TODAY’S DEVOTION (Sunday 19th July 2020)
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”
“And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.” Acts 4:13-14 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 199th DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
It is another glorious week. I trust God that you are doing great this morning. This week shall be for you a week of results and answers. I bless you today in the name that is above every other name – the name Jesus.
For us at the Cry of the Spirit Ministries we have decided to make it a week of seeking God for fresh encounters. The Bible says if we seek with the whole of our hearts, we will find Him and that is what we intend doing. I ask that you join us in spirit and in truth so that we all will experience this God in a fresh way.
Our devotional text today is full of truths. Being uneducated and untrained in matters of the law, was the only minus the council of elders in Jerusalem saw in Peter and James, that fateful day. Obviously the picked on them with such derogatory remarks because the success of these men was threatening them.
People will always see what to pick on you when you begin to succeed more than them in any field of life. But these religious minds forgot that God does not choose the qualified. GOD qualifies the chosen. If you are full of yourself, there would be no room for God to fill and use you in the school of human instrumentality.
I was not qualified for ministry. I was born a stutterer and scarcely educated. But God qualified me and today none of that exist in my life. His qualification educated me while running with the vision and His Spirit took away my stuttering problem.
His grace has given me much more and made me who I am today. God indeed does not choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen.
You do not need to be qualified for anything God want to do with your life. A yes, is all He looks for. Once you become sold out, everything that look zero in you, will be turned into hero. His grace will so help you that people will begin to see so much in you that was not even there when you first started out with GOD.
AS ALWAYS, GOD HAS A WORD FOR US TODAY.
Have you ever received a prophecy directly from the Spirit of God to your spirit or through a true man or woman of God that never came to pass? I have! I guess many others have also.
Anyone who says failed prophecies do not trouble them is a liar; especially when they speak concerning our deliverance from some yokes, blessings, or some major things God want to use us to do. We are all troubled when genuine prophecies concerning us fail!
Mark the word “genuine” because I am not referring to false prophecies or what we just pick from realms that look God but are not God and claim, “God has said.” Neither am I referring to the things some prophets and pastors prophesy upon us because they want to sound anointed or express what our fat offerings have done to their carnal hearts.
You know, when you give some good money to money-controlled prophets and preachers it could stir out a prophecy. I am not referring to such prophecies. I am referring to genuine word of promise from the LORD that came to you either directly or indirectly.
God wants every word of deliverance, blessings, lifting or visitation He sends directly or indirectly to us fulfilled. If He never wanted His words to be fulfilled, He will not send them.
God is not talkative. He says what He means and means what He says. That was why when Zachariah doubted the word He sent to him through the angel Gabriel in Luke Chapter 1, his mouth had to be shut to prevent further things He may say from hindering the word of the LORD. We can say or do things that can hinder the word from coming to pass in our lives.
In fact, God has a way of dealing with any obstacles that can hinder his word from coming to pass in our lives. And if we become the obstacles, He will deal with us as well.
SOME OF THOSE OBSTACLES ARE DOUBT AND LACK OF CONFIDENCE IN WHAT HE HAS SAID.
That was why He shut the mouth of this priest to prevent further confessions of doubts from coming out of his mouth. There is confession of faith and there is confession of doubt. The confession you make as soon as a word proceed from God to you matters a lot in the spirit realm.
In second Kings Chapter 7, a special adviser to the King of Israel on economic matters made a confession of doubt after a word from the LORD was spoken. And Elisha said to him, “In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”
The wrong time to make a confession of doubt is when a word has proceeded from the LORD to you, and the wrong place to do it is before a genuine vessel God used in transmitting that word to you.
When God speak, He speaks from opened portals of Heaven. From His realm, it is already accomplished. It is those portals that release the power to perform in our realm what He says. They make it possible for the word to come to pass by filling the word with an inherent performing power. That is why Isaiah wrote says,
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, But water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10-11 NKJV
The word of the LORD does not return to Him void; in other words, it does not lack the power to perform itself in the lives of people. Any confession you make therefore, at that place and time that that word is coming to you is being made under an opened portal.
A CONFESSION OF DOUBT WILL SHUT THE PORTAL OVER YOUR PRIVATE LIFE AND PREVENT THE WORD FROM COMING TO PASS.
