TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 27TH JUNE 2024)
“O LORD, you know; Remember me and visit me, and take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation.” Jeremiah 15:15-17 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 178TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
The LORD is worthy to be praised. He has given us another day to be alive and well. Our God is very great, and We form a part of that Greatness, even as He covers Himself with light as with a garment.
The Bible speaks of His greatness when it says He stretched out the heavens like a curtain. The Bible says He lays the beam of the upper chambers of the waters and makes the clouds His chariot.
That is why when we are on the plane, sitting or sleeping, as it flies through the clouds, we do not fear what may Happen because the plane is flying right through God’s chariots – the clouds. Hallelujah!!
Yes, God rides besides His Children while they are up there in the skies on the plane, to protect and watch over them. That is why there have been divine interventions for many of His own in air incidents that would have turned out very fatal.
I remember the story of the God’s servant Benson Idahosa. We were told that he was flying from Lagos to Benin in Nigeria when his plane lost contact with the radar and started going towards the sea without the pilot realizing it.
When the announcement of the development that would have turned fatal was made, the man of God stood and spoke in tongues for minutes and said a strong worded faith filled prayer and everything was restored to normal.
By the time the pilot could reach the radar again after the miracle had happened, it was discovered that the plane was already in Port Harcourt Nigeria, and few minutes into the Atlantic Ocean.
GOD WHO MAKES THE CLOUDS HIS CHARIOT INTERVENED BECAUSE HE WAS RIGHT THERE BESIDES THEM.
Ordinarily, fear should have killed him like it did others. What was it that kept him in faith? What made this man of God un-afraid was revelation knowledge, like we saw yesterday. Revelation knowledge that the Holy Spirit fired into his heart that very moment kept him in faith.
The story has it that all were afraid and screaming for help. He had to quiet everyone and take charge of the situation under G;od before calm was restored. Our LORD and savior said;
“It is the Spirit Who gives life [He is the Life-giver]; the flesh conveys no benefit whatever [there is no profit in it]. The words (truths) that I have been speaking to you are spirit and life.” John 6:63 AMPC
Bible truths inspired by the LORD in the midst of incidents like that are gateways into the supernatural realm of God. They are Heaven’s clearance to the earth to come into things supernatural. That was what happened that day in the aircraft incident.
Fear is killed by living truths that comes to us as spirit and life, especially in the midst of fearful events.
To walk in faith instead of fear in the midst of any situation, we need our spirits red hot for God so that His Revelation word can come to us right there, right when fearful things strikes. Revelation words that comes to us that way can be very powerful.
They have capacity to bring us into realms where we bring the arm of the LORD down on situations around.
You see, in the midst of any adversity, be it a circumstances or fatal incident, the first thing that comes to us naturally is fear. If it remains that way, we are doomed. We will not be able to come to realms of divine intervention. That is why you see people dying in mishap despite screaming the name of Jesus.
The Bible says “and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.,” (Joel 2:32 NKJV). But why is it that not all who are calling His name are saved when face to face with adverse situations?
It is the platform they stand to call His name that determine what happens; the spiritual plane they operate from.
THERE IS THE SPIRITUAL PLANE OF FEAR AND THERE IS THE SPIRITUAL PLANE OF FAITH.
We ascend into either by the words we hear, the things we see, and what we feel in our human spirits in the midst of our situations.
The truth is, you can call on the name of the LORD, and you can shout on the name of the LORD. The two are not the same, because they do not come from similar planes of the spirit. Sometimes you call upon His name without saying a word. But shouting upon his name is usually loud.
Calling upon the name of the LORD only happens when we are in the spiritual plane of faith, shouting His name happens when we are in the spiritual plane of fear. We shout His name in fear and call upon His name in faith. One brings a terrible result the other bring a favorable result.
The Bible says whosoever shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be saved, not whosoever shall shout upon the name of the LORD.
So, we can only call upon the name of the LORD when faith comes in; until faith comes it, whatever we may be doing with His name on our lips is just a shout and will yield no result.
You see, fear in the midst of an attack or an unwanted situation opens doors to doom. But Faith opens doors to God to come in and help. And the faith that open doors to GOD to come in and help, comes from the Holy Spirit, through any fountain of Bible Truths within us. It comes when our spirits are red hot with the flames of the Holy Spirit.
