TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 20TH JUNE 2024)
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
I, the LORD, search the heart, test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings. Jeremiah 17:9-10 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 171ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
The greatest Insurance on earth is to have God by your side, because it does not matter who may be by your side, if God is not by your side, you are doomed to be alone in life. Being alone is dangerous, the Bible says it is not good to be alone.
God has been by our side. He helped us to take side with Him, that is why we have always seen Him by our side. We are alive today because of the same reasons. We give Him the glory for all that.
Today we will still be looking at matters of righteous prayers.
Righteous Prayer positions a man properly in the Spirit not to be alone in life. You may be an orphan, a widow, or widower, with no one to call yours in life. Righteous prayers can change all that. I have seen righteous prayers change the circumstances of people who were alone in life, with none to help them.
Yes, it helped them stumble into their prophetic purposes in God, and stirred them to pursue it. As they pursued it, they woke up to discover they are no longer alone in life.
Being alone in life does not always mean being an orphan, a widow or a widower.
It could mean having a lot of relatives but there is no one among them who can help you in time of need. It could also mean having a father and mother, or just a father or a mother, but still living like an orphan because of their not being there for you.
If life place you in such circumstances, and you find a good church to plant yourself, and then begin to practice or build a life of righteous prayers, it will not be long, your circumstances will change.
Like earlier stated, you will stumble into a revelation or an opportunity created by God that will help you fulfill why you were born. As you start living for that, your life will become filled with helpful people.
Yes, your life will be filled with helpful relationships that are not even related with you by blood. It could start with just one righteous helpful person showing up in your life, then another, then another, and then another, and on and on, until you are no longer in need of any relationships.
SO, IF YOU FIND YOURSELF ALONE IN LIFE, FIND A CHURCH THAT WILL TEACH AND TRAIN YOU IN RIGHTEOUS LIVING AND RIGHTEOUS PRAYERS.
When you begin to live right and pray right, it will put you by God’s side, and being by God side is having God by your side. If you have the very big God by your side, it does not matter who is not by your side. You will find yourself pursuing divine purpose and having very helpful people in your life over time.
Good will begin to come to you, and the LORD will be guiding your steps and making your life bright and brighter by the day. Yes, you will no longer be alone in life. You will find yourself serving your generation according to the will of God, and see people and provisions coming to you.
The Bible says;
The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.
“Lift up your eyes all around, and see: They all gather together, they come to you; Your sons shall come from afar, And your daughters shall be nursed at your side.
Then you shall see and become radiant, And your heart shall swell with joy; Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you. Isaiah 60:3-5 NKJV
Though this is a prophecy about Israel, it also concerns us since we are present day spiritual Israel by the Jesus-Abraham connection.
This scripture contains a revelation of how the circumstances of your life can change when you embrace right living and right praying. It says, the gentiles; nations or people without God will come to your light. They will come to the light that God is shining in your life because of your right living and right prayers.
It says they will gather together and come to you, kings or men who are privileged economically than you. For some, it is people who will be like sons and daughters that they need. They are the ones that will come to them.
It also said our hearts will swell with joy because the abundance of the sea will be turned to us; that the wealth of the gentiles will come to us. That is the result of a right living and right praying that puts you on God’s side, and puts God by your side.
GOD WANTS ALL THESE THINGS TO HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE, AS YOU SERVE YOUR GENERATION ACCORDING TO HIS WILL.
You see, Charlatans, dark prophets or heretics, might have used this scripture to manipulate people’s lives and stole from them, it still has a photograph of what your life will become if you embrace right living and right praying.
Any prayer that does not embrace the principle of righteous prayer, and any life that is not adjudged by God as a righteous life, will not give you the results in that scripture. Wealth transfer is not for the wicked. It is for those who pray right prayers and live right before God.
A lot of people who are alone in life have been praying yet not getting this kind of result. I reiterate again that any prayer that is not righteous prayer, and any life that is not adjudged by God as righteous before Him, will never give you the stated results.
You see, there is a lot of praying going on in some quarters. Some of them even bringing down a supernatural manifestation. But if you check such manifestations in the lenses of the scriptures, you will know they are not Christ like, but anti-Christlike.
If you are not living right and praying right, you will always touch the dark supernatural in prayers. You will touch dark realms.
Prayers that bring the manifestation of the dark supernatural are prayers prayed in bitterness, hate and vengeful feelings. They are prayers prayed by hearts that are not right before the LORD. Hearts like money-making hearts, crafty hearts, deceitful hearts, hearts salted by divination and sorcery, and etc.
