TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 29TH JULY 2024)
“Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.
“So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. Exodus 23:20-26 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 211TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Glory be to the LORD GOD for another day. It has been 211 days of Divine Impact, with the impact of God’s mercies being the greatest of all the impacts we have received from the LORD.
With all the hazards of this world and all that the enemy try to do to harm us, God’s mercies has carried us through. The Bible says;
“As the mountains surround Jerusalem, So the LORD surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.
For the sceptre of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, Lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity.” Psalm 125: 2-3 NKJV
God’s mercy has not let the scepter of wickedness to rest upon us these 211 days. We believe it will still watch over us all through the remaining days of the year.
As we wind up the days of this month, and get ready for the coming month, the LORD has been speaking to us on practical Christian living. We have come to understand that practical Christianity is a calling. It is one lethal spiritual force that can easily win a willing heart to the LORD.
We saw practical Christianity as something God looks for in us to use in changing the world around us. God’s ultimate passion is to use us to touch the lives of others positively, and practical Christianity put us in a better position to be effectively used.
We also learned that practical Christianity involved living a healthy life because it takes the healthy to touch the lives of others effectively. That does not mean GOD does not use sick people, but we will do a better job when we are healthy.
Once you become sick, your primary focus will be how to be healed. It will never be how to touch the lives of others through practical Christian living.
Jesus was never sick one day. But He spent His life healing the sick. That is God’s plan; that we be the ones bringing healing to the sick, not the ones getting sick and being in need of healing all the time.
That is why He spoke to us on taking care of our bodies and health yesterday and not over spiritualizing health matters.
SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE DIED OVER SPIRITUALIZING THEIR HEALTH.
I remember this story told by a dear man of GOD of how a woman refused medication, saying that GOD will heal her. She had been taught to operate by faith very wrongly, so when she fell sick, she refused to take drugs, saying taking drugs is a demonstration of doubt.
I have met quit many who caught HIV and were placed on anti-viral drugs abandoning their drugs in the name of faith. If God is not truly involved in what we call acts of faith, it will turn out tragic.
We have always encouraged them to keep using their drugs because medication has never prevented divine healing, rather it has facilitated divine healing. Those who obeyed were eventually healed of HIV.
We have them in the church today, alive and well serving the LORD.
That dear woman got her faith wrongly, and refused to listen to the voice of reason. Many preachers spoke to her to allow the doctors to take over, but she refused. Persistent and loving doctors administered drugs to her, she refused to take. Sadly, she died and was buried.
Do you think God will be happy welcoming her that early in Heaven? No!
The Bible says the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon us. One of it is the scepter of foolishness treated as faith in GOD.
Any faith that tells you not to use medication is a wrong one. It could be the voice of the spirit of death speaking to you because death kills in so many ways, and one of the ways is to make men foolish by twisting facts, and making them believe what is not true.
True faith is built on the foundation of God’s word, and there is no place where God forbade anyone in scriptures from using medication. He said to Adam;
….. “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I HAVE GIVEN EVERY GREEN HERB for food” and it was so. Genesis 1:29-30 NKJV (Emphasis mine)
THIS SCRIPTURE MADE IT CLEAR THAT EVEN BEFORE THE FALL OF MAN, GOD GAVE MAN EVERY GREEN HERB FOR FOOD.
The word herb has to do with leaves that keeps one healthy or eliminates the possibility of being sick.
Medications are manufactured from green herbs. So, refusing to take medication, especially when you are sick, is like Adam looking at God and saying, “I believe you can keep me healthy without taking the green herbs you have given me for food.”
That will be rejecting God’s plan for his health.
Yes, it is part of God’s plan for us not to be spending our monies on medication or surviving by it, it is also part of His plan for our health to be restored or kept strong through the proper use of medication. Proper use of medication has never and will never prevent or hinder divine healing from taking place in a person’s body.
In fact, if you have a living faith, it will use medication as a facilitator of divine healing. Yes, you will pray over the medication to become a similitude for your healing. So, from Biblical point of view, if you fall sick and say God said you should not take medication, you could be lying on Him.
There are even silly men and women whose children fell sick, and you find them denying them medical care, with some claiming that GOD said so and He will heal them. Sadly, some die through this kind of carelessness and the parents blamed it on curses.
