TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 13TH April 2023)
“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” Psalm 91:14-16NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 103RD DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS!
Glory be to the LORD GOD almighty for another day. The Spirit of the LORD has made us; the breath of the Almighty gives us life. It has given us life for 103 days of this year.
The Bible says a living dog is better than a dead lion. I think this is because it can become a lion any day, while the lion will just decay by the hours. Being alive is precious because it gives you hope. To him who is joined to the living, there is hope. Life is a precious gift from its giver.
You may be wondering who the giver of your life is, well it is not your father or mother. It is Christ Himself who created all things as GOD. We have been looking at matters of doctrine and today we will be walking away from where we stopped yesterday and looking at the doctrine of Christ on life. I hope you are ready!
To start with, the Bible said this about Christ and His doctrine of life;
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:1-5 NKJV
All things, including life, were made through Him. In Him was life, and that life is still there. He still gives it today. He said He has come, so that we may have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). The life He gives is always abundant. He does not give limited life; He gives abundant life.
He gives three kinds of lives abundantly. The first is natural life, which begins when the egg of your mother that He fashioned, and the seed of your father that He created, meets and forms a baby. By this process natural life begins; it begins at conception and terminates at death.
The natural life therefore, is a life that can be terminated. However, originally, God never designed it to be a life that can be terminated. He designed it to be an immortal life.
BUT IT IS NOW A LIFE THAT CAN BE TERMINATED DUE TO THE FALL OF MAN.
Permit me to break the flow a little and share something useful at this point. When the natural life lost its ability to be forever, God confined it to the power of time. The reason was to bring sin and its consequences to an end. It was a redemptive move.
In others words, He redesigned that time and time alone bring natural life to an end as a redemptive plan. But as we can see today, most of the natural lives that are coming to an end are not being brought to an end by time, but by other things that exist in time. The Bible calls them messengers of death (Proverbs 16:14).
The messengers of death include executioners in the spirit realm, like demons that takes away people’s lives, the spirit of death that come prematurely, life taking curses that are released into the lives of people, incurable diseases, conflicts, wars and violence, spiritual attacks, accidents (road, water and air transport), human error, chemical attacks and a lot of other things.
However, the God who never designed that natural life be terminated by these and other messengers of Death, has a package of protection for His own. He watches over us and make sure the wicked do not take us out. He watches over our souls against the messengers of death. He knows our lives are constantly under threat by the many messengers of death on earth, hence giving us commandments to keep.
He said in His word;
“You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.
So, you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you.
No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. Exodus 23:24-26 NKJV
The intentions of our GOD are clear in this scripture. He promised us protection from messengers of death like sicknesses, miscarriages, bareness and etc. He made it clear in this scripture that if we do not bow down to serve the gods of the nations; the god of sex, the god of gold (money), the god of fame, the god of fortress, the god of self and etc. He will make sure we are protected from the messengers of death until our days are fulfilled.
MEANING BOWING TO OTHER GODS BRINGS ONE UNDER THE GATE OF DEATH.
Once you are within the gates of death, any messenger of death can take you out. To fulfill our days, we must not bow to other gods. Our fathers refused to bow and they fulfilled their days.
Even when few where killed, they were killed at their appointed times.
Peter, James, John and the rest of the Apostles could not be killed until the times appointed. God said “I will fulfill the number of your days” and He did. The sentence “I will fulfill the number of your days” simply means, God will make sure that nothing apart from time, terminate our natural lives.
The Bible spoke about the time to die and the time to be born. When any of those time comes, forces will be allowed to be put in motion to allow the event to happen. When the time to be born comes, God will allow things to happen for someone to be born. When the time to die comes, God will also allow things to happen for that person to be out of this world.
The vision of Heaven for our lives remains that time, and time alone terminates our natural lives.
If you are a student of the Bible, you will realize that the Bible is full of promises of Protection from the LORD against the many messengers of death that are out there terminating natural lives.
The vision is to make sure we fulfill our days like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did.
Our devotional text says;
“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” Psalm 91:14-16NKJV
LET ME REITERATE AGAIN, THAT GOD ORIGINALLY DESIGNED THAT OUR NATURAL LIFE BE TERMINATED BY TIME.
In other words, God re-designed the natural life, as a redemptive move, be terminated by the fulfillment of its days or its years on earth. All our fathers died when they were full of either year or days! That is our heritage. Yes, it is our heritage to fulfill our days.
That is the doctrine of Christ on natural life. There is more to it. You do not need to sow a seed to live long, just tap into the heritage.
Maybe let me pick how some of our fathers ended their natural lives so that you will have a clue on how God wants yours to end.
Concerning David, the Bible says;
“So he died in a good old age, full of days and riches and honor; and Solomon his son reigned in his place.” 1 Chronicles 29:28 NKJV
Concerning Job, the Bible says;
“After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days.” Job 42:16-17 NKJV
Concerning Abraham, the Bible says;
“Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” Genesis 25:8 NKJV
In the lives of these three, you see two dying full of days and one dying full of years. In all stories, no messenger of death was allowed to take them. Time was the one that was allowed to do its job. But there are some of our fathers that died some other ways.
The Bible says;
“Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—
of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.” Hebrews 11:36-38 NKJV
This category of our fathers tells us that there are some of us who will end violently because of the dragon’s hate for the Christ we represent. And that God will allow it so that we can have a better testimony in the day of rewards.
HOWEVER, IT WILL ONLY HAPPEN AT APPOINTED TIMES.
That is why we who are involved with Christ in kingdom advance, do not worry about long life by the world’s definition of long life. We only worry about a fulfilled life. If you understand the prophetic definition of long life, you will know that a fulfilled life is a long life after all. And that God wants us to live fulfilled lives.
He wants us to live natural lives that are full of His presence and the manifestation of His will.
A natural life that is full of God’s presence, the manifestation of His will and a lifestyle established in His ways; serving its generation according to the will of GOD, will bow to no one but GOD alone. It will be long enough to accomplish all it was shot into time to accomplish. God will watch over it and make sure no messenger of death takes it out before its time. However, we also have a role to play in this.
We are to guard and protect our natural lives with wisdom from above; divine direction from the Holy Spirit, and obedience to natural laws. So that it will not be terminated by any messenger of death. God wants us to be careful about our natural life.
Sadly, so many have not been careful about their natural lives. That is why they put alcohol, illicit drugs, Cigarettes, brew, all kinds of dangerous things into it. Others put illicit sexual experiences, ungodliness, bad decisions, wrong alliances and marriages, improper feeding and etc. into it, leading to an outbreak of darkness in their lives.
The natural lives of many people that came to an end in our age was not terminated by time like that of Abraham. It was terminated by the things they put in it. It is my prayer that GOD will use these words to help us live right and fulfil our days.
When we come back tomorrow, we continue these mysteries – the doctrine of Christ on LIFE.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Therefore, you shall be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
You shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess.” Deuteronomy 5:32-33 NKJV