TODAY’S DEVOTION (Wednesday 27th October 2021)
“My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise. Awake, my glory! Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn.” Psalm 57:7-8 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 300TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS.
Our God has indeed been faithful. Keeping us for 300 days of the year. With just 65 days to go, according to the Gregorian calendar, we owe Him all gratitude. Indeed, if not the LORD who has been on our side, men would have swallowed us alive. Blessed be the name of the LORD who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
As we have always maintained on this platform of grace and truth, our whole duty as men is to fear God and depart from evil. Today we will be looking at truths along the same line, building on what the LORD shared with us yesterday.
One of the major parts of our lives that God usually focus on whenever He is dealing with us, is our hearts.
When Christ comes into our lives, He does not come into our heads but our hearts. It is His Holy Spirit that sits in us to animates our minds (or heads) with His Holy Word, so that we can align with the LORD and walk with Him. That was why in the Day of Pentecost, tongues of fire appeared on the Head of the disciples not on their chest.
God will not ask you for your head in His first dealing with you. He will ask you for your heart. The reason is obvious. The heart is the seat of moral life.
The heart in scriptures represents our spirits, not the blood pumping organ in our chest. Though there are instances in scriptures where the heart refers directly to the blood pumping organ in our chest, the heart as the spirit of man, is the gate between the visible and invisible world.
If a man’s life will be better, it will depend on the realm his heart is connected to. In other words, the realm his spirit is outsourcing life from. That is why scriptures says we should guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF KEEPING OUR HEARTS WITH ALL DILIGENCE LIES ON US NOT GOD.
We are to use our will to do it using His amazing grace in our lives. It is one of the ways we work our salvation with fear and trembling. We are to use God’s grace and truth available to us, to set our hearts right in other to outsource things from the right realm – God’s glorious realm.
Sadly, so many are outsourcing things from the realm of not just godless people, but the realm of darkness itself. Today it has become very easy to do that through the social media. That is why hearts have become darkened, wicked, insensitive, more godless, sexually immoral, selfish, cruel, un-forgiving, malicious, antagonistic and lawless.
A song writer once wrote saying; “There are days I wake up feeling on top of the world. And there are days I wake up feeling the world is on top of me.” My response to this song has always been, “It depends on which realm our heart opened to before we slept”
If you do not treat your heart as a gate of the invisible realm (either good or bad), you will get your life jammed with things you cannot handle by being careless with the things you allow into your heart.
Everyone who has ever related with God was made to tune his or her heart to the realm of God, by spending time with His word day and night connecting their hearts or spirits to the realm of God – the right realm. That was what made them men and women of exploits in their days.
Exploits are only possible when you see the invisible and hear the inaudible from the realm of GOD, using your spiritual senses or the ability of the heart to perceive things in the invisible realm.
You sharpen your heart or spirit, to be able to do that if you develop the habit of spending quality time with God and His word day and night. Joshua comes to mind here. God spoke to him saying;
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Joshua 1:8-9 NKJV
Good success is God’s kind of success. It is not success by the definition of this world. It is success that is a by-product of exploits that are only possible when the heart or spirit is pure and animated enough to outsource things from the realm of GOD.
We must understand that the words we allow into our hearts determine if our hearts will be pure enough to outsource things from God’s realm.
ONE OF THE GREATEST KINGDOM MEN WHO EVER LIVED IN OUR CHURCH AGE WAS SMITH WIGGLES-WORTH.
Stories have it that he never read any other book in HIS Christian life apart from the Bible. He never read News Papers, or exposed his heart to any information apart from the Bible. The result was amazing. He got his heart connected to the right realm (the realm of God) and led a very powerful Christian life and ministry.
What trailed his life is still unbelievable in some quarters. Though some have taken some of the things he did, like how he served himself the holy communion, to desecrate the sanctity of the Holy Communion, he remains a man to be studied with a mind that have been matured by apostolic truths.
A servant of God, I know very well, once shared a story about this great man of God – a story one of his close friends who was with Smith Wigglesworth shared with him.
He said Smith Wigglesworth was invited to attend a funeral service of a particular man. While the body of the dead man was laid in a little space within the place for viewing, people sat in the main hall participating in the funeral service. The body was alone at that place and there was a door leading to where it was laid for viewing.
Then Smith Wigglesworth walked in and went straight to where the corpse was lying. No one was with him and none followed him behind. He went and took the corpse and placed it on the wall and commanded it to walk. But it fell! He did it again and it fell. He did it the third time screaming in righteous anger.
This time the dead man refused to remain in the land of the dead. He came back to life and walked. Then the man of God held him hand by hand and walked with him out of the place to the main hall where his funeral was going one.
The result was amazing!
EVERYONE IN THE MAIN HALL RAN AWAY LEAVING SMITH WITH THE MAN.
They would later return to celebrate the power of God. The lesson here is, if our hearts are sold out to God’s word, it will bring us to a glory realm where we will be doing amazing things that will snatch the lost world from the spirit of hell and bring them to Christ.
That is what it means to be a Christian.
