TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 15TH OCTOBER 2022)
“Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one’s own resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].
And the world passes away and disappears, and with it the forbidden cravings (the passionate desires, the lust) of it; but he who does the will of God and carries out His purposes in his life abides (remains) forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 288TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
It is a beautiful weekend I hope you are doing fine in the LORD.
Sorry that the devotional is coming to you late. We had an all night meeting in the Church captioned, “power night” last night that ended few minutes to 6am this morning.
So, I needed to give nature what is due to nature; I needed to sleep.
Actually, when we got home this morning, I sat down and attempted to write the devotional before taking a rest, but my head was heavy. Like a horse that is battle weary, it refused to respond to me.
Then I spoke to the Holy Spirit for help, nut He also refused to respond to me. That was when I knew they all wanted me to go and sleep; my head and my senior partner, the Holy Spirit, hence going to bed. And that was around few minutes to 8 am.
Now, if your head and the Spirit of the one who writes the devotional through you wants you to go and sleep, you will be stupid to argue with them. So, I went to sleep.
Thank God I did. Amen! That is why the word is coming to us at this hour!
There are parts of the body you do not argue with. One of them is the head. When it says “am tired, please go and sleep” and you say otherwise, a day will come when it will never respond to you again, and you will be needing medical attention to plead with it to work with you again.
We are spirits living in earthen bodies. We are not our bodies. Nobody has seen how any one of is look. We only see how our bodies look. The real us is invisible, living in our bodies.
So, when critical parts of our bodies say “we cannot take it anymore, we need some rest” and you continue pushing them, you will soon be in trouble. We must understand the messages of rest that parts of our bodies send to us at intervals, and give them the rest they deserve after a season of hard work.
Sadly, some people give their bodies more rest than they deserve. That also is not good. It will make you break down in health at a particle time of your life. The body is built in such a way that it must be engaged to work at maximum level, not minimum level, else certain parts will begin to break down.
For 15 days today we have been looking at the Cry of the Holy Spirit on the Holy Spirit Himself. In other words, what the Holy Spirit said in the scriptures about Himself, and it have been wonderful.
The Holy Scriptures is made up of things that the Holy Spirit wrote in the lives and times of people.
THAT IS WHY THE BIBLE IS A PERSON NOT JUST A BOOK.
The author, the Holy Spirit, made it as person. It is when you are not reading it with the author by your side that you call it other things.
One of the major things we have seen the Holy Spirit say about Himself in the word is His purpose of coming into our lives. He showed us that His purpose of coming is to set our lives in order.
So far we have understood that everything He does with us and in us is geared towards setting our lives in order.
You see, the fall of man so damaged our lives that our maker casted us out of His Garden. The purpose was tp fix us and then bring us back, and now we are back through our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, a manifestation of our maker that came to redeem or buy us back from the enemy of our soul.
The reconstruction and reordering are ongoing. They are set to be happening within a time frame called the dispensation of grace; a season set aside for the Blessed Holy Spirit.
Talking about the season for the Blessed Holy Spirit, it may interest you to know that from the day that man left the garden to the day Jesus began His ministry, it was the Father Himself that was on duty on earth.
He was on earth building a path for the Son to be revealed, and the Son was finally revealed and took over for three and half years. Then the son gave way for the Holy Spirit. When He was doing that, He said;
“If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:15-18 NKJV
He actually fulfilled His promise of not living them, and by extension us, orphaned; He came to them and to us in the outpouring of His Holy Spirit. That is why the Holy Spirit has Christ as His identity. He is Jesus in Spirit form.
HE DOES NOT HAVE HIS OWN IDENTITY.
If God were to open your eyes to see how the Holy Spirit look like, you will just see Jesus standing before you, or living in you because the Holy Spirits is Jesus in Spirit form.
So, as soon as Jesus resurrected and ascended into Heaven, the time for the Son to work on earth was over.
In other words, we can say, the time for God to work as the Son on earth was over. Until then, He was working as God the Father. And while working as God the Father, He used some of His Prophets to prophesy about that. One of those He used was Joel.
The man of God was used to prophesy saying;
“And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
Even upon the menservants and upon the maidservants in those days will I pour out My Spirit.” Joel 2:28-29 AMPC
That is why when you stand on this scripture to ask the LORD for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon your life or upon the life of another, He will respond swiftly. He may respond by asking you to start obeying His commandments because there is a life you have to live to receive His Holy Spirit, according to what Jesus had said.
Now, It is important that we look at that deeply, because many in Church today do not have the genuine Holy Spirit and cannot even receive Him.
