TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 22nd April 2026)
“Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.” Micah 2:10 KJV
WELCOME TO THE 112TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF STRATEGIC VICTORY
If the devil is killing a man through a pleasurable deed, a lifestyle or a relationship (the way he did to Samson, God’s warrior), praying to be free from whatever he may be doing, while still involved in the pleasurable deed, living the lifestyle or attached to the person, will not bring deliverance or safety.
It will be like lying in Delilah’s home and praying that God save you from her desire to know the secret of your strength. The only way to be saved is to walk away not to pray. We must understand when prayer is not needed but action.
When spiritual attacks come through what we do, how we live or a relationship we are attached to, praying to stop the attacks will never bring a permanent peace to our lives. Repenting from what we may be doing or how we may be living or detaching ourselves from anyone who may be a door to the attack, are the only things that will bring permanent peace.
Israel never came out of slavery until they came out of Egypt.
Egypt in that Bible story is a shadow of what we may be doing or how we may be living, or what wrong relationships we may be in. Its slavery represents what any of them can do to a Child of God.
Each one can turn you into a terrible slave to sin, Satan and the evil of this age, with no freedom to serve God and do His blessed will.
When God wants to set us free from such bondages, He will not leave us in anything we may be doing, or any way we may be living, or any relationship that is a door to our captivity. He will confront us to repent and pull us out, sometimes through terrible things in righteousness!
The devil’s threefold missions remains to kill, steal and destroy. Deeds that gives us pleasure at the detriment of our walk with God, lifestyles the flesh creates, and wrong relationships remain some of his greatest killings, stealing and destroying machines on the face of the earth.
SADLY, HE HAS BEEN EFFECTIVE IN USING ALL OF THESE SPIRITUAL WEAPONS OF WAR.
For instance, Samson’s deed with Delilah gave him pleasure. Satan would later use it to almost neutralize him. Reuben’s deed on his father’s bed gave him pleasure. But it later made him one who could be cursed. King Saul was preplanned to be king over Isreal forever, but one lifestyle he choose for himself buried that plan of God for his life.
Jonathan, his son, would have been saved from all the trouble and still fulfilled his destiny as David’s second in command. But he died with his father, the king, who was under divine judgment without fulfilling his destiny. The Devil used the weapon of wrong association to eliminate him.
The sad thing was that he knew his path in life and understood God’s plan for his life. But he never fulfilled it. He said to David,
“Don’t be afraid,” Jonathan said. “My father Saul will never get his hands on you. In fact, you’re going to be the next king of Israel, and I’ll be your highest official. Even my father knows it’s true.” 1 Samuel 23:17 CEV
How sad it is to know God’s plans for your life and yet not fulfill it? If Satan engage his killing machines against you, it will work if you walk in sentiments instead of the Spirit. So, let’s look at the error of Jonathan for a moment. He knew his destiny but died without fulfilling it because the devil used his attachment to his father to stop him.
God killed his father for visiting a witch and for rebelling against him. Sadly, Jonathan died with him.
Satan knew Jonathan’s father will come under the sword of divine judgment. Hence keeping Jonathan attached to the father even after the man had lost favor with God. He kept the young man in his father’s service. Sometimes people die deaths that are not theirs. They die another person’s death because sentiments will not let them detach themselves from those people.
THAT WAS THE STORY OF JONATHAN – ONE OF THE SAD STORIES IN THE BIBLE.
One may ask, should he have detached himself from his father? The answer is yes! The man Saul, had long ago ceased from being his father in the sight of GOD the day he threw a spear at him – the idea was to kill him. Before God, if you desire to kill your child, you cease being the parent of that child.
Yes, you cease from being the parent in God’s sight, the way a husband or wife ceases to be your husband or wife if he or she throws a spear of death at you. Jonathan should have ran away to the stronghold the way David did and remain there until prophecy was fulfilled. But sentiments and lack of courage would not let him.
There are so many Jonathans today in church, serving husbands that are bound to remain Satan’s killing, stealing or destroying machines. There are Jonathans in Church today serving wives, Churches and so-called men of God, and all kinds of people they are attached to – people that are bound to remain Satan’s killer machines.
