TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 5TH JULY 2023)**
“Of what use is money in the hand of a [self-confident] fool to buy skillful and godly Wisdom — when he has no understanding or heart for it?
A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity.” Proverbs 17:16-17 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 186TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
It has indeed been our year of signs and wonders. God who has been merciful to us, has kept us in perfect peace. He has not been dealing with us according to our folly but according to His faithfulness.
With the excesses in our lives, it is indeed not easy to have people like us in His kingdom. He has to keep working on us, purging our hearts, purifying our motives, straightening our lives, ordering our steps, restructuring our ways, reviving us when we become dead in our walk with Him, etc. Simply put, He has to remain a Heavenly Father to us.
If He has not been a Heavenly Father to us, there is no way that we would be here. That explains why Jesus guided us, in how to relate with Him in prayer, by saying;
“…Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” Matthew 6:9-13 NKJV
This pattern of prayer that the LORD Himself gave, shows us what the will of the Father is for our lives.
AND THE BIBLE SAYS, IF WE PRAY ACCORDING TO HIS WILL, HE HEARS US.
It is His will that we live a life that hallows His name. It is His will that his kingdom come, and His will be done on earth, as written in Heaven; not as determined by us, our circumstances, our blood relatives or parents, our empty or spiritually dead preachers or greedy shepherds, but as written or determined in Heaven.
Yes, it is the Father’s will that we be supernaturally supplied with provisions from Heaven, even provisions from unexpected ends. It is His will that we be given our daily bread. It is His will that our sins or debts be forgiven. It is His will that we forgive others, because His justice system says, He can only forgive us if we forgive others.
From the LORD’s prayer, we can also see that it is not the Father’s will that we be led into temptation. In other words, it is not His will that we be tempted. We are only tempted because of the fallen nature. It happens when our desires have been drawn to a particular direction.
Meaning, without carnal desires or without sin living in us, temptation to sin will be an impossibility.
The Father’s will is that we do not fall into any temptation to sin, hence bringing an immediate reward for every temptation we overcome. The purpose is to motivate us to keep overcoming temptations, so that we will not lose our salvation, because it is possible to lose our salvation through a frequent fall into temptation.
A frequent fall into temptation, makes the heart hardened and promotes a life of sin, leading to a total breakdown of all spiritual defenses and resistance against darkness, and a return to our old ways.
The Bible is full of things God rewards us with whenever we overcome temptation. He makes a way of escape for us and if we take that way, we overcome the temptation. The Bible says,
“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV
THE LAST THING WE CAN SEE IN THE LORD’S PRAYER AS THE FATHER’S WILL IS THAT WE BE DELIVERED FROM THE EVIL ONE.
Yes, it is God’s will that you and I be delivered from the evil one. If we are not delivered from his sways, schemes, paths, methods, men, women, policies, cultures, manipulations, influences, or attacks on our emotions, our lives will never fulfill their purposes on earth.
The attacks of the evil one on the righteous is different from His attacks on the wicked or unsaved. Sadly, we have unsaved people even among us preachers and our church members. That is why you find people in Church going through exactly what only the lost should go through, since they have not been translated from his dark kingdom.
For instance, the lost or unsaved, struggle with generational curses because they live in spirit realms where curses exist, and sadly people in church struggle with the same. But generational curses should not happen to the truly saved, because they are no longer in realms where curses speak, by reason of salvation and infilling of the Holy Spirit.
Secondly, the unsaved are neutralized by what they call evil altars, because they live in spirit realms where such things can neutralize people. Sadly, people in Church are also neutralized by the same. You see even those people call apostles leading church people to fight evil altars, instead of discipling them to live in spirit realms where such attacks do not happen.
God designed that such nonsense should not happen to the saved. You see that even in the days of shadows, how He proved it.
He made sure that the evil altars Balaam raised never spoke against His holy nation, depicting that once you become part of the holy nation, through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit and apostolic integration, you no longer live in spirit realms where evil things will speak in your life.
Israel did not rise to pray against evil altars to have victory. It is those with a faulty salvation that will definitely do that, and we have many of them today. Israel did not. In fact, they were not even aware that it happened. Go read Numbers chapter 22 to chapter 24, and you will find out yourself.
God used the story of Balaam and Balak to prove to us that evil things, be them altars or whatever, does not speak in the lives of the truly saved. That is why you will never find any of these things in the early church.
THE WHOLE NEW TESTAMENT HAS NO TEACHING, PREACHING OR DISCUSSION ABOUT ALTARS, EITHER VEIL OR GOOD.
