THE BATTLE AGAINST THE WASTERS
Dr. D. K. Olukoya
The Bible says that no man can enter into the house of a strongman and spoil his goods except he first binds the strongman. This book focuses on the activity of the evil powers that has dealt a deadly blow on the black race in particular and has truncated its developmental process. We are talking about the power of the wasters. These wasters must be dealt with for they are responsible for destroying God’s plans for individuals. Therefore, I want you to pray the following prayer points before we continue:
1. Every virtue of my life that the enemy is sitting upon, come to me by fire, in the name of Jesus.
2. Anything planted into my life to disgrace me, come out now, in the name of Jesus.
A man of God went to preach in a particular place and as a mark of courtesy, he first of all went to the palace of the chief of the town. He greeted the chief and preached the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to him. The king challenged him by telling him to first assist them solve a problem they had with their river and then they would listen to his message. So, the man of God went to the river and prayed for seven hours. Then the demons in charge of the river came out and protested that they be left alone to accomplish their mission of spoiling the lives of the inhabitants of that place. A dialogue then ensued between the man of God and the demons. The man of God asked them whether they were the ones that got to the location before the river and they said that the river got there before them. So, the man of God said, “Since it is the river that got here before you, then you are strangers and it is written that the strangers shall fade away, and be afraid out of their close places.” (Psalms 18:45.) That was how he succeeded in chasing them away and, of course, he need not preach much for the villagers to accept Christ for they had seen the raw power of God.
Isaiah 54:16: “Behold I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work, and I have created the waster to destroy.”
Verse 17 goes further to say that, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise up against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”
The spirit of the waster is the most terrible demon that has demoted the black man. It has done and is still doing a lot of havoc. This evil spirit is at work in every African country.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO WASTE?
a. To waste is to use wrongly. For example, pouring diesel into a kerosene lantern.
b. Not using a thing maximally.
c. Rendering a useful thing idle.
d. To render something worthless or to make it useless.
e. To damage something completely.
Before the spirit of the wasters can take over an environment, it must first of all have grabbed the individuals who make up the inhabitants of the place. One thing that worries my spirit and breaks my heart is the fact that there are so many people around who are not working according to God’s time-table for their lives. You will understand what I am talking about better by asking yourself the following questions:
i. Do I really know where my God’s-given prosperity lies? Some of us spend years and years drawing water and hewing wood. Some of us spend years serving our oppressors. Do you know where your God’s - given prosperity lies? As you are reading this message, do you really know what you should do to prosper?
ii. What are the things that I am happy doing?
iii. What are those things in my life that I know can help others to attain their maximum when I do them?
iv. What are those things that God has planted in my life that have capacity of demand?
v. What are those things that I can accomplish with minimum assistance?
If you don’t have clear answers to these questions, then the wasters are already in place in your life. That is the truth.
If you don’t know how to pray in anger before, you have to learn to do so to really confront the wasters. Once they are operating in one’s life, crying is not the answer. Blaming others won’t get you anywhere. The only way out is to fight and defeat them.
A lot of men are being wasted everyday because they never find out what God wants them to do. The devil finishes such people completely by making them to engage in activities that will make his job easier, for example, womanizing, smoking, drinking and moving about in the night, and little by little, their lives are wasting away. Such people forget the fact that nobody is getting younger. Every day, everybody gets older and if by the time you are 40 and you have not discovered the direction you should follow, then you are lost. Some people say that a fool at 40 is a fool forever; but I believe that nowadays, a fool at 21 is a fool forever.
A lot of women’s lives have been wasted. Some women are in the mess they are now because of accidental pregnancy. They may not have been meant for the men they are married to but because the men have put them in the family way, they were compelled to marry them, even though there is no love between them. Many women are collapsing under this heavy burden now and the enemy is wasting their lives. The same thing goes for some men. That is why I said earlier that if you don’t know how to pray in anger, better learn to do so now.
