TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Monday 10th May 2021)
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:12-13
WELCOME TO THE 130th DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS!
It is out of God’s mercies that we are not consumed, for His compassion fails not. Blessed be the name of the LORD for not giving us over to the teeth of our enemies.
Many of us may not be committing sin with our acts every now and then, but does it with our minds every now and then. Yet, we are still here.
If what Lucifer said in his heart was what sent him out of Heaven, then God have been merciful to me and many of you reading this not sending us to hell by what goes on in our minds sometimes. These are the things that should make us cry every now and down, thanking God for His mercies.
For instance, adultery is when a married person have sexual intercourse with someone other than the spouse. So each time I read scriptures like, “if you look at a woman lustfully, you have committed adultery (for the married)” it tells me so much about the number of adulterers on earth.
Meaning, an adulterer is not just one who do the act, but one who think the act. The difference between the two is that one who think the act came back to his or her senses, but the one who committed the act did not.
When you come back to your senses, and repent for thinking about it, you are considered righteous before God. When you do not, then you will need to repent and obtain mercy else something bad may happen – the sin will devour you someday if you persist in it, according to proverbs 6:27-35.
What am saying this morning is, it was one thing that Lucifer thought in his heart that sent him out of heaven but many of us have not been sent to hell by the LORD despite the many sinful and ungodly things we think in our hearts.
Indeed, God is merciful. It is important that we thank Him for His mercies every now and then even if one has no food to eat.
Though Lucifer ought not to have developed such thoughts because he was in the glory realm in the eternal past and we are in a very sinful and polluted environment; an environment he created for us when he became Satan, using the fall of man. Maybe that is why God do show us underserved mercies, hoping that we get transformed.
THE ONLY PERSON I HAVE SEEN BELIEVING IN MAN ABSOLUTELY IS GOD HIMSELF. HE ALWAYS HAVE FAITH THAT WE CAN CHANGE.
For instance, He believed in the return of the prodigal son and waited for him on the way. He will always wait for you to return, that is why the only thing to do when you sin against God is to return, not to walk away for good.
Personally, I have found out that no matter what I do sometimes, He still comes to speak or cleanse me, like He did to Cain after killing his brother, and David after sleeping with Beersheba, and Samson after losing his consecration. That is why I try to lead a clean life as much as possible. You don’t reward such mercies with a life of persistent disobedience.
Sadly, like many of us, Cain did not make use of that grace. He did what we should never do when God show us such mercies; he walked away from the presence of the LORD. But David and Samson did what we should always do in similar circumstances; not walk away form the presence of the LORD who believes is us more than anyone else on earth.
That was why David and Samson ended well but Cain did not. You will always end well if you do the right thing with God’s mercies.
God still believe in us even in our sinfulness. He still believes in you and I; He still believes that we can make it to Heaven and be absolute Holy, despite what we may have done, if I only we will get up from our sinful acts and return to Him for help.
But it will all begin from making up our minds not to allow sinful thoughts to breed in us and led us to sinful acts again. Yes, it will begin from the place of using the word of the LORD to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against a righteous life in our hearts.
The Bible says in Proverbs 23:7 that as we think in our hearts so are we. That is why it is dangerous not to arrest the sinful and ungodly thoughts within us, because they are capable of defining who we become or what we do at the end.
This morning, we are going to refresh our minds with truths we have shared before that will help us on this journey.
God has provided His Holy Spirit and Holy word to help us in the battle against the sin that lives or springs up in us. That is why He made, serving our generation according to His will to include serving the LORD by walking intimately with His Holy Spirit daily.
He made it to include perfecting our ways on daily bases and allowing ourselves to be used of God to ministers to others in His place! In that way we can fulfill our highest calling as believers.
OUR HIGHEST CALLING AS BELIEVERS IS TO BE THE BODY OF CHRIST WHEREVER WE FIND OURSELVES.
To be the body of Christ is to serve as His base station for reaching that boss of yours who is still unsaved, that colleague of yours who still lives in darkness, that client who do not know the LORD, that man or women who sits beside you and etc. God’s vision for waking us up each morning is to be His operational base station on earth.
There are truths in Philippians 2:12-13 to dig this morning. Which is why, we made it our devotional text today! It says,
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:12-13
Our Church generation is a unique generation. We know how to work out our fallen nature and make sure we touch people with it but we do not know how to work out our redeemed nature – our salvation.
