Strength for the Journey

By Theophilus Titus Chondol

Early reflections and impressions about the significance of life on earth, and the purpose of our existence to bring glory and pleasure to our God remains the hallmark of this work. After all, what else are you here for, if not to live for the cause God created you? Jesus said, For this cause came I unto this hour; to this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world (John 12: 27 and 18: 37).

God in His grand plan for creation designed and decided our race, tribes, nationalities, geographical locations, times, seasons, and the bounds of our habitation. God planned that mankind may seek Him and find Him, because our purpose for existence is to His praise and glory (Acts 17: 2628 and Isa. 43: 7 and 21).

Theophilus approaches this book with simplicity, sharing his very experience with God, as he journeys in God to the place of true fulfilment in life. The message in this book encourages you to never settle for Gods second best, when your original place is there for you before the foundation of the world.

God has made available the strength you need to be the person He had in mind for your assignment on earth. This book shares that with you and encourages you to pursue your fullness in God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Nov 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499087673

Theophilus Titus Chondol

Theophilus received his call into ministry in 1987 after a visitation from the Lord Jesus Christ at about 4.30 a.m. in his room, in his village. He obtained B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Jos, Nigeria. God’s guiding hand took him to the United Kingdom, where he studied Education in the University of Liverpool. He got training for pastoral ministry and was later ordained. He keeps testifying that his response to God’s calling into the ministry remains the best step that ever gives him fulfilment today – touching the hearts of men and women with the love and compassion of God. His central message is the love of God leading men and women to their place in Him. He is called to teach, to preach, and to shepherd in every sphere as the Lord throws open the doors for serving. He is married to Stephannie Egondu, and they are blessed with two precious children – Joann MaFat and Noel MunFat. He now serves as the Resident Minister at TNLIM, Liverpool, UK.

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Copyright © 2014 by Pastor Theophilus Titus Chondol.

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Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified Bible, New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Website.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation—Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorised Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgement

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1   A Place Beyond What You May Think!

Chapter 2   Nothing Is Impossible if You Believe

Chapter 3   God Will Direct Your Actions

Chapter 4   Where I had My Dreams

Chapter 5   This Dream Was Different from Others

Chapter 6   The Dream from the Lord

Chapter 7   God Will Establish You

Chapter 8   Your Life Shines Brighter Unto the Perfect Day

Chapter 9   Today Is a Great Day for You!

Chapter 10 God Made You in Charge of Your Domain on Earth!

Chapter 11 Climbing Higher on Your Ladder

Chapter 12 Follow God’s Way

Chapter 13 The Secret of Climbing High!

Chapter 14 A Life to the Full—with Joy and Excitement!

Chapter 15 My Utmost for Him!

Chapter 16 The Promise Is Meant for You!

Chapter 17 It Is No More a Speculation… On Your Way to the Top!

Chapter 18 Everything Has Been Settled Regarding You

Chapter 19 Enjoy God Each Day!

Chapter 20 Make God Your Only Option in Life!

Chapter 21 The True Essence of Your Beauty Is the Centre of Attraction or Attention

Chapter 22 You Are God’s Masterpiece

Chapter 23 Expressing the True Essence of Your Beauty!

Chapter 24 Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty!

Chapter 25 Your True Value Is Indestructible in God’s Hands!

Chapter 26 You Become What You Separate Yourself To!

Chapter 27 The Best of You Is Here!

Chapter 28 You Can Choose to Walk Through the Door

Chapter 29 Making Your World a Better Place!

Chapter 30 Renewing Your Mind

Chapter 31Expand Your Thinking!

Chapter 32 A Renewed Mind Determines What You Think!

Chapter 33 God Is Ready to Take You Higher!

Chapter 34 You Determine What You Become and How Far You Go

Chapter 35 The Mystery of Your Assignment

Chapter 36 A Clear Picture of the End Result!

Chapter 37 A Life That Wins Always!

Chapter 38 Be Willing and Obedient, and You Will Prosper!

Chapter 39 Where Your Heart Is, Your Body Follows!

Chapter 40 Dare to Take Your Place!

Chapter 41 Simplify Your Life!

Chapter 42 The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven—Determine to Be One!

Chapter 43 Seek God Until You Prevail with Him!

Chapter 44 Let the Word Promote You Each Day of Your Life!

Chapter 45 Build Up Your Confidence Daily

Chapter 46 Jesus Our Guidepost

Chapter 47 The Integrity of the Word of God!

Chapter 48 Casual Approach Towards God Must Die!

