EMPTY AND VOID 5

Hope you know, some of you, you complain about everything. I can't cope, this office politics is too much, I need to resign. Look, look, just simple conversation we had, look at what they are saying about me. You read about the story of Esther. Her life was simpler as the daughter of the man at the gate. When you get to the palace, you deal with palace politics. There is no aspect of you being useful as a generational asset that is not controversial. Why is it that Christians, we are where we are Salt that can't sweeten, agents that can't transform. We're many in our numbers, but we can't do anything. I'm going to give you 5 reasons why we're there. Number 1, number 1, family. Number 2, religion. Are you writing? Schools for exposure. 5, individual quality. Number 1, family system. The family was God's initial design for the equipping of every child. In fact, congregations only came because families failed. Majority of the things you are learning in business school ought to be taught by your parents who did well.

The word of God is the ultimate agent of transformation. It breaks barriers, renews minds, awakens destinies. It reshapes, realigns, rebuilds. Apostle Femi Lazarus has been given a divine mandate. To raise a generation of kingdom-minded culture shapers, leaders equipped to infiltrate every sphere of influence, to inspire, to transform societies, and to leave a lasting mark on generations to come.

The word of God dominates my spirit. His life is at work in me. My body is not susceptible to sickness.

His sermons knows no boundaries. It speaks to every race, Every tongue, every culture, every sermon, every insight, every counsel carries the power to ignite transformation, bring healing, and unlock divine purpose. Get set for a journey beyond the ordinary, a journey of transformation, of restoration, empowerment through the power of God's word.

