TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 28TH August 2025)
“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning of it, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” Ecclesiastes 7:8 AMP
WELCOME TO THE 240TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
What can be better than serving the LORD, especially in spirit and in Truth? What can be better than walking in the truth, not just the word, but the truth of the word?
What can be better than receiving forgiveness from the LORD for falling sometimes and rising by His mercies to keep running the race? What can be better than having Jesus as your advocate, refuge, fortress and all in all? What can be better than having the blood of Jesus as your cleanser and the word of the LORD as your life motivator?
If you are not serving Jesus, especially in a church built on sound doctrine, you will never know what you are missing. The LORD has been so faithful to us, and we are grateful. He is our king and Helper. There is nothing we have been able to accomplish without His help. To Him all the glory belongs!!
Today we will be going deeper beginning with the story of the man called Noah. We have been looking at what our destiny needs to be fulfilled. One of the major things that our destiny needs to be fulfilled is an understanding of the times and season we are in. That is where the story of the man Noah comes in.
THE BIBLE IS CLEAR THAT WE ARE IN A TERMINAL GENERATION.
A terminal generation is a generation that marks the beginning of an end. When Jesus was speaking about that He used the man Noah as an example. But we are not going to share about the eschatological truths buried in his life, we will just share some faith building truths.
You see, Noah was a wonderful servant of the LORD. He was a grand Child of Enoch; the man who walked with God and was not, for God took him. In a perverted and crooked generation, Noah stood tall in righteousness and found grace in God’s sight.
That is an example for us all who are also living in a perverted and crooked generation. God expects us to yield to His grace and stand tall in righteousness and find more grace in His sight, grace that can make us God’s saving arms in this generation, a saving arm from its moral decay.
Let me share something with us about grace. I have shared some of these truths before on this platform. There is a grace that comes upon a man to be righteous; there is also a grace that comes because he is righteous. Noah had both in proportions. Through his lineage, grace came upon him to be righteous, and through his obedience, grace came upon him because he was righteous.
When we come into Christ, grace will come upon us to be righteous. This initial grace is the source of what Paul calls “imparted” or “imputed” righteousness.
When this grace is imputed or imparted into a sinner, he becomes a saint by the law of grace. In other words, he becomes the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. If he makes use of what was imparted to live right and pure in God’s sight, more grace will then be given to him, making him an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith indeed!
The grace that is given when we make use of an initial grace to live righteously before God is called “SUFFICIENT GRACE.” The one that comes upon us to live right is called “INITIAL GRACE.” Theologians call it “saving grace.”
SAVING GRACE WILL SANCTIFY OR SET US APART FROM SIN, BUT SUFFICIENT GRACE WILL KEEP US SET APART FROM SIN.
God’s saving grace is for DELIVERANCE from the practice and penalty of sin, but His sufficient grace is for PRESERVATION from the practice and penalty of sin. So, Noah found both proportions of grace in God’s sight.
God used him to preserve creation, during and after the flood. But the things that took place at the end of his life suggest that he lost an amount of grace.
The Bible says Noah became a drunk, exposed his nakedness and one of his sons saw it and mocked him.
Then he woke up and placed a terrible curse on him which opened humanity to idolatry after the flood. It was like a reversal of things God used the flood to deal with. How, you may ask!! When a critical man loses an amount of God’s grace, he will begin to do things that create breaches in God’s program.
God had used Noah to repair the breach that was caused by the fallen angels who married the daughters of men and gave birth to giants on earth. But now he was creating a major breach in GOD’s fresh redemptive plan for mankind. What is a breach? You may ask! A breach is a break in the flow of things.
Noah broke the flow of divine things, and it gave birth to a lineage that reintroduced idolatry on the face of the earth.
Our devotional text today says, “better is the end of a thing than the beginning.” In other words, the end is more critical than the beginning. Noah’s end was not handled properly, hence laying the foundation of idolatry in the new earth. Spiritual fathers must learn how not to create breaches in the lives of sons and daughters in faith.
We must learn how not to curse. Today, every form of Idol worship can be traceable to the lineage of the Son of Noah that was cursed by his father. When a spiritual father loses God’s grace, he will begin to curse his Children at the slightest provocation and creating breaches in the spirit in their lives.
HE WILL BECOME WRECK LESS WITH WOMEN ALSO.
Sin will become active in the life of any Christian when he begins to lose God’s grace to be holy. Most times, it is at the end that people loose God’s grace. They do not lose it at the beginning, and we forget that in the eternal point of view, it is not how we started that matters, but how we will end.
It is the end of your Christian life that will determine your eternal destiny not actually the beginning. Yes, this point must be loud and clear! Many believers started well but ended very badly. Today, most are in hell.
It is therefore important that we run our Christian race from the beginning looking at the end, else we will not make it. An athlete who gets involved in a race with eyes at the beginning instead of the end will never make it. The Bible says we must run this race with eyes towards the end of the race not the beginning. We must depart from past glories and press into future glories.
There is another dimension of truth on these lines that is worthy of note!
You see, our generation is too much in a hurry. We get ourselves involved in things for immediate rewards not knowing that most things in God’s kingdom speak at the end not the beginning. God said to Habakkuk,
“Write the vision. Make it plain upon tables that he may run that reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time. At the end it shall speak!”
Things do not speak in the beginning in God’s kingdom. They speak at the end. It is how your Christian life will end that will determine your eternal destiny not how you started – which is also important. Noah started great but almost lost it in the end!
My prayer for us this morning is that we will not lose any amount of grace at the end of our walk with God. That is why it pays to move from a lower level of grace to a higher level of grace every day of our lives as Christians.
It is people who move from grace to grace on daily basis that stand the chance to make it at the end. Those who do not are risking their eternal life. Each time I take a spiritual gaze at some marriages today, I become sad in spirit. They do not have what it takes to get to the end.
MOST MARRIAGES CRASH BECAUSE THEY LACK WHAT MARRIAGES NEEDS TO MOVE FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END.
When a marriage is moving from one terrible crisis to another instead of from grace to grace, it will not get to the end. It will be lost at the end. It will die and get buried or die and left on the surface, either due to what people may say or maybe the children involved in it.
When a marriage dies, two things will happen; the couples will either be living in a mirage they call marriage for the sake of the Children or divorced altogether.
Spiritually, the faith of so many Christians does not have what it takes to stay strong with Jesus from the beginning to the end. They do not have sufficient grace and truth to last in the race to the end. Prophetically, many have become like the five foolish virgins in Matthew 25 who had Oil but did not know that it was NOT enough to keep them to the end.
They lost their oil at the end and lost their eternal rest with Jesus. But the five that had sufficient Oil finished well at the end.
As we close this devotional today, I want to ask you these questions; do you have sufficient grace to finish your Christian race sound and strong? Are you receiving sufficient truth in your Church to endure the horrors of the last days and finish the race strong, or you are just being taught the wisdom of men?
Do you have sufficient Oil in your lamp to keep you aflame to the end? In fact, are you even burning at all? Is the lamp of your spiritual life burning with enough Holy Ghost fire to stand the darkness of our age? Has your faith grown cold?
This is time to take a personal assessment of your spiritual life! It is the state of your Christian life in the now and at the end that will determine your eternal destiny, not what it was yesterday. Many are basking in the glory of yesterday instead of developing spiritual capacity for today that will give them a better tomorrow.
God sent this word to wake us up!! There is a strange fire on our mountain! We must start running and running for our eternal life. Our eyes must be placed on the city which has foundation, whose builder and maker is GOD!! Amen.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.”
“But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:14-16 NKJV
