TODAY’S DEVOTION (TUESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER 2022)
“I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.” Psalm 78:2-4 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 305TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
On the 305th day of our year of Amazing Grace, we are stepping into a new month. To God be the glory.
What a mighty God we serve. He made sure that the most essential things for staying alive are free. That is one of the highest expressions of LOVE. Yes, one of the highest expressions of love is making the most essential things of life free to the object of your love.
If love was not God’s nature, I do not know where we would have all being. In fact, the entire planet would have been no more. It was love that made Him to still keep the earth despite what the Nephilim turned it into in Genesis chapter 6.
Yes, His love is the reason we are all alive. Keep the age of Nephilim apart, look at our own lives, is there anything those creatures did that most of us have not done?
Look at Sodom and Gomorrah for example, the inhabitants where the first to be taken to hell while alive. Death is usually the gate way of going to hell or Heaven, but these guy’s wickedness was so much that going to hell through the gates of death was considered a blessing in the court of divine settlement, hence they were denied the process.
However, most of us today have superseded the wickedness of the inhabitants of those two cities and yet, we are still alive. It is enough to thank God for!
Indeed, our God is slow to anger.
It is love that makes one slow to anger towards the object of their love. Understand also that being slow to anger does not mean we are expected to keep living wicked lives. There are three major purposes of God’s love that I want to state here.
The first is to bring us to repentance and provoke a life of righteousness, the next is to establish a healthy relationship with us, and the last on my list is to provoke us to walk in love and mercy towards others as well. These are the harvest God expects after seeding His love into our lives.
I CONSIDER THEM THE EXPECTED HARVEST OF GOD’S LOVE FOR US
It was David that said;
“If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.” Psalm 130:3-4 NKJV
Indeed, no one will stand if God were mark iniquities! That is why His love forbids it. Indeed, David was one of the Bible men who understood the nature of God’s justice system and how it functions. He understood the purpose of God’s love and mercies more than many of us today. That was why he never continued with a life of adultery and murder after the Beersheba experience.
He made it clear here that God does not keep records of our wrongs so long as we make the proper use of His love and mercies.
The improper use of God’s mercy has been the bane of our generation. But this man of God made it clear that the fear of the LORD should be the result of God’s love and mercies towards us, not a life of persistent sin. The fear of the LORD is usually the foundation of the three things that I said should spring out of our lives as a result of GOD’s love.
When God seed His love into our lives, the seed is to produce a righteous fear for Him. When that fear is produced, it will result in repentance and righteousness, a healthy relationship with the LORD, and a walking in love and mercy towards others.
For the sensible, God’s love and mercy is not a fertility for wicked living, but a fertility for righteous living. It is my prayer that we will all make use of His love for us, live right, and serve our generation according to His will and ways. Amen!
We have been on different Journeys of faith with the Cry of the Holy Spirit on vital subjects of God’s kingdom on this platform of late. We just finished a 31-day journey of faith on the blessed Holy Spirit.
TODAY WE ARE BEGINNING A 30-DAY JOURNEY WITH THE CRY OF THE SPIRIT ON PRACTICAL WISDOM.
Lack of practical wisdom is the reason for the death of many. It is the reason for the poverty of many. It is the reason for the hardship of many. It is the reason for the suffering of so many people on earth today.
if you look at the church today, you find so many who are doing all they have been told to do but are still suffering. I have studied the lives of some and discovered that what is separating this breed from their breakthroughs is not demons, but lack of practical wisdom.
Most of them know the Bible so well, but are bereaved of practical wisdom. They speak in loud tongues and demonstrate so much spirituality but have no ounce of practical wisdom in our minds.
We forget that the mind is stronger than the spirit, and if we do not fill it with practical wisdom it will ruin whatever we may have use our spirits to collect from Heaven through our worship or devotion to God.
Child of God, it does not matter how prayerful or serious with God you are, if you do not know how to apply common sense in life, your Christianity will remain a reproach.
There are people whose unsaved loved ones cannot understand why their Christianity is not moving them forward in life. The people pray so much, attend church so faithfully, but are still suffering, leaving their unsaved loved ones with no option than to blame the Churches they attend, or the Jesus they are following, for their backwardness and lack of progress in life.
Now, we all know that in a man’s walk and talk with the LORD, there could be times of trial, suffering, and testing of our faith and circumcision of our hearts by the LORD, during which it will seem to our unsaved relatives that we made a wrong decision by serving God. But that season is not always forever.
God always have a way of finally coming through for us with significant blessings, even making our unsaved relatives give their lives to Christ.
So, if you find someone who have been very serious with God, fasting, praying and serving the LORD in Church, but is still in perpetual suffering, looking shameful and disgraceful, despite his or her Christianity, it is lack of practical wisdom that is destroying them.
