TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Monday 21st June 2021)
“I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.”
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
“I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.” Ecclesiastes 3:10-12 KJV
WELCOME TO THE 172ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS.
The scripture of our devotional text today is loaded with mysteries about time – truths that we will need a move of the Spirit in our spirits to uncover. But let’s begin with praise to our God for bringing us peacefully to “the last days of the month.”
Who is like unto this God? Who make wars to cease! Who created days and appointed man to live peacefully within them. Who is like this God! Among the gods who is like Him! Glorious in Holiness and fearful in praises! Doing wonders! Hallelujah!
We bless Him for the month of June and other months that we have seen this year.
Friend, life is a gift that comes with many opportunities. I believe that the life we have all lived from January till date came with many opportunities as well.
Beautifully, some used the opportunities to do God’s righteous will for their personal lives; they changed their behavior, understanding, relationships, and even places of worship. Now they are experiencing God in deeper ways. There is a lot of improvement in their spiritual lives.
Decisions remain the controller of destinies. If you make the right one concerning an aspect of life, it will give you so much peace and prosperity in that aspect. If you make the wrong one, it will give you war. Decisions are the strongest forces one earth. They control how our lives turns out in time and eternity.
Sadly, there are those who have not made a positive use of year 2021. Today they are worse than the year met them. Some are even dead. They did not make the right decisions hence having hell in their lives. God gives us light and understanding so we can make proper decisions in life.
PROPER DECISIONS ARE DECISIONS THAT ALIGNS A MAN’S LIFE WITH GOD’S WILL AND WAYS.
Proper decisions will bring the best of God to a man’s life.
One major reason He gives us His word, the Holy Spirit and even spiritual fathers is to help us make proper decisions in our walk and talk with Him. Doubtlessly God have been using these devotional to help us improve in our decision making processes. It’s important that we apply the knowledge we have received so far.
The truth remains, without a spiritual father to feed you with rich spiritual food, a divine plan to guide you daily, some natural and divine wisdom to apply in your daily decision making processes, and a courageous heart to use in facing the challenges of life squarely with the aim of defeating them under God, a year will come and go and leave you in a very bad shape.
If you do not make use of the year 2021 to improve your life, your walk and talk with God, the year will leave you in a very bad shape. You will be stepping into 2022 in sorrow and disappointment.
Am telling you this because we are beginning another six months by the end of this month.
Yes, the LORD is giving us another six months to use in making the right decisions and improving our lives. Another six months to be fed spiritually, to follow or develop a divine plan to follow if we have none, apply our hearts unto wisdom, make proper decisions, face the challenges of life courageously under His grace and do His blessed will.
God wants us to make use of the next six months to make sure the year leaves us blessed than it met us.
You see, God’s purpose for creating days, weeks, months and years must be understood. They are created to help us mark signs and seasons. They are created to help us number our days so we can apply our hearts into wisdom. That is why I said age is not a number. It is a message.
It is a message that you are older and have seen enough time to make proper decisions. You have seen enough time to stop being stupid and foolish. You have seen enough time not to marry someone younger than you by very ridiculous years. You have seen enough time to know that it is lawless to do so.
You have seen enough time to be a model of morality to those you saw the sun before..
YOU HAVE SEEN ENOUGH TIME TO APPLY YOUR HEART UNTO WISDOM.
That is why people say a fool at forty is a fool forever. Meaning you should no longer be a fool at forty. But many are still fools even at 50, 60 and 70.
If we do not make use of the days, weeks, months and years God gives us wisely, and spend them applying our hearts unto Heavenly and practical wisdom, we will lose big time. We will come to the end of our days in sorrow. The end of your days can only be as good as the quality of your wisdom.
It may interest you to be reminded again (as we have always done through this devotionals) that God does not live in time. He lives in eternity. To Him therefore, there are no natural nights, no days, no weeks, no months; no January to June or July to December.
He lives in eternity, created time as a very small piece of eternity, placed us in it and gave us wisdom on how to live in it. He does not do things according to our Calendar. He does them according to His.
He created our Calendar (natural days) and placed us within it so we can live in our Calendar looking at His calendar. That He made possible by giving us His Holy Spirit and Holy word.
Your life on earth will only be meaningful if you spend it looking at God’s calendar for it. Yes, looking at His unique calendar for your earthly life.
You must therefore understand that God’s plans for us are not in time. God’s plan for us are in eternity. They are only unfolded in time to enable us lead our lives according to His calendar for them. In other words, we are not to be governed by our own time alone but by His. Consequently, things do not leave Heaven to the earth in our own time frame. They do so in His own time frame.
Sadly, sometimes His time frame clashes with ours and since many of us do not know how to recognize or submit to His time, we end up losing whatever He may have prepared to bless our lives with. That is why the lives of so many Christian go in a cycle from year to year. That is why many are stagnated.
THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO RECOGNIZE GOD’S TIME OF VISITATION AND THINGS THAT MAKES FOR THEIR PEACE.
Sadly, instead of the preachers giving them the anointing or teaching to do so, the point them to the altars of their father’s houses and some devils as being responsible for their problems. Jesus Himself made it clear that many of us suffer and are stagnated in life because we do not know our time of visitation. In other words, we do live our earthly lives according to God’s calendar for them.
