DREAM BIG: You Are Created For More

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MARRIAGE WITHOUT STRESS: How to Build an Enviable Marriage in an Unsettled World

DREAM BIG: You Are Created For More

You are born to soar!

Why I Wrote This Book:

It was a beautiful evening in the month of April 2008. I had gone to personally pick one of my covenant friends of almost 2 decades, who had just flown in from London, United Kingdom, and was scheduled to preach at our Ministry’s anniversary here in Canada. As we breezed out of the Toronto Pearson International Airport into the freeway, we got talking about moments we’ve shared together in Nigeria that we both treasured so much, he reminded me about the prophetic declarations that I have shared with many almost two decades ago that we are called to preach the Gospel in the nations of the earth when we did not even know the way to the airport. Looking at me, he said, “Pastor, you are now living in your dream....you have become a citizen of the world.”

Though we are just “warming up” for God’s mighty glory that will fill the earth as waters cover the sea in these last days as prophesied by prophet Habakkuk (Hab. 2:14), there is the undisputable truth that the Dream of yesterday is the reality of today. What you “see” determines what you believe, and what you believe determines what you become. Your life cannot be richer or larger than your dream. There is the principle that all things are created twice-mental creation (first creation), then physical creation (second creation). Whatever human eyes can see today was initially created in someone’s imagination. Friends, when God wants to give a man a tree, He will give him seeds and when He wants to give him a future, He places a dream in his heart.

It is your dream that determines your destiny. Dreams are the building blocks of a glorious life. Man’s greatest limitation is not in the economy, the colour of his skin, family background, lack of formal education or anything external. No! Man’s greatest limitation lies within. Small mind cannot build greatness neither can any little mind build anything that is worthwhile or enviable. Your heart-not your physique, determines your height in life. God has so much in store for His children, yet many live in this world like a pauper because their hearts cannot conceive nor fathom what God has prepared for them. Life has brought frustration to many instead of fulfilment. Millions are living below their full potential today in spite of all that Christ has done for them. Untold numbers of people in the church are financially broke today, not because we don’t have Heavenly provision, but because they are disconnected from the Heavenly vision. Our provision lies in the vision shown to us by the Lord. Nothing guides our earthly walk like vision for “where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint” (Prov. 29:18 NIV).

Are you tired of where you are today? Do you feel like this life is passing you by without fulfilment? Have you once tasted fulfilment but today your heart is broken and shattered? Do you think that God has forgotten you and your life doesn’t really matter to Him? Do you feel like quitting and forget about God’s purpose for your life because of unrealised dreams? Or are you asking, is this all there is? Is this all that life has for me? I wrote this book for you! I AM SENT TO YOU BY THE LORD. I am sent to open your understanding to what lies within you. “Eyes hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9 KJV). When Elisabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb (Luke 1: 41). As you go through this book your dream will come back to life again. God does not only raise the dead from the tomb, He also raises the dead dream in our womb.

This book will ignite a fresh fire in your heart and create a thirst in your soul for His plan and purpose for your life. It will strengthen your faith to become all that you are born and created to be in this world. Friends, you will discover that life is not about your own personal plan. IT’S ALL ABOUT HIM-LORD JESUS AND HIS KINGDOM. This book will place in your hands life-changing and time-tested secrets that will move you from dreaming to doing. The status of men is enhanced in the Kingdom by Secrets (Job. 29:1-4). Men rise in the Kingdom by secrets- and not by struggles. No one will ever rise above his/her insight, for it takes UNDERSTANDING to be OUTSTANDING in life.

You’ve looked around long enough. It’s time to start looking at what lies within. What lies within is far greater than what lies without. What lies behind you, and what lies before you are nothing compared with what lies within you. Friends, you are too loaded to pass through this life un-reckoned with if Christ is in your heart. God is not finished with you yet. Dream big! Make big plans. Grow your faith in Him and His Word. Open up to the light of Heaven. God is still speaking and men are still doing the impossible. Fight for your place in Destiny. There is something in you that your world is waiting for. When you locate your purpose in life and pour your life into it, you will become a wonder to your world. There are not enough devils in the pit of hell that can defeat the plan and purpose of God for your life. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today”.

May His WORD through this book bring you out of the common place of life and establish you among the Great Achievers in Jesus Name. Remember, if your heart is big enough to conceive it, your God is strong enough to perform it.

Dream Big-for you are created for more in this life. That’s why I wrote this book. Never forget this!

Welcome to your SEASON OF DISCOVERY and RECOVERY.

