TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2024)
“Trust in Him at all times, you people; Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. Selah
Surely men of low degree are a vapor, Men of high degree are a lie; If they are weighed on the scales, they are altogether lighter than vapor.
Do not trust in oppression, nor vainly hope in robbery; If riches increase, Do not set your heart on them. God has spoken once, Twice I have heard this: That power belongs to God.
Also to You, O Lord, belongs mercy; For You render to each one according to his work.” Psalm 62:8-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 199TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
It has been 199 days of free life services from the LORD!!
Yes, 199 days of free air for our lungs, free energy for our body systems, free sunlight for our crops, free rains for the same, free heart beats, free healings when we are sick, free ability to have food on our table, free protection from terrible spirits, free deliverance from the evil one, and etc.
If we were to pay for these things, most of us would be dead by now. But the good LORD has not placed anything in His kingdom for sale. He has not commercialized anything.
Sadly, it is some of those who claim to be His servants or representatives that are commercializing His free services. For them, the gifts of God are to be purchased with money. They commercialize what He uses men to do; healing, deliverance, prayers, preaching, and etc.
Come to talk of commercializing the free gifts of God, it might interest you to know that the first person to induce or move for the commercialization of the free gifts of God in the New Testament, was not a servant of God. It was not even a child of God. It was a sorcerer. The Bible says;
And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
But Peter said to him, “Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God.
Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.” Acts 8:18-23 NKJV
So, we can see clearly that no true apostle of our LORD and savior Jesus Christ, commercialized the gifts of God. The first person to do so was a sorcerer. A lot that sorcerers started in Bible times are being peddled today by supposed men and women of God.
You cannot bring to life what was shut down by the early church; something a sorcerer attempted starting, and call yourself a servant of God. No! You are a servant of gods.
IT WILL BE AN ERROR FOR ANY TO TREAT YOU AS A SERVANT OF GOD
The Bible clearly states that one of the gods you are serving is the god of the belly; a word that captures man’s dangerous desire for earthly pleasure and prosperity, at the expense of true worship. People who serve other gods in the name of the Almighty God, commercialize His free gifts.
If Peter had not acted as the true apostle of Jesus Christ that he was, the commercialization of the gospel and the free gifts of God it brings would have started in the early Church.
But the man of God Peter, who also functioned as a gate keeper, stopped the sorcerer from transmitting a dangerous spiritual virus to the church, just as he stopped Ananias and Saphira from planting the seed of lying to the LORD while giving, in the early church.
I think we need men and women of God like this version of Peter; people who will serve as gate keepers of God’s word and work, these end times. Maybe you can ask the LORD to make you this kind of Peter, not the Peter that denied the LORD that most of us have become.
Most of us have denied the faith that was once delivered to the saints. We now live sinful lives that we call our struggles.
We have become part of the generation that says with its life styles, “I do not know Him.” We are using our deeds to look at the LORD in the face and say, “we do not know you.” I mean, the very LORD who gave us the breath of life, healing, deliverance, and etc.
The Bible says;
“They profess to know God [to recognize, perceive, and be acquainted with Him], but deny and disown and renounce Him by what they do; they are detestable and loathsome,unbelieving and disobedient and disloyal and rebellious, and [they are] unfit and worthless for good work (deed or enterprise) of any kind. Titus 1:16 AMPC
We are denying Him with our hearts and lives, while our mouths are confessing Him. In fact, most of us have moved from being the Peter that denied the LORD because of fear, to becoming white washed tombs that look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men rotten bones, like the Pharisees.
THIS VERSION OF CHRISTIANITY MUST DISAPPEAR FROM OUR LIVES.
If it does not disappear, we will disappear. Our peace will be no more. Our joy will be obliterated, and there will be no recovery. Our marriages will keep breaking, and our kids growing into sons and daughters who grieve the heart of their parents.
We will keep sorrowing, sighing, and seeing promises God made to us failing. The rest and freedom the LORD promised to those who come to Him, will be missing in our lives, and false prophets will keep misleading us.
We need to strive to become the Peter that will stand at the gate of doctrine and religious practices and stop whatever is not of God from further penetrating the end-time Church. We need to become end time prophetic purpose driven.
If you are one of those who are mindful of Zion and all she has gone through in the hands of the demon of deliverance, the anti-Christ spirit, or the contemporary version of Baal and her prophets, you will agree with me that we all need to be come the version of Peter that withstood Ananias and his wife, and neutralize Simon the sorcerer.
This is one major prophetic purpose that the seeds of the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, should seek to fulfill in one way or the other this end-time.
You see, we are a terminal generation. We have samples of how to live our lives in the holy scriptures. We have men like Noah, Enoch, and etc. to look at because they lived and represented the kind of faith position people who live in a terminal generation should take.
For instance, if you look at the life of Enoch, you will understand that a terminal generation like ours, ought to live its days building its life around end time prophetic purposes. If they do not live that way, they will be overtaken by the ill-winds of their age and even become eternally damned.
Being a gate keeper today, especially the Peter’s way, is a major prophetic purpose for the end time. It is therefore important that, we all take our eyes off what we might be going through for a moment, and embrace what we should be doing with our lives.
One of the things we should be doing with our lives, especially in this season of a great rise of sorcery and sorcerers in the present times, is to live our days functioning as the Peter who served as a gate keeper for Christ in the early church.
YES, IT IS TO FIND CHURCHES THAT WILL ARM US WITH THE SPIRITUAL WEAPONS WE NEED TO SERVE AS WATCH MEN OVER THE WALL.
If we do not live our days driven by end-time prophetic purposes, we will be overcome by the ill-winds of the seasons that are upon us. We will completely become like vapor, no matter our economic status.
A part of our devotional text says,
Surely men of low degree are a vapor, Men of high degree are a lie; If they are weighed on the scales, they are altogether lighter than vapor. Psalm 62:9 NKJV
This scripture paints a photograph of the two kinds of life we live on earth.
There is the life of men of low degree and there is the life of men of high degree. Those who live the life of men of low degree strive to grow into the life of men of high degree because of its advantages. But the word says both kinds of life are vapors.
We all know what a vapor is. It appears and vanishes after a short period of time. If your life is a vapor in the realm of the spirit, there is nothing you do, get, or become that will last long. If you get married, it will not last long.
If you get a child, the child will not last long. If you get a job, especially a good one, it will not last long. If you get a relationship, it will not last long. If you are privileged to have some financial blessing, it will not last long.
Nothing good in your life will stand the test of time. It is therefore a curse to live a life that is a vapor in the spirit realm. To break the curse, live your days around an end-time prophetic purposes.
Do not strive for things that will make you a vapor in the spirit realm. Strive for eternal things, like the fulfilment of God’s prophetic purposes in time. Do the will of God for our age and time, which has the life of a gate keeper as one. That is how not to be a vapor in the spirit realm.
The Bible says those who do the will of God; people who live their days according to prophetic purposes, will abide forever. They will not pass away.
In other words, whatever they become will last. If they get married, it will last. If they get jobs, especially good ones, it will last long enough. If it goes away, a better one will come. Nothing good that happens to them will ever disappear. It will rather go from glory to glory.
The only thing that will be disappearing in their lives is anything bad, evil, or sinful. God will make sure it does not take root in their lives. That is the word of the LORD today!!!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!!
“Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one’s own resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].
And the world passes away and disappears, and with it the forbidden cravings (the passionate desires, the lust) of it; but he who does the will of God and carries out His purposes in his life abides (remains) forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 AMPC