THEY COULD BE INTELLIGENT IN LIFE, BUT INTELLIGENCE IS NOT WISDOM.
Lack of practical wisdom will turn the life of a serious-minded Child of God into a reproach to be mocked at by unbelievers. It will make his or her Christianity to be consider an error and the ways of sin the ideal way to lead life on earth.
This 30-day journey have become a necessity because it is not God’s will for us to have nothing to show in our earthly lives for serving this great and awesome GOD. We cannot be serving the GOD of all glory and have our lives full of all kinds of reproach. Except one is in a season of divine process, that is not God’s will for us.
God may be on your side, but without practical wisdom in your heart, your life will be full of reproach.
Our devotional text says;
“I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.” Psalm 78:2-4 NKJV
Parables and the uttering of dark sayings was what Jesus used in passing out timeless truths to the generation that saw Him physically. He passed out timeless truths that can help us even today in becoming wise in life. The parables and dark sayings were full of practical wisdom to apply to our daily lives.
In fact, it was not just through parables He passed out practical wisdom, or demonstrated the necessity of same, He also did that through some of the amazing miracles He performed.
Generally, I saw in the life and times of Christ the life of one who was very spiritual and also very practical. There was a perfect Balance in how He handled those two sides of life; the very balance we lack today that He wants us to come into these 30 days.
I hope you are ready!
If you read the four gospels, you will see that Christ applied Spiritual wisdom where it was necessary, and practical wisdom where it was necessary. He did not play any form of religion the way we do today by being spiritual where He was supposed to be practical.
FOR INSTANCE, HE DEMONSTRATED A HIGH SENSE OF PRACTICAL WISDOM WHEN HE WANTED TO BRING LAZARUS BACK TO LIFE.
I think it is important that we look at that miracle again; maybe we will find why many of us today, despite our prayers, fasting and etc. are still suffering.
The Bible says;
Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said,
“Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”
Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.” John 11:38-44 NKJV
If you look at this Miracle, you can easily see the place of practical wisdom in the delivery of every miracle from God. The story made it clear that most miracles that will change our lives will remain in the Spirit realm if we lack the practical wisdom to bring them to the material world.
In every miracle, there is the God side and there is the man side. Practical wisdom will help us do the man side for the God side to manifest.
Jesus wanted Lazarus raised from dead, just as God wants you and I to live amazingly blessed lives on earth. But it all depended on the practical wisdom of rolling away the stone. He had to request that they do their part so that He can do His part. They did it, and Lazarus was raised. The same principle must be applied in our lives.
I WANT YOU TO READ THAT STORY AGAIN AND ALLOW GOD TO SPEAK TO YOUR HEART ON THE NECESSITY OF PRACTICAL WISDOM.
You see, if you are a serious minded Christian, know that your life is blessed. God has put so much blessings in your life. The bible called it “blessing us in the Heavenly places.” Now, those blessings were supposed to manifest in your life on earth.
If you are therefore not seeing them manifesting, you lack the practical wisdom to make them manifest in the material world. That is the wisdom to seek God for from this this day forward, even as we embark on this wonderful 30-day journey of faith.
As a pastor I have seen very beautiful believers suffer for this one reason. God will bless them with great miracles but they will not be able to perpetuate them due to lack of practical wisdom. Others will be given blessings in the Spirit realm but lack the practical wisdom to pull them into the material realm, consequently living a life of suffering, and hoping for the best and smiling.
There are also so many people in faith who have decided to be doing things right without compromise who are going through intense suffering for lack of practical wisdom. Their righteousness has not borne fruits of prosperity in the material world for them despite their dedication to GOD.
Most of them are Heaven worthy but earth useless. God does not want it that way! He does not want us to be Heaven worthy but earth reproaches all our lives. We must all make good use this 30-day journey of faith to change things for the better.
I believe enough has been shared.
As we bring this to a close, I want you to understand that if you are born again, your life is a product of what is in your head not really what may be happening in the camp of your enemies. Lack of practical wisdom is always more powerful than our enemies. It can reduce us to a reproach to be mocked at, while God wants us to be a piece of His glory to be celebrated.
Child of God, It is important to note that God wants us to be cloth with salvation, and called His prosperous priests or representatives. He wants us to eat the wealth of the gentiles, not in corrupt ways but in His own ways.
He wants us to boast in their glory not lead lives that are full of shame and reproaches. Until that happens, we cannot effectively represent Him.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“But you shall be named the priests of the LORD, They shall call you the servants of our God. You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, And in their glory you shall boast.
Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs.” Isaiah 61:6-7 NKJV