TODAY’S DEVOTION (MONDAY 12TH JANUARY 2026)
“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:26-28 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 12TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF STRATEGIC VICTORY
Since the beginning of our devotionals this year, the LORD has been giving us wisdom to apply our hearts to. The wisdom is called divine wisdom. We have all seen that Divine wisdom is the most essential ingredient for living.
There is a word of wisdom that was shared some time ago that is worthy of study. The word is simple. It says, “God is in control but not in absolute control of everything in our life.” I think at this time of the year, we should remind ourselves of this wisdom so that we can have a beautiful year ahead of us.
Yes, God is in absolute sovereign control of everything but not in absolute delegated control of everything. He has delegated some controls to mankind. One word we can use to define the controls is the word “DOMINION.”
He gave dominion or delegated control over the earth to man. There are therefore aspects of your life that are not under His absolute control. They are in your control. If you do not use the controls well, you might have a difficult 2026.
Due to this control dichotomy, it is wrong to blame God for things happening on earth, things like rape, killings, murders etc. They happen because of the misuse of the control God delegated to man.
A lot of the many bad things God seems to be watching happen, are happening because God cannot stop them, man is the one with the delegated control to stop them. That is why God use men to stop some bad things from happening. If there is no man He can use, then the things happen.
THE JUDGMENT OF GOD IS HIS WAY OF FIXING THE ABUSE OF THE CONTROLS HE DELEGATED TO MAN.
If you do not understand this secret, you will spend your days asking God to do things that are absolutely under your control to do. You will pray until your life come to an end without any significant result to show. God is not in delegated control of your life hence there are things He will never do no matter how you pray. They are left to you to do.
A key statement in our devotional text says,
“Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
In other words, “let them have delegated control over the fish of the sea (everything that concerns the water), over the birds of the air (everything that concerns the air or everything in the first heaven), and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth (everything that concerns the land)”
The text is about the delegated control God gave us to manage His earth and our lives. We are to manage them according to His divine will not according to our desires or will. One of the tools He has given us to use in doing so is called divine wisdom.
You cannot be given delegated control over almost all of God’s natural creation without the tool to manage the control.
In fact, man was not independent when the controls were given. He was totally dependent on God! The tool for managing the controls was not in the human plane. The tool was in God’s realm. He was the source of the tool.
All these goes to tell us that God expected to indirectly manage the aspects of the earth He placed under man’s control – He expected to rule it through man. The delegation of the control therefore did not originally remove Him from the equation.
THERE WAS NO WAY A “FINITE MIND” CAN MANAGE THE CREATION OF AN “INFINITE GOD”.
Divine wisdom was therefore designed to be man’s instrument for managing the controls given to Him by God. But when man fell, He handed over the controls to the devil. We see this affirmed during the temptation of Jesus.
You remember the devil saying to Jesus; “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish (Luke 4:6 NKJV). Amazingly, Jesus did not dispute it because it was true. He actually came to save man from Satan’s grip and take back the controls. And that was finally done by His death on the cross.
But because the Church has not risen to totally enforce that victory, and because many are still living in the dark of what Jesus have done for mankind, certain things about certain lives are still under the devil’s control.
Therefore, when bad things happen and we say God was the one that allowed them to happen. We do all that without realizing we are lying to ourselves. God does not allow bad things to happen. It is man that is allowing them to happen. God could use a bad thing that may have happened to work out His will for the victims, but He does not allow bad things to happen.
In fact, it was never God’s will and will never be His perfect will for bad things to happen. That is why He is moving His creation to a new heaven and a new earth where bad things do not happen. It should not depart from your mind.
The first being with delegated control was Lucifer. He was also the first to allow bad things to happen in God’s creation. He is now a fallen angel, called Satan, with a third of God’s former angels working with him and for him to make bad things happen and keep them happening. He and men outside God’s influence are responsible for the bad things happening on earth. In the eternal past, he used the spiritual controls God delegated to him to allow bad things to happen.
The second being to allow bad things to happen on earth was Adam himself. He used his delegated control to allow bad things to happen.
HE WAS INFLUENCED BY THE FALLEN ANGEL SATAN TO DO THAT.
This little study should help us understand that God was not the origin of bad things and never allowed them to happen even in the eternal past. The fallen angel was responsible for all the bad things and is still responsible. God only moves to deal with the bad things the fallen angle make happen.
The flood of Noah was one of such moves, a redemptive move to clear His earth of bad things. The killing of the heathen nations by the sword of Joshua and other men He influenced was another, the termination of Sodom and Gomorrah another, the list is long. In fact, hell fire was created to deal with the bad things happening.
Kings are raised by God to deal with bad things. People are called into Gospel service to deal with the bad things happening. God’s move has always been to stop bad things from happening not to make them happen. It is those with His delegated control that have been allowing bad things to happen.
That is why every evil that has ever befallen men is traceable to either men or the devil. It is when God moves to stop bad things from happening that He kills to make alive. Bad things happen whenever men do not use divine wisdom to manage the delegated control God gave mankind. That is when you see people breaking down in health, coming into poverty, and all kinds of crisis.
The absence of divine wisdom in many hearts is the reason for the presence of all evil, especially the presence of persistent demonic activities. We can stop bad things from happening if we walk in divine wisdom. If you apply your heart to divine wisdom, you will erase the bad things that may have happened or may be happening to you right now.
The next type of divine wisdom to apply our heart unto this year is the wisdom of constant flow and the wisdom of how to keep the constant flow of God happening in your life. It is the constant flow of blood in the body that keeps it alive.
It is the constant flow of rivers that keeps them alive. It is the constant flow of the air we breathe in and out that is keeping our natural bodies alive. Constant flow is God’s way of preserving things on the face of the earth.
GOD DID NOT CREATE MAN TO SURVIVE FROM “ACCUMULATION” BUT FROM “CONSTANT FLOW.”
If you accumulate and there is no constant flow, what you accumulated will either be polluted or ended. If we were breathing from some air God kept somewhere, by now it would have reduced. But God created a constant flow of fresh air hence it cannot be finished.
The same applies to every other created thing.
The waters in the Ocean are not flowing from some accumulated storage somewhere. They are flowing from a constant flow God created. God designed that the flow from a constant flow. In the same way He designed that we be sustained from constant flow of things from His presence into our lives.
He designed that there be a constant flow of finances to us, sound health to our bodies, revelation to our spirits, anointing to our lives and grace to our faith. He designed that there be a constant flow of the good things we need physically or spiritually into our lives.
God never designed that we live from a storage system. That was why the rich fool was killed the night he decided to start feeding from a storage system. God designed that we do not store our riches but give them out towards His purposes so that there will be room from Him to push in more into our live.
As we bring this to a close, I want you to understand that “stopping the flow of good” has always been Satan’s assignment. He stopped the flow of God on Adam in Genesis 3 when he seduced the woman and then the man to disobey God. He will come to stop the flow of God in your life also. He knows “constant flow” is God’s way of sustaining you.
But you can decide not to allow that to happen by being a man or woman of faith and the presence of the LORD, the source of all constant flow of good.
Make this day your day of resisting the enemy and asking the LORD to activate whatever He may have stopped from flowing into your life. Remember, Satan cannot stop anything without our permission, so repent of any sin you may have committed and ask the LORD for mercy.
THIS SCRIPTURAL PASSAGE CAN BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION;
‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight — That You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”
Psalms 51:1-6 NKJV
