TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 22NDMay 2023)**
“Do you not see and know that your bodies are members (bodily parts) of Christ (the Messiah)? Am I therefore to take the parts of Christ and make [them] parts of a prostitute? Never! Never!
Or do you not know and realize that when a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? The two, it is written, shall become one flesh.
But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.
Shun immorality and all sexual looseness [flee from impurity in thought, word, or deed]. Any other sin which a man commits is one outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own,
You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 142ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS & WONDERS!
May the blessing of the LORD rest upon you this day!
May His face continue to shine upon you! May you never lack His miracles in your day of need, In Jesus precious name. Amen!
Indeed, the LORD has been our shepherd and we have not lacked; we have not lacked His power, His mercies, His compassion, His protection, His provisions, His breath, His life, His face upon our lives, His direction, His revelation, His peace, His presence, His purification or sanctification.
Indeed, we have not lacked anything Heaven considers essential to our eternal and earthly lives. To God belong the glory!
Recently, I sat down to think about this God that we serve, and I began to see few more lights of who He is. He is completely different from other gods that men worship, in so many ways. He is far beyond those deities, and you cannot place them side by side.
If you want forgiveness of sin, He is the mercy seat. If you want purification from defilement, He is the refiner’s fire. If you want to be free form the consequences of sin, He is the judgment seat. He took away the consequences of our sins on the cross so that repentance can eliminate it from our lives. That is why, the greatest undoing of many today is a lack of repentance. It is through repentance that the sin Jesus abolish on the cross can be abolished in our lives.
I have taught repeatedly that there are two kinds of repentance; there is the initial repentance that happens in our day of salvation; which is repentance from dead works. And there is subsequent repentance that happens each time we encounter revelation; which is repentance towards God, producing faith towards our LORD Jesus Christ.
Sadly, lives are still the same, both morally and otherwise after hearing the gospel and being in Church for so long, some even preaching the gospel, because many of us have convinced ourselves that we do not need repentance. Repentance has not been added to our so-called Christianity. But any Christianity that lack repentance is a delusion.
REPENTANCE IS THE RESPONSE WE GIVE TO THE VOICE OF THE LORD. IT IS THE QUALIFICATION FOR HEAVEN.
It is the best response a man can give to revelation knowledge. If things are revealed to us and we do not respond to them with repentance towards God, and faith towards our LORD Jesus Christ, they will not profit us. The Bible says;
“For indeed we have had the glad tidings [Gospel of God] proclaimed to us just as truly as they [the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them]; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; neither were they united in faith with the ones [Joshua and Caleb] who heard (did believe).” Hebrew 4:2 AMPC
From this scripture it is clear that any revelation from the word of GOD, the Bible, should exhume from us a leaning of our entire personality on God and absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom and goodness. If that did not happen, the word revealed will not profit us. It should bring us to the place of the unity of the faith with our Bible fathers. It should pull our hearts to the one who created us.
But most of us build a resistance in our spirits and prevent that from happening.
Two things hinder the word from producing in lives; internal resistance from pride, arrogance or related filthiness of the spirit, and the pollution or adulteration of the word itself.
Where the word is not adulterated, you find people building internal resistance against it. Where it is adulterated, you find hearts that are very far from God saying things that make them look close to Him.
The greatest fear of Satan, so long as the gospel is concern, is the message of the cross. He knows that if people hear the message of the cross, and do not build a resistance against it, or if it is not replaced with another gospel, he will lose the battle for the souls of men.
The message of the cross is where sound doctrine spring from. It has potent power to draw a soul to the one who died on the cross for him, evoking consecrated Christian living in the process. In simple terms, the message of the cross will draw our hearts to He who died on the cross for us. That is why God wants it to be the only message preached, instead of the messages many of us preachers preach, basically to exhume honor for ourselves, worship from our members or listeners, and money for our needs.
One of the major messages of the cross is the cry of the Holy Spirit on righteousness, purity and holiness.
IN THE DAYS OF THE SHADOWS (THE OLD TESTAMENT), THERE WERE A LOT OF SPIRITUAL WASHINGS THAT MOSES TAUGHT THE PEOPLE TO CARRY OUT.
Some of the washings was done for health reasons and others for spiritual reasons. There were also instructions on how to stay clean, especially in regards to touching the dead and etc. People like Nazarites and Levites had stricter rules they followed, because the LORD separated them to bear His Holy things.
They were consecrated by the LORD, through the rules He gave them to keep, so that they will remain holy enough to bear His holy things. You find what the Bible says about the consecration of the Nazarites in Numbers Chapter 6 and that of the Levites in Numbers chapter 8.
Now, I have said it repeatedly that the Old Testament is the will of God concealed, while the New is the will of God Revealed. The message that was concealed by the LORD in those practices is simple. The practices tell us that God will never allow any filthy persons to carry His holy things. I believe strongly that the messages in the practices hold mysteries about the sanctification of the body.
A portion of our devotional text says
“So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body.”
I believe GOD was using them to teach our generation that we need to honour Him with our bodies by keeping it pure and holy. He was concealing for us, not from us, truths about the sanctification of the body. Do not forget, our Bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the most precious part of God that needs absolute Holiness to dwell in a man.
