Thursday, March 12, 2009

Please Exorcise Me Of Success Sorcerers


Dear Agatha,


I was born in 1965, married and blessed with three boys and a girl. Financially, however, I am not very buoyant. My dream in life is to be financially happy.

Even when I fast and pray for money, something comes up to take it away, making me to borrow from friends.

I am confused. I need your advice. Please help me.

Jerome.



Dear Jerome,

We all dream of financial prosperity but most times, we are limited by our lack of vision as well as spiritual problems.

Prayer and fasting can lead to breakthrough, spiritually and physically, if we know what to pray for and how to act on the visions we are given by God. But in a situation where we are even unable to focus on the obvious and remote causes of our problems or hold on to our God given visions, it becomes difficult for anybody to achieve anything positive in life.

Results to prayers cannot be achieved in vacuum. It has to be anchored on substance for it to work. If all you have done all these while is to pray and fast on something that has no character or substance, chances of you getting the results you want are nil.

Your lack of focus could also be the reason something keeps coming to take whatever money comes your way. This is because you only asked God to give you money; you didn’t tell Him what you need the money for and since the money isn’t tied to specifics, the devil has a way of coming up from behind to take it away.

So begin the process of transforming your life as well as breaking the circle of non-achievements by doing a re-appraisal of your entire life. Beyond having financial success, what have you passionately wanted to do in life? Do you ever hope to achieve success as a businessman, attain the height in your professional calling? Or are you one of those who think money is the only way to success and happiness?

There is no way you can achieve anything positive in your business if all you think is money. Before money comes, there must be a hunger and dedication towards hard work and recognition in your area of strength.

How much have you invested in your dreams for success to come your way? How much do you believe in your dreams? Do you measure the success of your dreams in terms of the money it brings in for you or the amount of satisfaction you get from doing it?

You can only begin to complain about spiritual problem if you focus your dream on the right path. There is no way you can gauge your progress without first viewing it alongside your set targets.

In terms of other achievements, how you would rate yourself? You see it is often easy for us to tag ourselves as failures if, like you, we are myopic about our needs and expectations in life. There are some people who don’t have what you have, a family. You are not complaining about your children constantly being in hospital requiring you to give some huge sums of money for life-threatening diseases or conditions. You are also not saying you are unable to look after your family resulting in your wife leaving you.

That you aren’t asking God why He allows your children to suffer needlessly or giving you a wife who isn’t supportive is only because your problems are superficial. Your only concern is financial wealth. For this reason, you should be thanking God for His mercies and not looking for faults in those things God hasn’t done for you.

Doubtless, God is one of financial prosperity but without the right measure of faith, attitude, sacrifices and dedication to work, this sort of prosperity remains a mirage.

It would do you a world of good to first acknowledge that God has prospered you more than one way. There are men your age who pray to have the type of family you have, children to call them daddy, and a woman to call wife.

These are the types of people whose foundations ensure they leave this world the same way they came or experience one moment of peace and happiness.

However, this is not to say something isn’t wrong somewhere. What line of business or work are you into? How much satisfaction do you derive from it? There is no way you can have spiritual fulfillment from doing a job if you are always struggling to execute a business out of want of a better thing to do.

You must first align yourself spiritually with whatever you are doing to achieve success. What most people don’t realise is that if one is in tune spiritually with one’s choice of career or business, no matter how little the monetary returns are, the value of such money often beats the imagination. God is a spirit that dwells in an atmosphere to peace and happiness. If your life is a struggle in terms of your career or business, please go to God in prayers to help direct you at what you are doing wrong.

Move or change when God has shown you what you should do if serious about achieving success in what you are doing because delay would further bring about frustration.

But God’s commandment only works if you have the faith to trust Him with your life and happiness. There is no success or prosperity without sacrifices as well as moments of planting. These times are usually dry and call for pure hard work. Unless you have a vision to succeed, the difficult times may want to make one quit but persistence and patience always bring one to the Promised Land. The wilderness experience is not meant for you to grumble but one to surrender everything to God without reservation.

However, if this problem persists, then something may be wrong with your foundation. Because there is no divorcing one’s foundation from one’s fate in life, look around everybody in your family. What is common to all the men? Are they also struggling to make an impact in their lives, choices of careers or businesses like you seem to be?

If the pattern runs similar, investigate when it all started and how those whose fortune seems to be brighter were able to rise above it. The good thing about foundational problems is the available information regarding the genesis of a family’s problem. So the information is always there for you to pick up.

Others may not have been able to do much with the information but given your knowledge of God, you can free yourself as well as all your siblings if you directly seek the help of God on the matter. Sometimes some of the things we see in our dreams and regard as foolish are actually signposts pointing us at the source of our problems.

Even a lot us are innocent victims of many of the foundational burdens we carry around, we are made to suffer all the same due to the havocs and spiritual damage our forefathers did in their time. Many of them went into highly occult practices with consequences, which only the grace of God can erase completely from the lineage. If this is your situation, asking for the mercy of God, no amount of prayers or deliverances can help you. You must first belief completely in the superiority of God through Jesus Christ over all other powers as well as the confidence that through His unconditional mercies you are healed.

This type of prayers requires complete devotion and boldness to execute. It also entails patience as well as absolute dependence of God’s leadership. The moment you allow impatience or your own situation challenge whatever partnership you enter into with God, it may be a little bit difficult to get the results you want. This is because foundational problems simply don’t disappear in a day. Depending on how powerful the spirits one’s ancestors have stirred up, it may take a while for their influences to be eradicated completely.

Foundational problems are also best tackled by the entire family because your wife or children too may also have some negative spiritual affiliations determined to stifle the progress of the family.

It could also come from your own character and relationship with others. Are you honest? Have you ever cheated anybody in your life so much so you caused someone to suffer needlessly and innocently? Think if you have done that, best you make peace with such a person.

Another reason some people experience difficulties in their lives has to do with the type of houses they live. Some houses are notorious for depriving occupants of luck. How long have you lived in your present house? When did you begin to notice your situation? Did it begin when you packed into your present accommodation? Ask your pastors to come and pray to be sure the house is not complicating things for you spiritually.

In resolving your issue, you have to allow yourself flow with the spirit of God, listening as well as accepting His directives without hesitations. Leaning on Him would give you focus on how to pray and what your plans in life should be.

So pray and fast for the right reasons not because you want financial prosperity alone. To do this is to leave yourself opened to the manipulative powers of the devil, as your faith in God is conditional.

Good luck.