Forgiven!

Hello Reader!, Welcome to Olive Grove! Below is an article I wrote and published for prison inmates many years ago on the Olive Grove Print Copy. I tell you it is still as powerful and liberating as it was the very first day I was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write it. Be blessed and receive the forgiveness you need. And may the Lord deliver you from any prison you may be locked in Jesus name.

A couple of years ago, a young man in prison wrote to me after reading Olive Grove. He wrote because he was confused about the subject of forgiveness. He listed all his crimes and sins and wondered if he would ever be forgiven. He had raped, robbed and even murdered innocent people and he was wondering if it was possible for someone like him to benefit forgiveness from God. I wrote back and through scriptural references assured him of God’s forgiveness to all who confess and repent of their evil ways. God will never turn away from a contrite and remorseful heart. This is the power of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross of Calvary.

A few days ago whilst meditating on the scriptures, I came upon the account of Jacob’s reunion with his estranged brother Esau. As I reflected on Jacob’s schemes to secure the forgiveness of Esau whom he outwitted of his birthright and blessings some twenty years previously, it occurred to me that like many of us today, Jacob did not understand the subject of forgiveness. Money and cattle cannot buy true forgiveness. Forgiveness is a free gift from one to another. Esau had already forgiven Jacob for stealing his blessings but unaware of this free gift, Jacob in his usual pattern schemed to secure the favour of Esau with material wealth. Needless to say, Esau was also a very wealthy man and did not need Jacob’s gift.
What Jacob and his mother did to rob Esau of his blessing was wicked and wrong, but Esau was able to forgive Jacob even before he asked or sought to be forgiven. In the same way, God has already prepared before hand a feast of forgiveness for us. However we partake of this feast if we confess our sins and forsake them. (See 1John 1: 8-10)
Forgiveness remains a confusing subject for many people today, especially those who have violently taken innocent lives or done things that are unspeakable. The forgiving grace of God is not selective. When Jesus died on the cross, He did so bearing in mind every imaginable and unimaginable crime or sin that man could ever conceive or commit in his lifetime. God cannot turn His back on those who ask for His forgiveness especially those with a contrite heart. (See Ps 34:18; Psalm 51:17; Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 66:2)

Forgiveness is one of the very ready and accessible blessings of God. When you give your life to Christ forgiveness is the first of the blessings you receive. It is on this platform that you build your personal relationship with God. Without the foundation of repentance and forgiveness, there is no new birth. Satan understands this process that is why he confuses people and holds them bound in their dark past so that they cannot receive the light that comes from God.
Like every blessing from God, forgiveness is received by faith. In other words, you do not have to see it before you take it rather you take it and accept you have it before you see its effect in your life. In any case God’s forgiveness is not a tangible or physical blessing so there is no way you can see, feel, smell or touch it. However, the blessing of God’s forgiveness has tangible fruits. For instance, those who have asked and received forgiveness by faith enjoy a feeling of assurance that they are God’s children. A sister fruit to this divine assurance is the fruit of peace. With this peace comes joy and flowing from joy is the strength to face the consequences of our past mistakes knowing that God is faithful to see us through. Inmates who have had this divine experience of forgiveness stand out amongst their peers in and out of prison. They carry themselves with dignity and self respect because they know that they have been divinely elevated. They understand that they have been pardoned in the highest court in the universe i.e. the Supreme Court of God. Jesus whom they accepted as their Lord and Saviour was their advocate. He is the lawyer with more qualifications than all the Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) put together!
The Psalmist in Psalm 86:5 says, “For you Lord are good and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you.” God is ready to forgive us, but are we ready too to receive. There are some of us who are still unrepentant in spite of our present condition. Do you think God created you to be in prison? Of course not! God created every man with a definite purpose. And that purpose is greatness and fruitfulness, not prison. Now that you find yourself there what you can do to make amends is to seek and receive the forgiveness of God so that you can receive divine help to trace your steps on to the path of purpose and fruitfulness.

