TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 22ND October 2023)
Then the Lord said to him: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria.
Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.
It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. 1 Kings 19:15-17 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 295TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
We give glory to God for the start of another week. It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed. Yesterday we shared something about the release of our destiny.
The seed of divine destiny is in everyone but can never be activated until we have an encounter with Christ. That is what makes salvation or the beginning of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ the first thing a divine destiny will need to be fulfilled.
We bless the LORD God of Heaven and earth for giving us life and another brand-new day. Days are seeds sown into our lives to bring forth works of righteousness – in other words, to work the works of the LORD. Jesus says, “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night comes when no man can work.” If He lives in us, we will be driven to do the same. That is where the application of wisdom and knowledge in the release of divine destiny comes into play.
“Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times and strength of salvation” says the LORD. Meaning we will never be strong and stable in the release of our divine destiny without divine wisdom and knowledge about our divine destiny. Simply put, no one can work the works of He that called us out of darkness into His marvelous light, until he receives adequate wisdom and knowledge on his assignment. God’s ultimate desire for us, is that we be armed with the wisdom and knowledge we need to gain stability in matters of divine destiny and possess the strength of salvation we need to unleash it.
Today we will be looking at one more thing we will need, so long as the release of our divine destiny is concern. Yesterday we spoke about dealing with fear. God has promised to guide us in ways we should go and never allow us to be in the dark. That He has been faithful in doing through these devotionals.
I WANT TO REFRESH OUR MINDS ON THE MYSTERY OF SPIRITUAL MIDWIVES AND WHY WE NEED THEM IN LIFE.
Matters of destiny are weighty matters. I have said it before that divine destiny is like a pregnancy. Once a woman is pregnant, the services of a midwife will become inevitable. Once you come to the revelation of divine destiny, the ministry of a spiritual midwife will become inevitable.
No pregnant women can midwife herself into delivery. In the same way no Child of divine destiny can midwife himself into bringing forth his destiny accurately. We will all need the impartations, prophetic skill, and apostolic directives of a midwife. We will need imputes of a midwife God raised and assigned to us.
Our devotional text today is full of revelation and insights that we can even put in a book. But this is a devotional, so we will scoop just a little of what it contains; enough to start the day with. The text occurred in a season that God wanted to eliminate Baal worship in Israel. The Bible shows us an unfolded plan; in that plan, four men were involved. Three were pregnant with the seed of divine destiny. One was already unleashing his own, both as a prophet and a spiritual midwife. His name was Elijah!
The other three were pregnant with divine destiny, and needed him to midwife them to delivery, but they were not aware of any of that. Their names were, Hazael, Jehu and Elisha. These guys never knew they were pregnant. They needed a prophet to tell them that, since the Spirit was not yet given. They also did not know they needed a midwife.
Sadly, there are so many believers who are pregnant with great things from heaven but are not aware they are pregnant. They need encounters with the Holy Spirit of true prophetic voices to be stopped and brought into the revelation of what heaven has impregnated them with. If that do not happen, they will defeat their divine destiny! That was the situation Elisha, Hazael, and Jehu found themselves.
They were all successful in what they were doing; the other two were successful military Officers – generals and commanders of the armies of their respective nations. Elisha was a successful mechanized farmer. But like some of us now know, success in the wrong assignment is failure in disguise. We are called to die fulfilled, not successful as the world defines it.
HAZAEL, JEHU AND ELISHA WOULD HAVE DIED SUCCESSFUL AS THE WORLD DEFINES IT.
However, God in His infinite mercy stepped in to tell them they were pregnant, and to decode the pregnancy to them by sending Elijah. Elijah’s assignment was to function as both a prophet and a spiritual midwife to these pregnant people.
A major highlight in our devotional text today says.
“Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.”
If you read this scriptural verse carefully, you will discover a word God used on all the three pregnant people. That word contains the specific job God assigned Elijah to do in their lives. That word is, anoint. Elijah was told to anoint each one of them to be what God has destined them to be! The word anoint does not just imply pouring some olive oil on their heads as they use to do in the Old Testament. In fact, Elijah never poured any oil on Elisha. The word holds deeper things than that.
Hidden in that word are two important aspects of equipping, that every Child of divine destiny must go through, under the ministry of his God given prophetic midwife, to unleash his destiny. The word anoint practically means; to point out their destiny to them; to equip them to know what God have called them to do, and to train them to grasp it. After which, they will be commissioned. That was what God meant.
Sadly, Elijah succeeded in anointing (not pouring of oil on his head) only Elisha. He did not anoint the rest. When Elisha would be commissioning them much later to unleash their destiny, it was too late for them to be trained the way he was trained. They had to be commissioned as UNTRAINED and UNTAMED men.
MAY THAT NOT BE SAID OF US!
The greatest problem in Church today is the army of untrained and untamed men and women, trying to do one thing or the other. They want to preach, teach, prophesy, sing and lead churches without genuine spiritual upbringing. That is why we have many sorcerers called prophets, and magicians accepted as miracle workers by the lost. We have so many prophets and prophetesses who are sexually perverse, and amazingly terrible. We have leaders who live very sinful lives, making sinful living a lifestyle, among their followers. Many who claim to be born again, now live like the world, and tragically believe they will make heaven.
You need a spiritual midwife to unleash your destiny as a trained and tamed child of GOD or minister of the gospel. God will always send someone into your life to do that. You only have to be sensitive enough to recognize the person when they show up in your life.
Child of God, we are in end times. There is resurrection of grace dimensions in our age and time. You will need a minister of the gospel with the spiritual stature of Paul or Elijah, who will train you in the things of the Spirit for today, and get you commissioned to do, what GOD has sent you to the earth to do, in a time like this.
You will not need the many Eli, Saul, Simon the sorcerer, or bar Jesus’ type of people we have today in ministry.
If you try to pursue divine destiny without a midwife to help you, your destiny will never be release accurately. What happened to Hazael and Jehu may happen to you! The primary purpose of what we call fathering is for the ministry of spiritual midwife to be unleashed to a pregnant people so they can release their destiny. Sadly, that is not what we see today.
Most spiritual fathers cannot accurately tell what their spiritual children carry. They give them jobs to do, but do not know God’s blueprint for their lives, like Elijah knew for Elisha, and Paul knew for Titus and Timothy. All they want is to be called fathers, and given what they call, the father’s honor. The sons themselves do not even know what to expect. They pursue spiritual fathering for the wrong reasons and end up becoming misfits in God’s end time army.
Like apostle Paul did many years ago, permit me to say, “there are no many fathers.” We just have many instructors and ‘boy’ leaders forcing people to call them ‘papa.’
When the Bible says, “boy leaders,” it is not a reference to chronological age. David was older than Saul in spiritual matters. You could be 80 years old and still be a boy leader in Kingdom matters like Eli was. You could also be 30 years and still be a boy leader. It is not about chronology but about maturity in deep spiritual matters. A midwife must be a thousand times ahead of you in Kingdom matters and the revelation of Jesus Christ, to be able to help you to bring forth the blessed things God has called you to bring forth on earth.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR TODAY;
I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you.
For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me.
For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. 1 Corinthians 4:14-17 NKJV