It is like in ancient times, when there were no vaccines or proper medical care. So many diseases that can be cured today, were incurable then. The witch doctors will blame the diseases on some curses or spells from the gods.
They will say to the sick, the kings or the chiefs, that the gods are angry with the people, and that they need to offer some sacrifices. That is the same thing some of this misled faith people are doing today.
I remember what happened in my own village; I was told how entire communities were wiped away by diseases that could not be cured then but can be cured now.
So, it is part of the plan of the devil for people to either reject proper medical care, or not have money for it, or not have access to it at all, or over spiritualizing it, calling it an arm of flesh or an act of doubt.
Understand that when God said, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited” (Jeremiah 17:5-6 NKJV) He was not referring to proper medical care or advice.
IF IN OUR SPIRITUALITY, WE CALL PROPER MEDICAL CARE ARM OF FLESH, WE ARE BEING FOOLISH.
It is very important that, we heed the voice of the LORD this morning on these issues. A portion of our devotional text says;
“Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.
You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. Exodus 23:20-24 NKJV
It is important that we obey the voice of the LORD this morning and stop bowing to all these heresies on health and medical care so that we will not destroy ourselves. Only then will God be an enemy to all the diseases making life difficult for many. Only then will He be an adversary to them.
Proper medical care is not the arm of flesh because man did not plant the green herbs and other organic chemicals used in making drugs on earth. God planted them because He knows how our bodies function.
Our bodies were made from the ground just as the green herbs. So proper medical care is applying what was made from the ground to what was made from the ground so that it can be healed. Simple!
IF YOU ASK ME, I WILL SAY YOU NEED TO LIVE HEALTHY, HAVE A GOOD DOCTOR IN YOUR LIFE, AND ABOVE ALL, HAVE DR. JESUS AS THE ULTIMATE.
When the good doctor fails, Dr Jesus will come in to help, or when the good doctor is treating you, Dr. Jesus will lay His hands in his and use him to heal you. People who have this three will not leave the world earlier through disease. They will fulfill their days!
A portion of our devotional text says,
“So, you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.” Exodus 23:25-26 NKJV
God promised to take sickness away from us, but many do not know how He does it. Most of us think it’s just through prayer. But there are three basic Bible ways that God uses in taking sickness away from us. He will either use the power of the herbs He created (medical care or advise), or the power of healthy living, or the power of the Holy Spirit.
Whenever you desire health, you must apply one of the ways.
There are those who may twists this and begin to go for herbs administered to people by witch doctors. When we say the power of herbs, we are not referring to the concoctions that witch doctors serve people. Most of them engage the power of demons.
And do not forget, Satan will always come for the lives of those he heals after a while. That is why most die suddenly after experiencing his healing power.
The phrase green herb describes medical care, and the intake of green plants that God made to grow from the ground, basically to take care of certain diseases in man’s bodies without the reinforcement of incantation to some gods of deities.
God will take sickness from us when we live healthy and eat healthy. He will take it from us when we use the green herbs of the field, follow medical advice, and submit to proper medical care.
If those two do not work, and we move on to submit to the comfort of His Holy Spirit, He will take the sickness away from us when we pray and ask Him to heal us by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is the secret.
Do not forget, Satan will keep us ignorant to kill us with diseases. He does that in so many ways.
He could keep us ignorant of the right medical care to go for, or the right green plant to take to be healed by filling our hearts with fear. He can even master mind wrong diagnosis to. There are even cases where he positions his agents in hospitals as nurses and doctors to kill.
That is why we must not substitute the Healing power of the Holy Spirit that comes in the name of Jesus Christ with any of the health or healing provisions discussed here.
Our LORD and savior Jesus Christ must remain king over our health. He must remain LORD, guiding us by His word and blessing us with health. Do not forget, He took our diseases long ago, and restored back our right to healing and sound health over 2000 years ago. That has not changed.
He is the authentic seed for our healing, we do not need to sow any other seed. He is the altar that has been raised for our healing, we do not need to raise any other altar. He is the sacrifice for the elimination of our disease, we do not need to give any other sacrifice. He is enough!!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY.
“He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
Surely, He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole. Isaiah 53:3-5 AMPC