TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 20TH MAY 2024)
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 141ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
It’s been just God’s amazing love, kindness, and compassion that have been keeping us. We have already seen 141 days of peace, progress, amazing helps from heaven, and lots more.
We have also had challenges here and there but God’s intervention has also been present. It is God’s intervention that makes life challenges a walk over for some. Life storms are normal. What makes the difference is the presence or absence of God’s intervention forces.
If God’s intervention is absent in anyone’s life, life storms will never be a walk over. They will rather bury the person.
For instance, the reason why some will lose their jobs, their health, their hope, or any other thing and either commit suicide, or do some foolish things, or even give up on God, while some will have the same or even worse experiences but remain calm, is due to the presence of God’s intervention forces in their lives.
God, intervening to keep them in perfect peace helps them to stay calm in the midst of the storms. That is why it pays to serve Jesus; not lips service, but heart service. It pays to serve Jesus with the whole of our hearts, lives, and our everything.
Those who serve him with their lips only, might not get such interventions. Only those who are honest, faithful, true, or deeply involved with Him, will get such intervention from God. He will plant His intervention forces in their lives.
God has so many intervention forces, but the greatest One is the Holy Spirit. The Bible says,
“Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city:
Because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks;
Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.” Isaiah 32:13-15 KJV
THIS SCRIPTURE IS FIRST A BIBLE PROPHECY THAT CAME TO PASS IN 1948.
It spoke about how the nation of Israel will no longer be the way it was under David, Solomon, and the Kings after them. The prophecy said it will be scattered, and the land will become a joy for wild asses or ancient empires. History has proven this prophecy right.
Indeed, the city of Jerusalem functioned as dens for some empires, even in the day of Christ when the Roman empire ruled. This continued until the outbreak of the Charismatic movement in the 18th century, a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the prophecy.
Today we have the state of Israel, with a landscape that is fruitful.
The season the Charismatic movement broke out, was the season that a notable man in the United Kingdom conceive the Idea of a Jewish state. He must have seen this prophecy and moved, knowing that the time for Israel to become a nation again had arrived.
But there is also a truth in this prophecy, the truth of how the Holy Spirit functions as an intervention force in our lives. The scriptures testify that, a man’s life will remain in a horrible state until the Holy Spirit is poured.
That makes Him the Ultimate intervention force in God’s kingdom. When Lucifer became the serpent in the eternal past, God deployed His arch Angel Michael to neutralize him. But when he metamorphosed from the serpent to the dragon, the Holy Spirit was deployed and He has been neutralizing him, his works, and his devils for many years.
He is the grace God gives to all who walk with Him. He knows how to help us in the midst of storms. He knows how to take us to the deep when our shallow spiritual lives begins to hurt and harm us.
THAT IS WHY HE HAS BEEN REFRESHING OUR MINDS ON DEEP INTIMACY!
Many who live shallow Christian lives are slaves of sin and Satan. Others are slaves of self. A shallow Christian life will never allow you to be free from the slavery of sin and Satan. That is why God wants us in the deep.
When we become deep with Christ, deeply involved with Him, our slavery to a life of sin and oppressions of Satan will be terminated.
Satan wants to terminate our slavery to Jesus Christ and make us his slave, and God want to terminate our slavery to sin, self, and Satan and make us His slave-Sons. That is the reason for spiritual warfare.
But the Holy Spirit is here with us! He is here to help us in the war. He is urging us to go deep with Christ. Will we yield to Him?
In attempting to make mankind his slaves, Satan is on rampage killing, stealing, and destroying. And in order to make us His slave, God, by His Holy Spirit, is on a rescue mission; to seek and to save those who have been enslaved to sin, self, and Satan.
Spiritual warfare is actually founded in the drive to terminate slavery.
The Holy Spirit wants to terminate our slavery to sin and satanic oppressions. The enemy wants to terminate our submission to the Holy Spirit and make us slaves of sin and spiritual oppressions. That is what spiritual warfare is all about.
That is why you save yourself from war if you have the Holy Spirit in your life, and allow Him to lead you to be serving Jesus in the deep. Serving Jesus in the deep involves not allowing whatever you might be going through to make you a slave of sin.
It involves being actively involved with Him; spirit, soul, and body. That is how you come into rest from sorrows; the sorrows of sin and Satan. And do not forget, the Holy Spirit wants us to have rest from all forms of sorrows, because it is the will of the Godhead.
His job is to implement the will of the Godhead. That is why He is our ultimate intervention force. Our devotional text today says;
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
This scripture reveals what we just stated above. The Holy Spirit’s role is to give us rest, but that He does, by getting us actively or deeply involved with Jesus Christ.
NOW, HOW DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT GET US ACTIVELY OR DEEPLY INVOLVED?
To start with, it is important to note that accepting Jesus as LORD and savior is coming to Him. Now, when we come to Him, we are expected to take His yoke upon us and learn from Him.
The person who leads us into all that is the Holy Spirit.
He uses the ministry gifts in the Body of Christ to do that, mostly the ministry gift of the apostles in our lives (not apostles by titles). He uses them to open our understanding of the scriptures and then guides us into all truths until we get to the height of faith where we can take the yoke of Christ upon us and learn of Him.
Yes, He brings us to where we can take His burden that is light upon our shoulders, and His yoke that is easy upon our necks – the yoke of doing His blessed will, and the burden of LIVING OUR DAYS to execute His plans and purposes on the face of the earth.
When we yield to Him, and get to that height of faith, we will become His slave-Sons, and find rest for our souls.
I believe the message of today have been passed. As we bring this to a close, permit me to state this final truth that I want to share; it is very important to note that in God’s kingdom, rest; especially from the sorrows of sin and the demonic, does not come through any other means.
Rest in Christ comes when we become slave-Sons of God. It is a heritage of Sons of God, not a result of any deliverance process you see in Church today. The early church did not do any of what we see done in Churches today. But God’s people had rest from all oppressions of the devil.
So, save yourself from the darkness we see in Church today called deliverance.
Understand that, you might be led to raise altars, sow this seed or the other seed. You might be led to do the ridiculous, like drinking of oil, taking holy communion in an unholy manner, praying with salt or holy water, or going to this forest, mountain, or valley to pray. Rest will never come that way.
SADLY, THAT IS WHAT MANY ARE ALWAYS LED TO DO.
Your rest will not come when you do all or any of these things. Your rest will come when you become a slave-Son of God. That is why when you stop doing the dark things done in church in the name of deliverance, do not sit at the fence of truth. Go further into becoming a slave-Son of God, so that your rest will come.
Let me reiterate that your rest will not come when you drink oil, or get anointed by it.
Your rest will never come when you raise altars or silence some. It will never come when you give any substance to God calling it Isaac offering. It will never come when you go to this mountain, or that other mountain to pray. It will never come when they pray star recovery prayers over you. It will never come when you go through deliverance.
Your rest will not even come when you stop using oil, or you stop following the altar raising and silencing, salt or holy water using gospels. That will save you from touching dark things. But your rest will only come when you become a slave-Son of God.
So, get serious with God. Also, find a church with an apostolic content that will help you become a slave-Son of God.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.
You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. Romans 6:15-18 NIV