TODAY’S DEVOTION (Saturday 8th March 2025)
Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! Sing out the honor of His name; Make His praise glorious.
Say to God, “How awesome are Your works! Through the greatness of Your power Your enemies shall submit themselves to You. All the earth shall worship You and sing praises to You; They shall sing praises to Your name.” Selah
Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men. Psalm 66:1-5 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 67TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
Glory be to the LORD God almighty, creator of Heaven and earth for keeping us alive these 67 days. I believe strongly that the remaining 298 days of the year are also covered. Yes, He will keep us!
He will do things in our lives that will make His praise on our lips glorious.
You make His praise glorious when you praise Him in Holiness, sometimes sacrificially like Paul did in the prison. Paul and Silas where in a very terrible situation – a situation that preaching the gospel brought them into. But they did not table their problem to God. They tabled their praise to Him.
Someone reading this may have spent enough time, tabling his or her problems to GOD. It’s time to start tabling your praise to God. Most times when we table our problems to God things remain unchangeable. But when we table our praise to they change.
That was how Paul and Silas changed their situation, though they were not singing with the aim of coming out of the prison. They were just singing because of what Jesus said many years before that day. Years before that day Jesus sat on a mountain and taught what we now know to be the beatitudes.
Part of what He said while teaching reads:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“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 5:10-12 NKJV
Paul and Silas obviously had the knowledge of this and decided to make it real in their lives – they rejoiced and were exceeding glad for the great reward awaiting them in Heaven. They rejoiced by singing Hymns; but they did not know that in doing that they were tabling their praise to God instead of their problem.
THE RESULT WAS AWESOME; THEIR EARTH YIELDED HER INCREASE AND POWER CAME DOWN.
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.
And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.” Acts 16:23-28 NKJV
When we table our problems to God, the God of peace will guard our hearts. But when we table our praise to God, especially while going through persecutions or facing difficult circumstances of life, the God of peace will invade our lives with the greatness of His power.
One of the major truths to glean from this story is this, Paul and Silas did not sing to the LORD for the purpose of deliverance from Prison. They sang in obedience to the word of the LORD. The word they sang to obey said, whenever we face what they faced, we should rejoice and be exceedingly glad and not regret preaching the gospel or regret being Christians.
If you face what Paul and Silas faced, it is possible to regret ever preaching or ever giving your life to Christ. Our LORD taught that we rejoice. If we do not rejoice, we may enter into regret. That day, Paul and Silas chose to rejoice by singing hymns.
The result was a shock to them also, hence there was no prison break despite the demolition of the prison by the presence of the LORD that came down.
IN SIMPLE TERMS, THEY APPLIED THE WORD TO THEIR WOE AND THEIR WOE WAS ELIMINATED, AND THEY BECAME A WONDER.
The wonderful power of God came down and broke down the prison leading to the salvation of Souls. God carried out a prison break for them but not for them to escape because they were not criminals. He did that to make men submit to Him, and it happened.
In the same way, you can eliminate your woes and become a wonder to many if you become a word applicant. The Bible says an entire household gave their lives to Christ.
“Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized.
Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household.” Acts 16:29-34 NKJV
Souls submitted to God that day, and Heaven was populated. The next people to submit to God were the authorities that got them locked up unjustly in prison. The Bible says.
“And when it was day, the magistrates sent the officers, saying, “Let those men go.” So the keeper of the prison reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go. Now therefore depart, and go in peace.”
But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans, and have thrown us into prison. And now do they put us out secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and get us out.”
And the officers told these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans. Then they came and pleaded with them and brought them out, and asked them to depart from the city.” Acts 16:35-39 NKJV
IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT PRAYER COLLECTION WILL NOT HELP YOU AS MUCH AS WORD APPLICATION.
It was not prayer collection that helped the apostles here, but word application. It was not prayer collection that brought the kind of presence they saw, but word application. Word application will bring a higher dimension of God’s presence on your life than prayer collection.
You will never know permanent peace in your life until you stop following the prayer collection system you see in church. You must move into word application, because God will rapidly move to confirm His word.
The enemy knows how word application neutralizes his kingdom, hence using the greed, Biblical illiteracy and covetousness of many preachers, prophets, and ‘fathers of faith’ or fathers of the lands, to turn believers in Christ into prayer collectors.
When God said His house shall be a house of prayer, He never meant a house of prayer collection. But most places of worship today are houses of prayer collectors. The reason is because the preachers established their ministries on the pathways of Idolatry. The pathway of idolatry is the path of prayer collection.
It is a path where prayer is collected from the representatives of the dark forces treated as deities or gods. But Jesus never started His church as a prayer collection center. The books of the New Testament clearly pointed out that the Church was started as a Kingdom advance center, where people were turned into disciples of Christ.
IT WAS SO SUCCESSFUL IN ANTIOCH THAT BELIEVERS WHERE FIRST CALLED CHRISTIANS THERE.
But as earlier stated, Paul and Silas did not sing their hymn because they wanted God to bring them out. They sang because they were applying the word of God to their situation. Each time we face an unpleasant situation; we have a Choice to either apply the WORD of God or our WORRY to the situation.
Paul and Silas decided to apply the word of God not their worry, and Heaven responded with great power. A major highlight in our devotional text today says.
Say to God, “How awesome are Your works! Through the greatness of Your power Your enemies shall submit themselves to You. All the earth shall worship You and sing praises to You; They shall sing praises to Your name.” Selah
Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men”
If we want to see the greatness of God’s power breaking out on us to make His enemies submit to Him and change our circumstances, we must learn to apply HIS WORD to our woes not OUR WORRIES. If we apply our worries, our woes will increase but if we apply His WORD, His WORKS will break out and swallow our WOES. That is the message!
When you apply your worry to a situation you will not just increase your woe, you will break another instruction that Jesus gave. You will be a word mis-applicant. He said in one of His teaching sessions, “Do not worry about your life” (Matthew 6:25).
When you worry about your life you become weary and weaken. Friend, the worst thing to apply to a problem is worry. God wants us to learn to apply His word to our situations not our worry. The scripture is full of words to apply in any given situation we find ourselves.
There are Bible words to apply when facing marital crisis, health challenges, financial hardship, disappointment, or temptation. God did not leave us without truths to apply to the circumstances of life. It is when we lack the knowledge of these things that we perish.
That is why the best book to read is the Bible and any other book that will help you understand it.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY!
“But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:13-17 NKJV