TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 20TH JUNE 2022)
“O LORD, you know; Remember me and visit me, and take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation.” Jeremiah 15:15-17 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 171ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
The LORD is worthy to be praised for another day to be alive and well. Our God is very great. He is the only one who cloth Himself with honor and majesty. He covers Himself with light as with a garment. He stretched out the heavens like a curtain.
We worship Him this morning and declare that He alone is God and there is no one beside Him. No bishop, archbishop, prophet or any other deity in Church or outside the Church can come close to even the least of His children. He is greater than the greatest.
He lays the bean of the upper chambers of the waters and makes the clouds his chariot. That is why when we are on airplanes seated or sleeping as they fly through the clouds, we do not fear what may Happen because the plane is flying right through God’s chariots – the clouds.
God rids besides His Children while they are up there in the skies on the plane to protect and watch over them. That is why there have been divine interventions for many of His own in air incidents that would have turned out very fatal.
I remember the story of the God’s servant Benson Idahosa of blessed memory!
We were told that he was flying from Lagos to Benin in Nigeria when his plane lost contact with the radar and started going towards the sea without the pilot realizing it.
When the announcement of the development that would have turned fatal was made, the man of God stood and spoke in tongues for minutes and said a strong worded faith filled prayer and everything was restored to normal.
By the time the pilot could reach the radar again after the miracle had happened, it was discovered that the plane was already in Port Harcourt Nigeria, and few minutes into the Atlantic Ocean.
God who makes the clouds His chariot intervened because He was right there besides them. That brings us to the cry of the Spirit for the month – neutralizing fear. What made this man of God un afraid was revelation knowledge of what His God can do. The story has it that all people on board were stricken with fear and screaming for help except him.
HE HAD TO QUIET EVERYONE AND TAKE CHARGE OF THE SITUATION UNDER GOD BEFORE CALM WAS RESTORED.
Our LORD and savior said;
“It is the Spirit Who gives life [He is the Life-giver]; the flesh conveys no benefit whatever [there is no profit in it]. The words (truths) that I have been speaking to you are spirit and life.” John 6:63 AMPC
Bible truths inspired by the LORD in the midst of incidents like that are gateways into the supernatural realm of God. They are Heaven’s clearance to the earth to come into things supernatural. That was what happened that day in the aircraft incident. Fear is killed by living truths that comes to us at an immediate present as spirit and life.
To walk in faith instead of fear in the midst of any situation, we need our spirits red hot for God so that His Revelation word can come to us right there for interventions to take place.
Revelation words that comes to us that way can be very powerful. They have capacity to bring us into realms where we bring the arm of the LORD down on situations around.
You see, in the midst of any adversity, event or fatal incident, the first things that comes to us naturally is fear. If it remains that way, we are doomed. We will not be able to come to realm of divine intervention. That is why you see people dying in mishap despite screaming the name of Jesus.
The Bible says “and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.,” (Joel 2:32 NKJV). But why is it that not all who are calling His name are being saved when face to face with adverse situations?
You see it is not just about the name on our lips, and sometimes in our hearts, but about the platform we stand to call His name. It is the platform that determine what happens; the spiritual plan we operate from at that time of an incident.
There is the spiritual plane of fear and there is the spiritual plane of faith. Both are created by the words we hear, the things we see, and what we feel in our human spirits in the midst of our situations.
You see, you can call on the name of the LORD and you can shout on the name of the LORD. But the two are not the same. They do not come from similar planes of the spirit.
SOMETIMES YOU CALL UPON HIS NAME WITHOUT SAYING A WORD. BUT SHOUTING UPON HIS NAME IS USUALLY LOUD.
Calling upon the name of the LORD only happens when we are in the spiritual plane of faith, shouting His name happens when we are in the spiritual plane of fear.
We shout His name in fear and call upon His name in faith. One brings a terrible result the other bring a favorable result.
The Bible says whosoever shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be saved, not whosoever shall shout upon the name of the LORD in fear. So, we can only call upon the name of the LORD and see results when faith comes in; until faith comes in, whatever we may be doing with His name on our lips is just a shout and will yield no result.
