ARE YOU THERE?
Dr. D. K. Olukoya
We shall start this message by looking at three scriptures: Genesis 3: 9: “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, where art thou?” Was it that the Lord could not see Adam? No. He could see him.
I King 17: 2: “And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.” In verses 9 - 10 of the same passage, God continued to speak to Elijah: “Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there, gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel that I may drink.”
II Kings 5: 9 – 12: “So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shall be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, (Naaman was angry, like all baby Christians) and said, Behold, I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. (The sick man was becoming impatient and was also becoming the doctor). Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.” He wanted to go to Abana and Pharpar, but the Lord had no appointment with Abana and Pharpar but with Jordan.
The first passage says, “Where art thou?” The second and the third ones talk about men who wanted to avoid the place God wanted them to be because they thought they had a better place to go. It was not that God could not see Adam, but Adam was in the wrong place. This is why I always say that a sinner in the right place and a saint in the wrong place are birds of the same feather because both of them will not receive blessing. God was actually asking Adam the following questions: "Adam, is this your condition now? Are you in the place where I placed you? Is this our agreement? Is this what has become of you? Adam, why have you decided to wage war against yourself? When did you become a self-appointed criminal hiding yourself from the Almighty? Why have you allowed the enemy to catch you so cheaply? Why are you in this condition?" This is why one of the greatest prayer points you can pray for yourself is: “O Lord, let me be in the right place at the right time.” I think you should close your eyes and pray it.
A certain sister's mother made a covenant with God that if He gave her a child she would dedicate the child to Him. This sister happened to be that covenant child. She grew up doing quite well. When she entered the university, her colleagues made fun of her because she had small breasts while they had bigger ones. They called her names and gave her lectures on how she could enlarge her breasts. They told her that the reason her breasts were so small was because she was a virgin, that if she started committing fornication, they would grow big. Unfortunately, she listened to their lectures and sold off her virginity at very cheap value. The day it happened, she had a dream in which she saw four men in white garment pursuing her. They caught up with her and began to beat her. As they were beating her, she kept hearing a voice saying, “Where art thou?” She too, started screaming until she woke up. The following night, she had the same dream but this time, she asked them why they were beating her and they said: “You are a covenant child. God has ordained that you would produce four prophets but because of what you have done, joining yourself to satanic agents, God has replaced you with someone else." At this juncture, I think you should take the following prayer points:
1. O Lord, do not replace me with stones, in Jesus’ name.
2. Every anchor of evil replacement, be shattered to pieces, in the name of Jesus.
Beloved, this is a very serious matter. Where are you? If you are not able to answer this question, then you are living what I call a wasted life. There are many people in the Bible who lived wasted lives, from men like Cain to men like Samson. Are you in the place and in the condition that God wants you to be? You could be in the place where He wants you to be but not in the condition He wants you to be. Is what is written in Hebrew chapter 5 verse 12 not true of many churchgoers today? It says, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.”
There are lots of babies in the house of God. They ought to have grown beyond the stage they are now but they are still there. The babies who come to the house of God are only interested in miracles and breakthroughs. They hate any ministry that talks about holiness within and without. They do not like it at all. The reason you see people flocking to where they can dance for hours is because they want the flesh to enjoy forgetting that the Bible says that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and that the same flesh battles against the spirit. Those who hate the ministry of holiness rush to where there is no discipline. Where art thou?
There are many people who went to Bible colleges but the Bible College is not inside of them. Such people have the Bible only in their brains. There is a difference between having the Bible in your brain and having it in your spirit. The Bible in the brain can get you a Ph.D. in theology but cannot make you to be born again. Whereas the Bible in the spirit can make you to be born again and you will have power over the host of darkness, which is what God is looking for. I was talking to a woman who graduated from a Bible college. I said to her, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and she said, “No. That is wrong. According to the theory of so, so and so, there are five view points on that issue.” Since I did not have time to argue with her, I said, “Madam, you don’t believe that you can receive the Holy Spirit, but if I pray with you now and that power falls upon your life, will you not believe?” She said, “That will be good.” I said, “Okay let us pray.” Then we started praying. As we prayed, she did not only receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, she also started to prophesy. When she finished, she exclaimed, “What a wonderful experience!” That made nonsense of all the Bible theory she had learnt. After the baptism of the Holy Spirit, God showed her the true position, which hitherto she had not known in a vision. She saw a staircase containing 14 steps and on step No.14 was written, “1994.” God meant for her to be on step No.14 by 1994, but that year, she was on step 3. She said, “Ha, what is this? I do not understand this.” Then suddenly, she heard the sound of a trumpet and before she knew it, rapture had taken place. People were flying. She saw them going but found that she was not going anywhere. She tried to jump, believing that if she jumped, something would carry her up, but she could not go up. She thought it was because she was fat but when she looked at the sky, she saw fatter people going to be with Jesus. She broke down and cried. Suddenly, an angel appeared and showed her a score, which read 22 per cent. For the first time in her life, she knew where she was. She did not need anybody to tell her to sit up. She did a five-day dry fast to catch up with the 11 steps to be in her rightful position.
