TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 6th October 2023)
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘” Matthew 13:26-30 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 280TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS
Yesterday the LORD spoke to us about right relationships. We give Him the glory for all the insights that came. Today we will be continuing on the same flow. But to start with, I want to ask, where do blackmails and lies proceed from? Where does gossips and slander proceed from? Where does betrayal and murders proceed from? Who are the best weapons men use in betraying, especially those who have been very helpful of them?
Wrong relationships of course! Friend, if the devil wants to invade your privacy and have someone tell everything about you to the outside world (a fabrication of the bad or ugly parts of your life) who does he use? The answer is trapped in two words – Wrong Relationships. Sometimes, there may be nothing bad in your life to talk about, but they will just take some facts, and fabricate them with lies and begin to say something very untrue in the language and tone of truth.
God likened wrong relationships to tares sown by the devil to hinder our lives. Either you believe it or not, most of what we face in life are products of the wrong people we are either putting up with or have put up with at one time in life! God want to stop the enemy from using wrong relationships to destroy us.
I trust that God will use whatever He wants to share with us today, to grant us dominion over the menace of wrong relationships many sons and daughters of God are struggling with.
LET ME REPEAT A STORY THAT MAY INTEREST YOU. I HAVE SHARED IT REPEATEDLY EVERYWHERE.
Between 1984 and 1993, my family was involved in a lot of farming in the young City of Abuja then. When I say Family, I meant my Dad, My Mum and siblings. My Dad was a police officer and had just being transferred from Calabar, in Cross River state South-south of Nigeria, to Abuja. The government of the day was still trying to convince people to move from Lagos Nigeria to the young Capital city, Abuja, so there was enough land to use in growing crops and dealing with hunger then.
Food was relatively cheap. With very little money you can buy a lot. We grew virtually every Nigerian crop you can think of. The only things we did not grow were, onions, Oil, salt and water. That is hilarious but really true.
During those farming years I learnt a lot of lessons that are helping me now to understand God and His ways. They also helped me to understand what God means whenever He says a thing that seems to relate with farming. They also helped me to understand the different kinds of weeds that grow around our crops. So, in the days of weeding the farms to allow the crops grow, we will carefully remove them, and when that happens, you will see the crops growing beautifully and producing bountifully in their seasons.
That reminds me of a man or woman of destiny. Truly, the life of a man or woman of destiny is like those crops that we planted in our farms. The farm is this world, and the weeds are the many wrong relationships we bring into our lives, either through the door ways of compassion, improper joining or marriages, juicy business proposals and financial connections, and related things. If those relationships are not weeded out of our lives, we will never grow beautifully or produce bountifully.
Wherever you see a standing tree of righteousness, especially the one that is turning many to righteousness, look closely, you will see a terrible weed growing, that will soon spring up like a python to strike, with the man or woman. Such weeds find their ways to be so close, most of them using the doorways of compassion.
SATAN HAS A WAY OF PLANTING WEEDS AROUND US, USING THE DOORWAYS OF OUR MERCIFULNESS.
This is true in the life of those of us in leadership positions, and people who may not be in leadership positions but love doing good to others. He understands, like the servants of the defeated king of Syria did, that the kings of Israel are merciful kings. Yes, those who are saved and sanctified are merciful people. So, he uses that to get his weeds planted right where the LORD has positioned them.
The Bible is full or allegorical expressions. So, let me speak at this point, in allegorical terms. If Satan plants someone who by allegorical expression is a leper (one sold out to a life of sin, and sees nothing wrong with committing any abominable with you), you will never fulfill your destiny.
If the enemy plants one with the allegorical expression of a discharge (a person who make others filthy, especially with their mouths, or attitudes), the release of your destiny will be in doubt.
Like I shared not too long ago, I want to repeat again that, the wisdom I gathered from those farming years, made me to understand that weeding is part of life. If you do not make seasonal weeding part of your life, as a Child of God, you will never grow to become what God has called you to be.
There is a kind of people you must wake up to weed out of your life, from time to time, else you will move from being a crop to becoming a weed yourself. It’s your responsibility to discern them by the Holy Spirit.
You do not need to listen to gossips, backbiters or concerned people; just discern them by the Holy Spirit, and take the proper action.
Maybe, these four nuggets of truth I want to share, will help you. I have shared them before and need to repeat them again for emphasis. I have come to discover that every relationship (spiritual, marital, social, economic, or etc.) does four things to us;
1. They divide us positively or negatively.
2. They subtract from us negatively or positively.
3. They add to us negatively or positively.
4. They multiply us negatively or positively.
If a relationship has been dividing, subtracting from, adding to, or multiplying you negatively, apply the “weeding principle.”
IN OTHER WORDS, WEED THEM AWAY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE (THE CROPS).
You can only love your neighbor “as” you love yourself. In simple terms, if you have not loved yourself, you will not be able to love your neighbor. You will be hypocritical trying to love your neighbor.
The principle of seasonal weeding, is very important in dealing with wrong relationships, irrespective of who they are.
I remember one day I went into our rice farm and discovered some weeds growing along with the rice. Honestly, I did not know they were weeds because they looked alike. But as they grew together, the weeds became very clear to us. We carefully moved into the farm and removed them away to save the crops.
Wrong relationships sometimes are like that; they look right when they first appear. But as they grow, their true nature will begin to emerge. If you do not carefully weed them out of your life, you may grow up with them and get to the evening season of your life; ending as an old wretched man or woman, regretting over so many things that can no longer be amended.
But that is not the will of GOD for either of us.
Many people do not know that time is one of the greatest “revealers” of things. As people press into our lives, time and pressure has a way of proving who they really are to us.
When time proves that a relationship was wrong, when it proves that you were wrong, you must apply the principle of weeding else you will loose.
Now, there were weeds that we will find out in our farm in those days that we cannot remove at the time we found them. Trying to remove them will mean uprooting the crops as well. To such weeds we usually apply the Biblical principle Jesus taught concerning the wheat and tares. A major highlight in our devotional text says;
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘”
SOME WRONG RELATIONSHIPS ARE LIKE TARES AMONG WHEAT. THEY MUST BE ALLOWED TO GROW TOGETHER UNTIL THE TIME OF HARVEST.
They have grown up to be so attached to us that any attempt to remove them will remove us as well. In cases like that, we must be patient, checking for the harvest time; a time that their evil deeds will either consume, or remove them from our lives.
For instance, all false marriages are like tares attached to wheat. You have lived with the man or woman for so long, and even have children, but you know you were wrong, because everything about the whole issue is killing you. That is when to prayerfully wait for the harvest time of the LORD!
It is only in harvest time that God carries out the kind of weeding that solves such problems, but He does it by fully involving you. He will have to guide you in every step out of the snare. That is where sufficient prayers to build up spiritual sensitivity come in. In simple terms, God will have to carry out the process through divine direction.
There are details we cannot state down here because it’s just a devotional. But one thing you must know is that God does not deal with all wrong relationships the same way.
The ones that have so grown and attached themselves to our lives are dealt with “the-wheat-and-tare” way. If you try to solve your problem through any other method it will not lead to a happy ending, because you will end up destroying both yourself, and the person or people you may be involved with.
I hope the LORD has spoken to us this morning. May every word written become a book of wisdom in your mental shelve in Jesus precious name! AMEN!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURAL PARABLE YOUR MEDITATION TODAY:
“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.”
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘” Matthew 13:24-30 NKJV