TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 1ST JANUARY 2023)
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:21-24 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 1ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS!
It pleases the Father (Source) of our LORD Jesus Christ, and the whole council of Heaven that you and I be alive to see the first day of the year 2023, according to the Gregorian calendar. Glory be to GOD that we finally made it.
Not everyone who will see or hear that you made it to this year will be happy about it, but do not worry. Just rejoice in the LORD.
Yes, they will not be happy because they prophesied so many things to the contrary, gossiped and spread so many unpalatable things about you. Some would have ended your life, but GOD’s eternal decision was superior, that was why you made it to the new year. To make matters worse for them, the LORD has declared it your year of Signs and Wonders.
What more can we say, other than Welcome to 2023! Celebrate Jesus because it will be one of your best years on earth!
The Bible says;
“If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,” Let Israel now say— “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us,
Then they would have swallowed us alive, when their wrath was kindled against us;
Then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul; Then the swollen waters Would have gone over our soul.”
Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. Psalm 124:1-6 NKJV
We join the Psalmist to say,
“Blessed be the LORD, who did not give us as prey to the wishes, prayers, prophecies, gossips, conspiracies, betrayals, evil reports, slander, lies, deception, evil dreams, visions, expectations and stealth assaults of those the enemy swayed against us in 2022.”
We know even in 2023 He will not give us over to them.
We forgive all of them and hope that they see the True light of Jesus Christ, and live lives that are Heaven worthy. We look forward to running this race successfully and seeing all of them in Heaven.
Let no one go to hell because of their hate for us or wickedness against us. Let us all live lives that are Heaven worthy. Amen.
TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF NOT JUST THE YEAR 2023, BUT THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH OF THE YEAR 2023.
It is therefore a unique day; but there is more.
I carried out a prophetic and historic research of years and found out that 2023 itself, like few years of its kind in the past, is a unique year. It is one of few years in the Gregorian Calendar that begun on Sunday. That means a lot because the year marks the beginning of a fresh circle – a circle of 12 years; it takes 12 years for a year to begin on a Sunday.
From my research, the year that begins on Sunday is always the 1st of the 12 years that make up the circle. Today therefore, is the first day of the 12 years that makes up a fresh circle of 12 years. Its an opportunity to start your life afresh if you would.
Do not forget the prophetic place of Sunday. It is the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection of Christ. It is a blessing for a year to begin on it, after over 11 years of waiting for time to make it happen. It calls for the application of our hearts unto wisdom and gives us a rare opportunity for restarts, re-enforcements, re planning, re-energizing, and other related beautiful things.
You may be wondering why I took my time to research this. I did that so that we can have something to use in numbering our days and gaining a heart of wisdom. The Bible says
“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12 NKJV)
In line with our apostolic tradition, we are beginning a fresh 31-day journey of faith today with the Cry of the Holy Spirit on one of the most beautiful subjects of GOD’s kingdom – visionary living.
Believe it or not, the last 12 years of your life knowingly or unknowingly shaped you for this next circle of 12 years to come! Whatever happened in your life during the period, prepared you for this year, and the circle of years to come.
THE ONLY THING WE DO NOT KNOW IS THE KIND OF PREPARATION.
There is a preparation to succeed and there is a preparation to fail. If it prepared you to succeed blessed are you, this 31-day journey will give you something to build your success on. But if it prepared you to fail, you can change that using the wisdom and power of GOD that will be coming to you through this journey of faith.
Understand that during the last 12 years, people spoke into your ears things that shaped your thinking and decisions, consequently preparing you for either failure or success this year. Whatever your eyes saw that got registered in your mind in the last 12 years prepared you for either failure or success this year and the next years in the circle.
You are today, the sum total of what you saw, heard, felt, experienced and went through in the last 12 years. That is one major wisdom to apply your heart unto in your quest to succeed this year and the other years to come, as a son of light. It will help you to be patient with GOD but determined to have a better next circle of years if you do.
The starting point can be the place of looking backwards.
It is important to look into the last 12 years of your life and see what went wrong, the quality of wisdom you had, and what you can do consistently right, in the next circle of years starting from today, to have a better future.
