TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Monday 23RD November 2020)
“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:20 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 326TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
The LORD God have been faithful to us; He has been directing us, warning us, washing us, teaching us, rebuking us, rebuilding us, restoring us, realigning and renewing us all since the lockdown began. It has been a season of experiencing His mercies like never before.
Personally, there are things I did this season that I have never done in my life before; there are also things that happened that I wish never happened. But I could not help it. On the glorious side, there are things GOD did in my life that He has never done before; things I thought were not possible.
That is how I will sum up His faithfulness in my life this season.
I know, you also have your own story to sum up! The life we live in this fallen world is full of ups and downs, gory things and glorious things, the good and the ugly, the dark side and the shining light side, the sinful side and the holy side. It is such an imperfect life that will always require daily repentance and God’s exceeding grace to make it to Heaven.
God’s commitment to have us in Heaven at all cost is the reason we are still in Him; it is the reason for making us His investments on earth. I remember when that word came about us being God’s investment, the lights just shone out of the darkness of our hearts.
It seems the gracious GOD is more committed to have us in Heaven than we are committed to get there. That is why He forgives and forgets, and infuses us with grace to keep marching on!
We have all been beneficiaries of His mercies that are new every morning. Yes, we have been products of the greatness of His faithfulness. Our lives have found a meaning because He cares. Personally, His unfailing love and manifest presence have been the fuel of my life. I believe it is the same for you.
I don’t know about you, but for me I will say God’s commitment to have me in Heaven when I breathe my last on earth, has been beyond description.
I have had many death threats, but my greatest fear in life has never been dying. My greatest fear in life has been missing Heaven because of what I know about the next life. That is why I consider the word He sent to us yesterday to be more than a devotional.
Child of God, the word that came yesterday on some of us heading for a crash, like a derailed train, should be taken seriously. That was not a devotional. That was a prophetic finger wrapped in a devotional. I will admonish that you print it out and keep in your archives, then read from time to time. Or you save it on a soft copy for easy access.
Sometimes I wonder what people really expect from God. I wonder why we treat Him and His ways so badly.
In so many ways, this great and merciful God has been reduced to a tool for the realization of selfish and even unholy desires. Our response to Him and His Holy words sometimes has been disgusting. We forget that in His Love and mercies, He has not reduced or lowered His Standards, He only made it possible for us to meet them.
Most of us treat Him like a medic. We forget that if we continue to treat Him and His as a mare consultant clinic or hospital, we will never come to the perfection He commands and enables.
Jesus said “be ye perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Over 90 percent of believers either do not know this or have forgotten it altogether. False teachings and deceptive practices have helped us bury it.
JESUS DID NOT SAY, BE YE UNFAITHFUL OR SINFUL. HE SAID BE YE PERFECT. THE CHRISTIAN RACE IS A CALL TO PERFECTION.
Yes, Heaven is a place for the perfected. It is a place where there will be ex- sinners who have been made perfect. It is not a place of practicing sinners who refused to accept God’s standard, or reject His grace that is making the spirits of just men perfect.
That is why God’s grace is busy here on earth helping us to perfect Holiness in His fear. All we need is just to yield ourselves to it and allow the Holy Spirit to achieve God’s Holy vision for our lives, by making a good use of our will.
I can’t forget what the LORD told us about our will in the just concluded school of Holiness.
If empowered by His Holy Spirit, our wills can be a potent force to be reckoned with. It is responsible for going to hell or Heaven. That is why we do not need God as a dispensary clinic or Hospital full of sick people. We need God as our dwelling place, empowering us inside out to meet His righteous standards and become perfect just as He is perfect.
Clinics and hospitals are only important when people are sick. But once they are healthy, they are no longer important. To so many people, God and His servants are only important when they have problems. Once they are free from their problems they disconnect from them.
To others, just as people move from one hospital to another when they are sick until they find cure, so they treat Church, God and His servants; they move from Church to Church, pastor to pastor, and God to even gods, to find a cure for their earthly problems that has no eternal relevance. Sadly, many are finding none because you do not treat anything divine like a dispensary.
