TODAY’S DEVOTION (Monday 12th May 2025)
“IN THOSE days there appeared John the Baptist, preaching in the Wilderness (Desert) of Judea and saying, Repent (think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” “Matthew 3:1-2 AMP
WELCOME TO THE 132nd DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
Glory be to the LORD God for keeping us alive and doing much more than our mouths can say. It’s been love of God galore for us, and we thank the merciful One who dwells on High and still lives with us.
The One who created all things and was never created.
Let’s glorify Him with this song:
“You are awesome in our lives, mighty God. You are awesome in our lives, Abba Father. You are worthy of our praise; unto you our eyes will rise. You are awesome in our lives, mighty God.”
He has indeed been awesome in our lives. What can we say, even those who made themselves our enemies are getting so angry at His mercies and kindness in our lives that people are asking why.
The bitterness is so strong that if our lives were in their hands, they would have snub it away. But blessed be the LORD who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
It has not been easy doing ministry in the habitation of cruelty. When God spoke to me in 1996 that my kingdom post will be in the dark places of the earth, and that the dark places of the earth are full of habitations of cruelty, I never understood fully unto I came to East Africa over 10 years ago.
Then I thought He was referring to the villages and other places that we were carrying our crusade evangelism in. I thought the habitation of cruelty refers to villages were witches and wizards live.
I never knew there were things bigger than witches or wizards; wicked and unreasonable men and women, both young and old who make the activities of witches and wizards look like a Childs play.
From being threatened with kidnap, deportations, death, demonized, maliciously attacked by those feeding from our hands, lied against, inducing the authorities to harm me, to being sued to courts for things I never did, to all kinds of treatments and bitter betrayals, it’s been battle galore since we came here with the LORD, but God’s mercies have not given us to the will of our enemies.
THE WICKED HAS RISEN AGAINST US IN MANY WAYS, BUT THE LORD HAS BEEN WITH AND FOR US ALL THE WAY.
The LORD has been respecting the covenant He cut with me in 1996, and keeping the decrees, He made over my life, seeing us through thick and thin. The enemy has never had his way since we came, because the counsel of the LORD shall stand, and that of the wicked brought to nothing by the righteous God.
We have been seeing scriptures fulfilled on our lives, making the Bible more real than it has ever been.
If not for the faithfulness of the LORD and His decrees over our lives, it would have been terrible. We came here without understanding the spiritual terrain, hence there were few mistakes made here and there in a bid to fulfill the apostolic mandate given to us.
Mistakes like committing ourselves to people who seemed good, kind and loyal, and sometimes sharing the innermost frustrations created by the heat of the battle with them. But they all turned out to be terrible ears to share such sacred things with when they took and developed them into lethal and malicious lies, slander, and all kinds of evil reports.
However, the LORD who know our hearts have been faithful in watching and keeping us away from their swords. The psalmist said:
With the merciful You will show Yourself merciful; With a blameless man You will show Yourself blameless; With the pure You will show Yourself pure;
And with the devious You will show Yourself shrewd. For You will save the humble people but will bring down haughty looks.
For You will light my lamp; The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.
For by You I can run against a troop, By my God I can leap over a wall. Psalm 18:25-29 NKJV
EVERYTHING IN THIS SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN REAL AND VISIBLE IN OUR LIVES.
If you are facing similar battles and any of those things we face here in your own life, I want to admonish that you have faith in God and draw courage from what I have shared. Stand the way the LORD wants you to stand, and you will see His faithfulness and mercies reaching out to manifest all you find in the scripture above in your life. Amen!!
You might need to repent in certain areas, maybe from sin or from things that are not sin but are being done foolishly.
You may need to repent from acting and thinking in ways that are right but cannot bear good fruit due to the kind of people in and around your space. Yes, you may need to start thinking differently and acting differently.
That was what we never did when we came here. We were still thinking and acting like we do in the Nigerian spiritual terrain where people will never do certain things to you. We never knew things here were different.
Our devotional text says,
“IN THOSE days there appeared John the Baptist, preaching in the Wilderness (Desert) of Judea and saying, Repent (think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” “Matthew 3:1-2 AMPC
Talking about changing your mind, your conduct, or thinking and acting differently, I have come to realize that whenever God want to do something in your life, He will ask you to think and act differently. He will ask you to change your conduct.
Simply put, He will ask you to repent towards the blessing that is coming. For instance, the blessing of making Heaven, as depicted in this scripture, require repentance. Repentance positions one for what the LORD wants to do in his or her life, that is why the Bible says it brings in times of refreshing into our lives.
Until we change our conducts and thoughts and begin to act in the direction of a coming blessing, we will miss it.
UNDERSTAND THAT EVERY LASTING MOVE OF GOD IN A MAN’S LIFE WILL REQUIRE A CHANGE OF THOUGHTS, MIND, AND CONDUCT.
That is why before He moves into our lives, He will speak words conveying His will and intentions to us. He will even teach us things and send prophecies our way. He will show us things that will lead us to what He wants to do.
The wise thing to do will be to receive those words and sit with the Bible to study the lives of people who had similar visitations and draw truths that will need seasons of meditation on, until we experience a change that will help us to begin to act, think and conduct ourselves in such a way that what God wants to do will be done.
People who do not know how to repent towards God for things that are at hand will miss them. He made Joshua to sit with His words daily so that He might have the internal configuration that is required for the performance of what God wanted to do in and through his life in Bible days.
That pattern has not changed. We will also need to sit with His word until that happens. The LORD had given Joshua a promise that says no one will be able to stand before him all the days of his life, that as he was with Moses so will He, God, be with him.
That was exploits waiting in heaven to be carried out on earth by the hands of Joshua. But the key to seeing that happen was a repentance towards what God wanted to do; a repentance that is only possible through meditation in the word. The Bible says the LORD spoke to Joshua saying:
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you[c] shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Joshua 1: 8 NKJV
FRIEND, THERE IS A SILENT MOVE OF GOD TO RELEASE A PEOPLE OF “END TIME EXPLOITS” INTO HIS HARVEST FIELD.
We are already experiencing this move of God. You are one of these people of exploits if you are reading this devotional. Time to wake up from ignorance, personal sins, ungodly conduct, spiritual laziness, thoughts on the mundane and the carnal, etc.
Time to wake up to the responsibility of finding the word to sit with until your own internal reconfiguration takes place.
Yes, you need to be reconfigured for the exploits God want to perform by your hands to happen. You need to be reconfigured to know God intimately to the point of having His Throne Move from Heaven to your heart, like it did our Bible fathers. It all begins from the place of knowing God, not knowing about Him.
Knowing about God will leave some portions of carnality showing itself here and there and hindering God’s work. This is the time to know God.
Knowing GOD kills our flesh completely and keeps us in a state of humility because the more of God that is revealed to us, the more we see that we are nothing. The more of God we know the less of us we become, making it impossible to boast, and bringing us to the place of end time exploits, which are not just performing miracles but transforming moral landscapes.
As we get to the end of days, times and seasons, one thing God will raise men and women to do is to transform moral landscapes.
The darkness of immorality has soaked so many.
When we say immorality, it is not limited to sexual immorality. There are all forms of immoralities. God wants His own Kind of life called Holiness and purity, made possible by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and His truths to be lived now than ever.
The eternal consequences of not living that life are the reason many are dying and ending in hell fire. God wants that to stop and has chosen you to be part of the army that will carry out the apostolic exploits that can stop it.
It is my prayer that you hear the trumpet of the Cry of the Spirit that has sounded this morning and begin to sit down with truths until you are reconfigured. Amen!!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE A MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!!
“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.” John 15:15-16 NKJV
