TODAY’S DEVOTION (FRIDAY 24TH NOVEMBER 2023)
“You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” 2 Timothy 2:1-5 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 328TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
This is the Day the LORD has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it.
God has given us free flow of air in our lungs, free flow of our excretive systems, free flow of blood in our vein, free manufacturing of our white and red blood cells, the peace to sleep and wake up, the ability to eat and swallow food, and some other things our words cannot capture.
It is important that we do not take it for granted, because there are people who depend on machines to be able to do all that. If you visit the intensive care units of some hospitals, you will see people who are paying for what the LORD is doing for us freely.
Yes, there are people who pay dearly for the air they breathe in, there are others who spend money daily to be able to excrete. But here we are, able to do all that and much more naturally. If that is not enough for us to thank God for, then we do not know what to thank God for.
We are having a very important meeting at the Cry of the Spirit Ministries this week. It is our in-house apostolic summit – the last one for the year. The depth of what the LORD is revealing to us is beyond words. He has been so good to us and amazing in His works towards us.
Sometimes I wish all in the body of Christ can sit with us to hear such things. So many are wallowing in ignorance yet they carry themselves like people who know.
Like the Samaritans, majority worship what they do not know. That is why they follow dark or false doctrines that sound true to them; some do that because of the relieve they get, while others because of the twisted scriptures that are used to dish the dark doctrines to them.
I SENSE WE ARE GOING TO END UP IN VERY DEEP PLACES OF THE SPIRIT, BY THE TIME WE WILL BE THROUGH ON SUNDAY EVENING.
I urge you to join us if you can.
On this platform and at this time of the year, it pleased the LORD that we be taken on a journey of faith with the Cry of His Holy Spirit on Visionary living. It’s been an enriching experience for those who have been following. We have seen some laws of visionary living.
Since the day before yesterday, we have been looking at the laws of God’s faithfulness. Today, we will be looking at the law of Man’s faithfulness. The foundation for this was laid yesterday.
Yes, when it comes to visionary living, it is not just God that has to be faithful for a life to be fulfilled, man also must be faithful. Heavenly Visions are fulfilled when faithful men work with the faithful God, or when the faithfulness of God acts on the faithfulness of men.
A lot about Visionary living is about spending a life time living a life that is being faithful to God and to His vision for your life. If you take away your faithfulness from a visionary life that you might be living, it will not be long, you will become part of the records in the history of human failure and personal destruction.
I have come to discover that, no matter how potentially aligned with God and how practically blessed a visionary life you are living is, if you do not have the required faithfulness for God to use, in making His faithfulness meaningful in your life, you will end up a reproach in life.
You will fall from grace to grass despite the faithfulness of the LORD to you.
Like we shared the other day, God needs your faithfulness for the works of His faithfulness to be established in your life. For instance, God was faithful to Samson, and everything was glorious. It was the loss of Samson’s faithfulness that led to his problems. He lost it in the house of Delilah.
That tells us that there are people in life that if we meet, especially during our vulnerable moments, will definitely influence us to throw away our faithfulness to God. Samson met Delilah in His vulnerable moment. That is why we must be careful when we become vulnerable.
IT IS NORMAL TO BECOME VULNERABLE BECAUSE WE LIVE IN AN IMPERFECT REALM. BUT WE MUST BE CAREFUL WHEN WE BECOME.
We must be careful because only the right people can help us sustain our faithfulness to God when we become vulnerable. The wrong ones will influence us to throw it away! I have been in ministry from age 16, so I have a lot of stories to tell in that regard.
Very sad things have happened to me in my vulnerable moments.
Yes, I have been vulnerable several times because of the kind of assignment that is upon my life. It happens whenever I fight the battles of the LORD. The seasons I threw away my faithfulness to God, were seasons that I fell into the hands of very wrong and dark people in my vulnerable moments. The last one almost destroyed my life completely.
It is normal for God’s people to feel vulnerable and weary, but they must be with the RIGHT persons and not the AVAILABLE persons, in those dark moments of their lives. I learned painfully that if God’s people cannot find the right persons to be with, they should then embrace the path of the Eagle when they become vulnerable.
The Eagle is one unique bird that the LORD created. It has a lot of mysteries for every follower of Jesus Christ.
