TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 13 JULY 2024)
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.”
“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies.”
“Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.” 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 195TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
This is the day the LORD has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it. We bless the GOD of Heaven and Earth for yet another weekend. It’s been our season of considering matters of fear and prayer.
Today we want to refresh our minds on a very important aspect of life; the release of our divine destiny, which is often intertwin with the prayer life of a Christian.
There is a way that an effective prayer quickens one’s spirit towards divine destiny. That is why you find everyone with a prayer life in the Bible, discovering and stepping into their divine destinies.
The same will happen to you if you develop a healthy prayer life.
Now, when it comes to the role of prayer is helping one release his or her divine destiny, one major thing we must look at is the power of diligence. Praying people who add diligence to their prayer life, unlock their destinies so easily and quickly.
Diligence simply means HARD WORK, and we want to talk about it. I hope you are ready.
To start with, let me say I have never seen anyone God used to do marvelous things on the face of the earth, who did not work hard along with God, to get those things done. That is why, if you pray well, but do not work hard, you will not have many answers to your prayers.
Most things you will unlock in the realm of the spirit through your prayer will never be made manifest.
Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17 KJV). Jesus was very prayerful but He never replaced hard work with prayer. He prayed and worked hard. He did not say, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I slept.” He said my Father worketh Hitherto and I work.
As you bow the knee in prayer, you must also work hard because, if your desire is to see many answers to your prayers and fulfill your divine destiny, you must work as God works.
HARD WORK OR DILIGENCE MUST NOT BE AN OPTION, BUT A NECESSITY!
God cannot be working and you praying and sleeping, and expecting His promises to be fulfilled in your life. Don’t forget, our prayers will help us fulfill our divine destinies, and our divine destinies are all about God’s pre-planned programs for our lives.
No one can fulfill a preplanned program of God for his or her life without filling every detail of their lives with hard work or diligence. Practically, fulfilling God’s pre-planned program for your life, will involve sensing them from time to time on the prayer knee, and laboring to have them birth on earth as written in Heaven.
It will involve sharpening your prophetic senses through righteous prayer and the study of God’s word, and using them to sense everything God wants you to do with your life, and living your days doing them diligently. Anyone who does that will never be lazy or idle.
That was why Jesus was never lazy or idle when He was physically here with mankind. He worked and worked and worked until He died. He worked because God was working! We must not be different.
We must learn how to sense what God is doing from time to time and be swift at doing it on earth, as sensed by our spiritual senses. It’s like a partnership between what the unseen things God has done in the unseen realm and our spiritual senses.
Now someone may not understand me; but what I mean was best captured by the Bible story of what happened between David and God in the battle against the Philistines in 2 Samuel 5. The Bible made it clear that David did not rise against the Philistines until God has risen against them.
At one time God said to him;
“You shall not go up; circle around behind them, and come upon them in front of the mulberry trees.
And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines” 2 Samuel 5:23-24 NKJV.
IF DAVID HAD GONE TO SLEEP AFTER HEARING THE SOUND OF MARCHING ON THE TOP OF THOSE TREES, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO VICTORY!
That is the story of many. While God is marching on the mulberry trees of their lives to grant them victory in life, they are busy sleeping and lazing about. They pray and expect so much from God, but see so little or nothing due to their laziness.
David was different. He was not sleepy and lazy. He was not too lazy to move after hearing the sound of divine movements on the top of the mulberry trees. He was diligent and swift. He moved into battle and fought alongside God. That was why victory came.
That’s how this life was designed to be lived, after the fall. It was designed to be lived through righteous prayers and hard work. The only substitute for that is a very hard life. We must all learn to pray and to work within the confines of God’s prophetic plans and purposes for our lives.
One of the reasons for adding hard work to prayer, lies in the need to always find the possible to do, in our quest to get God doing the impossible in our life. God may not do the impossible, until we find the possible to do with our lives, and it is through prayer we find the possible and through diligence we do the possible.
As soon as we do the possible, we will see God doing the impossible. That is the secret of the journey of faith.
Many are suffering today because they are idle and others lazy. They are very prayerful, but do not know how to find the possible to do, so that God can do His part and prosper their lives.
God will never move in your life if your hands have found nothing to do. Your hands must find something righteous and economically beneficial to you to do, for God to bless you.
If you are prayerful, be diligent also, and you will see God. Do not be lazy or idle. Whoever God finds idle He engages in productive work. You see that in a parable in the Bible. If God find you, or you find God, He will get you and keep you busy for His will, ways, or purposes.
GOD DOES THAT BECAUSE HE HATES LAZINESS.
So, you cannot be waiting for God to move in laziness and idleness. Most people do that calling it waiting upon the LORD. But waiting upon the LORD in the Bible does not denote sitting down in idleness and expecting something to happen. It denotes doing something in expectancy.
In other words, it is working hard towards the manifestation of what God may have promised you or revealed to your senses.
If you think waiting upon the LORD is being idle and hoping things change in the direction of what God may have promised, you need to do a rethink this morning. Everyone who ever waited upon the LORD worked very hard; none was lazy or idle.
For instance, it was through hard work that our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob waited upon the LORD and actualized their destinies. It is through hard work all the men of faith in Hebrews 11 waited upon the LORD. They combined the prayer knee and laboring hands to do great exploits for God.
God is calling on us through this platform to begin to do the same. He is calling on us to begin to use our prayer knees and laboring hands to change our lives, and fulfill our divine destinies.
A major highlight in our devotional text says,
“..If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies.”
There are so many busy bodies today who go about begging and collecting loans they will never pay. God does not want His children to join in such shows of shame because it brings a reproach to His name.
People who are not willing to work are the greatest eaters among us. They trouble us to give them this and that. God cannot bless any people who are lazy.
If you read Genesis 26, you will discover what Isaac went through, and how his hard work helped him. The Bible says water was a necessity in those days, even as it is today in those places. He was busy digging fresh wells from what his father Abraham had done in the past to solve the water problem.
But the philistines kept claiming or blocking them.
The Bible says they blocked the wells not once, but Isaac dug them again not once too. He matched every attack of the devil with hard work, and God blessed Him. If he was lazy and weak like many today, he would have just entered the prayer room complaining to God about them, instead of being diligent and working hard to keep digging fresh ones as they kept strifing with him and claiming the ones he dug.
What is the message this morning? God wants us to build a healthy prayer life, and begin to add hard work to our prayers so that we can live blessed lives on earth. That is the message!!
Yes, He wants us to master the spiritual skill of engaging the prayer knee and laboring hands in making our lives better on earth, and doing His blessed will.
MAKE THESE SCRIPTURES AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a wise son; He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.” Proverbs 10:4-5 NKJV
“The appetite of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the appetite of the diligent is abundantly supplied.” Proverbs 13:4 AMP
“The thoughts of the [steadily] diligent tend only to plenteousness, but everyone who is impatient and hasty hastens only to want.” “Securing treasures by a lying tongue is a vapor driven to and fro; those who seek them seek death.” Proverbs 21:5-6 AMP
“Do you see a man diligent and skillful in his business? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” Proverbs 22:29 AMP