore room should be given no more to curses.

He pointed to the key to understanding the New Testament in Jn. 4:24. Our present life as believers is a life that is coming and that now is. we can enjoy now the FORETASTE of the kingdom life as it will be in the future (Rev.21;1-4, 22:1-3).

God is dwelling with us as the redeemed. We can therefore stand on the provision of Jesus’ work at Calvary to constantly combat every attempt of the enemy which continues for now in terms of sorrow, weeping, curses etc. These will persist when one fails to use the provision . When curses are removed from people’s lives they serve God better (Rev. 22:3, Luke 1:73-75).

With the words of God in our mouth we can refute every attempt of the devil, even those through the people he uses, to sow wrong words into our lives. It is time to be awake, he insisted, as the enemy sow tares among the wheat when men are asleep.

He took time in rounding up as we got ready for the Lords table to proclaim blessings on certain areas where the devil is diabolically messing with people. The blessings were sealed with the remembrance of the sacrifice made by the Lord for our salvation.

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For there is no sorcery against Jacob,
Nor any divination against Israel.
It now must be said of Jacob
And of Israel, Oh, what God has done!

– Numbers 23:23

On Sunday, 18th October 2015, Rev. Isaac Boluwatise shared from the scripture to upset the ideology (popular especially in the African context) about curses. He showed that a man’s life is ruled by his ideological leaning, i.e. what he thinks and what he believes, which affect how he lives and does things. A personal ideology not checked with scriptural lens can ensnare a person’s progress towards the zenith of God’s plan.

He shared that even after salvation, Christians are still prone to think in regional terms. The instantaneous change at salvation did not produce a drastic overhaul in the mind. The mind is to be transformed continually towards the image of Christ. Such transformation, causes us to know that while our earthly regional affiliations stands, as new creation 2Cor. 5:17, belonging to a new commonwealth, 1 Pet 2:9, Phil 3:20, our affiliation to the kingdom of God becomes primary.

He established that the general way of thinking in Africa, which uses the incurable religious disposition in humanity, appreciates the supernatural but wrongly magnifies the devil and his prowess more than God, emphasising the efficacy of curses more than of blessings because of the experiences from the past. Rev. Bolu in his teaching did not deny the operations of the devil and the reality of curses; he however insisted that the blessing is superior to the curse.

He declared that:
1. The promises of God stand in spite of the troubles from the past or around in the present. A person blessed of God cannot be cursed, your future pronounced by God cannot be denounced by the devil. Numbers 23:8.
2. It is time for you to take what belongs to you and that everything standing in your way are giving way for you. God, he said, is positioning you to the frustration of the enemy. The enemy is out on a mission to devastate seeing you are now thinking less of the past. He doesn’t give up on his mission. Pastor established the truth that every believer is blessed of God and they should never doubt this and should know that as the journey gets closer to what God has for you, the devil’s strategy changes for the worse while the blessing of God stands sure.
3. You need to understand the significance of blessings and curses: he explained that Both are empowerment (He defined blessing as empowerment by God for you to be all He has declared about you and curse as empowerment by the devil for someone not to be all he was declared to be,) set before you: as your choice and thought will determine which of them operates in your life) and released by words (In diabolical operations they use words, incantations to express sorcery and cast spells. God also declares blessings via the spoken word. His blessings are His spell (God’s spell is the root for Gospel in English) cast upon lives and situations for prosperity).

He encouraged everyone to invoke divine blessings: (1). By refuting every mouth that speaks against personal welfare since God did not design such scheme for His people. (2). By believing that the end is blessed despite the attempts of the devil. (3) By rising up like a lion that will not rest until victory has been celebrated; and (4). By pronouncing the blessings since God has previously released them.

He rounded up with the declaration that we are blessed beyond the curse, encouraging everyone to consciously, intentionally walk in the provisions of God.