The School Of Winners (4) By Dr. D.K Olukoya

The School Of Winners (4) By Dr. D.K Olukoya

Click HERE for Previous MESSAGES by Dr. D.K. Olukoya

THE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE AND MIRACLE MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL HEADQUARTERSSUNDAY WORSHIP SERVICETOPIC: THE SCHOOL OF WINNERS (4)ANCHORED TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 28:13; LUKE 18:1; JOSHUA 1:8; DANIEL 9:2; PHILIPPIANS 3:13MINISTER: DR. DANIEL OLUKOYA (G.O MFM WORLDWIDE)

The MESSAGE

Deuteronomy 28:13 (KJV) says “And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them:”

In our discussion on the school of success and the school of winners, we looked at the three classes available: the top, the bottom, and the middle. And I explained to you that quite a lot of people are just stuck in that centre, and we began to look at studies and steps to be in the school of winners.

The first one is to find God. If you have not found God, you have found nothing. The Bible says “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”

Have a fighting spirit.

Form good habits and keep them.

Persist till you succeed; do not give up.

Know your uniqueness. Know that you are only one of a kind in the whole world.

You must have a goal.

You must be a person of action.

All these we dealt with last time.

The next one is that you must soak yourself in a life of prayer. Be a prayer warrior. The Bible says in the book of Luke 18:1 (KJV), which says “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint”. The Bible encourages us to always pray. The Bible encourages us to be very solid in the place of prayer so that your words can bear fruit and that you can be a lion amongst men. Be addicted to prayers.

Become a Bible addict too. Know your Bible. Read your Bible. Unfortunately, we have a class of believers here who do not study the Bible, and because they do not know the Bible, they are being tossed about with every wind of doctrine. They just listen to various things on social media and refuse to read the Bible themselves. Be a Bible reader.

The Bible says in the book of Joshua 1:8 (KJV) “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” The Bible gives us the keys to success. Be a student of the Bible. Eat the word of God. Swallow it day and night. Let it not depart from thy mouth.

Also Read: Without Fail, Recover Your Virtues (2) By Dr. D.K Olukoya

It is what will make you prosperous and give you good success. It is easy to read the Bible in a year or six months. If you read five chapters a day, you will finish reading the Bible in a year. Be a Bible addict.

Be a reader. In Daniel 9:2 (KJV), the Bible says “In the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” The Daniel of the Bible, who was known as a man with an excellent spirit, was a reader. Even when the Apostle Paul was locked up in prison, he was asking people to bring his books.

Whether you like it or not, understanding comes from books, because a book is a collection of the writer’s thoughts and an abundance of the teacher’s heart; which time and situation may not allow him to deliver to you verbally. When you read the books, you know the stories behind a person. One of the reasons for Africa’s underdevelopment is the poor reading habits of its people. You will never be known better than what you know.

So, beloveth, let me advise you: do something about your reading habit. Most people do not buy Christian books to improve their lives. Many only buy prayer books. Let me advise you: drop that social media. Drop the TV. Drop those useless discussions and read! Fortunately, books are available in various languages. Oh, you cannot read English? Buy your local language. Oh, you do not know how to read? Get somebody to read for you or go to the adult literacy class and learn how to read.

Reading is a habit you need to form. Reading is a lifestyle you need to cultivate. Reading is your best teacher, and it is a teacher that will not flog you if you get something wrong. It is a teacher that keeps repeating its lesson. Our forefathers told us stories, but now we must graduate to reading. If you are in this service or you can hear me, and in a whole year you cannot bring out three Christian books that you have read, then there is a problem.

You are not like our forefathers. You are not like those who wrote the Bible, and you will be a dwarf in the school of success. It is recommended that you read at least two Christian books a month. Unfortunately, this generation is not one that likes to read. No matter how small your accommodation is, try and build a small library in it. Books are treasures. Those books are more treasurable than clothes, shoes, or houses.

Many people do not know the power of books, and it is a serious matter when you refuse to grow because someone has put knowledge in a book and you refuse to go check it out. You lock yourself up. When I came back from England and my luggage was cargoed from London to Nigeria, when my load came out of the lorry and I opened the first box, my mother said, “Daniel, these are books”. I said “Yes”. I opened the second one, and she said the same thing. I opened the third one, and she said the same thing.

She asked, “Where is car?” I said that I did not buy. She asked, “Is it books you bought for me too?” I said, “Mummy, these books you can see, I will read them, and then I will be able to buy you anything you want.” You see, what you hear goes away, but what you read stays. Books will teach you more than any lecturer or teacher can say. There is a limit to what any preacher can tell you from the pulpit. So, if you are a non-reader, let me just make you understand that you are a closed person; you have closed yourself up.

That is why a book is one of the most important agents of impartation, and therefore, God’s people have a lot of writings. Years ago, a minister of God came to me from Benin City, knelt down, and started crying. He said, “Dr. Olukoya, pray for me. I am not doing well in this work. All my colleagues have bought houses and cars, and I do not have anything. When an offering is collected on Sunday, the people waiting to collect it as welfare are already queuing by my door. In fact, one day, armed robbers came to the church after service and wanted to collect the offering”.

“I told them I had distributed it to the needy.” The armed robbers looked at him, shook their heads, and said, You handsome young man, why are you doing this kind of poverty work?’ So, please just pray for me”. I looked at him and said, “Young man, who is Apostle Joseph Babalola?” He said “Daddy, is he a politician”? I said, “I see. Now get out of my office. Do not come back here until you have read everything that has to do with this man of God”. He asked where he could find the books, and I told him to go to Christian bookshops; he would find them there.

