TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 17TH OCTOBER 2024)
“And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.”‘” Exodus 4:21-23 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 291ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the word of the LORD shall not. There is no one like Our God, who rides the Heavens to help us. He has been a faithful helper all our lives.
He helps us when sin comes to knock us out, with its pleasure and consequences, especially whenever we call on Him. He helps us when lack comes to knock us out, through all kinds of economic pressure. He helps us out when the evil and corrupt system of this world corrupts and influences us to go against His will and ways.
He helps us out in so many ways.
From all kinds of helps He gives, we can see that our lives were originally designed to be helped by the LORD. That is why the Holy Ghost is called “Another Helper.” Tell me how you will survive this world in righteousness, holiness, or purity without being helped by the LORD.
Sadly, very few cares about living a righteous, holy and pure life in this world. Many do not see it as necessary. They have been literary overcome and overwhelm by ignorance and desire to satisfy their sinful craves. So, not many do ask God to help them live right.
It is because of His help that people in Bible days fasted and prayed. It is because of His help that we also fast and pray daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. When we fast that way, we are waiting upon Him to help us. Yes, we wait upon the LORD because, His help is all we need in a wicked world.
He takes delight in helping us. In helping us is His strength fulfilled in us.
That is why it is good to always call upon Him to help you in time of need. Yes, in time of financial needs, health needs, security needs, holiness needs, the need to live a pure life, the need to speak the truth even under pressure, the need to say no to the flesh and yes to the Holy Spirit.
In time of all kinds of needs. The Bible says we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities or the impact of our corrupt and sinful nature. So, He can help if we call on Him to help us.
SOME PREACHERS HAVE TRAINED PEOPLE TO CALL ON THEM IN TIME OF NEED, INSTEAD OF CALLING ON GOD.
Deception makes you call on a man who presented himself to you as your messiah in time of need. It makes you run to those who present themselves as God sent to help you. But truth teaches you to run to God; to use sit under God’s servants to find God for yourself and walk intimately with Him.
Sadly, both the church and the world now seem to be on the same page. We all live sinful and wicked lives. We all pursue money instead of God. We all serve our carnal desires. We all point those in need to the wrong direction instead of the right direction – the direction of the Holy Spirit.
While the church sends those in need to dark prophets and ministers of the gospel, the world influences them to face godless systems that does not help. It influences them to follow humanistic philosophies and ideologies in time of need, instead of calling on God.
Those in the church who seem to be getting it right, teach people to call on God only on matters of earthly challenges. Not on matters of living right and making Heaven at last. People gather in large prayer houses to call on God to help them solve problems, instead of help them live righteously in a wicked world.
If we live righteously in a wicked world, most of our problems will not exist, except the cost of living right, which is far cheaper than the final cost of living a sinful and Godless life. God’s greatest help is only available to those who will ask Him to help them live right in a wicked world, and solve their daily challenges as well.
At this point, let us look at few principles of obtaining help from the LORD. The first has been addressed. You must seek to live a righteous life in a wicked world to be help by the LORD immensely.
God will first send help to the righteous before the wicked, because righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. God will not give any help that will promote what is a reproach to mankind, sin. He will only give a help that promotes righteousness.
So, if you want God to help you, begin by asking Him to help you live right in a wicked world and sinful age.
WE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT GOD’S FIRST PRIORITY IS TO HELP US MAKE HEAVEN.
Any help we need from Him will be release in such a way that we become Heaven worthy. We must therefore prioritize Heaven making as we call upon Him, we must not cease asking Him to help us live righteously in a wicked world.
Moments are passing; heaven and earth is rapidly passing away. That should not depart from our minds.
We are also passing away. Yes, we are eating up the years the LORD has appointed for each and every one of us. Soon and very soon, each and every one of us will drop dead and step into a much higher life than this. Will the life be in Heaven or hell? That is the ultimate question that should fill our hearts.
Friend, it is important that Heaven making be our highest priority. What shall it profit us if we gain the whole world and loose our souls to hell?
The Bible teaches that if Heaven making becomes our priority, we will begin to tap into the powers of the age to come and turn every valley of weeping in our lives into pools of blessings, the blessing of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
When the Holy Spirit manifest in your life, life will become very easy, because He is Our helper. He has a nature that helps, and will begin to give you so much help that life will become easy for you. It is when we lack His help that life is difficult.