MARRIAGE WITHOUT STRESS 

How to Build an Enviable Marriage in an Unsettled World                                                          

                                                                       PROLOGUE

                         No One Has a Marriage Problem – People Only Have a Wisdom Problem

In February 2014, I had the privilege to speak and be a blessing at an annual international conference of a church in Los Angeles, California. I was getting ready to leave for Canada the following day, when I was approached by a precious sister. She said, “Please pastor, I’m here to see you. Would you share with me the secret to a stress free marriage?” That was heart touching request for me. The following month I was preaching in the United Kingdom. After a glorious night of signs and wonders, I was taken back to my hotel. As I was entering my hotel room the protocol officer of my host church who was escorting me said, “Pastor, my wife told me to ask you for the secret to a stress free marriage.” One time after a meeting, a woman said to my wife, “Please pray for me that I will enjoy my marriage the same way you are enjoying your own.”

My wife, who I affectionately refer to as “Honey,” and I have long desired to put the wisdom God’s grace has made available to us in this area into a book. As we have shared this wisdom in several nations around the world we have also heard the groaning of many and seen their tears. People of God in different cities and nations, clergy and lay people alike, are crying for relief and rest in their marriages and the cry is getting louder and louder. We can feel your pain and know that God also sees the deep longing of your souls. We wrote this book for you – the longing souls and crying hearts trapped in stress-filled marriages.

This book is about building marriage God’s way, and God’s way is found in God’s WORD and His WORD alone. The Apostle Peter declared, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee…” (Acts 3:6). We know what we don’t have but also we do know what we have been given. And what we don’t have is not as important as what we already have. There is one thing that is crystal clear today for my wife and I and that is: we have enjoyed and are enjoying a stress free marriage. Grace has made this possible and this is what we are sent to share with you. I have said it times without number that should God “change” his mind and allow marriage in Heaven, I would still marry my wife. It has been days of Heaven on earth for us.

What redemption has made possible for us is also available to you. The season of your life is about to change. Please understand this: Revelation and obedience determine the seasons of our lives, not a calendar or a month of the year. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever….” Whatever God reveals, He equally releases! Whenever Heaven shows us something, it has already been released from God’s Throne Room to us. Our responsibility is to lay hold of it. What we see determines what we believe; and what we believe we are supernaturally empowered to become.  

We had our own struggles in marriage for a while until the light of Heaven dawned on our hearts. Then our eyes were opened to secrets in the WORD that put an end to our struggles. The turning point came when the secret of God was delivered to us. Our words and world changed and we were ushered into this glorious bliss. Today we can, by His light, walk without stress through every form of darkness the enemy throws at us (Job 29:3-4). No more stress!

Please open your heart to a fresh revelation that is about to be shared through this medium. Get rid of the “old wine skin” for it cannot hold this new wine that Heaven is bringing your way. The old wine skin – old ideas and the worldly system – that holds tight to some myths about marriage must be discarded and replaced with the truth of the WORD. This is a strange book with a strange unction. It may not be conventional, but I trust the Holy Spirit to release life through it into your life and marriage. The light of His WORD carried in this book will shatter every form of darkness in your marriage and enlighten every dark place in your life.

God’s original purpose of marriage, which is blessing, still remains today. Marriage is to be enjoyed and not to be endured. Marriage is too good to become something we are enduring. No! The greatest thing that happened to man (Adam) after his creation (and before the fall) was the establishment of the marriage institution. This blessing provoked the devil so much that Satan immediately sought for man’s fall (Read Gen. 2-3).

When Adam was in the Garden of Eden his existence and faithful service didn’t matter to the devil until the establishment of the marriage institution. That shows us how significant marriage is. Satan couldn’t be bothered with Adam’s activities in the garden. There was no reference to the existence of the devil in the garden until God established marriage.

Immediately after God established this enviable institution, Satan showed up (Gen. 3:1). Nothing provokes anger from the pit of hell like a godly marriage. I wish the church would understand this truth; then many would not walk the aisle unprepared. Nothing triggers an attack from the devil like marriage because he understands the power and blessing that reside in marriage.

After contacting some deep insights in the WORD and walking in those insights, with the supply of the Holy Spirit, the devil has been put at bay in our marriage. Some have mocked these statements in unbelief.

Others couldn’t wrap their minds around them. Some have embraced these insights and are enjoying the same blessing that we are enjoying today. “All things are possible to him that believes” (Mk. 9:23). What you don’t believe, you can’t enjoy. Whatever your heart can’t conceive, your life can’t experience. The eternal rule of the kingdom is “According to your faith be it unto you” (Mat. 9:29b).

