TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 17TH MARCH 2024)
“These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Jude1: 12-13 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 77TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Today is the LORD’s day!
The LORD’s day is not Sunday but the third day of Christ, and the word “Today” is not referring to today as in 17th March 2024, it is referring to the present spiritual seasons that are upon us.
The spiritual seasons are seasons of the LORD, and they are amazing seasons of His glory!
One major thing the glory of the LORD does, is to ask us to get out of the way. He will tell our flesh, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!! Get out of the way!!! Get out of the way!!!!”
Yes, He will send such a command whenever God wants to be glorified, in ways that will either make our lives glorious or advance His kingdom. I believe, many are waking up in the Spirit to this command, and what a command to wake up with.
Have you ever been in a situation where someone tells you rightly to get out of the way? I bet you may have been. We hear that daily on our roads while driving. But this time around, it is not man telling another man to get out of the way. It is God telling us, ministers of the gospel in the present church, to get out of His way!
This is not in any way undermining Heaven’s dependency on preachers with a permit from God; because, “How can the lost hear the gospel or the saved be sanctified daily without a preacher?”
The Bible says he gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some Evangelists, some pastors, and teachers (permit me to say, and some all of them), for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, till we all come to the unity of the faith.
So, I am not undermining the ministry or works of all of us that the LORD has called and placed in his vineyard by that prophetic statement.
In fact, the dependency of Heaven on preachers, was further revealed in the story of the angel who appeared to the Centurion in Acts 10, and instructed him to send for Peter so he could hear the gospel.
You can see in that story that the angel had no permit to preach to the man because Heaven has already assigned that to us, the preachers to do.
BUT THERE COMES A TIME WHEN WE MUST STEP ASIDE FOR GOD TO HAVE HIS WAY WITH HIS PEOPLE.
If we do not learn to step aside so that God’s people can meet Jesus Himself, especially in the way some of us who have become defiled are running our ministries, or carrying ourselves before the LORD’s people, there will be no rest in their lives.
If we keep asking them to sow seeds into our anointing, instead of sowing their lives into the will of God for them, we will keep causing eternal problems in the Church.
So, this morning, God is saying to us preachers, “Get out of the way!”
Sadly, not many are even hearing this prophetic sound. That is why we keep imposing ourselves on our members; even turning ourselves into “demi-gods” to be worshiped.
If there is anything that has kept most Christians under demonic attacks, or away from the rest Jesus promised, that thing is the spiritually seductive ministries of the ministers of the gospel who are standing in God’s way.
What they are preaching and how they are leading their ministries, make them the Alpha and Omega of their members instead of Christ.
It has become so bad that most Christians now believe their pastors, even more than the Bible. You see that in how they support them even as they preach and practice things that the Bible clearly forbids.
Due to the twisted teachings on, “Believe the prophet, and you shall prosper,” these people have become so deceived that they now literally take their mortal men of God for God Himself and follow what they say above what the Bible says, and then call you all kinds of names for attempting to open their eyes, or trying to help them out of the spiritual quack mire.
I have seen Christians who fear their pastors more than God Himself.
OH YES, THEY ARE SO MANY TODAY!!
They fear offending their pastors, but do not fear offending God. They even carry out extra biblical instructions from these pastors, not minding what God thinks about it.
For many of them, their pastors has spoken, so even God must obey!
Friends, if your bishop or pastor puts themselves on the way between you and God, and you let them do it, you will never meet God. Don’t be too crazy about what your so-called spiritual father says above what God’s written word says, especially when it is not adding value to your eternal destiny.
You will always be restless in life, if you let men stand on the way between you and God. Understand that, it does not take meeting a pastor to have rest, it takes meeting Jesus Christ spirit to Spirit to have rest.
I think one of the major factors that has placed ministers of the gospel on the way of God, is the perverted spiritual-father-spiritual-son factor, and the perverted submission principle some of us preachers teach and induce people to practice.
You see, in the school of submission, there is a healthy and an unhealthy submission. Yes, even in the place of loyalty, there is a healthy loyalty and a destructive one. Sometimes they all look alike.