In Bible phrase that described this judicial way of looking backwards is called “judging ourselves.” The white man will call it, “personal appraisals” or “assessment of one’s personal life.” It is important that you stretch the curtain of time judiciously backwards sometimes, especially for the purpose of learning or picking some wisdom that will help you go forward.
The truth is, if you carry out an honest assessment of your life of the last 12 years, you will discover among other things, that your areas of ruined were created by the darkness that rested or arrested your emotions. You will discover that, among other things, you never lived a visionary life during those dark days. You led an emotional life.
THERE ARE NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE EMOTIONS. BOTH CAN RUIN ANY OF US, DEPENDING ON OUR LEVEL OF BLINDNESS.
God never built man to live based on his emotions, either good or bad. That was why there were no emotional display in all Adam did well in the Garden of Eden. There was just vision. The only time he went emotional was when he ate from the tree of sound judgment because of what he felt for his wife, Eve. The result is all we have today. If he had stuck to vision, he would not have sinned.
We sin or become rebellious when we depart from the realm of vision and step into the realm of emotions or feelings. That is why visionary living involves a life of holiness, submission to divine will and total commitment to GOD.
A visionary life will not break GOD’s instruction or live a sinful life because it knows the consequence. The Bible says Adam was not deceived. Meaning he knew what he would lose eating from that tree. Yet he ate anyway. That is how stupid we become under emotions. Feelings do not about care what GOD says because it is a creation of the flesh. It only cares about getting what it wants.
The feeling of sexual pleasure, for example, do not care about wedding vows. It just cares about the very person it has decided to sleep with. Friend, man was built to live based on Heavenly vision not feelings. It is when we live the way GOD built man to live that we succeed in life. Any other way will bring ruin, either in time or eternity.
The ruin of living by feelings can be diabolic and unredeemable. That is why most times we blame witches for what our emotions created. We forget that the creations of negative emotions like lust, pride, anger, cravings, envy, jealousy, disappointment, tribal sentiments, greed, covetousness, lack of contentment, bitterness, malice, vengeance, and etc. can be more dangerous than devils sometimes.
I can’t stop thinking that if Samson was in the present-day deliverance churches, his fall on Delilah’s laps and subsequent loss of eyes and dignity would have been blamed on witches and wizards, or altars raised by the Philistines or something else. No one would have seen the role his negative emotions played. That is how ignorant our generation has become.
Samson’s emotions took him from the path of visionary living, that was packed with power and amazing exploits, to the path of emotional living, that was full of lust and Godless pleasure. The result was losses, shame and eventual death.
SOMETIMES, THERE ARE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE THE RUIN THAT EMOTIONAL LIVING CAN BRING INTO OUR LIVES.
Emotional living is a silent destroyer that many do not even know exist. While we are busy searching for our enemies here and there, it is right there within our very souls, causing us great harm.
Sadly, the present church has built a culture of blaming so much on a devil the Bible says Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection destroyed, and the rest on people who appear antagonistic towards others, thereby becoming blind to the real enemy within. If you want to succeed this year, or in the next circle of years that will usher us into another new year on a Sunday, walk away from that culture. Recognize all the enemies within your soul and deal with them squarely.
Among the enemies to recognize and deal with is the enemy of emotional living. Embrace visionary living in place of emotional living.
Stop living the way you feel about yourself, about those GOD may have placed in your life, or about anything in your life. Start Living the way you should. If you live the way you should, you will be visionary and not emotional no matter what may be wrong with you. That brings us to some Bible based definitions.
First, let’s start with the definition of emotional living. Emotional living, in Bible sense, is living your life according to strong feelings derived from the carnal nature or sin that lives in you, the negative circumstances around, moods, or relationship with others.
It is basically living your life according to how you feel not according to how you should. For instance, when you follow your carnal desires to get married, sleep with someone, start a career, or walk away from something, you are living your life based on how you feel not how you should.
YOU SHOULD BE SPIRITUALLY MINDED NOT CARNALLY MINDED.
