Monday 16th November, 2020 . 

Hello and a lovely Monday morning to you in the name of Jesus.

I trust your week is going well in Jesus name. Throughout this month, we have been talking about Team Up and not down and by that we mean the power and importance of having the right relationships in our lives

We started with Team Trinity, looking at the fact that the Trinity is a team and see the things we can learn from them. Last week, we spoke about Imitating Team Trinity, which is about the things we can learn as human beings from Team Trinity.  

This week, we will be talking about The Team Triangle. 

What do we mean by team triangle? We mean those significant relationships that define our lives. There are three major relationships that define our lives. 

I have a background in engineering and I learnt that the triangle is the most stable and powerful shape when you are talking about building engineering, where they have to build structures and have joints. They have the triangle at the angle of bridges, in the building etc.

In the same way, if we are going to have stability in our lives and relationships. There are three major relationships we need to have, which we call The Team Triangle is what we will be talking about throughout this week. They are:

1. Mentors

2. Mates

3. Mentees or protégés.

I will read from the book of Exodus 17:8-13(NLT) 

 8.While the people of Israel were still at Rephidim, the warriors of Amalek attacked them.9.Moses commanded Joshua, “Choose some men to go out and fight the army of Amalek for us. Tomorrow, I will stand at the top of the hill, holding the staff of God in my hand.”10.So Joshua did what Moses had commanded and fought the army of Amalek. Meanwhile, Moses, Aaron, and Hur climbed to the top of a nearby hill. 11.As long as Moses held up the staff in his hand, the Israelites had the advantage. But whenever he dropped his hand, the Amalekites gained the advantage. 12.Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset. 13.As a result, Joshua overwhelmed the army of Amalek in battle. 

In this scripture, we see these three classes of relationships. 

They were going to go to battle, Moses who was the Mentor called on Joshua, the Protégé or Mentee and said "Listen we are going to go to battle and I will stay in the mountain while you engage the enemy on the field." As he was going on the mountain, he called Aaron and Hur. They were his Mates and they were there to help him. They got victory in this battle but how did they get victory? Was it because of Moses on the mountain or was it because of Joshua fighting the enemy on the field or was it because of Aaron and Hur holding on the hands of Moses? I believe it took all of them.

I pray God gives us the wisdom to know the place of Mentors, Mates and Mentees in our lives in the name of Jesus. 

We will be talking about this throughout this week and I pray that God gives us more understanding.

Thank you and God bless you

Sunday 15th November 2020.

A beautiful Sunday morning to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for today, for His love, mercies, and grace. We have been talking about imitating the Trinity and we are just looking at God and seeing how we can leverage and learn from the things the Trinity have done in our lives

We have spoken the place of purpose, oneness and seen how we can work together as one so we can have a wonderful team like team Trinity.

A major tool when it comes to working as one is something locked up in the Trinity that is easy to miss. If you remember the story about the Trinity and different lessons, we learnt it says "Three personalities make up the Trinity: The Father, The Word and The Spirit. These three agree in one"

The central personality is The Word who became flesh that we call "Jesus". Another meaning The Word communicates is language, communication and when it comes to building teams the place of communication, language cannot be over emphasized.

I will read Gen 11:6 (NKJV)

6.And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.”

God almighty said "The people that are one and have one language" one means of communication that they all buy into. He said "The moment they use that in their team, nothing will be withheld from them, nothing will be impossible to them"

Language is a major tool for building oneness in our teams, if you remember in the book of Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar had taken these boys from Jerusalem and made them slaves in his palace, and he took Daniel and his friends.

In Daniel 1:4 one of the things he said was that he took them to train them in the language and literature of Babylon. He wanted them to understand the language of Babylon. Why? for them to be one and useful to Babylon, they needed to understand the language.

We see that Jesus did the same thing when He was building the new church and He baptized with the Holy Spirit. The first thing that happened to them was that they began to speak in a new language. In Acts 2:4 when the Holy Spirit came upon them the first thing the Holy Spirit enabled them to do was to speak in a new language.

