OTD's BSSM Weekly: The Kingdom and His Lordship
Semester Two, Week Two in the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry
Hello friend!
How was the past week for you?
It was massive and immersive for me. It was a special week in school and because of the time difference, my sleep pattern was super flipped. I had classes till 1 am and at 3:30 am and some days, from 6 pm to 6:30 am with some hours in between.
But I loved it!!! It was a wonderful time. There were hundreds of people healed and a powerful time of impartation! I share my personal experience below.
Let’s get into it.
Lordship of Christ
“Some of you don’t have a financial problem, you have a Lordship problem”
Okay, sir!
Listening to Bill Johnson is like drinking water from a firehose! I’m glad for replays and the ability to pause and take a note and reflect. Usually, I would take a key point or two and write my thoughts on them. Today is one of those days that I’ll just pour out some hard-hitting notes from his teaching on a life modelled after Christ. If needed, I’ll write a sentence or two to give context or shed light on it. I have tried to select and arrange these in a way that flows to make one coherent message.
The core of the message is simple. We need to be under the covering of Christ. Do you have areas of your life that you still try to control by yourself? Control is a big concept that we won’t deconstruct right now. But I believe the first point below can give an idea of what it means in this context.
We are representatives of another world, of a Kingdom with a different set of rules. It is hard to get the benefits of one Kingdom when you follow the rules of another.
The unrenewed mind is constantly at war with God. The key isn’t to think God thoughts. It is to see things from His perspective.
To know what is on the heart of God, we need to search it out. We are called Kings and priests. It is the duty of royalty to pursue mysteries and search out the heart of God. (Proverbs 25:2)
If you feel that you aren’t hearing God, change the topic. Ask Him what’s on His heart and talk about that. See things from His perspective.
To experience righteousness, peace, and joy, we have to see things from God’s agenda and what He values - the Lordship of Jesus.
You won’t discover your significance until you discover your insignificance.
Until you see and place yourself under the Lordship of Jesus, you won’t discover what makes you significant.
We are only co-missioned in the measure that we are in sub-mission to the primary mission.
You cannot lead if you will not be led. You won’t make a good leader if the reason you want to tell people what to do is that you don’t like people telling you what to do.
Most of the time, we gravitate towards what we are good at and call that ministry; because we are comfortable with a world that we can manage. But we have been invited into a world that we do not understand, we cannot comprehend and have been assigned the impossible.
We are told to “heal the sick” not “pray for the sick”. We think that this is impossible but the real problem is that we think that the rest of the Christian life is possible.
OKAY! BURN!!! What about the Christian life did you get by yourself? The desire was fueled by God, the salvation is from Jesus, our walk is by the Holy Spirit. Everything about the Christian life is impossible. I mean, we believe a virgin birth a child! If we believe that by God’s grace and faith, then we can step into more impossibilities with God.
We have the privilege to re-present Jesus to the world.
We have the privilege to be earthly suits for Christ. He wants us to let Himself shine through us. All we do is believe and walk in obedience. Walking in obedience is how we live by faith.
Faith connects us to a world without limitations.
The ‘Other’ in the fire
This week was Randy Clark week at School. Randy Clark is known for his healing evangelism across the world. One of his gifts and calling is to impart and teach the power to heal to believers. I looked forward to this week with excitement. But as the day approached, I realized that I was nervous.
I have mentioned my health journey in passing before but never really shared it. I’ve had fibroids for years now. It was diagnosed in 2017 but had been there for a long time. I remember how my sisters and I would joke about my stomach being slightly pouchy. I remember my mom talking about going for a scan but I didn’t pay attention. I don’t fall sick often and I did have a small fear that if I had a health issue, it would be something really bad. I usually used the avoidance tactic to get by. Anyway, I found out what it was a few years after.
There is no need to go into the story of how horrible it can be. Doctors say I have a high pain threshold. I’m not usually certain of how to respond to that but I guess it has been helpful through this journey.
