TODAY’S DEVOTION (TUESDAY 18th April 2023)
“And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country.
I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,” says the Lord GOD.
“I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.” Ezekiel 34:13-16 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 108TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS & WONDERS
The Spirit of the LORD has made us. The breath of the Almighty gives us life. We give God thanks for His marvelous works and great deeds in our lives. We are a testimony of His mercies and compassion.
If you want to see how compassionate our God can be, look at us. Consider what we may have done in this life and see how He has not dealt with us according to our deeds. Then you will know that GOD is merciful and full of compassion. He is slow to wrath and abides in mercies. The slowness of His wrath is what keeps the wicked alive despite their wickedness.
The Bible made it clear that He will not always strife with us. His anger, is but for a moment, but His mercies, are from everlasting to everlasting.
We thank Him for the Cry of His Holy Spirit that has come to us so far on matters of doctrine. So long as the present times are concern, matters of doctrine are matters that should be considered for a life time. They way men consider matters of food and nutrition on daily bases, that is how believers ought to consider matters of doctrine on daily bases.
It is important to reiterate again, that what you eat naturally will eat you. In the same way, what you eat spiritually will also eat you. The wrong doctrines people have eaten or absorbed in church, are responsible for the kind of spiritual attacks or unwanted suffering they go through as believers. Your Christianity will never be better than what you are feeding your life with.
The vision of this daily discourse is to help us come to the place of being able to discern the difference between wrong and right doctrines. It is to help us walk in discernment and knowledge, so that we can know which doctrine to imbibe in our walk with God, and which one to turn away from.
In the light of that, we are going to be looking at an aspect of the Doctrine of Christ on spiritual life – the aspect that have to do with proper spiritual feeding.
Many have not realized how important proper spiritual food is to our spiritual lives. There is the law of spiritual feeding. It says, “if we feed our spirits with what comes out of the mouth of the LORD, we will all become what comes out of the mouth of the LORD.” Meaning, if we feed our spirits with the doctrine of Christ, we will be Christlike in our character.
WE ARE THE DOCTRINES WE EAT OR FEED ON, EITHER GOOD OR BAD.
The secret to changing your life lies in changing your doctrine. The Bible says;
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4 NKJV
We cannot set our minds on things above if we are not feeding our spirits with things from above. We will never appear with Christ when He appears in glory, if we are not feeding our spirits with what will make that happen. If we feed our spirits with the Heavenly, we will set our minds on things above. If we do not, it will be impossible to do so.
The wrong doctrines on the lips of so many preachers are the reason believers are earth bound and worldly. They are the reason many love the world and the things that are in the world. They are the reason many cannot obey the doctrine of Christ that says;
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever“1 John 2:15-17 NKJV
If you do not feed on the doctrine of Christ that instills genuine love for God and His ways, you will end up loving the world and its ways. Our closeness to God or to the evil system of this world, is a function of the kind of teachings we obey or follow in life.
People who follow lying spirits listen to false doctrines like the heresies being preached about first fruits, raising or breaking of altars, gospel of materialism being presented as the gospel of prosperity, etc. They follow doctrines of devils like, doctrine of spirit spouses, stolen stars, and etc.
You will never hear from the true Holy Spirit listening to doctrines of devils. You may end up being led by a spirit but doubtlessly, it will never be the Spirit of God.
THAT SHOULD TELL YOU WHY MANY PEOPLE IN CHURCH TODAY ARE DEMONIC.
You are the very doctrine you feed on! The spirit that lives in you is as a result of the doctrines you are taught or obeying. If you are taught the doctrines of Christ, Christ will be living in you. If you are taught the doctrines of devils, devils will be living in you and calling themselves your husband or wife.
No one can have an encounter with the true God, or walk in submission to His will and ways, listening to false doctrines. That was why, for Satan and Jezebel to take Israel away from the true God, they did not send a demonic host to convince them, or raise a government to torture and force them to leave their GOD.
They knew that will never work.
They simply changed the doctrines of righteousness and prophetic anointing that the people had been following right from the days of Moses, by raising prophets of Baal to be prophesying to them.
Then they went further to silence the doctrine of God completely, by killing and terrorizing the prophets and priests of God, whose responsibility was to teach and prophesy to the people the doctrines of righteousness – the doctrines of GOD.
At the end of the day, Israel became worshipers of Baal.
There is a repeat of this in our generation. Many are turning away from true worship because these same spirits are at work in many preachers, and have successfully replaced Biblical doctrines, now people follow man-made or demonic doctrines in many local assemblies.
If you look at the kind of teachings and messages coming from many, you will realize that so many people who are given pulpits to preach have no business standing there. Hence dishing out things that do not transform moral landscapes. They preach and teach things that are not part of the doctrine of Christ.