The attacks of the enemy on the righteous is completely different from the attacks of the enemy on the unsaved. There are things the enemy cannot do to the righteous because of the blood line. He can’t cross the blood line. He can’t touch their children, their business, their money, their health, their everything. You find that in the life of Job.
Until God removed the hedge, the enemy could not touch him or what he owned.
If you find Satan touching your things, it is not because the hedge has been removed by God because that no longer happens. It is because your salvation is either faulty, not real, or not healthy. Believers should never struggle with things that unbelievers struggle with.
It is the Father’s will that the righteous be delivered from the evil One. The evil one-use people to do things in our lives that make life difficult. He cannot touch us directly, hence using people who touch us directly to make life difficult. But God’s will is that we be delivered from him and all he does through people.
Our divine destiny will need deliverance from the evil one to be fulfilled.
One way that God deliver us from the evil one, is by giving us destiny partners in place of messengers of Satan. We shared about spiritual midwives, but destiny partners are not spiritual midwives. Spiritual midwives are people we need to submit to and serve; they are at a higher level. They are not partners, but more than partners.
Yes, God can use spiritual midwives to deliver us from the evil one, but we are talking about destiny partners.
Destiny partners are like help meets, and there are different kinds of them. There are those God will bring into your life to be your life partner. Until you get married to them, you will not be able to unleash what God has called you to do on the face of the earth.
The reason marriage has become a curse in the lives of many of our brethren in the body of Christ, is simply because they are married to people that are not their destiny partners. God did not create your marital life to be occupied by a man or woman who is not your destiny partner. If you erroneously give that holy place to the wrong person, you will live in hell all your life.
DESTINY PARTNERS ALSO COME AS LONG-TIME FRIENDS – SOME CALLS IT COVENANTS FRIENDS.
Jonathan was a covenant friend and a destiny partner of David. His partnership saved David at one time from premature death. He pitched tent with David when Saul his father wanted him dead. Your divine destiny will need such people to be fulfilled.
Shadrach, Misheak and Abednego were destiny partners of Daniel in Babylon.
It was their collective prayer at one time that saved the wise men of Babylon from execution. They generated a presence from Heaven through corporate prayers for Daniel to be able to come to the realm of decoding the King’s dream.
Sadly, many are clothed with friends who do not know how to support them to unleash their divine destiny.
Some Pastors are clothed with members who are parasites and unkind. They come telling them stories to scoop money from them but cannot do anything to support such men of God. Instead of helping them to quench adversity, they help them to create adversity by becoming both a spiritual and financial burden to the men of God.
Yes, we are to give a cup of water to young Christians to grow in Christ. It’s our job as preachers to do so. So, God wants us to be a blessing to people materially, but when they begin to take advantage of us, throw contempt, insults, maltreatment, disrespect and disregard at us, and use the access they have to us to harm and hurt us, it is not a good thing.
People ignorantly and foolishly harm themselves by making life difficult for serving servants of God, who are doing critical things in God’s kingdom. Others just spend their time working or walking around the servants of GOD as wearying tools of the enemy. This is very sad.
Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 5 that people should not be a burden to a Church when they can take care of themselves. Church members ought to be destiny partners to their pastors, not agents of pain and ruin. They ought to be like brothers born to extinguish adversity in the life of their man of God.
A major highlight in our devotional text today says, “A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity.” Destiny partners that come as covenant friends are basically placed in our lives as Crisis extinguishers.
THEY KNOW HOW TO HELP US QUENCH THE FIRES KINDLED IN OUR LIVES.
What is the message this morning? What is the LORD saying to us this morning? “Ask me to give you destiny partners. You cannot unleash your divine destiny without them” That is what He is saying to us!
You will need a destiny partner for a wife or husband, and a destiny partner for a covenant friend. If you are a pastor, you will need destiny partners for Church members. God did not create a divine destiny that can be fulfilled without destiny partners.
If you live a life without true friends or people sent to you by heaven; folks God raised to help you unleash your destiny, you will never fulfil God’s plans for your life. The Bible showed us the importance of destiny people in our lives from Chapter to chapter.
Adam needed Eve, Daniel needed his three friends, and David needed Jonathan. There is someone you need. Ask the LORD to bring them into your live. May God enlighten your eyes to sense who have been predetermined to be part of your life before you were born, in Jesus precious name.
May you not use toxic behavior or wrong attitudes to push them away from your life! AMEN
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“Your sons shall make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste shall go away from you. Lift up your eyes, look around and see; all these gather together and come to you.”
As I live,” says the Lord, “You shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, and bind them on you as a bride does.
“For your waste and desolate places, and the land of your destruction, will even now be too small for the inhabitants; and those who swallowed you up will be far away” Isaiah 49:17-19 NKJV