Isaiah 49:1-3: “Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken ye people, from far; The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft, in his quiver hath he hid me. And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
God made Jesus His arrow and wants us who are Christians, to be His arrows. Jesus was an arrow fired from heaven for our salvation. God wants us to be like Him. He is described as the first fruit of them that slept (1 Corinthians 15: 20). We are supposed to be an arrow in the hand of the Lord. Do you want to be an arrow in the hand of the living God?
An arrow has to be made. As Christians and disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we did not make ourselves. We did not automatically become the arrows of the Almighty God. For us to become His arrows and for Him to make use of us, we have to be totally cut off from the vanity of life and the world of our forefathers, then we would have a new identity. We had the old identity when we were in the world and it must go. When we have a new identity we become an arrow.
Peter said to Jesus, “We have laid everything aside and followed you.” This means that they had become arrows. Carnality and worldliness would prevent us from being effective arrows. It is easy to play Christianity or church. but it is another thing to become an arrow of God. When you leave playing church, when you make up your mind to desist from being a bench warmer in the house of God, then you will become an arrow in the hands of the Almighty. When you do not want to be a spiritual mediocre but you are determined to move up to the mountain top, then you will become an arrow.
A man cried unto God when he noticed that he was not worried when he saw sinners. He noticed that he could not be bordered whether they died or lived. The day he realized that he was not supposed to be like that, he got angry and prayed that God would give him compassion for sinners, that something within him should make him to feel sorry for them. He prayed that one prayer point seven days. On the seventh day, he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “My son, you are broken now. You can go.” He started preaching in his city and within a week, all the joints where people were taking alcoholic drinks were closed down and people stopped going to film houses. Everybody became interested in God and rushed to the church to hear the word of God. Drunkards abandoned their drunkenness because one man cried to God and became broken. The question is how many people are willing to be broken? It is very easy to say that you want to be broken and when the process starts, will you not grumble or complain?
A sister who used to be very fashionable got born again and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. She started speaking in tongues and prophesying and became a new person. When one of her old friends visited her, she straight away said to her, “You must give your life to Christ.” Her friend asked if she was not coming to their party. She said, “No, I am not.” Her friend told her that she had run mad. She said, “I am not mad; you should give your life to Jesus.” As the children of devil who do not easily give up, the friend asked for a drink and the sister said, “There is no beer. I broke all the bottles of beer last night. Do you want soft drink?” Her friend said, “You know that I don’t drink that one,” and walked out.
The sister had become an arrow in the hand of the Almighty God. On the direction of the Holy Spirit, she threw away all her make-up and now looked as natural as God made her. She eventually turned her city upside-down for Jesus. So, when you say, “I want to be broken,” you are making a very serious statement, which to carry out, you have to pass through something that would be completely uncomfortable to your system.
Once the material for an arrow is obtained it has to be shaped. If you want to become an arrow of the Almighty, you must be prepared for certain things to be cut off from your life, those things, which can destroy the arrow. For example, all your worldly old friends must go, since they would have found your life uncomfortable to associate with. If you say that you are born again and have the fire of God and you are still associating with your worldly friends, I summit to you that you are not serious yet. The day you become serious, those friends would begin to avoid you or change. It is a must. If you call yourself a “communicant” and you have wives and concubines all over the place or you have a demonic timetable for fornication, you are a communicant for hell fire. If you abandon your first wife claiming that she is now too old and not fashionable, and you keep a young lady in a flat somewhere, you are going to hell fire together with that young lady.
As a certain sister was praying one morning using our book entitled “Pray Your Way to Breakthrough,” suddenly, God opened her eyes and she saw her husband pulling a girl to an uncompleted building. She started to wonder what the vision could mean. Suddenly, she remembered that they were building a house somewhere, which was not yet completed. The Spirit of God said she should go there and she did, and to her amazement, her husband, who was a Sunday school teacher, had a girl in the uncompleted house. When she saw the girl, she thought of smashing her nose but as she was about to do that she remembered that she was supposed to be a broken Christian. She asked the girl what she was doing there and she said, “Mr. So So kept me here.” Then she ordered her out. Although the man was a Sunday school teacher, he was heading to hell fire with the girl.