It was pretty awful a few months ago and I went in for surgery. It was free and provided by the Elevation Church’s Pistis Foundation in partnership with Benjamin Olowojebutu Foundation. I had to talk myself into going in because way deep in my heart, I didn’t want it. I wanted what I know that God wants to do. His own healing.
Well, the surgery couldn’t be done because my body refused to cooperate. I kept bleeding. I was so sad and felt like I failed at faith. I felt like I failed at having faith for healing and I felt I failed at faith to believe that the bleeding would stop. At that moment, I just wanted to get these horrid things out of my body and was already picturing my recovery process. I also imagined how the acne problem on my face would also stop because they are mostly hormone-induced. I was so mad and had to fight tears as I spoke to the doctor while leaving the hospital.
But most of all, I was mad that God just wouldn’t heal me. I mean, this thing is nothing with Him! Even my faith or lack cannot hinder His love and grace to heal me. So why not?
I had a second opportunity to go back. But by now, I had cried with God and listened to Him long enough to decide I wouldn’t go in for the surgery. I do believe in medicine and surgery. I have no doubt that if I go for surgery, it will be successful. But I believe in something infinitely bigger and at this point, it doesn’t align with going for surgery.
I told my Spiritual Papa and he said he’d support and stand in faith with whatever decision I made. I decided to go with what I believed, not what I saw. My mom firmly believes in God with me. I’ve got friends and family praying. We believe God that I am healed. Every morning, I have expected to wake up to a flat stomach. But the most beautiful part of it all is that I was at peace and was filled with hope. I realized that fibroids have been an excuse for many things I wanted that I haven’t reached for. I’d been largely apathetic and just going with wherever the flow went. I made a commitment to stop that and I started dreaming with God again.
All these led to the start of the Randy Clark week. You can imagine that my expectation exploded and this made me nervous. Nerves aren’t good. Especially for something that isn’t exactly in my control. However, after the first and second sessions, I felt myself relax into the love of God. My expectation remained through the week and I loved every bit of the teachings. I felt God’s presence powerfully, especially during impartation night. I prayed for some people over the week and someone sent in a testimony that her pain has stopped. I am stepping out more to pray for the sick and do other crazy things.
The expected end to this story would have been to say that I have seen my stomach go “flat, not flabby” (exact words I planned to text everyone afterwards. Haha) but it hasn’t. It’s still swollen, hard, and distorted. That’s what my natural eyes can see. But this week, it lost the last shreds of its power on me. I’m not in control of how or when. I cannot even pre-plan my reaction because I honestly don’t know how I will react. Maybe, I’ll do some flips!
I don’t have to do anything more to prove that I have faith. I just know God’s love and I remain open to receiving His abundance.
Usually, people wait until their clothes are washed and perfumed before we share our testimony of walking through fire. But there is another in the fire, standing next to me. He is my focus and the one I am drawing attention to. He is the reason I am dancing unbound in the fire.
He is the God of the impossible. The impossibility of healing me from fibroids without surgery. The impossibility of walking in peace and joy while I’m waiting. The impossibility of holding His gaze as I walk through fire.
The impossibility of holding His gaze as you walk through your own fire. Jesus makes that happen.
Whew! Cool stuff.
Now, check out these amazing testimonies from Global Awakening! I love the first one because of the friend’s enthusiasm and her story.
This week was really packed and I was going to share notes from two more classes. But I feel like the above are just right.
Update on Tuition fundraising
I still have just over $4000 to raise and I trust God’s word that it has been taken care of. Thank you to everyone who has donated. To still do so, my account details are below. If you’d like to make the payment directly to the school, you can too! Just send me a message for the email to contact.
Access Bank (Naira)
0060467531
Temitope Damilola Oyewusi
Narration (Tuition)
Access Bank (USD)
1505086878
Temitope Damilola Oyewusi
Bank Address: 87 Awolowo Road Ikoyi Lagos Lagos State
SWIFT CODE: ABNGNGLA
Routing Number/Sort Code: 044151711
Narration (Tuition)
Remember, we are representatives of another Kingdom!
Love and love,
OTDamilola,
For King and Kingdom