TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER 2024)
“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.”
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” Matthew 5:11-13 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 266TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT.
Today, we will pass through the kitchen to get the word of the LORD for the day. The Bible teaches that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.
There is a proceeding word for today!! But like I stated, we will pass through the kitchen to get it. Are you ready?
Now come with us!
One of the most significant part of a kitchen is cooking ingredients or spices. Cooking ingredients are important in helping how our meals comes out of the cooking pot. They determine if a meal served can be eaten or not.
How they are used helps us in identifying which cooks are bad cooks, which are good cooks, and which are great cooks.
They determine the success of most restaurants. In fact, in my tradition, how a woman uses them in her cooking, will go a long way in determining her marital life.
Yes, if she does not know how to make use of them and come out with a great meal to the taste of her mother and father in-law, and finally her husband, she will never become part of the family.
If this were a global standard for marrying today, hundreds of beautiful ladies would have been single till death, because most ladies do not know how to cook. They cannot even be mothers, in terms of parenting a child well.
Yes, they can conceive and bear children, but that is where their status as mothers ends. They do not know how to cook, and they do not have what it takes to raise a kid well.
I write this to tell us that cooking ingredients, like spices and all that makes a meal tasty, are important.
Now, they are not just important in the kitchen; they also have great economic value. People make millions of dollars daily from food cooked using them, and from spices sold to make food pleasant to our taste buds.
THE SAME CAN BE SAID OF OUR CHRISTIAN LIFE. IF WE MIX IT UP WITH THE RIGHT SPIRITUAL INGREDIENTS, IT WILL BE SWEET AND EXCITING.
Spiritual ingredients have a way of helping in enhancing our eternal relevance in a perverse and crooked generation. But there are also things that look like them, and if we allow those things get into our faith, life will become bitter and terrible, to state the least.
Few years ago, I watched a true-life story that was relayed through a cartoon program. It happened many years ago in an Asian nation.
The story was about a family that owned a restaurant in a particular City. This restaurant had run for years and no other restaurant in the City equaled it in success.
It had a reputation that spread beyond the boundaries of even its nation. Someone will see their success and start a restaurant, but after a while it will be closed down for lack of patronize.
What was bringing people to the restaurant was obviously the taste of the food. The food was prepared by the old man who had ran the restaurant for decades.
He inherited the skills from his parents, and developed himself to become an ancient cook with a special touch on meals.
It does not matter what he cooked; it will always come out with an uncommon taste.
For instance, a restaurant downtown may be serving out rice at even a cheaper price and this man will also be serving out the same rice. But people will not patronize that restaurant.
The reason is simple; this man’s rice had a unique taste that overwhelmingly satisfied the taste buds of customers. It was not voodoo but skills that can make a weak and lazy person think its voodoo.
One day he called his only son and requested that the young man come to learn how to cook so that when he dies the boy can take over the restaurant.
The son did and really put in a great effort to learn but he could not produce what the father was producing. He will watch the man do things and do exactly what he sees, but will not get the result the father got.
He became really worried about it! So, one day he called the father and asked, “Dad, what is the secret behind the unique taste of your food?” The man responded, “a secret ingredient.”
The Old man had taught him everything but was yet to expose this secret ingredient that changes the taste of any food and makes the taste buds of a man go crazy.
HE WAS WAITING FOR THE APPOINTED TIME, AND FINALLY IT CAME!
Then the old man said to him, “Son, the skill we use in preparing our food is the same with that of every other cook here in this City. But what helps us to stand out is a secret ingredient that my father taught me how to prepare many years ago.”
He had learnt if from his father as a little boy, and since it cannot be found in the market, no cook has been able to produce their kind of taste in their meals.
I shared this story to relate what the Spirit placed in my heart to relate to you.
Any effort we put to make our lives sweet and exciting as Children of the Most High God, will never yield a positive result until we add a “secret ingredient” from Heaven to it.
It is the absence of this ingredient that generates bitter things in our lives and allows the enemy to have victory.
What is that secret ingredient? The will and ways of the LORD! Yes, a combination of the will and ways of the LORD is the secret ingredient that every man needs to sweeten his life in a wicked world like ours.
If your life lacks this secret ingredient, there are over seven terrible things that will be going on in it randomly.
The Bible is full of stories of man and women who were in good shape when this ingredient was in their lives, and transformed into awfully bad shapes when it disappeared.