The prison should be used as a place to get your life back on track by spending quality time in the word and presence of God. Do not waste the time with idleness, but attend church regularly; fellowship with other inmates who have given their lives to Christ and not with those who are still unrepentant. Indian hemp, cocaine, alcohol and cigarettes will not help you now, but the Lord. You are not too far gone in sin and crime to be forgiven. Armed robbery and militancy were not the original plan of God for your life. There is a definite plan and purpose for your life in Christ Jesus. When you locate this plan life would become sweet and stress free again.
Some of you may be estranged from your families and loved ones and you are wondering what you could do to be back in their favour. This is easy as all you need to do is to make peace with your Maker. The bible says that ”when a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Proverbs 16:7) Stop trying to get back into the good books of those you have disappointed and hurt without first getting into the good books of God. God is able to right every wrong and heal all broken relationships, but you cannot.
What is it that you seek and desire now? What do you want to correct or make right if the hand of the clock could be turned back? All you seek and desire is in the hands of the Almighty God. It sounds simplistic, but it is true. When you give your life to Him and forsake your old ways, He is able to supernaturally make things right again. Seek first the kingdom of God, the bible says and everything you desire would be added to you.
When all is forgiven, God walks with you by His Spirit to ensure that everything you lost in the days of sin and crime is restored to you. In Christ, to be forgiven is a ticket to get your inheritance in God.

Serving in Pain

It is not easy to lose a loved one, most especially a son or a daughter. I remember when my younger brother Samuel died by drowning, my entire family was thrown into grief. My father could not take it. He practically aged overnight and not long afterward he passed on too. Not to express our grief or not to give in to grief would have been extremely hard. Yet the bible instructs Christians not to grieve as the world, but rather to thank God in everything knowing that we will someday see our loved ones who have slept in death before us. In other words, we are to keep serving the Lord even in pain.
When Nadab and Abihu were killed by the Lord because of their irreverent service before the Lord, Aaron and his household must have been undeniably thrown into grief too. The death of these young men was so unexpected. One minute they were ordained and consecrated into the priesthood to serve the Almighty God and the next they were burnt to death because of disobedience! This must have been too much for Aaron who was their father and who was also supposed to have been watching over their acts of service since they were just recently ordained. He must have been tempted to throw in the towel and forget his divine calling, but God would not allow that. “Do not let your hair become unkempt and do not tear your clothes or you will die and the Lord will be angry with the whole community. But your relatives, all the house of Israel may mourn for those the Lord has destroyed by fire. Do not leave the entrance to the Tent of Meeting or you will die, because the Lord’s anointing oil is on you.” (Lev 10:6-7)
God’s people are expected to keep serving the Lord no matter what happens. In sickness, in health, happy times, sad times, in prison and out of prison etc we are to keep our focus on the Lord and not our earthly circumstances. Circumstances change, but God can never change. As a matter of fact it is our service to the Lord that will change our circumstances.
Sometimes, when I go into the prisons to minister and share the word of God, I see young men and women loitering or playing outside the church premises and I wonder why they are not in the service. Some may have given up all hope and probably do not see what good church can do for them now. This is a wrong thinking. In whatever situation we find ourselves, we have to serve and worship God. This is what will give us solution at the end of the day.
Things can still change for good! You can work with God to ensure that all things indeed work together for your good. God’s word can never fail. If you can believe today, He will work with you right there in the prison or in your solitary cell.
It was difficult for Aaron not to mourn his sons. In a sense, it was a kind of prison he found himself, but he knew better than to disobey the instructions of God not to mourn his sons. Death awaited him if he disobeyed and also the entire camp of the Israel would have been in jeopardy by his disobedience. He could not afford to disobey and so he kept serving the Lord even in pain.
Is your wife and children awaiting your release from prison? Is it not your mother’s wish to see you out of prison before she dies? What about those plans you had to finish school and start your own business? Are you just going to let all that go? Don’t you know that other people will be in jeopardy if you refuse to serve the Lord because you are unhappy or angry that you are in prison? Serving the Lord is not an option. You have to serve the Lord in spite of your pains if you want to see better days in life.
There are no better options for us in life than to serve God - whether we are in prison or out of prison.
SHALLOM

