Power of a Woman: Doing it BETTER (II)

This is the concluding transcript of message delivered at the Breakfast Meeting of the WOMEN MINISTRY RCCG Dominion Cathedral on 18.10.14

Let’s come close home to the church

Sapphira of the Ananaias and Sapphira fame. I don’t know whose decision it was but this woman of faith went along with her husband in an evil plot and they both paid dearly. Are there Sapphiras here today? I can see you all looking like not me. But if you instigate your man against the church, you connive with him not to tithe or bless, you change figures with him, you join him instead of placating him when he is talking about this pastor and this boss, you well up his negative emotions or inappropriate ideas then you are Sapphira and I can only pray that “May you not fall suddenly in Jesus name”. Sapphira did deception better. The story of Deborah in Judges 4 tells us about the power of influence. Deborah had no elected office and hadn’t gone to war nor had any reputation beyond being a judge who attended to people under a tree; quite lowly. But she knew God and was spiritually gifted to hear from God, a prophetess. Her gift made people approach her; what window of opportunity to do better has your calling or career opened to you and yours? Deborah’s gift led her to do security better. She gave an intelligence report on how she would use the power of a woman to lure the bad guys so Barak can slay them but Barak will not go alone. He said, “…if you will not go with me, I will not go.”  Like Obama needed Mrs. Clinton who, did administration better to do the first term! Still talking about the church. What of Anna, an elderly woman of God, she remained unmarried and just attended to the things of God; she had a covenant with God to not die until she had seen Jesus. God upheld the covenant because she knew how to do worship and service better. Rev Jackie McCullough who was our guest minister two years ago at RCCGNA WIM Retreat has a mother who is over 100 years old; she still sits in the front pew in church! To be better, we must recognise the anointing of elderly women and tap into it. I invited one of my mentors Deaconess Stella Sanyaolu who is well over 80 to Divine Connection’s Singles Summit. She said no because no one had given her such invitation since she became blind. But I recognised that blindness have not affected her anointing. When her son saw that I wouldn’t give up, he brought Mama. Mama had such a good time and she poured out her anointing on the mature singles. Following that event, some of them are married or have found their life mates. Priscilla, the helper; we have them all around us. These women do helping better. Pastor Funmi Dosunmu going here and there for the children ministry and women. I got to the NJ women retreat and she was there and in Dallas where we were meeting as children teachers she was there serving. Dcns. Kachi Festus once sent me an email, “So let me know if you need me to run errand.” Me, need you to run errand, Lord bless me with this kind of humility! What of Miriam the woman of God whom God used to care for the protector of Israel, the prophetess who led a praise team in Exodus 15:20, that same woman became better at tale bearing. Picture an anointed woman of God who begins to lead a gossip trail against a regional pastor and she is suspended, will pride let her return to the fold? May be not. Miriam pleaded but because to whom much is given much is expected God punished her with leprosy and she was banished from the Christian fold for 7 days.

What of in the community?

Time will not permit me to go into details but you know the adulterer, the woman of Samaria at the well who knew how to do adultery better, which is why foolish men kept marrying her. She must have been on a track to woo her sixth victim. What are we doing with such women amongst us? How can we translate that negative power into positive strength? Jesus made her better by making her an evangelist; she drank the living waters and thirsted no more. The wife of Potiphar who almost destroyed Joseph’s destiny, so horny she wanted to have her way with a young man. We have them with us; so horny you need a dildo when your man is away. They can do sex better with anyone but how do we translate and transform this negative energy into positive desire? King Potiphar never did. What of Martha, the busybodies amongst us, they hear from the rats and whisper it to the birds in the community. We had Rizpah (2 Samuel 21) who advocated against the state and upturned a verdict by keeping vigil for five months over her murdered sons’ bodies. We also had Esther, who against all odds entered into a season of prayer and fasting to redeem her people from bondage.  

My dear mothers, aunties and sisters; we have heard about Bible women who represent women who live amongst us and work with us. We can do better positively; we can do better by grace of the one who says, I can do all things through Jesus Christ. Before we go into the things that hinder us from being better? Let me ask rhetorical questions: Are you a pillar or caterpillar? Are you a pillar or a prostitute? Are you a pillar or a pain in the neck? Are you a pillar or a pothole? Are you a pillar or a prideful woman? Are you a pillar or a pest? Are you a pillar or a pot of poison? Are you a pillar or a punitive plaintiff? Are you a pillar or a plough?

