TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Sunday 21st March 2021)
“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” John 17:9-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 80TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS!
Silently we began unfolding how to attract Right relationships into our lives in yesterday’s devotional. We presented the first two keys to apply. The key of “travailing prayers” and the key of “doing to others what you wish that they do to you.”
Travailing prayers is spending time with God requesting that He grant you Right Relationships until your life is filled with them. During those moments He will be showing you what you may need to be doing in other to receive and retain them.
Doubtlessly, one thing He will show you is how to treat others the way you want them to treat you. In simple terms, He will teach you how to put people in your shoe before taking decisions or reacting to them. That is what we presented as the second key. But this morning I perceive the Spirit of the LORD Jesus taking us a step further.
Everyone who will fulfill divine destiny must be surrounded by Right relationships. If you see a man or woman sandwiched by wrong relationships, either through marriage, business or other forms of economic pursuits, social circles, or ministry, you have seen someone whose divine destiny will never be fulfilled.
He or she may see his define destiny, know it, train and wait for it to be fulfilled but will never fulfill it. He will be like Moses, seeing the promise land, talking about it but never being able to come into it. No one fulfills divine destiny hooked up to wrong relationships.
In fact, if the devil wants to quench a man’s holy fire, or take him away from God’s righteous paths, or make sure he knows his destiny but do not fulfill it, he will send a wrong relationship to him. He will send it wrapped in the carnal and earthly things the man so desires.
That was how Samson was neutralized and deactivated. Many sons and daughters of Jesus Christ have been neutralized and deactivated the same way, and many more are being neutralized and deactivated.
When Satan uses a wrong relationship to deactivate and neutralize you, you will be in a terrible shape spiritually, economically and socially. Sometimes your health or marriage life will be in terrible shape.
FRIEND, THE NEUTRALIZATION AND DEACTIVATION OF THE SONS OF GOD IS ONGOING EVEN IN THE CHURCH TODAY.
One thing we must understand is that if we are making waves with God, touching lives and living a red hot Christian life, Satan will want to neutralize and deactivate us. And the strategy he always uses is that of “releasing wrong relationships” wrapped in things that satisfy our canal and earthly desires into our lives.
One wrong person can quench, in one day, a fire and reputation you spent a life time to build. That is how terrible it is. But these persons do not come killing, stealing, and destroying. No! They come with helping hands and with the supply of the carnal and earthly things we need and silently deactivate and neutralize us in the process.
Sometimes they do not start their mission until they get so deep into our lives, then without us knowing it, start neutralizing and deactivating anything that is God in our lives. Other times these people themselves will not know that are being used. The enemy will just blindfold them and you see them doing it like a mission that must be fulfilled.
That is why every time we are “red hot for Christ in our prayer lives and the execution of the great commission” that is the time to be very careful who we bring into our lives. Even bloodlines have to be redefined and separated from God’s Kingdom Line in our “red hot” moments as Sons of God.
IT WAS IN THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT OF THIS PROPHETIC TRUTH THAT JESUS SAID,
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
“For I have come to part asunder a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, and a newly married wife from her mother-in-law — and a man’s foes will be they of his own household.”
“He who loves [and takes more pleasure in] father or mother more than [in] Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves [and takes more pleasure in] son or daughter more than [in] Me is not worthy of Me;”
“And he who does not take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conforming wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying also] is not worthy of Me.” Matthew 10:34-38 AMP
This scripture has been presented by most preachers (and is still being presented) almost as a ratification of sibling rivalry by Jesus. To be honest most of us have used it and are still using it to trigger hatred and rivalry even in the hearts of members of the same family, tearing them apart and making them to devour themselves.
May God forgive us for twisting the scriptures to our destruction!
There is no space to outline in full what this portion of the Bible really means, but one thing you should know is this; God created family and His sovereignty decided where we were born. He would not have created us and placed us in the hands of our enemies and call them our family. No! Brotherhood was created for keeping not for killing.
This scripture explains what happens when a member of a family kisses the will of God and other doesn’t understand. It calls for the redefinition of bloodlines when we are red hot for Christ and not devouring and destruction of bloodlines (by what deliverance ministers call dangerous prayers) when they are swayed by the enemy to attack or hurt us.
