TODAY’S DEVOTION (TUESDAY 25TH JULY 2023)**
“And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.” Luke 22:31-32 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 206TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
We bless the LORD our God for another day. He has kept us alive and well. We have slept and woken up for 206 days this year alone because the LORD made it happen. To Him belong all the glory.
Even the babies in the womb can tell that we live in a fallen world, where things are not always perfect. So, I don’t know the side of life that you woke up from this morning. If it’s the dark side, I have this word for you. The same word can be applied to those who woke up on the sunny side.
You see, life has a way of throwing things at us. So, when life throws sad things at you, when expectations fail and disappointment creeps in, when people you thought should help you, now withdraw their help, when those you laboured for in any way to keep happy refuse to reciprocate, as a Child of God that is the time to lift up your faith.
When the news of the death of a loved one demoralizes you and you cannot find the reason to live the next minute, when the enemy comes against you like a flood, the most important thing to keep alive at that material time is your faith.
Every believer has one kind of threat to their faith or the other. To some, it is financial crises and perilous happenings. To others, it is being single, and others being married. To some others, it is their prosperity.
It is very important to understand that every marital status can put you in a position of test, trial, and temptations. In other words, if you are single, do not think that when you get married, your trial of faith will come to an end. If that is true, then there would have been no adultery on earth, or other forms of marriage-related sins, evils, and troubles.
Being married only brings you into a fresh dimension of tests, temptations, and trials.
There are so many married people who are becoming single every day due to what we are sharing. They think that once they leave their marriages and become single again, all will be well. It could be the right thing to do but know that you will also come into another dimension of tests, trials, and temptation as well. So many who have left their marriages can testify.
YES, THEY ESCAPED ONE TROUBLE AND SOME ARE HAPPY ABOUT IT, BUT ALL ARE NOW IN ANOTHER.
Friend, in most cases, it is not our marital status that is the problem, but the world will leave in. We all must understand that both prosperity and adversity can take a believer away from the faith because when one is poor, he begins to think that once they become rich, all temptations and trials of faith will come to an end. No, they won’t! Comfort is the cheapest access to corruption.
So, in our devotional today we will be highlighting some truths on keeping the faith, either in prosperity or adversity. God indeed says in His word that, “the just shall live by faith” that is either they are married or single, or they are poor or rich. The necessity of keeping the faith cannot be erased by an economic or marital status.
Keeping the faith is how to live, not keeping our fears, pain, or anything negative because the Bible did not say the just shall live by struggles, fear, pain, or anything negative.
The Bible also did not say “The just shall live by prayer, fasting, giving, singing, or going to church,” as important as all these things are. God said in His word, the just shall live by faith. Prayer, fasting, giving, singing, or going to Church, are only meaningful if they birth faith in us.
Actually, the Holy Spirit encourages or enables prayers, Biblical fasting, giving, singing, and going to Church basically to help us live by faith. If doing any of these things, therefore, is not imparting faith in you or strengthening what is already there, you are involved in forms of godliness that have no power.
Friend that is where the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire comes in! It is the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire that makes our prayers, fasting, giving, singing, and even going to Church impactful. They become faith-building tools because of the power and influence of the Holy Ghost. The Bible says.
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” Jude 20-21 NKJV
The importance of faith to a Child of God is perhaps known better by the devil than the Children of God today. The fierceness of Satan’s attacks against our faith and the weak response we usually give to “faith building” proves it all.
MANY IN CHURCH TODAY WILL PREFER BUILDING THEIR HOUSES TO THEIR FAITH.
Others will prefer building their careers, businesses, fame, families, and all they desire without giving a thought to their faith. We forget that when God says the “Just shall live by faith,” He made faith-building the most important thing in the life of a Child of GOD.
It is the faith of the just that will sustain his house, career, business, fame, family, and all he desires in life. In simple terms, God designed that our lives be sustained by our faith. That is why Satan attacks it ferociously. Our devotional text today says it all.
The spirit realm sometimes seems to be a complicated realm. When Satan asked for Peter, to shift him like wheat, his rising profile, business, or family was not the subject of his attack. Peter’s faith was.
And when Jesus moved to provide a prayer cover for him, He did not pray for his business, fame, or family not to fail. He prayed that his faith should not fail because that was the focus of the attack.
A major highlight in the text says,
“But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
The subject of every satanic attack directly or indirectly is your faith. The quicker you come to terms with this the better. Until your faith fails, your business will not fail. Until your faith fails, your marriage or family will not fail. Until your faith fails, your ministry or calling will not fail. The life of the redeemed of the LORD is designed to be lived by faith.
Keeping the faith is therefore the most important activity we are to spend our time doing, either when going through adversity or when in possession of prosperity.
In other words, when things are not okay with you, when you are going through tests, trials, or temptations, withdraw a little and build your faith so that what you are going through, will not paralyze who you should be as a Christian, or keep you from going forward in your walk with God.
Now what is faith? It is not a mental confidence. No! Peter had a mental confidence when he boasted that he will not deny Christ.
BUT JESUS SAID TO HIM BEFORE THE COCK CROWS ONCE, HE WILL DO IT THRICE.
The Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It means true faith has both substance and evidence. It is usually anchored on revelation, that is why it comes by hearing from God at an immediate present.
In other words, if God has not spoken to you about a thing at an immediate present, there cannot be true faith in Him from you concerning that thing. True faith is a child of things (in the throne room) that have been revealed to our spiritual senses; it is a proof of things we have seen in the spirit but have not seen in the natural – a conviction of the reality of them.
