TODAY’S DEVOTION (Thursday 2nd January 2025)
“And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Therefore “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.” ‘I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Corinthians 6:16-18 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 2ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY.
We are still basking in the apostolic euphoria of what happened at our cross over service. We do not intend to recover. No one will want to recover when God say to them, He is going to sing because of them.
Our hearts are full of thanksgiving to the LORD for giving us another set of days to live, do His blessed will, and be assets to His kingdom. I don’t know how you stepped into this year, but we stepped into it standing for Jesus. That song was something else. At that prophetic moment, it was Kairos in spiritual nature.
I have come to discover that who you give the first hours of a year to, will definitely determine how you spend the rest of the year.
We know, our God is faithful and will never forsake us. He will be with us as He has promised. The prophetic-timed blessings will definitely explode on our lives as we step into the very days that they were set to speak or explode in our lives.
He is the governor of the earth, and wise people would hand over their lives and hearts to Him; they will submit to His influence, and yield to His will and ways. Wise people know that the battle is not to the swift, neither is the race to the strong, hence committing their lives to the LORD and owner of the earth to watch over them during the year.
Wise people also know that by human strength shall no man prevail.
They know that only the grace of God can keep them. They know that if they will go through a year successfully and not be consumed by the perils of the year, they would have to lose control of their lives and put God in control.
FRIEND, OUR HANDS ARE TO IMMORTAL AND WEAK TO BE IN CONTROL OF OUR LIVES.
Many drivers have lost control of very good vehicles and destroyed themselves or the lives of others in the process. Many fathers have lost control of their Children and watched them perish in their rebellion. Political leaders have lost control of their nations and constituencies and brought the lives of many into social perils.
World History is full of very powerful people who eventually lost control of themselves and those under their influence, and gave in to a life of sexual pleasure, alcoholism, drugs, and night parties, with some eventually dying by suicide.
Warriors have lost control, kings have lost control, even very wise and educated people have lost control, but there is only one person who has never lost control of anything placed under His control. That person is the Blessed Holy Spirit! If our lives will blossom this year, they must be under His control.
It may interest you to know that you will fail woefully this year if you put your life under the control of any prophet or prophetess.
It may interest you to know that you will destroy yourself dearly if you go through this year putting your precious life in your hands, as humanism teaches. Yes, you will see hell in 2025 if you put your precious life under the control of your anger, sex drive, crave for comfort or the desire to please someone.
Yes, God is saying to you this morning, this second day of the year; in 2025, do not allow anything to push you to place your life under the control of drugs, vile movies, sexual perverse people, your own sexual emotions, your ignorance, the picking of offenses, strife, un-forgiveness, your immaturity, your anger, the love for money, or any other carnal or sinful craving.
The Bible is full of people who brought their lives under the control of the Holy Spirit, and placed it absolutely in His Hands. When they did, they were redeemed from unredeemable circumstances, delivered from lions, demons, and all kinds of terrible situations.
THEY WERE SECURED AND PROTECTED BEYOND HUMAN COMPREHENSION.
They moved from smallness to greatness, from doing great things to doing greater things. Hallelujah! There are no words that can fully capture how beautiful a life will become if placed in the hands of the Blessed Holy Spirit. Only Him knows how to beautify it.
Sometimes He would have to break it (which is painful to the flesh), then bless it. Yes, sometimes He would have to crush it, until every pride, lust, sin, deceit and craftiness and all unclean things are removed from it.
This year, if we will allow Him to do the necessary; break us to bless us, or crush us to clean us, He will take us in His blessed hands and make us the envy of nations. He will make us so glorious that when people look at us, they see the essence of who God really is in us.
He alone knows how to make a life Heaven on earth, without one raising or silencing an altar.
He alone does it without giving us oil to use, or having us to sow seeds first. So, I want to say to you, if your life is in your hands, please take it out and place it in the Hands of this great Friend who formed us in our mother’s womb. Yes, place it in the hands of the blessed Holy Spirit.
At this point let me tell you something you may not have fully comprehended; your life is not your own. Yes, God and the blessed Holy Spirit own us. That is why He is called the Spirit of the LORD!
The word LORD means “owner.” He is the Spirit of God or Jesus – the Spirit of the owner of our lives. And since the spirit is the real person, He is the owner of our lives. Putting your life in His hands is getting yourself back to the hands of your owner.
The owner of your life has your best interest at heart! In fact, His interest is purer and better than yours. His love, care, and concern for you is stronger than your love, care and concern for you. He will lead you through paths you will not ordinarily want to go to make the best out of you. Expects that in 2025. That brings us to our devotional text.
IT TELLS US WHO WE REALLY ARE. IT SAYS WE ARE TEMPLES.
This is very revealing. We are not just humans but Temples. Our structure is that of a temple with seven compartments to carry the seven spirits that constitutes the Blessed Holy Spirit. The Bible made it clear that there are seven spirits of God. The seven spirits of God are the seven ways this blessed Holy Spirit manifest Himself in us. We are His temples, and are to live our lives that way. A major highlight says;
“For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
This is a call for a new you and a new me, because there can never be a new year without a new us. Our moral lives determine a lot in our lives that we have acknowledge. We must embrace the reformation of our inner lives that is necessary for us to have a new year.
Without that embrace, we will have a new year in number and not a new year in real life. Things will just remain the same. What is it that God expects of us? The answer is in our devotional text. The rest of the text says;
Therefore “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.” ‘I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
This scripture is telling us what we should do. It is saying that there are people with dangerous influence over our lives to separate from this year, places with evil influences over us to come out from, ideologies to delete from our mindset, and ungodly paradigms to dissolve.
For some, there are churches to come out from and even preachers to cease listening to. Any Church that is not a spiritual construction site for the building of God’s temples, which we are, should not have us this year. Any pastor who is just a preacher and not a builder of our faith to function as God’s temples on earth, should not have us this year as a member.
Time to make the right decisions – decisions that will make you God’s temple indeed. Time to become a New You! Like I have always said, if there is no new you morally and spiritually, you will never have a new year.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY.
“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles Walk, in the futility of their mind,
having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:17-24 NKJV