Samson was one of them. The secret ingredient that made his life sweet was a hidden code of conduct God gave his mother before he was conceived.
It became his assignment, and the guarantee for a special presence of God upon his life. He was told not to cut his hair because he was a Nazirite.
A Nazirite today is that man or woman GOD has separated unto himself for a special assignment; the assignment of bearing a reproach for Him. It is not someone with dreadlocks.
Samson, whose name means ‘like the sun,” was a man God separated unto Himself for a special assignment. In his days, he was to carry a long hair that is not to be cared for in any way.
In the days of the Bible, when a man carries long hairs that are not to be cared for, it is a reproach to that man.
SO, AS GOD’S NAZARITE, HE WAS TO CARRY THOSE LONG HAIRS SIGNIFYING ONE WHO BEARS THE REPROACH OF THE LORD.
In simple terms, his assignment was to bear the LORD’s reproach all his life and also commence the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. The presence of the LORD rested upon him in a special way because he bore the reproach of the LORD.
People who bear the reproach of the LORD carries the presence of God upon their lives in a special way!!
They do not need to carry oil in their hands or anoint anyone with it. When you sit with them, hear them speak the words of the LORD, and get yourself attached to their lives, a move of God could begin in your own life.
I believe God is calling you to be that person. But you must come to the place of bearing the reproach of the LORD to be the person.
You must come to the place of carrying long hairs (not Physical hairs) for the LORD, the place of a willingness to bear His reproach like the Hebrews 11:36-39 men and women did.
Yes, like Paul the apostle and the rest of the early Bible fathers did.
Though the ultimate fulfillment of the Nazirite vow as seen in Christ, we can all yield to His Holy Spirit to bear His reproach in our age and time as New Testament Nazirites.
We can all come to the place of having this secret spiritual ingredient in our lives, and begin to experience the presence of the LORD upon our lives in a special way!!
Satan will never want us to accept any secret spiritual ingredient that will make the presence of the LORD rest upon us in a special way. It has a way of paralyzing his kingdom and stopping his nefarious activities in a special way.
He knows that only those who carry the presence of the LORD in a special way can stop him in a special way, and does not want that to happen.
So, he would network with our flesh to make sure it never happens. That is why we must crucify our flesh.
If we crucify our flesh, we burry the very weapon he uses to stop us from coming to that faith position in Christ; the faith position that will enable us to embrace the Nazirite vow under grace, as explained above, and carry the presence of God upon our lives in a special way.
THE DYING WORLD IS IN NEED OF PEOPLE WHO CARRY THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN A SPECIAL WAY, NOT PEOPLE WHO CARRY OLIVE OIL.
But the enemy is fighting hard to stop us from emerging as these needed men and women of God. He would want us to do things that will lead to us becoming like the salt that has lost its abilities to be the salt God created it to be. The later part of our devotional text says,
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” Matthew 5:12-13 NKJV
The enemy want us to be good for nothing in a dying world. What he is capable of doing to achieve that, can be gleaned from the life of Samson.
The long hair Samson carried, or the reproach of the LORD he bore, was the secret ingredient that made his life different and wonderful. But he could not keep to the rule of bearing the LORD’s reproach all his life.
A woman some Bible scholars believed was Samson’s second wife, called Delilah, took away that assignment that the LORD gave him, when she shaved his hair to make him like every other man.
She took away the secret ingredient that make him different from other men.
When the ingredient was lost, Samson indeed became like any other man. The Bible says;
“Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison.” Judges 16:21 NKJV
When a secret spiritual ingredient that the LORD gave you, to make you holy, pure, righteous, upright, and a carrier of God’s special presence is lost, people can trample on you. You will lose everything and become a prey for predators in the dark kingdom.
God wants us to be His own special people carrying His special presence. We must make up our minds to be such people. That is the word of the LORD for today!!
Our 2024 Marriage & Family Life Conference start today, it will be a week-long apostolic seminar on marriage. It is important that you plan to attend and to get the messages after the meeting.
Understand that if you miss it in marriage, even your eternal life can come under threat. Every wrong spouse will take away the secret ingredient that makes you different from others. That is why the LORD must guide you in your marital decisions.
As we bring this to a close, remember that there is a call of God on us, on everyone in the end time church, to take on the Nazirite vow, but not in its shadow form where you leave your natural hairs long, but in its prophetic form where you bear the LORD’s reproach and carry His presence in your life in a special way.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil.”
“For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”
“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-19 NKJV