TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 12TH MARCH 2026)
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘” Matthew 13:26-30 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 71ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF STRATEGIC VICTORY
We bless the LORD GOD almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, for giving us another day to fulfill. Days are not given to us to waste but to fulfill. It means they are to be lived according to God’s will and according to divine wisdom.
This morning, we will be visiting a well of truth dug four years ago on Right relationships. We had used the lenses of the New Testaments some time back to see the importance of separating from people who either touch the dead, are leprous or have a discharge; a rule God gave to the Church in the wilderness.
Those things were literal in those days and were given for health reasons, but today they are metaphors of certain spiritual illnesses that people carry that expresses themselves in behavioral patterns. These kinds of people are the basic reasons for periodic weeding in matters of relationships. We are going to add to the building blocks of our faith by revisiting that well.
I believe it will help us not destroy ourselves if the opportunity presents itself. In simple terms, it will help us not to keep people in our lives that should have no place in it.
There is a destruction that comes when we keep people in our lives that God have not designed to be part of it. Men are better or effectively destroyed by devils through relationships than through anything else sometimes. Those relationships sometimes, are people who should not have been part of our lives in the first place, or people who should be but have decided to become messengers of destruction or death instead of messengers of peace.
There is something to be doing from time to time if you will not allow yourself to be destroyed by wrong relationships. I do it from time to time. It has helped me a lot, that thing is called weeding. My life is full of people who were part of it but are no more. Time came when I had to weed them out.
FROM CHURCH MEMBERS TO CASUAL ACQUAINTANCES, THE LIST IS LONG AND GROWING BY THE YEARS.
If you do not carry out weeding from time to time, in your relationship life, you will never become who or what God has destined you to be.
Understand that there are people who can grow from loving you to hating you, especially those who are in your life for the wrong reasons; the self-centered, or people attracted to you because of your success, money or any other thing that seems beneficial to them; people that would have never been in your life if you were poor, sick, unattractive, or going through one thing or the other.
People who fall victim of such men and women are the compassionate. The compassionate hates seeing someone hurting, hence having such terrible people in their lives basically to keep them from the hurts of life. That is their default character.
Sometimes they do not care what you may have done, they will not weed you out just on compassionate grounds.
Due to this disposition, you find them either recycling people who should not even be in their lives or putting up with them even when they are losing their own peace or progress by doing so.
Come to think of it, where do blackmails and lies proceed from?
Where do gossip and slander proceed from? Where does betrayal and murders proceed from? They all come from people we should have weeded out of our lives when they move from being constructive wheats to destructive weeds in our lives.
You may wonder why Jesus kept Judas despite having prophetic knowledge of what the man was about doing to him? The answer lies in one word, compassion. Though it worked out our redemption at the end, Judas would have been taken care of through proper weeding.
LET ME SHARE WITH YOU A BIT MORE ABOUT WEEDING, MAYBE FROM THE AGRICULTURAL POINT OF VIEW.
Between 1984 and 1993 my family was involved in a lot of farming in the young City of Abuja then. When I say Family, I meant my dad, my mum and siblings. My dad was a police officer and had just been transferred from Calabar, in Cross River state South-south of Nigeria, to Abuja. The government of the day was still trying to convince people to move from Lagos Nigeria to the young Capital city, Abuja, so there was enough land to use in growing crops and dealing with hunger then.
Food was relatively cheap. With very little money you can buy a lot. We grew virtually every Nigerian crop you can think of. The only things we did not grow were, onions, Oil, salt and water. That is hilarious but really true.
During those farming years I learnt a lot of lessons that are helping me now to understand God and His ways. They also helped me to understand what God means whenever He says a thing that seems to relate with farming.
They also helped me to understand the different kinds of weeds that grow around our crops. So, in the days of weeding the farms to allow the crops to grow, we will carefully remove them, and when that happens you see the crops growing beautifully and producing bountifully in their seasons.
It imprinted a message in my heart of what a man or woman of destiny should be doing from time to time.
Truly, the life of a man or woman of destiny is like those crops. Satan has a way of planting weeds around us. Those weeds are the many wrong relationships we bring into our lives either through false marriages, business connections, church membership, need to have friends in your life, meet cues, and other related things.
IF THOSE RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT WEEDED OUT OF OUR LIVES, WE WILL NEVER GROW BEAUTIFULLY OR PRODUCE BOUNTIFULLY.
If Satan plants a leper, a person with discharge or one who is fun of touching the dead around you as a relationship (like we see in scriptures), you will be sorry. The wisdom I gathered from those farming years made me to understand that weeding is part of life. If you do not make seasonal weeding a part of your life as a Child of God, you will never grow to become what God has called you to be.
There is a kind of people you must wake up to weed out of your life from time to time else you will move from being a crop to becoming a weed yourself. It’s your responsibility to discern them by the Holy Spirit. You do not need to listen to gossip, backbiters or concerned people; just discern them by the Holy Spirit and take the proper decision.
Maybe this will help you. I have come to discover that every relationship (spiritual, marital, social, economic, or whatever) does four things to us;
1. They divide us positively or negatively.
2. They subtract from us negatively or positively.
3. They add to us negatively or positively.
4. They multiply between us negatively or positively.
If a relationship has been dividing, subtracting, adding to, or multiplying you negatively, apply the “weeding principle.”
In other words, weed them from your life to save your life (the crops). You can only love your neighbor AS you love yourself not less or more than you love yourself. In simple terms, if you have not loved yourself, you will not be able to love your neighbor.
Do not allow weeds to stay in your life until they kill you and use your death, decay, or bad story to fertilize their growth, success or life progress. I hope the LORD has spoken to us this morning. May every paragraph written become a book of wisdom in your mental shelve in Jesus precious name! AMEN!
LET THIS SCRIPTURAL PARABLE BE YOUR MEDITATION TODAY:
“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.”
“But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.”
“So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
“But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
Matthew 13:24-30 NKJV
