Our long awaited Annual Thanksgiving service for 2020 came with tremendous joy and excitement, Divinely encouraged by the Lord Himself who declared December our month of “Unspeakable Joy”.
After the challenges of 2020, with its covid backdrop, it was time to celebrate what God had done for us.
Our Man of God Dr Able led the events in Kempton Park West with a short word of exhortation from the life of John the Baptist (John was Jesus’ cousin, his own family member), expounding how John lost his battle for life by complaining, instead of praising God. He explained how John the Baptist lost the spiritual war to a little girl. All the girl did was dance to her gods. She was praising them through her dance. But instead of John doing the same and starting to praise God (like Paul and Silas did) he sent his disciples to complain to Jesus: “are you really the one I was looking for? I am in prison and what are you going to do about it?). And so he lost the battle. Her spiritual altar won. If only John had started praising God there in prison, it would have been altar vs. altar and God could have destroyed the wicked altar that stood against his life. But we know what happened- John didn’t do that and had his head cut off and put on a platter for the girl. – Oh, how many lessons we can learn from this.
Futhermore, Dr Able explained that praises are so important in the life of the believer. And if you don’t praise more than you pray, you have it wrongly. The Psalmist prayed 3 times a day, but he praised God 7 times a day! This is so important as Dr Able was quoted to reveal that one can pray amiss….but you cannot praise amiss! What a wonderful truth revealed to live by. Hallelujah.
This exponounciation was based on the revelation made by our guest speaker, Dr , who asked the question, what would have happened to John the Baptist if only he would have praised God!
Dr’s wife gave a short exhortation from Psalm 103, on how the Psalmist cried out from his soul to give the Lord the thanks that is truly due to Him, the Master of all. (The term “Lord” means “Master”).
Following the exhortations, it was time for an overwhelming crowd of testimonies. From narrow escapes to supernatural healings, angelic interventions to financial restorations, the testimonies just kept flowing and flowing. The 5 hour service was ended by our Senior Pastor, who still had to go to our Pretoria branch. If he had not stopped the services, the testimonies would just have kept coming. He was then pleasantly surprised when he got to Pretoria, where the service was still ongoing. Every member in the church were rejoicing before the Lord with their own testimony. The service eventually closed there around 3pm in the afternoon, but not after each and every member had given God their deepest and sincere thanks for His awesome displays of love this past year.
Wow, this was a service we will not forget soon. Truly, we are a blessed people, as God’s Christ Life Commission. We are in Co-Mission with God- that’s for sure!