Five Loaves and Two Fishes

Many times we think that what we have in our hands or what we have to offer to people is too small or too little. And because of this thought we fail to take steps to make a difference in our lives or the lives of others. We have this wrong thought pattern because we forget the principle in the story of the five loaves and two fishes in Matthew 14:15-20. How did Jesus accomplish feeding over five thousand people with just a meager quantity of food? He focused on the seed principle. Jesus never thinks of anything offered to Him as too small so far as it was done or given cheerfully and in love. Whatever we have in our hands is a seed. Many people make the mistake of thinking that a seed must always be big, plenty or much before it can yield a harvest. This thought pattern is erroneous. Everything in life is a seed. Our smile is a seed. Giving a helping hand to another in need is a seed. A bottle of coke is a seed so is a packet of N5.00 biscuit. Playing the drum or guitar in the church is a seed and so is sweeping and cleaning the church. Helping an old man to cross a busy road is a seed, likewise giving up your seat in a crowded bus, train or room for a pregnant woman or the elderly.
The question now is what is in your hand? What is the “five loaves and two fishes” in your hand that you have shyly refused to sow because you feel that it is too small. This attitude is the reason the rich in our midst keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer. If you are too ashamed to give the little you have it is likely that you may remain in one spot for a very long time. The only way to make a difference in your life is to make a difference with the little you have.
In prison, it is generally not permitted that you keep money on you, and besides even if you were permitted how would you earn it since you are also not working to earn a living in there. In spite of this fact, you still have something on you or within you that counts as a seed. You can lend a helping hand in the Church. You can assist to counsel other confused inmates. Also you can give someone a bar of soap to wash or bath. Visiting and encouraging fellow inmates who are sick is another wonderful way to make a difference. These and more are all forms of seed. It is not always about money, but about what you can do to make a difference in your environment per time. When you take the first step, God goes ahead to give you more seeds and more opportunities to sow. Before long you become a man or woman to be reckoned with – someone worthy of honour even in prison.
Never allow the circumstances of life to determine how far you can go or what you can be. Use what is in you or on you to make a difference and create a change in your life. The good book says that whatever a man sows he shall reap so join me and let us begin to sow good seeds. The past is gone, but let us make sure that the future is glorious by what we do today.
Shalom!

The Call

I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!

This is Olive Grove International Foundation. It is also known as the "Voice of the Spirit" and I promise that the Lord will directly speak to your heart as you commit to visiting and interacting with us.

Our Vision Statement: We envision emotionally lost and troubled souls restored to a meaningful life of hope in Christ.

Our Mission Statement: We exist to teach and disseminate the undiluted Word of God through print and electronic media to emotionally lost and troubled souls to restore hope and meaning to life.

What we do here is to give hope and encouragement to those who feel lost, alone and troubled and to demonstrate how you too can become an encouraging tool and a hope giver in the Lord. I believe in my heart that as you continue to follow us your vision and destiny will open up in Jesus name.

A bit of Background of our Work
In October of 2001, I was in class at WORD OF FAITH BIBLE INSTITUTE (WOFBI), Lagos when the Spirit of God impressed on my heart to start a Newsletter. I did not know the next thing about writing and publishing and I told the Lord so. At break time I took a walk around the campus to stretch my legs before the next intensive classes. All the while I was preoccupied with this new assignment from the Lord and wondering how I was going to start on it. I got back to class after break time and found a newsletter of a church strangely stuck behind the back rest of my chair. This newsletter was not there before I left the class. I pulled it out and opened it. It was a four paged newsletter and as I kept going through the articles page by page, I heard the Lord say to me, "This is what I meant. This is what I want you to do for me" I realized then that He had sent someone to leave it for me as a pattern to follow. This is biblical. He had also shown Moses a pattern to follow in the building of the sanctuary in the wilderness "See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40) I had no formal training in writing nor publishing and I had never written any literary work in the past, but I started out in faith because the Master called.

When I started, I had no direction as to an audience or mode of distribution. I used to distribute the Newsletters free at bus stations, on street corners etc until one fateful day, in the place of prayer, the Lord instructed me to direct the distributions to the prisons. That was when my prison ministry started.

Today, Olive Grove is solely distributed to prison in-mates free of charge. I have been privileged to minister to thousands of prisoners through the years via the Olive Grove and physically visited several prisons to fellowship with them.

You can never truly understand how wide and deep the love of God is until you practically see men and women who have been hardened by crime give their lives to Christ and live like lambs. I have seen convicted murderers, rapists, armed robbers etc receive Christ and turn away from their sinful ways.

The prison ministry is one that is greeted with skepticism, fear and distrust but I hold one view and that is if they are good enough for Christ they are good enough. The Apostle Paul said in 1Cor 2: 2 "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (NKJV)

If you are related to a person in prison, please do not harden your heart against them, but pray for them and visit them. Yes, some have done unspeakable and "unforgivable" things, but we must forgive them if we want God to forgive our sins too. (Matt 18:21-35)

As I faithfully served in the Prison Ministry, and other supporting roles in local assemblies that He planted me, the Lord further mandated me "to teach and disseminate the undiluted word of God through print and electronic media to the emotionally lost and troubled to restore hope and meaning to life" This dimension of my assignment is what has informed the intensity of my activities on social media in the recent months. By the grace of God it is our intention to take advantage of every media avenue open in the world today to teach and disseminate the word of God as the Day of the Lord draws near.

It is my heartfelt prayer that none who come in contact with this ministry will live hopelessly, meaninglessly or die unsaved in Jesus name. Amen!

Ebiye Koko