Fun Haven this Sunday was a truly exciting and refreshing time and it was all about the word, games and much more with Pastor Ebi.

In the midst of numerous enjoyable activities, the high point of the service was the word taught by Pastor. Pastor began to share with us how important God considers his word to be, she recounted the story of Jesus taking his disciples asides to be alone in a quiet place after he heard that John the Baptist was beheaded. The people found out and went ahead of him so that he was met with a multitude of them, rather than respond by chasing them away, the bible records that he saw them as sheep without shepherd and started teaching them, showing us his conviction that the word is the most important thing on the earth, as he once taught, the word is a seed which when planted grows and begins to bring forth fruit. Pastor charged us to be deliberate in receiving the word of God in order to see real changes and improvements in our life.

Pastor then moved into the message of the day centred around Family, Friendships and Culture, she started by referring to families that disintegrated or where a member was isolated because of a rumour about that person. Pastor taught us never to respond that way, she reminded us that the Spirit of God is a Spirit of reconciliation and so any thing that causes strife and division setting people apart is not from God, she reminded us that it is the devil that inspires divisions and destroys important relationships, his only purpose being to steal, kill and to destroy. Reading from Ephesians 6:1, Pastor emphasized the need to honour our parents and the accompanying benefits mentioned, if we want things to be well with us and we want to partake in God’s promise of longevity on the earth, then we must take serious his instruction to honour them, this includes the way we speak of them to others and honouring them by giving them of our substance.

Pastor moved on to talk about the importance of the friendships we keep and how they say a lot about who we are, she reminded us that where we are going to in life is determined by those we spend time with, only those going to the same destination go in the same vehicle, she charged us to choose and make friends that are in line with our destination and destiny, friends that are inspiring and have a vision for the future. Associations are important and everyone is born into a family because God thinks everyone needs a family to grow; besides our families, our friends form a major part of our associations. We looked at an example of an inspiring association in the bible, Paul and Silas were put in prison because of an action Paul took, casting out a demon from a little girl, rather than blame Paul for their seeming calamity, Silas stood by him, they sang and prayed together and a miracle happened. Pastor charged us to make friends those that we can jointly inspire ourselves to be full of faith, kingdom minded, passionate about soul winning and the things of God.

Pastor concluded by showing us what God meant in Genesis 12:1 when he told Abraham to get out of his country and his kindred, we saw that it was not just an instruction to leave his physical location but to leave the culture of his country and kindred.

“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Hebrews 11:8-10

Abraham left his city with its culture and looked forward to a city with a different culture, a spiritual city, one built and made by God. Pastor explained that some families have a culture of malice, bitterness and quarrel or a culture where even though they do wrong, they cannot be corrected, God’s instruction to every Christian is to come out of such cultures as they define how you think and respond and would determine how you eventually end up in life. Pastor also spoke of the culture of lateness popularly called “African time”, the culture of using the wrong words which some have imbibed, and the culture of negative expectations which some people have, they don’t believe success, wealth or good things can last and are always expecting some form of calamity ahead but when we got born again, we became new creatures and God wants us to have a new culture, to change our cultures with the word. The bible called us a royal priesthood, those who are royal don’t talk anyhow, they mind what they say; we are priests unto God and that means he has our attention, he listens to our every word, this consciousness should drive us to speak and act differently knowing that we now belong to a different kingdom with a different culture.

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