If we want to have great, powerful teams, teams that can really do amazing things then we must understand the power tool of language. We must know how to use words, we must know how to use our communication to build and not to tear down our teams and sometimes communication is not just the things we say, there is the verbal and the nonverbal but it's important we understand whatever medium of communication we are using they must be used as tools to build oneness.

May God empower us by the power of the Holy Spirit to use language to build our teams strong in Jesus name.

God bless you.

Have a lovely day.

Part 6

Part 5 of the series.

Thursday 12th November, 2020. 

A beautiful Thursday morning to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for today, we are still talking about imitating team Trinity. I trust God that as we learn this and we practice it, we will have the same peace, rest and joy we see in the Trinity in Jesus name.

 Phil 2:1&2 (NLT) 

 1. Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2.Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. 

Paul was writing to the Philippian church and obviously he was writing about working together, unity and peace and Paul understood this. Why? He had the first team with Barnabas and God selected that team. It was wonderful until they went their separate ways and he knew the pain. He knew what it did to him and now he had dealt with churches that were troublesome like the Corinthian church and he knew the power of working together.

From prison as an elderly man and somebody who had more experience, he was writing to this young church saying " listen, you want to make me happy, learn to work together as one". Understand this, the purpose of any team and every true team is to be able to work together as one.

 Amos 3:3 says 

 "Can two walk together except they agree?". 

We can't work together except we agree. So unity, oneness, agreement and the ability to work together is the purpose of every team. Myles Munroe said "When the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable" There are so many teams where people are abused, where they abuse one another whether it's a marriage, business or ministry team because the person doesn't understand the central purpose of the team. Paul spelt it out beautifully here. He said "Agree together, walk together. Be of one mind and purpose". That is what makes sure team powerful. Have you heard people say about a football team particularly or maybe some other sports teams?  That they are like a well oiled machine.

What do we mean by a well oiled machine? In a well oiled machine there is no cranking and struggles, it's just smooth and that's the beauty of having a loving team that works as one.

By God's grace, I do a lot of work with married couples and I usually tell them. I say " Listen, a witch and wizard that is married together with one purpose and mind. They will enjoy there marriage better than praying and fasting saints who don't agree together"  because it's not your praying and fasting that makes you one. It's agreeing together in mind, spirit, purpose and working to make it happen.

Oneness in teams don't just happen. We work to make it happen. Have you heard people say that "Even though marriages are made up in heaven, they are worked out on earth" If you want your team to work, you must work at oneness sometimes you will fight, sometimes we will go off tangent but the idea is that we bring it back together and work as one.

May God give us grace and strength to work as winning teams as we work as one.

God bless you!

Have a lovely day.

Wednesday 11th November 2020.

Hello and a lovely Wednesday morning to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for His goodness; love and we trust Him that this year we are finishing well and strong in the name of Jesus. The Bible says " God is the one who crowns this year for us with His goodness and cause our path to drop with abundance and blessings. May that be our portion in the name of Jesus. We have been looking at imitating Trinity, learning from God, learning the dynamics of teamwork from God and it's interesting the things we are learning. Yesterday, we spoke about the fact that we need to be more proactive in getting our teams and initiate things that we saw in Jesus and we just go a bit further in that.

We will read this morning in Luke 6:12-16 (NLT)

"One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names: Simon (whom he named Peter), Andrew (Peter’s brother), James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus), Simon (who was called the zealot), Judas (son of James), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him)"

We see here how important the team selection process is to Jesus and mind you Jesus is still part of the Trinity so we are learning from the Trinity so we saw in our lesson yesterday, how we are to initiate and go out, now we are seeing the power of process. What He did before He went out to choose, because He knew the power of His team and He knew that this was going to be one of the most important, if not the most important team He will have on it because of the responsibility He will give them. The Bible says, " He prayed all night to God" What do you think He was praying about? I think he was praying about these names. Lord should I choose Peter? If I choose Peter, peter is a bit stubborn and brash, what will he do? How about this ? How about that? Lord is this person, right? And He began to ask questions about each of them. Lord should I choose Judas? He said "Choose Judas" but he is going to betray me. He said, "Yes you need someone to betray you, that's purpose" He said "The zealot that one is like a troublemaker, a fighter should I choose him? Yes, you need them." You need the power of love to change their lives and He prayed all through the night asking questions then in the morning He came out, called all His disciples together and He selected twelve from them.

