Preacher: Richard Prince

THE PERSON

One of the most amazing thing people get shocked by when I talk is when I tell them that am not a
pastor. They get so shell shocked to hear it because society has been reduced to nothing but adjectives.
You know sometimes in my darkest hours and my least uncultured times I've had people come out from
nowhere and asking me if I were a pastor or not. One time I just walked into the room and the guy asked
me if I were a pastor. And each time I try to hide it underneath some leather jacket and torn jeans or
some shabby hairstyle and beard growth. I keep getting the same question popped at me every time.
Some even go beyond questioning and flat out identify me as one. Am not a pastor am a human being
because a pastor limits himself with societal expectations. He can't wear certain clothes, nor relate with
people freely, nor be seen amongst certain places and he confines himself and shut out his humanity
through hurt because some how he sees others living their lives and expect him not to live his so he
stops those closest to him from living theirs through doctrines and dogmas. Am not a pastor am a
human being and that to God is the greatest service I can render him towards the humanity he created
than just being some fancy adjective. God never created adjectives but human beings with their
individual contribution according to their humanity. When God was creating you he wasn't creating a
pastor. or a politician, or an engineer, or a doctors, etc but he was creating a human being. Greater than
being a pastor, or a doctor, or an engineer, you are a human being with a message in your life. OK? The
word doctor may be AN adjective that is used in describing any professional who's gone to study
medicine at a tertiary education for a number of years, but the humanity of you is that you're not a
doctor according to education but is THE adjective that comes to mind because you naturally want to
help people by treating them in the best possible way you can to the extent that you went as far as to
study medicine at a tertiary education for a number of years in order to practice what you love helping
others through with. That is why there can be a thousand surgeons in a room and each with their
different contributions to helping people. The same profession, the same study, the same number of
years but their individuality actually created the several departments of medicine. That is God
encouraging their individualistic humanities.

But the difference between the two definition I gave is that society has put a level of professionalism
that blatantly corrodes the person from the profession, that's why we find professionals rather than
humans, rather than humans we find cold hearted brutes masquerading as nurses, and people without
tolerance for love standing as academic professors, and the list goes on. Because someone somewhere
hadn't allowed themselves healed before they took the reins of destiny. Or misunderstood what God
was telling them because an opportunity that corresponds with their expectations presented itself
before them. Take time to heal! God is more interested in your humanity than in your purpose driven
life. Because without that humanity we ultimately become emotionally distant but vengeful
professionals. That's why a politician can have no other ambition than self gain as a form of revenge
over what was done to them while they were nobody in the past. But what we have in social these days
are a group of people who have lost that very humanity because of what people tend to describe them
with. And what we find in the professionals are people who have lost their ability to be humans because
of professionalisms. We find people who are spiteful and ruthless whereas the very core of their duty is
to be tenderhearted, kind and compassionate. I believe that being human is the greatest responsibility
to God because if he needed angels and robots he would have made you either of each. And you're the
one who decides where to function in response to that humanity of yours.

THE CALL

It is one thing to hear God talk to you and it is another to understand what he is communicating to us
about. Because oftentimes we find ourselves interpreting the message of God in the light of our own
experiences and sometimes we--have you ever those moments when talk to people and find them
understand something different from the main point you were trying to put across? You say one thing to
and what they understand is a different thing altogether. And they're narrating what they think you
mean to you and you interrupt that that was not what you're telling them at all. In the very same vein
we misunderstand the point God is making because we think we have an idea of what it ultimately
means. But we lose it time and time again only to get right back to the first spot we began in the first
place.