The powers of the wasters are strong forces working against Africa as a whole. Even if you don’t know the whole of Africa, Nigeria serves as a good specimen. This country is so fertile that any seed you put into the soil will grow. There is virtually nothing that can’t be grown in Nigeria. God has blessed her with virtually everything. She has abundance of minerals. Her pilots have been rated as some of the best in the world. A lot of very good brains are found there. The question is, what is happening to her that has prevented her from being great? The answer is not far-fetched. It is the spirit of the wasters. And this cuts across all black nations. The problem is not leadership. You also get it wrongly by saying it is bad administration or the inability to plan things properly. The problem is the demon of wastage wasting things. But before this demon took over the nations, it had started with individual citizens. This is really sad.
One of the strategies of the wasters is to blind people from recognizing opportunities. Even when they are right under their nose, they would not see them. These spirits are deceptive in nature. When opportunities are available to people under the manipulation of these powers, they will never have the true picture of what the situation is. The opportunities they are supposed to seize will look shapeless, impossible or sometimes they perceive them as set-backs or failure. The situation will disguise as something else and make people waste their lives by missing opportunities that can never be repeated.
Unfortunately, some of those who should go on three days dry fast and address the wasters believe that their problems are as a result of bad luck. There is no such thing as luck. A person is either blessed or cursed. What many people call bad luck is actually the activity of the wasters.
These wasters are the powers that plant spiritual diseases in people’s lives, especially the spirit of impatience. Impatience has made many people to lose great fortunes in life. It operates everywhere - in the banks, post offices, highways, markets, homes and churches. It is commonly said that the patient dog eats the fattest bone. So, if you are going to move permanently from poverty to prosperity, from defeat to victory, from failure to success and from nobody to somebody, you need to deal with the power of the wasters. The other time a professor was jailed for a rather pathetic reason. He appropriated the rice meant for distribution to people in his local government area to himself. When he was being taken to jail, he was protesting that it was a waste for the country to lock up a whole professor in the jail. But his problem really was impatience. He wanted to get rich quickly with minimum effort.
Many think that money is the answer to their problems. How wrong they are. If you don’t deal with the wasters and you are given millions and millions of money, it will vanish in no time because this spirit will ensure that nothing good is done with it. It will waste it. It happened to the prodigal son.
The powers of the wasters make people give up when they have temporary set-backs. And it could be that they are just at the edge of success. They make people think aimlessly. Such people just move through life without a divine purpose. It is unfortunate. There are some people who go through life expecting the worst to happen to them and if anything good comes their way, they say, “Well it is too good to be true,” meaning that they expect failure all the time. These people end up blaming others for their predicaments when they should have faced the demon of the wasters responsible for their problems.
It is unfortunate that many lives are being wasted. The Yorubas have an adage which says that if a man spends 20 years planning to run mad, what time is he going to be released into the market place. Close your eyes and pray this prayer point in boiling anger: “I reject every manifestation of backwardness in my life, in the name of Jesus.”
It is this spirit of the wasters that does not allow people to understand that God has to expose His people to painful training in order to turn them to champions. A champion is somebody who has triumphed over great enemies. David was a champion. There is hardly someone who can become a champion without fighting. But the power of the wasters will not allow people to understand this.
People are said to be great for God because they have won many battles. It is only the fellow who passes examinations that is promoted. God may be testing you at this moment. The test of God for your life is to make you a champion. When God tested Belshazzar, He found him unfit. “Thou hast been weighed in balances, but have been found wanting.” That was the conclusion of the Almighty concerning the life of Belshazzar. So, in a sense, God was telling Belshazzar that he had wasted his life.
All the physical trials that Christians are passing through today are in reality, spiritual strategies for promotion. An untested product from the factory is as unreliable as the weather. But when an item is tested, it can be used and you can also have guarantee on it. Great spiritual assignments are reserved for vessels that do not break under trial. So, any man or woman who is looking at his or her problems from beneath will be boxed to a corner by those problems. But the man who gauges his problems from God’s position, will see all his problems as opportunities to record God’s testimony. Peter when he was looking at the storm from the position of Christ, remained afloat, but when he looked at it from beneath, he sank. There are many of us who are busy wasting our time throwing stones at Moses, complaining over very little discomforts instead of forging ahead.
