My beloved members of Press Clips Pentecostal Church (PCPC), today, we have reopened our church and I am honoured to bring you a motivational preacher and a knowledge thinker: Poju Oyemade, Senior Pastor, The Covenant Nation. As an author of a book on strategy, I found his sermon on “How To Think” inspiring. It is slightly edited for this column. Listen:
You have to learn how to think, to be a critical thinker. What I mean by that is how to use acquired knowledge to solve problems. What is the major aspect about solving problems? A medical doctor solves certain problems. You go to a lawyer when you have certain problems. And they use knowledge and apply that knowledge to solve the problem. And they have to think in the application of that knowledge.
So I want to show you how to think, because it’s something people must learn. The Bible says you are transformed by the renewing of your mind. How to think! How do I think? How do I solve a problem? You’ve got to understand. Your work is not to sit down and try to make money without solving problems. You are to solve problems by using knowledge. Processing that knowledge in what we call thinking to solve the problem. So how do you do that? It’s a skill.
People have lost faith in these intangibles. Because people come up and give even some cases testimonies. Some of this source of wealth might even be dubious. So people have lost faith in these values: qualities of diligence, punctuality, proper planning of work that is to be done, so that it can be completed on time. In other words, you’ve got to plan properly for the work you want to do, so you can deliver on time. Time application and quality of work done. In other words, you deliver it on time, and there is real quality in what you are doing.
It’s almost just about what the anointing is going to do for me. And we forget that what the anointing does, first of all, is to produce in you this character. The Bible says as we behold him, we are transformed into the same image. The caterpillar becomes the butterfly. And the butterfly has the capability of doing things that the caterpillar cannot. So the spirit of God transforms us into another person who has more qualities than that other person had before he began meditating on the things that the Holy Spirit wanted the person to meditate on. So, grace comes upon the person and transforms the individual into a better person. Then more can be done by that individual.
Now, a diligent person is the opposite of a slothful man. You place a diligent person somewhere and tell that diligent person: “All you have to help me do is to arrange these books properly, so that when we come we would be able to find the books easily.” The slothful person you have to force: “Why haven’t you arrange this?” The diligent person not only arranges the book, but reads what is inside the book, because he has the opportunity to. Nobody told the diligent person to read. He reads what is in the book, gains knowledge, brings that knowledge to the table. Then the CEO walks into the place, holds a conversation with that person, realizes that this person knows so much and is highly informed about the business and is respectful. And the man begins to think, “I have never seen anybody take this initiative.”
The slothful person is just grumbling about being queried for not arranging the books well. The diligent person is thinking about seizing every opportunity and doing something with it. The effective worker is not just one who goes into the jungle and they say “go and start cutting” and he starts cutting. He would first of all climb the highest tree, evaluate the whole work, and find the best way to do it. He would then come down from the tree and say: “Sir, we’ve found a way to get this job done.” And he goes to execute the job. Four days after, they come and say: “How come you did this so quickly?” He says: “Well, when you told me, your goal was to get this place cleared, your goal wasn’t just to ask me to go to the jungle and be cutting. I went up to the top of the tree, I saw certain things there, so I found out the best way to do this. I did it and found value in some things that could assist us in what we are doing.” And this man looks and says: “This is the kind of worker we need.” That is the diligent person. He or she is a creator of content. And what is that tree that you climbed up to? Knowledge!
Any assignment you are given, the first thing you do is read books. You don’t first of all put your hands to the plough. The first thing you do is to go acquire knowledge. What does it mean to be this? Because you are not given a title. You are given a job description. And with one knowledge, you will be more effective at that thing you are doing. Climb the tree first. Have an overview of the entire thing. That is what the Internet has done. There is a knowledge explosion on the earth which you must tap into to get good result.
You see, the old worker was purely a farmer. It was the Agricultural Age. Everybody was in farming. Then came the Industrial Age where factories were being built and people were trained to work in factories. And that was the skill they had. So you had to now start training people. Then 9 to 5 came in. There was no 9 to 5 for the farmer. The environment described the job he did. The seasons determined how he worked.
Then the knowledge worker came in. Which means educational system was now created. Universities and all of it. And people began to learn and apply knowledge. The Internet has now come and taken that knowledge that you find in libraries, in universities, in choice places and put it out there. There is explosion of knowledge. People are now looking for those who can use this knowledge to create new things. I was in Italy and I discovered that their closeness to Egypt, Israel made them to see knowledge that was already operational in those civilizations like Egypt, like the Greek empire. So they acquired knowledge from there and built empires. Those in the upper part of Europe like Germany also learnt and built nations. Finally, America came. So what I am trying to say is this: you acquire knowledge that is already in existence in different places. And you have to understand how to combine that knowledge to create powerful and new things. To change the way we work, to change outcomes, to change results, to speed up things. This is the kind of new man and woman that the Holy Spirit wants to create within you. This is not the time for magic in the church. This is a time for responsible, supernatural behavior enabled by the Holy Spirit with diligence, with moral excellence, knowledge and that plug of faith that would take the supernatural and bring it to the forefront. Let us pray!