THE CRY OF THE SPIRIT DEVOTIONALS – BY RICHARD E. S. TAKIM

TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 1ST MAY 2024)

“The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations.

All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.

A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” Psalm 22:26-30 KJV

WELCOME TO THE 122ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.

Blessed be the name of the LORD for giving us another day to be alive. It is out of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, for His compassion fails not.

Like we have always said, whenever you see a brand-new day, just say to the LORD, “thank you for life, thank you for sustaining your breath in me. Thank you for allowing me to be counted among the living of today.” 

Gratitude to God will remain one of the greatest forms of worship God expect from man. When we remain grateful in good times and bad times, we are actually doing the will of God. The Bible says,

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NKJV

Giving God thanks is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus.

Meaning, if we are not giving God thanks, in good times and in bad times, whose will are we really doing? It might be the will of the evil one, who always seeks to cut us off from the ways of God so He can destroy us.

Talking about Satan’s unquenchable desire to destroy us, the nation of Kenya has been witnessing some disasters of late. Floods have taken so many lives, destroyed properties, and changed the ecosystem of many residents of this great nation.

I read of over 50 to 80 people who are either missing or dead in villages around the Mai Mahiu town, due to killer flash floods that swept through homes and roads, cutting off traffic from Nairobi.

Dams are overflowing their banks, and a lot of rains have been falling. There has been emergency responses from the government and people are in pain.

Sadly, in what looks like a spicing on this dangerous cake from Satan for the nation, so many have been dying from road accidents also. I was shocked that the road I drove through last night, valley road, witnessed an accident earlier in the day in which a traffic police officer was killed.

THE ROADS ARE FLOODED AND A LOT IS HAPPENING.

Someone sent me a message asking why is God punishing them? I was shocked. Did he sit with God in Heaven to hear Him say, “I want to punish Kenya with floods and death?” Another sent a message asking another question and making comments that are simply indicting God.

Why should human beings point fingers at God in a thing that Satan is responsible? The Bible says he came to kill, to steal, and to destroy. The Bible did not say Jesus came to kill, steal, and destroy. So, why should man point fingers at God when man sees bad things happening? It is shocking!!

The only person that came that we should have life is God, not Satan. If we will point our fingers to the right source of our problems, then we can deal with them or avoid them altogether.

God created our earth perfect, and placed us here.

But our connection to Satan and our sinful ways, destroyed everything and brought the earth into the state we all see today, in different nations of the world. Whatever bad things we see today are associated with the evil one, who only does evil things.

If you see God creating calamity, it is to bring peace.

The Bible says God create calamity and God creates peace. God has never created calamity to eliminate peace, except where peace has become a fertility for the destruction of men and the prosperity of the works of Satan.

God has always created calamity to wipe away evil, and establish peace on the earth. Bible prophecy has it that, He will allow evil to destroy itself, and when evil is destroying itself, people die. People who are not protected will die.

So, to wipe away evil, God will create calamity by allowing evil to destroy itself. That is in Bible prophecy.

Yes, what we are saying this morning is this, God kills to make alive, but what is happening in Kenya now is not one of such moves of God. He is not the one behind the floods and accidents. It is clearly a cake of destruction from the evil one, because of the dark atmosphere the nation was plunged into by things that we cannot state on this platform.

GOD’S ETERNAL MOVES ON EARTH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TO SAVE US FROM THE DEVIL, HIS WORKS, AND EVIL DEEDS.

The Bible says the everlasting God is our refuge, underneath are His everlasting arms. His eternal will is that we be saved from the enemy and all he does to make our lives difficult.

This He does through the warnings, directives, teachings, instructions, statutes, counsels, exhortations, and rebukes that are contained in His word, the Bible. But if they are not taught to us, we will never know them and live our lives in such a way that He can sit over them as the governor.

And until God sits over our lives as the governor, guiding us daily, correcting us, directing us, rebuking us, leading our decisions, and influencing every detail of what we do, either as individuals, a family, or a nation, we will never be protected from things like these.

Yes, He cannot govern our lives if we do not know what His words says and walk in it.

And it is when He governs our lives that we will be saved from disasters like what we are seeing today. I repeat, it is when God govern our lives, families, nations, and etc. that men will be saved from disasters like what we are seeing today.

A story was told of how a group of sons and daughters of Christ were saved from a terrible flood. They had been persecuted and some killed for preaching the gospel in that place.

The place was prone to floods because it was riverine and because they had no drainage system. One day in prayer the LORD said to them, “move your dwellings to the mountain up there.” Now, there were no people living on the mountain, but they had to obey because He was the governor of their lives.

THEY MOVED, AND EVERY ONE MOCKED AT THEM.

Then after three months, the rains came, and refused to stop. Then the floods came, and many were killed. But no one in this group of believers in Christ, who had made the LORD the governor of their lives, was affected.

Obviously, God saved them from the flood by leading them to move to the mountain before the flood even came.

If God is the governor of your life, He will do the same. He lives in the future as much as with you in the present, and sees what is coming. He will move you to safe places before what is coming comes, or direct you on what to do before it comes.

But if we do not know Him like those believers knew Him, how will He lead us that way? How will He save us from floods and accidents? I have been saved from accidents and premature death by his governing influence over my life several times.

I have come to discover that it is good to go for prayer covers, or pray over our families, cities, and nations. But if God is not governing our Individual lives, like He governed the lives of those believers, our prayers will produce no results.

Those believers were not affected because they lived on the mountain where the flood could not get to long before the flood came. God took them there earlier and got them established on the mountains before the floods came.

Simply put, the governor of their lives saved them.

Friend, in time of trouble, it is who governs your life that will save you. If you are the governor of your life, then you will perish when trouble comes because there will be no one to save you.

That day, the people of the village saw God and stopped mocking at those believers. Some later abandoned their idols and joined the Church. They knew the God of those people saved them, unlike their gods who could not.

CHILD OF GOD, IF THE LORD IS YOUR SHEPHERD, THE ONE LEADING YOU, YOU WILL BE SAVED FROM APPROACHING DISASTERS.

Protection from the cakes of destruction Satan serves nations, families, and individuals, is by God becoming the governor of our lives. It is when we have a living relationship with Him that we can be saved; a relationship that allows Him to govern our lives.

So long as that relationship does not exist, we will always eat from the cake of destruction that Satan serves the people of the earth. A major scripture of our devotional text says;

“The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations.” Psalm 22:26-28 KJV

If your life is the LORD’s then allow Him to be the governor in your life. We cannot be saying we belong to God, yet we are the ones in charge of our lives. There is no way that we will be protected from the enemy that way.

God’s will is that we live in peace and prosperity, serving our generation according to His will. You see that in the devotional text.

The phrase “the meek,” in the first verse of the text, represents the poor and vulnerable. Concerning them, the word says, they shall eat and be satisfied, and that they shall praise the LORD and seek Him.

That is the will of God for us all. The will of God is not that we get destroyed or killed by floods, road accidents, and etc.

The will of God is that we eat in plenty, and be satisfied, which represents a life of peace and prosperity. But that will not happen because we hold prayer caravans, but because each person is being governed by the LORD. That is the word of the LORD!!!

May the LORD favor you this month with a kind of grace and goodness that you have never seen. May you be protected and not eat from the cake of destruction that Satan serves nations in Jesus’ precious name. Amen!!

MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!!

“There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.” Deuteronomy 28:26-27 KJV