What do I mean by stoning Moses? By stoning Moses, I mean blaming others for our problems. Some people are in the habit of heaping blames on their pastors or their former churches instead of realizing that they still have battles to fight. Your destiny is in your hands. Avoid looking for excuses for your present predicament. Rise up and challenge the spirit of the wasters and you will become a champion.
When the powers of the wasters are working in people’s lives, carrying out God’s assignments becomes difficult for them. They live aimless lives - a life of spiritual procrastination. Time has no friend. A lot of people are wasting time. Many people who put a lot of money into very useless projects are wasting money. The man, who has money today, becomes poor overnight because of the spirit of the wasters.
Somebody wrote me a letter which made me really sad. In the letter, she said she invested all her money on something that somebody told her was hot cake in a particular country only for her to get there and find out that she had sunk all her money on what was not needed there at all. She never prayed before embarking on the business. She ended up wasting all her resources.
A lot of families are being wasted. It is the waster that circulates a woman from one husband to the other and also circulates a man from one wife to another. Somebody came to me and said that she wanted to marry. I asked her whether she had found God’s chosen one for her and she said yes. The man she wanted to marry was 57 years old while she was 48. She further told me that the man had married five times and all the wives were dead. Unfortunately, the sister could not see that the man had the spirit of the wasters working on him.
The Israelites wasted all the opportunities to hear the Lord by themselves. Esau wasted all his opportunities. If the powers of the wasters were to be working on blind Bartimaeus, he would have missed his healing. But he refused to lose the opportunity.
Some are wasting their talents. They are using them to glorify the devil. Some are even burying theirs. There are many things that could get a Christian to hell fire but one which is clear in the Bible, is the burying of one’s talent. The person will become like the unprofitable steward who said, “You gave me one talent and since I did not see you and because I was afraid, and know that you wanted to reap where you did not sow, I buried it.” The master had no other option but to throw him into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Some people come to the house of God just to sit down, warm the benches and go away in spite of the great talents that they have. God is recording these wasted talents against them and they have to give an account of them.
Satan can waste a person’s health by keeping the person on a job that wastes his or her health, energy and abilities. A person’s blessing, properties and spiritual power can be wasted too. Beloved, we really need to pray hard. The power of the wasters can make people work like elephants but eat like rats.
Cain was a wasted man. Although Samson’s birth was prophesied by angels unfortunately, he was a wasted man. Somebody like Goliath was a waste. In spite of his threats against the Israelites for forty days, he only succeeded in promoting David.
You can waste anything but the most painful thing to waste is your life. You can put a halt to the activities of the wasters now.
Before you were born, God had designed a purpose for you. If you are not fulfilling that purpose, your life is in danger. So, you really have to decide to use your life to fulfil divine purpose. May be you are winning the race nobody asked you to run or you are effectively doing the wrong thing, you better be careful. The fact that what you are doing is good does not mean that it is right. It is said that a good idea does not necessarily mean it is God's idea. So when a person’s life is not fulfilling the divine purpose, the person is wasting his life.
We have a lot of wasted lives around. You have an opportunity now to fight back with all the powers that you have. The Psalmist did not want his life to be wasted so he prayed radical prayers. He prayed violent prayers. He prayed red hot prayers. He prayed calling the thunder and lightening of God to strike his enemies. He prayed that the ground should open up and swallow his enemies. He prayed that the teeth of the ungodly should be crushed. He got really violent. You too have that power. You only need to exercise it in faith and pray against the wasters.
Now, look at yourself: are you walking in God’s plan for your life? He has designed specific ways for us to follow. The fact that God has designed the way you should follow means that if you do not walk therein, no other path can bring you blessing. This is the truth.
There are so many of God’s children roaming about the streets now. They cannot be blessed until they run back to the Saviour. Once God has decided that this is what you should be and in one way or the other, you depart from it, you have opened the door for the wasters.
A lot of pastors have been wasted. A lot of elders have been wasted. A lot of deacons and deaconesses have been wasted and many more are still being wasted. When they should be apostles to the nation, they are still busy distributing biscuits in one church or the other. Some women whom God has promoted are still busy downgrading themselves by being the fifth or the tenth wife of somebody somewhere. And God is lamenting about such lives for failing to do what He has purposed for them.
