Rulership By Provision by Apostle Johnson Suleman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

2 Corinthians 9:8

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.

Dominion is contestable. It is means that determines might. You cannot be a voice if you are not a source. Heaven attends to desires, but to command real dominance a person must ride on the wings of provision. Psalm 68:19 says God daily loads us with benefits, and Psalm 103:2 calls us to forget none of His benefits. For you to enjoy dominance you need relevance, you need supply, you need means.

Vision Needs Provision

No one is called successful for merely having a vision. Men are branded failures not because they lack dreams but because they lack provision. A life of no vision is a shame, but a life of no provision is a tragedy. No matter how small a vision is, it needs provision, even a carpenter needs capital.

Three Channels Through Which God Provides

1. The Instrumentality of Men

   1 Chronicles 12:18

   The spirit came upon Amasai, who said, "Blessed be David, and blessed be his helpers, for his God helps him." The proof that a person is helped by God is that God introduces the right people into their life. Psalm 17:14 speaks of men who are the hand of God, and whenever we pray for the hand of God, God sends a man.

   Saul waited on Samuel and, when the people began to scatter, offered the sacrifice himself rather than waiting for the appointed man. God rejected that offering even though it was directed to Him, because it bypassed the man God had assigned to the process. Any process that removes a man from the equation is unacceptable to God. God monopolises worship but institutionalises honour. Without God, we cannot. But without men, God will not.

   Moses reversed a curse over Reuben's tribe so that his men would not be few, yet among Reuben's men none became a judge, a lawgiver, or a priest. It is not about having men in quantity, it is about having men in quality. Church growth is not the same as church health.

   There are three classes of men to recognise.

   
   person
   Apostle Johnson Suleman
   Omega Fire Ministries International
   Enjoying this sermon? Browse more messages by Apostle Johnson Suleman on Provision at ReadSermons.
   library_books More Sermons
   • Passive men. They do not stay, they pass through. Simon of Cyrene carried the cross once and moved on Matthew 27:32. When they finish their assignment, let them go. Trying to keep a passive man permanently in your life turns him into a tormentor.
   • Conditional men. These respond only on the platform of what you can offer, a transactional connection. Pharaoh needed his dream interpreted, so Joseph rose. The paralysed man in Mark 2 needed four men to carry him to Jesus; he needed men in that moment.
   • Customized men. These need nothing from you, they are simply sent, and they explain away your errors rather than exploit them. Hiram loved David and built him a house once David became king, and later transferred that same loyalty to Solomon 1 Kings 5:1, 10. These are people whose entire assignment is your lifting.

2. Supernatural Manifestation

   Every one of us has already lived on the supernatural without naming it, waking with nothing and somehow surviving by the end of the day. Miracle provision is not an economy to live by, it is an intervention for when the natural genuinely cannot help. John 4:38 speaks of entering into the labour of others. In Deuteronomy 29:5, the Israelites' shoes and clothes did not wear out for forty years in the wilderness, a direct supernatural provision. Psalm 78:25 calls manna the food of angels. When you are stuck financially, switch out of the natural realm and into the supernatural.

3. Work

   2 Thessalonians 3:10

   If a man will not work, he should not eat. Work is not the same as a job. A job is for income; work is for impact. A job is a task carried out to survive; work is what a person loves and would do even without pay, and God wants a person's work to grow until it can fully sustain them. There is dignity in labour and honour in developing capacity, so no one should be idle.

   The Israelites outnumbered the Egyptians yet remained in bondage, because in that whole crowd none of them held a position of government, none was a lawgiver, none was a scribe. The positions that mattered were occupied by a small few. Believers who only complain from the sidelines while refusing to occupy positions of influence, in business, in government, in public life, forfeit the ability to shape what happens around them.

Enemies Can Be a Platform for Provision

Proverbs 16:7

When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. If Potiphar's wife had known that her lie against Joseph was really an announcement of his rise, if Joseph's brothers had known that selling him into slavery was God sending him ahead, they would have acted differently. When God saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb Genesis 29:31. Rejection by men can be the very thing that opens a door no relationship could have opened. Man's rejection can become God's direction.

Pain is proof of life. A dead man feels no pain. God works in a structured way where every next level is preceded by a battle, so a battle is not a sign of being forgotten, it is a sign that a new level is being announced. Every person attracts both warfare and welfare by reason of the deposit they carry. When Peter's net broke under the weight of the catch Luke 5, it was a sign of what he carried. Later, when he needed tax money, Jesus sent him after one specific fish that carried a coin in its mouth Matthew 17:27. A net cannot pick out one man carrying something specific, a hook is required to single him out. You may start late, but let yours be the latest.

The Gospel Is Power, Not Morality

The gospel is not a moral lesson and it is not legality. There are people who do not steal, drink, smoke, or lie, and are still not saved, because morality is not the gospel, though the gospel empowers morality. The gospel is the person of Jesus Christ. Preaching is not arguing or condemning, it is introducing people to Him. Jesus told the woman caught in sin to go and sin no more. He did not call her sinless, and He did not call her a sinner. He preached repentance while preserving her dignity, and that balance is the gospel.