The trend is becoming commonplace that Gospel preachers do consider quitting their ministries at the earliest of time. This is because they feel they have worked enough but raising a God’s ministry is physically tiring. They have reached a point of exhaustion. But one servant of God who is respected for his untiring ability at calling souls to the way of God, Apostle Johnson Suleman, says no man who has a mission at hand must quit; “a strong work ethic is necessary to do the work of God,” he noted in one of his mid-July apostolic teachings.
Likening doing the work of God to the biblical Moses, who continued moving on in the wilderness while his followers continually murmured against him and His God, Apostle Suleman who is the General Overseer of the Omega Fire Ministries (OFM) worldwide, says “preachers must have thick skin, because if we are not careful we can be overwhelmed by the spirit of laziness through a complaining crowd.”
“Imagine you prepared a sermon for a crowd, prayed all week for that Sunday and you came to church to see four people in attendance. Imagine your children not worshipping with you, or your wife preferring to go to a more standardized church as it were because things are not well with you and she can’t bear the ridicule anymore. You opened a church and every service day, you see people passing your church to other churches. You preach your heart out; they even pass by and pity you; some shake their head and even mock you. That is part of the price for greatness,” counsels the servant of God.
Apostle Suleman warns that God’s ministers must never forget that every Christian is in spiritual warfare and leaders are especially susceptible to the attack of the wicked one. The ministry is filled with many battles and many blessings, but the only possible way to avoid struggle is to give up. If the devil can sideline a preacher, he will often destroy the ranks that follow.
The ‘Restoration Apostle’ who cited as an example his earlier days as a preacher with just five members in Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria, in a primary school with only bulb, beseeched pastors still struggling to raise a ministry to persevere because “if you have not suffered you cannot be settled. If you have not laboured, you cannot be honoured.”
He said in his sermon that only a determined leader finishes a lifetime of ministry well, as hazards encountered by Christian leaders, especially in Africa, are enormous, adding that “in all the challenges, God is still saying that you are His beloved son; so it is that rare leader that runs faithfully to the end.”