There are daughters who are still attached to biological fathers or stepfathers who sleeps with them, even to the point of getting them pregnant. And they are not doing anything about it. They do not know that when a parent (direct or stepparent) defile you sexually, you come under a curse. The curse could manifest in any form.
Most times such curses cannot be broken because they are from God. You see that in the book of Leviticus.
Sadly, just as Jonathan could not fulfill his destiny because of attachment to a parental relationship that became a wrong relationship, so many in our time will not fulfill their destinies for remaining attached to relationships that have become wrong relationships.
When a good relationship becomes a wrong relationship, as a child of God you must bend your knees and pray strongly about the next step to take. If you pray reading the stories of people in scripters in your kind of situation and how God led them to handle them, you will not come under the sword of the enemy.
But if you remain senselessly attached to it like Samson was attached to Delilah and Jonathan to his father, there are no words that will describe what your life will turn into.
IF A RELATIONSHIP YOU ARE ATTACHED TO BECOMES SATAN’S DESTINY KILLING MACHINE, THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO DETACH YOURSELF FROM IT.
There are no two ways about it. If you create any way, that way might become your way to ruin. If you keep yourself attached, while you need to detach, hoping things will change. You will be the one to change the way Jonathan was changed. He was changed from a living soul to a dead corpse in the battlefield, while fighting for his father – a man who God no longer fight for.
There are people fighting for preachers God no longer fight for. There are those attaching themselves and fighting for spiritual authorities that God has abandoned like Saul. If you fight for people that God, no longer fight for, you will lose your life.
If you attach yourself to people who are not attached to God, you will lose in life. If you support people that God no longer support, you will collide with God. As children of God, we are not to remain with who God has departed from. We will be destroyed without remedy if that happens. We are not designed to have peace in life that way.
No child of God is designed to have peace in life if he is involved in a pleasure Satan can use to destroy him or leading a lifestyle that he can use to ruin him or sharing their lives with the wrong person.
Yes, if a pleasurable deed, or lifestyle or even a person you are attached to is cursed like Saul was, you must walk away from him, stop the deed or turn away from the lifestyle.
We should not remain attached to accursed deeds, lives, or people, else we share in the curses and start suffering unnecessarily in life.
Sadly, many wives are under curses as well as many husbands. I have seen a spouse sharing in the curse of the other spouse. It is not pleasant. Some preachers, spiritual fathers and their Churches are under the curse of God for doing despicable things.
SOME OF THEM THE CURSES ARE NOT SPEAKING YET.
Many Church members are also under the curse of God for doing exactly what King Saul did in his days. Sadly, some Jonathans are also attached to them GOING through a lot in life. They do not know they are sharing curses that may never be broken.
There are also God’s servants who are attached to accursed Church members. They are suffering today. I have been attached to accursed church members many times. People you shepherd according to the integrity of your heart, only to find them saying things to people that you never did, using facts that are twisted.
You will regret being a pastor during such painful moments. My life is full of such moments. In fact, I have become used to them. I can tell you, there are some church members you will have, that will look like very good people, but they are curses waiting to speak in your life, as a pastor.
All the wrong things that happened to me in life as a preacher happened because of my attachment to them. I would have died like Jonathan if I had not detached myself from some of those wicked church members early. I had to end their time in my life by sending them away from my space.
If you are in Jonathan’s situation as a Child of God, there is only one prophetic word for you. That word is in our devotional text this morning, and it’s simple. It says, “Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.”
That is the word of the LORD. Depart from that accursed person, deed, or lifestyle no matter how promising, pleasurable, or beneficial it may be to you now. May the LORD guide you further. Amen and amen.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY
“I turned about [penitent] and my heart was set to know and to search out and to seek [true] wisdom and the reason of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness [and what had led me into such wickedness and madness].
And I found that [of all sinful follies none has been so ruinous in seducing one away from God as idolatrous women] more bitter than death is the woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are bands. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her.” Ecclesiastes 7:25-26 AMP