Whenever the Eagle becomes vulnerable, it does not go to any bird for help. It knows it will be falling into wrong hands. It does not go to any animal, not even fellow Eagles. It just retreats to the mountains to be all alone, feeding on honey and water until its strength is renewed and soul refreshed.
The Bible encourages us to follow those steps when it says;
“But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.” Isaiah 40:31 AMPC
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN THE BIBLE. I LIKE THIS AMPLIFIED RENDERING OF THE ETERNAL VERSE.
This verse made it clear that when we are vulnerable, and cannot find people who will help us to lift up our wings of faith, and mount up close to God at that moment, we should just retreat to a secluded place, and spend our days feeding on honey and water.
Honey represents the knowledge of wisdom, and water represents the refreshing of the Holy Spirit. When we become vulnerable, we should not go looking for available people, we should rather spend time with the knowledge of wisdom and the refreshing of the Holy Spirit until we are renewed. That is the way of the Eagle.
We must learn to retreat like the Eagle do, when we become vulnerable.
Yes, if we retreat to a secluded place like the Eagle, and spend quality time feeding on the Honey of God’s wisdom (which is the Bible), maybe through the instrumentality of Bible books and teachings that can help our faith during those moments, and songs that will help us experience the refreshing of the Holy Spirit while there, we will find ourselves with wings of faith mounted close to God like Eagles.
We will return renewed and revived!
Except the place you live is not convenient, I will suggest that the secluded place should not be outside your home. You can get a room within your home to make it your Eagle’s Nest; a place to retreat to mount up with wings like the Eagle, when you become vulnerable.
If you are one who is not at ease in Zion, one with a great destiny to fulfill, you must be doing this whenever you are vulnerable so that your vulnerability will not make you throw away your faithfulness to God.
It is important that you strive to keep your faithfulness to God intact at all times. It is important that you watch against falling into the hands of the wrong people like Samson did, and like many of us have done in the past.
THE WAY OF THE EAGLE EXPLAINED HERE CAN BE OF HELP.
The Bible made it clear that so long as the faithfulness of Samson was intact, he was a glory to behold. When it became lost, he became a reproach. Understand that, there are lords of the Philistines waiting behind any wrong hand you fall into in your days of vulnerability. The word says;
“When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart.” So the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand.
Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. Judges 16:18-19 NKJV
Samson lost his faithfulness to God by revealing what he was told to keep. He did not do that because he wanted to, He did it because He was vulnerable at that time. When you become vulnerable and meet the wrong people, they will make you throw away your consecration vows; the vows you made to the LORD.
But the way of the Eagle has been revealed to us this morning so that we can stop all that!
Child of God, Heaven has a lot to do by our hands this end times. God wants us to keep our faithfulness to Him intact at all times, so that He will keep using us to push hell backwards. It is important to understand that, and wake up from every slumber.
Yes, it is important to understand that your faithfulness to Him, will position you to see Him neutralize the gates of hell on earth by your hands, and then fight to keep it intact at all times. That brings us to our devotional text.
THE TEXT WAS A CHARGE PAUL GAVE TO TIMOTHY WHICH ALIGNED GREATLY WITH THE FLOW OF DIVINE TRUTH ON THE SUBJECT MATTER.
He said to Him;
“You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” 2 Timothy 2:1-5 NKJV
I don’t know what else to add to these great words from the LORD. God will never commit great kingdom feats to faithless men or women. He will only commit them to faithful men. That is what we find in Paul’s counsel to Timothy.
We must therefore be faithful to God at all times to see the Holy Spirit commit great Kingdom victories to our hands.
Now, faithfulness to God at all times is not cheap. It is costly. You will go through hardships to be faithful to God. You will have to make sure you are not entangled with the affairs of this life with the sole aim of pleasing God, to be counted faithful.
You must also follow God according to His own rules, not yours or that of the culture or systems of this world, to be judged faithful by the LORD. This was fully stated in the text.
Finally, understand that going to Heaven is not automatic. You do not make Heaven or become all that God created you to be on this side of eternity by God’s faithfulness alone. People who think that way will have a rude shock in life. You need to be faithful.
It is my prayer that this devotional will be used by the LORD to position you eternally for the things He wants to do with your life, on this and the other side of eternity. Amen!!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY!
“He gives power to the faint and weary, and to him who has no might He increases strength [causing it to multiply and making it to abound].
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and [selected] young men shall feebly stumble and fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.” Isaiah 40:29-31 APMC