TODAY’S DEVOTION (TUESDAY 23RD JANUARY 2024)
“Who are these who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their roosts?
“Surely the coastlands shall wait for Me; and the ships of Tarshish will come first, to bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord your God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because He has glorified you.” Isaiah 60:8-9 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 23RD DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Day unto day the LORD has been giving us wisdom. He has been speaking to our hearts, and we have been seeing His light.
Indeed, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceed from the mouth of the LORD. Here we are again with a gift of another day, and a word to live by today.
Indeed, we are born for such a time as this. What a great day to be alive and well. Irrespective of what might be happening, I submit to you that our generation is one of the most blessed generations that God created.
I remember a generation that was born when God wanted to show to the world that we are trapped in spiritual slavery. That generation was the generation of the sons of Jacob who spent hundreds of years in Egyptian slavery.
Like I shared some time ago, come to think of it, Children were born in slavery, raised in slavery, and died in slavery during those horrific days.
They were born into a slavery system and grew up seeing it as a way of life. If perhaps they had any chance to be educated, courses on becoming a successful slave would have been the discipline they pursued; graduating with maybe first-class degrees on slavery.
In simple terms, it was a norm to be a slave in their generation. They were born for such a time as that.
However, seasons changed, and in the fullness of time God raised a man in the person of Moses, who was also born for such a time as that. And because of the times he was born, he was not a slave, but a deliverer. Hallelujah!!
WHO YOU ARE TO BE IN GOD, HAS A WAY OF REFLECTING IN THE SEASON YOU WERE BORN IN, AND THE TIMES YOU LIVE IN.
Moses was born in a season for the deliverance of the Israelites, so his identity reflected in the events of his life, and the events of the season. That was why He was able to stand before God, and enforce the freedom of His people from Egyptian slavery.
Today we can glean some truths from their experience and know that everything was part of God’s big redemptive plan for mankind.
In a prophetic sense, that generation was God’s missionary team to Egypt, born to slave and die, so that the world will be made to know that, mankind is a slave to sin and Satan, and needs a savior in the person of Jesus Christ, to be liberated and set free forever.
Moses demonstrated this prophetic truth, when in the last days of his life on earth, he said to the Israelites, “a Prophet like unto me will be raised.”
He called Jesus a prophet because that was the unveiling He had. It is our generation that know Him as more than a prophet, because the Holy Spirit have been given.
Every generation of God’s people will have its own divine destiny to fulfil.
It will have its own part to play in God’s big redemptive plans for mankind. A generation that cannot sense its part and submit to it will end up becoming a wasted generation in God’s view.
You are part of the present generation, you are to not just exist, but live. There is something for our generation of believers that you are to become part of. If you do not become part of it, you will be living as a wasted generation.
Find a preacher who knows what God has designed for our generation and sit under him or her, with a loyal heart.
However, as you do that, you must be careful of spiritual fakes and noise makers, because there are some who appear to know what God is doing for the now, but are just making noise and calling attention to what is not an authentic emphasis of the Spirit for the now.
We are a generation of destiny; there is an end time plan of GOD for you and I. Every day of our lives on earth, ought to be a day of fulfilling that plan or preparation to fulfil the plan.
So, as you go through your private walk and talk with God this year, and maybe the years to come, SEEK Jesus Christ daily the way our Bible fathers did; ask Him to talk to you about your role and place this end time. Often times than not, He is going to use your pastor to do so, especially if he or she is connected to the present truth.
STOP BOTHERING HIM ON MARRIAGE OR MONEY MATTERS.
Those are things that will come to you when you are properly positioned in your place, in His end time plans. The Bible says all that will be added when we seek the Kingdom and its righteousness.
I found out that Jesus never spoke to the disciples about money and marriage matters when He was physically on earth. He spent each time with them doing just one thing; that thing was preparation to become part of God’s move. That is what the LORD is doing in our generation because of His imminent return.
Understand that just as He spent His time in Bible days, speaking to His disciples about their role in His then redemptive plans for mankind, He is spending time in our days, speaking to His present-day disciples about their role in His redemptive plans for the end time.
He is not making our earthly needs the center of the conversation. But only those who are intimate are experiencing this. Not people in the outer court.
Sadly, like we shared yesterday, many do not have a private relationship with Jesus Christ, hence not experiencing this.
