TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 21ST MARCH 2026)
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.”
“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies.”
“Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.”
2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 80TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF STRATEGIC VICTORY
It’s been our season of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Today we want to look at what the Bible teaches about diligence. I hope we are ready.
Sometimes, the difference between the successful and the not successful lies in that word diligence. Our lives will need the blessings of diligence to be all that God created them to be. Understand that laziness, idleness and complacency will ruin us.
Yes, the blessings that only comes through diligence or hard work is all our lives will need to be what God created them to be. Even when it comes to our relationship with God, it is important to understand that you will not see anyone used of the LORD to do marvelous things who did not work hard along with God to get those things done.
You do not sit down in laziness and see divine help; you put your hands to work. Jesus said,
“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17 KJV). Note what Jesus did not say in this scripture; Jesus did not say “My Father worketh hitherto, and I slept.” He said my Father worketh Hitherto and I work.
If your desire is to fulfill your divine destiny, progress financially,
rise spiritually and become all that God created you to be, you must work as God works. Hard work or diligence must not be an option but a necessity!
A FACE THAT ALWAYS LACK THE SWEAT OF HARD WORK WILL ONE DAY BE COVERED WITH THE TEARS AND SIGHS OF A HARD LIFE.
Heaven blesses a life of hard work that is salted with faithfulness, integrity, honor, and virtues. It blesses a life of hard work that is watered by the presence of the LORD. People who know this will embrace the principle of hard work. They will never replace it with prayer. They will rather pray hard and work diligently.
They know that praying hard and working hard goes together, hence praying hard on their knees, and working hard with their hands. They know the connection between the prayer knee and the diligent hands.
While working hard tills the ground and plants the seed, praying hard brings the rain of God’s presence upon the seed, resulting in uncommon blessing. If you are praying hard but not working hard, your life will be flooded with the rain of God’s presence but there will be no tilled ground with the seed for the rain to act on to bring you the harvest of a blessed Life.
God cannot be working, and you praying hard, but sleeping in their area of diligence and then expect His blessings or promises of economic fatness to be fulfilled in your life. Don’t forget, our financial prosperity springs from the prosperity in God’s pre-planned programs for our lives.
Now, you cannot fulfill God’s pre-planned programs for your life without hard work, and until they are fulfilled, the prosperity in them will remain unreachable. Hard work therefore is a significant key of moving from where we are to where God wants us to be so long as success in life or ministry is concern.
Let’s share a bit on fulfilling God’s program for our lives, since the progress and success our lives needs is usually buried in God’s preplanned programs for them. Fulfilling God’s pre-planned program for your life will involve sensing them from time to time and laboring to have them birth on earth as it is in Heaven. Which is where diligence comes in.
If you are not diligent, they will remain unfulfilled. In other words, if you do not sense God’s plans and work hard and smart for them to come to pass, God’s presence will lack what to water to bring His word to pass in your life.
THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED PROPHETIC DILIGENCE.
That was what Jesus did. Prophetic diligence is sensing God working something in the spirit realm and getting up to join Him in the natural realm. It is hard work based in prophetic understanding of what God wants you to do, or what the Spirit will bless or enable you to do.
We must learn to sense what God is doing from time to time and be swift in doing it on earth as sensed in our spiritual senses. That is how prophetic diligence works. It’s like a partnership between the unseen things God has done in the unseen realm and our spiritual senses.
Now someone may not understand me; but what I meant was best
captured by the Bible story of what happened between David and God in the battle against the Philistines in 2 Samuel 5. The Bible made it clear that David did not rise against the Philistines until God has risen. At one time God said to Him:
“You shall not go up; circle around behind them, and come upon them in front of the mulberry trees.
And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines” (2 Samuel 5:23-24 NKJV).
If David had gone to sleep after hearing the sound of marching on the top of those trees, or if He was too lazy to move into battle and fight, there would have been no way he would have unleashed his divine destiny as a warrior of righteousness that very day.
The victory the LORD had already accomplished in the Spirit that day would have been withheld in the spirit realm.
Do you know how many victories or successes you have missed in life for lack of prophetic diligence?
Do you know how much your economic life would have improved if you had embraced prophetic diligence? If you do not add prophetic diligence to your quest to succeed through hard work, you will still live a hard life despite your hard work. It was through prophetic diligence that our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob prospered in their days.
ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB WERE GUIDED BY THE LORD TO PURSUE THE ECONOMIC THINGS THEY PURSUED.
Isaac was told not to go to Egypt, but sow in the land, Jacob was shown how to make speckled sheep produce non-speckled sheep and how to make non speckled sheep produce speckled sheep. God showed him cross breeding. The prophetic diligence saw them through.
In fact, a major highlight in our devotional text says “..If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies.”
But the reverse is the case in many places. People who are not willing to work are the greatest eaters among us. They trouble us to give them this and that. God cannot bless any people who are lazy. The release of destiny requires a lot of hard work. We see that in the verses that preceded the one highlighted above.
Paul wrote to the Church at Thessalonica saying;
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.”
You will not be able to achieve significantly if you are not willing to work with labor and toil night and day like Paul did. You will not be able to release your destiny if you do not add hard work to your Christian life.
Like earlier stated, everyone who ever walked with God was a warrior not some lazy pigs. Abraham was a warrior, Jacob was a warrior, and Isaac was a hard-working farmer who could re-dig wells that his father dug in time past.
IF YOU READ GENESIS 26, YOU WILL DISCOVER THAT THE PHILISTINE BLOCKED THE WELLS ONCE.
And he dug them again once. He matched every attack of the devil with hard work and God blessed Him. If he was lazy and weak they way many of us are today he would have said “let’s forget about the wells. What is lost is lost!” The kingdom of God has a special blessing for the diligent.
Sadly speaking, there are a lot of lazy people in ministry and in Church today. In one hand we have prophets and pastors who do not work hard. They go about prophesying money from people’s pockets. Others will be going about from one public transport facility to another predating through what people see as preaching; they will stand to preach one empty message and close by requesting for an offering.
While there could be those God genuinely called to preach in public transport facilities, majority are just victims of the perils of their own Laziness and idleness.
We also have members who are always begging and refusing to do anything reasonable with their hands. They will always meet you with a problem to solve instead of a business idea to advise them on how to actualize. This is very sad!
The amazing thing is this bunch of people does claim to be hearing from God. How can you be hearing from God and be idle or lazy.
How can you be hearing from God and be running greedily after people’s money and asking them to sow seeds instead of looking for what problem to solve for God to bring you some money?
People who hear from God are very busy people; full of integrity.
They are busy doing what they heard from Him; saving this soul, pursuing this business, solving this problem, putting things in kingdom order, obeying the last command from the throne room, and etc. They do not sit down looking for the next person to beg money from or defraud.
What is the message this morning? If you fulfill your destiny, you must work hard and work smart. You must not be foolish, lazy and idle. That is the message.
MAKE THESE SCRIPTURES AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a wise son; He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.” Proverbs 10:4-5 NKJV
“The appetite of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the appetite of the diligent is abundantly supplied.” Proverbs 13:4 AMP
“The thoughts of the [steadily] diligent tend only to plenteousness, but everyone who is impatient and hasty hastens only to want.”
“Securing treasures by a lying tongue is a vapor driven to and fro; those who seek them seek death.” Proverbs 21:5-6 AMP
“Do you see a man diligent and skillful in his business? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” Proverbs 22:29 AMP
