TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Sunday 21st February 2021)
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘ Matthew 13:26-30 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 52ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS
We bless the LORD GOD almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, for giving us another day to fulfill. Days are not given to us to waste but to fulfill. The word fulfill means there is a purpose to accomplish or a will of God to either do or align with.
Being fed with God’s word is one of the major purposes of any day the LORD gave us and a major will of God to align with if our goals is to fulfill our days.
This morning we will be visiting a well of truth dug four years ago on Right relationships. Recently, we used the lenses of the New Testaments to see the importance of separating from people who touch the dead, are leprous or have a discharge; a rule God gave to the Church in the wilderness.
The LORD showed us the mystery surrounding the instruction and how it relates to our spiritual lives today. I feel we should add to the building blocks of our faith by revisiting this well so that we will not destroy ourselves by keeping people in our lives that should have no place in our lives.
There is a destruction that comes when we keep people in our lives that God have not designed to be part of our lives. Samson kept Delilah and ended his life tragically. Dinah joined herself in friendship with the heathen and she was raped, leading to bloodshed. The Bible says we should not be unequally yoked together with two kinds of people; unbelievers and people who function as temples for demons.
There are Churches headed by either unbelievers or people who are temples of demons. If we are yoked together with them, we will never enjoy peace in our lives. Satan has a way of plating us in those churches or bringing people who are of the some stock into our lives form time to time to ruin us slowly and silently.
There is something to be doing from times to time if you will become all that God may have created to you to be. That thing is weeding. That is why we will be looking at the mystery of weeding in today’s devotional.
May the LORD use the well to fill your hearts with wisdom and guide you properly. Amen!
THE MYSTERY OF WEEDING
Where do blackmails and lies proceed from? Where does gossips and slander proceed from? Where does betrayal and murders proceed from? Who is the best weapon men use in betraying another through confidential whispers?
If the devil wants to invade your privacy and have someone tell everything about you to the outside world (the bad and the ugly) who does he use? The answer is trapped in two words – “Wrong Relationships.” God likened wrong relationships to tares sown by the devil to hinder our lives.
Either you believe it or not, most of what we face in life are products of the wrong people we are either putting up with or have put up with at one time in lives! God want to stop the enemy from using wrong relationships to destroy us. That is why this month’s devotional is important.
Let me begin today’s devotional with a story that may interest you.
Between 1984 and 1993 my family was involved in a lot of farming in the young City of Abuja then. When I say Family, I meant my Dad, My Mum and siblings.
My Dad was a police officer and had just being transferred from Calabar, in Cross River state South-south of Nigeria, to Abuja. The government of the day was still trying to convince people to move from Lagos Nigeria to the young Capital city, Abuja, so there was enough land to use in growing crops and dealing with hunger then.
Food was relatively cheap. With very little money you can buy a lot. We grew virtually every Nigerian crop you can think of. The only things we did not grow were, onions, Oil, salt and water. That is hilarious but really true.
During those farming years I learnt a lot of lessons that are helping me now to understand God and His ways. They also helped me to understand what God means whenever He says a thing that seems to relate with farming.
They also helped me to understand the different kinds of weeds that grow around our crops. So in the days of weeding the farms to allow the crops grow, we will carefully remove them, and when that happens you see the crops growing beautifully and producing bountifully in their seasons.
IT IMPRINTED A MESSAGE IN MY HEART OF WHAT A MAN OR WOMAN OF DESTINY SHOULD BE DOING FROM TIME TO TIME.
Truly, the life of a man or woman of destiny is like those crops. Satan has a way of planting weeds around us. Those weeds are the many wrong relationships we bring into our lives either through false marriages, business connections, and related things. If those relationships are not weeded out of our lives, we will never grow beautiful or produce bountifully.
If Satan plants a leper, a person with discharge or one who is fun of touching the dead around you as a relationship (like we discovered recently), you will be sorry.