At one time Jesus demonstrated the meaning of this scripture when He redefined blood relationship by calling those who do His will ‘His mother and father’ instead of Mary and Joseph. Yet He did not do that in hate or at any time ask God to kill them.
At another time, when He hung on the Old Rugged Cross – in pains and anguish of the soul (then Joseph had died) – He still remembered to take care for His mother. He asked one of His disciples shortly before He died, to take full responsibility of her, and the man responded swiftly and took her into his home.
So if that scripture meant members of our households are our enemies, then Jesus would not have bothered about Mary or any of His earthly brothers especially while hanging on the cross.
FRIEND, JESUS WAS AN EXAMPLE OF A CHILD THAT WAS A RIGHT RELATIONSHIP TO HIS EARTHLY ‘PARENTS’ SO TO SPEAK. HE WAS A LOVING SON!
Sadly, that cannot be said of most of us His followers. Most of us are like plagues to our parents. We ask God for good relationships but are very bad relationships to even our own blood relatives because of the-fall-down-and-die syndrome.
We twist great scriptures like this and use them to kindle grievances in our hearts against those the LORD gave us to keep. May God change and forgive us this morning!
Friend, God is speaking to us about “Right Relationships” this month to stop the enemy. He wants to rescue those of us who have been neutralized and reactivate us by giving us right relationships. But we must become Right Relationships ourselves. It is easy to point an accusing finger, but difficult to check ourselves.
What the enemy used a wrong relationship in your life to destroy, God will use a right one to restore. We must therefore know how to receive and retain them through proper conduct.
That brings us to the next key to apply in receiving and retaining Right relationships – it is called the key of spiritual sensitivity. We have spoken about this key in another way in previous devotional. But today it shall be different.
Now, what role does the key of spiritual sensitivity play? How do we use it to receive and retain right relationships? You know we are more of spirit beings than natural beings. Spirit beings function through their spiritual senses, and spiritual sensitivity is engaging our spiritual senses in judgment. Now how does that work?
Let’s look at the life of Christ as man in the flesh again. As soon as He started His earthly ministry, God began to pull people to Him. God knew that without Right relationships around Him, whatever He came to do on earth will not have continued, especially after His resurrection; everything will die and the gospel will not reach us. So He gave Him the first apostles to be with Him.
BUT HOW DID JESUS RECEIVE AND RETAIN THEM?
After a season of “praying to cultivate spiritual sensitivity,” He selected 12 out of the many that were already around Him and called them His apostles. Then He called others “disciples.” Among the twelve there was a wrong relationship He carefully allowed to be among them so that the scriptures might be fulfilled.
There is a lesson to glean here; if you want to apply the key of spiritual sensitivity in matters of relationship, you must know how to pray to cultivate spiritual sensitivity!
Now these men that God gave Jesus (as man) needed to be retained. And if you read the Bible you will discover that Jesus (as man) spent every minute of His life praying for them, teaching them, and training and imparting them. The primary purpose was to retain them so they could enable Him to become what God called them to be.
Our devotional text this morning reveals one of the many places He did that during His days as man. It made it clear that Jesus really did a lot to keep those the LORD gave Him. A major Highlight of it says,
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
He added all that to spiritual sensitivity. That brings us to another key to use in receiving and retaining Right Relationships – the key of constant healthy communication. It’s dangerous to take things for granted. Many speak insolent and vulgar words to their love ones and expect things to be right. They will never be right!
If you do not speak healthy things from your heart to those that LORD has given you, you will loose them no matter how loving or anointed they may be. If God give you a Right Relationship in a pastor, a wife, a husband, a business partner or any other and you do not know how to manage your language, will always be in trouble with them.
Right relationships must be kept through Right Communication. Jesus spoke words that were full of grace and truth to His disciples until He died, resurrected and ascended. If you do not do the same, you will always loose great people God bring into your life to make you.
It’s a New day for you in Jesus precious name!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY:
“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
“Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:29-32 NKJV