TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Thursday 14th January 2021)
Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’
If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. Exodus 33:12-15 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 14TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS
The LORD God has been with us these 14 days of the year. He has been our companion and travelling partner. To Him be the glory for not allowing us to spend one day outside His companionship.
One of the signs that you are been accompanied by God on a journey is the quality of word He sends to you each morning. He has been speaking to us on this journey each morning; which tells me He is with us.
Come to think of it, the most important companion you will need in life is not a man or a woman you love. Neither is it a caring Preacher, Friend, Dad or Mum, as important as they may be. The most important companion you will need in life is God’s manifest presence.
When you secure His presence, then it will bring the precious people your life will need to become significant on earth.
For many years I have maintained that if God is present, it does not matter who is absent. And if God is absent, it does not matter who is present. You will need the presence of God in your life more than any other presence to make it in life. That is why you must understand everything about the presence of GOD, and do everything under God’s grace to make sure you do not live a life that is void of His manifest presence.
I grew up to know that if God’s manifest presence goes with you to any place, even if it is the valley of the shadow of death, you will have rest.
In our MACS yesterday, I use what I call prophetic percentages to analysis these things. People in the Church often think that when things are not okay with us we must look for one devil doing it to chase him out so that they will be okay.
When we can’t get or stay married, we must go for deliverance. When we can’t breakthrough financially, we must go for deliverance. When we lose jobs incessantly we must go for deliverance.
When we see ourselves eating, swimming, crying, dying, being attacked, or having sex in the dream we must go for deliverance. When strange beings come to molest us in the dream, we must go for deliverance. When there are deaths, vices, curses or any other generational mishaps in our families, we must go for family liberation, and all that.
Well, a devil may be responsible for any of that but what they call deliverance is not the permanent cure. The permanent cure is in what Jesus said. He said in Matthew 12:33; “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit”
The bad things that happen in our lives or the lives of our families are simply fruits growing out of a life (or lives) lived without the active presence of GOD in it. In other words, if a life lacks the active presence of God, all I mentioned above will be happening in that life. If a family lacks the active presence of God all I mentioned above will be happening in that family.
IF THE TREE IS BAD, IT WILL BEAR BAD FRUITS.
The Tree represents or signifies a human life. It is where our lives are rooted that determine what grows out of them. If our lives are rooted in the sinful, the satanic, the abominable, the contrary to God’s will, the desecrated or demonic, good things will never grow out of them.
If a family is rooted in the same things mentioned above, especially from generation to generation, bad things like deaths, curses, late or no marriages, divorce cases, grinding poverty, and etc. will be happening in that family from generation to generation.
It is where the tree is rooted that determine what grows out of the tree. It is where a human life is rooted that determines what grows out of it. If we are rooted in Christ and His active presence (am not saying church and active religion, but Christ and God’s active presence), we will be bringing forth glorious things out of our lives.
The Bible says,
“The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Those who are planted in the house of the Lord Shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be [b]fresh and [c]flourishing,” Psalm 92:12-14 NKJV
In other words, those whose lives are rooted in the active presence of God shall flourish like a palm tree. They shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Families whose lives are rooted in the active presence of God, shall flourish like a palm tree, they shall grow like cedars in Lebanon from generation to generation. That is the secret.
They will not see curses, deaths, poverty, witchcraft attacks, incurable illness, wormwood or any evil that befalls other families. Their lives will just be blissful and pleasant as long as they keep pursuing the LORD.
SADLY, MOST PREACHERS DO NOT KNOW THIS; WHILE OTHERS ARE JUST GREEDY AND WICKED!
They will rather prefer you carry them to the village to uproot something, or pass you through one religious ritual or the other. They do that because that is the only way they can stay relevance both financially and other wise. Jesus says, we do not need such deliverance rituals; we need His active presence constantly in our lives to be free from anything from the kingdom of darkness..
If the lives of people are constantly rooted in the active presence of God, they will be flourishing form generation to generation.
