TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 14 JULY 2024)
“Of what use is money in the hand of a [self-confident] fool to buy skillful and godly Wisdom — when he has no understanding or heart for it? A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity.” Proverbs 17:16-17 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 196TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Our God has been faithful to us. It’s been a year full of the manifestation of His love, amazing goodness, and unfailing power.
I know God has proved Himself faithful to you in some ways or the other. Give Him Praise! Return the glory to Him, for He is great. He does miracles so great. There is no one like Him. Hallelujah!!
He has been speaking to us on this platform, and those who are listening are experiencing His power in their lives. He has been wrapping our spirits with the mantle of truth and our souls with the armor of light.
This morning, He has some other truths for us on prayer. We want to look at one beautiful reward of having an effective prayer life. That reward is the release of special relationships called destiny partners. Yes, the release of people to function in your life as partners of life.
There is no one who has ever developed a strong prayer knee in life who did not have partners of life surrounding him or her.
If you study the life of David, you will realize that when he started as a little shepherd boy, he had no one in his life but the animals he was taking care of in the backside of the desert. But after developing a strong prayer knee, his journey to greatness began.
At the end of the first phase of the journey, before he turned 20, he was already a national figure. Even the king knew him.
The life of David and other Bible figures shows that if we are strong on our prayer knee, one of the major blessings that we will reap, is the blessing of God given people, released into our lives to function as partners of life.
It is from the pool of a man’s partners of life that he gets someone to either marry, do business with, or do any other significant matter of life with. The importance of picking someone to do significant things with from the pool of God given partners of life cannot be over emphasized.
IT GUARANTEES SUCCESS AND PROGRESS IN LIFE.
Jesus followed the same principle while choosing His 12 disciples. The Bible says He choose them from the pool of the 500 men and women who had become his partners of life. He did not choose them from the Pharisees who were already established in matters of the law.
He chose them from the pool of partners of life God surrounded His earthly life with. If He were to marry, He would have married someone from that pool. His life teaches that we should limit our interpersonal relations to men and women God brings our ways to function as our partners of life.
Most marriages fail because of this same reason.
People do not marry from the pool of the partners of life that should surround their lives. They just marry whoever. That is why our marital lives are in shambles. We follow carnal desires instead of spiritual principles in our choices of a mate.
There are those who do not even know that they should have a pool of men and women God brought their way, to function as partners of life, around them. They just live their lives and do very significant life ventures with whoever they find, running into trouble thereafter.
In marriage, people just pick whoever looks okay and marry, coming into serious problems shortly after.
In ministry, you find some of us preachers, picking whoever gives money or whoever is available, to do very significant things about the call of God upon our lives with, and run into trouble waters thereafter. In business relationships, you find people picking whoever suits their financial fancy, to do business with, then when profit or losses come, they even fight to the point of taking their lives.
That is not the will of God. Your life was not designed to be shared with any human you find. Your life was designed to be shared with God given people.
It is therefore very important to note that, God did not create our marital, economy, or social lives to be shared with people who are not our partners of life; people He has not blessed or brought to function as partners of life in our lives.
IF WE ERRONEOUSLY SHARE OUR LIVES WITH THEM, WE WILL LIVE IN HELL WHILE LIVING ON EARTH.
People who get married or do serious life venture, with men and women from the pool of the partners of life that God used their prayer knees to create for them, succeeds in life. They rise high in life within a short time. Their partners of life supply all they need to rise.
If you have an effective prayer life, God will use it to do so much in your life, including blessing you with a pool of partners of life.
Jonathan was a partner of life to David. He played a lot of roles in David’s safety from the sword of Saul, his father. Shadrach, Mishael and Abednego were partners of life to Daniel in Babylon. Their collective prayer, at one time, saved the wise men of Babylon from total annihilation.
The Bible says they generated a presence from Heaven that propelled Daniel to come to the realm of decoding the King’s dream and saving everyone from the sword. Sadly, many are clothed with friends who do not know how to support them to unleash their divine destiny, like these men did to Daniel.
Yes, we have men and women with so many people in their lives, but no pool of partners of life around them. Hence, still limited in life, despite the presence of people in their lives.
Friend, if the devil wants to limit you in life, he will make sure you have around you a pool of men and women who only know how to advance their economic lives, by scooping money from you. Yes, he will make sure you are surrounded by a pool of men and women who cannot add value to you.
He will clothe you with parasites who use you to add value to themselves, and do not care about you.
A parasite does not care about its host. In the same way, parasitic people do not care about who might be adding value to their lives on earth. That is why, if Satan want you limited and crushed in life, he will give you a pool of parasitic men and women, as a gift.
What one parasitic man or woman will do in your life, is much more than what one demon might do. That is why the early church had no place for parasitic people.
GOD WROTE BY THE HAND OF PAUL THAT PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE A BURDEN TO A CHURCH WHEN THEY CAN TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.
He made it clear in another verse of the Bible that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If you allow the devil to plant a pool of parasites around your life, you will marry from it and do significant life ventures with people from it, failing in all.
A major highlight in our devotional text today says, “A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity.” Any pool of partners of life will be full of friends who love at all times, and brothers who are born for adversity. A strong prayer knee can create that pool around us.
What is the LORD saying to us this morning? The LORD is saying, strengthen your prayer knee; ask me to give you or create for you a pool of partners of life around your life. Without that pool you will not have a place where to get people to do significant things in life with.
You will need the pool to know where to pick a wife or husband from, you will need the pool to have covenant friends.
If you are a pastor, you will need the pool to be able to pick the people you need for ministry. Yes, you will need the pool to pick the sons of peace that God has prepared for your ministry, and make them part of your life. If you live a life without a pool of true friends or people sent to you by heaven to give you the support your life needs to become all that God created it to be, you will be sorry in life.
Satan has a way of planting destroyers that come as helpful people into our lives, but God has given us a promise of divine intervention. Stand on that promise and seek Him, until a pool of partners of life begin to build around you.
It’s a new Day for you in Jesus’ precious name. AMEN !!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“Your sons shall make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste shall go away from you. Lift up your eyes, look around and see; all these gather together and come to you.”
As I live,” says the Lord, “You shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, and bind them on you as a bride does.
“For your waste and desolate places, and the land of your destruction, will even now be too small for the inhabitants; and those who swallowed you up will be far away” Isaiah 49:17-19 NKJV