Chapter 49 Life Before and after the Fall

Chapter 50 Now That You Are Alive in God!

Chapter 51 ‘I Have Given You Victory…,’ Says the Lord!

Chapter 52 You Are the Image of God on Earth!

Chapter 53 ‘The Door Is Open—Walk Therein!’ Says the Lord God

Chapter 54 Who Is God to You?

Chapter 55 God Is Who He Says He Is! . . . Not Who You Think He Is!

Chapter 56 God Is Who He Says He Is!

Chapter 57 Time to Go to Work!

Chapter 58 Separation for Elevation by God!

Chapter 59 Experience God through His Word!

Chapter 60 Laying All on the Altar

Chapter 61 Obedience Is the Way to Life

Chapter 62 The Spirit of Revelation

Chapter 63 Attitude

Chapter 64 Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude!

Chapter 65 What Is on God’s Mind?

Chapter 66 Rich in Good Work!

Chapter 67 An Army of Intercessors!

Chapter 68 As for Me and My House… !

Chapter 69 Lift Up Your Heads, Oh You Gates!

Chapter 70 You Are More Than What You Thought!

Chapter 71 Believe That You Are Changing!

Chapter 72 Take Charge of Your Circumstances!

Chapter 73 Mystery of Your Assignment

Chapter 74 Working the Works of God!

Chapter 75 Nothing Is Impossible!

Chapter 76 Obedience and Blessing

Chapter 77 Do not Struggle Anymore!

Chapter 78 Make Every Effort to Grow

Chapter 79 Making Good Use of Your Time

Chapter 80 Time to Enter into Your Finest Moments

Chapter 81 Forcing Your Way In!

Chapter 82 The Attitude of Faith and Trust

Chapter 83 Higher and Higher in God!

Chapter 84 You are Complete in God!

Chapter 85 There’s Got to be More!

Chapter 86 Keep Your Life Simple and Organised

Appendix: Self-Evaluation

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to the Lord Jesus Christ and to everyone that will glean the treasures from these pages of hope and encouragement the Lord laid in my heart to make it available to all.

Acknowledgement

I affectionately express my appreciation to the Most High God for the gift of my parents, Rev. Titus Machingo Chondol, who had his exit to glory in July 2006, and my mum, Mama Briskilla Titus Chondol. You gave me direction in life from childhood to the moment I could discern right from wrong, through my early walk with the Lord. I cherish those precious memories of my upbringing, while you were into missions and pastoral work across some rural areas in Plateau State, Nigeria.

To Stephannie my wife and friend, I say a big thank you, for the encouragement in helping to make this book become a finished work. My daughter Joann MaFat and my son Noel MunFat, you two are a blessing and a unique gift from our God.

To the Chondols: My beloved sister (Mary), brothers (Naphtali, Eleazer, Ezra, Mark, Frank, Jehoshaphat), and your families, thank you for your love always, as we live daily pleasing our God.

Prophet Isa El-Buba, my mentor and my spiritual father, I appreciate you so much for all I have learnt from you by example, and in words too. You’ve helped me to grasp that, in this journey in life, we must live a life of holiness by the minute, while conscious that we are strangers in this world, while we make positive contributions into people’s lives, through our calling every day of our life.

Thank you, mummy Choice El-Buba, and all EBOMItes, for your love and service to God. Thank you, COCIN family, for because my story will not be complete without you as my dad served full time as a minister for over four decades under your commission. I pray that the Lord will help you serve even better.

This work could not have been completed without the kind assistance of two precious sisters—Anne McAlister and Lois Marie Wiggins, who took time and went through each page and polished the work. The Lord bless you abundantly and I do appreciate you indeed.

Bishop Edwards and Bishop Gloria—my parents in the Lord, thank you for your agape love towards me and my family, because of the Cross of Jesus. Your love is deep and so contagious that it releases to our God a fragrance of sweet savour, bringing praise to Him daily. Amen.

Preface

The inspiration behind this work is to stir in the mind and heart of the reader a mindset that nobody is marked for failure or for the low place in life. This is because God made us of equal opportunities in this life.

It starts from the moment you know Jesus in your life. From then on, you stand on the same platform with every child of God, having the right given to you by God to live and reign in life. This common ground we all share as God’s children does not have some selected giants with extra advantage from the rest in the Kingdom of God. Rather, God addresses us the same, because He has made us joint-heirs with Jesus. It reveals that what Jesus is heir of, you and I share in the same inheritance.

