TODAY’S DEVOTION (FRIDAY 24TH JUNE 2022)
“Of Naphtali he said: O Naphtali, satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord, possess the Sea [of Galilee] and [its warm, sunny climate like] the south.
Of Asher he said: Blessed above sons is Asher; let him be acceptable to his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil.
Your castles and strongholds shall have bars of iron and bronze, and as your day, so shall your strength, your rest and security, be.
There is none like God, O Jeshurun [Israel], Who rides through the heavens to your help and in His majestic glory through the skies.
The eternal God is your refuge and dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He drove the enemy before you and thrust them out, saying, Destroy! Deuteronomy 33:23-27 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 175TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
Our GOD is worthy to be praised! He has given us another day to be alive. Another day in His appointed days for our lives; another day to serve our generation according to His will.
Blessed be His Holy Name!
Today is the 24th day of our 30-day journey of faith with the Cry of the Spirit in fear. God has spoken to us and further established that unholy and unrighteous fear is not one of the things He has given us.
He has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of sound mind. Fear is not one of God’s gifts to man because such fear will paralyze His people and put Satan’s men on the front burner.
We started the last days of this journey looking at types of fear that God welcomes and even create in His kingdom. The first is the fear of God. We have been looking at the fear of God since then. The Bible says it is clean and righteous all together. When you have it, the fear of man will disappear.
Talking about the fear of man, the Bible say it brings a snare.
The word snare is a trap. If you live in fear of what man can do to you or any fear inflicted upon you by a bad parent, an incident, an uncle, aunt, a sibling or teacher, you will spend your days in a trap. You will be crippled in life. That is why when you come into the real presence of God, the fear of man disappears.
You find the fear of man in marriages, families, places of work, or interpersonal relationships where manipulation is present. The manipulator has a way of using threats or any other thing to bring the other into the snare (the fear of man). He or she exacts control over the other and put him or her in a submission box. That was who Jezebel was to Ahab.
She successfully put her husband entire household, and the nation of Israel under fear for her through her witchcraft and control.
There are mothers, wives of political leaders and pastor’s wives who operate like that. I once worked with a preacher who was very powerful in words and deeds but live like a chicken at home because of the control of his wife over him. He had no fear for any demon on earth but he fears his wife like a plague.
SADLY, SHE ENJOYED IT UNTIL HIS MINISTRY WAS DESTROYED.
The fear of man is also inflicted on you when the person knows a secret about you that you would not want anyone to hear. There are people who hold very damning secrets about the lives of others that if they say them the people will be ruined.
So, they use that to put their victim under control. They threaten and put them in fear. So many are in this kind of a snare.
Sometime some of us preachers do the nonsense to our members, which is very bad! We forget that God will judge us severely. In fact, most of us have made the Church a fear inflicting zone of the earth, which ought not to be at all. We will come to that.
God has a way of judging us! Anyone who use what he knows about the other to control the person will pay dearly for it because God hates witchcraft. Yes, it is a form of witchcraft to use what you know about someone to manipulate and control the person with fear.
There are wives who use what they know about their husbands to manipulate and control them with fear and there are husbands who does the same to their wives. Most times women do that to their husbands to extract love from them, and men do that to their wives to extract submission from them.
There are also leaders who do that to those they lead to extract submission from them. But in God’s plans submission should naturally flow out of us in a healthy way. It should not be a product of manipulation and fear. It should be a child of love for the person who is to submit to you.
The fear of man is a fear type that is not welcome in God’s kingdom.
We are to respect and honor men but not to fear them. It is just that some call honor and respect for others fear for them. I have heard the rebellious say such things. It is not fear for man when I bow or kneel to greet the person I honor and respect. Especially if he or she is my parent or one who has impacted my life deeply.
NOW, THERE IS THIS OTHER FEAR TYPE THAT YOU FIND IN SO MANY CHURCH SYSTEMS.
I grew up first in a Catholic Church system, then we moved to the Pentecostal church system. In all the systems they have some forms of religious fear taken and treated as fear for God.
The clergy inflict fear into the heart of the laity, making us tremble before them instead of before God. The fear makes us their subjects instead of their sons and daughters in faith.
Religious fear is perpetuated by certain teachings in the Church. Some of the teachings are mutilated teachings on fathering. That is why religious fear and charismatic witchcraft thrives in most churches where people call their pastors “papa” or “spiritual father.”
While God established the spiritual fathering system to build kingdom sons, in so many churches the system have been abused and turned to a facility for breeding charismatic witchcraft and religious fear.
But wherever a healthy spiritual parenting system operates, you find people walking in the fear of God, worshiping Him alone and honoring their spiritual parents without a trace of religious fear or Charismatic witchcraft.
I have also seen churches where preachers are not treated as spiritual fathers putting people in religious fear. So, its not just the spiritual father teaching that breeds this fear type but other forms of teachings and practices.