Why is it that Christians, we are where we are? Salt that can't sweeten, agents that can't transform. We're many in our numbers, but we can't do anything. I'm going to give you 5 reasons why we're there. Number 1, number 1, family. Number 2, Religion. Are you writing? Schools. 4, exposure. 5, individual quality. Number 1, family system. The family was God's initial design for the equipping of every child. In fact, congregations only came because families failed. Majority of the things you are learning in business school ought to be taught by your parents who did well. Maybe I should slow down. But I should just tell you some of the simple things. Let's go back to John 3:16. That's the first institution that the devil attacked. He weakened quality of individuals. It affected the quality of children they are giving birth to. Two defeated minds defeating the child. I was given an illustration today. One of the reasons why people are mediocre— I use number line in mathematics. You have number line, you have zero, you have negative integers, um, then you have positive Integers, let's just have that. And then you have -1, -2, -3, -4, 1, 2, 3, 4, down till infinity. And then you have someone, and this sometimes is most of our problems. This is a Christian, a praying home, parent trying their best, because there is a way you can— the assumption is that the fact that you are a religious person means that your destiny is taken care of, that because you go to church means that automatically you must finish well. You have suffered in the past, then there's a God who— have you suffered kind of things I've suffered? There's no way my future is not going to be bright. I'm saying that your life is not Nollywood. You can suffer and there's still no hope for you. Suffering is not the guarantee of a glorious future. This is where it's going to pain you, because you meet people who didn't suffer what you have suffered, who do better in areas you didn't do well. So this is what we have. We have people who came from negativities, problem, they experience pain, experience despair, experience— exposed to lack, exposed to depravities and all that. But in the midst of all this, because they are religious people, we spiritualize pain, we spiritualize lack, we spiritualize and all those things, and then we find doctrines to make it everlasting. So what we do is that we look for aspect of the Bible that talk about suffering, that talk about all those things, that the moment they talk about something that you have in God, you are triggered. It's the reason why when you talk about wealth, it's those who don't have that fight. Yes, sir. So this person is, is, is, is born here Negativity. So in fact, for this person to now get to the point of zero, it is a measure of success. That I tried to beat the negativities to become nothing. I've tried. So the quality of attempting to get to this point where you can The mindset required to get to the zero and be okay and say this is my life is the mindset of being basic. The fact that you don't have what it takes again in your faculty to think big. You have been programmed: marry, give birth, if you can try to mortgage a house and then pay with your retirement and just die. Because it's success, because I'm as long as where you grew up you didn't see it. You define success in respect to producing what you didn't see. The fact that I have produced it doesn't mean that in real context you have done well. You have just done better than your parents. So it— the issue is that when God is looking for someone that is going to take over the world, he can't find this one because the problem is already too much, it's going to, it's going to just attempt to be nothing. And then you have friends that from the moment they were born, they were born level 100. The family can be the ground of God's strategy and and can be the burial ground of many destinies. When you come from a dangerous place, it's not just about upbringing, it's about the quality of conversations you hear, the quality of individuals. You wake up every morning, what is fight for? 2k sub, data, gaslighting, all those kind of things. Those are the things you have to fight through. You, you, you, you cannot ever imagine God using you at a level where you're a blessing to the world because that is not factored in the ideology of this kind of place. We've got to survive first. So every plan, vision, dream, and intentions, everything must be that we settle hunger issue first. The person who is exposed to this kind of thing is going to build survival instinct, is going to self-preserve. Um, so you're going to see many things with this person. He's going to quit easily, quit on people. Once it becomes stressful, I'm done. Quit on relationships. Don't stress me. The moment something happens that he's not taught to negotiate because nobody negotiated with him, once something is said in the direction he doesn't agree, he curse. You bust that because it's not saying relationship produce. It's only known money that they give. It doesn't understand human value or social capital, doesn't understand all those things. He throws his name around, there's no weight to it. It's a construct. Ideally, the way life in itself is designed, that somebody who is giving birth to in this point can— there's nothing available here. So the issue is that for negative integers, you have everything that make sure that you survive being in that realm, including quality of pastors. You must not forget that a defeated mind can say yes to the call of God. And some of the problems we have is that we have people who cannot be employed anywhere who have said yes to ministry. If you are going to arise in such system, you are a threat to the system. So the best the system can manage you to become is another pastor. The system can choose a wrong husband for you, choose a wrong wife for you. And tell you that just marry, people do well after they marry. We don't know where you're going to say so. See, many people's success began after they married. You think there's a God that bring money just because you say yes, I do? This the way they are pushing young people, just, just go, just go. It will backfire. And when it backfires, we're going to have a generation that will hate God. The problem now is that God— you can't start partner— it's difficult for me to be your exportable material as one that you want to use to solve the problem of the earth, because first, just the fact that I was born here means I have to cater for people I didn't give birth to. The genesis of my life begins with fatherhood. You're a child, but you have to raise children. What can you do? What's the way out? Because if we're in church and we don't understand this basic thing, we're just going to keep saying amen, hopefully that something just happened by some miraculous might, and