However, although this status automatically becomes born in you at new birth, yet walking into its physical manifestation requires that you take responsibility and apply this in your life daily, by becoming subject to the lifestyle of Jesus, who Himself made Himself close disciple to His Father. Jesus came to redeem us from sin, and much more, to show us how man, having been restored to God, can walk back into the same glory he fell from at the disobedience of man (Rom. 3: 23; Col. 1: 27).

The pages of this personal journey of my testimony reveal how God took me from the start and, needless to say, from a naturally despised beginning to where I am today. He has instructed me to share the same because our stories as men created by God have a great link from our separation from God to our rebirth. I love to share that your present place, or your past, are no determinants of where God has for you if you will get on board with Him.

The born-again reality is the genesis of this enlistment into God’s children who are meant to attain the highest place in life designed by God before the foundation of the world for every man.

Each of us stands on a ground called potential. Potential is the deposit of everything God poured into you, which remains dormant until the day you apply a translational force on it so that you move from where you are to where God gave you with Christ Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father far above principalities and powers.

You may feel beaten by the horrific blows of life and of wickedness in every available sphere, as a result of the corruption in the heart of man. Every man would want to have everything to himself, and this makes us have a mentality of the strong and the advantage to rule the weak and the naturally disadvantaged. The good news is everyone born of God is enlisted a possible potential for greatness.

We are meant to change not only our stories, but that of our family, our communities, and our nation. It is, therefore, your decision to get up and get on this journey to God’s ultimate place for you in this life and in the life to come—eternal life with Him forever.

Everything that happened to you—good and bad—are part of your past which has framed you to this very spot where you stand as you begin to rewrite the story of your life to God’s ultimate for you, and you end up a wonder to your world.

In concluding, I need to put it into your heart that you must be separated from the voice of the multitudes. Their sound beat is a strange one, and will only leave you on the landscape they have created for themselves. But when you team up with God, and you make Him your only Lord and Master, heeding to His bidding and statutes, then you are set for the journey. You will be stirred up to be on your way and leave the life of toiling behind and come up hither in God as you receive strength for the journey from this personal epistle in Jesus’s name.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

As you read through this work, you will notice that there is no reference made to any other material apart from the only Manual—God’s Word. This is deliberate because it is meant to be a personal journey and the encounters I had on the way to where I am at present. The journey goes on while we are in this life.

This is a book that becomes more valuable after you have gone through it completely for the first time. You will find it useful as you ponder on a chapter each day the next time you read it from the start. This will cause the work to sink inside you more, and it will give you the opportunity to reflect on your personal life journey as well. This is because each chapter of the book was written in one day, to the end.

Do the best you can to see to it that you go through the scriptures (Bible verses) thoughtfully and prayerfully with deep reflections. Doing it this way will allow you to open the door for the Holy Spirit to transport you into experiences and into places not yet chattered upon by any mortal man. For He (the Holy Spirit) will reveal to you the mind of Jesus for your unique walk on this planet earth (John 16: 13-15).

When you do that, you will experience heaven on earth. What I mean is you will be in a realm with God that no experience in this life can paint or present to you, but Him alone. Such were my encounters that there were times I wondered if I was in this cruel world, because God became more real to me than my very surroundings, and I became convinced that what God says I am, I am, and what God says is mine, I will possess as I walk with Him in obedience and submission.

You will need a journal, where you will record the key lessons God would show you. Such recordings will put under your feet solid slab to stand upon without shaking because time doesn’t wear out recorded experiences from real-life encounters with God.

Remain prompt to obey the voice of God from the pages of the scriptures. When you hear God from His Word, it will not be long, and you will begin to perceive his inner voice in your spirit, and you will always know it is God because the more time you spend with Him, the more you begin to recognise His voice above that of strangers (John 10: 5 and 27-28).

The more you realize how crucial it is for you to discover yourself in God (Jer. 29: 11-13, 33: 3), the more urgency will be born in you to follow God in obedience, with a deep hunger never to settle for anything less than God’s best for you.

The Lord bless you and may your joy know no bounds in this personal adventure with the Shepherd as you receive strength for the journey.

Amen!

Introduction

STRENGTH FOR THE JOURNEY

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There is a journey everyone is engaged in. It is a journey addressing purpose, fulfilment, and destiny in the life of everyone that takes time to invest in this personal narration of my personal journey from my early years to date.

I share from my heart, my personal journey where I began my life with a dream as a country boy, in one of the remote places geographically, to where I am today.