You should not get married based on carnal feelings, sleep with someone you are not married to, or start a career sentimentally, or just walk away from something because of one moment of disappointment. Any of these could bear you desirable fruits at the immediate but in the long run, will create ruin.
For instance, how many weddings have we attended that gave birth to marriages that no longer exist today? Many!
If you check the root of most divorces or sick marriages you will find out that the love birds got together simply because of what they felt for each other, it wasn’t based on what they saw in their future; it was not based on vision. It was based on feelings. Hence, becoming antagonistic towards each other as soon as the feelings disappeared.
For me, counselling sessions have proved that most marriages these days are not products of visionary living (sometimes on the part of one partner other times on the part of both), but feelings! That is why they either stink, become sick, or die as soon as feelings change.
If what you feel for someone is what joined you to him or her, the relationship will crash the day the feelings change. It is what you see in your future with someone that should determine if you will be joined to the person in marriage or not. Visionary living should determine your marital decision not feelings.
I submit to you that people no longer marry these days, they just get joined based on feelings. Because you do not call what feelings joined together a marriage. It’s just a house bound to collapse under the winds of change in feelings.
No aspect of life was designed by GOD to be run on feelings. All aspects of our lives were designed to be run by Heavenly visions. That is why humans try to manage the scourge of living by feelings with what they call emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is basically how not to allow your feelings run your life. It is living according to reason instead of feelings.
GOD WANTS US TO LEAD LIVES THAT ARE FOCUSED ON HEAVENLY VISIONS NOT DRIVEN BY INWARD FEELINGS.
A major portion of our devotional text says;
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23 NKJV
This scripture is about focus. Understand that when we focus ourselves and energies on God given visions, our lives will be full of light, peace and prosperity from God. But when we focus ourselves on what or how we feel in our carnal nature, our lives will be filled with darkness. We will find ourselves doing very bad things.
The first murder case in the Bible was committed by someone who focused on how he felt in his carnal nature; how he felt towards His brother. God tried talking him out of it but he would not listen. His name was Cain. The young man would later find Abel his brother and kill him, satisfying how he felt towards him.
But when God, the Judge of all, met him, He unveiled to him the kind of life his feelings-based behavior had created for him. Cain was devastated. He never knew that was how powerful his feelings were. Whenever our behaviors are feelings-based, we get the same kind of results.
The Bible says;
“And [the Lord] said, what have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.
And now you are cursed by reason of the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s [shed] blood from your hand.
When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth [in perpetual exile, a degraded outcast].
Then Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.” Genesis 4:10-13
If Cain had handled his feelings properly, if his behavior was not feelings-based, he would not have created the kind of life that we see in this scripture for himself.
HE HIMSELF DESCRIBED IT AS A PUNISHMENT THAT WAS MORE THAN HE COULD BEAR.
Friend, God will never create a life that is like unbearable punishment for us. The Bible says His plans for us are good, and His future for us is peace. It is our feelings-based behavior that creates a life that is like an unbearable punishment for us. If we will walk away from feelings-based behaviors this year and the years to come in this circle, and migrate into visionary living, our lives will be glorious.
It’s a New year! A New year calls for a new you! Stop doing things that will create a life of unbearable sufferings and troubles like Cain did. I have always said, if there is no happy new you, there cannot be a happy new year. You must decide for a new you this year, especially as the year begins another circle of 12.
Decide what you want to be in the next 12 years of your life when this circle will be complete through visionary living. It is my prayer that the remaining 30 days of this journey will help us accomplish just that in Jesus precious name. Amen!
As we bring this to a close, understand that we humans are built to succeed through focus. So, do not allow many things to get your attention this year. Live a visionary life.
In Christ, there is only one thing that matters. That is the one thing that should get your attention. Let your eyes be single on that one thing and every other thing that is related to it. It will attract a glorious energy from Heaven for your life on earth.
We wish you a happy new year, and a very beautiful and fulfilling circle of 12 years. Amen
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDIATION FOR THE DAY!
“Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You. Selah
Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring; The rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; Each one appears before God in Zion.” Psalm 84:4-7 NKJV