Today is the day when you really have to break yourself loose from the wasters. So, take a hard look at your life. What things of lasting value have you done so far for Jesus? He is saying, “I spent so many years for you, but how many minutes have you spent for me?” "I suffered a lot for you, what have you done for me?” Think about it. If as you are getting older, you look back and really cannot put your finger on something you can say that you have done for the Lord, something that people can remember and glorify the Lord because of you, then your life is being wasted. Maybe all you can point to is that you have become a chief not knowing that by calling yourself a chief you are demoting yourself. How can the children of the Most high God be calling themselves chiefs? It is a demotion.
Do you want your life to be like that of a certain sister who died and all that could be said of her was that she married 7 husbands, had 15 children, 2 for each of them and nobody could tell the father of the last child. Some funny priest would say, “Thank God for her life. She has gone to heaven.” She did not go to heaven, she was wasted.
A lot of pastors are wasting themselves like Gehazi. They are running after gifts and money. They run after people who will give them things. They are operating with the anointing of Gehazi. This will not get anybody anywhere.
Beloved, you have one life to live and it is on a one-way traffic. There is no reverse journey. It is like an arrow that has been fired from somewhere. It is going somewhere and it is not coming back. By the time your life ends, what is going to be written in the Book of life about you? Will it be said that you spent your life fruitfully or that you wasted it?
One man of God said that there are two ways people pass away: they either die or they are killed. Those who dead are the ones who fulfill God’s purpose for their lives. Conversely, those who are killed are those who did not fulfill God’s purpose for their lives.
We need to battle against the wasters. This is what is affecting Africans as a whole. When there is a witch in the family of twenty and the witch wants to eat up eighteen people within two years, she will first of all eat up all the bright ones. Anyone who wants to be bright gets attacked by the witch. Any child that is intelligent would be attacked by the wasters. If you see any child that is seriously sick in school, check, he must be a bright person. Such children usually see strange things that other people around them cannot see. So, when the useful ones are finished, who will help the others?
A lot of people who could benefit our country now are busy cleaning streets and washing gutters in London and America. Medical doctors have been converted to security guards in America. African dentists are washing plates. In Saudi-Arabia, top African professors are working under people who are not qualified to be their students because they want money. Where are we going? This is a waste which first of all started with individual lives.
People are running away from the farms. They want to work in the cities and when they get to the city and discover that there are no jobs, they take to armed robbery. God forbid that somebody will read this book and the wasters will still be working in his life. Review your life. Is your life not being wasted as it is now? If it is, then you need to reverse the trend.
If God says you are to be a blessing to this nation and it has not been so, it is simply because you have been doing the wrong thing, succumbing to the powers of the wasters. You must refuse to be wasted because God did not create you to be wasted.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I refuse to be wasted, in the name of Jesus.
2. Every waster of my prosperity, fall down and die, in the name of Jesus.
3. Every aggression against my prosperity, be paralysed, in the name of Jesus.
4. My blessings shall not stagnate, in the name of Jesus.
5. I reject weak financial breakthrough. I claim big financial breakthrough, in Jesus’ name.
6. Every hidden devourer, be bound, in the name of Jesus.
7. I release myself from every evil family pattern of poverty, in the name of Jesus.
8. All my prosperity on every evil altar, I withdraw you now, in the name of Jesus.
9. Every spirit of leaking pockets, come out with all your roots by fire, in Jesus’ name.
10. Every prosperity paralysis from household wickedness, come out with all your roots by fire, in Jesus’ name.
11. Every clever devourer, come out with all your roots, in Jesus’ name.
12. Every spirit of fragmented life, come out with all your roots, in Jesus’ name.
13. Every spirit of debt, come out with all your roots, in Jesus’ name.
14. Every handshake of poverty, come out with all your roots, in Jesus’ name.
15. Every financial paralysis by witchcraft, come out with all your roots, in Jesus’ name.
16. Begin to tell the Lord the type of prosperity that you want and He will give it to you, in Jesus' name.
17. Every satanic insect prepared against me, be dissolved by fire, in the name of Jesus.