It is very common to find churches and other religious entities using the spiritual and sometimes the creeds that binds them together to rule their followers with fear. This is not the will of GOD!
That is why you find out that whenever revival break out, this fear type disappears.
You see those who were once held down by it coming out to speak boldly against the evil deeds of those who once held them down with fear. You see the once fear-stricken people becoming faith filled and looking at those they once dread in the face (to their amazement) and saying, “you are wrong!”
You see people breaking free from religious fear and realizing that those they once held in dread are really dust before God and not deities as they made them think.
So many take religious fear as fear for GOD.
Religious fear is not a fear for God! A real fear for God will translate into righteous and holy living. But the fear we have in the Church system is not.
IT IS RATHER TRANSLATING INTO HERO WORSHIP; WORSHIP FOR THE CLERGY.
What has plagued many in what we know as Church today is religious fear. You find even giving in the church done through the channel of fear. For instance Many pay tithes because of the fear for devourers or curses as drummed into their ears by their pastors.
God designed giving to be an expression of love for Him but we have been made to be giving out of fear of what might happen if we do not give.
Under the law, tithing was given in of fear but under grace we tithe out of revelation and out of our personal relationship with GOD. In fact, all forms of giving under grace are expressions of love and worship to GOD.
So, tithing is our way of saying to the LORD “I worship and love you.” When you tithe, You are using the act to tell the LORD, “I love you and want to bear the financial responsibility of spreading your work with my tithes.” That is why it is heretic to say if one does not tithe, he will not make Heaven.
Understanding that anything you do out of religious fear might bring you under spiritual attacks because God has not given us the spirit of fear. That is why you see so many believers under spiritual attacks today.
Any church where the spirit of fear is given to people, a demon is in charge there. And it will be attacking those who worship there from time to time. Sadly, their pastors will be blaming their father’s houses or any other factor as responsible.
The blessing of walking in the fear of the LORD will never manifest in any church where fear for man or religious fear is inflicted on people. That is why they will be breaking curses from people’s lives from time to time.
Child of God, you must understand that if you are walking in anything you call fear of God, you will never find the blessings of “walking in the fear of the LORD” manifesting in your life if it is not the fear of God.
OUR DEVOTIONAL TEXT SAYS;
“Of Naphtali he said: O Naphtali, satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord, possess the Sea [of Galilee] and [its warm, sunny climate like] the south.
Of Asher he said: Blessed above sons is Asher; let him be acceptable to his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil.
Your castles and strongholds shall have bars of iron and bronze, and as your day, so shall your strength, your rest and security, be.
There is none like God, O Jeshurun [Israel], Who rides through the heavens to your help and in His majestic glory through the skies.
The eternal God is your refuge and dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He drove the enemy before you and thrust them out, saying, Destroy! Deuteronomy 33:23-27 AMPC
This scripture contains some of the blessings that will manifest in our lives if we walk in the fear of God. From being satisfied with favor, to dipping our feet in oil (code for economic might not the witchcraft practice of dipping people’s feet in a bowl of olive oil), to having GOD as our refuge and watching Him thrust down our enemies before you, saying destroy, the list can be endless if we add other scriptures to it.
Sadly, you do not see these manifestations in so many lives because most of us are not walking in the fear of the LORD. We walk in fear for papa, Bishop, apostle and etc. not fear for GOD.
Moses spoke the blessings into the lives of the sons of Jacob, who later became the tribes of Israel to show us what to expect in our walk and talk with GOD once we are located in our spiritual tribes, walking in the fear of the LORD. It gave us a revelation of what God will be speaking into our lives when the need arises.
I believe the LORD has spoken to us this morning. It is important that you deliver yourself from any church system that controls you with fear right away.
Do not wait to hear from GOD. There are things you need to hear from GOD before you make a move, running away from the snare of religious fear or the fear of man is not one of them.
In the Church today you find so many of us who have given our pledge of loyalty to wrong spiritual leadership. You find many who have given their pledge of loyalty to leaders who manipulate them with fear and take them back to the law with their practices and money-making spirits.
You find many of us preachers using your loyalty to us to ruin your lives with all kinds of manipulations in the name of deliverance and fear of God.
You must learn to withdraw your pledge from us and fight for your liberty. God is not involved in your stay in a place where fear is used to keep people under submission and charismatic witchcraft is practiced. Do not allow anyone to use God to keep you in a snare you are calling church.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“My son, if you have become security for your neighbor, if you have given your pledge for a stranger or another,
You are snared with the words of your lips, you are caught by the speech of your mouth.
Do this now [at once and earnestly], my son, and deliver yourself when you have put yourself into the power of your neighbor; go, bestir and humble yourself, and beg your neighbor [to pay his debt and thereby release you].
Give not [unnecessary] sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids;
Deliver yourself, as a roe or gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.” Proverbs 6:1-5 AMPC