then I'm out. The problem is that even the quality of thinking that this place puts you You can't come out. I told you when I went for NYSC, I met a girl there at the PP I was posted to, and she said, I just want you guys to let me clean the offices and wash the toilet. I said, but you studied about chemistry. She said, I just, I managed to graduate. You can be defeated without an opponent. Life already won you. Just by default. Life itself just, just gone. One of the things we are not agreeing on is the fact that church, church people are very emotional people, and I talk to you. Yes, sir. Are you sure? Let me take one. I'll talk one. Check your mood. There's a way potential suitors will come around and see negative integers as a bit. I'm called minus X plus another. The reason why there's a lot of delay around marriage amongst us, not because we have fewer men to women is that it's taking longer for people to be balanced. And you, after first date, you're already into your sister who is also going to be sponsored to school and all that. Everybody's using OT now. So the destruction of the family system have given rise to a reactionary mob. And if this alone is the problem, it's enough to decide to destroy any society. The family is supposed to be God's, God's biggest strategy on earth. Supposed to be the training ground for giants. Anything you didn't see, you can't do. Look at how, look at how serious this is. They train up a child in the way she should go. When he grows, he will never— God— he will never— God— raise him with poverty mindset, he will never depart from it. Raise him to react, he will never depart from it. Raise him not to be able to hold intellectual conversations, he will never depart from it. That's it. And I'm raising a very serious concern because added to the problem on ground, we are also entering the wave of another industrial revolution where human critical activities, reasoning, are also subjected to machines and computers. So the level of intelligent people is dropping. We're going to find more, more and more people who can't hold simple conversations. Once they don't agree, they fight. Why do people fight? Why is it that there's fight everywhere? Boy is boiling because there's enough frustration to go around. Can you please explain this statement better? All these newsless people now not fighting. See what George just said. What are you saying? What did we throw? What did you carry? I shared this story before. We're in a church years ago in the city of Ibadan. The richest man in that church was Commissioner of Police who only comes to church once in a year during harvest. He has a son. The son was my age mate. Myself and my brother, they know us in that church because when it's time for offering, I'm And we give offering, everybody will know, it's coins. Makam, makam, to sound. For the first time in my life, I saw my age mate carrying mint. Mint. I said, what do you want to do with that money? Say it's offering. You will give God. 'You will give? Give me out of it so I can give offering too.' The boy just packed and gave me. Abi, I have given God me. I gave God one. Just by being in an environment where there's that level of exposure, our pursuit in life can't be the same thing. I might need 10 years of a repair to even think like that. No battle, no fight, just quality of family. Sorry, number 2. And these are hindrance to God's activity on the face of the earth— religion, including church, particularly once the church becomes like what it is now. I showed you the scripture, Amos 5:21, Message translation. You should read it. I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion project, your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fundraising schemes, your public relations and image-making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice. I want oceans of it— oceans of it, sorry. I want fairness, rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want. Psalms 82, let's start reading from verse 3. Psalms 82, go back to— Defend the poor and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and the needy. Deliver the poor and the needy, rid them out of the hands of the wicked. It takes a measure of stamina to bring justice. Let me tell you something. There's a concept. I've tried to— there's only little to what I can do now as far as this country is concerned. Some of us are going to try, then— I don't think the climate of this country now is really palatable for intelligent minds, particularly Not because of the devil, because of the church. We still have the— I'm gonna try. There's something called crowd engineering. It is the— it's a construct where few people with information can engineer the entire crowd to think in certain direction, react when they want them to react, and respond to what they need them to respond to. Um, first you must understand, as long as you are dealing with a crowd, they are— they can be easily manipulated. In fact, it is believed throughout history that it is not good for humans for someone not to lead them. Whether the person is good or bad, it's their choice. So there's crowd engineering. The, the, um I was teaching about something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Have you heard about it before? Just one of those concepts. So one time a prof gave, let's say, like 10 people IQ tests, and after the test he had their results but he didn't give them. So he asked them, what do you think you scored? Those who got the least boasted loudest, and those who did better were quite conservative. So that whole concept is based on illusion of competence, that in a society, those who are the loudest are sometimes the most confident, are the least when it comes to smartness. They just have the assumption that they are smart. Sometimes the level of smartness you have is just rich enough to win arguments. Rich enough to sound smart in comment section. And I want to say this emphatically: nobody needs to know you better to know what you know. The quality of your life is a reflection of your knowledge. Do you know what I know? We know by what we are seeing. Nobody will know better and their life will not change. It's simple as that. Now, the reason why this is so important is that religion is man-made construct. The moment Christianity becomes a religion or is attempted to as a religion, it's going to be built on— this is what is built on: number 1, fear; 2, false hope. Let me start with these two. Many people are not doing certain things not because they love God, because they are afraid. If this message blessed your life, there's so much more waiting for you. The Femi Lazarus Digital Library gives you access to powerful teachings, messages, and resources from Apostle Femi Lazarus, all in one place. Download the app today on the App Store and Play Store and keep growing in the word.