If we do not humble ourselves under the mighty hand of the LORD, lead our lives according to His calendar for them, we will not be experiencing seasonal exaltations. We will be missing divine visitations and breakthroughs. The Bible says;
“Be you humbled therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation: Casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you.” 1 Peter 5:6-7 Douay-Rheims
God’s visitation and exaltation comes in season. We are not to allow our cares to force us into carving out our own Calendars and making decisions according to our plans for our lives. That will be dangerous.
It is very important to learn how to relate successfully with this God who lives in eternity while we live in time. One of the many ways to do so is to know His time of visitation and be ready for it.
A people who do not know how to humble themselves under His mighty hand, by submitting to His LORDSHIP from time to time, will never come into God’s time of visitation for them. They will remain trapped in the perils of life.
Things can only be made beautiful in our lives in God’s time not in ours. If we cannot therefore, humbly see, sense and cease the moments created for us by His time, things will remain ugly in our lives.
A MAJOR HIGHLIGHT IN OUR DEVOTIONAL TEXT TODAY SAYS,
“I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
The word “travail” in this scripture simply means God given task. It has nothing to do with suffering or adversity. The Bible was referring to what God has assigned us to do within our own time frame. And that to me is to discover His time and align to it – align to its demands. Or in other words, respond to it!
God’s time comes with deliverances to receive, blessings to collect, instructions to obey, visions to pursue and execute, plans and purpose to make our goals, and etc. That is why His time is called “day of visitation.” It is usually full of divine moments to sense and see through with the eyes of faith, and cease swiftly.
One thing about divine moments is that when they come and we do not see, sense, and cease them, they go back to eternity living us dry. That is why many of us are still stagnated in life.
Don’t forget, until things leave Heaven to the earth of our lives, we will never go forward in life. And the time they do so is called God’s time not our time. That is why they say, God’s time is the best. No one has ever said our time is the best.
That brings us to the second truth we can glean from our devotional text. It says
“He hath made everything beautiful in his time:”
Why is God’s time so powerful? It is powerful because that is the only time He moves to make things beautiful! If you wait for Him in your own time you will never see Him.
For instance, many are still single today because they do not understand this mystery. They thought it was God’s time to get married when they met a particular man or woman and started a relationship with them. Eventually things turned out sour leaving them still single – even worse than they were before the men or women came.
THE BIBLE SPOKE ABOUT AN EVIL TIME. IT SAYS,
“For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, Like birds caught in a snare, So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.” Ecclesiastes 9:12 NKJV
What is an evil time? There are two basic times in scriptures; God’s time and our time. In God’s time, He makes things beautiful, but in our time He does not. The Bible calls God’s time “beautiful” and calls every other time “evil.”
An evil time therefore, is a time that is not God’s. It could be good and splendid – a time we consider ideal to do this or that, but it is not God’s time. It is an evil time.
For instance, the single lady or young man who thought it was time to get married but ended up becoming a single mother or single father, missed God’s time. He took a decision in an evil time and got the consequences.
Evil times are times Satan uses to ensnare us and to deposit some Ishmael miracles into our lives.
All the scars in my life are products of things I did in an evil time. This is not just true of me. It is true of you also. If you look at your life you will see scars and even fresh wounds that are products of decisions take in an evil time.
Our pains in life are usually products of the things we did in an evil time. No one can happily go through this world doing things in an evil time. That was what Jesus knew, hence always waiting for divine timing for every action to be taken. You will always hear Him saying “My Time has not come.”
If Jesus had a time to do whatever He did, and His Spirit is living in us, who told you we can succeed leading our lives contrary. We must lead our lives knowing when our time to do this or that has not come. We must know when our time for marriage has not come, our time for ministry has not come, our time for doing this business or that one has not come.
We must know when the time to leave a particular church has come. We must know when the time to step into fresh spiritual horizons has come.
WE MUST LEAD OUR LIVES DOING THINGS IN THEIR TIMES AND SEASONS.
The Book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells us about the two basic types of timings on the face of the earth.
It tells us that there is a set of time for sowing and a set for reaping. If you sow when you ought to reap, or reap when you ought to sow, your financial life will remain ugly.
The word sow means invest. It does not mean to give money to a preacher.
That chapter also tells us of a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
Yes there is a time to terminate a relationship and a time not to. If you terminate a relationship when it’s not yet time to do do, you may live an accursed life on earth. If you also starts a relationship when you ought not to, you may end up accursed in life.
There is also a season to socialize and a season not to socialize. If you socialize when you ought not to socialize you will plunge yourself into things that even prayer may not save you.
Knowing God’s timing for things is the best way to lead a Christian life in an evil infested world!
Sadly, Satan has a way of making an evil time look beautiful and attractive to us, consequently impregnating us with the urge to move into things thinking it’s God’s timing. The attack is basically to make us miss the blessing. But I trust God has made someone wiser this morning.
Begin to re-structure your life as you prepare to travel through the next six months (July to December). Get yourself ready for 2022. Apply your heart unto this wisdom.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
“For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44 NKJV