TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 15TH JANUARY 2025)
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Psalms 23:1-3 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 15TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY.
It is another day from the LORD, God be glorified. Day unto day this year, like other years, we have been seeing His mercies. He has proved Himself to be more than dependable in everything. Amen and amen!
It’s very important that a Child of God begin any season or time of his life with a long time in prayer. The season could be a fresh year or a new year, another year of his life, after or before his birthday, and any fresh season that God usher the person into.
Our LORD and savior Jesus Christ began His earthly ministry with a 40 day fast. Moses began another phase of his ministry with a 40 day fast. The apostles began the global redemption ministry the LORD committed to them, and now its our turn, with a 10-day fast in the Upper Room.
Beginnings in God’s kingdom are kick started with long term fasting and prayers, led and governed by the Holy Spirit.
You can start the journey of another year of your life, especially at the completion of another, with a long term fast. It is a blessing to align with Holy Spirit traditions that our apostolic and prophetic fathers followed.
I remember a time in my life that I was fasting and praying about 21 days to my next Birthdays. That came to an end when my fasting pattern changed. It is usually interesting, beautiful and powerful (though painful to the flesh) to start a season of life with a long term fast.
But it helped me a lot. It gave me focus in life and organized my life so powerfully. Long term fasting is a supernatural life organizer. If you do it the Holy Spirit way, instead of the demon of deliverance way, you will reap great benefits from it. You will find your life organized and restructured altogether.
You will never know what you are missing not marking your seasons and times with a lengthy time in prayer.
Our generation has really lost the blessings our Bible fathers enjoyed in their days. We have become a fast food generation that does not want to spend quality and lengthy time with God in prayers; we do not follow the paths of long-term prayers except we want deliverance and other earthly things from God.
While there might be nothing wrong with that, it is very important that we note how it affects our souls negatively. The Bible teaches that it does not fatten our souls.
YES, IT KEEPS OUR SOULS LEAN SPIRITUALLY, MAKING LIFE HARD AFTER THE FAST IS OVER.
The primary purpose of long-term fasting is to fatten our souls, strengthen our grip on the LORD, and receive a new life to live until another season of long term fast.
We do not fast and pray long term because of some earthly reasons, we do that like the eagle does annually, being eagle Christians. We do that to renew our strength, so that we can be able to soar through the next phase of our lives, running and walking without growing weary or fainting till the next season of a long term fast.
Sadly, except they are in problems, many of us usually, do not have time for long term fasting. We spend lengthy time with the earthly but cannot spend same time with the eternal God, fellowshipping with His eternal word and Spirit; dwelling in the house of the LORD, to behold His beauty and enquire at His temple.
The reason for this is simple; we have become too attached to sin, Satan and the evil and corrupt systems of this world that we have lost the pull to come into God’s presence; the same pull that took Jesus to the wilderness and Moses to the mountain to fast for 40 days.
We stay away from God but claim closeness to Him declaring that He is good all the time. But there is a dimension of God’s goodness that can never be seen by people who lead their lives in shallow waters. It can only be seen by men and women of Holy Ghost governed and initiated long term fasting, like Moses.
Remember, it was during one of those Holy Ghost initiated long term fasting seasons Moses had that God said to him, “I will make all my goodness pass before you…” (Exodus 33:19).
HE SAID ALL MY GOODNESS, AND NOT SOME OF MY GOODNESS.
If we want to live our days in some of God’s goodness, then we can just be the nominal shallow waters Christians that we are. But if we want to enjoy all of God’s goodness, and see His glory like Moses saw, we must be engaged in long term fasting like Moses and Jesus did.
The choice is ours; we can decide on which kind of life we want to have.
If we become long term fasting believers, we will have a life that is full of all of God’s goodness, but if we remain lazy and short-term seekers of God’s presence, we will be enjoying just some of His goodness.
The world we live in, is too dangerous for us to have just some of God’s goodness. It is a world that we will only survive and thrive significantly if all of God’s goodness is in our lives.
Child of God, God want you and I to have all of His goodness passing through our lives year after year, month after month and week after week, not some of His goodness.
David said in Psalm 23, “goodness and mercy shall follow me…” That did not tell us the measure. But what the LORD said to Moses during his long term fast, tells us the very measure God is willing to give to us if we seek Him; all of His goodness.
He wants our lives to be full of all of His goodness, not some of it.
We sing of His goodness running after us, but what measure are we seeing running after us? For some, it’s just a small measure. Moses had a great measure. It was so great that he came down with a face that was shining like that of Christ on the mountain of transfiguration.
Friend, God wants all of His goodness, not just running after us, but running through our lives like a stream and making it beautiful. He does not want a little measure of His goodness in our lives, because that will not do much impact in His kingdom. He wants all of His goodness in our lives, especially this year.
But that will only happen if we become men and women of Holy Ghost governed and initiated long term fasting and prayer like Moses and Jesus were.
That is what will give us the goodness of the LORD that is required to keep us away from sin, Satan and the evil and corrupt system of this world all the time. Yes, that is what will give us the goodness of the LORD that we need, to have all forms of blessings needed for doing God’s will today.
ALL OF GOD’S GOODNESS IS THE REQUIRED MEASURE FOR TODAY, NOT SOME OF HIS GOODNESS.
If we will allow the LORD to be our shepherd this morning on what this devotional is saying, all will be well. Our devotional text this morning is a common Psalm that many in the Christian faith recite, off by head; and that is beautiful! It says,
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake”
We explained what it means for the LORD to be our Shepherd in our prayer session on Monday. You can order for the messages. It speaks of the LORD being the one who guides us. Today He has guided us on how to have all of His goodness in our lives.
He has said, it is not His will that we have some of His goodness following us. His will is that we have all of His goodness following us. It is my prayer that we allow His light in today’s devotional to guide us.
The second meaning of the LORD being our shepherd says, “He is the one who feeds me.” We need to open our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit of the LORD to feed our heart with the truth in this devotional. That calls for reading and thinking through it again until it is digested into our hearts.
If we do not open our hearts to get what we just found in this devotional digested into our spirits, we will never come into the reality God wants us to come into through this word.
The divine direction that we have found this morning and the spiritual feeding, will go a long way in helping us becoming all the LORD want us to become on this side of eternity, if we allow that to happen; if we apply what we found and ate.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY;
“Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.” Jeremiah 15:16 NKJV