Where art thou? Do you know where you are in the time-table of the Almighty? Where are you in the spiritual thermometer of the Holy Spirit? Are you a spiritual diabetic patient dancing to unclean praises? In some churches now, you find those leading praise/worship dressed in skimpy things. Unclean praises. Or are you a spiritual malaria patient, running between hot and cold? Today, you are hot and tomorrow you are cold, just like somebody having malaria fever. Or are you spiritually anemic, no spiritual blood, that is, no fire? Or are you suffering from spiritual malnutrition, that is, no word of God inside, no prayer and no holiness? If your case is like that, then you are suffering from spiritual kwashiorkor. Or are you a spiritual masquerade? You are just masquerading. Nobody knows what you are inside. Or are you a spiritual chameleon changing your colour according to the weather or environment? Where art thou?
The spiritual life of many people can be likened to the case of two men who went to a bar and drank beer until they were so drunk that they forgot that they came to the place by boat. Eventually somebody reminded them that they came there with their boats. They entered into their boats, but because they were drunk they completely forgot that they had tied the rope of their boats to the harbour. They paddled and were surprised that the boats were not moving. There are many people like that whose sins have stagnated their spiritual lives. That is why you see a lot of people prophesying but they manifest very little of other gifts because the other gifts need more concentration and much more seriousness. When such people prophesy, “Thus says the Lord,” and nothing happens, they go home and say, “Sorry, it is because people are not ready to consecrate themselves and pay the price.”
If you are going to listen to human opinion, I tell you, you are never going to be useful to God at all. That is why I am asking the question, “Where art thou?” The story was told of a man who was running ferry-boat across a river. One day, a gentleman entered his boat and as they were chatting, the gentleman asked him if he could swim. He said, “Don’t ask me foolish questions.” The gentleman repeated the question and he said again, “Don’t ask me a foolish question. What kind of stupid question are you asking me?” The man said, “In case this boat capsizes, how will you get out?” He said, “It is not going to capsize.” The next day, he died. Why? He was relying on false confidence instead of listening to what the gentleman was trying to tell him. Sometimes you find somebody who has just commited a sin declaring boldly: “I know that I shall trample upon serpents and scorpions and over every power of the enemy and I know that Jesus has overcome principalities and powers for me. Nothing shall by any means hurt me,” when he is already hurting God Himself. Where art thou? If you are not able to answer the question, you will become a waste.
The devil is already wasting people. In fact, the greatest demon harassing Nigeria is the demon of wastage. Human beings are wasted. Many things are wasted. A person could decide to waste his own life. A person could inherit wastage and a person could be wasted by powers of darkness. You must refuse to submit yourself to be wasted.
It is a disaster to look at one’s life and discover that one has wasted it. It is a disaster to come to the house of God and find that you are not really doing much and you do not act on what you are being taught. If God gives you a big truth and tells you to follow it and you find it difficult to follow, He will fold His hands and wait for you. He will continue until you finish with that one. That is how God operates. The reason many people are not moving ahead in their spiritual lives is because they sift the messages and choose and pick the ones they want. They forget that the totality of the word of God must be taken seriously whether it is convenient or not. This is why it is an important prayer point when somebody says, “I refuse the activities of the wasters in my life, in the name of Jesus.”
The greatest waste that could happen to a life is for it to be wasted at the end of the age, when you would stand before the judgment throne of God and the Lord would not recognise you even with your Christian name. You may tell Him that you were the chairman of the harvest committee of your church and He would say: “Yes, but that harvest has no value here. I don’t know you.” You may say, “But Lord, I worked miracles.” He would say, “Get away from me, you worker of iniquity.” That is the greatest wastage.
