What Jesus told me about stages of ministry

•Pastor Oladapo

Rev. Raymond Ugochukwu was born into a nominal Christian home. He was religious, but somehow felt some vacuum in his heart. The head pastor of Christian Pentecostal Mission Int’l, Iyana Ipaja, Lagos share his experience with Daily Sun.

Call into ministry
From 1984, God had asked me to leave my business and dedicate my life wholly to His work. But this did not go well with me. I wanted to continue in my business and use the money to sponsor God’s work.

Encounter with Jesus
The last revelation that, however, made me to finally surrender in 1978 was when the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me in a vision and took me to mountain top gushing out water. There and then, God revealed the time of “picking water” (which was the most painful and burdensome); time of fetching water ( which was a bit easy) and time of swimming (the most joyous and moment of ecstasy). Later God opened my eyes to know the meaning as three stages for anybody who wants to succeed in the ministry.

Time of picking water” the time to labour and gather souls – one after the other. ‘Time of fetching’ the second stage is when to feed the soul with the word. “Swimming in water” is the peak of every ministerial assignment: when revival breaks forth and pull crowd. God strictly warned me never to ‘swim’ when I should be “picking or fetching water” lest I drown. This speaks volume of time sowing and reaping in the ministry and waiting on the Lord for harvest.

Advice to young ministers
One mistake I made in the ministry that I would not want anybody to repeat is the four years I refused to heed the call of God. If not by His grace and patience, this would have robbed me of my destiny. However, everybody may not have such a grace. The time is short and the salvation message is urgent. Anybody who is graciously called into the kingdom service should gird his loins lest he forfeits the plan of God for his life. Luke 9:62 says “No one who puts his hand on the plough and look back is fit for service in the kingdom of God”

Miracles hour
One of the spectacular miracles in hour of breakthrough is the testimony of a couple I stayed with when I newly came down to Lagos in 1997.

The relationship could be likened to that of Elijah and the Shunamite woman in 2 Kings 4:8-17. The couple had been expecting fruit of the womb for three years. When I was about to leave them, I asked them by faith to mention the sex of the child they wanted from God in a year’s time. The wife said a baby boy, while the husband said two baby boys.

I asked them to agree on twins baby until their dream is fulfilled. To the glory of God, the word of prophecy came to fulfillment about a year later and their twin baby boys were dedicated to God.