I am aware of men who laughed at my parents, because they were termed ‘poor’ even amongst the poor. But little did they know that something would emerge in the later years of life that would change that impression forever by the power of God through a dream he gave to a little boy!

The Lord Jesus wants me to make my personal journey available so that it will serve as a source of hope and encouragement to the naturally advantaged and the disadvantaged, and to the weak and to the strong alike. We all stand on common ground before our Creator and Master, that the race of this life is not for a privileged few but available to everyone who will dare to listen to Him.

There is a hunger in every person which can never be satisfied by anything one tries to feed it with. That hunger is a place made by God in man that is reserved for God to fill when we come to realise and let Him do so. That place was created when man withdrew himself from the fullness of God at the fall.

Man fell from the fullness of God to a place that became immediately filled with natural limitations on every front. As a remedy, therefore, all through the generations, God always sought for a man who would cooperate with Him, so that He would distinguish him by causing that man to walk in a higher dimension of life as God originally designed.

Few mentioned here who have walked in that dimension are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Elijah, Job, John the Baptist, Jesus (of course), many Apostles in the early Church, and many thousands in the preceding generations to date.

RESTORATION TO GOD’S FULLNESS FOR US

Jesus came to restore us to Himself. In so doing, man has the privilege of reconnecting with his lost place in God. This restoration reveals the wholeness man is meant to pursue in God until the void is taken over by God’s purpose for man. Each of us, therefore, needs to do the following:

1. Develop a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ (John 10: 10b).

2. Develop a walking relationship with the Holy Spirit (John 16: 13-14).

3. Follow the voice of the Spirit, which comes primarily through the Word of God (Josh. 1: 8; Rom. 8: 14).

4. Act in obedience in the direction of the Spirit’s leading.

God is in you if you have Jesus in your life. God lives, works, and speaks in you and through you too. Entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the beginning of the journey into the fullness of life. If you must make a meaningful mark in the journey of life, then there is one place to be in—that secret place you have with your Father, the most High God! Know Him, know life; know Him, know peace!

What I have done through this work is share my story, or rather, my adventure with God—the secret the Lord took me through, which is causing me to trace my path with God in God for my life. I can say without hesitation that it is the path to fulfilment in life. This message comes from a personal walk, a personal experience, a personal journey too, woven into words that will encourage you to reflect into your life, believing that there is more to your life than you think you are pursuing now.

God is willing to take you there if you embark on a meaningful search from HIS Word. A good place to make the first call is Jeremiah 29: 11-13, which reveals to you that unless you seek the Lord, you remain a stranger to yourself for a whole lifetime (Jer. 33: 3). Believe that there is more to life than the surroundings and the ‘world’ you have explored!

I want to ask you, are you fulfilled in your life, your marriage, your family, your career, your job, your course of studies in school, profession, and so on?

I invite you to come with me on a journey through the chapters of this book, as God uses what He revealed to me and taught me to add to your knowledge, and to encourage you on your journey in Him to the fullness He has in store for you. This journey never ends until we are through from this end first.

Check each day and you will be encouraged to keep walking to fulfilment.

Thank you.

Pastor Theophilus Titus Chondol

CHAPTER ONE

A PLACE BEYOND WHAT YOU MAY THINK!

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‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the

Lord

. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ (Jer. 29: 11; TLT)

I want to tell you this that the place God has for you is a great place beyond what you may think. When He created you, He did not just design you to live here based on your terms and what you feel you would want to do.

What you are today, or who you are today, does not determine the great place God has for you. Until you discover in God who you are, and what you are meant to do in your existence, you may still be far from the best He has for you.

God settled what you would be in this life before He formed you in your mother’s womb. He formed you to come with a specific mission, and a purpose to pursue. Your significance is hidden in that purpose. He will reveal it to you if you let Him, because He takes pleasure if you can live to your full potential He had in mind for you before He sent you here.

THE REAL YOU IS NOT YET REVEALED UNTIL GOD DOES THAT

People may look at you, laugh at you, or see you as nothing. But that will go on if you let them. That will continue if you remain without knowing who really you are in the mind and in the counsel of God. What you look on the outside is far from what you really are in the mind of God. Your environment over the years has shaped your perception of life, your attitude, and your predisposition, but there is a seed planted in you by God that carries God’s original intent for you.

You start believing in yourself, ‘I am aiming high in life by the power of God.’ By stirring the inner personality inside you, you begin to provoke the revelation of who you are. There is born in everyone of humanity a dream bigger than the natural capabilities one can grasp or accomplish!