So many who call themselves born again, (preachers inclusive), do not have the authentic Holy Spirit.
If you even watch the many so called “Holy Ghost Baptism services” you can tell the people are being Baptized in the spirit of religion. You find being trained to speak in tongues and to prophesy. Which is like training a pregnancy to grow.
It is when a religious spirit (the counterfeit of the Holy Spirit) is being imparted into people that preachers do such nonsense.
You do not train a pregnancy to grow. If it is there it will grow. In the same way you do not train people to speak in tongues or prophesy. If the Spirit of God is there, they will supernaturally conceive the tongue and speak, or receive the prophetic gift and prophesy.
SO, IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WE LOOK AT WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Jesus said;
“If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive…”
These words of Christ tell us that people do not just receive the Holy Spirit because they prayed for it, or because they are prayed for. We receive the Holy Spirit because we live for it.
People may pray for us, but if we are not living for it, we will never receive. At best we will receive the religious spirit that counterfeits Him.
Living for it, is key to receiving the genuine outpouring of the Spirit upon your life.
The world cannot receive Him because of the way they live. They do not live for it. So, if we are worldly, if we live the way they do; lust controlled, money controlled, sin controlled and etc. we also will not receive Him. Whatever we may have as Him will be the religious spirit, His counterfeit.
That is why the Bible admonished us saying;
“Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one’s own resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].
And the world passes away and disappears, and with it the forbidden cravings (the passionate desires, the lust) of it; but he who does the will of God and carries out His purposes in his life abides (remains) forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 AMPC
Thank God this scripture happens to be our devotional text for the day.
It has a lot of truths on why many cannot receive the Holy Spirit; the genuine Holy Spirit. It made it clear they those who cannot receive Him do not love God, they love the world. And Jesus conditioned the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us on our love for God.
It is love for God that prepares us for the outpouring. It is love for GOD that separates us from the lost world and all its craving for sensual gratification, greedy longings of the mind, and etc. It is love for GOD that will make a man live a life that is separated from sin, iniquity and trespass.
LOVE FOR GOD DOES NOT MAKE US CHURCHY, LOVE FOR GOD MAKE US HOLY.
It is love for the world that make people Churchy and not holy. They may not be adulterers or fornicators but the will be other things that seems not outrageous; lovers of money and pleasure more than livers of God, liars, deceptive, crafty, wicked at heart, sneaky, lustful and etc.
If you see the Holy Spirit coming on someone who loves the world but pretends to love the LORD, it is to bring the person to repentance, not to live in Him. He cannot live in such a person, because God is a jealous God.
People who love the world will never receive the Holy Spirit because they cannot live for Him. That is why if they join any Church and are made religious, at best they will receive the religious spirit that counterfeits the Holy Spirit.
If you fully understand what Jesus said about receiving the Holy Spirit, it will dawn on you that no worldly church has the Holy Spirit. That is why they only have the olive oil that they use as His symbol and in His place, and the Spirit of religion that masquerade as Him, giving them all kinds of prophecies.
If you want to have the Holy Spirit in your life; the true Holy Spirit that eliminates the crave for carnal things and forms Christ in us, you must find a church that is not worldly or carnal. You must find a Church that is not money controlled, lust infected and etc.
You must find a spiritual family that operate as the ground and pillar of truth. That is the message of today.
As we bring this to a close, understand that God the Father finished His work over 2000 years ago. God the Son also finished His over 2000 years ago. Today, it is God the Holy Spirit that is in charge.
We must,therefore, separate from any kind of life that will not let Him have the full preeminence over our lives and set it in order. We must yield ourselves to Him.
Just as God the Father created a path for the first coming of Christ for our redemption, so is God the Holy Spirit making a people ready and creating a path for the second coming of Christ and our final redemption.
Do not forget the mystery of the trinity.
In the trinity, we have God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. All three are Equal in power, and everything because they are One, just as our spirits, souls and bodies are one.
It is my prayer that God the Holy Spirit, who is currently in charge of redemptive activities on earth, will take you further in these truths and make you what God the Father and the Son wants you to be in Jesus precious name. Amen
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Now when they heard this they were stung (cut) to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles (special messengers), Brethren, what shall we do?
And Peter answered them, Repent (change your views and purpose to accept the will of God in your inner selves instead of rejecting it) and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of and release from your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise [of the Holy Spirit] is to and for you and your children, and to and for all that are far away, [even] to and for as many as the Lord our God invites and bids to come to Himself.” Acts 2:37-39 AMPC