TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Friday 3RD September 2021)
“When they were few in number, Indeed very few, and strangers in it. When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people,
He permitted no one to do them wrong; Yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes, Saying, “Do not touch my anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.” Psalms 105:12-15 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 246th DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS!
It is a good thing to give thanks to the LORD and to glorify His great name when one wakes up in the morning. We thank God for giving us another weekend.
If we build a character of sending a voice of thanksgiving to God as soon as we wake up each morning, it will create an altitude for us in the Spirit, bringing us to Higher Heights of faith and better realms of life.
People who know how to be grateful to God for even a brand new day, will always enjoy brand new things from the lord. Life is about seed time and harvest. If you want a harvest of any kind, look for its seed and sow into time and you will get it.
Gratitude remains the seed for the harvest of altitude. Meaning, there are heights we will never come into in life until we learn to be grateful to God.
One major blessing we enjoy if we become people of gratitude is the blessing of the power of God’s mercies and kindness that places one on the high places of the earth. People who spend their days under the power of God’s mercies will not be paralyzed by the mess of life.
Honestly, if I look at how we have fared this year and the quality of people that the year has consumed in death, I have no other words that to say, “it is out of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed.”
When you hear of better and healthier people than you dying, then you have no choice than to admit that God’s mercies has really kept you! Indeed, if GOD should mark iniquity no one can stand. But there is forgiveness with Him that He may be feared. I think the loudest way we can tell the LORD “thank you for keeping us” is by increasing our fear for Him.
WE ARE TROPHIES OF THE POWER OF HIS MERCIES, HENCE WE NEED TO LEAD A LIFE THAT FEAR HIM IN RETURN!
People who do not know how to appreciate God by enhancing their fear for Him will eventually loose whatever His goodness may have brought. They will lose it because of their attitude of lack of fear from God. When it comes to receiving and retaining the blessings of God’s goodness, attitudes are some of the major keys.
We shall therefore be looking at attitudes and the anointing this morning.
To start with, I want to submit to you that attitudes do not just help us to retain supernatural treasures from God, they also help us in making prayers work for us! Yes, they are responsible for making prayers for us, or prayers from us to work.
A man’s prayer life may be regular, powerful and tremendous in making God’s hand available in his life but if he does not have the right attitude, he will destroy everything his prayer brought down from the Throne of GOD.
That is why people who pray must also learn to have the right attitude in life so that their prayer life will not be hindered by their wrong attitudes. In your quest to get treasures or divine interventions from God through prayers, you must strive to maintain or have the right attitude in life.
I have seen wrong attitude deny many amazing manifestations of God. It denied the Pharisees the great visitation that Jesus brought in the days of the Bible.
Jesus had to weep over the city of Jerusalem over its attitude towards Him when He was physically here. That tells us how many times we may have made Him weep over us for having the wrong attitudes and suffering for it.
Being grateful is a right attitude one must cultivate. There are other right attitudes that one must cultivate to lead a brighter and better life, and God will be speaking to us about them this morning.
Most times we think it is prayer, giving or fasting that changes things, we forget the power of right attitude. That is why effective prayer and fasting works on us first before bringing God to our situations.
God will first work on us to carve out a right attitude in us so that we may come into the blessings or interventions we may be asking Him for before responding to us. That is one of the purposes of protracted fasting. It is for developing right attitudes.
UNTIL A MAN’S ATTITUDES ARE MADE RIGHT, HIS LIFE WILL REMAIN A MISERY.
Our Attitudes are the sum total of all the perceptions formed as a result of the life experiences we have had and the environment we live in.
For instance, You find people with no spouses having a bad attitude towards those who have. You find those who grew up without fathers or mothers having a very bad attitude in life because of what they may have gone through, or because of the thoughts of not having fathers or mothers in life.
You find others having a bad attitude towards men or women because of the experiences that may have had with them.
You see, No matter what may have happened to us, we should not compound our woes by allowing it to create a bad attitude in us. Our lives may turn out more terrible than what may have happened to us.
Our Attitudes are also our feelings, beliefs or perceptions about a product, service, people and etc. How we feel, what we believe, and what we perceive in life has a lot to do with how our lives turn out.
I believe Someone have just been told why his or her life is the way it is; wrong attitudes.
If you are sensitive in the Spirit, you will know that God has just spoken to you. You will start working on your attitudes and not repeating whatever people point out to you as bad.
So many people have a bad attitude toward rebukes and instructions. That is why they cannot stay for too long in blessed places. When you rebuke or instructed them on what to do they become offended or antagonistic towards you. Such people will never succeed in life, especially by God’s definition of success.
