TODAY’S DEVOTION (FRIDAY 12TH DECEMBER 2025)
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 346TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
It’s another glorious day on the eve of this eventful year. (Yes, December is the eve of every year). Another day to lift our eyes and hearts to the LORD and say, “thank you for keeping us all through the year, LORD.”
With the spirit of gratitude, lets embrace this day as a gift from God and request that He make it a blessing in our lives even as we rise to serve our generation according to His will. The greatest way to live an earthly life, is to live it serving one’s generation according to God’s will. Let that be part of your 2026 plan.
One thought that entered my heart this morning is the fact that my life is owned by someone, and that I am not its owner.
Since the life has its owner, the responsibility of keeping me alive is not resting on me but on the owner. The way to live the life is not also in me but in the owner. He is to tell me how to live it. He has a plan and pattern for the life. My job is to live the life according to its plan and pattern.
That is why one of the most important words in the Bible is the word “LORD!”
The word LORD in the Bible is from the word Adonai, meaning owner. Our primary assignment on earth is to use our lives and do the will of its owner. This Life was not given to us to be owned by us. This life was given to us to be owned and governed by its owner.
Those who think they own their lives, or who live like they own this life and can use it to do anything, will end up defeating the plans and purposes of God for their lives. They will not fulfill their prophetic or eternal destiny. They will be broken and shattered in one way or the other, and sometimes even when they have the best of this world, they will still not have a great eternal ending.
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS OUR LIVES WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE OR DO. ANYTIME WE VENTURE INTO THOSE THINGS, WE DESTROY OURSELVES.
The first of them is exactly what I stated earlier. Our lives are not designed to be owned, possessed, governed and controlled by us. Our lives were designed to be owned, possessed, governed and controlled by the Spirit of the LORD, the Spirit of the owner, through our mental faculties and abilities.
People who allow that to happen live the best lives in time and eternity. Those who do not, usually end up ruining themselves in time or eternity.
To OWN can be used as a verb, a pronoun or an adjective. As a verb, to own means to have something as your possession. Your life was not designed for you to have as your possession. You could even become possess with demons if you attempt to have your life as a possession.
A life in your possession is usually directed after your own will and driven to follow your own sinful paths and ways. It is completely cut off from the controls of God and never brought under the power of His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the owner. And if a life is not under the power of the Holy Spirit, it will not receive any significant thing from the LORD (from its owner)!
Our lives are designed to be products of what we receive from its owner. Yes, God designed that our lives keeps going by what it receive from its owner. Meaning, if we receive nothing, things will never be well with us.
People who are sick, for example, needs healing from the owner of their lives to keep living well, people who are healthy need divine health from the owner of their lives to remain healthy, those who struggle with sin needs holiness and dominion over sin from the owner of their lives to live pure lives on earth and make heaven, those who are poor need the power to get wealth from the owner of their lives to lead good economic lives. The list goes on!!!
THE IMPORT OF THIS IS, IT IS WHAT WE GET FROM THE OWNER OF OUR LIVES THAT GIVES IT A MEANING ON EARTH.
We will never live blessed and beautiful lives in an accursed world, except the owner of our lives get them filled with blessings and beauty. Yes, the owner of our lives must fill it with good things, for our lives to be good. Most times He does that as we kneel before Him in prayer, other times as we fast and pray. Some other times He does it when we are busy serving Him in one way or the other.
But we must all understand that it is His will that we live good lives on earth, as we journey to Heaven, and the reason is obvious.
From what the law of ownership is, every owner desires the best for what they own. No owner desires a bad gifts for what they own. In the same way, understand that the owner of our lives will always desire the best gift in His kingdom for us. Do not forget that the owner of our lives is an eternal King. He created all things, but He was never created.
The Bible teaches that every good and perfect gift is from Him. That is why, if our lives turn out good, we will always find what we received from Him as responsible, and if it turns out bad, we will find what we did not receive from Him as responsible. (Read this paragraph again and let God speak to you through it).
The best way to live to always receive good and perfect things from your owner is to hand your life over to Him. Wise people will hand over their lives to its owner to run according to His own will and way. That is what to do in 2026 and the rest of your days on earth.
We find a lot of people who did that in the Holy Scriptures. Concerning this special breed, the Bible says:
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrew 11:13-16 NKJV
ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE HANDED OVER THEIR LIVES TO THE OWNER DIE IN FAITH; THE REST DIE IN FEAR AND SIN.
Yes, only people who have handed over their lives to their owner seek a homeland beyond this world. Only they desire a heavenly country. They are the only ones you find God attaching Himself to. You will always experience God’s manifest presence anytime you hang around them. They dance to a different drumbeat in the Spirit.
They literally outsource their earthly lifestyle from the Heavenly realm where God lives.
They do not set their minds on the earthly and mundane; they set their minds on the Heavenly and eternal. They do not trade the eternal for the earth. They will even lose the whole world to secure their souls, instead of losing their souls to secure the whole world.
As we move closer and closer to our year of Strategic Victory, one of the questions to ask yourself is, how much of my life do I own and how much have I allowed its owner to own? The answer you give to this question will determine how your life will turn out in 2026.