I remember, many people laughed at me before in the past. People held all kinds of opinion about me based on their perception and perspectives in life. But they are not laughing now. When all you can see is nothing beyond your immediate environment, then you will limit your scope of life. As for me, I saw beyond that remote countryside. You know why? Because I believed that I was going far in life.

My village, where there was no motorway at one time, did not stop me from dreaming bigger than my immediate perceptions could see. There is an inner eye in man if he can take time to slow down and begin to see what God sees! Every man remains a stranger to himself to a greater proportion, until the day he begins to have a dialogue with His creator.

Nobody can prevent you from dreaming. Take time daily and dream and believe God that you are going far in life. While in that village, I would go to the farm with my dad and mum in the morning, and return in the evening. We would set out for the farm by 6 a.m. (local time) and return at around 4 p.m. Yet in all of that, I was seeing beyond the horizon of my immediate environment. When a man can dream, natural boundaries place no restrictions on him at all.

YOUR DREAMS ARE GOD’S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR YOU

God will begin to rearrange your life—opportunities, people, and situations—to begin to adjust in your favour. When you trace the God-given dream, then you have caused spiritual laws to work in your advantage. Circumstances, people, opportunities, and so on, will be drawn by the hand of the Lord to follow His bidding into what God had in mind to accomplish in your life.

But until you are sensitive in following God’s promptings, you may shut out His promptings all the time and you may live below your potentials He had for you when He created you in the first place.

It takes to developing this sensitivity, and responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit that you develop in the area and the calling God had in mind for you. When you progress in your walk and growth in God and also in the area of your calling, it becomes a journey you travel in time until you leave what you were in the natural, and you become all that God had in mind for you. You become translated to the place reserved for you. That place that holds your fulfilment and happiness in life, and exploits you accomplish because of God revealing to you what you were in the ‘blueprint’. Finally, you will come and stand and look back and realise that God took you beyond your wildest dreams in life.

But first you must believe that you were made for a great and high place in life, which only God can reveal to you. It takes you to seeking you and finding Him, and when you find Him, you find yourself in Him.

Chapter Two

Nothing Is Impossible if You Believe

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All things are possible to him that believes. (Mark 9: 23)

GOD HAD POURED INSIDE YOU ALL THAT YOU WOULD

BE IN LIFE

Everything you ever want to achieve in this life is inside you! You existed in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. As far as you can see, that is how far you can go. God never placed any limits in your life because in the spirit realm, there is no shortage of space, time, resources, and opportunities, like it is in the natural realm.

When you become born-again, you translate from a natural man to a spiritual man (2 Cor. 2: 15). The spiritual man is the one that has access to all that God had in mind for him before the beginning of creation.

The extent you want to go in this life, whether in studies or in business, whether it is marriage, career, or anything at all, depends on you. No human being or any challenge in this life can stop you. You can go as far as you can see. Some of us think life has concluded what they can become or how far they can go in this life. But it is never true at all. You are the one that determines how far you achieve your dream in life.

When I saw the passage I quote here today in the Bible then, I began to dream, pray, and read information that could take me to where I wanted to go even though I came from a family that did not have money to help me pursue my dream. I only needed to believe the promise of God, and dream to see where I wanted to go. It was 1987 when I finished my secondary school. I had failed my GCE then. I came out with 2 Credits and 2 Passes. I looked for a school that would admit me and none agreed. But I had a dream in my heart that one day I would travel to either America or England to study. So I did a resit of my GCE examinations in 1988 and came out with good results.

When I told some of my friends that one day, I believed I would go to America or England to continue with my studies, they laughed. But you see, God never forgot my desire that I asked; I just believed that He could do it. My friends said, ‘Where will your parents bring the money from to send you there? And look at the village where you live!’ Well, the day came when I left that village and travelled to England, where I live today! My village could not stop me, my family challenges could not stop me, and my earlier failure in GCE could not stop me! As long as I had a dream in my heart, I believed God would bring it to pass.

QUESTIONS

What are the challenges you are facing that might have kept you without hope? Who told you that is all you can have or you can be and you agree with them? Who told you that money is what you need to make it in this life? Do you have a dream? If you do not have one, begin to dream from today. Take time each day, and get a quiet place and imagine what life will be if you can become what you have in your mind.

GOOD NEWS

The only person who can stop you is you, and nobody else! I challenge you, and I encourage you begin to dream and change the story of your life, your family, and your community. Those who make it in this life are people who dream and who refuse to accept what life wants to deny them, because all things are possible to you if you believe.

