TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 28TH AUGUST 2022)
“Therefore, he sent horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city.
And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?”
So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, “Strike this people, I pray, with blindness.” And He struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha. 2 Kings 6:14-18 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 240TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
God has been our help and refuge. It is His mercies that has kept us from being messed up. That is why a life without Christ is heading for the rocks.
Until we are founded on the rock of ages, the rocks of life will do us much harm.
When the rock of ages becomes your Rock, He will not allow you to be given over to the will of your enemies. He will not let the scepter of the wicked to be laid upon you.
Yes, His light will always shine upon your mind to help you walk through darkness. Even those who lived before the Cross experienced that. The Bible spoke to us about Job. The word says;
Job further continued his discourse, and said:
“Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God watched over me; When His lamp shone upon my head, And when by His light I walked through darkness;
Just as I was in the days of my prime, When the friendly counsel of God was over my tent;” Job 29:1-4 NKJV
If you have not read scriptures like these and sought to be like these men in terms of righteous desires, then you should do that today. One of the best gifts we can enjoy in our walk with the LORD is His friendly counsel. Job in his days of trial remembered how it guided him through darkness and yearned for it again.
If we do not have the friendly counsel of GOD upon our Tabernacle, we will not be able to navigate through the trouble waters of this world. We all need to be guided from the throne room of God to live successfully in a world that is constantly under the sway of the wicked one.
It is through such counsels we make war.
That is why if God be your counselor, you will never fail in life. He counseled men like David all their lives, and they fought wars without a scar. There was no time that David nursed an injury from a battle field. God so protected him that non could stand against him in battle.
BUT ALL THAT WAS ACHIEVED THROUGH THE FRIENDLY COUNSEL OF GOD.
It is the friendly counsel of God that brings us under the divine dominion to vanquish our enemies in any confrontation. It has a way of putting God ahead of us and making Him break out against your enemies like a breakthrough of water.
Oh. How much many need that today. David experienced that in Bible days. The Bible says;
“Now when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to search for David. And David heard of it and went down to the stronghold.
The Philistines also went and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim.
So David inquired of the LORD, saying, “Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand?” And the LORD said to David, “Go up, for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into your hand.”
So David went to Baal Perazim, and David defeated them there; and he said, “The LORD has broken through my enemies before me, like a breakthrough of water.” Therefore, he called the name of that place Baal Perazim.
And they left their images there, and David and his men carried them away.” 2 Samuel 5:17-21 NKJV
The victory David got in this scriptural passage did not come through prayer and fasting, as good as that is. It came through the friendly counsel of God that he sought. Your life will become easy and your troubles few if you have the friendly counsel of God in your tabernacle.
It will guide you in victory and in all you do in life.
It will show you things that are yet to happen and lead you on how to deal with them. The friendly counsel of God is one of the assets of the believer that many do not have. You will never become anything significant in life without the friendly counsel of the LORD. Honestly, you will not.
Greatness in GOD’s kingdom is born by either a word of direction from the LORD or words of direction form the LORD.
THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE FRIENDLY COUNSEL OF THE LORD AN ASSET TO THE BELIEVER.
People who are constantly and genuine guided by the LORD will get things done that no one can do. They will brighten up their lives and move form glory to glory despite the forces that may be against them. And all that comes through the friendly counsel of the LORD.
The Bible says;
“For those blessed by Him shall inherit the earth, but those cursed by Him shall be cut off.
The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, and He delights in his way.
Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the LORD upholds him with His hand.” Psalm 37:22 -24 NKJV
Those blessed by the LORD are those who have given their lives to Christ. You are blessed if you are saved and cursed eternally if you are NOT saved because the Bible says the curse of the LORD is in the life of the wicked or the unsaved. So, if you are saved, you are blessed.
Now, as one who is saved and blessed, your steps are to be ordered by the LORD. In other words, you are designed to succeed only by taking decisions through the friendly counsel of God.
That is why you find blessed people not taking decisions in their flesh. Because if they do, what they are made up of will not be unleashed. They will end up living accursed lives.
It is the friendly counsel of the LORD that helps blessed people to unleash what they are made up of on earth. In other words, it helps them to manifest the blessings of the LORD in their lives.
So if you are blessed of the LORD, please do not live your life like the rest of the world. Be guided by the friendly counsel of the LORD else you will ruin God’s plans for your life.
The necessity of having our steps, as believers, order by the LORD is one of the many reasons for spiritual fathering. That brings us to our 31-Day journey of faith with the Cry of the Spirit on fathering.
Obviously, many have replaced the voice of the Holy Spirit in their lives with the voice of their so-called spiritual fathers. In fact, I have heard misguided Christians who shamefully said the voice of their spiritual father is the voice of God to them.
YOU FIND THEM CONSULTING THEM INSTEAD OF CONSULTING GOD. BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, THEY ARE RUINED.
A successful spiritual father will be one whose life and ministry is built around the Tree of life. He will bring you to the place of being led with the friendly counsel of the LORD. He will never be God’s voice in your life. He knows the consequences too well to be. He will be a prophetic aid for hearing God’s voice for your life.
Now, the friendly counsel of the LORD does not come to us by the hearing of our spiritual ears only. It sometimes comes to us by what we see in the Spirit.
Our devotional text tells how what the passion of a true spiritual father will be. It will not be for us to be seeing through His eyes. It will be that God may open our own eyes so that we can see through the eyes of the LORD like He is seeing. I hope you understand me.
The text says;
“Therefore, he sent horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city.
And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?”
So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, “Strike this people, I pray, with blindness.” And He struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha. 2 Kings 6:14-18 NKJV
This is a story of divine protection. Elisha had been warning the King of Israel by the word of the LORD of the plots of the Syrian king against him, and that had been helping him to escape death.
IN OTHER WORDS, ELISHA HAD BEEN FRUSTRATING THE PLANS OF THE SYRIAN KING AGAINST THE KING OF ISRAEL THROUGH PROPHETIC INTELLIGENCE.
And that got the King of Syria furious. Though he thought he had someone betraying him to the king of Israel, he did not know that Elisha through prophetic intelligence could hear what the he say even in his bedroom.
You can see the blessing of the friendly counsel of God in the life of Elisha.
Then the king sent soldier to arrest the man of God. They arrived at his city of residence early in the morning. Obviously, the place was not fenced. But before they came, God had surrounded His servant with chariots of Fire and horses of fire from Heaven.
However, the servant of God’s servant, Elisha, who was blind to the prophetic reality, and became afraid when he saw the army that the king of Syria sent against them. That was where the man of God showed us what a spiritual father should do to sons; he asked the LORD to open the eyes of his servant so the he also can see what surrounded them.
That is why people who are fathered by spiritual fathers whose lives are built around the Tree of life do not walk in spiritual blindness.
They can see into God’s plans and purposes for their lives. They do not just see visions and revelations of the LORD, they hear the inaudible and do the impossible. The best part is they cannot be deceived by any one.
This Elisha Pattern of spiritual fathering is one thing we need today. We do not need to depend on the prophetic powers of our spiritual fathers but on that of the LORD Himself. And that can only happen if we have fathers who will do what Elijah did to his son in the ministry.
Again, the Bible says;
And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
May the LORD give us spiritual fathers who will impart us to hear from the LORD ourselves.
You can see prophetic independence here. We can not find Elisha manipulating the young man to listen to him as the voice of the LORD of his life. He just prayed for him to see what he is seeing. That is what a True spiritual father will do.
I believe the message of today has been passed. May the LORD use it to build us up and keep giving us an inheritance among they that are sanctified in Christ. Amen!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,” Ephesians 4:11-14 NKJV