TODAY’S DEVOTION (Thursday 27th March 2025)
“These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots;
raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Jude 12-13 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 87TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!! Get out of the way!!! Get out of the way!!!!” What a command to wake up with this morning.
Have you ever been in a situation where someone tells you rightly to get out of the way? I bet you may have been. We hear that daily on our roads while driving. But this time around it is not man telling man to get out of the way. It is God telling us, ministers of the gospel in the present church, to get out of His way!
This is not in any way undermining Heaven’s dependency on preachers; because “how can they hear without a preacher.”
However, there are some of us preachers that God is saying unto us, “Get out of the way!” Sadly, not many can pick a true prophetic sound, come to talk of picking this sound. That is why most keep imposing themselves on the sheep of the LORD; even turning themselves into “demi-gods” to be worshiped.
If there is anything that has kept most Christians under demonic attacks, or away from the rest Jesus promised us, it is the ministers of the gospel that are standing on God’s way. What they preach and how they lead their ministries make them Alpha and Omega to their members.
It has become so bad that most Christians now believe their pastors, even more than the Bible. They literally take these mortal men for God Himself and follow what they say above what the Bible says. I have seen Christians who rightly or wrongly, fear their pastors more than God Himself.
They fear offending their pastors but do not fear offending God. They even carry out extra biblical instructions from these pastors, not minding what God thinks about it. To them their pastors have spoken, so even God must obey!
Friends, if your bishops or pastors put themselves on the way between you and God, and you let them do it, you will never meet God. Don’t be too crazy about what your so-called spiritual father says above what God’s written word says, especially when it is not adding value to your eternal destiny.
YOU WILL ALWAYS BE RESTLESS IF YOU LET MEN STAND ON THE WAY BETWEEN YOU AND GOD.
It does not take meeting a pastor to have rest, it takes meeting Jesus Christ, spirit to Spirit, to have rest. I think one major factor that has placed ministers of the gospel on the way of God is the polluted spiritual-father spiritual-son factor and the adulterated submission principle.
You see, there is healthy and unhealthy submission. There is also a healthy and unhealthy father son relationship. When a spiritual father takes the place of your Heavenly Father in your walk with God it is an unhealthy spiritual father-son relationship.
The reason Jesus instructed His first disciples to “call no one father” was primarily to curb this spiritual menace; the very plague that has befallen us today! Sadly, our church generation seems not to be aware of these dangers. Consequently, spiritual fathering has been elevated in many local assemblies above the necessity of Heavenly Fathering.
Heavenly Fathering? What do you mean? Does that exist? It does. I will teach that very soon in our weekly apostolic session.
Any spiritual fathering that is not a mare catalyst of Heavenly Fathering is charismatic witchcraft. There is a difference between spiritual fathering and Heavenly Fathering. Most people who are fathered by apostles, prophets, bishops and all we have in our churches today, lack Heavenly Fathering, that is why they are not complete in Christ.
Their spiritual fathers are their all in all. They even say that to their shame!
It takes Heavenly Fathering to truly come into divine destiny. It takes Heavenly Fathering to unlock the unique you. Spiritual fathering may make you a duplicate of someone, but Heavenly Fathering will make you an image of Christ. That is why it takes Heavenly Fathering to unlock the supernatural and turn the world right side up.
AUTHENTIC SPIRITUAL FATHERING IS MERELY A CATALYST OF HEAVENLY FATHERING.
It is God’s quickening agent for Heavenly Fathering. Jesus made that clear when He said He will not leave the apostles as orphans. Meaning He will send a new Father to them, and guess who was sent? The Holy Ghost! Not an anointed Bishop or accurate prophet.
But these preachers who stand in the way of God present themselves as superiors. They preach the fathering things and lift it high above everything in the kingdom. The internal drive for such preaching is usually selfishness; not really to help a people unlock divine destiny.
Our devotional text describes the identities and true spiritual impact of this breed of preachers on believers. It says.
“These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots;
raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever”
It’s better to sit at home and look for God than to have a minister of the gospel who fits this description for a father in the LORD. Sadly, that is what many so-called fathers in the LORD’ have become, and their sons in the LORD can’t see it (and may never see).
They may never see it because what really made them to call these men “father” is either their financial prowess, success in ministry, or the army of contacts they have built over the years; contacts every untaught upcoming preacher crave for.
I want you to make this day a day of reflection on these truths; especially if you are caught up in the “unhealthy father in the LORD” net. I am not against fathering; I am against charismatic witchcraft called fathering. The filth is so big. A devotional cannot just erase it.
There are teachings on this subject which will be of help to you in our ministry. Get them!
My prayer for you today is that God give us fathers who are truly old in the things of GOD, not just spiritual boy leaders or instructors (who maybe 80 years Old chronologically but not Old in the things of God) for spiritual fathers.
MAKE THESE WORDS OF PAUL AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY.
“I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 1 Corinthians 4:14-15 NKJV