Jesus’s mother pushed him into ministry, yet she did not lord it over him. As people of faith, our confidence in our ability to do things better must be in God (Philippians 3:3). To be better, we must be better in passion with the man in our lives, we must be better in patience with the angry folks in our area of influence, we must be better at following peace with ALL men and women. We must be better in being personable and being admirable. We must be better in being playful with our children, they shouldn’t see you and think RUN! We must be better in politeness, if we say sir and ma to strangers, our in-laws should get it too. We must be better in being pleasant and welcoming; our home and work area must be pleasant. We must be better at being precious – highly valued no matter the season of our lives – single, single again, married, trusting God for a child, for job, for relevance, widowed, elderly, wealthy, poor… The Lord calls us precious in His sight. We must and can be better at being pretty, attractive. Women are very funny, we are supposed to be very wise yet when we are at home with our husbands or loved ones we dress down but when we are going out and at times meeting strangers we care much less about, we dress up. Treat your man, your children like royalty because they are your kings and princes and princesses! We can be better at being proficient, being skilled; if you sell fried rice, learn to make better rice, if you are an administrator, learn to be better, if you are a homemaker learn to be better. My husband may not eat when he visits you, not because he is a great cook but because he has a better chef at home! I am not better in some areas (O Lord help me!) but I can be better in all areas because God says that I can do all things! I can be better when it comes to being prosperous. Wealth is not having money in the bank and lying that you don’t have money; you are mentally poor if that is your kind of wealth. You are wealthy if you have resources at hand that can be liquefied to meet your immediate need. I haven’t had a paid employment since coming to America but I don’t borrow or use a credit card and the glory is God’s. You can be better when it comes to being pure and many other areas but how? Stand stands in the way of all these amazing p's we have shared.

The acronym we will use for what hinders us from being better is HATE – H for hurt, A for anger, T for trials and E for Envy.  Let’s take them one by one:

Hurt – So you got married believing the man is rich but you now realize the house is in foreclosure, the car may be revoked soon, his job is on contract, he owes half a million dollars and he has a medical condition! So you are hurt. Everyone in your family had children in their first year of marriage but you who married as a virgin is still trusting God yet they are insensitive enough to keep asking you to send clothes to Tamilore who just had a baby, Nkechi who is on maternity leave; so you are hurt. You have worked so hard in church but still carry the tile of HOD instead of deaconess; so you are hurt. You are the most hardworking in your office but instead of being commended for reporting a scam your boss no longer confide in you, so you are hurt. Hinderance to doing better, hinderance number one to being better is hurt.

Anger - You were told you would be made a full pastor but after inviting your friends to the convention, your name was dropped so you are angry. Your husband was unnecessarily upset and you missed having sex during what became your last ovulation, so you are angry. You know God asked you to come to America but you are yet to get your papers sorted out, so you are angry. Like me you lost a parent suddenly despite being a prayer person and you have a lot of questions that makes you angry. Your children have become rebellious and your husband has turned a blind eye so you are angry. He says he loves you but he beats you and runs after every thing in skirt that you don’t consider as beautiful or brainy as you, so you are super angry and want to do everything to make him pay like Dinah’s brother did to Shechem and his entire clan.

Trials - You have degrees and certificates but you can’t get a job so the trials lead to temptations that weigh you down. You are trusting God for a man and yet you can see widows getting married, friends entering into second marriages; the trials led you to start giving sex for love. You are trusting God for a child and sex is the last thing on your husband’s mind because he has a child from another marriage so you are tempted to try something unholy. Friends carry designer bags, wear brand names and you know you earn more but can’t account for it because your husband and children waste your money so you are tempted to carry drugs. Trails and temptations stop us from seeing that God will never leave us with weights we cannot carry.

Envy - Envy, the sister of brother jealousy; a feeling of discontent aroused by someone else’s possessions or quality. For the envious, the grass is always greener at the other side, until they move over: Her husband is better, his pastor is better. She is a citizen; I am merely a resident. She is a nurse, I am merely a nursing aid no wonder she talks to me anyhow. She is so young and have children already little wonder she doesn’t respect me. Envy robs you of seeing yourself as better, as the apple of God’s eyes, His own very image.

HATE is the cankerworm that stops Christian sisters from overflowing in the grace to do better. Hate led Cain to murder Abel and lose his own life. Hate is what welled up in Rachel’s heart against her sister who usurped her role as first wife.

Let’s see what the Bible says about this hate. Romans 2:6 “Who will render to every man according to his deeds”, what is your deed? 1 John 4:20 says, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” Proverbs 8:13 - The fear of the LORD [is] to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. 1 John 3:15 says, Whosoever hateth his brother [sister] is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

What are the eternal influences a woman can change the world with? Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 13.13 “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love". A woman of influence should have the three but the greatest is love.

Women have the power of influence in ways men cannot.  Influence is a power often greater than authority.  So the question is, how can we be better? We can be better by being gods – the Bible says, “Ye are gods” (John 10:34, Psalms 82:6). Who is God in one word, love. Love is the feeling of intense affection, a feeling of fondness, endearment. Love is passion for life, care for others. Love is God and God is love. A woman of influence must love with the self-giving love of God, which empowers those in her area of influence to have love as their main motivation in life! God has given us the spirit of power, the spirit of love and the spirit of a sound mind. For you to be better, you must love God, love yourself and translate that love of God and self to others.

We’ll use the acronym L.O.V.E to expatiate on how we can be better by working at being like God. L is for Live, O for Outstanding, V for vision and E is for Empathy.

