THE ONLY DISASTER WE HAVE IS LEADERSHIP DISASTER. WE HAVE BEEN CURSED WITH BAD LEADERS BUT THE CURSE IS BROKEN!
-Dr Pastor Paul Enenche at Dunamis International Gospel Church on Thieves of Joy (Part 3)

Psalm 30:5

Objective: To understand the forces that steal our joy.

Four Areas Where our Joy can be Attacked.

1. From enemy forces of darkness and wickedness. Revelations 12:12.
2. From human agents of wickedness and destruction. There are some people, till people cry, they are not happy. Esther 7:6.

Human agents of wickedness, we have plenty of them in our nation. The pain of people is their joy. I am sure you watched with dismay how materials that were meant for relief during the COVID period was stacked in warehouses with suffering masses suffering and with wicked people, wicked at heart, keeping food meant for sufferers. The approach by which the materials eventually went to the people is completely upside down. They refused to give to the people by choice, so the people took by force. Wrong approach that can bring the nation into disorder, breakdown of law and order that may be difficult to control because of wicked individuals, some more wicked than the devil, more wicked than animals.

While we put ourselves under pressure, we distributed palliatives almost five times during the lockdown, all manner. Somebody brought me personal food, I told them take it to the Church, let them distribute it from the Church. He brought box load of food and said for you and your family, I said oh, my family and I don’t need this, there are people suffering, give it to the people.
Wicked, keeping it till 2023 according to what some people say, to use it for campaign. Give people peanut and then ask for vote and when these retired, expired cargoes are talking about 2023, I’m wondering what they are talking about. Retired, expired, recycled cargoes. All of them the same thing, from one party they jump to another. Another day, you jump to another, the same retired, expired people. You are killing people, you say 2023, so this hell should continue till 2023, God forbid and beyond 2023. God forbid!

I am sorry I deviated from my message. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul. All the people who stole millions and billions who are dead, what is the benefit of the money to them?

Human agents of wickedness. There are people when they lead you, you celebrate and there are others when they lead you, that is sentence of frustration.

God blessed Nigeria with Mineral resources, Human resources, quality population, physical resources, even spiritual resources, natural resources. No natural disasters, you don’t hear of earthquakes, volcanoes. The only disaster we have is leadership disasters. We have been cursed with bad leaders but the curse is broken. Bad wicked people.

You carry young men as thugs and send them to kill. Why don’t you send your son as the number one thug? Until your child is the number one thug, you haven’t started. Human agents of wickedness and destruction. Haman kind of people.

3. From personal actions and in actions. Psalm 51:12.

Wisdom to Employ to Handle Joy Attack.

1. Connect with God and make Him alone the source of your joy. Phillipans 4:4.
2. Resist every attempt of the enemy to steal or destroy your joy by the Word of God. James 4:7, Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
3. Refuse to allow the activities of wicked people control your joy. Refuse to allow your joy to be at the mercy of people’s actions. Acts 16:25-26.
4. Avoid actions that attack your joy and embrace actions that fuel your joy. That is, the things that you do yourself or fail to do that will make you lose your joy, avoid them. Psalm 32:11.

What are the Thieves of Joy to Avoid?

1. Avoid the lack of clear visions and goals for life. Matthew 6:22-23. Joy cometh with light. Visions and goals bring brightness and sunshine to life. People with visions, people with goals, they have sunshine in life. The absence of clear visions and goals bring darkness to life.

What am I doing with my life, what impact do I want to create or make?

What do you have time for if goal is not there? What use is a football match without a goal post.

You are going to get married, what is the goal and vision for that marriage? We had a clear vision and goal, it was written at the back of our wedding card, our vision for the home, that this family will embrace a representation of the love between Christ and the Church and so forth and so on. You wake up in the morning and you are pursuing nothing, there is nothing at the end of the day that showed that you lived a fulfilled day that day.

2. Lack of personal development. Proverbs 4:18-19. Personal development is key to personal fulfilment as far as life is a law. There is nothing as disastrous as the feeling of being left behind. There are people who have practically abandoned themselves, some people finish schooling and have finish learning. You may finish school but never stop learning. I was not born playing saxophone or singing.

If you can’t fly, run, if you can’t run, walk, if you can’t walk, crawl but by all means, keep moving- Isaac Newton.

What is an abomination is to stay at one point. There is nothing that can give you more joy than the fact that your life is not remaining at one spot.

I prophesy upon you, the discipline of personal development, that discipline is come upon you in Jesus Name. Amen.

The lack of personal development ties people down.

3. Focus on what is lacking or what is not working; this attacks your joy.
   Habakkuk 3:17-18. The focus on what you don’t have kills your joy. No matter how bad it is, there is something working. Your hands are working, there are people who don’t have hands.

What you focus on multiplies. Begin to look at what you have and appreciate and focus on it and what you don’t have will be taken care of by God. When Jesus was to feed the 5,000 He focused on what He had and that brought everyone joy.

4. Focus on self. A life focused on self is a life focused and settled on misery. We have a lot of miserable men in this country. You have once been a president of a country and no road to your village, no road for your…what a liability. And inside that road is a mansion. If a mother gave you breast, you should have human feeling.

Give and it shall be given to you. Pay attention to somebody’s joy, it will make joy just explode in your heart.

I announce to somebody today, every pressure of your life that has made you not to have time for any other person, I declare the dissolution of that pressure now in Jesus Name!

Counsel:

• Avoid any level of congested or over busy schedule that disconnects you from God. Authentic joy is in God’s presence. Psalm 16:11.
• Avoid every action or inaction that disconnects you from the joy of the Lord. Psalm 51:12.