TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 27TH JANUARY 2024)
“When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back.” Psalms 114:1-3 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 27TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
It has been 27 days of free life from the LORD. Yes, free life because staying alive is not cheap, making being kept alive very costly. But God has kept us alive without charge.
He has kept us alive even when we never deserved it. We owe Him the deep gratitude.
Can you imagine feeding only one family for 27 days? How costly that is in today’s world? But that is very small compare to the cost of keeping that family alive.
That is a photograph of what the LORD has done for us for 27 days. God is worthy of our praise!
He has been keeping us naturally alive through so many visible and invisible things He is doing for us, and spiritually alive by feeding us spiritually through this platform. Day unto day, a word has been coming from His presence to us. To Him belong all the glory.
In our devotional yesterday, God highlighted the life of Achan to us and warned that if His glory will remain with us, we must learn to discern the Achans in our lives and do away with them.
Achan was a person in Bible days, but today a Bible figure that represents anyone whose presence in your life, is putting the presence of God away from you. He also represents that person in your space who is making you sin against the LORD in any way, or become disloyal to Him.
Sometimes, the process of removing Achan is painful and emotionally excruciating.
If he or she is so attached to you, sentiments will come in to make things difficult. If you have benefited or are benefiting in some way from him or her, it will be more difficult.
The closer the person is, the more the price you may need to pay.
But I have come to discover that when it comes to having the presence of the LORD in our lives, every price is worth it. What you will suffer for loosing the presence of God cannot be compared with what you need to go through to keep it.
It’s therefore important that you pass through the process and make sure that whoever is an Achan church, pastor, friend, business partner, spiritual father, spiritual son or daughter, or any benefactor, is peacefully done away with. Just politely do to him or her what Abraham did to Lot.
PEACEFULLY AND STRATEGICALLY SEPARATE FROM THEM, USING THE WISDOM OF GOD IN YOUR HEART.
For some, you have to redefine boundaries of relationship in your quest to separate from the Achan dimension in their lives.
The Achan dimension is a dimension of touching accurse things; living a life that is not pleasing to God. Things like having a broken moral life that can be transmitted into another person is also an Achan dimension.
So many people in Church today, live very sinful lives that can be transmitted to us if we become close to them. They carry Achan dimensions in them.
They can transmit lying, stealing, spiritual indiscipline, loose tongue, sexual immorality, and etc. into us if we get close to them.
It is to protect us from people with the Achan dimension that the Bible says, “do not be yoked together with unbeliever.” It also says, “He that walk with the wise will be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed.”
I submit to you that the will of God concerning us and any one with the Achan dimension in our lives, families, or space, is that we separate from them. We do not need to go and start praying again seeking the LORD for what His will is. The Bible has just told us.
The only thing we are to pray about is for a download of the strategy to use to separate from them, and release of the grace to go through any pain that might result.
The most painful part of the Achan story is that of his wife and entire Children. Perhaps many of them did not even know what their father did.
Maybe they got to know it the day God exposed him. Yet they were not spared. It’s dangerous to have an Achan biological or spiritual father.
The Bible says;
“Then Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had, and they brought them to the Valley of Achor.
And Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.” So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.
Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day.” Joshua 7:24-26 NKJV
DO YOU SEE SOMETHING IN THIS SCRIPTURE? ACHAN’S INNOCENT KIDS DIED FOR WHAT THEY DID NOT KNOW.
How many innocent Church members are suffering for what their pastors are doing secretly which they are not even aware of? How many men and women are suffering for what their wives or husbands are secretly doing which they are not aware of?
Let me share a secret with you.
If you are in covenant relationship with anyone, you will go through sufferings for any wrong thing that person might be doing, especially if you are not involved in wickedness yourself. That is why you must separate from Achan if you are living right before GOD.
The worst person you can have in your life is an Achan for anything.
People with Achan dimensions bring corporate destruction for things they do privately.
It was from the Achan story I learnt that Secret sins are personal but not private. One man will secretly disobey God but everyone who is under his influence will openly pay for it. That is why the Achan phenomenon is dangerous.
If a pastor is an Achan, every one of his members will pay for it, especially those in covenant relationship with him. If a member is an Achan, a pastor will also pay for it. Either of them can go from crisis to crisis because of the other.
If you are a pastor or church member who want to fulfil your divine destiny, you must come out of Achan churches, break free from Achan spiritual fathers, Church members, spiritual mothers and etc.
Achan church members will definitely take any pastor to the valley of Achor.
In the same way, Achan spiritual leaders will take any Church member to the valley of Achor. No pastor or Church member in the valley Achor can fulfill their divine destiny.
YES, NO PASTOR CAN EXECUTE GOD’S PLANS OR FULFILL HIS MINISTRY WITH AN ACHAN CHURCH MEMBER IN HIS SPACE.
No member can do the same under any Achan spiritual leader. We must all come out of every strange people and places in our lives, else we will disappoint our divine destinies.
Our devotional text says,
“When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back.”
In other words, when Israel came out of Egypt, there was a multiplication of God’s presence in their lives. It just increased so much a way that the sea could not stand them. It saw them and fled, parting a way for them to pass through.
That is the message here.
Meaning, if you want to become God’s sanctuary and dominion, where His presence will be breaking forth in your life, you must separate yourself from strange people and places. You must not remain with them, saying, “the LORD understands.”
Actually, many believers are dying, not for the presence of diseases, demons or destruction, but for the lack of God’s presence in their lives.
If you realize how much you need God’s manifest presence, you will pay the price to have it in your life than to have food in your stomach, money in your accounts, clothes on your body, shelter over your head, or visa to any nation under Heaven. You will never trade it for anything; you will rather trade everything for it.
It is important to understand that, our enemies are only as powerful as the absence of God’s manifest presence in our lives.
In other words, the absence of God’s glory in your life is the reason your enemies are more powerful than you.
If you get away from what or who is keeping the glory of God from kindling every detail of your life, or what might be quenching His manifest presence in your life, you will become God’s sanctuary and dominion.
Then it shall come to pass that you will begin to look for your enemies and not see them again because they will see it and flee from you.
That is the word of the LORD to us this morning. It’s a new day for you in Jesus precious name. AMEN
Walk in the light of this word, and the year will be the best year of your life, because you will find every detail of your life kindled with God’s glory, bringing about the manifestation of His goodness as never before.
Do not forget, God’s glory is the storehouse of His goodness.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR TODAY;
“Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters” Psalms 114:7-8 NKJV