Such a person cannot be an effective arrow in the hand of God. It is also dangerous for such kind of people to be praying MFM prayer points. When you say "every enemy of my breakthrough, fall down and die” and you are the enemy of your life, it means that you want to die. Keeping boyfriends, girlfriends, sugar daddies and sugar mummies and thinking that you are enjoying because of the money and other things you collect from them would only lead you to hell fire with the money and all the other benefits. Neither can you be an effective arrow in the hand of the living God. All the jobs that would make one to commit sin are dangerous and should be avoided. In some jobs, lying is the order of the day; if you do not tell lies there you will not succeed. But in such jobs you are eating the wages of sin and very soon ulcer may set in because you are not eating the right food. This can affect your children, they may become dullards because the money you use to train them is demonic.
The way of life is narrow and if God wants to use you, you have to corporate with Him. That co-operation means that it is you who should change. God cannot change, it is you that need to change. There are two kinds of ministers in the streets now: The first kind are disposable ministers, people who are making noise now, but very soon will disappear. In the second group are people who God intends to use in future. The training of such people is tough. A ‘Yoruba’ adage interprets, “The bottom of the pot that cooks pepper must be hot.” Apostle Paul says, “No man who wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life.”
If you want to be an arrow of the living God, all your activities must come under examination. For example, you must ask yourself certain questions: “What am I doing with my time? Does the way I am behaving now make me sharper for God or blind? What are those things in my life that I must eliminate for me to make heaven? An arrow must be sharp, ready and available like the five wise virgins.
An arrow needs to be pointed. Its sharp edge helps it to penetrate, the sharp point for our life is the Holy Spirit. So, if you are in MFM and you have not receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit, you are still a bench warmer. You need to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Then you will have a sharp point. The Holy Spirit will sharpen you because you are open to Him. His anointing gives us the sharp point to walk in this terrible generation. It is that power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit that empower us to devastate the kingdom of darkness.
An arrow has a quiver also. Sometimes, some people run ahead of God. God told Moses to come up to Him on the mountain. On days one to six, God did not say anything to Moses again but Moses did not complain. He did not say, “Where is God that said I should come? I have not heard anything. I am going down.” No, but on the seventh day, God spoke to him again. Many of us are still in the same situation. God is keeping us in His quiver. You should just wait, listen, gather instruction and knowledge and then move on. Joseph was the man in God’s quiver for a long time before God pushed him forward. By the time God pushed him out he was another Joseph, it was not the Joseph his brothers threw into the pit.
Those are the characteristics of the arrow. Now ask yourself. “Do I qualify as a divine arrow? There are two things in the Scripture that we call arrow killers. When God is shaping somebody to become an arrow, two things that can kill that arrow completely are:
SIN
Sin is poisonous. It poisons the soul, the spirit and the body, it is a spiritual leprosy. It is a spreading cancer. If you are a careful reader of the Bible, anytime the Lord Jesus talked about sin, He used the sharpest expression possible. Therefore, we too are to use the sharpest weapon to fight against this great enemy. We are to destroy it no matter what it costs. We are to hate it with perfect hatred. It came from Satan and when a person is living in any known sin, it brings him to the region of death. This is why prayer for the sake of our sin can be nothing but a real battle. Satan knows that once he plants any sin in a person’s life, that person belongs to him. So when you fight against sin, it is a matter of fighting the greatest enemy, that is Satan himself.
God called a man of God and said, “I want to show you something.” The man said, “What, Lord?” The Lord took him straight to hell fire where he saw men and women screaming and rolling on the floor. When he saw this, he put his two fingers in his ears and said, “Oh Lord, take me out of this place. I don’t want to listen to the screaming any longer." The Lord said, “Go and warn my people that they should not come here.” So, any one who goes there is trespassing. Close your eyes and pray like this: “Any thing that will take me to hell fire, O Lord, remove it from my life now.”