Yes, it involves being sold out to the word until you come to the realm of becoming a duplicate of GOD on the face of the earth, in words and in deeds. That is the reason for being saved. The Bible says,
“And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16:17-18 NKJV
God want to perform great wonders through us. He wants to do amazing acts by our hands. The acts are wonders of His word. But until our hearts follow His word without compromise, the wonders will not be performed in and through us.
Jesus Himself said, anyone that the word of God comes into (especially in the frequency it came into Smith Wigglesworth), will become a small God on the face of the earth – He will become a true delegated authority of God on earth, bringing His kingdom down as written in Heaven.
Time to reject a low level and powerless Christianity and accept the higher height of faith God has set for us. Yes, there could be season of low moments in the life of a Child of God, because we still live in an imperfect world. But what we do when such moments come is what really expresses if we have strength in God or not.
The Bible says;
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
Deliver those who are drawn away to death, and those who totter to the slaughter, hold them back [from their doom].
If you [profess ignorance and] say, Behold, we did not know this, does not He who weighs and ponders the heart perceive and consider it? And He Who guards your life, does not He know it? And shall not He render to [you and] every man according to his works? Proverbs 24:10-12 AMP
EACH TIME I READ THIS SCRIPTURE I SEE THE EXPECTATION OF GOD FOR OUR LIVES.
God does not want our low moments to consume us. He said if they do so, it’s because our strength is small. It is not because what we may be dealing with is bigger than us. It is because our strength is small.
In this scripture (proverbs 24:10-12), you find the Bible telling us what GOD expects us to spend our days doing, irrespective of what we may be going through. He expects us to spend our days delivering those who are drawn to death and helping those tottering to the slaughter no matter what we may be going through.
God expects us to be selfless in all season and selfish in none. That is the secret of a blessed life by God’s definition.
Meaning, no low moment should stop us from fulfilling His assignment for our lives. We should just keep our heart steadfast towards Him, by burying it in His word (which is Him), and we will always find the energy to defeat our low moments, and respond to His will, spending our days to deliver those drawn to death or the lives that are tottering to the slaughter.
This means we must develop the righteous habit of spending appointed days and nights, stocking pilling our hearts with God’s Rhema word. Only then will we have the reserved energy to handle the lows of life. It is in time of peace that we prepare for war, not in time of war.
I have come to realize that if we put the words of a strong God in our weak hearts in time of peace, we will always have a reservoir of power within our hearts to carry on in life in time of war.
The reservoir of power that Smith Wigglesworth had within him was built from the appointed hours, days, weeks, months and years he spent putting the words of an infinite God in his finite heart. That was why he saw life where others saw death, healing where others saw sickness, light where others saw darkness and etc.
He was an unusual man because he spent his days feeding his spirit with the words of an unusual God.
THE WORD TOOK HIM OFF THE PLANE OF HUMAN FEELINGS TO THE PLANE OF SUPERNATURAL FAITH.
As we bring this devotional to a close, permit me to share something on feelings. The reason is simple – Satan has a way of manipulating our feelings to bring us to low moments. It’s therefore important that we answer some big questions on feelings.
To start with, what do you do when you wake up feeling down, dejected, disappointed, discouraged and completely worn out about life? What do you do when you wake up not even feeling to sing to the LORD, like you have always done, or have a word of prayer, maybe because the prayers you may have prayed have not been answered?
What do you do when feelings become your prison? The answer is simple; turn to the “Spirit” not your “feelings.”
We all pass through these things.
There are days I wake up not even sensing God at all, or feeling born again until I lift up my heart to God like David did in our devotional text saying; “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise. Awake, my glory! Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn.”
The LORD has taught me to always learn to turn to His word and Spirit, and drive myself to go beyond my feelings each time I feel that way.
Honestly, God does not relate with us based on our feelings. He relates with us based on His word in our hearts and plans for our lives. That is why it is important that we get our hearts stock piled with His Rhema word.
As we can see in our devotional scripture today, David must have woken up that morning feeling flat. But he knew that what he felt was not a pointer to what Heaven thought about him. Feelings dwell in the realm of the soul, not the realm of the spirit or heart.
When you feel flat, sense and stand on what is in your spirit or heart, not what is in your feel. Break the prison doors and come out.
Here is one thing we can learn from David; what we feel in an immediate present is not a pointer to what God feels about us. We must understand that feelings are not permanent but God’s plans for our lives are permanent.
That is why it is foolish to take decisions based on feelings.
Talking about taking decisions based on what we feel, here is what you should not forget, when we take decisions based on feelings, especially sexual feelings, the conditions will change, and the feelings will leave us. When the feelings leave us, the consequence of our actions will remain – sometimes for a life time.
Just check the lives of those who got pregnant out of wedlock, or those who got into fatal sexual relationships because they wanted to satisfy a sexual feeling; you will see the truth of this word speaking.
Also check out the lives of those who married based on feelings and see for yourself what feelings do to a people.
Broken lives and dashed hopes are everywhere today because feelings are taking the better part of people’s reasoning. There is so much to share on this but this is just a devotional. May the LORD use the little that have been shared to speak to us further on these things. Amen!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU.
His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears; Isaiah 11:3 NKJV