Sometimes It's about what God wants you to be, and this want isn't some imposition but a filtered
scrutiny. It's not about what you think you can be because God telling you to get ready for something
isn't He expressly telling you that the time for that something is about to happen. Take for example, I
had a time in my life when I was like God what you want me to be because am done imitating role
models and he just said, I called you to change lives not dance to rhythms. But then again he did
something more phenomenal that when a situation came for me to actually change lives he asked me to
sit that one out. Although I was going through some things and then I bumped into what corresponded
with my purpose, but like I was told, it was my purpose but it wasn't yet time. Oftentimes we stumble
upon scenarios that looks like they correspond with the word of God for our lives, and this is why it is
important never to navigate God's ship with assumptions, so I asked God, I think am ready for this and
the man upstairs told me to take time to heal. It is not about the mission set before you but about your
ability to understand the movement of God considering a particular situation. Because you may find
yourself face to face with a situation that corresponds with the word of God concerning your life and
God is asking you to sit this one out because there are other things that formulate in constructing the
concept of being ready other than just being confronted with opportunity. You see opportunity may be
Providence but it takes preparation to engage that opportunity and bring out the maximum off it, not
just opportunity seized itself.

You may think you're ready and it all boils down to making sacrifices because you think you're ready but
God is saying "take time to heal" in other words, take time to go through the process and let it go
through you. So when you are broken and tired don't be sadden because you can't deliver just let
yourself heal. There are dozen other opportunities but fewer dozen memories, so enjoy the moment if
it's what health means to you. That you are some public figure doesn't mean that you can't have a great
private life.

THE PURPOSE

You see we're so focus on a purpose driven God that we forget the one who took his disciples away to
rest. Really we confuse our interpretation of God that the thought of him wanting you to do nothing to
do nothing but to sit back and heal look a bit blasphemous forgetting that he was the same who
instituted the Sabbath day for rest. When God says "sit this one out and heal" it doesn't he considers
your inputs to be irrelevant. It just means that he wants you to get to that place where you want to do it
because you got strength not because you're responding to necessity placed on you. Because God who
sees the end from the beginning knows the frame of mind that you're currently in right now and how
delicately sensitive you are, understands that you are only that you're only going to make a mess of the
project at hand even though it corresponds with the things he called you to do.

Because if you're not rested, if you're not well equipped, if you're not healed you're only gonna be a
deformed person orchestrating a malformed project. Years ago Creflo Dollar gave a message citing that
even a slight nudge on an object going a straight line will tilt it relatively farther from its intended final
point. It takes emotional, psychological and intellectual stability to grip the reins of destiny. A misshapen
product because everything you do may be in line with the pattern of God, but it wouldn't be from a
right heart. And it takes a right heart to get a right attitude to get right results, not just an assumed
readiness alone. A close example is the scriptures where they said lord we did this in your name and
they were replied when I was hungry and naked and homeless you never did come for me so begone for
me for though you did good, you didn't do it as you should have done if your priorities were straight.
Focus here doesn't just mean purposeful, not focused as in being objective, No, but focused as in
stability. because a calm mind can and will accomplish greater than any unsettled mind will. the calm
head can think a thousand thought and be objective with every one of them, but with an unsettled mind
even the slightest thing becomes profoundly taken too personal. You see that these people some how
let their personal stuff interpret what God was telling them to the point where they think they
understand but really didn't. Discernment as you see is very important and as a matter of fact is key.
Ever had an unstable worker you just had to send home early because you know their frame of mind
would cause more harm than good? They themselves feel that they can do it, but you know that there's
no way anybody who just lost a loved one could handle customer service. God knows that destiny comes
along with it stresses and will take alot from you but he doesn't want you being overly sentimental with
the little foxes in it because he knows those little foxes are bound to come. TB Joshua once said that he
needed to go through his early aloneness so that the crowd wouldn't intimidate him. And this healing
can only be achieved when you understand that everything in your life is a phase and each phase has a
lesson to be learned from it which ultimately corresponds with your grand theme, that is, your life.

That's why the Bible says I knew you before I formed you and have separated you for this purpose. Your
purpose in life is an adjective not an identity. Your purpose isn't greater than you, but simply put is a
place where function as human with your humanity. You didn't stumble into your profession nor
stumble into your calling, but not don't let your calling define your humanity for before God separated
you, he knew you. Your humanity isn't about sin but about your uniqueness and your ability to be
compassionate to others with that uniqueness. When God created Adam he created human. It was in
Adam's humanity that every other thing were added to him. His job, his home, and wife too. Before all
other thing else was a person in you created by God with a good heart. Destinies, visions, purposes are
all strategies set by God for self actualization, nothing inferior about it at all.