Come to think of it; a lot of families have household members who do abominable things like having sex with animals, blood relatives, or even their parents.
Having sex with someone you are not married to is enough sin before God, how much more doing it with an animal or a relative. These and other abominable things many families do; are the reason the presence of God cannot sit on them. It is the reason there is no God in their lives to prevent bad things like curses, deaths, marital challenges and etc. from happening.
Those who try to bring God take oil to them. Very sad! They do not need oil or water in their hands but the active presence of God permanently in their lives.
If our lives or that of our family members are rooted in things that will not allow the active presence of God to be at work in it, we will never see good in life. And if that continues from generation to generation, we will never see good all through those generations, leading to what some preachers call generational curses.
That is why I tell people, you cannot sow any seed and be free from these things. Just live a life that carries God’s active presence and you will be free. Our devotional text tells it all. It was a conversation Moses had with the LORD.
Moses was like a Christian who believes in knowing and following the ways of the LORD rather than His acts. He was not interested in the acts, because he knew people who follow God’s ways see His acts automatically. The secret of having the active presence of God in your life is to get your life rooted in the ways of the LORD. So He said to the LORD “show me your ways.”
Our devotional text puts it this way,
“If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
Moses went on to be one who knew the ways of God, even with face to face encounters with Him.
WHEN A MAN WHO KNEW THE WAYS OF GOD SPEAKS THINGS THAT ALIGN WITH OUR DISPENSATION, WE MUST LISTEN.
He knew that the problem is not our enemies or what they do in our lives. The problem is, the absence of God’s active presence in our lives always. That was why he said to the LORD, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.”
Previously, God has said to Him, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Meaning, if we, or our families are restless, the problem is not the presence of demons or evil men and women, the problem is the absence of the active presence of GOD that gives men rest from those things.
Sadly, instead of going for this truth and getting our faiths established in them, we prefer going for deliverance. Let me show you the futility of going for what you call deliverance. Jesus our deliverer said;
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.
Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.
Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation. ” Matthew 12:43-45 NKJV
I don’t know what your deliverance preacher may have told you about this scripture. Most of them will twist it to keep people going for deliverance. But this scripture tells us how futile deliverance can be; especially deliverance by Baal, the demon of deliverance.
The scripture made it clear that the spirits do not permanently go away. They come back somehow some time. It tells us we do not need what you call deliverance, we need the active presence of God at work in our lives.
We need preachers who will train us to carry the presence of the LORD that gives rest.
We need voices of God that will impart into us lifestyles that guarantees the manifest presence of God in our lives. We need some John the Baptist who will operate in the spirit of Elijah, not to pass us through what you call deliverance, but to speak words that will open Heaven over our souls and bring God’s active presence down to our lives.
When Jesus said we should cast out demons, He never meant by passing people through what we call deliverance, but by making them temples of God in the Spirit. That could not be done before the cross, hence He was going about casting them out. But the pattern changed after the cross.
Today, you do not just cast them out by doing what we call deliverance. You cats them out by training people to carry the active presence of God wherever they go. You cast them out by making people temples for God in the Spirit. That was what the apostle spent their days doing.
They walked with the LORD, and learned the ropes of carrying the active presence of God, and taught men and women the same thing. That is what we need to do today as ministers of the gospel. But how many of us truly know how to do that? How many of us carry the active presence of God?
My final word for you today is that you learn to seek God until you find Him. SEEK GOD AND YOU SHALL LIVE! Lead a Christian life that carries the active presence of God in it and you will find rest for your soul.
It is a new year; we must make up our minds to come out of any strange life style that will not let God’s active presence to sit on our lives. We must stop doing anything that will not let His presence break out into the camp of our enemies and give us rest from their attacks.
We must come out of Egypt (a life that lacks God’s active presence)!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY
When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people [a]of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, And Israel His dominion.
The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, The little hills like lambs.
What ails you, O sea, that you fled? O Jordan, that you turned back? O mountains, that you skipped like rams? O little hills, like lambs?
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, Who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters. Psalm 114:1-8