However, the fact that you are not experiencing it, does not mean it is not happening. This is a call to come to the place of personal and intimate relationship with the LORD!!
I reiterate again, that in the days of the Bible, the earthly needs of the disciples where never the subject of any of Christ’s teaching, preaching or meeting with them. Their role in His then redemptive plan was the subject. The Spirit of the true Jesus will do the same thing to us today.
If you find any Holy Spirit making your earthly needs the ultimate concern of your relationship with God, it is either you are a baby in Christ or you are under a dark spirit.
DARK SPIRITS WILL CONCENTRATE ON YOUR NEEDS TO MAKE YOU LOYAL TO THE WRONG SPIRITUAL COURSE.
They will make your worries and satisfaction of your carnal desires your chief pursuit in life. They will convince you that all your problems can be solved and that they have come to help you solve them. They do all that, using need and money conscious preachers, churches, and ministries, especially those who pretend a lot.
That is how they take people away from becoming part of what the LORD is truly doing today, to what looks like what the LORD is doing.
I submit to you that Satan is scared of you being at the center of God’s plans for your life. He is scared of you coming into your place in God’s end time army, hence making you need conscious instead of destiny conscious.
He knows that, members of God’s end time army, do not get themselves entangled with the affairs of this life, because it neutralizes their power, hence making sure you are entangled.
Yes, he will even use preachers, to make sure you are entangled with the affairs of this life. He will use them to promote a need conscious Christianity and make your heart vulnerable to deception, because people who are need conscious can easily be deceived and derailed.
Once you become need conscious, you begin to run after money and all it can buy, and either forget the paths the LORD wants you to pursue or spend your days mixing it up.
I have come across so many in this ugly situation. I have seen people who would have being great soldiers of the cross, mixing the paths God wants them to travel on with other things, thereby becoming unfit for battle.
Do not forget that once you become need conscious, you are already in an anti-destiny path. You are within the reach of the wicked one. He can pierce your life with many sorrows. You must be aware of that.
There are people on some paths of what people see as success, that he has successfully made to bow to dark systems that are giving them their heart desires, but sending leanness to their souls.
IF YOU LOOK AT THE BATTLE FIELDS OF LIFE, YOU WILL SEE SO MANY CASUALTIES OF THIS WAR.
There are those he is making to travel from place to place, and to every country on earth to put them in paths that have made them less effective in God’s end time army.
It is a very subtle move that is succeeding greatly because of the carnality of our hearts and the deceitfulness of riches. Yes, it is a very seductive and need meeting plan that only destiny consciousness will save a man from.
Child of God, do not forget that Destiny matters are originally designed by God to function as the compass of a man’s life. God designed them to be to us what the Compass is to a ship. He designed that they function as the control tower of our Christian life.
Therefore, if you are leading your life without a constant touch with matters of your destiny, or the revelation of your path in God’s end time plans, you will be doomed like any ship with no compass, or aircraft with no constant touch with its control tower.
A major highlight in our devotional text today is unique and revealing at the same time. It sounded like a question an observer asked in amazement. It says; “who are these who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their roosts?”
In my opinion, there seems to be an insinuation here that perhaps, God has aircrafts in the Spirit.
You see, everything good that man created to make life easy for us, carries a resemblance of what GOD already own in the Spirit realm. From the discovery or invention of electricity, which carries the resemblance of the power of the Holy Spirit, to whatever good you can think of.
Maybe birds were created as part of the revelation that God rides on a powerful aircraft sometimes. David seems to have seen it in one of his devotional times and wrote down something like that in Psalm 18.
If that is true, then God’s aircraft will not be a non-living thing. It will be a living thing – something that is powered by God’s supernatural life instead of man-made engines.
Any way, please don’t mind me and my Bible induced imaginations about God! That is how I think sometimes!! Let’s go to the subject of our devotional word for the day.
We were designed to function as ships guided by the compass of the information of our divine destiny, or the control tower of the revelation of the roles God want us to play in His end time plans. Our lives will be dark, dirty, and damned, if we allow any other thing to guide us. That is the message.
We can go on and on, but God has spoken to someone this morning. I encourage you to run with the word.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!!
..”Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, It will not tarry. Habakkuk 2:2-3 NKJV