When we withdraw to build our faith, we have to be reading the word, or studying some things about the Kingdom of God; things that are related to our divine destiny. It could be an autobiography that will help you, or any other spiritual material.
Whatever it is, if it is a God’s kingdom faith-building tool, it will prepare your heart to see and hear things from the Throne room of God, that will either birth a fresh faith in you or strengthen the one that is already there. It will birth a conviction of the reality of things in God’s will for our lives, hence helping us to remain strong in the midst of our tests, trials, or temptations.
Apostle John spoke about things that can be seen, felt, and touched in the spirit. That is where you come to if you do that.
Faith is usually a product of seeing from God, touching and feeling things in God that have been created to be born on earth, and taking steps that will pull them from that realm to our realm. You will come to where you can do this if you do not allow your adversity to push you to where the enemy sent it to push you to. If you rather withdraw and start building your faith, like the Eagle you should be.
If you withdraw, you will build a very beautiful creative force from God, that will enable you to create something out of nothing physical, and change your situation, or paralyze it from ruining your life. That force is the force of faith. That is why Satan attacks us not to go that direction.
Satan attacks faith-building because he knows that is the only thing that will ruin his plans and push. You put him in a very difficult situation if you withdraw to build your faith whenever he strikes.
DON’T FORGET, SATAN CANNOT CREATE, HE CAN ONLY MAKE USE OF WHAT HAS BEEN CREATED.
But with the instrumentality of faith building, especially in the midst of adversity. We become superior because it gives us the edge over him by bringing us to the realm of doing what he cannot do, creating. Thereby paralyzing his plans and push.
Yes, we can create a marriage according to God’s design and stop him, a business in God’s will and stop his plans, a spiritual life in God’s will and come alive in God, a family with God’s kingdom power and stop his evil power over our families, and a lot more.
Faith helps us to create by seeing, touching, and feeling things in the Spirit’s realm, through prayer. Then goes further to show us what action to take to bring them into the natural realm! That is why God made prayer a catalyst of faith. Understand that things cannot be revealed to our spiritual senses until we have prayed effective spirit-led prayers. The Bible says;
‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ Jeremiah 33:3 NKJV
Friend, any prayer that is not activating your faith by bringing you into God’s prophetic realm is a form of godliness that has no power.
True prayer mounts pressure on God to reveal Himself. It is Holy Spirit led not ‘holy’ flesh led – bringing us into a realm where God can be revealed to us. And God reveals Himself sometimes by speaking or showing something to us. When that happens, faith will be born in us.
In conclusion, the Bible spoke about a faith that was once delivered to the saints. This refers to an apostolic Christian belief that was established on the revelation of Jesus Christ to the early Church. That believe can be summarized in one proclamation that Paul made. And that proclamation is “Christ in you the hope of glory.”
If you look at the Church today, there is a great falling away from that faith; I call it the faith of our fathers. People are being told to sleep with prophets and prophetesses for spiritual cleansing. Others are taught to drink the oil and treat it as the Holy Spirit, instead of doing away with it as the Bible reveals.
Many others are trained to give money for prayers, and other forms of sacrifices; using salt, water, brooms, etc to invoke deliverance or one form of supernatural intervention or the other.
THAT IS NOT THE FAITH THAT WAS ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS.
God is calling on the remnant, those He has preserved from these pollutions to rise! He is calling on us to rise and begin to contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
The Bible says,
“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude 3 NKJV
The time to obey this call in our generation is now!
I hope someone is listening. We cannot be adulterating the faith and not see darkness engulf us. We cannot be adding to our faith what the LORD did not add and think we will walk in the dominion of our Bible fathers over the world and its system.
The covid-19 incident that happened just recently, exposed the dominion of the world over the church. The world made us all to put on masks, instead of it listening to us. It could not listen to us because many are beneath it in power. We could not even bring healing and stamp out the plague. It was science that got it done after many deaths.
Sadly, I did not see our famed fathers of faith, recognizing that and leading the church to the threshing floor. The fire of dominion has gone off in the temple, and they have become spiritually blind like Eli.
Thank GOD, for that generation, Samuel was there as God’s son generation for the blind Eli to listen to, and bring Israel out of the looming Ichabod situation it found itself. But like the fathers of today are doing, Eli did not listen to Samuel. He heard him but did not listen.
There is a difference between hearing and listening. When you hear but do not take the steps that should be taken, you heard but did not listen. No blind father should lead a Child. It is a child who sees that should lead a blind father.
In the natural realm, when a father becomes blind, he listens to his children who are seeing and submits himself to them to lead the way. That is how it should be in the Kingdom of God. When a father becomes spiritually blind, God should admit it, and then listen to a generation of sons that are accurately seeing into God’s plans. That is how God designed it!
But what the devil wants is to inflate the generation of blind spiritual fathers with other ideas, and keep them saying to all, “We are the fathers of faith, follow us. Do not be disrespectful of us.”
Only a wise father will recognize God’s hand upon a son’s generation and not provoke it with such acts because the Bible says, *“Fathers do not provoke your children.”*Only a wise father will listen to a son’s generation that sees what they do not see in the Bible.
Only a wise father’s generation will be guided by the gentility and humility of old age and learn to say to a son’s generation, “My son, my daughter, meet me and share with me what the LORD has shown you about His present moves on Earth. How are we supposed to live as end-time believers? Should we keep the oil or throw it away? If we are to throw it away, please how do we do that? And etc.”
It’s my prayer that God will use these words to give keep working in our lives and giving us an inheritance among they that are sanctified! AMEN!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.”
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.”
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Psalms 34:15-19 NKJV