The Sunday Mail
APOSTLE GURUPIRA
IT’S a year since The Sunday Mail Religion started publishing Divine Appointments. Ebenezer for the milestone! We give thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ for the support and intercession.
As we start another year, we do so with Apostle Paul’s word of encouragement: “Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvellous life God has given us. God reminds us, I heard your call in the nick of time; the day you needed me, I was there to help. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing” (2 Corinthians 6:1-2).
We anchor this celebratory piece with verse 2b that reads, “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.” NOW!
Apostle Pride Sibiya of Glory Ministries said last November “spiritual ministers that come from Zimbabwe are providing bread.
“Look at people like Bishop Tudor Bismark, Baba Ezekiel Guti. These are not just Zimbabwean fathers. They are breaking bread at an international level”.
Spiritual ministers should continue to provide bread not only in Zimbabwe, but across Africa and the entire world, where some people have not heard about Jesus.
And those that take the Gospel message need to be equipped. They need support.
This was Archbishop Asa Gurupira’s call to individuals and corporates to partner preachers at a fundraising dinner for Jesus for Africa Evangelistic Ministries in Harare on July 4.
The dinner was attended by a businesspersons who finance evangelism.
Archbishop Gurupira is founder of Faith in God Ministries International. Below are excerpts of his address which was prefaced with the reading from Luke 23:33-43.
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Thank you so much for coming to be with us on this great occasion. You play a big role in ensuring that the urgent and long-term goals in this ministry receive urgent and deep interventions in time.
Let me underline before I come to the Scripture that kingdom business is different in a number of ways from the way business is done in the world. So, as I speak, I hit two birds with one stone.
I am going to help some business people in Africa because as I travel, I see disaster. Some do very well and then they come down quickly. Some start very well and they finish well, which is what we want.
For any meaningful success in business — the kingdom way — our businesspeople must be empowered through training so they do not close ancient gates that guarantee success.
A good example of this is in the area of administration of a company.
Management talks of controlling what has already been set, so that it runs well. But as one might continue to reason, what has been set has been set by a leader because leaders initiate, they envision and many times the initiator or visionary might not be the effective implementer or manager.
Whichever way you look at it, the vision career apart from laying out the vision, should uncompromisingly establish a kingdom culture on biblical principles in the organisation upon which practical systems will then operate.
It is imperative for every kingdom businessperson to know that although the application of practical systems of running companies, for example financial systems, technology costs and upgrade, e.t.c is the same between worldly organisations and faith-based companies, there is a vast difference between the two, brought about by the principles on which they run.
The latter is anchored on kingdom principles (Matthew 5), which when followed well, the technicalities of administration, which are practiced by both, will find a way to operate sustainably.
This is where most of our business people struggle. They do well in administration just as their worldly counterparts, but they then renege on our kingdom business principles and thus they throw spanners in the works and get surprised all the way.
In this short prologue, I have laid before you the need to follow our kingdom principles, and it is my heartfelt hope that our businesspeople will be nurtured from infancy on the correct principles by which to operate business and we will never fail. We will save Africa.
Although commercial tax evasion, lack of beneficiation of our products, and illicit financial drain to foreign nations contribute greatly to the draining of Africa’s economy, corruption pandemic has been a silent killer and a propeller of capital flight.
Corruption in business deals pushes the whole business sector to navigate in murky waters.
I am fully persuaded that if we are serious in training our people in proper business principles, in the fear of the Lord, we will inoculate the next generation with a large chunk of God-fearing and difficult-to-corrupt business persons that will develop Africa.
Nations have been passing through recession and difficult times have rocked businesses, but to the Christian businessperson I say: You are going to go through tough times. That’s life.
I also say that nothing happens to you, it happens for you. Continue to be positive. Dream positive, walk positive, plan positive, eat positive, talk positive and positive results will surface.
Positive anything is better than negative nothing.
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive once, you will have positive results.
Secondly, I am fully persuaded that kingdom businesspeople although passing through the same conditions as everyone else can excel beyond imagination. This assertion is anchored on the supposition that every businessperson in the kingdom knows why he is in business, which may not be the case for many.
Let me underline here that life’s persistent and urgent questions are: What are you doing for others? And most intriguingly, what are you doing for the kingdom you represent?
Why were you born, and why has God endowed you with such serious entrepreneurial skills? Is it just for you and your family?
We came into this world to answer a question. I then discover that anyone who discovers their passion, the reason why they were born, if they pursue it, money will follow them. Money follows passion.
Look for who you are, and then, money is channelled by God to you because you were born to answer a question. You are a minister in the kingdom. You are an answer to a crying world.
The fields out there are “white already to harvest” but the labourers are few (John 4:35).
My heart bleeds because in Zimbabwe and Africa, we are competing for souls, church to church, yet there are some, in the 10/ 40 Window where someone has never heard about Jesus.
Matthew Simpson in his lectures on preaching gives a picture of this unseen world (where evangelists travail): His throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Saviour, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations and what responsibility!”
Through Simpson’s description, we are in no illusion to the importance of sending out preachers, and here we have one. Once a preacher is out there in the 10 /40 Window nations, there is no time for him to look for resources.
We just have to equip him. We just have to hand him the tools he needs. You can make a difference. You can go to Afghanistan, to Egypt without going. You can go to China without setting your foot in China. All this by just supporting the work of God!
Let us take their hands and go with them. Let us take their heart and go with them. As they burn with passion, I thought that the opposite of Martin Luther King’s words should come true: “We will not remember the words of our enemies, but the demeaning silence of our friends.”
So, when I looked at our Saviour going on the cross (Luke 23:33-43), He did not rise alone, He rose with two criminals.
I thought He was crucified alone. No! The Bible says two criminals rose up with Him.
One criminal said, in short, you are finished, save yourself. You used to heal the sick; you used to do all those things. Do it now.
He knew that once the Romans put you on a cross, it was too late to write a will. He saw an impossible situation. But the other one said, don’t you fear God? Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
The other one saw a way out of the cross. So, two criminals rose up. To me, two world systems rose up when Jesus was dying on the cross. One system that says it’s impossible; and, the other one which says it can be done.
You can pray the way you want, but as long as you operate from an inferior system, you will be going nowhere. If you are a mindset that says it can be done, then God will avail the resources.
Many times we want to start with resources, but God wants your heart, and from there, God will avail the resources.
Let us get a better paradigm shift: It can be done. Those are the systems that form governments and churches today.
When we see the body of Jesus being wrapped by Joseph of Arimathea, that was a higher system being wrapped.
On the cross, when this man says Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. There were no longer three people. There were only two — one criminal and Jesus. The other one had disappeared. Jesus accepted one and refused the other.
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