Others have a bad attitude towards money that is why they are poor. Some others have a bad attitude towards choice relationships, that is why they cannot keep one, but blame it on demons. They do not know how to manage some choice relationships, hence losing them like a flash.
There are women who seems to know how to live with bad husbands than good ones. When God blesses them with good husbands, they become a liability to them instead of an asset.
THE FACT THAT A MAN IS GOOD DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD MAKE NO POSITIVE CONTRIBUTIONS TO HIS LIFE.
It could be the other way round. The truth remains, if you do not have the attitude of managing what is good, you will always be left with what is bad. Bad attitudes can ruin any blessing in your life. It can ruin your marriage, your business, your ministry, your health, and etc.
For many years some believers have been accusing the devil and praying against him for what their own attitude is bringing upon them. That is why things have not changed despite their prayers.
Bad attitudes have turned great success into wonderful failures without a demon getting involved. They have taken people from the exalted Thrones of life to the lowest places of the earth without an attack from hell.
If you will ever live a blessed life in this accursed world, your attitudes must be adjusted intentionally, because with God on our side, no devil can stop us from succeeding if our attitudes are right.
But there is something else to add to this discourse this morning; the blessing of an anointing from God. A major line in our devotional text this morning says;
“He permitted no one to do them wrong; Yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes, Saying, “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.” Psalms 105:14-15 NKJV
This scripture has been used by many of us preachers to put our members under fear or threat. But what we do not realize is the scripture was not originally referring to the clergy but the entire nation of Israel.
The nation of Israel was made up of a prophetic and anointed people. They were pregnant with the Holy Seed – the messiah.
They needed protection to fulfill that destiny. God had to make them prophetic and anointed to protect them because of the environment they walked through during their 40-year journey and later lived in. Moses never poured oil on them to get them anointed. Psalm 114 shows God sat on them to get them anointed.
The scripture today is not just applicable to Israel but the saved and sanctified in the body of Christ, global.
IT IS CLEAR THAT GOD’S ANOINTING WILL BE REQUIRED IF WE WILL SUCCEED IN THIS WORLD.
After we have fixed our attitudes, the next thing to do with our lives is to get an anointing from the Holy One.
God does not want anyone in the Body of Christ touched by the evil one and his host of devils or men. He wants us protected. We are protected by His anointing upon our lives as believers (not the oil).
The anointing of the Holy One is an equipping for living life on earth. In Heaven what is needed is the glory, but on earth what is needed is the anointed. Nothing can function successfully in Heaven without the glory that is why God is full of glory. In the same way, nothing can function successfully on earth without the anointing of the Holy Ghost.
Again, I am not referring to the anointing in a bottle or Jar of Oil. But the anointing of the Holy One that comes upon us as we seek Him. Meaning, if you want to succeed in marriage, business, ministry, family life, your career, and etc. apart from having the right attitude in life, you must have an anointing from the Holy One.
The anointing will be necessary to enable you bear and raise your Children. It will be necessary to help you make good decisions in life. It will be necessary to helping manage the conflicts of life.
The anointing does not just help us in managing physical things, it also helps us to relate with God. Many of us do not know that God is Spirit not physical. We cannot relate fruitfully with Him without the anointing of His Holy Spirit helping is to sense Him and hear His voice.
Everyone God ever called to walk with Him was anointed before He could do so.
We need the anointing and a right attitude to walk with God. We need the anointing and a right attitude to have money in our pocket and etc. The anointing and a right attitude walking together to put money in our pocket is part of what the Bible calls the power to get wealth.
The word says;
“And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.! Deuteronomy 8:18 NKJV
Wealth is one thing on the face of the earth that if you do not have the power to get, you will remain in financial difficulties. If you want to prosper by the help of God instead of the help of sin, you will need the anointing of the Holy Ghost and a right attitude in life.
Some people have the attitude of lying under pressure; you cannot find truth in their mouth when they want to hide something from you. Some have the attitude of getting angry unjustly and sinning at the same time. But the Bible is against all that.
Some have the attitude of laziness and not working with their own hands. They do not take life serious. A person who do not have the attitude of diligence and hard work have chosen defeat and hard life.
Others have the attitude of grieving the Holy Spirit. How can you walk in the anointing of the Holy Spirit grieving Him? You will only walk in the anointing of the anointed cherub. If you want to succeed in any accursed place, you must have the right attitude and learn to operate under the anointing of the Holy One.
I believe the LORD has spoken to us this morning! The Bible is a book that helps in shaping our attitudes. Read it!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another. “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.
Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.
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 4:25-32 NKJV