It's important that we don't just take team selection casually. A team like we spoke about yesterday could be a marriage, business, ministry team. The more strategic the team is, the more careful we should be in selecting. Jesus knew the power of this team, so He was extremely careful. This is Jesus, part of the God head. He was extremely careful, praying all through the night to choose them.

The Bible says in Isa 11:3 it said " He will not choose by the seeing of the eyes or by the hearing of the ears only but in righteousness" Why? because we can be confused by the things we see and by the words we hear. That's why it's important just like we see in Jesus we get divine perspective. Somebody that looks useless today, might be very useful tomorrow. Somebody that looks like a star today might just become a cause of scar tomorrow.

Let's take our team selection seriously. That's what we see in Jesus, who is a member of the Trinity. If He took that process well, He had to pray it through the night, we need to do the same.

God bless you.

Have a Lovely day.

Tuesday 10th November, 2020. 

Hello and a beautiful Tuesday to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for today, we are still talking about imitating Trinity and what do we mean by that? That God had a team and still has a team by the way you need to have your own team.

Yesterday, we started by talking about importance of team and how we need to imitate God by having our own team. I am sure you know how important it is to work with teams and have your own team. 

We see that right from the beginning God created man and woman. We read it yesterday that He created them male and female. "Let us make man and let them" so us in heaven, team Trinity created them on earth.

If we want to maximize our impacts and make something substantial about life we need to work in "thems". We need to work in a team but we must understand that somethings happened after God chose this team for man He brought the woman to man, there was sin in the garden and God said "man what happened?" He said "it's the woman you gave me" and so many people believed that after that God stopped giving people wives or a team but whatever it is you have a responsibility to pick a team or be part of a team  and work for the development of your team. God will not take responsibility for that. We need to work together with God to be part of a team to pick a team and to ensure our team grows and develop.

It's important we understand that teams are different depending on the uniqueness  and purpose of the team you need to know how to go about that. It might be a marriage, family, work, military or a ministry team like Paul and Barnabas but whatever the uniqueness of your team is you have the responsibility to either choose a team or to work together with your team to ensure it fulfils it's purpose..

 Matt 4:17-20(NKJV) 

 17.From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.18.And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.19.And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.20.And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. 

God sent Jesus to this world with the assignment of saving mankind. He had gone to this mountain for forty days, He had prayed and fasted and was coming back and He began His mission and his mission was to bring man to God and he began to teach, Repent the kingdom of God is at hand but he knew he could not do it alone and He went out to pick His team and He saw two young men first, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew and He initiated what He wanted to do with them. He said "follow me because I am going make something out of you, follow me and I will make you fishers of men" and they followed.

If Jesus God in the flesh, a member of the Trinity had to go and get His own team, work with his own team, develop his own team then we need to do the same  like I said, it might be a marriage, office, school or neighbourhood team what ever it is we can't leave the responsibility of teams docile. We must be actively involved and work to develop our teams

I pray God will give us grace to do this in Jesus name.

God bless you!

Have a lovely day.

Be imitators

Sunday 8th November, 2020. 

A beautiful Sunday morning to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for His love, grace and it's a good day to go to church either physically or you attend church online. It's good to know that there are some countries today that are under lockdown, we pray God's strength, peace for those countries. The Lord will strengthen you, keep you on the the shadow of His wings, safety, security and protection in the name of Jesus.

We have learnt the lesson from team Trinity, how the lesson they showed us is the oneness, togetherness and unity of the Trinity and that's the major lesson they are teaching us in different ways. So we see how Jesus Christ came to unite all men into one, taking the wall of partition away, making sure that there is no difference between Jews and gentiles and bringing all one in Christ then after he did that He made one between man and God. 

