The Healing Service this month was another special one as we marked the second year home-going anniversary of our founding father, Apostle Geoffrey D. Numbere, with a thanksgiving. Led by his wife, Pastor Dr. Nonyem Numbere and his immediate family, the Ministry gave thanks to God by prayers and offerings for keeping and sustaining us these past 2 years. Through the Apostle Numbere Foundation in conjunction with Greater Evangelism Publications, 6 of his books were available for the Church.
We heard testimonies from brethren of God’s goodness in their lives. Amongst them were Bro. Jeremiah Peter, who had been diagnosed of different ailments including diabetes, typhoid, arthritis and ulcer, but was healed during the last healing service. Interestingly, he was contracted to bring someone to church as a commercial driver but decided to stay for the service and there he got healed.
Also, Pastor Lebari Sime of Choba Church testified how God healed him of a condition that produced blood from his mouth. In his words, “this started in July 2014 and continued till this year but in the June 2016 Healing Service, God healed me during the prayers. I felt something moving like an object in my body and when I got back home to check myself, my saliva was clean. Till date there has been no trace of blood in my saliva”.
God’s word, brought to us by His servant Pastor Isaac Olori, was tagged “Contending for our spiritual heritage” (1 Kings 21:1-9, Jude 1:1-3). He defined the word “Contend” to mean striving in opposition or to exert one’s strength to get a possession. He further analyzed our heritage as Christians by stating that, “the greatest heritage we have is our faith in Christ and the best heritage any man can achieve is spiritual heritage, hence, rather than strive for earthly things, one must seek to get this spiritual heritage”. He was keen to point that, without the forgiveness of sin there cannot be an inheritance since our heritage begins with the common salvation. This Common salvation, in itself does not depict a lower value but is referred to as Common because it is the gift of God to every man. To buttress his point, he said, when we accept Christ, we become a heritage of heaven as well as custodians of the faith and as such, no one is superior or inferior in God’s sight – because before God we are equal. However, the difference is only evident in the way we choose to relate with God based on that salvation.
In analyzing the concept of “The Faith”, he stated that this faith is not the faith to possess something but a body of doctrines which we are to believe and adhere to, and if the soundness of these doctrines is lost then our salvation is at stake. He revealed that there is a war in the spiritual realm for our faith of which many Christians are unaware of because their faith have been drained by the enemy through pressures, unsound doctrines, invasion of worldliness and series of attack from hell. So, the only way to evade such attack and protect our possession is to earnestly contend for the faith, by guarding our salvation with fear and trembling. While exemplifying Naboth, he stated that God is seeking a man who will be a custodian of the faith and not bow to pressures. Naboth was able to withstand the pressures of King Ahab because he understood the significance of his inheritance unlike Esau who was willing to sell off his birth right.
In conclusion, we were adjured to hold on to, build up and contend for the faith, as God is ready to stand with any man who is willing to uphold the faith.
