TODAY’S DEVOTION (FRIDAY 9TH AUGUST 2024)
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.
We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death is working in us, but life in you. 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 222ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
God’s amazing grace has run our lives for 222 days of this year.
It is the first day of the week and it is important that we kick start it with the spirit of gratitude. Time to sit down and count our blessings; if we do, obviously we will be surprised at what the LORD has done this year alone.
Yes, we will be surprised at what the LORD has done in our lives this year alone. For some of us, aside from minor headaches and fatigues, it’s been 222 days of not knowing sicknesses or diseases.
Our God has kept us healthy and strong despite how hard we have been driving ourselves.
He did not even allow our sins to sink us, He rather convicted us of them, and stirred us towards repentance, pouring out His power to help us sin no more. What a mighty God we serve.
For others it has been 222 days of mercies, forgiveness and God waiting on them to see if they will respond to Him with a life of purity, holiness and consecration. His patience has kept them alive not their prayers or anything else. By reason of what they have done, they should not be alive.
Counting our blessings and naming all the LORD has done in our lives can spark gratitude in our hearts; I mean real gratitude.
Now, sometimes, it is also important to count our burdens. Yes, you heard me well, our burdens. It is when we count our burdens and the challenges that we have gone through and come out well that we will realize how strong our GOD has made us to be.
Some of us carry burdens on daily bases; burdens that are capable of breaking us if there is no grace from the LORD.
When we count the challenges we have gone through and come out well, and the burdens we carry on daily bases, we will realize how God’s internal strength is helping us to navigate through the different seasons of life determined for the earth. We will see what we have been through, and yet we are still alive.
WE WILL SEE WHAT WE CARRY DAILY AND YET NOT BROKEN.
That is when we will realize how God’s invisible and invincible power has helped us with might on the inner man. That is when we will understand why we find one of our Bible fathers Paul, praying for his spiritual children on the same line often.
If you read the Bible, you will find him asking the LORD Jesus Christ to, among other things, grant them, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might, through His Spirit, in the inner man. We have seen our LORD and savior doing that, and much more in our lives today!
The Bible says, He wrote to the Church at Ephesus saying;
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19 NKJV
As I look at the context of this scripture, against the background of what Paul went through in life and ministry, I can clearly see how this great spiritual father was praying what God had accomplished in him into the lives of his spiritual children.
Daily, we have seen our Heavenly Father, doing in our lives what this great man of God prayed Him to do in the lives of his spiritual children thousands of years ago. We have seen him strengthen us with might on the inside, and not allowed the life burdens we carry, to sink us.
That brings us to our focus today; the kind of miracles a Christians will need in the end times that are upon us. We have seen some miracle types that happen in God’s kingdom; the last was destiny miracles.
TODAY WE WILL BE LOOKING AT THE MIRACLE OF SUSTENANCE.
The word sustain means to strengthen or support physically. In God, this sometimes manifests in the release of spiritual support and strength from His Holy Spirit. It manifests itself in how you find yourself surviving mysteriously, despite the problems you may be going through.
Yes, the problem is there but it is not killing you. You are living, and sometimes even succeeding despite its presence in your life. That is the dynamic exploit or work of the miracle of sustenance.
There are seasons in life when God will not take away a life burden from us but will sustain us in the midst of it. Clearly, not many of us understand God during such seasons, but we will be amazingly seeing ourselves not consumed or destroyed.
Obviously, many present-day believers are blinded and ignorant of this kind of miracle; the miracle working power of God that is released into our lives during such seasons. It is very easy to be blinded or become ignorant because of what the enemy might be spectacularly displaying before us or doing in our lives during those times.
His activities have a way of filling our hearts and not allowing us to see what the LORD is doing in our lives, to make sure we are not destroyed by what he may be doing. There are Bible Men that can help us understand this kind of miracle working power of God. Men like Job, Moses, Paul, and the nation of Israel in Egypt.
For Job, he had a terrible attack from the devil that will not go away for a reasonable time. He had to comfort himself by saying “my redeemer lives.” The miracle of sustenance kept him in the midst of the trial, and helped him not to curse God or sin with his lips.
For Paul, he lived his life within the web of a messenger of Satan at one time of his life and ministry. The Bible says it was sent to buffet him terribly with the aim of limiting his exaltation or influence. After the season, he wrote to the church at Corinth saying;
“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.
Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 NKJV
GOD’S GRACE IS ALWAYS SUFFICIENT, BECAUSE HIS GRACE RUNS THE MIRACLE OF SUSTENANCE.
In the scripture above, you find God’s servant Paul, enjoying the miracle of sustenance. The thorn in the flesh was not taken away from him, but it also could not kill him or fulfill its mission of limiting his ministry and preventing him from reaching the territories the LORD called him to reach.
In simple terms, He survived despite what it did in his life! That is how the miracle of sustenance works. It helps you survive or succeed despite the troubles you might be having. That is why, if you are surviving, despite the troubles you are having, just know that God is with you.
It is important to note that God is not only with us when troubles disappear, He is also with us when they are there. He is there to make sure they do not take us out or down.
So, do not allow your heart to fail if trouble is still there after you have prayed for a while. If the presence of God came upon you during the prayer, and the trouble is still there, God is saying, “I have given you the grace to sustain you despite the trouble.”
It means that trouble is on a divine mission, and the mission could be to usher you into a new weight of glory. So, hang on in faith. It will soon go away!! It will soon disappear into an amazing life. You are under the control of the miracle of sustenance.
The miracle of sustenance gives you strength and any other thing you may need in the midst of reproaches, infirmities, needs, persecutions, distresses, and all we go through for Christ’s sake, not by taking them away but by helping us do great things and stay alive despite their presence in our lives.
I have seen this miracle in my small life over and over.
Each time I look at what I go through every week and most times every day in life and ministry, in the battle front and other fronts, I marvel how I am surviving. There are trouble times some of us go through, that we will never be able to share with anyone on this side of eternity.
SURVIVING THOSE THINGS FILLS ONE’S EYES WITH TEARS IN THE SECRET PLACE.
Seeing God do great things by our hands despite them, fills one with the awe of God, who has a history of demonstrating His greatest strength through us when we are either hard-pressed, persecuted, perplexed, or struck down.
The miracle of sustenance has indeed been manifesting itself in my life beyond my wildest imagination. Our devotional text says;
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death is working in us, but life in you. 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 NKJV
There are many times that one has stood with death working in him to submit to GOD’s will so that life will work in others. The miracle of sustenance is one major miracle that God unleashes to destiny men and women.
If you understand how it works, you won’t complain when God allows you to go through things in life.
There is so much about this miracle, but let me close with what happened to the nation of Israel in Egypt. The Bible says when there arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph (in other words, who chose to expunge all that GOD used Joseph to do in Egypt), the entire nation was plunged into a 400-year period of slavery.
How they survived is what I am yet to fathom, but they did. They survived for 450 years even.
God used the miracles of sustenance to keep them alive in the slavery because it was working out a purpose of His. The Bible says at the very time that the Pharaoh that decided to ignore all that Joseph was used by God to do arose, he dealt terribly with the nation of Israel, and asked that the midwives kill all of the male children born by the Hebrew women.
The women feared God and did not do it. Then he began to oppress them with rigorous labor.
THE IDEA WAS TO DEPOPULATE THEM. BUT THE MIRACLE OF SUSTENANCE WAS DEPLOY TO COUNTER THE MOVED.
The Bible says the more they were oppressed, the more they increased. Hallelujah!
If you are under the miracle of sustenance, what the enemy may be doing in your life will never diminish you. The more you are oppressed, the more you will survive.
When the devil will be celebrating your destruction, that is when you will be rising in power and greatness. The Bible says if he had known, he will not have crucified Christ. The same heritage is what we enjoy in Christ.
There are people in God’s kingdom that I believe Satan is regretting of attacking and killing them. I believe Satan regretted killing people like Paul, Peter, and the rest of the apostles, because their death is the reason we are saved.
It sparked a revival that got to us and today there are believers all over the world. He thought by killing them, the faith will come to an end, but never knew that is when it will spread.
I believe the message of today has been passed. The miracle of sustenance is what you should fix your heart on when going through things that are bigger than you. It is one miracle that most time we do not know is happening when God releases it to us. No destiny man or woman, will be able to fulfill their destinies without it.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
“Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.”
Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses.
But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel.” Exodus 1:8-12 NKJV