You see, fear in the midst of an attack or an unwanted situation opens doors to doom. But Faith opens doors to God to come in and help. And the faith that open doors to GOD to come in and help comes from the fountain of Bible Truths that we have eaten and absorbed in our human spirits long before the incident. That is why being a word eater is very important.
Our devotional text says
“O LORD, you know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation.” Jeremiah 15:15-17 NKJV
These were the words of Jeremiah. You can tell from them what He was going through.
Sometimes when I read the words of Jeremiah, I see what that man of GOD went through trying to deal with the spiritual deception and falsehood of his day. You find out that Paul the apostle went through similar things and some of other apostles also for being used of the LORD to deal with the same devils that appeared in their day to steal the souls of men.
I HAVE TO REALIZE THAT IN MINISTRY TODAY, IT IS EASIER TO BE A SOLOMON THAN TO BE A JEREMIAH.
Though being a Solomon will end you in vanity and there are chances that you will end up bringing forth for trouble and even loosing your soul; but in the church we have today, it is easier to be a Solomon than to be a Jeremiah.
That is why you see most preachers prefer being Solomon, with many side chicks and a lot of money to spend on them. No one will accuse you of destroying the body of Christ while you are indeed the one destroying it.
Yes, as a Solomon, you will find women loving you and men serving you. You will be esteemed as a great man of God and even pray in National prayer breakfast and in government circles. Great people will be coming from far and wide to see you with gifts. But he’ll will be your home if you end that way!
Jeremiah did not get the kind of treatment Solomon got from people. The reason lied in what the LORD called and equipped him to deal with.
Jeremiah’s Kingdom assignment included prophesying against Israel (the Church in the wilderness) and her priest and prophets. And perverted Church people do not like that. They prefer prophecies against their enemies not the enemies of the cross.
Church People do not like men and women God raised to prophecy against the backslidden Church. They will antagonize them saying they are attacking other ‘men of GOD.’ That is why you find Jeremiah passing through so much persecution; not from the pagan world but the backslidden Israel in his days.
Men and women of Israel who gave their hearts to Baal worship made the earth too hot for Jeremiah, accusing him of attacking the servants of God and His word. But when Nebuchadnezzar met him, he honored him. Another gentile nation would later take care of him at a particular time.
The church today has become worldly and the world Churchy.
When the world become churchy and the church worldly, the Church will be persecuting and destroying those the LORD raised to confront them of their evil but the world and the few believers who are intimate with Christ will be serving them with great honor and treating them as men and women of God.
So, in our devotional text, you find the man of God going through what anyone with similar kingdom assignment will go through. You find him also presenting his case to the courts of Heaven and God responding in subsequent verses.
WE DID NOT CAPTURE HIS RESPONSE IN OUR DEVOTIONAL TEXT BECAUSE THAT IS NOT OUR FOCUS FOR THE DAY.
One key verse you find in Jeremiah’s word to the LORD in our devotional text said “ Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.”
Jeremiah was able to withstand all he went through without fearing those who were against him because he was a word eater. Our enemies and the persecutions we face can only eat us if we do not eat the word.
In other words, you will be eaten and paralyzed by persecutions, adverse situations and fatal incidents if you are not a word eater.
Word eaters do not shout on the name of the LORD when face to face with challenges of life. They call upon His name. The word they have eaten will resurface in their spirits in the day of adversity by the power of the Holy Spirit and give them the boldness to stand in the face of anything that may come their way.
When the word they have eaten resurfaces, it will bring them to the arena of faith in the realm of the Spirit, opening the door for God to step into their situations.
I believe the LORD has spoken to us this morning. Time for response.
This is a call to walk in faith and boldness. It is a call to be a word eater. It is a call to plant yourself in ministries that feed people with the true word, not the ones that use the Bible to collect money from desperate and gullible people through the practice of charismatic witchcraft.
This is not time to be a lazy Christian who just collect prophecies and believe in anything the preacher says and claim to be from GOD. This is time to have a personal closet where you and God meet daily to get His word planted in your spirit, with a preacher who will help you improve and keep your personal relationship with God alive on daily bases over you for spiritual oversight.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.” Acts 17:10-12 NKJV