The wisdom I gathered from those farming years made me to understand that weeding is part of life. If you do not make seasonal weeding a part of your life as a Child of God, you will never grow to become what God has called you to be.
There is a kind of people you must wake up to weed out of your life from time to time else you will move from being a crop to becoming a weed yourself. It’s your responsibility to discern them by the Holy Spirit. You do not need to listen to gossips, backbiters or concerned people; just discern them by the Holy Spirit and take the proper decision.
Maybe this will help you. I have come to discover that every relationship (spiritual, marital, social, economic, or whatever) does four things to us;
1. They divide us positively or negatively.
2. They subtract from us negatively or positively.
3. They add to us negatively or positively.
4. They multiples us negatively or positively.
If a relationship has been dividing, subtracting, adding to, or multiplying you negatively, apply the “weeding principle.”
In other words, weed them from your life to save your life (the crops). You can only love your neighbor AS you love yourself not less or more than you love yourself. In simple terms, if you have not loved yourself, you will not be able to love your neighbor.
YOU WILL BE HYPOCRITICAL TRYING TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.
The principle of seasonal weeding is very important in dealing with wrong relationships, irrespective of who they are.
I remember one day I went into our rice farm and discovered some weeds growing along with the rice. Honestly, I did not know they were weeds because they looked alike. But as they grew together, the weeds became very clear to us. We carefully moved into the farm and removed them away to save the crops.
Wrong relationships sometimes are like that; they look right when they first appear. But as they grow, their true nature will begin to emerge. If you do not carefully weed them out of your life you may grow up with them and get to the evening season of your life; ending as an old wretched man or woman, regretting over so many things that can no longer be amended then.
Many people do not know that time is one of the greatest “revelator” of things. As people press into our lives, time has a way of exposing who they are to us. It has a way of proving us wrong. When time proves you wrong concerning any relationship you erroneously took for a right one, you must apply the principle of weeding to it else you will lose.
Now, there were weeds that we will find out in our farm in those days that we cannot remove at the time we found them. Trying to remove them will mean uprooting the crops as well. To such weeds we usually apply the Biblical principle Jesus taught concerning the wheat and tares.
A major highlight in our devotional text says;
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘
Some wrong relationships are like tares among wheat that must be allowed to grow together until the time of harvest. They have grown up to be so attached to us that any attempt to remove them will remove us as well. In cases like that we must sense when the harvest time comes for the weeding to take place.
IF YOU CANNOT SENSE IT, YOU WILL REMAIN UNDER THE SNARE TILL DEATH.
Other times it requires bending your knees in prayers until God carries out the weeding Himself or turn them into crops from the weeds states they have been. All things are possible with God. But one thing that is not possible is the turning of Satan into a born again Child of God.
So you must sense when the harvest time comes even as you pray, and also understand that there are people that cannot be changed from weeds to crops by any kind of prayer because of who they have sold their souls to.
For instance, all false marriages are like tares attached to wheat. You have lived with the man or woman for so long and even have children with them and now you know you were wrong because everything about the whole issue is killing you terribly. That is when to prayerfully wait for the harvest time of the LORD!
It is only in harvest time that God carries out this kind of weeding but He does it by fully involving you. He will have to guide you in every step out of the snare. That is where sufficient prayers to build up spiritual sensitivity come in. In simple terms, God will have to carry out the process through divine direction.
There are details we cannot state down here because it’s just a devotional. But one thing you must know is that God does not deal with all wrong relationships the same way.
The ones that have so grown and attached themselves to our lives are dealt with “the-wheat-and-tare” way. If you try to solve them through any other method, it will not lead to a happy ending because you will end up destroying both yourself and the person or people in question.
I hope the LORD has spoken to us this morning.
May every paragraph written become a book of wisdom in your mental shelve in Jesus precious name! AMEN!
LET THIS SCRIPTURAL PARABLE BE YOUR MEDITATION TODAY:
“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.”
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘” Matthew 13:24-30 NKJV