TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Wednesday 25th November 2020)
“And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 328TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
With just 35 days to go away from this tempestuous year that puts the natural and spiritual lives of many in jeopardy, I want to say, “Thank you LORD for your mercies.” When the LORD spoke to us about the horrors of a foundational year, my heart was actually filled with fear and then faith.
My fears came from the realm of the flesh and faith from the realm of the Spirit. There was a time in January that I was literary stricken with horror about this year and wondering “what is it.” It led me to cancelling certain meetings we had planned for the year.
Then the story of how Abraham was stricken with horror in Genesis 15 came to my spirit.
He was stricken with a deep sleep, horror, and great darkness while in deep conversation with the LORD. It does not make sense to be stricken with deep sleep or horror when the LORD is talking with you. It does not make sense to come under darkness in such environment. The Bible says
“Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon.” Genesis 15:12 NKJV
As you can see, a great man of God, in conversation with the LORD of the earth, who was full of LIGHT, TRUTH and FIRE, came under the power of deep sleep, horror and great darkness; things that should never happen when you are at that level of conversation with the LORD.
But it all turned out to be a prophetic communication tool. God was speaking to Abram by voice, then He changed the communication system to allow our Great Father Abraham, to fully understand the next thing He wanted to say to Him.
I believe the LORD changed the manifestation of His presence around him to generate the three things he experienced; deep sleep, horror and great darkness. All three had just one message.
IT WAS TO LET ABRAM KNOW WHAT HIS CHILDREN WILL GO THROUGH IN A FOREIGN LAND. THE BIBLE SAYS;
Then He said to Abram;
“Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
“And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come you with great possessions.
“Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” Genesis 15:13-16 NKJV
This does not mean that if you are feeling afraid, falling into deep sleep and darkness God must be saying something to you. Please don’t twist this to your destruction. You could be under an attack. There is a difference between what Abram experienced and what many are going through today.
What many are going through today is leading to depression and suicide but what Abram went through was a prophetic experience that did not leave him depressed or made it suicidal.
The scripture we just read above is full of great truths. There is so much buried in it. But we will zero in only on the prophetic message God sent the deep sleep, horror and great darkness to communicate to Abram.
Those three were God’s mail men or messengers. They brought the mail to Abram who later became Abraham.
They came to prepare him for the voice of the LORD that was about sounding to say “something bad was going to happen to his seeds, but there will be resurrection. Yes, there will be resurrection and His Children will come out of it with great possessions. Hallelujah!” That is one of the heritages of the righteous.
Jesus was crucified and buried, but on the third day He rose again. Resurrection is the bedrock of the Christian faith! There cannot be genuine salvation until a man encounters the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.
Israel going to the foreign land was man going away from the realm of glory to the kingdom of darkness through sin.
THEIR COMING OUT WITH GREAT POSSESSION REPRESENTS OUR SALVATION EXPERIENCE.
God used them to revealed to the world that we were lost in sin but will be raised from it again through His salvation plan. That is why there can be no genuine salvation with a coming out from sin, Satan and the evil and corrupt system of this world through God’s resurrection power.
The power of the Holy Ghost is the power of God’s resurrection moves. It can bring a dead marriage back to life. It can bring dead organs in anyone’s body back to life. It can revive a business, a backsliding soul, a dying Church, or family.
We just shared about the greatest threat to the eternal life of humanity in our just concluded school of deep thing; the gates of death, hell and grave. But God’s Resurrection power is Heaven’s tool for dealing with these terrible gates.
As you may have known, these three gates are the major gates responsible for all human problems. That is what makes the resurrection power of Jesus Christ the most potent force for dealing with all our problems.
I have seen this power make even dead and barren wombs conceive. It was the power that brought Lazarus back to life after being in the grave for four days. It was the power that healed the sick, casted out demons. That is the power our lives need at any time to come out anything the gates of hell, death or grave throws at us.
It was the same power that touched a young Roman soldier, the only Son of his mother, who died in battle field and was put in a coffin on the way to be buried. The power touched him when Jesus touched the coffin. It does not matter the kind of coffin you may be in spiritually, once His resurrection power touches your life, you are coming out.
I have come to realize that anything Jesus touches comes back to life!
History has it that this young man had been embalmed. In those days virtually all vital organs of the body are removed during embalmment. So what was in that coffin was like a shell of human flesh.
But the one who created man and breathed into Him to become a living being was the very person that touched the coffin, and the resurrection power brought the man back to life! It replaced all vital organs and gave him his life again.
YOU SEE, WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE BUT WITH MEN NOTHING IS POSSIBLE.
God’s resurrection power is the answer to all our problems. That is why God wants your faith to be built on the power of God and not the wisdom of men. Our devotional text said,
“And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God”.
These were the blessed words of God’s apostle of grace, Paul. Words that tells us what authentic preaching should produce in men.
Authentic gospel should produce resurrection, especially from moral decay. Not the fake resurrection from financial hardship but not moral decay we see today in so many gospel meetings and ministries. That is the version of the resurrection that Baal gives to men and women speeding to eternal damnation.
Whenever I take a closer look at the book of Acts and the letters, I see how far our church generation has departed from the faith that was once delivered to us. I see how we have become different from the early church.
The apostles were not preaching the gospel most of us preach today. They were not preaching persuasive words of men’s wisdom or secular humanism. They were demonstrating the Spirit and the resurrection power of God. They were unleashing God’s resurrection power of the morally dead. They were resurrecting men and women from moral decay and spiritual enslavement.
But today, when we preach, we demonstrate the flesh and produce a Christianity that is simply a form of godliness that has no resurrection power. That is why at best people will fall under the anointing and get up without anything happening to them in their moral nature.
ANY PREACHING THAT IS NOT CHANGING OUR MORAL NATURE IS NOT FROM THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD.
Yes, there are people whose lives are full of breaches; folks that will not let God’s power do a work in them because their hearts are not right towards Him or others. But when we preach a gospel that produce a Christianity that is simply a form of godliness that has no power, even true seekers of God will remain the same if they fall under our version of the anointing.
If your life is sinful, barren, poor, sick, sad, oppressed, dead or dying, there is one answer God made available in His word. It is not olive oil in a bottled, holy water, prayer clothes, candles, praying salt, or mats. It is not any prayer chalets given by charlatans and impostors behind pulpit. It is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ!
The good news is this power is available every day, even right now as you read this. That is the power you need to plug into to quench the evil flame that may have been kindled in your spiritual life, your health, marriage, finances, ministry, or family.
I commend you this glorious day to God, and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among they that are sanctified! Amen!!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26 NKJV