I use to define the Church to be a spiritual hospital and God the doctor and us the patients because of what Jesus said about the sick needing a doctor. But God brought me out of that when He gave me a deeper revelation of what Church is, what happened at both the fall and the cross, and the process of perfecting the saints, not just for the work of the ministry but for Heaven.
I FOUND OUT THAT CHURCH IS NOT A HOSPITAL AS EVANGELIST MINISTRIES PRESENTED IT, BUT A MILITANT FORCE OF GOD ON EARTH.
If we reduce Church to be a hospital, we the patients, and God the doctor, then we are not seeing things in God’s apostolic and prophetic perspective. That is why people do not have a relationship with God! They only have contact with Him.
No patient really has a deep relationship with a doctor, a hospital, clinic or dispensary. At best we do have more consistent contacts with them. That is why no one has ever moved out of his or her home to go live with a doctor or nurse in a hospital, clinic, or dispensary forever.
God wants people who will live with Him not just have contact with Him. That is why, though He is Jehovah Rapha, He is neither our doctor, nor His Church our hospital. Neither are His servants our nurses. He is our dwelling place and His true servants people anointed to help us dwell with Him, and He in us!
To so many others, God is a consultant of eternity affairs, But He is more than that. He is our source and His righteous servants His arm for helping us return to and live in Him. So if you are treating God either as a clinic, a hospital, or a consultant, you will never make it to Heaven in your walk with Him.
Besides, while here on earth, there are realms of glory you will never come into, embrace or walk in. That is why we lead a Christian life shaped by our earthly needs, and the desire to have them met at all cost. Our love for God is defined by our selfish desires. That is why we do not remain faithful to Him when what we describe as “our worship of Him” do not force Him to meet them.
Job would have failed if that was His way of serving the LORD. Don’t forget, it is the same Jesus we are dealing with today. Then He was not known as Jesus Christ because it was a name He took just to pay the ultimate sacrifice for our redemption. But it is the same LORD we are dealing with!
A Christianity that is shaped and defined by the desire to have our earthly needs met at all cost, will not leave a standing army for God in the battle field when things becomes tough!
JOB REMAINED STANDING IRRESPECTIVE OF WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS EARTHLY PROSPERITY! HE WAS GOD’S STANDING ARMY.
That is why one of the groups of God’s people that will rise on earth these last days to demonstrate God’s glory to a dying world will be the Job Church. From the ashes of their dying will appear a glorious people, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible like an army with banners.
God is depending on our generation to rise and become part of this group! But we cannot become part of it with the kind of Christianity that we are leading. We do not have the Job kind of love for God in our hearts. We do not have his kind of worship. Maybe we need to go back individually and study the life of that man.
Our devotional text today says “we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” One way to be reconciled to God is by aligning with His expectations of us in our age and time. It is to align with the kind of love and worship that He expect from us, especially in a time like this.
Many of us do not even know what Christianity is all about. We take it like one of those religions on earth and defeat the purposes of God all together.
You see, wherever people reduce Christianity to a mare religion, they become an extension of the army of the anti-Christ in the very system described as the body of Christ.
Wherever a walk with God is reduced to a mare religious exercise, people stand against the things of God in the name of God. They stand against Christ in the name of God or Jesus, and against God’s purposes in the name of some prophets who once lived on earth.
There is a call of God this morning, a call to be His perfect people and standing army. Nothing less will be required. Yes, the standard is high because His ways are high according to what Isaiah tells us. But there is a grace according to what Paul shared with us. A grace to meet the standard.
Let us therefore learn to come boldly on daily bases to the throne of grace, to obtain mercy and find grace to help in this time of need. Let us do away with whatever the Holy Spirit reveal is derailing and leading us to a crash. Let us use our righteous wills righteously and come up to higher heights of faith.
The dying world is waiting for a glorious Church that will function as a standing army to save her. She is not waiting for a hospital or dispensary clinic. Will you be God’s standing army in a dying world?
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY
“So I sought for a man among them who will make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one” Ezekiel 22:30 NKJV