We must understand that it is the doctrines that we are taught to obey and follow that determines who we worship in spirit and in truth. Because of the many false doctrines on the lips of preachers today, many who call themselves worshipers of Christ, do not really worship Him in spirit and truth.
THE DOCTRINE THEY ARE TAUGHT TO OBEY AND FOLLOW TESTIFIES ABOUT THAT.
They practice false doctrines that make them use water, salt, oil, cloths, horns and etc. to pray. They are taught to do all kinds of things that God has abandoned; things currently powered by the demon of deliverance, like raising, breaking and silencing of altars in the name of deliverance.
You cannot be a true worshiper of Christ and behave like witch doctors in the name of deliverance. You cannot be a true worshiper of Christ and be comfortable with what the demon of deliverance is doing through preachers who are yielded to it.
You cannot be a true worshiper of Christ and lead a life that is not of Christ in any way! Our spirituality is a reflection of who or what we worship.
We become who we bow to. If we bow to God by obeying His word, we become Godly in nature. If we bow to other gods, by following man-made or false doctrines, we become corrupt in our moral nature. Therefore, it is not our mouths or confessions that truly tell of who we worship, it is our moral lives.
The judgment of men may be favorable to us because of our loud confessions, and because men look at the outward appearance and what we want them to see. But God’s judgment will always be different because He looks at the heart and the secrets of men. He sees even what we do not want men to see, and hears what we may not want them to hear.
He remains the silent listener in every conversation.
Whatever the Bible says we should do, or should not do, can only be done, or not done. It all depends on the doctrines we are feeding our spirits with.
IF WE ARE FEEDING OUR SPIRITS WITH THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST, WE WILL BE ABLE TO OBEY THE BIBLE.
That is why, if you find yourself doing what the Bible says we should not, you will need to change your spiritual diet, so that you can do what it says we should do. Whatever the Bible says we should do that you find yourself not being able to do, can only be done when you start feeding your spirits with what will empower you to do it.
Your spirit will need to be fed with what will give it the fitness to obey God, and that fitness can only come through sound doctrine – the doctrine of Christ.
We live our Christian lives according to the fitness that exist in our human spirits. It is proper spiritual feeding that gives us the fitness to be the very Christians that Christ died to make us to be.
Understand that no believer can be, what he or she have not fed his or her spirit to be. If you want to be prayerful and intimate with God for example, look for an aspect of the doctrine of Christ that will help you, and then feed your spirit with it.
If you want to increase your finances by the prosperity of the righteous, look for an aspect of the doctrine of Christ on that, and feed your spirits with it. If you want to increase the density of the presence of God you carry, look for an aspect of the doctrine of Christ that teaches that and feed your spirits with it.
If you want to walk with GOD like our Fathers did in their days, look for what they fed their spirits with and feed your spirit with it, and you will be able to walk with God the way they did. The Christian life is designed to be lived based on the doctrine we expose ourselves to. It becomes powerful when we expose ourselves to the doctrine of Christ, and weak when we expose ourselves to other doctrines.
Whatever we see in our relationship with God is a function of the doctrines or doctrine we are feeding our spirits with. For instance, there are two people the Bible says we should look at in certain matters of the Kingdom. The Bible says we should look at Abraham, and also said we should look at Jesus.
Abraham’s walk with God was fascinating and amazing. But He could not even leave His father’s house to follow the LORD God until He was fed with what comes from above. The Bible says;
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Hebrews 11:8-10 NKJV
THERE IS SO MUCH TO GLEAN FROM THIS SCRIPTURE. BUT WE WILL LIMIT OURSELVES TO ONE LINE OF TRUTH.
The last verse said “for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is GOD.” I believe if Abraham was not fed with what came from above, the same things Jesus calls Heavenly things, he would not have looked for the city with foundations, whose builder and maker is GOD.
Our devotional text says;
“And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country.
I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,” says the Lord GOD.
“I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.” Ezekiel 34:13-16 NKJV
If you look at this scripture, you will find God repeating the word “feed” more than once. That tells us the importance of feeding to how a life in Christ will turn out.
God did not say I will raise prayer warriors, or intercessors for them. He said I will feed them. Prayer and intercession are very good, but no matter the multitude of prayers and number of intercessions that are on your case, if you are not fed the doctrine of Christ, you will remain under the chains of the wicked one.
This morning, God is calling on us to seek sound doctrine, not just prayers as we have always done. He is calling on us to seek the doctrine of Christ. Prayers without sound doctrine can easily bring people to the realm of witchcraft.
You will never be able to do what your spirit have not been fed to do no matter how much you pray. That is why the apostles gave themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. You will need righteous prayers and the doctrine of Christ, to get to all the places God has prepared for you, both in time and eternity.
May the LORD make your spiritual life very prosperous in Jesus precious name. Amen and amen!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOUR LIFE!
“These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.
But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you [g]will abide in Him.” 1 John 2:26-27 NKJV