TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 7TH AUGUST 2024)
“Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples;
To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute on them the written judgment— This honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!” Psalm 149:5-9 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 220TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
In the words of David, I will say, “it is a good thing to give thanks to the LORD, and to sing praises unto His name. It is a good thing to show forth God’s loving kindness in the morning and His faithfulness every night” (Psalm 92:1-2).
From the revelation of the Psalmist, all these can be done on an instrument of ten strings, which to me is the keyboard. It is clear that David was not just a Psalmist but a music producer and an instrumentalist. He was a music arranger. Sometimes I wish I could be like him when it comes to music.
He continued;
“For You, LORD, have made me glad through Your work; I will triumph in the works of Your hands. O LORD, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep.
A senseless man does not know, Nor does a fool understand this.” Psalm 92:4-6 NKJV
Indeed, for the days that we have seen this year alone, we can say, the LORD has made us glad through His work. We have triumphed in the works of His hands. His deep thoughts have helped us dearly in decision making. We owe Him so much thanks.
From what this scripture says, only a senseless man will not understand this wonderful works of the LORD. It is not easy to be alive for even one day. Come to talk of all the days we have been alive. The sick who are on life support in the hospitals can attest to this.
So many of us in the faith today do not have the spirit of gratitude or the diction for showing gratitude.
Though the spirit can produce the diction, if you are finding it difficult to know what to say to God in your gratitude moments, you can develop it. You can develop the dictions to use in showing gratitude to God by meditating on the book of Psalms.
DAVID WAS A MASTER OF SHOWING GRATITUDE TO GOD.
It was from Him we learned that the trees can clap their hands to praise GOD. We have thought that only men could clap hands, but David saw another creation of God that could do that. If trees that are not in the image and likeness of GOD can clap their hands to praise GOD, then we humans should do it better.
Child of God we can learn so much from the Psalms of David when it comes to showing gratitude. Today we want to refresh our minds again on Miracles, Signs, and Wonders in God’s kingdom.
There are prophets who never walked in miracles in Bible days.
People like John the Baptists, but they walked in signs. God will never leave His own without a supernatural deed. When we show Him gratitude through Praise and Thanksgiving, He will move in power upon us, resulting in miracles, signs, and wonders.
A people who know how to praise God walk in miracles all the time. A people who know how to thank God will be place on a high spiritual altitude by the miracle working power of God.
I have never seen a man or woman who know how to thank God, no matter the circumstances, defeated in life. So, to walk in miracles, among other things that we have seen, we must know how to show gratitude to GOD through a praise and thanksgiving life.
Now, I did not say a praise and thanks giving service. I said, “a praise and thanksgiving life.” Many of us can do it in a service but when you check our lives, you will never find praise and thanksgiving to God. You will only find complains or prayer points of what He must do.
Whatever we can do only in a Church service, be it prayer, fasting, praising or thanking God, is not yet a part of our lives. And once great acts of worship like that are not yet part of our lives, it is a sign that we are not yet true worshipers.
If you are not a true worshiper, you will faint in the day of adversity. The day of adversity is always difficult for those who are not yet true worshipers, because they will not have the inner strength to stand.
Yes, we faint in the day of adversity if we do not build strength in the inner man through true worship, before the adversity came. Read your Bible carefully; you will discover that everyone who was a true worshiper, had it tough but smooth in the day of adversity.
HEBREWS 11 HAVE A RECORD OF EVERYONE OF THEM.
Men like Job made it through, because they stored the inner strength that saw them through, by being true worshipers.
You could say Job did not sing a song, but worship is not singing. Worship is living. We sing to worship God but worship is not singing. Job made it through because he was a true worshiper. If he was not, he would have cursed God and die like the wife suggested to him.
A true worshiper cannot be destroyed or shaped by adversity. A true worshiper destroys or shapes his adversity. He shapes it by determining how, and sometimes when, the adversity will leave him. The adversity does not determine when it leaves, the person determines when the adversity leaves.
As we see in the life of Job, a true worshiper will never bow to suggestions from any quarter to abandon God, or become bitter with life in his day of adversity. Yes, no adversity can convince a true worshiper otherwise about God, because true worshipers are deaf to the utterances of their adversity.
They do not let their adversity speak into their hearts or determine what they do in their relationship with God, during their ordeals. Their worship has a way of giving them the strength to remain faithful to God.
They are usually constant, faithful and resolute in their commitment to God in the day of adversity. That is why Jesus said the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
JOB WAS A TRUE WORSHIPER.
Maybe some do not recognize him to be because he never sang a song. But like we shared earlier, worship is not singing, but living. If you cannot find true worship in Job because he did not sing a song, it means you do not know what true worship is.
The life of the man of God Job, teaches us that true worshipers will always come out well from whatever the enemy may throw at them. People who know how to express their worship in the midst of adversity will never be consumed by it.
They will experience the amazing miracles of GOD.
Job expressed his worship by remaining committed and faithful to God, as a result, he saw the miraculous power of GOD restoring everything he lost. He got double for his troubles. But Paul and Silas expressed theirs through singing. They got the same results.
Both experienced the outbreak of God at the end. In Paul’s case, the Bible says;
“And when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely. Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed.” Acts 16:23-26 NKJV
It is important to understand that Paul and Silas did not sing because they needed God to intervene. They sang because it was their life styles to sing and rejoice in the LORD whenever they were persecuted. They understood what Jesus meant when He taught the disciples saying;
“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12 NKJV
So, it had been their lifestyles to rejoice and be exceedingly glad in the midst of persecution.
HOWEVER, WHEN THEY DID AT THIS INSTANCE, GOD BROKE INTO THE PRISON YARD.
Like I said few years back, “when true worshiper sing, God gets up and dances to their music. It is His dance that breaks chains and brings us out of any prison of life.” That is the dance that produce miracles for us after we have sung or while we are singing to His name.
Our devotional text says;
“Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples;
To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute on them the written judgment— This honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!” Psalm 149:5-9 NKJV
The strategy here is to learn to express your worship at all times, even if it means singing when the circumstances of life are saying, “you can’t.” Let the high praises of God be upon your mouth. Doubtlessly, it will put a two-edged sword in your mouth. That is the word of the LORD.
As we bring this to a close, I want to submit to us that our thanksgiving and praises has a way of provoking the power of God to unleash miracles in our lives. But we must develop a life style of praise not just doing it only in Church on Sunday.
May the miraculous power of God remain at work in your life. May you never depend on any preacher for miracles. May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble!
May He be your help in Jesus precious name. Amen!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
So they rose early in the morning and went out into the Wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, O Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem: Believe in the LORD your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper.”
And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the LORD, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying: “Praise the LORD, For His mercy endures forever.”
Now when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; and they were defeated.
For the people of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir to utterly kill and destroy them. And when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another.
So when Judah came to a place overlooking the wilderness, they looked toward the multitude; and there were their dead bodies, fallen on the earth. No one had escaped.” 2 Chronicles 20:20-24 NKJV