The flames that kindles our spirit comes from the Holy Spirit after we have separated our hearts to the LORD, and after we have eaten and absorbed the word of the LORD into our hearts. That is why being a word eater is very important.
Our devotional text says;
“O LORD, you know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation.” Jeremiah 15:15-17 NKJV
THESE WERE THE WORDS OF JEREMIAH. YOU CAN TELL WHAT HE WAS GOING THROUGH FROM THEIR CONTENTS.
Sometimes when I read the words of Jeremiah, I see what that man of GOD went through, trying to deal with the spiritual deception and falsehood of his day. It is not cheap to deal with deception.
You find Paul the apostle going through similar things as you read the story of his life. There are other apostles, especially in our days, going through similar circumstances for being used of the LORD to deal with the same devils that appeared in their days.
You see, it is easier to be a Solomon in ministry than a Jeremiah or Paul today.
Though being a Solomon will end you in vanity and there are chances that you will end up bringing forth for trouble and even losing your soul; but in the church we have today, it is easier to be a Solomon than to be a Jeremiah or Paul.
People, especially the loosed women in church, will love you and your ministry if you are a Solomon. Yes, they will never accuse you of destroying the body of Christ if you have many side chicks and a lot of money to spend on them, while still going about as a preacher.
Yes, as a Solomon, you will find women loving you and men serving you.
You will be esteemed as a great man of God and even pray in National prayer breakfast and in government circles. Great people will be coming from far and wide to see you with gifts. But none of that will happen to a Jeremiah or Paul.
Jeremiah’s Kingdom assignment included prophesying against a backslidden Israel (or Church in the wilderness) and her corrupt priest and prophets. Church people do not like that. They prefer prophecies against their enemies, not prophecies against those who have become the enemies of the cross.
Church People do not like men and women God raised to prophesy against a corrupt and backslidden Church.
Those who do not understand will always antagonize them saying, they are attacking other men of GOD. That is why you find any Jeremiah or Paul passing through so much persecution; not from a pagan world, but from a backslidden and corrupt Church.
Men and women of Israel who gave their hearts to Baal worship made the earth too hot for Jeremiah, accusing him of attacking the servants of God and His word. But when Nebuchadnezzar met him, he honored him.
ANOTHER GENTILE NATION WOULD LATER TAKE CARE OF HIM AT A PARTICULAR TIME.
The church today has become worldly and the world Churchy.
When the world become churchy and the church worldly, the Church will be persecuting and destroying those the LORD raised to confront them of their evil, but the world and the few believers who are intimate with Christ, will be serving them with great honor, and treating them as ideal men and women of God.
So, in our devotional text, you find the man of God going through what anyone with similar kingdom assignment will go through. You find him also presenting his case to the courts of Heaven and God responding in subsequent verses.
We did not capture God’s response in our devotional text because that is not our focus for the day. One key verse you find in Jeremiah’s word to the LORD in out devotional text said;
“Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.”
Jeremiah was able to withstand all he went through without fearing those who were against him because he was a word eater. No one who feeds on the word can be fed on by devils.
Our enemies and the persecutions we face can only eat us if we do not eat the word. In other words, you will be eaten and paralyzed by persecutions, adverse situations and fatal incidents if you are not a word eater.
Word eaters do not shout on the name of the LORD when face to face with challenges of life. They call upon His name.
The word they have eaten will resurface in the day of adversity by the power of the Holy Spirit and give them the boldness to stand in the face of anything that may come their way. When the word they have eaten resurfaces, it will bring them to the arena of faith in the realm of the Spirit, opening the door for God to step into their situations.
I believe the LORD has spoken to us. This is a call to walk in faith and boldness. It is a call to be a word eater.
It is a call to plant yourself in ministries that feed people with the true word, not the ones that use the Bible to collect money from desperate and gullible people through the practice of charismatic witchcraft.
This is not time to be a lazy Christian who just collects prophecies and believes in anything the preacher says and claim to be from GOD.
This is time to have a personal closet where you and God meet daily to get His word planted in your spirit, with a preacher who will help you improve and keep your personal relationship with God alive on daily bases. That is the word of the LORD!!!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.” Acts 17:10-12 NKJV