TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 2ND JANUARY 2023)
“Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 2ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS!
Blessed be the name of the LORD for the second day of the year, 2023, according to the Gregorian Calendar. May the LORD remain exalted for ever and ever! Amen!
The race for another circle of life has just started. If you are still in the euphoria of the new year, wake up. The journey has started, wisdom to apply our hearts to is already coming from the Cry of the Holy Spirit to us. This time around He is speaking to us about Visionary Living.
People who succeed in life do not live life the way others do. They are divine by visions. Their conversation is visionary, their network of relationship vision driven, their residency in nations visionary; they do not just move into nations or cities for pleasure. They do not move in driven by emotions. They move driven by visions.
Talking about residency or citizenship, there are people who just live in their nations and cities because that is where they were born. They keep living there, grow and die just based on the fact that they were born there. But that is not too good for success.
Success in life is not a birth right but something you work out. You must be visionary to succeed. You could be living in a place because you were born there, but that will not guarantee your success in life. You must become visionary in your choice of residency. You must ask yourself why you are in that nation or that city, and if the place is adding to you in life or ruing you completely.
You must ask if the place is elevating you or burying you. Visionary residency is very important in life. It is part of visionary living.
Visionary residency is taking residency in a nation, city, town or village, not because you were born there but because you will be made there. In other words, you went there because it has been revealed to you by the word of the LORD that you will be made in that place.
THE LAW OF VISIONARY LIVING HAS THE LAW OF VISIONARY RESIDENCY ATTACHED TO IT.
Visionary residency played a major role in the lives of so many people who became great in Bible days! You find God applying the law in His walk with some of the people He called and made generational colossus.
For instance, God applied the law of visionary residency on Abraham, a generational colossus. How did He do it? He made him to leave where he was born to where was later made a father of many nations. His life tells us that visionary living will involve visionary residency.
Visionary residency is also, you moving away from where you were born to where you will be made. Sometimes it will be you, moving from one nation to another, city to another, town to another, or one neighborhood to another neighborhood. It is you and I moving from where we were born to where we will be made. If there is a vision to live for, there is a place to move into for that vision to be fulfilled. It is not necessarily where we were born. It is where you will be made.
Our devotional text says;
“Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3 NKJV
There was no way Abram would have become Abraham in his place of birth. God had to move him. He had to move from a place of familiar territory to a place of unfamiliar territory.
There are people whose destinies are like that. So long as they remain in their places of birth; neighborhood, villages, town, Cities, nations and sometimes continents, they will never succeed in life.
They must move. They must engage the law of visionary residency.
Now, do not begun to think that every destiny must move from the place of birth to another replace to be fulfilled. That will not be visionary residency that will be the flesh making decisions for you.
Visionary residency is born of the Spirit of God not the flesh. It is not stereo typed.
IT IS NOT SOMETHING YOU SEE OTHERS DO AND THEN JOIN THEM IN DOING.
For instance, Abram had to become a foreigner to fulfill his destiny. But Moses had a different destiny route. His destiny and success were tie to the place of His birth. Even when he ran form it and went to stay in a foreign land for 40 years, he could only become a shepherd. He could not become what God created Him to be – a deliverer.
He ended becoming just a husband and father to a woman who was not ware of his culture. God had to meet him when he 80 and asked him to return to the place of his birth, Egypt, to be made the deliverer he was born to be.
So there are destinies that need to live their place of birth to success and there are people who need to return back home to succeed. Visionary residency is you sensing which part is yours. It is you knowing if your making or becoming significant, successful or fulfilled in life is tied to your place of birth like Moses, or a foreign land like Abraham.
One thing you must avoid is allowing circumstances or the flesh to choose for you were to reside in life. That was what Lot did. His success in life was tied to residing with Abraham, which is another form of visionary living. But he will mismanage his relationship with Abraham, decide to live in a place his flesh told him was the best for him, and then lose out eventually.
The Bible says;
“And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar.
Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east. And they separated from each other.
Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD.” Genesis 13:10-13 NKJV
LOT LIFTED UP HIS EYES TO DECIDE IN THE FLESH WHERE TO LIVE, AND THE SIGNS HE FOLLOWED LOOKED VERY GOOD, BUT TIME PROVED HIM WRONG.
The Bible says he saw a place that looked like the Garden of Eden and went to reside there. His success in that place did not last for long. War would break out, he would become a captive, and everything he had gathered in life would be lost.
Abraham later went to rescue him, but that was not the end of his problems. He finally found himself living in Sodom. When God’s judgment would strike the place, Lot would later find himself where no one lived. God wanted to prevent that by choosing for him to reside, but in his typical nature, he would still opt for a place that seemed good in his sight.
The result was him, loosing his wife, and entire material wealth, and finally getting his two daughters pregnant. What a pathetic story! No one would want to end like Lot in life. His problems were not caused by demons or curses. His problems were caused by his lack of respect for the law of visionary residency.
You could be suffering today for lacking respect for the law of visionary residency.
As we bring this to a close, ask yourself some destiny questions. Where do you live? Is your residency in that place born out of the LORD’s directives or the directives of human circumstances?
If you are in a foreign land, ask yourself, are you there like Abraham was in a foreign land? And if you are living in your neighborhood, village, town, city or nation of birth, are there like Moses was in Egypt?
If you are not living in that place the way Abraham lived in a foreign land, or the way Moses in his place of birth, then you are living like Lot lived. You have not respected the law of visionary residency. You may not end well. That is why God sent this word to wake you up!
VISIONARY LIVING WILL INVOLVE VISIONARY RESIDENCY.
There must be the voice, leading, mission, or work of the LORD at the center of your choice of residency. If none of that is there, then you are not respecting the law of visionary residency; you are not living visionary. That could be why you have not progressed in life.
If you look at Lot, his life started going down, then down and then down, when he broke the law of visionary residency. God’s will for him was for him to reside with Abraham. So long as he was there, he prospered. Instead of him to manage the conflict that ensured between them properly, he chose to change his residency. That was the move that destroyed his fortune.
Changing your residency because of conflict that can be managed through humility, is not always good for you. It may ruin you the way it ruined Lot.
This is a new year! We are on a 31-days journey of faith with the Cry of the Spirit on visionary living. Today is the second day of the journey. God’s word to us today is all about respect for a law of visionary living called the law of visionary residency. Do not forget, where you reside will determine what you become in life.
Now there are others laws of visionary living. When we come back tomorrow, we will pick up from the next.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him; for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar. And he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave.
Now the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us as is the custom of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the [f]lineage of our father.”
So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.
It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, “Indeed I lay with my father last night; let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.”
Then they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father.
The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day. Genesis 19:30-38 NKJV