Why is it that fighting sin is a great battle? It is because the devil presides over sin. He does not want the bondage of sin to be broken. One of his wicked strategies is to make man and woman spiritually blind so that they cannot see even their own sin. He tries to make sin look harmless, like a little lie here and there, a little stealing, unrighteousness here and there, and when people say, “This is bad,” you may respond that it is nothing. But that thing you say is nothing is a big thing. The devil records it and tries to make us not to recognize it. That is why it is necessary to pray these prayer points: “Lord, give me the spirit of truth.” “O Lord, place me in the light that I may recognize my sin.” “Let the spirit of repentance fall upon me.” When the spirit of repentance falls upon us there will be true revival both individually and collectively. If we are willing to humble ourselves, be sold out completely to God and fall down on our knees for repentance, we will experience astonishing things. You may think that what you are hearing now is testimony; no, you have not heard any, until men and women fall on their knees and cry to God for repentance and turn from their wicked ways. But as there are still people who bear grudges and malice, or husband and wife who come to service and the husband would say, “Go and sit where you like,” or the husband says to his wife, “I am taking my own car, you bring yours,” revival is still very far.
When you recognize yourself as a spiritual sinner, when you hate sin, even to think of it and you start struggling to get out of it, then revival will not come into your life. When you come to that point where you take a decision to fight against the power that is stealing in your life, no matter what it may cost, then you will experience revival.
Sin is an evil weed that overruns the garden. It stains people and is the leader of all spirits of sickness. There are conditions which must be in a person’s life before the Lord pays him a visit. A lot of people have been praying for God’s visitation, saying, “I wish the Lord will speak to me as He did to Samuel, how I wish He will open unto me the windows of heaven, how I wish I too will have divine revelation." In spite of this prayer, spirit wives or husbands are pressing them on their beds. Sin is the thing responsible. Once the issue of sin is settled, the devil loses his power. It is sad but true, it is unfortunate but it is happening, that sometimes we try to minister deliverance to people who are not willing to repent. That is why their deliverance takes a longer time. We ask them to pray: “Oh Lord, deliver me, I break every covenant, inherited or not inherited, in the mighty name of Jesus." We ask them to pray: “Oh Lord, deliver my brain from the hand of the devil.” Or “O Lord, I fire back every arrow of the enemy.” But the person firing back the arrow is not ready and willing to repent and so the deliverance takes a long time. Some say, “I have been asked to repeat the deliverance, I have done it seven times.” Examine yourself. The result of ministering deliverance to people who have not repented is that they sometimes receive temporary relief and as they fall back to their sins if one demon has gone out, seven more will come back with it making eight.
So, the key to a successful deliverance is that the person must be willing and ready to give up all sins. When genuine repentance starts, deliverance begins. When there is no repentance, the devil will say that you are wasting your time. You shout and cry but he would be waiting for you at home.
A man came to me the other time and said, “Sir, there is fire on the mountain.” He wanted to pray for a demon-possessed person. He said, “In the name of Jesus, I command you demon to go out of this person.” The demon replied, “In the name of Jesus, I command you to shut up.” He repeated his command and the demon said, “I will wound you.” He was very clever; he quickly took his Bible and ran out and came to me and said, “So demons can call the name of Jesus.” I said, “That was not a big deal." He said, “But the demon replied that I should shut up, in Jesus’ name? Then I told him the blunt truth. I said, “Brother, something is wrong with you. That demon saw it." The Bible’s position is clear: no repentance, no deliverance.
Whenever there are prayers and repentance, revival happens, so we should better think now. Those who are still tied down with church posts will soon realize that church posts are empty labels.
When one has repented and is in distress, it becomes a distress of God, his sorrow becomes God’s sorrow, and the Lord will comfort him. God is looking for a life of repentance and prayer not for temporary things but for things that will last forever. Don’t look for a shortcut because there is no shortcut to power. In my book, Spiritual Check-Up, we have the story of a man of God whose ministry had no power, so he prayed three days without food or drink. The third day Jesus came to him and asked, “You want power?” He said, “Yes.” Jesus said, “Now take your biro and begin to write” and gave him 13 points that were wrong with his life and said, “The day you correct them power will flow in your life and ministry.” By the time he looked at the 13 points he saw that the last two points were so bad that if his wife saw them she would say, “Eh, you, a pastor, have this kind of things is in your life." So he memorized the two and brought back 11. He then adjusted himself and power came. Now, talk to God like this: Every power failure in my life, fall down and die, in the name of Jesus.