Live – I was going to make the first acronym Love but God said, tell my daughters to live because some of them merely exist! Take “O” (others) out of love and focus on “I”, focus on self. God asked us to love others as ourselves but how do we truly love others when we have stopped loving ourselves. Matthew 4:4, But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Please make this confession credited to Kenneth Hagin: “I live by every Word of God, I feed my faith, I feed on faith food”. To live is to be mentally, physically, socially and spiritually present in the moment. To live is to remove that chip on your shoulders and learn to relax knowing God is in control. To live is to have assurance that your unknown tomorrow is in the hands of the All-knowing God. Acts 17:28A records, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being”. Let God worry about that reproach, let God take care of that demotion, let God take the lead in the fight for your right. Someone said to me, “How come your car is not in your name? My response, “The steering is in my hands!” Don’t become the general manager of the world! Live and let others live. Remember that worry pays no dividend. Move beyond yesterday, live! Remember that life is a process, not a destination. By the time we truly arrive, we are on longer alive. Tell your neighbour to live – live!

Outstanding – In whatever level or season you are in, you must be distinguished. Your lifestyle and delivery must be marked by excellence. But what draws this outstanding nature out? Faith. A woman of influence brings faith to bear on everyone around her.  Faith and trust in God for herself and the encouragement, enablement, for others to have real faith in God. This is what makes her stand out from the crowd, tremendous faith. A woman of influence believes that her future is in God's hands and teaches others to trust in God, no matter the circumstances. 

Vision – Every sister that must do better must be able to see physically and spiritually; they must have and sharpen the power of perception through prayer. Every woman that would partake of being better must have a vision and a mission, a career and a calling. They must have eyes that see beyond the nose. You may be trusting God for a loving man, but what do you see? Hannah saw but what did she do with the vision. Samson saw but what did he do with the vision. Many woman have missed it in marriage because when they saw that their husbands will be poor instead of running to God to turn his captivity around they ran away with another man that appears rich but a woman of influence picked up the man you dumped, turned his captivity to cash and now you want to return. Touch your eyes and decree, my eyes will see. Touch your head and declare, my mind will yield to God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that I can ask or think in Jesus name. The Bible says, “The wise woman buildeth her home”. When you have vision, you are a repository of the revelation that you will make it in career or calling, you pleasantly anticipate that you will succeed in motherhood or ministry. This will make you walk with your head raised high with confidence about who God has made you, a woman of tremendous power of influence. Vision will ensure you are not depressed about that child that is on the way, that man that will love and pour his strength into you, that body of Christ that will celebrate your worth as a pillar of strength, that boss that will honour you! Vision leads to hope, hope of a better tomorrow.

Finally empathy – the ability to understand time and season and to use that understanding to share the feelings of others made Jesus not just another prophet but the son of the living God. Let someone read Hebrews 4:15 “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” I counselled a woman who was so spiritual that she had become inhuman! God could be touched by our infirmities because He lived as human. Let’s not be so spiritual that we cannot empathise with others. To save sinners, Jesus brought himself so low as to dine with them; He walked up to Zaccheus and the woman of Samaria. Empathy would help us do and be better. Maya Angelo said, I am human and nothing human is alien to me. If your HOD is pregnant out of wedlock, how do we discipline such a person with empathy?

What does the Bible have to say about LOVE? Psalm 97:10, ”Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.” Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.” Which means love empathises with the sinner in a way that cares for the soul enough to not put them to death but bring them to the knowledge of the soul-cleansing blood. John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.” How did God love us? In John 3:16 we see that God loved the world including the saints and sinners in it so much that “He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". God so loved us that he gave His one and only for our redemption.

My dear sisters, God created us in His image and likeness, He created us with the creative power to have dominion. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God gave us the power to be better than animals and things. God withdrew from vacation to create us from a finished product; the extra time He spent on us as women was meant to make us better. 

Paul confirmed what God said in 2^nd Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Do you have hate instead of love; God’s grace is sufficient to transform you. He says in Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” You are not condemned, you are asked to confess and come to Christ for the redemption of your soul so that you can be renewed and transformed. Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Women of power who can do all things better, rise up majestically and begin to decree I am loved, I am lifted, I am celebrated, I am acknowledged, I am relevant, I am precious, I am celebrated, I am honoured, I can do all positive things better.

Worship: I wanna be more like you, Jesus

Let us take this prayer points:

1. My Daddy, I thank you for the abilities to do better you have planted in me
2. My Father, remove every seed of hurt, anger, trials and envy from me
3. My God, implant your love which passeth human understanding in me

Hold someone beside you as an indication that you are not in this alone and that we will help each other make a commitment to be better. Then say this out loud as a prayer and a decree; powerful women make decrees:

Lord I desire to be better. We your daughters, your princesses, desire to be better. Lord help me love better, make me outstanding, make my vision clearer and make me better in the area of empathy. Instead of being overwhelmed by hate, let love lead me to be touched by what touches others especially women around me. Give me the faith that would transform me from a controlling woman to a powerful and graceful woman of influence, in Jesus name I pray. Amen!

Thank you for being such an awesome audience; give a woman beside you a hug and a high five. Let somebody shout hallelujah. God bless you.

Power of a Woman (I), precedes this. Please read.

Mrs. Omolola Omoteso-Famuyiwa is a minister who is 

passionate about sharing God's words for the healing of others.

God bless you.