Authentic Christianity is a call to return our lives back to its owner.
We took it from Him in the Garden of Eden and walked away into the hands of the evil one. He in turn took it from us and pretended to be its owner for thousands of years. Sadly, many believed him and still believe him.
HE EVEN TAUGHT OTHERS TO THINK THEY OWN THEIR LIVES, WHILE HE OWN IT FOR THEM AND DIRECT THEIR AFFIARS.
But his false ownership was terminated on the cross of Calvary over 2000 years ago, when God stepped down as man and paid the ultimate sacrifice for our redemption or buy back. Yes, we sold our lives for nothing, but the owner came and bought it back for something; He bought it back with His own eternal blood. Hallelujah!!
Today, as many as recognized Him as the owner of their lives can be owned by Him again. That is what salvation is!! In fact, the original purpose of preaching is to tell people this good news and request that they return their lives back to its owner; yes, back to the one that created it.
But that also is one of the most difficult things to do. Few will want to return their lives to its owner. In fact, very few will even believe the truth, the truth that they do not own their lives. They will not want anyone but themselves governing their lives. That is why many of us seek what we call freedom.
Freedom to be the sinful us; freedom to pursue a happiness that will not give us a better ending. Freedom from divine restrictions and morality. Freedom from right living and ethical conduct. All of us wants this kind of spiritual infection called freedom. That is why we are destroyed.
We know the cost of getting our lives back to its owner. We know that it will cost us everything hence not willing to do so. At most, we do it partially, especially when things are not working. We do not do it totally like our LORD Jesus showed us. God wants us all to return our lives back to Him, not by lips but by living so.
Returning our lives back will require repentance from dead works and a turning away from a sinful life. It will require not doing things that are not God’s will for our lives. It will require getting out of things that are not part and parcel of God’s program for our lives. It will require leading a godly life, at the expense of anything on the face of the earth.
WHEN THAT HAPPENS, YOUR PASSION IN LIFE, VISION FOR LIVING, AND TRADITION WILL CHANGE.
You will begin to cry like Paul and say, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Yes, you will begin to press on to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of you.
Nothing in this world will matter to you anymore.
The ultimate of God will replace everything you consider legitimate among men. You will no longer be comfortable in earthly success driven churches and messages. You will begin to look for something fresh, something out of the status quo. Something different from the acceptable and most celebrated.
Sometimes, you will find yourself surrounded by people, yet alone. Alone because they do not understand you. Alone because they are ruled by the spirit of this world and control by the gods of the nations.
No one who have handed his or her life back to the LORD will not be alone if he or she finds himself or herself among Christians who have not done so. It is usually complicated! If you are in a marriage, it will become sour until your spouse joins you in handing over his or her life, totally and truly, to its owner.
If you are in a business or an organization run in a certain way, it would become difficult, because people who have not handed over their lives to its owner have a way of becoming a pain on the neck of those who have. But one thing God does to all who have handed over their lives to Him, is to fill it with His Holy Spirit.
That is why it is when we totally surrender that we receive the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the One who owns our lives, into our lives. When He comes, He brings another precious gift called POWER.
His power is a precious gift because it is the ultimate power. Every other power submits to it. Our devotional text says:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8 NKJV
WHEN YOU RECEIVE THIS POWER, YOU WILL BEGIN TO BE A WITNESS OF THE OWNER OF YOUR LIFE, NOT JUST BY WORDS BUT BY GREAT SIGNS AND WONDERS.
He will begin to beautify your life, bless it and do things in you and most times through you, that will reveal Him to people who sit in darkness, so that they may come to do what you have done – hand over their lives back to its owner.
One of the greatest things you can ever do with your life is to get it back to its owner so that He can make it what He created it to be. His words tell us that before you were formed in your mother’s womb, He knew you, He sanctified and ordained you to be certain things on earth. Will you live this life without becoming those things? No!
Time has come to decide or make a decision; the decision to either handover your life in the hands of its owner, or leave it right there no matter the cost, if you have already done so. This is the time to stop worrying about anything.
We slip into a life of worry whenever we take our lives back.
Worrying is one of the signs that shows we are now in control; is a sign that God is no longer in control. When we own our lives, we worry how it is either turning out or how it should turn out. We enter the worry room seeking answers to things; especially things we cannot change.
God sent this word this morning to tell us to hand over our lives totally to Him as we prepare for 2026. We have owned it enough; choosing which career to pursue, which city to live in, which man or woman to marry, and all that. Now He wants us to trust Him enough to let Him have it. Time to tell the Holy Spirit,
“Come and take over who belongs to you! I belong to you LORD. I don’t belong to me, or anyone. I belong to you. Come and take me back. Run my life the way you want. Govern it the way it seems good to you. Only let me sense the direction you want me to go. I promise, I will not rebel against it. If I do, chastise me! Please LORD, do not leave me to myself. Amen and amen!”
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY
“Now it shall be, if you diligently listen to and obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all of His commandments which I am commanding you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you pay attention to the voice of the LORD your God.
“You will be blessed in the city, and you will be blessed in the field.” Deuteronomy 28:1-3 Amplified Version