The second powerful thing that kills the arrow of God is called destiny changers. What does that mean? God does not engage in any useless exercise. If He puts a drop of water somewhere He has a purpose. There is a purpose for the stars, the moon, and the sun. Every man has a divine destiny, God will not create you without having a vacancy in His programme for you. So, God’s plan for everyone is so definite that the Bible even says that the hairs on our head are numbered.
God has a vision about everyone’s life but if one is not careful the destiny changers will change the vision and when they do, it becomes too bad. The way Samson died was not the way God ordained for him. The punishment Jonah received was not God’s design for him. If the call of God is upon your life and you are playing with it you are courting a serious trouble. When God organized trouble for Jonah, no prayer or charm could help him. I know a man, who prayed for prosperity. He prayed for many months that the Lord should baptize him with money. Then in a vision an angel came to him and without saying anything handed a Bible to him and he found foreign money inside it. What that meant was that the man’s prosperity was within God’s word. He did not understand this, so he bought a commercial bus and gave it to a driver who put the money he made in his pocket and told him that the vehicle broke down. The man tried other kinds of businesses and did some contracts but ended up owing N120,000. He sold all his property but his problems continued until he ran back to God. I pray that such should not be your lot, in Jesus’ name.
One man did not understand what was happening to him and he prayed, “O Lord don’t look at me like this, I want a change.” God opened his eyes and he saw men coming one by one to the throne of God. The first arrived and they asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “I am Babatunde Fabiyi." Fabiyi means ‘Ifa (an idol) gave birth to this one.’ They told him, “What a pity!” You were meant to be a winner but you are a failure. Why did you allow the world to change your destiny? He said, “I thought I knew what was good. All my decisions were sound and logical.” They told him that the fact that his decisions were sound and logical did not make right his running a race that nobody asked him to run, that his purpose of coming to the world was to raise prophets and prophetesses for God like Phillip the evangelist whose four daughters prophesied; that was his divine destiny, but he threw away the children to free women and prostitutes. He asked, “How did I do all these?" They said, “Your problem started with your name. Your name should have been John Olusegun but you call yourself Fabiyi." They showed him hell fire and he was shivering while watching the vision. Soon a woman stood up and they said, “What is your name? She said, “I am Doris Douglas,” and they said to her, “Madam, you started so well, what happened to you?” She said, “At a stage I could not understand myself and I got confused,” that was what she got to say at the judgment seat. That is why we pray against over-sophistication. They told this woman that she made four mistakes:
1. You always revealed your secret to your enemies.
2. You picked your husband without asking the Lord.
3. You keep tight lips, you should tell your secrets to God’s ministers.
4. You are an alcoholic.
Then the angel explained to her how a single mistake could change God’s purpose, programme and plan of God for a person’s life. The story is told of how what we recognized today as football rules started. In those days, people were playing the game the way they liked. One day one man grabbed the ball, ran and threw it into the post and right from that day the game changed and its rule changed. In the same way you too can break a spiritual rule and change your destiny forever. We have to pray against this destiny changer that has hidden in so many lives and in so many areas. For so many people their memory is so short and their vision is so clouded that they cannot see beyond their nose.
You are not reading this message by chance. God has a purpose for it. He wants to save you, that is why He has brought the message your way. But if you neglect it, it means that you have not understood the purpose for which God brought it your way. You must change and align yourself to His will. If you are a woman reading this message and you still wear trousers, transparent dresses or leaving your hair uncovered when you pray, and you are just seeking for miracles, that is dangerous. God is looking for people who are seeking the greatest of miracles, that is, making themselves presentable at the marriage feast of the Lamb. If one loses that miracle it is better that one were not born. It does not matter how rich or intelligent you are, if you miss it, just too bad.
We should be very serious with our spiritual lives. Whatever you are or whatever you call yourself does not really matter. What matters is what God calls you. Therefore pray the following prayer points with holy violence.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I want to be come what God want me to be, in the name of Jesus.
2. O Lord, whenever I am stubborn, make me to surrender, in the name of Jesus.
3. I release myself from the hand of destiny paralyzers. in Jesus name.
4. Are you an arrow of God? You have a wonderful opportunity to sort yourself out.
Dr. D. K. Olukoya
