TODAY’S DEVOTION (FRIDAY 5TH JULY 2024)
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life.Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:17-19 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 186TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
This is the day the LORD has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it. Indeed, the Heavens declare His glory, the skies proclaim the works of His hands. Until you fly 30,000 to 40,000 feet above sea level you will never understand the last part of this scripture that I just quoted.
There were no aircrafts in the days of David but I believe the Spirit of God may have taken him that high, to see the wonders of God in the clouds. Those guys had no much distractions like we have today! They were too focused to lose those dimensions of the Spirit.
When we read things like what they experienced in their days, it becomes like fictions to us. Especially what they experienced on the prayer knee. For instance, David, after all the battles he fought with Saul and all who stood on his way to destiny, the time for testimony came, and here was what he said;
“I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies. The pangs of death surrounded me, And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; The foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, Because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, And devouring fire from His mouth; Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down With darkness under His feet. And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters And thick clouds of the skies.
From the brightness before Him, His thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire.
The LORD thundered from heaven, And the Most High uttered His voice, Hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe, Lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen, The foundations of the world were uncovered At Your rebuke, O LORD, At the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.
He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, For they were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity, But the LORD was my support. He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.
The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.” Psalm 18:3-20 NKJV
THIS SCRIPTURE CONTAINS A CHRONICLE OF WHAT DAVID SAW GOD DO IN HIS LIFE THROUGH THE PRAYER KNEE.
I admonish that you take your time to read through it over and over. If you want to see God move in your life through prayer, read things like this and see how He moved in the lives of people in Bible days. Everything we find in this scripture is still possible today!
In distress, especially if we are in covenant relationship with Him, we can bend our knees in prayer, and call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and see Him break out the way He did for David.
He can repeat in our days what He did in the days of David. Yes, smoke can go out of His nostrils again, and fire out of His mouth again. Meaning, our prayers can make Him kindle the prophetic anointing and release a fresh outpouring of His Spirit to deal with our distresses.
When the prophetic anointing is kindled, no dark force anywhere can stand the impact. Not even physical forces propelled by dark forces. You see that all through the scriptures, especially before the cross.
I remember how the prophetic anointing engaged one angel to kill 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. It was as a result of a network between the prayer knee of Hezekiah and the Prophetic anointing in Isaiah.
The prayer knee of Hezekiah stirred it when the king heard the report of an impending attack from Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. He then bowed the knee and called upon the LORD in his distress, and the fire or prophecies came out of the mouth of the LORD, Isaiah and slay 185 thousand Soldiers.
The Bible says;
“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Because you have prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.’
This is the word which the LORD has spoken concerning him: ‘The virgin, the daughter of Zion, Has despised you, laughed you to scorn; The daughter of Jerusalem Has shaken her head behind your back!
‘Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice, And lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel.
By your messengers you have reproached the Lord, And said: “By the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, To the limits of Lebanon; I will cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypress trees; I will enter the extremity of its borders, To its fruitful forest.
I have dug and drunk strange water, and with the soles of my feet I have dried up all the brooks of defense.”
‘Did you not hear long ago How I made it, From ancient times that I formed it? Now I have brought it to pass, That you should be For crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins.
Therefore their inhabitants had little power; They were dismayed and confounded; They were as the grass of the field And the green herb, As the grass on the housetops And grain blighted before it is grown.
‘But I know your dwelling place, Your going out and your coming in, and your rage against Me.
Because your rage against Me and your tumult Have come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came.” 2 Kings 19:20-28 NKJV
This was part of the fire that came out of the mouth of God, Isaiah, when Hezekiah’s prayer got to His ear. Remember David said, “Because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, and devouring fire from His mouth; Coals were kindled by it.”
Whenever our prayers gets to God’s ears, fire proceeds out of His nostrils and mouth.
THE MOUTH REPRESENTS THE PROPHETIC ANOINTING.
One thing about what comes out of the mouth of the LORD is this; it is usually performed by God’s angels. So, when Isaiah released that fire from the Throne Room of God, angels moved to perform the word content. The Bible says;
“And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the LORD went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses—all dead.
So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away, returned home, and remained at Nineveh.
Now it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. Then Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.” 2 Kings 19:35-37 NKJV
You can see how the story ended!
Sometimes our enemies roar at us thinking we are chickens to be slaughtered.
Our weakness and smallness have a way of deceiving our enemies to think that we are no bodies, and with one blow they can vanquish us. But to their ignorance and detriment we have a terrible and awesome God who does wonders. He has a history of fighting for His own like a woman in labor who fights for her unborn child to be born safely.
He can roar from the throne room and cause the earth to shake on our behalf. He is a very big God on our side. If we can bend the knee and pray righteous prayers like Hezekiah did; not the wicked prayers prophets of Baal are leading people to pray today, we will see the similar wonders He did in Bible days.
What propelled this great move is not the kind of prophetic anointing we see today.
Most of what we have today is powered by sexual intercourse that is why you hear reports of the prophets sleeping around with whoever is around, with even their wives endorsing it, by turning blind eyes on the rascality of their prophet husbands.
As we bring this to a close, permit me to remind you that we have been looking at how to cultivate a prayer heart or spirit. And one of the ways we presented is through meditation in the word of the LORD.
The word of the LORD is full of so many stories that happened in Bible days like the one we just saw in this devotional. When it comes to developing or cultivating a prayer heart or spirit, meditating on Bible events of what God did when His people prayed will be very helpful.
If we fill our hearts with insights that we got while meditating on Bible stories of what God did while people prayed, we will have sufficient faith and fire to release through prayer whenever the enemy strikes.
I think our hearts must not be ignorant when it comes to these things. An ignorant heart in the prayer room will sometimes touch the demonic and call it the divine. It will even come with accurate prophecies that God never spoke. After some time, you will find God rebuking them to be liars, leading to so many troubles in their lives.
That is why you find most prayer people in one kind of spiritual attack or the other. Most is as a result of rebukes from the LORD because of the accurate and inaccurate things they spoke from a false spirit they make people believe was the Holy Spirit!
Friend, it is dangerous not to get the heart filled with what will release the fire of righteous prayers as we pray. It will connect your heart to false spirits in the spirit realm and make you a subject of the rebukes of the LORD!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY
“Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?
Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Do not add to His words, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.” Proverbs 30:4-6 NKJV