Read Online The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now by John U. Nwankwo - Free Book Online Page B

Pastor Joel Osteen, the senior pastor of Lakewood Church, one of America’s largest and fastest-growing congregations with about forty-five thousand adults in attendance every week, whose story I find interesting as it threw greater light to how PTS can arrest our minds. In his shared story of his late father—John Hillery Osteen, the founder and first pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, from its humble beginnings in 1959 until his death in 1999. According to Pastor Joel Osteen, his late father, John Osteen grew up with what he described as “poverty mentality.” When Pastor Joel’s father started pastoring, their church could only afford to pay him $115 every week. Pastor Joel Osteen shared the following story about his Dad: Daddy and mother when they initially begun their ministry hardly could survive on a $115 weekly pay, especially once my siblings and I came along. The most dangerous aspect of their life, however was that Daddy had come to expect poverty. For a number of years, he wasn’t even able to accept a blessing when it came. During a time of special services at the church, although our family barely had enough food to get along, my parents hosted the guest minister in their home that entire week.
    The following Sunday, a businessman in the church said, “pastor, I know you cared for our guest speaker in your home all week. Things are tight, and I realize you can’t afford those extra expenses. I want you to have this money to use personally, just to help you out.” He handed my dad a check for a thousand dollars, tantamount to ten thousand dollars today! Daddy was overwhelmed by the man’s generosity, but he was so limited in his thinking at that time, he held that check by the edge of the corner, as though it might contaminate him if he clutched it any tighter, and said, “oh, no, brother, I could never receive this money. We must put it in the church offering.”
    Pastor Joel Osteen said that later, his Daddy admitted that deep down inside, he really preferred to keep the money. He knew that he and mother needed that money, but he had a false sense of humility. He couldn’t receive the blessing. He thought he was doing God a favor by staying poor. Pastor Osteen reported that Daddy later said, “every step I took as I walked to the front of the church to put that check in the offering, something inside was saying, Don’t do it. Receive God’s blessings. Receive God’s goodness. ” But he didn’t listen. He reluctantly dropped the check into the offering. He later said, “When I did [i.e. drop the check in the offering box], I felt sick to my stomach.” Based on this story shared by Pastor Joel Osteen about his father, you could see clearly someone—a minister for that matter who tirelessly worked hard for the good of God’s people and for God too, and whom God has chosen to bless with finances that God and even the people he was serving have come to believe that he merited. However, false religious mindset, powered by PTS subjected him into captivity and placed his mind and lifestyle under the clutches of mediocrity. The inability of the man of God to be open to receive God’s material favor and blessings cost him and his family who were struggling to make a living against God’s plan handsomely, just for the sake of his ‘religious’ mindset. The good news of that story didn’t end there however, because years later, Pastor Joel Osteen’s father had to outgrow this limited poverty-stricken mindset and received God’s best and unlimited prosperity.
    You too can. But you need to kill every cankerworm of fear and limitation the enemy has planted in the backyard and front yard of your mind. You don’t have to settle for mediocrity. But if you are in an environment where mediocrity abounds, chances are that you will never grow rich or win life big favors and opportunities. It is absolutely ok for you to prosper and do well in life because that is part of what God’s grace is