Such prayers come as curses issued against their enemies, spells cast on them, and flow like incantations and etc. They are like what witches, wizards, and dark hearts do when offended.
I listened to an audio sometimes back where a prophet from Nigeria was cursing someone who exposed his sinful deeds to the public. I said to myself, “none of these bitter curses will work if what you did was true.” God is a just God. He has no respect for persons. He respects His principles.
YES, THERE IS RANKING IN THE SPIRIT BUT THERE ARE NO VIPS BEFORE GOD.
If you break His principles, it does not matter your ranking, you will be judged like any other person out there. Moses was highly ranked, but was judged like the rest of the Israelites when he struck the rock. He did not enter the promise land like others who committed other forms of trespass.
If a shepherd sleep with a sheep, the judgment of the Sons of Eli will come upon him if he did not repent but continue in wickedness. The first way it will come is by exposing his sins to the whole world. If he did not acknowledge and repent, then other forms of judgment will come.
God has four forms of correctional judgments for such spiritual leaders. When it gets to the point of exposure, He will use people who were once loving and loyal, or those who were antagonistic, to expose our long-time secret sins for being rebellious and not repenting.
If He is doing that and we resort to wicked prayers against those He may be using, we are being stupid and foolish.
We should not forget that at that time they are His anointed, they are His prophets, and He said in His word “touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” Sometimes, we preachers should come down from “the man of GOD horse of pride,” humble ourselves, and be repentant Christians for once, because we are first Christians, before preachers.
Righteous prayers have nothing to do with issuing curses on people and shouting that fire should consume them because you are angry at them , or because you feel hurt by the things they are justly saying or doing.
If you are guilty, repent before God and move on. If you are not, then leave it to God. Ask Him for grace to move away from the hurting things they might be saying or doing. He will grant you grace and judge the issue in His own time and way.
In fact, in the school of righteous prayer and right living, once you notice that you are angry, you do not pray at all.
You simply kneel in submission to the Spirit of the LORD, asking the LORD to wash and cleanse your heart of unrighteous anger. That brings us to our devotional text today. It says;
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
I, the LORD, search the heart, test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings. Jeremiah 17:9-10 NKJV
NO RIGHTEOUS PRAYER CAN COME FROM A WICKED HEART.
If you want to operate in the faith and fire of Righteous prayers; a prayer life with capacity to make you a throne room Christian, the journey must begin from your heart. What kind of a heart do you have?
Do you have a wicked and desperate heart, or you have a righteous and humble heart? Understand that if we do not begin from the heart realm, our prayers could turn out to be an abomination in the sight of GOD.
It is the kind of heart a man or woman has that determined the kind of prayer that come out of their mouths. And it is the Kind of prayer that comes out of our mouth that determines if God will hear us or not.
It is therefore important to check the kind of heart you have and ask the LORD to work on it first, before lifting up your voice in prayer. We see this pattern in the story of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal.
When it was his turn to pray, He never prayed until the broken-down altar was repaired. The altar represents the heart. The heart must be in order before you pray. That is the message. The Bible says;
Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.” 1 kings 18:30 NKJV
If the heart is not right, the prayer will not be heard! If what is broken is not fixed, what you are praying will not be heard. There will be no answer from God. Elijah knew that hence taking the first step to praying righteous prayers, which is putting the heart in order before the LORD.
The Bible says if we hide iniquity in our hearts the LORD shall not hear us (Psalm 66:18).
Sadly, many do not consider this because like the Pharisee in Luke chapter 18, they are already righteous. They enter the place of prayer with an arrogance that leaves them with unanswered prayers. But Elijah knew better.
Despite his spiritual prowess, he humbled himself and started from the basics, putting the heart right before God; repairing the broken-down altar. A lot of demonic things happen when we pray to the LORD with hearts that are not right before God.
WE UNLOCK THINGS FROM THE SPIRIT REALM OF SATAN, WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT.
A heart that will not first tune to GOD to be purified or set in order before lifting up its voice in prayers, will say prayers that GOD will not look at; prayers that are an abomination to the LORD. The Bible says,
“One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, Even his prayer is an abomination.” Proverbs 28:8 NKJV
We must first of all hear from God before speaking to God. We must sit down and receive sound truths that are capable of setting our hearts in order before lifting up our voices to GOD in prayer.
Anything outside that will not help us in the prayer realm of God.
It is my prayer that God will use these words to build your prayer life up and give you an inheritance among they that are sanctified. Amen!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AND ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. James 4:1-5, 8-10 NKJV