In the sense that Jesus Christ became the channel. The son of God became the son of man so that sons of men can become the son of God. I heard that many years ago. Jesus, the Word one of the Trinity took on flesh came among us after He finished back as a man with flesh and He is there among the Trinity representing us and standing out for us, rooting for us and saying " Listen, I can understand I can feel because I have been there before"

Another thing He did for us, let's read in 2 Cor 5:19 (NLT) 

 "19.For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation" 

Through Jesus Christ, God was reconciling, bringing back the whole world to Himself, not just the people, the whole world. Remember, before the fall, God used to come down the garden of Eden to relate with man. God made heaven and earth together. He wanted everything to be one but after the fall, man fell and the world was falling off but He said " Listen, now that man has come back, now that there is man in the Trinity let's bring everything back together again" and that's the work He is given us, bringing man back together to God and bring back society. Let the earth reflect heaven he was talking in Hebrew 8:5 He says "This serve as a systems of worship , they only copy a shadow of the real one in heaven for when Moses was getting ready to build the temple, God gave him this warning, be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.

What is He saying? When Moses was going to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, God showed Him the picture of the tabernacle in heaven. He said "Listen, this is the real tabernacle, build one out there on earth, let the earth be a reflection of heaven"  why? I want heaven and earth to be one. Remember what we call the Lord's prayer in Matt 6:10, part of the prayer says this "Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" What is God saying there? He said "I want heaven and earth to be one, I want heaven to be seen on earth and that's the work we have today. 

What is team Trinity showing us? The oneness of the Trinity, pulling everything together in one and He says "listen I have given you that responsibility, just as you have seen us pulling everything together in one even though we are different from one, make sure everything is one. Oneness between man, oneness between man and God and oneness between heaven and earth. That is what we learn from team Trinity and that is our responsibility.

May God give us grace to do it in Jesus name.

God bless you!

Have a lovely day.

Saturday 7th November,2020. 

A beautiful Saturday to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank God for His life, strength, peace and presence with us in Jesus name.

We are still talking about Team Trinity and the many lessons we learn from our wonderful God, the Godhead. The three that walk in perfect unity, harmony and oneness 

Yesterday, we saw how Jesus brought oneness into mankind bringing the Jews and the Gentiles into one, taking the wall of partition away so we can be one people, walking with one God, reflecting the oneness of the Trinity.

Today, we'll read 1 Tim 2:5(NLT) 

 5"For,There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus" 

Who is that? 

The man Christ Jesus. 

One God,  that's the Trinity, the Godhead and one Mediator who reconciled God and humanity - One man who reconciled humanity and divinity - The Man Jesus Christ.

To reconcile means to bring together, make peace or make one.

Jesus Christ, a member of the Trinity brings oneness between mankind and God.

It's something miraculous, a complete show of love. One of them chose to take up human flesh.

Jesus, the Word, became fully God and man.  Paul talking about this in 1 Tim 3:16 (NLT) says

 "16.Without question, this is the great mystery of our faith Christ was revealed in a human body and vindicated by the Spirit.He was seen by angels and announced to the nations.He was believed in throughout the world and taken to heaven in glory".. 

The mystery is this, God became man. One member of the Trinity took on human flesh and became the man Jesus Christ. When He finished on earth, He went back to heaven again as a man. So today, amongst the Trinity is a man- fully man and fully God. That's why God can feel our pain and struggle why?  In the Trinity today, there is man there.

So the bible says in the book of  Hebrews  "we do not have a High Priest that cannot be touched by the feeling of our weakness" Why? There is man among them, so when you are tired, weak and under pressure He can understand even though it's not an excuse to sin. 

There is man among the Trinity so He can bring oneness between God and man. 

Just God took on humanity  so that humanity can take on divinity through the finished work of Jesus Christ. We call it partakers of the divine nature.

So we can see God uniting all men together through Jesus Christ, again, God uniting mankind and God, reconciling man back to God.

What an amazing lesson we learn from Team Trinity.

Let's be with one with another and let's be one with God.

God bless you! 

Have a  lovely day.