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Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s sermon on “Divine Opportunities” delivered from Mount Carmel on Sunday June 6, 2025 has been condensed and edited by me for clarity. I have used it as my column today because I consider it a classic. May God bless and open doors of opportunities for you as you read and get inspired by the sermon:
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Opportunity is a divine helper sent to help someone who needs help urgently to be able to achieve God’s ultimate purpose for his or her life. There are two things you can do when it comes to opportunities. It’s either when the opportunity comes your way you seize it, or if you are careless you lose it. If you seize the opportunity, then the rest of your life, you’ve got it made. If you miss that opportunity, that opportunity may never come back again.
A poet (and playwright) in the olden days (William Shakespeare) wrote a poem. And it says: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Neglected, the rest of their voyages is bound in shallows and miseries.” The African elders would tell you that opportunity is a man. A man that has plenty of hairs in the front of his head. But the back of the head is bald. So they say: Once you see opportunity coming, you better grab him by the front of his head. Because the moment he passes by you and you try now to grab him, you will discover that the back of his head is bald. You try to catch it then, you will catch nothing.
Everyone that God has created would get at least one major opportunity. You grab it, you are settled for life. You miss it, then that might be bye-bye. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ that today, God will send you a major opportunity. And that He would give you the grace to seize it. So that for the rest of your life, you would be riding high.
In the Bible, we have a man called Elisha. He was already doing very well. He was the son of the richest farmer in the land. But then, a day came when a prophet passed by him, threw his mantle upon him. Something told Elisha: “The purpose for which you are born is now about to begin to happen.” And what did he do? He seized the opportunity. He let go everything and decided to follow the servant of God. Later on in life, this unknown son of a farmer became so mighty that everywhere you went, even wealthy people begged him to come to their home to dine. Even kings called him daddy. And even after he died, his dead bone still raised the dead. He had the opportunity of a lifetime, he seized it and today we are still reading about him.
Another good example would be a woman in the Bible who had a problem that no doctor could solve. She had been bleeding for 12 years, every day, continuously. Doctors had referred her here and there, all to no avail. Then she heard that Jesus was passing by. And something told her: “Here comes your opportunity.” She moved fast. Struggled through the crowd. And touched the helm of the garment of Jesus Christ. That day, her problems were over. She was healed of the issue of blood, and I can assure you that not long after, she got married and had children. She would have bled to death if she had missed that opportunity.
And of course, there was blind Bartimaeus. He was a beggar sitting by the roadside, begging. He couldn’t attend the crusade that Jesus Christ had organised. He had heard of all the miracles that the Son of God had performed. So when he heard that Jesus was passing by, he knew “this is the opportunity of my lifetime.” So when he cried to Jesus for mercy and people told him to keep quiet, he refused to keep quiet. He cried louder. And you know what? Jesus never came back to Jericho. If God had not opened the eyes of Bartimaeus that day, he would have died in darkness. But because he seized the opportunity, today we are reading about him thousands of years after he died.
But then, there are those who lost their opportunities. Maybe we would just mention one or two like Gehazi, the servant of Elisha. If there is anybody who was placed by God to become the greatest prophet ever, it was Gehazi. Why? Because when Elisha was to die, he would have asked Gehazi, just like Elijah asked Elisha: “Gehazi, what can I do for you before I go?” And his answer probably would have been: “Give me a double portion of your spirit.” Imagine what the double portion of the spirit of Elisha would have done for Gehazi. But instead of him seizing the opportunity that the Almighty God had given him by positioning him with a man who can say to a leper: “Go and wash and be clean.” It was Gehazi who delivered the message to Naaman. So he knew every detail. He was living with a man with awesome power. He was living with a man who can speak to River Jordan and River Jordan would become a curer of the incurable. He saw it all happen. But because of money, he lost the opportunity and ended up becoming the patron saint of lepers—that is Gehazi.
There is another fellow who lost his own opportunity. His name is Judas Iscariot. Peter said of Judas Iscariot: “This man was with us. He saw the miracles that Jesus did. He was with us when we went out casting demons.” But he decided to lose his opportunity and he ended up hanging himself.
I was invited to come and minister by the traditional ruler of one town, not far from where I am. And I went because the traditional ruler happened to be one of my spiritual children. He wanted to thank God for so many things that God had done for him. Just as I was settling down, the chiefs of the traditional ruler began to come towards the church. They came dressed in the various dresses of their secret societies. They came to show everybody that they really belonged to the devil. The ushers saw them coming and were alarmed: “Are we going to allow these people into the church?” they asked. “Of course,” I replied. “Bring them in, put them in the front row where Jesus would be able to reach them very quickly.” They came and I preached. I was much younger than this. I am talking of more than forty years ago. I changed my sermon to what happen on Mount Carmel. And I hit the devil hard! I challenged all of them. I said: “I came here with my wife and my son, in the car register number so and so. If you think your God can do anything, let him make one of my tyres flat. And if that happened, I will serve your God. But if you can’t do that, you must surrender to my God.” Then I made the altar call. And the second in command to the king who was the head of all the secret societies was the first one to come forward to surrender his life to Jesus. When the other chiefs saw their head going forward, they followed him. After the service, the king said to me: “Let’s follow this high chief home. Maybe he didn’t know what you asked him to come forward for.” So we went to his house and the king asked him: “Why did you surrender your life to Jesus? Why did you go forward when the altar call was made?” He said: “If you see a small boy like this challenging all of us, who does not know he has somebody behind him? It is the one behind him that I surrounded to.” That man was over 90 years old. He died thirty days later. All his life, he had served the devil. Within thirty days of dying, he switched over to the side of the Lord. He had an opportunity and he grabbed it. And today, I am sure when I finally get to heaven, he is one of the people I would meet.