Many of us do not know that when we gossip, slander, fight, become greedy, lustful, and proud or do anything to respond to the carnal passions within us, we are WORKING OUT our fallen nature and using it to touch others; most times destroying their chance of walking or returning to God. Which is not our calling!
The Bible made it clear that one of the major things that we must learn to WORK OUT as Children of the Most High God is our salvation. We must learn to work out or cultivate our redeemed nature or our salvation to touch the lost world around us according to the will of God, with fear and trembling!
To work out our salvation means so many things that we will be exploring briefly.
First, it means to live true to our heavenly calling as the body of Christ or saints of the Most High God. It also means to manifest the Holiness, purity, power and goodness of God deposited in our lives by His saving grace!
Furthermore, it means to pull the righteousness that Christ has accomplished for us on the cross, from His Holy Spirit to our unholy lives to make it holy, so that men will see it and glorify God in Heaven!
To work out your salvation also means, to make sure every eye that looks at you sees the finished works of Christ in your character and every other thing you are or do in life! Jesus said in Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (NKJV).
IN ESSENCE, WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION WILL INVOLVE BRINGING TO THE FORE THE INTERNAL WORKS OF GOD’S GRACE IN OUR LIVES.
And that can only happen after we have yielded to GOD’s grace and received His sanctifying truths, maybe over time. Sadly, many of us have not yielded to God’s grace enough or received His sanctifying truths that can help us accomplish that in our internal lives, hence we have nothing Godly to bring to the fore.
We always bring froth the nasty, the sinful, and the wicked to the fore.
You cannot work out, or bring to the fore any salvation that the saving grace of God has not being allowed to work or accomplish in you. You will just be working out the sinful or the religious (form of godliness without power). That is why the Church is yet to influence the world back to Christ.
For instance, most of us pastors, apostles, prophets and prophetesses allow sexual perversion to spring forth from within us to the men and women that God brings to us to harvest into His kingdom. Many of us allow greed and covetousness to spring forth from within us, leading to conception of carnal visions and revelations of all kinds, resulting in giving out instructions to people that keeps us smiling to the bank while the people smile to hell.
Preacher, God will Judge us if we do not repent!
We must humble ourselves and start submitting to the grace of God to work out, or accomplish something in us, so that we can stop doing these abominable acts as spiritual leaders. Because these are the things that are making the Church impotent in a dying world.
We think the world will return to Christ by our preaching only. That is a lie. The human life is designed in a unique way; it is designed to be shaped by lifestyles. Therefore, it is our lifestyles that are stronger in pulling the lost to Christ than our preaching. That is why, when we preach the right messages and lead wicked and sinful lives, we produce nothing in God’s kingdom.
Yes, we find people not coming to Christ genuinely. We find psychological salvation everywhere. We find them coming and going back to their old ways after watching us for a while and seeing that we are just hypocrites.
AND IF WE COMPEL OR MANIPULATE THEM TO REMAIN IN CHURCH, THEY REMAIN AS SONS OF HELL INSTEAD OF SONS OF GOD.
The most important thing to do either as a pastor, Church member or one who just gave his or her life to Christ, is to spend your days working out your salvation with fear and trembling. If we do not work out our salvation, we will come to a point where we will be professing that we know God with our lips, but in works or deeds we will be denying him; which is the hallmark of the hypocrite.
If we do not work out our salvation, we will claim born again but still live like the lost sinners around us. The only difference between us and them will be Church attendance. Our spiritual states will still be the same.
Friend, our apostolic Fathers spent their days working out their salvation with fear and trembling. That was why there was no scandal among them after accepting Jesus. But the reverse is the case in the present Church!
Most of them like Saul who became Paul, were criminals and assassins. They killed and did so much terrible things. Some of them were harlots, convicts and all that. But when they met Christ, there was no turning back to the old path of sin and wickedness. That was possible because they submitted totally to the demands of God’s saving grace and allowed it to do a work in them.
They submitted their will to the grace of God to guide them by the word of the LORD. By doing that, God worked in them to will and to so of His good pleasure. It resulted in the very salvation they spent their days working out with fear and trembling!
It is our turn to do the same!
May God use these words and give you an inheritance among they that are sanctified! Amen
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:16-20 NKJV