THE KEYS TO GREATNESS
The kingdom of God is principle based. The blessings of God are kept a secret from everybody. They are concealed and it takes people with insight to find them out.
“For unto you it is given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” Luke 8:10
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, the honour of men to search it out” Proverb 25:2
Greatness, as one of the blessings of God, is unlocked by divine principles. These principles are like keys that open doors. When you are without a key, success becomes a thing of struggle. A key-less man is an hopeless man. May the Lord grant you insight today as you read this piece in Jesus Name.
To be great means to be outstanding in whatever one does. It means to be successful, prosperous. But the greatest definition I have found for the word greatness is, ‘a life of blessing’. Any man that is great is a man whose life is blessing people everyday. A man that gives joy and succor to others.
Greatness is not purely a measure of the savings of a man but how much the man has invested into the lives of others. A giving life is a great life. Success is not a product of accident. It does not happen by chance. It is never inherited. Leave a great wealth for a man that does not how to succeed and see him reduce it to zero. Greatness is not a promise but a covenant. Men walk their ways into it consciously. Since it is a covenant, one must learn how to activate it.
The following are the catalysts that activate the covenant of greatness:
1. OBEDIENCE: Obedience simply means submitting oneself to the authority of another. We must learn to submit ourselves to the authority of God to have the covenant of greatness activated unto us. God is all knowing and He has a thought He thinks concerning you. Check it out in Jeremiah 29:11. He says there, ‘I know the thoughts I think towards you, the thought of peace and not of evil. The thought to give you a hope and a future’. Listen, it doesn’t matter what may be happening around your life, you have a future in God. That future is a very bright one. God thinks about your prosperity everyday. But the key to having that prosperity is Obedience. In Isaiah 1:19, God said, ’If you will only obey me, and allow me to help you, then you will have plenty to eat(NLT). A man that will be great in life must learn to obey God. If you chose to disobey God, you have also denied yourself of His help for He cannot help disobedient people.
2. DILIGENCE: By diligence we mean hard work. Gone are the days when people folded their hands and prayed God to send them manna and He did. That stopped in the wilderness. The policy has been modified. It is now ‘he that will not work should not eat’. Your hands has been given to you by God to work with. When you learn to use your hands to work, it brings you into the corridor of power. It is written, ‘seeth thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings and shall not stand before mean men (Proverb 22:29)’. God hates idle hands and finds it difficult to bless them. The best God can do for the lazy hand is to help it get poorer. No matter how much you know to pray, you’ve got to learn how to work with your hands to walk into greatness.
3. STUDY: Nothing can take the place of knowledge. No man can ever rise beyond the level of his knowledge. What you know is who you are. Show me a man that is truly great and I will show you a man that learns. Knowledge is what demarcates between the successful and the unsuccessful people. It is not just the knowledge acquired but that which is used. Hear what God says, ‘my people are destroyed due to lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)’. When you study, your life becomes approved by God for greatness (2 Timothy 2:15). Don’t allow yourself get obsolete, especially in the field of your practice. The extent of transformation of your life is a function of the relevant information you’ve been able to gather and utilized. Be a man of the books, for truly, understanding comes by the books.
4. HARD PRAYER: Prayer is the communication between a man and God. No doubt there are a lot of anti-success forces that could hinder a man from prospering despite all he’s doing to succeed. Believe it or not, the devil does not delight in the prosperity of any believer because hoe knows that the prosperity of the believer will cause trouble in his kingdom. Therefore, sponsors his agents to work against your success. You need to deal decisively with these forces of darkness. And the way to doing that is through what I call ‘hard prayers’. It is not the kind of ‘plus Jesus, minus satan’ prayers that we hurriedly pray everyday on our ways to work. It is a conscious prayers targeted at pulling down every stronghold of the devil against your greatness. Take time to take charge of the devil through prayers. Devourers must not have any ground in your finances.
5. GIVING: Oh! Many of us would wish I didn’t mention this. There are some of you, the moment you hear the word ‘give’, your muscles become tightened. The truth is no man becomes great without knowing how to give. Remember our last definition for the word greatness? A life of blessing. Read these passages:
“Give and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, press down and shaking together shall men give unto your bosom. (Luke 6:38)
“There is a man that gives and has more. Another man keeps back what he has and only become poor” Proverb 11:24
Let me leave you with these five keys or principles for now. Another time I’ll open your eyes to other keys. Blessed and great shall be your success if you put these principles to use. You’re destined for greatness.