THAT IS WHY HE WILL FIRST CONVICT US OF SIN, CLEANS US FROM IT, BEFORE HE COME TO DWELL IN US.
If you understand how important a vessel is in the kingdom of God, you will strife to keep your vessel (your body) clean, for the LORD to find a dwelling place in you, so that you also will dwell in Him. We can only dwell in the LORD, if we are clean enough for Him to dwell in us. So, we should use His grace upon our lives, and stop touching the unclean***!***
Our devotional text today is about one of the greatest defilements of the body that has been practiced from age to age; sexual immorality. People do not know that sexual intercourse, sometimes even legitimate intercourse, can defile the body.
Yes, legitimate intercourse, between a man and his wife, or a wife and her husband, can defile the most consecrated among the two. That is why, the consecrated are to get married to the consecrated, or the truly saved, to the truly saved. It should not be a yoke together with an unbeliever in Church or outside the church.
Even the natural teaches this spiritual truth, and here is it; the fact that a sexual act is done within a divinely set standard, does not mean if one partner is infected with a sexually transmitted disease, it will not get to another. For instance, if a man or woman catches a sexually transmitted disease, the legitimacy of sex between him and his wife, or between her and her husband, will not prevent the disease from being transferred from one partner to the other.
Sexual purity, in the deeper sense of it, is not just having intercourse within marriage, but having it in the purity of the spirit, soul and body. Making sure one partner is not spiritually unclean, because the unclean will defile the clean.
I have seen men and women; people of God, whose prayer fire where quenched by sex with their husbands or wives. This could be too subjective to be believed. But it is true and it ought not to be like that. Legitimate sex should not kill one’s spiritual life, but it does in many cases because of the defilement in one partner. Though it is not a sin, but it brings defilement to the consecrated and clean among the two.
One of the many reasons God ordained marriage to be between two saved and sanctified people, is because of that. He originally created the union to be between a man and woman in His image and likeness, living under His glory.
THAT WAS WHY THERE WAS NO DEFILEMENT THROUGH SEX.
Sadly, defilement would later come after Eve’s conversation with the serpent.
When your wife or husband is defiled spiritually, having sex with her or him will defile you spiritually, come to think of doing it with someone who you are not even married to. It will be double spiritual tragedy.
You should understand why Paul said every sin we commit, apart from sexual sins, is done outside the body. Our devotional text says;
“Do you not see and know that your bodies are members (bodily parts) of Christ (the Messiah)? Am I therefore to take the parts of Christ and make [them] parts of a prostitute? Never! Never!
Or do you not know and realize that when a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? The two, it is written, shall become one flesh. But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.
Shun immorality and all sexual looseness [flee from impurity in thought, word, or deed]. Any other sin which a man commits is one outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own,
You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 AMPC
You can see the cry of the Holy Spirit in this scripture against sexual sins because of the kind of defilement it leaves in our lives.
Apart from breaking God’s law, the sinful act also desecrates our spirits, souls and bodies. The act makes us one in body with the person we commit it with, making us to share not only in God’s judgment, but in the defilement that exist in the other person.
As a young Christin then, I had lived a consecrated life for years before falling into sexual sins due to some adulterated teachings I imbibed. The quest for marriage that was kindled by some of the teachings, further brought me to the valley of slaughter. I lived in it for some years.
I CAN’T FORGET HOW I FELT DURING THOSE YEARS.
It is through sexual sins, that we join the body that have been dedicated to the LORD, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit for the master’s use, to another person, who is not sanctified and dedicated to be our spouse. That is what brings defilement and sin against the body.
The Bible says through sexual intercourse, one becomes one in body with another person momentarily. Meaning, if that person is defiled, you also become defiled after the act. Only repentance can help us out of the consequences of sexual sins.
As we move to the threshing floor of repentance, God sends times of refreshing into our souls and spirits, to clean us of every defilement. He creates in us a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us. But those who will not repent and continue with a life of purity, He will release blows upon them, using the rods of men at times.
People under them also suffers, if they are leaders or departmental heads in Churches. That is why when you see a preacher unrepented about sexual sins, you should leave that Church because something is on its way to hit you.
When you see a life that is not in order in matters of Righteousness, Purity and Holiness doing the work of GOD, you have seen an impostor; one God is not using; one that other gods may be using. For those who are being used of God, the Bible says;
“Depart! Depart! Go out from there, touch no unclean thing; Go out from the midst of her, Be clean, You who bear the vessels of the Lord.
For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight; For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.” Isaiah 52:11-12 NKJV
God has shown us enough for the day! Time for application! When we return tomorrow, we will pick from where we stopped today.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,
Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.
And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God.
Everything is permissible (allowable and lawful) for me; but not all things are helpful (good for me to do, expedient and profitable when considered with other things). Everything is lawful for me, but I will not become the slave of anything or be brought under its power.
Food [is intended] for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will finally end [the functions of] both and bring them to nothing. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but [is intended] for the Lord, and the Lord [is intended] for the body [to save, sanctify, and raise it again].
And God both raised the Lord to life and will also raise us up by His power.
Do you not see and know that your bodies are members (bodily parts) of Christ (the Messiah)? Am I therefore to take the parts of Christ and make [them] parts of a prostitute? Never! Never! 1 Corinthians 6:9-15 AMPC