TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 13TH AUGUST 2023)
“But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.
If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? Matthew 12:25-26 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 225TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
God’s glory is real and He does not share it with another. But it is His grace that prepares us for it.
He loves working on us by His grace and placing us on the wings of His glory after that, so that we can ride on it to His appointed destinations for our lives, both in time and eternity. While lifting us up in time, and making our lives beautiful, we are not to swallow the glory. If we swallow it, we will begin to diminish and die. Hmmm, I guess many do not know that!
God’s glory is not to be swallowed but given back to God!
He will use His grace to make us true worshipers, so that we can offer Him the worship He can inhale. When we offer God a worship He can inhale, He will inhale it and then expel His glory upon us. When He expels His glory upon us, it will kindle our lives and make them glorious, bringing about the fulfilment of the glorious things spoken concerning us before the foundation of the world.
Now, when that happens, you are NOT to own the glory and ascribe things to your skill, education, or dedication, expertise or anything of that nature. You are to return the glory back to Him. When you ascribe it to your abilities and capabilities, you have swallowed it.
Sadly, some of us do not just swallow it, many of us eat it! My prayer this morning is that God will not allow me to be His glory eater. There are no words to describe what my life will become if I eat His glory. It is very safe to ride on His glory but very dangerous to eat it.
No one eats God’s glory and lives happily thereafter! The reason is simple. When it comes to His love, mercy, grace, blessings, and all we need from Him, God will share. But when it comes to His glory, the Bible says God will not share it with another. Neither will He give it to graven images.
No generation that has eaten God’s glory has ever lived to tell the story. From ancient past, to present times; no one has ever had a good life after eating God’s glory. That is why God will not expel His glory upon us, until His grace has worked on us in such a way that we will not eat His glory when He does.
If you have the spirit that eats God’s glory, He will NOT protect you from the terrible consequences of eating His glory.
YOU WILL BE EXPELLED FROM IT.
There is need for wisdom to manage the glory. That is why we will be looking at having or operating in the wisdom of God this morning. A lot will be taught about the Grace and glory of God in our service today.
Our generation is in an Ichabod state because we have too many with the propensity to eat God’s glory. God’s wisdom is desperately needed to save us from the scourge of eating His glory!
The first wisdom that will help us manage the glory, comes by understanding where the physical springs from and its related truths. That is what we will be looking at this morning.
Foundationally, all problems of the human race began from the spirit realm. When we understand that we will never ascribe God’s glory to ourselves whenever He moves to save us from humanly impossible situations. We can pray, but until God answers, we will never have the result of our prayers. So, we should not even glory in the answers to our prayers when we see results. We should just give the glory to God, because the spirit realm is a complicated realm.
Understand that, Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden was not a physical fall, but a spiritual fall. He fell in the Spirit’s realm; that resulted in all the problems we have in the human race today. The spiritual is the birthplace of the natural, so even our human efforts will never be able to help us except God do something about it. All that deletes any reason to give glory to ourselves.
Maybe, we need to share more about this so that you understand why you should not touch God’s glory when your effort seems to be what is changing your life.
You see, every natural occurrence is a child of a spiritual occurrence. For instance, if a man has not been killed in the realm of the spiritual, no matter what happens to him in the natural realm, death will not occur. If a man has not been made sick in the spiritual, when He becomes sick in the natural, proper medical care will take care of him. The list is endless.
This could be too subjective to you, but I have heard of people who were involved in ghastly motor accidents that medics certified dead, and took to the mortuary, only to meet them alive a day or much later. Death could not take them because they were not given over to it in the spiritual realm.
WHAT YOU HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN OVER TO IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM CAN NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU IN THE NATURAL REALM.
However, the one who determines if you will be given over is God, especially if you are His child. Job was given over to a test and trial by GOD, but not death and poverty. That was why what happened to him could not kill him. Left with the devil, he should die, but job was not given to death, so he did not die.
He lost his posterity and prosperity and everyone thought he will soon be buried, but the Bible says that never happened. God blessed his later days with much more than he ever had. What you have not been given over to, in the spiritual realm, will never happen to you in the natural. That is a major wisdom key that will help us manage the glory.
That is why, if things are not okay with you, just fix your face, faith, and all your being on God, He holds the final say.
What He has not given you over to, will never happen to you. Do not fear no matter the threats or whatever. If you have not been given to anything in the spiritual realm, it will never happen to you in the natural realm, no matter what may be going on in your life, be it disease, lack, threats, despair, etc.
So, sleeping and waking up alone, is enough to give God the glory. You woke up because He did not allow spirits who want you dead to take your life in that realm.
God is Spirit; He overrules what the devil would have done in our lives, hence no plans, prophecy, or programs of the devil can happen in our lives. That is why He alone should take the glory, for our wellbeing and life progress. His word alone is what we should trust and believe in, nothing else.
He deserves the glory because He takes care of problems in the very realm where they happen, so that they would not happen in our lives. He deploys His angels to take down controlling spirits, destabilize organized structures of Satan, and build a wall around us, so that the forces of darkness will have none of us.
WE CANNOT DO THAT, NONE OF OUR EFFORTS CAN. SO, LETS GIVE HIM THE GLORY!
Friend, I want you to understand that with the way the kingdom of Satan is organized, there would have been none of us alive today, if GOD and His angelic host, had not being parading the spirit realm on our behalf, and making sure no evil come near us, despite our sins and lawlessness.
That was what He did to Jacob, making it impossible for any evil intention of Laban to work in His life. When Jacob would leave Laban’s house, the same security was extended. One day God let Him meet the angels that had been parading the spirit realm around him to make sure no evil befalls him.
The Bible says;
“So Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is God’s camp.” And he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” Genesis 32:1-2 NKJV
This scripture tells us what happens in our lives in the realm of the spirit. It tells us how God’s host encamp around us and parades the spirit realm whose natural realm we may be residing in. God and His camp parades to make sure no devil or demon come near us and our families; those in Christ or in faith with us. A major highlight of our devotional text says,
“If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?”
Friend, Satan is very careful not to cast out Satan. He is careful, that’s why it does not happen. Even when his demon of deliverance is at work, he will only remove a visible demon, or a demon whose works is already known, to bring into someone’s life a stealth demon, or one whose works cannot be easily known.
But with God’s camp all around us, the organized kingdom of darkness cannot harm or neutralize us. The strategy of their organization is null and void.
If they like, they should strategize anything against God’s people or organize even our fall, God’s encamping angels that parades the spirit realm of the places or nations we live in, will meet them right where they are, and take them out. The angels of the LORD will destroy anything before it shoots itself into the natural realm where we live.
The explanations above tell us how God fights battles on our behalf without even informing us. It tells us how God disorganizes the enemy of our souls and keeps him off our lives.
The Bible says He makes sure that none of his counsel or council against us stands. If there is any reason, therefore, why we must give God the glory, it is in how He fights our battles, and does amazing things that we know nothing about.
If you do not believe that what I have just said is true, why did you sleep and wake up? Why are you alive? It is because he made it happen. Therefore, give Him the glory!
LET THIS SCRIPTURAL PASSAGE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR TODAY;
“I am the Lord, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images.
Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.” Isaiah 42:8-9 NKJV