Have you been crying in secret when you think about your life, family, and situations? Stop crying today and make a decision from today that you are the one who will change the story of your family. I will meet you tomorrow in this place. My friend, my brother, my sister, wake up and be what you want to be!

Chapter Three

God Will Direct Your Actions

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Ask the Lord to bless your plans, and you will be successful in carrying them out. You may make your plans, but God directs your actions. (Prov. 16: 3 and 9; GNB)

Precious friends, I continue to share with you on this journey through dreaming! Well, how then can I fulfil my dream because it always looks bigger than what I can achieve? Never be afraid if your dream looks too big for you.

There is no dream from God that is small. Dreams are always bigger than what you can handle in your own ability! God drops that dream in your heart, but He wants you to depend on Him to fulfil it. All that is required from you is you keep the dream alive by rolling it over and over in your mind with prayers.

SET APART A PLACE

Every day, you get a quiet place and meditate—wherever you are—in the countryside, the village, or the city. Nothing can stop your dream. Neither the rocks around you, nor the oppositions around you, nor the negative people around you can stop you from dreaming!

As you can see from these verses of the Bible, God will direct your actions and plans one step at a time! That is how mine started. Tomorrow, I will share with you in detail where my dream started: in a village, in a room, in the night; I had a dream, and I woke up and was happy that I saw what God was trying to do for me to succeed in life.

All of you have had a dream at one time, but you might not have known that it was your greatness from God. I began to ask the Lord to bless the dream and to guide me to that place. Today when I look back, it is perfectly the place that God showed me.

ENCOURAGEMENT

Whatever you may be going through today, go back to God and ask Him to bless His plans in your life. It is never too late to trace your way back if you will allow God to step into your life and guide His dream in you. You may be feeling unhappy, sad, and hopeless. But no! There is hope in God. Nothing is too late with God if you trust Him.

Start today to pray every day, and ask God to guide you and to show you what to do. Set aside a quiet place and a convenient time so that nobody is there to disturb you. If you do that, you are on your way to greatness and to the perfect place God wants you to rise to. Remember this that God does not mind whether you are rich or poor, or from a good family or bad. In fact, you are the one who will change the story of your family and your community and your nation.

Hold on to the dream God gives you; keep rolling it over and over with prayers, and see how God will arrange people, circumstances, and steps to take you up there! God has you on His mind and in His plan. Pursue it, my friend, my brother, and my sister.

Chapter Four

Where I had My Dreams

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways follow Him and He shall direct your path. (Prov. 3: 5-6)

WHERE MY DREAM STARTED

One night, I was asleep in my room in the village after I had returned tiredly from the farm with my parents. It was 1987, after I had finished my secondary school the previous year. Each time I returned from the farm with my parents in the evenings, I would carry my favourite Christian books and my cassette player and climb the rocks.

During those times, I would read and travel in my imagination to some wonderful countries and imagined myself studying in the university somewhere. I always had the US and England in my mind, and I loved God from that age of twenty years. But I had bad GCE (WASC) results that could not get me any admission.

Yet I had dreamt that one day my story may change for good. One night, as I slept, I had a dream, and in that dream, a man came in white clothes full of brightness, and he said to me, ‘Theophilus, I have called you to be a pastor.’

Another night, I dreamt that I was in Ohio in the US. I saw the big signboard with that name in the modern city I had never seen in life, but in that dream, I was walking with multitudes of black and white people. Then I woke up. That gave me a picture that one day, my studies would take me outside of Nigeria.

I gained admission in the University of Liverpool, in the United Kingdom, after my first degree in Chemistry in the University of Jos. After my graduation from the University of Liverpool, I had training in pastoral ministry in the church I went to. In 2005, I was ordained.

GOD DIRECTED MY PATH

I left the United Kingdom, and I was absorbed into training again in a Christian ministry called EBOMI Ministries, in Jos, where I served. In God’s eternal counsel of things, I returned to the United Kingdom to take on a function as resident pastor of the church where I am now. Did my dream come true? Of course, yes! Who gave me the dream? God! Who brought the dream to come to pass? God! As we go on, I will explain how my fees were paid in England, as you remember that destiny helpers can be raised by God free of charge to help you achieve your God-given dreams.

Life is good! Why? Because my dream came to pass, and I am doing what I love to do. Have you had any dream that made you excited and happy, but it appeared as if it was too big to come to pass? Do you feel as if you are in the wrong place in life? Maybe it is because you are in a place opposite what you would love to do.

No dream is too big to come to pass. If it came from God, He knows how to take you there. The question is, will you follow your