Sometimes confessions of doubt are not made verbally. They are made in the thought realm. Some paradigms that prevent a genuine word from God from coming to pass will just react within us at the time of hearing that word. That was what happened to Zachariah and the economic adviser to the King of Israel. It is just that they voiced it out.
But there are those who do not voice their thoughts out. The results are always the same. The point is, either you voice them out or not, they carry the same sentence from God.
God hears unspoken words louder than spoken words because He is more interested in what goes on within us than what goes on without. In one of our devotional quotes some time ago, I said, “WHAT GOES ON IN OUR HEARTS SOUND LOUDER IN HEAVEN THAN WHAT GOES ON IN OUR MOUTHS.”
But a major highlight in our devotional text this morning has something interesting that is worthy of consideration. It says,
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”
Before Jesus left, He had told these men that signs and wonders shall follow them. That in His name they will heal the sick, raise the dead, cleans the lepers, and bring timely interventions to many. That was a prophecy.
But it never came to pass in a large scale until they spent time with the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Spending time with Jesus turned these men who were un-educated and untrained in matters of religion into super men; it turned them into miracle workers as the LORD had said. That gives us one major key to use in partnering with the LORD to bring His promises to pass in our lives.
THAT KEY IS BEING WITH JESUS! HALLELUJAH!
In other words, being a man or women who spends his or her days on the prayer knee. The prayer knee is the most powerful knee on earth. It is a major key to use in seeing what God may have spoken directly or indirectly to you come to pass in your life!
Every authentic prophecy is a call to the prayer room.
If you do not treat prophecy as a call to the prayer room, a lot of things God says to you will never come to pass. That is why we all need to wake up from slumber as soon as a word come from the LORD to us. If we do not wake up and realize that when God speaks a word of prophecy to us, He is sending us to the prayer room to wait on Him until His word come to pass, our lives will be filled of unfulfilled promises.
That is why only those who wait upon the LORD see His word come to pass in their lives. Waiting upon the LORD is not being in a state of inactivity as it sounds but being on the prayer knee until the word of the LORD come to pass in your life.
The only person to be with after God may have spoken to you is Jesus not the genuine pastor or true prophet Heaven may have used to say that word. Sadly, most of us run after the vessels to be with them instead of Jesus, consequently defeating the word of the LORD in our lives. You do not need to run after anyone and sow a seed into their lives, you only need to run after God and countless hours in His presence seeking Him on your knees.
You may start drinking from the fountain of the vessel God may have used to speak to you, if he or she has a Church so that you may touch the portal of glory over His Church ministry and stay connected to it (to bring the word to pass), but the only one you truly need to run after and be with until the word comes to pass is Jesus Himself.
Believers whose hearts are established on God’s redemptive plans for mankind, know that many prophecies about major moves of God on earth are yet to be fulfilled.
THE REASON IS THERE ARE NO PEOPLE TO LOCK THEMSELVES UP IN PRAYER UNTIL THEY COME TO PASS.
I once read a book that said before men and women like Katherine Khulman, Charles Finney, Maria Woodworth Etta and the likes sprang up, people locked themselves up in chain prayers and prayed some scriptural prophecies into performance for a hundred years.
Meaning they prayed until they died handing over the prayer mantle to the next generation, who also prayed and died and handed over to the next generation. And it went on and on until God’s word came to pass. It was on the 100th year that God’s angel in Heaven took their prayers that threw to the earth for answers. That was the year the prayer vessel got filled in the Spirit.
Now, permit me to add that the kind of prayers you pray to move prophecies from the realm of promise to the realm of performance is not the one you pray with prayer books. No one need to give you any prayer point. The burden remains the prayer point.
Deep must call unto deep.
The burden of seeing that word come to pass must remain the reason behind the prayers – until the word of the LORD comes to pass you do not get up from your prayer knees. It is prophetic burdens that keeps us long and strong enough on our prayer knees. If they do not exist, you will be looking for prayer points online and end up practicing charismatic witchcraft offline.
I believe the message of today’s devotional has been passed. Be the doer of this word and not just a reader and your life will not remain the same.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.
And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.
“Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
“Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
“The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
“The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. 10 Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you.
And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.
The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. Deuteronomy 28:1-13 NKJV