TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURDAY 2ND NOVEMBER 2023)
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:21-24 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 306TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF SIGNS AND WONDERS.
This is the day the LORD has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it. He has been our help, our rock, and our everything. We are alive because He cares. Our hearts are full of gratitude for all He has done in our lives this year alone. It is the second day of the 11th month of the year, and we are expectant. Our expectations are rooted in what the LORD has said He will do.
If there is a promise of God in your life, that is where to root your expectations for the month on. If there is a prophetic understanding from the LORD, that is where to root your expectations on. If there is an instruction from the LORD to obey, root your expectation in the blessing that will come on you after your obedience.
The Bible says the expectations of the righteous shall not be cut off. The reason is because of the source of that expectation, which is usually God’s will and ways revealed in His word of promise to the righteous. If a man roots his expectation on any other thing, it will fail. The LORD brought us into this month in peace and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. Let us root our expectation in His care for us. Let us believe that because He lives, we shall see the end of the year in peace.
A government may give you precious promises and all that, but I want to submit to us that, the only person whose government truly cares about us, is not in the United Nations, the presidential villa, or state house of any nation. The only person whose government truly and deeply cares about us lives in our hearts; the LORD Jesus Christ. The Bible says He is the governor among the nations. It is His government among the nations that cares about us, not the government of any nation we may be living in.
THE BIBLE ALSO SAID HIS GOVERNMENT SHALL BE UPON HIS SHOULDERS.
If you are born again and Holy Spirit filled, you are part of His shoulders. His government is resting upon you. That is why your prayers will be necessary. It is through prayers we direct His government on our lives on what to do, especially if we pray according to His will.
If His government is resting upon you, your faith also will be required to keep it working in your life. It is through our faith that we sense and see the activities of this Heavenly government work for us. Our faith in His government is a necessity because the just shall live by faith.
We should therefore not fix our faith on any human government, if we truly want to survive. If His government rules our lives, it does not matter the policy of any human government we may have in our nations, our lives will still be blessed. One major reason for that is this, His government knows how to take care of us in any situation the nations of our residence might be.
He took care of Elijah from unexpected sources for months, and then Elijah and the widow for over three years, and the nation of Israel for 40 years. The same government is still here on earth, ruling and over ruling from the Spirit realm. Our circumstances and life needs are too small for Him to take care of. His government can make sure that nothing that comes from the human government we may have in our nations destroy us.
The only thing we should do is to spend our days doing His blessed will. People who spend their days doing His blessed will, enjoy supply from His government. Yes, those who spend their days walking along His paths, will not beg or be harmed. The government of the governor among the nations will take care of their security and welfare. The LORD who heads the government, will be Jehovah Jireh to them; protector and provider of all their needs. The Bible says;
“ For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk along his paths.” Psalm 84:11 TLB
No matter what is happening in the economy of the nation you live in, please have faith in God. Build your hope in the government of the LORD Jesus Christ, who lives in your heart to direct and govern your life; whose will you are doing, and whose paths you are following.
ONE OF THE PATHS HE STARTED REFRESHING OUR MINDS TO FOLLOW FROM YESTERDAY, IS THE PATH OF VISIONARY LIVING.
He made it clear that visionary living should replace all forms of emotional living in our lives. We will never enjoy what we need from the government of Jesus Christ, if our emotions are what is guiding us in life.
Emotional living will take us away from the supply and security systems of the government of Christ, and plunge us into an earthly system that will never help us. Everyone who enjoyed the best of the government of Christ led a visionary life. One of such persons was Paul the apostle.
He said to the head of the human government of his day during one of His trials;
“Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, Acts 26:19 NKJV
We are designed by our salvation, to spend our days in obedience to Heavenly visions in our hearts, not carnal emotions. Once you meet the LORD, He alters your design and you are expected to live those alterations as they are. For example, Saul the religious terrorist met the LORD, but by divine alteration he became Paul the apostle. He started living his life contrary to the religious emotions he had and became visionary; Heavenly visionary.
If we spend our days living in total obedience to whatever the flesh says to us, we are in trouble. We will be cut off from the supply and security system of the Heavenly government of Christ on earth. That is when hardship and terrible demonic attacks will become possible in our lives. We began the line of truth on visionary living yesterday and stopped somewhere. Let me conclude this piece, by picking up from where we stopped yesterday.
THE BLESSING OF VISIONARY LIVING (02)
Continued from yesterday….
First, let’s start with the definition of emotional living. Emotional living, in Bible sense, is living your life according to strong feelings derived from either the carnal nature or sin that lives in you, or the negative circumstances around, or moods, or your relationship with others and what they do to you. It is a comprehensive definition that you might need to go over it one more time.
Emotional living, is basically living your life according to how you feel, not according to how you should. For instance, when you follow your carnal desires to get married, sleep with someone, start a career, or walk away from something, you are living your life based on how you feel not how you should.
You should be spiritually minded not carnally minded. You should not get married based on carnal feelings, sleep with someone you are not married to, or start a career sentimentally, or just walk away from something because of one moment of disappointment. That will be emotional living, and it ruins!
For instance, how many weddings have we attended that gave birth to marriages that no longer exist today? Many! If you check the root of most divorces or sick marriages, you will find out that the love birds got together simply because of what they felt for each other, it wasn’t based on what they saw in their future; it was not based on vision. It was based on feelings. Hence, becoming antagonistic towards each other as soon as the feelings disappeared.
For me, counselling sessions have proved that most marriages these days are not products of visionary living but feelings. You see that sometimes on the part of one partner, and other times on the part of both. They married because of what they felt for each other. That is why the marriages dies as soon as the feelings change. If what you feel for someone is what joined you to him or her, the relationship will crash the day the feelings change. It is what you see in your future with someone that should determine if you will be joined to the person in marriage or not.
VISIONARY LIVING SHOULD DETERMINE YOUR MARITAL DECISION NOT FEELINGS.
I submit to you that people no longer marry these days, they just get joined together based on feelings. You do not call what feelings joined together a good marriage. It’s just a house that is bound to collapse under the winds of a change in feelings. No aspect of life was designed by GOD to be run on feelings. All aspects of our lives were designed to be run by Heavenly visions. That is why humans try to manage the scourge of living by feelings with what they call emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is basically how not to allow your feelings to ruin your life. It is living according to reason from the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, instead of the influence of feelings. God wants us to lead lives that are focused on heavenly visions not driven by inward feelings. A major portion of our devotional text says;
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23 NKJV
This scripture is about focus. Understand that when we focus ourselves and energies on God given visions, our lives will be full of light, peace and prosperity from God. But when we focus ourselves on what or how we feel in our carnal nature, our lives will be filled with darkness. We will find ourselves doing very bad things.
Do not forget that the first murder case in the Bible was committed by someone who focused on how he felt towards His brother. God tried talking him out of it, but he would not listen. His name was Cain. The young man would later find Abel his brother, and kill him, satisfying how he felt towards him. God’s judgment was later decreed on him and his punishment was indeed more than he could bear.
When we follow how we feel, we will get ourselves punished by life. But when we follow what we see, God’s Heavenly vision for our lives, we will be going from strength to strength, and turning every valley of weeping (Baca) into pools of blessings.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You. Selah
Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring; The rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; Each one appears before God in Zion.” Psalm 84:4-7