TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 1ST FEBRUARY 2024)
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:9-10 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 32ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
We give God the glory for giving us the mercy to see another month. We do not take it for granted because we know how fragile and precious the human life is.
We have been surviving under the shelter of His mercies, faithfulness, and grace. The cost of staying alive is been taking care of by Him. The Blood of Jesus Christ is making it impossible for the enemy to have a legal right to oppress our lives they way he wants.
We have so much to thank God for as a people. To him belong all the glory!
Our journey into the second month of the year begins today.
Last month we started a flow of truth to refresh our spirits on what our divine destinies needs to be fulfilled. We will continue with that discourse today.
One major thing your divine destiny will need to be fulfilled is Love for God. Yes, love for God. No one has ever fulfilled their divine destinies without loving the LORD.
Jesus as man, fulfilled His divine destiny by loving God the Father. His love for God was what was demonstrated in His love for us, the human race. It made Him to lay down His life for us.
God loves the human race, and want us all redeemed. Jesus’ love for God made Him that redeemer.
From this, we can learn that Love for God expressed itself in love for what God loves, and in laying down one’s life (Time, talent, treasure, etc.) for the LORD.
David fulfilled his destiny because of love for God. His love for God was so strong that he could not stand the defiling of the army of the LORD by Goliath of Gath.
He had to move even as a 17-year-old to remove the reproach from the people of God.
FROM HIS LIFE, WE CAN LEARN THAT LOVE FOR GOD CAN MAKE YOU TAKE ON GIANTS AND DO GREAT EXPLOITS FOR THE LORD.
His love for God was responsible for all he did, both as a citizen and king of Israel. It drove Him to dwell in the presence of the LORD all the days of his life, spending quality time there to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire at His temple.
Love for God is also expressed in a spiritual desire for His presence and more of it. It was responsible for him bringing the ark back to its place in Israel. It was responsible for his desire to build the temple.
He would later be prevented by the LORD from building it, and the assignment passed to his son, Solomon.
However, he found out the exact place the temple needed to be built, and secured it. That was the ultimate of the release of his destiny, and love for God enabled him to do all that.
Everyone in scriptures who fulfilled their divine destinies where driven by love for God. In the New Testament Church, we have Paul and the rest of the apostles who went through so much because of their love for God.
The Bible says they wondered in caves, and led lives that the world was not worthy of them.
They were all driven by love for God. That was why they never turned the Church into a money-making machine, and never twisted the doctrine of Christ or replaced with any other doctrine.
They preached Heaven making doctrines, not money-making doctrines.
They taught truths that formed Christ in the hearts of people not truths that put money in their pockets like we see today.
Friend, so much of what we see today in Church is different from what was in the hearts of our fathers in Bible days. Most of what we see today is love for money.
While many are opened about it, some just conceal it in spirituality, false worship, and fake love for God.
Sometime people do not recognize the deception.
Love of money manifests itself in form of a dangerous desire to be rich. You can see it in the heart of anyone with it if you look properly.
Many sons and daughters of destiny have fallen into piercing temptations, satanic snares, foolish and harmful lust, and have been drown into destruction in this life because of love for money.
YOU WILL NEVER FULFILL YOUR DESTINY WITH LOVE FOR MONEY IN YOUR HEART.
You will place your destiny for sale, and destroy yourself eternally. You will be seeking to gain the whole world even at the expense of your soul. You will be worshiping only in churches that present financial prosperity as the ultimate prosperity men should seek.
If you are a preacher, dark teachings like the redemption of first born, giving of first fruits, raising of altars, sowing seeds for miracles, or any other money-making teachings will be your gospel.
Love for money is so strong that it can shut down a person’s love for God.
In fact, our LORD and savior Jesus Christ said, our hearts do not have the capacity to love God and money at the same time. He said in Matthew 6: 24 that we cannot serve God and mammon.
Mammon is the god of riches and material acquisition.