He asked, “So you are not going to pray?” I said, “You do not need prayer. It is not prayer you need. Not everything answers to prayer.” So he went away sad. In three months’ time, he was back. Now, a smiling young man, he knelt down again and said, “Dr. Olukoya, thank you so much for telling me about this great man. I did not know this kind of man existed in this country. I have read all the books about him, and my life has changed. I started fasting, I started praying, and now our church has started to grow.” So that man locked himself up because of his refusal to read.

Books are powerful. Unfortunately, we have a generation of non-readers who are bookblind. You enter an aircraft, and you see non-blacks reading serious books. You see blacks reading books like magazines and newspapers while others are reading serious books. What reading can do for you, laying on of hands, fasting, and prayer will not do for you. It is like you are thirsty, and then you want to quench your thirst by eating groundnuts. Books can open your mind. They can lead you to virtue.

You can even have a divine encounter through books. I have seen people reading books, and the Holy Ghost fell upon them through books. Books can give you victory. One glance at a book, and you can hear the voice of somebody who died 1,000 years ago. So to read is to travel and to voyage through time. Are you in this service and you do not even buy books? You buy magazines to read all kinds of gossip. You do not buy Bible books. MFM has hundreds of books, but you have not even read one.

It is even a tragedy that most of those reading MFM books are not even MFM members. You ask some people to stand up and mention three books written by the G.O., and they have no idea but they are still coming to service. It means such people are in the company of a blind generation that has decided to be blind. Make up your mind from this service because readers are leaders. So you must read, no matter what. Spend your money wisely. Spend your time wisely.

All those stories you have been reading from newspapers, mazagines and social media—tell me how they have prospered your spiritual life. The majority of your time you wasted on those things; what impact has it had on your spiritual life? Have you had a divine encounter by looking at your Facebook? Make up your mind. Two books a month is not too much. Books come in different sizes. You can start with books of twenty to thirty pages and later graduate to more. The more you read, the more your spiritual life grows.

You do not know how the apostles died. But a book would sit you down and tell you how John died. Or how Peter died. Or how Paul died. When you buy a book like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and you begin to see how the apostles were killed and persecuted for their faith, it begins to challenge your own. You see people before emperors being told to renounce Jesus, and they refuse. You see their families being painfully killed. There was a man who refused to denounce Jesus, and his wife was killed. The second time he was told, he refused, and his first daughter was killed.

When it remained just one daughter, his mind was getting weak. He was going to give in and just say what they wanted him to say, but the daughter said, “Daddy, do not say it. Let them kill me”. So when you read stories like that, you see that the Christianity we are practising now is complete ice-cream Christianity. This is a serious matter. But you can only get this when you read.

May God make you a reader who will do what God wants you to do, in the name of Jesus.

The eleventh point is that you must have love in your heart. The Bible says “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing”. Love is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can destroy lives, but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of men. As a believer, you need to love all men, for they each have qualities that can be admired. This is Nigeria now. Every tribe has its own demons troubling them. Every area has its own principality troubling it.

So, nobody is perfect. As a man of God, you need to understand what spirit controls people. Therefore, you cannot hate anybody because all of us are under one influence or another. The demons of the Yorubas are laughing at you, but behind your back, they are leading with you. The demon of the Igbo is money. The demons of the Hausas are another. So we have various categories. The demon of some others is prostitution. The demon of some others is just drinking. In some parts of this country, you get there and find idols under air conditioners.

In Edo, it is fornication and prostitution. In Delta, they do all kinds of things. So, every tribe has their own demons. The beauty is that, in Christ, everybody is one and all of us need the mercy of God to exist. We must have love for all people. And finally, before we drop this topic,

You must refuse to live in yesterday. Philippians 3:13 (KJV) says “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before”. Anybody driving a car who decides to look at the rearview mirror instead of the front will crash. So do not waste your time mourning about yesterday’s misfortune or defeat. You cannot become younger than yesterday; it is too late. Yesterday is buried forever, and you should not think of it any more.

A wasted day is the destruction of a page in your life. You have to avoid the killers of time, so do not dwell on the troubles that soaked you yesterday. Be a forward-looking person. It is gone. It is gone. And now we must move forward.

I pray that the Lord will lay His hands on you in the name of Jesus.

PRAYER POINTS.

[Before Ministration].

Powers assigned to swallow good things in my life; you are liars; die! in the name of Jesus.

Shackles of darkness caging my glory, break away by fire! in the name of Jesus.

Fire of God, scatter every coven of darkness, assigned against my life! in the name of Jesus.

You month of April, hear the Word of the Lord; prosper me by fire! in the name of Jesus.

[After Ministration Prayers].

My head, my head, hear the Word of the Lord, arise and shine! in the name of Jesus.

Where is the Lord God of Elijah? Arise! Silence my silencers, in the name of Jesus.

God bless you in Jesus name.

Flatimes Notice Board: Until you are born again, God ever abiding presence will never be with you. You must be born again to enjoy continuous victory. Please say the displayed prayer below in faith:

Lord Jesus, come into my life. I accept You as my Lord and Personal Saviour. I believe in my heart You died and rose from the dead to save me. Thank You Lord for saving me, in Jesus name Amen.

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