A precious friend related this amazing testimony with me sometime in 2013 and it blew my heart away. He came to share with me some of the great projects that the Lord laid upon his heart for Canada. During the course of our discussion, he said, “Man of God, when I met you the other time (the previous year), during the course of our conversation you said ‘We don’t argue in our marriage.’ When I first heard those words from you, I thought, ‘Could that be possible?’ That was because I had never heard any one in my entire life say those kinds of words before. At that time we used to argue in our marriage. But today, I can tell you that we have entered that realm also.”  

This precious man of God has also entered that rest...the realm of a stress free marriage. I strongly believe that God did not design marriage for stress. I have seen people around me, who opened their hearts to this revelation and are walking in the same peace and rest that the Prince of Peace offered us. This realm is accessible to all that will believe and receive His WORD. The writer of the Book of Hebrews says, “For we which have believed do enter into rest...” (Heb. 4:3a). You can enter that rest by believing what the WORD reveals about marriage.

Faith grants you access to this realm. Let me make this clear to you. It is not God Who is depriving you of a glorious marriage! It is people’s ignorance and disobedience that have brought them sorrow (Hos. 4:6; Isa. 5:13-14). No! It is not God, so stop screaming at Him.

It is the revelation of the WORD that you have and walk in that determines what you will enjoy in this life. It is not God who determines who has a great marriage or who does not. It is your faith and obedience that determine it. It is God’s ultimate plan and desire that marriage should reflect Heaven on earth. That was His purpose in the beginning and that is His purpose today.

God has already made provision for your stress free marriage. I am not saying that He is going to make provision. No! The provision is made already. There is nothing He needs to do for us that He has not. The Apostle Peter put it this way, “According as His divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (2 Pet. 1:3). First Corinthians 3:21 says, “All things are yours....” And all those things include stress free, peaceful marriages and they are made available through knowledge.  

The Lord once told me, “If your heart is big enough to conceive it, I, your God, am strong enough to perform it.” From that time I discovered that it was my faith and obedience that limited me, not God. From that moment, I no longer saw prayer time as a time to convince or force God to do for me what His Son shed His precious blood for. “Whatever you can believe Me for, I can surely perform. I don’t just give things; you have to build your faith to receive them,” is a statement I recently heard from the Holy Spirit. God honours faith because faith honours God.

We strongly trust the Lord that this book will build and strengthen your faith to be a partaker of a stress free marriage. “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Ps. 84:11). “Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good…” (Ps. 85:12).

I believe marriage is good and God is not the one preventing you from enjoying that which is good. Don’t blame Him – and give no place to the devil either.

To think that what is not working in your marriage is the Lord’s fault is a slap on His face. And pointing accusing fingers at the devil as the sole cause of your marital woe all the time, without examining yourself, is also a contradiction to the work of redemption. Remember Jesus “disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the cross” (Col. 2:15 NLT). It is your depth in God’s WORD and your disobedience or obedience to His instructions that determine your pain or pleasure.

Many have experienced untold hardships in life because of their marriages. I have seen many believers in the Kingdom crying in pain because of marital agony. This was not so from the beginning. What God originally designed as a good thing has become a nightmare, heart-breaking to many today. God wants you to have full joy and rest in your marriage. This may sound too good to be true, but if you will open your heart to this fresh insight from the throne of grace, you will experience a turnaround in your marriage. Yes, I know this message may not be popular, but I know there is an inner crying in you for rest in every area of your life – especially in the area of marriage. That’s the reason you are reading this book.

Let me challenge you today! Don’t let your experience define the WORD OF GOD. Let God’s WORD re-define your experience. We are presenting to you through the pages of this book the truth of the WORD that Honey and I have learned, walked in and enjoyed. If what I am teaching or writing is not working for us, it would not be worth listening to or reading. But I say unto you in the words of the Apostle John, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life,” (1 John 1:1 NIV). The WORD of God works! A stress free marriage is possible. This is your season of rest.

It doesn’t matter what you may be going through today in your marriage. We are sent to bring you this life liberating message and put an end to your years of marital stress and woe. It is our earnest prayer that the truth shared in this book will revolutionize and transform your marriage. And if you are unmarried, the secret revealed here will become a solid foundation for your marriage in the future. Could it be that you are separated or divorced, we pray that you will have strength and receive vision to dream again in Jesus’ name.

Surely, the enemy will fight this revelation; he does all the time. Religion will call it heresy, the rational mind will think it’s unachievable, but I also know that darkness cannot overcome light. The supremacy of light (God’s WORD) over darkness is eternally settled. May you be able to say like that precious brother in a short while to come, “Man of God, when I read this book I also thought, ‘Could that be possible?’ That was because I had never heard any one in my entire life write these kinds of words before. But today, I can tell you that I have entered that realm also.”

May your testimony be the next one to celebrate – in Jesus’ name!

Only believe and obey!