So, we must be careful which of them we are practicing.
There is a healthy and a destructive father-son relationship. For instance, when a spiritual father takes the place of your Heavenly Father, in your walk with God, it is a destructive spiritual father-son relationship.
The reason Jesus instructed His first disciples to “Call no one father” was primarily to curb this spiritual menace; the very plague that has befallen us today!
Sadly, our church generation seems not to be aware of these dangers. Consequently, the spiritual fathering thing has been elevated in many local assemblies above the necessity of Heavenly Fathering.
“Heavenly Fathering?” you may ask!! Yes, heavenly Fathering. Jesus said, when we pray, we should say, “Our Father who art in heaven…”
You have a Father in Heaven whose fathering is the best. In His plans, spiritual and Biological fathers should be the prophetic scaffold for us to climb to experience Him as our Heavenly Father.
ANY “SPIRITUAL FATHERING” THAT IS NOT A MARE CATALYST OF “HEAVENLY FATHERING” IS CHARISMATIC WITCHCRAFT.
There is a difference between spiritual fathering and Heavenly Fathering. Spiritual fathering is almost everywhere, but Heavenly Fathering is nowhere. That is why we do not have the shekinah glory of the Heavenly Father in or around us.
The best a healthy spiritual fathering will give you is faith or the anointing. If you want the glory, you need Heavenly Fathering.
If you do not want to live the accursed life of an Ichabod life, despite your faith or anointing, use them to connect Heavenly Fathering. Do not limit yourself to your spiritual father’s faith or anointing. Understand that spiritual fathering is not the final place, it is the start place.
Heavenly fathering is the final place. That is the place of the glory.
Sadly, many of us are still short of His glory because there is no Heavenly Fathering in our lives. We struggle with sin, and Satan and embrace the systems of this world above that of God because of all that.
We pursue the anointing of so-called fathers of faith, without realizing that the anointing only empowers. It does not transform. It is the glory that transforms.
That is why you find many who are fathered by anointed apostles, prophets, bishops, and all we have in our churches today lacking the transformation of heart to live a morally excellent Christian life.
While some are blessed by God with spiritual fathers who are teaching them to by pass them and meet the glory, many are not.
Sadly, the few who are blessed with such spiritual authority, are not using the faith and anointing of God upon their fathers as a scaffold to connect the glory of Heavenly fathering.
Let me reiterate again that authentic spiritual fathering is merely a catalyst for Heavenly fathering.
It is God’s quickening agent for Heavenly Fathering. Jesus made this clear when He said He will not leave the apostles as orphans. Meaning He will send a new Father to them.
AND GUESS WHO WAS SENT? THE HOLY GHOST! NOT AN ANOINTED BISHOP OR ACCURATE PROPHET.
But these preachers who stand in the way of God, present themselves as superiors to the Holy Ghost, who God sent to activate Heavenly Fathering in our lives. They preach the fathering things and lift it high above everything in the kingdom of God.
The internal drive for such preaching is usually selfishness; not really to help a people unlock divine destiny. Our devotional text describes the identities and true spiritual impact of this breed of preachers on believers.
It says;
“These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves.
They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever”
It’s better to sit at home and look for God than to have a minister of the gospel who fits this description for a father in the LORD. Sadly, that is what many so called ‘fathers in the LORD’ have’ become.
And their sons in the LORD can’t see it (and may never see) because what really made them to call these men “father” is either their financial prowess, what they see as success in ministry, or the army of contacts they have built over the years; contacts every untaught upcoming preacher crave for.
I want you to make this day a day of reflection on these truths; especially if you are caught up in the “unhealthy father in the LORD” net.
The Bible is not against fathering; but against charismatic witchcraft called fathering. The filth is so huge. A devotional cannot just erase it.
My prayer for you today is that God give us fathers who are truly old in the things of GOD, not just spiritual boy leaders or instructors (who maybe 80 years Old chronologically but not Old in the things of God) for spiritual fathers.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION;
“I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 1 Corinthians 4:14-15 NKJV