Our hearts do not have the capacity to serve God and this demon. We can only serve the one and only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent, or mammon. We can’t serve both.
In God’s mindset, money should be a tool for serving Him and advancing His purposes. There should be no love for it in our hearts.
But in the mindset of a corrupt Church generation, God is tool for getting and serving money.
God is used for advancing carnal ambitions and promoting the love of money in people’s hearts. That is why the destructive desire to be rich has become the distinguished character of our Church generation.
Today we have people who when they become rich in money, they lose measures of the presence of God. We have preachers who had greater measures of God’s presence when they had no money.
When money came, the lost every of that and begin to ride in the shadow of what they once had.
When you see that happen, know that the person’s love for God has been replaced with an internal crave and love for money.
Friend, if the desire to be rich is the reason you are running after God, you will stop running after Him when financial comfort comes, and lose all the measures of the presence you once had.
That is why the true God will never bless any financially until He first deliver them from money!
HEAVEN WILL NEVER PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET UNTIL THE LOVE FOR IT IS REMOVED FROM YOUR HEART.
He will never place your feet on the path of divine destiny, until the love or worship of money is eliminated from your heart. The reason is because the destination of all with the worship or love of money in their hearts, is very dark.
God do not want us go that direction.
Our devotional text says;
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
The easiest way to be drawn into destruction and perdition like Judas Iscariot was, is to pursue a divine destiny with a desire to be rich.
That is why Churches have become money making machines, and every prayer for miracles, or divine intervention, is now attached to special financial seeds. As a result, many in our Church generation have become fat and rich in the unrighteous mammon (money), but very poor in the true riches of the Kingdom.
Sadly, the so-called spiritual fathers are the ones perpetrating this dangerous move in the church. John the beloved accurately captured the prophetic portrait of our Church generation when he wrote saying;
“Because you say,’I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’ — and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked — Revelation 3:17 NKJV
Look at the many Churches and ministries we call rich and mega, they are producing a followership that is wretched in the things of God, miserable, poor, blind and naked.
There is no fullness of God’s presence on display in their lives.
Whenever the pursuit of divine destiny becomes driven by the love of money, or desire to be rich, destiny people will become an assembly of Satan, or a gate of hell on the face of the earth, fighting even the very purposes of God they claim to be pursuing.
The preaching of heresies, practice of prophetic and Charismatic witchcraft, and direct attacks on the true Church of Jesus Christ and any voice God might be using to confront them, will become the hallmarks of their lives.
THEY WILL REDUCE THE GRACE OF GOD INTO AN EXCUSE FOR ALL KINDS OF PERVERSIONS TO ACCOMMODATE MONEY BAGS IN CHURCH.
But Jesus has said “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” That is why I am confident that they will not prevail. He spoke through John the beloved saying;
“Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie — indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.”
“Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.” Revelation 3:9-10 NKJV
I believe this is a present word for those who are keeping the word of the LORD, who are not driven by a desire to be rich in their pursuit of destiny.
God is saying to you this new month, “I will keep you from the hour of trial that shall come to test those who dwell on the earth. Above all, you will smile in eternity when your days are fulfilled.”
The troubles you may have faced in time for keeping to God’s word, and allowing only His love drive you in the release of divine destiny, will be rewarded.
I am persuaded that if you make today’s devotional your meditation, and allow the Holy Ghost to unveil more things to you, something destructive will be extracted out of your desire to pursue destiny.
As we bring this to a close, understand that, many who have lost the glory of God in Church now have the powers of the evil one in their lives. That is what they are using to dish out miracles to the naive.
That is why their prayers for people is usually based on giving money or sowing seeds, using salt, sand or mustard seeds to pray for their problems to be solved; and asking people to drink oil, etc.
They have pursued and acquired money but lost the glory of God. May that not be said of you or anyone in the true Church! Amen.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY;
“But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.”
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
“I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:11-16 NKJV