TODAY’S DEVOTION (Friday 4th September 2020)
“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 246TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
Today, we will pass through the kitchen to get the word of the LORD for the day. Are you ready? Now come with us!
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 and separate between good cooks and great cooks. They determine the success of most restaurants. In fact, in my tradition, they determine even the marital life of a woman.
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.
I wrote this to tell us that cooking ingredients, like spices and all that makes a meal tasty, are important.
They are not just plainly 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 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. God have been adding uncommon spiritual value to us since we started our 50 DAYS WINGS OF THE SPIRIT. He has transmitted great spiritual spices into our spiritual lives beyond our imagination.
IT IS MY PRAYER THAT THE LORD ADDS TO OUR SPIRITUAL STATURE THROUGH THIS WORD!
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 close 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; a skill he inherited from his parents, making him 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 the father do but will not get the result the father got.
HE BECAME REALLY WORRIED ABOUT IT!
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 told 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 places in my heart to share with 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! That 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 awfully bad shape 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. That was God’s will and way for Him. He was told not to touch his hair, a similitude of consecration. But he could not keep to the rule for a lifetime.
Certain secret ingredients are to remain in our lives for a lifetime! Samson never understood, like many of us, that secrets ingredients that relates our consecration are to be left in our lives for a lifetime.
ONE DAY HE REMOVED THAT INGREDIENT FROM HIS LIFE, AND HIS ENEMIES BEGAN TO HAVE HIM FOR DINNER.
His life became so tasteless and sour that he decided to commit suicide. He would later die with his enemies. That should explain why people take their own lives. They it because of an absent of God’s secret ingredient in their lives.
Every child of God has a “secret ingredient” in God’s plans and program for his life to discover and add to his walk and talk with God. Until that ingredient is discovered and added to his life, life will remain tasteless or even sour for him. His enemies will always have him for dinner. Concerning Samson, 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 his life had that secret ingredient, the enemy could not take him out. but now, they could cease him and put out his eyes, bound him with fetters, and make him a grinder in their prison. Life indeed becomes bitter, tasteless, or sour when we loose God’s secret ingredient in our walk and talk with him.
Each time we loose God’s secret ingredient in our lives, the first thing the enemy will do to us is to take away our eyes – representing our spiritual vision. Satan hates people who can see – believers who can see into the plans and programs of GOD for their lives. He knows that if we can no longer see into the plans and programs of God for our lives, we are gone. He will confuse and take us along with him to any pit of sorrow.
Satan knows if we can no longer see into the plans of GOD for our lives, his kingdom will become at rest. It is people who can see into God’s plans and purposes for their lives that are a worry to Satan. Because, if they can see them, they can do them, and if they can do them, his evil works will be cut off.
When he succeeds in taking away one’s spiritual vision, he will proceed to bind the person with his own kind of fetters, and then make him productive in his own kingdom instead, using GOD’s treasures in the person’s life.
THAT IS HOW PEOPLE BECOMES GRINDER IN HIS PRISON LIKE SAMSON WAS TO THE PHILISTINES.
It is very dangerous for a Child of God to loose God’s secret ingredient in his life! That is why Jesus said,
“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 5:13)
This scripture happens to be a major highlight in our devotional text for today!
What preceded it was an admonition from the LORD to His ministers and followers who may be persecuted for doing His blessed will; He admonished us not to be wearied by persecution and maltreatment from men of corrupt minds who attack us for His name sake.
“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.”
Being reviled and persecuted for Jesus’ sake is not a cheap thing to go through. Hearing men say all kinds of evil against you falsely, especially for doing the will of God, will make you weep bitterly in your closet and want to go Home like Elijah. These things have a way of deleting God’s secret ingredient in our lives (if it exists).
But Jesus gave us a bigger picture of things primarily to encourage us to stay strong and keep doing the right things (that may seem wrong in the eyes of the ignorant and aggrieved). He made it clear to us that whenever people revile, persecute and falsely accuse us for His sake, it is a sign that our Heavenly account has been credited with “great reward” and Satan is reacting using those he could find!
So, we should rejoice and not be sad! He said that was how they persecuted the prophets who were before us, but those prophets did not loose their secret ingredients because they had their eyes on the big pictured – the glorious future lying ahead of them, for them, and for everyone who will be persecuted!
If your life is bitter, tasteless, or sour, meet GOD in the secret place for the secret ingredient that can turn it around. That is the message of today!
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 fulfill.”
“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