Let us consider the case of Elijah. The raven could not have fed Elijah anywhere else except where the Lord said he should go. Likewise, the widow would not have appeared anywhere else, except at Zarephath where the Lord commanded him to go. The Lord did not tell Elijah to just be moving about aimlessly like a vagabond. He directed him to the places He wanted him to be. Those were the places of God’s will for him. They were the places of God’s power and provision for him. A person could dance away from the place of God’s will or God’s provisions. God has a place for everyone. He has something He wants you to be. He has somewhere He wants you to be and He has something He wants you to do. It is a tragedy for a person to decide to go out of where God wants him to be.
Sometimes what God wants you to do may be completely inconvenient or may not make sense, but you have to do it. This is why the Bible says: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14: 12)
Nobody can be truly happy when he is outside the will of God. One of the most horrible things that could happen to a person is when the person is outside where God wants him to be and he does not realize it until he gets to the grave. Such a person would end up living a wasted life. You can never please God anywhere else but where He wants you to be. You may be popular amongst people and anytime you are around, they praise you, but if you were not where He wanted you to be, you would have chosen the second best for your life. Whatever our achievements, we must not miss God’s purpose for our lives. If you feel too big to be where God wants you to be, you would be cheating yourself. But when you are in a place of divine appointment, then you are in the flow of divine miracle. If somebody had told the little boy whose fish and bread the Lord used to feed the multitude when he was living home his provision would feed 5,000 people that day, he would have said, “No. This one is just for me. How can 5,000 feed on this?”
When you are in a place of God’s purpose for your life, you are in a place of power. A person may be working very hard on a very good thing but if he is in the wrong place, he would be wasting his time; and it could be said that he is rebellious. So, the question is: Are you in the right place and in the right condition? Is your present spiritual level where God wants it to be? Namaan wanted to go to Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, but God had no appointment with Abana and Pharpar. Although they were nice rivers, the divine appointment was with the dirty river Jordan. Many of us are heading for Abana and Pharpar when we should go to Jordan.
Are you where God wants you to be? An ancient hymn writer says:
“When terrible problems encircle me,
Oh sinner to enable me escape the guilt,
When the devil in his deception
raise me up to the mountain of the world,
Asking me to bow down to him so that earthly
possessions could be mine,
Say, Oh God never fail to call me as
Saying, "Where art thou?”
Oh sinner to enable me escape the guilt.
So when the world’s glory wants
to force me break your law
Standing solidly behind me assuring
me that all is well.
Oh Lord, never fail to call me
As you called Adam in the garden,
To enable me to escape the guilt.
Say when my trust is shifting
From God to medicine and idols
When incantations are struggling with
prayers and incantations become
morning meditations
Say, Oh Lord, never fail to call me,
as you called Adam in the garden,
to enable me to escape the guilt.
When I am about to walk in my own
self-will and my heart beat up and down,
When I am neither hot nor cold,
Say, Oh Lord, never fail to call me,
As you called Adam in the garden, to
enable me to escape the guilt.
When I am loose like a dog not hearing
the whistle of the hunter. When all hopes
are lost and sin encircles me, say,
Oh Lord do not fail to call me as You
called Adam in the garden,
to enable me escape the guilt.
Now when all comforters flee, and all
counsellors are far away, when
sadness like wails assails me and make
me to bow,
Oh Lord never fail to call me,
as you call Adam in the garden, to enable me
escape the guilt, etc.
This songwriter listed several things that can remove a person from the conditions and the place where God wants him to be. In his song he prays: “Oh Lord, anytime I am going wrong, call me so that I do not go astray.” It is an important prayer point.
I want you to be sincere with yourself. If you know that the Holy Spirit has been telling you that your present position is not where He wants you to be spiritually and physically, pray the following prayer points aggressively:
PRAYER POINTS
1. O Lord, if I am out of the place You want me to be, restore me now, in Jesus’ name.
2. I refuse to live a wasted life, in the name of Jesus.
3. Oh Lord, help me to be where You want me to be, in Jesus’ name.
4. Every satanic lion moving about my environment be tamed, in the name of Jesus.
5. I wipe my name away from any satanic memory, in the name of Jesus.
6. I soak this month in the blood of Jesus, in Jesus’ name.
7. Let the divine favour of God envelope my life, in Jesus’ name.
8. By the divine decree that shall not fail, I receive answers to all my prayers, in Jesus’ name.
9. Holy Spirit of the living God, quicken me today into the position the Lord has ordained for me, in the name of Jesus.
10. O Lord, cause me to satisfy every condition that will lead me into the position You have ordained for me, in the name of Jesus.
