TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 8TH FEBRUARY 2024)
“The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
“Who knows the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is your wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalms 90:10-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 39TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
We thank the God of Heaven and earth for His marvelous kindness towards us. Day unto day we see His faithfulness. Our lives are full of the testimonies of how merciful, forgiving, and faithful our God can be.
Often, in reflecting on His faithfulness, I have sat down, like David did some times as reflected in the Psalms, to asked myself how I will look or be at 80 if the LORD allows me to get there.
It has become part of me to meditate about the future and what it holds for me and those committed to me by the LORD, while reflecting on God’s faithfulness. During those moments, it usually dawns on me that the future is not in our hands. The future is in God’s hands.
In fact, God is our future. If we live in Him and walk with Him, we are living and walking into our future already. Hallelujah!
Our devotional today is another talk on divine destiny.
Let me begin with a word on ministry – I mean gospel ministry – the ministry of seeking and saving that which was lost through the preaching of the gospel.
You see, ministry is simply service to the Most High God. True preaching itself flows from the fountain of a preacher’s walk and talk with God; it flows from a lifestyle from God.
We have been looking at the ingredients our divine destiny will need to be fulfilled. We have shared a number of things, and there is more!
I have come to discover that one major ingredient our divine destiny will need to be unleashed is the stories and secrets of those who may have travelled the paths God wants us to take in life as part of our destiny.
I remember being privileged to have a sit down with my spiritual father years ago. I asked him a number of questions. One was on how he had carried himself under the grace that God has given him up to that time.
I WAS SEARCHING FOR SECRETS THAT WILL HELP ME BECAUSE THE SECRETS OF MEN ARE IN THEIR STORIES.
The stories I heard and the secrets in them became the catalysts God used in pushing me into my own destiny, at the time. I did that after a desire to have the God he had, experience the moves of the Spirit he had experienced and seen in his ministry was birth in me.
Perhaps if he had not shared those things with me, I would not have been where I am today in spirit and in truth. Someone once said the easiest way to know how far or near your journey in life will be is to ask anyone coming from similar destination.
A man of God once said, he read about 39 autobiographies of men who were here before him, before stepping into ministry. If you look at him today, one can say, that really helped him. The secrets and stories of both successful and the not successful men and women in ministry, will always be of help to anyone God has called into ministry.
Now, I do not mean the dark secrets and gossips, I meant the secrets of success they applied and the stories that surrounds it. A major highlight in our devotional text today says; “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
This scripture is very significant to us all, especially these end times. It has been used as a birthday text, but it holds more revelation than that, especially if you allow others scriptures to explain it to you.
Our days are full of stories that if shared with a younger generation could be of help in their quest to fulfil God’s will for their lives. So, if we number them accurately, we can come out with records and details of events that characterize them for the benefit of others.
I love sharing the story of my birth because of how it has inspired people to make destiny matters the centre of their lives. The best time I share the story is usually on my birthdays. But today I just felt someone should be told something.
Maybe he or she will find some secrets that will make his or her walk and talk with God more fruitful.
OVER 47 YEARS AGO, MY MUM JUST CAME BACK FROM THE FARM.
Heavily pregnant with me, she had gone to live with her auntie when she saw that are DD was approaching. By DD I mean Delivery Date. She said that morning she woke up with uncommon strength and went to the farm to fetch some fire woods.
On her return from the farm, she dropped the firewood where fire woods are kept and within a short while she felt like going to the local toilet. For the purpose of hygiene our local toilets are built very far away from home, so it was like a journey for her.
Finally, she got there, but on attempting to climb over, labour pains started.
She shared with me that she had to retreat away from the toilet, and before she knew it, she was on the ground surrounded by bushes and a thick forest. Though where she sat was a path that leads to farms and hunting places, there was no one to help her.
However, she started pushing, because everything was biological ready for me to come out. Finally, I came out.
Now, because she was in the bushes, I fell on the bushes that she positioned herself for delivery when I came out. Soaked with blood, my tender skin experienced the harshness of the bushes and it cut a place close to my right eye. That threw her into panic because I began to bleed!
Then, after some minutes, a hunter who was returning from hunting met the scene and offered some help. Finally, my auntie came running; mother and child were taken to where they received proper care.
God so did it that I was born in a village that had one of the best water falls in Nigeria. The prophetic significance of all these has not stopped throwing me into deep thoughts.
First of all, I was fought by the dragon from the day of my birth.
He never wanted me to live, hence the cut. He was waiting to devour the child as soon as it is born. But God sent a hunter to raise the alarm that brought my auntie to the scene.
My place of birth, how I was born, what happened to my right eye, and the hunter that came, all speak prophetic volumes to me today.
If there was a prophetic unveiling that day, my mum would have understood that they reflected my assignment in the kingdom of God, and what Heaven sent me to do on the face of the earth.
To start with, my mum delivered me without a midwife; and that was dangerous, but it spoke of my apostolic assignment.
The message hidden in that is this; like my mum that day, most destiny people in church today, are trapped in circumstances that have stripped them of the opportunity to have prophetic midwives around them.
Part of my assignment is to be that hand. God sent me to be a spiritual midwife to those who are trying to bring forth their prophetic destinies without anyone on sight to help them. The word there is this, He has raised me to raise an alarm in the spirit on their behalf, and serve them where necessary.
There are others who are bringing forth their spiritual visions and prophetic purposes in wrong places the way my mum gave birth to me in a wrong place. They are in wrong Churches, under wrong prophets and prophetesses, and doing the right things in the wrong places.
Consequently, their destinies are bleeding and if help do not come quickly, they will bleed to either spiritual or prophetic death, where they will no longer have the spiritual or prophetic life to walk with the LORD.
My assignment is to locate this breed, and bring them under a God given apostolic grace that will help them to be spiritually nursed, and properly strengthened to bring forth their assignments.
Like I stated earlier, the place and event that surrounded my birth over 47 years ago, was indeed a prophetic message to my mum and those who finally came. But there was no prophet to decode it.
But the devil got the message and tried killing me with terrible childhood diseases.
My mum told me how she wept and feared for my life those days until I grew up. Thanks be to God, today I am alive and well, fulfilling exactly what God communicated to them that day.
I have come to discover that I am not designed by God to lead or feed people who are not destiny conscious. I am designed to feed prophetically pregnant people with the word of the LORD as documented in the Holy Scriptures.
I usually feel a stronger anointing upon my life, whenever I am ministering to people whose spirits are pregnant with divine mandates, or visions of what God wants them to do on earth, etc.
Until you are properly fed spiritually, you will not be able to discern what God buried in you. And until you discern what God buried in you, it will be distractive to go reading the autobiographies of people. You will not know the right story to read to actualize your destiny.
There is so much we can share on this but, this is just a devotional.
I believe what the LORD wants me to share today, have been shared. I trust the Holy Spirit to use every detail of it to perfect God’s plans for your life, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen!!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.”
“And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.”
“His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.”
“She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.” Revelation 12:1-6 NKJV