If you see anyone living a difficult life, you have seen someone without the help of the Holy Spirit. No one lives a difficult life if the Holy Spirit is in full manifestation in their lives. He will even give them a table of divine provision, protection, and prosperity in the presence of their enemies.
They will not have a curse to break in their lives, because the curses of life and the Holy Spirit of God cannot coexist in a person. One must give way to the other.
If you therefore see a Christian struggling with curses, you have seen one with no true manifestation of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Understand that no one can place a curse on someone with the Holy Spirit in their lives.
CURSES DO NOT GROW OR MANIFEST IN LIVES THAT HAVE THE FULL MANIFESTATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Understand this truth, and then pay the price to live a life that is fully yielded to the Holy Spirit so that you will not live a difficult life. Yes, seek a life that is full, controlled and inhabited by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and you will see how easy your life will become.
If you see a preacher living a difficult life, you have seen a preacher without the help of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the demon of deliverance do offer help to false preachers, but all true preachers can only prosper when the Holy Spirit offers them help.
Sadly, people think that speaking in tongues is always a sign of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life.
There are a lot of people who are speaking in tongues who are suffering terribly. They may have tongues but they do not have the true manifestation of the Spirit of God. Tongues do not translate into the manifestation of the Spirit these days because most of what people have today is not the Holy Spirit, but a counterfeit.
The ultimate sign of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives, apart from a life that abhors sin and refuse to be comfortable with it, is an easy life, despite challenges. Yes, a life that is heavily helped by the LORD!!
I have come to realize that if one is living a difficult life, it is because the help of the Holy Spirit is absent in that person’s life. When the Holy Spirit begin to manifest in your life, life will become easy.
My life became easy when He began to manifest Himself in me. We were born poor. So poor that even the poor called us poor. Life was very difficult. Yes, we lived a life of penury and mockery. But in the midst of that my mum taught us to prioritize Heaven making. We did.
There was never a time we sought any prophet or preacher to pray for us to become rich. We just sought the LORD to help us live right in a wicked world. Then the Holy Spirit began to manifest in our lives.
As His manifestations began, people began to queue at our space to be prayed for. We also began to see the Help of God. Difficulty began to disappear.
PEOPLE HAD SAID WE WERE UNDER A CURSE. BUT THEY SOON CHANGED THEIR MINDS.
The Holy Spirt helped us until we began to prosper and continue prospering by God’s definition. I can testify that you do not need a bottle of oil in your hands. You need the full manifestation of the Holy Spirit in your life. Just get the manifestation of the holy spirit in your life, and all will be well.
The second principle that governs the help of God is the principle of being in divine will. Our devotional text says;
“And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.”‘” Exodus 4:21-23 NKJV
God called Israel His Son. He called Him His first-born Son. That explained why the first-born kids of the Egyptians had to die, it was for God to give help to His first born.
But Israel did not just get that help because they were God’s Son, they got it because they were in His will. You do not get help because you are a child of God, you get help because you have the Spirit of God fully manifesting in your life, and you are in His will.
The Bible says they had called upon Him, and He heard them, and then sent Moses to them to deliver them in response. The Book of Exodus is full of the wonders of the LORD that were unleashed on Egypt to help them.
Why were they helped that way? They were in divine will. Their being in Egypt was in divine will. If you are in divine will, you will not lack the help of God. That was why all who walked with the LORD in Bible days strove to be in divine will at all time.
The Bible is full of the kind of help they received from the LORD for being in His will.
Some were bitten by snakes and yet survived. They turned to flight terrible armies that would have eaten them up because the LORD helped them. Joshua spoke to the moon and the sun and they listened because the LORD helped Him. The LORD heard him because he was in divine will.
In the New testament, Paul had a terrible encounter in Acts 27 and 28, that speaks of the power of God’s help. He enjoyed the help of God all through his ministry because He was in divine will. You will never enjoy the help of God following your ways, and doing your own will.
As you yield yourself to God, to have His Spirit fully manifesting in you, yield also to His word, will, and ways, so that you can be in faith positions that attract the help of GOD. That is the word of the LORD for today!!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE A MEDITATION FOR TODAY!
“We sinned against him, but he didn’t give us the punishment we deserved. His love for his followers is as high above us as heaven is above the earth. And he has taken our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west.
The Lord is as kind to his followers as a father is to his children. He knows all about us. He knows we are made from dust. He knows our lives are short, that they are like grass.
He knows we are like a little wildflower that grows so quickly, but when the hot wind blows, it dies. Soon, you cannot even see where the flower was.” Psalms 103:10-16 HBER