TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 13TH JANUARY 2024)
“Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Proverbs 24:3-4 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 13TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Gratitude to the Most High God for His marvelous deeds and gracious acts. This is the second weekend of the year, and we are deeply grateful to our GOD, for keeping us alive and watching over us.
The 12 days we have seen this year already have been a set of blessed days. I believe they set the stage of what we are to expect in the days to come because of the significance of the number 12.
Sadly, dark things are already happening to some souls. If you work in hospitals, you will bear me witness.
However, when you look at some of them closely, you will realize they were spill over of so many dark decisions and events that had been happening in their lives in the previous years.
If you ask me, I will say days and years are just the way they are. It is what we do as we live them that determines how our lives turn out. It is therefore foolish or ignorant to say, “2024 will bless me” or “2024 will bless you or be a blessing.”
Years are not gods that interfere with people’s lives. It is what we do in the days that make up the years that will determine if we will experience blessings or curses during the year.
If we do blessed things, like walking intimately with Jesus Christ, standing right with God, forgiving even the unforgivable, walking in wisdom and humility of heart, following peace with all men, working with our hands to provide for our needs instead of stealing, lying or loitering about, and etc. we will lead very blessed lives.
But if we do the opposite of all that, we will lead very accursed lives.
God has given us the dominion to shape our days, or years with our actions. It is important that we use it well. You will have a blessed year only if you do blessed things. You will never have a blessed year doing accursed things.
The Bible is clear that whosoever sow to please the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. None of us among men will ever reap blessings if we keep sowing to please our flesh.
SOMETIMES WE THINK THAT A MULTITUDE OF PRAYERS CAN REPLACE THE NECESSITY OF DOING THE RIGHT THING.
I want to submit to us this morning that, even if a thousand genuine and powerful men and women of God petition God to bless you, you will never see the blessings in your life, if you are not doing blessed things.
A people who do accursed things, should not expect blessings from God no matter how much they need them.
I wish us all the best of God this year. But having it as one of the blessed years of your life, calls for doing the blessed things that you have never done before. Yes, it calls for doing the blessed and beautiful things that you are yet to do with your life.
I reiterate again that if you want to have this year as one of the most blessed years of your life, prepare to do the most blessed things you are yet to do with your life.
No one will ever have a blessed year doing accursed things. The Bible is full of a list of accursed things that people do, and expect blessed things to happen to them.
For instance, having sex with animals, or animalistic people, sleeping with either a blood relative, another person’s wife or husband, or someone you are not married to, a neighbor, a colleague, a friend, a business partner or etc., is an accursed thing.
Sometimes doing accursed things do not speak in a man or woman’s life immediate, but it will definitely speak if there is no repentance. The Bible says sentence on an evil work is not speedily executed.
THE FACT THAT REPERCUSSIONS COME SLOWLY OR AT LAST MAKE PEOPLE THINK THEY WILL NEVER COME.
But either they come now or later, do not expect to lead a blessed life doing accursed things.
There are other accursed things we do that we do not know. Some of them are very mild and subtle. For instance, to be carnally minded is an accursed thing to a life in the Spirit.
Romans 8 says there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. If we want to be blessed by the LORD, we must not lead carnal lives.
God can give miracles to the carnally minded to bail them out of problems, but will never put the blessing that makes rich and add no sorrow on their lives. Until they become Spiritually minded, things will remain difficult for them.
Now, not that God hate the carnally minded. It is just that carnal mindedness has a way of swaying us to do things that will not let His blessings to sit permanently on our lives.
Do not spend this year thinking that your prayer will take care of you when your deeds are ruing contrary to moral excellence. Our deeds make more impact on our lives than our prayers.
Yes, I repeat! Our deeds make more impact on our lives than our prayers.
The thief on the cross did not go to heaven because he prayed, but because he did something as he prayed. He rebuked the other thief openly, and those who recorded the event heard him. That buttress the power of open rebuke. The Bible says it is better than secret love.
The man did that because he recognized the power of his sin and repented, and the power of God’s mercies and requested for it. That was a noble deed. It ended up saving him.
This is not in any way undermining the power of prayers. Praying right prayers is the live wire of a believer. But we must match right praying with right living.
THEY GO HAND IN HAND.
It is important to understand that, no matter how powerful your prayer life is, if your deeds are dark, you will destroy all you will ever unlock by your prayers. Praying alone is not enough.
Right living should complement a powerful prayer life.
People who do not know that, will be spending their days asking God to bless them with something, but doing things that will never allow the blessing to sit upon them. That is the wisdom to use to build your life this year.
A major highlight in our devotional text this morning said, “Through wisdom is a house built.” The word house there means life.
Many lives have been shattered by wrong decisions, outright satanic attacks and all that. But it will take divine wisdom to rebuild them back. One of it has just be handed over to you this morning; the wisdom of matching righteous prayers with right living.
There is a segment of the Church that believes prayer and fasting does everything, but most of them are no longer getting results in prayers. They now move from church to church looking for miracles.
You must come to the realization that the rebuilding of a broken-down life, is not done by prayer and fasting alone. It is done by the wisdom of God.
Yes, Biblical prayer and fasting will make your spirit receptive to God’s wisdom, and give you the required understanding to apply to your daily life in other to rebuild it.
But if you replace that wisdom with just praying, you are doomed. You will die praying! I believe enough has been said. A word they say, is enough for the wise.
As we bring this to a close, do not forget that the Bible says, God’s eyes are going to and fro looking for people who are loyal towards Him to show Himself mighty on their behalf.
That word contains another deed that will impact your life; a deed you must add to an effective prayer life to lead a blessed life on earth. That deed is loyalty to God. If you are loyal to God, you will be faithful in keeping His word, and loyal to the friends and destiny partners He gives you.
Another translation calls it a heart that is perfect towards God. You cannot be praying effective without having a heart that is perfect towards God and see the results of your prayers. That will be a sacrifice of a fool.
The message of today is simple, add right living and wise living to your righteous prayers and intensive fasting, and you reap results that eyes have not seen, ears heard, or hearts conceived.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY;
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
“Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
“I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.” Jeremiah 29:11-14 NKJV