Created for His Pleasure

I do not know her well having only interacted with her on a few occasions. However, I hear a lot about her firm but compassionate diligence with regard to the Vocational School she co-manages for the church. I know that she’s the wife of a quiet man who’s doing great work in the financial sector of our economy.

It was with that quietness, which I largely associate with her husband, that she delivered a truly beautiful message yesterday (August 15, 2019) during Thursday Showers, a praise and worship meeting, from 9.00 to 11.30am at The Fountain of Life Church, Ilupeju. Yes, there appropriately was praise and also worship. But to continue the 2019 Pastors’ Conference, Pastor Tinu Olashore delivered a pithy homily.

A word about this less publicized annual conference. I think it’s only known to Fountaineers – that’s how we call ourselves at the Fountain of Life Church. I don’t quite know how long the conference lasts. But I suspect that it is duration is only known by Pastor Taiwo Odukoya and Pastor Fred Ohiani. What it does is that the church then has the chance of experiencing the depth and breadth of the many men and women that Pastor Odukoya has ordained as pastors to assist him. During this conference many of these pastors – they must be more than two dozen – take the pulpit and, boy, they deliver messages with different flavours and scintillating colours! I usually find them fascinating.

So, yesterday day was Pastor Tinu’s day. It was quietly impassioned. Her theme is the title of this piece with which I say thanks to her for these four reasons.

1. That as Christians we must realize that we were largely created to give God pleasure. Therefore, we should strive at all times to ensure that in what we do or not do, say or refrain from saying, we bring pleasure to our Father who is in heaven. Scripture encapsulates it by saying we must seek first the kingdom of God to experience the addition of everything else we need in life.
2. That whereas it is easy to love God, the difficult part may be to love our neighbour. The reason being that our neighbour, unlike God who is good all the time, may do things that we quite dislike. To her, it’s okay to dislike what our neighbour may have done, it is not right to dislike him or her. After all, we sometimes hate what we ourselves had done or said but never do we hate ourselves. So, we quite capable to make a clear distinction between what was done or said and the individual who did or said it. When we do this, we bring pleasure to our maker.
3. That the Holy Spirit can irreverently be seen as an – I can’t quite find the right word to translate Olofofo because busybody doesn’t do credit to it. The Holy Spirit brings everything to us. He reminds us constantly of all that Jesus taught us vis-à-vis our actions, utterances, associations, etc. So, we’re never short of His advice, all of which are to make us bring pleasure to the One who sent Him.
4. And, that if perchance we are not receiving the many things we have repeatedly prayed for, we should simply wait. She then dropped the clincher. That when we wait, we should act like good waiters. Don’t waiters serve? We should serve Him as we wait because serving Him brings Him pleasure.

It was great time in the worship of Yahweh.

Ron Mgbatogu