TODAY’S DEVOTION (Sunday 18th October 2020)
“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
And do not present your members as [d]instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” Romans 6:12-14 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 290th DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
For 290 out of the 365 days of this year, the LORD has kept us. I will always declare that He has not dealt with us according to our sins, but according to His mercies. This is not to strengthen anyone’s hands in wickedness. Except there is repentance, the Bible says the soul that sins shall die. This is to show us how merciful our LORD is, in not allowing us to perish because of our sins.
The Bible says He understands our frames and knows our frailty, hence showing mercy each time we approach His throne for it.
This morning I was thinking about my life and reasoning over what would have happened to me if I were in the days of the Old Testament. If you do the same, you will realize that many of us would have been either stoned to death for our sinful acts, or consumed by the glory for our iniquities. But here we are living after the Cross, that is why our sinful nature has not crushed us.
We have learned under the grace of the LORD that God looks out to the repentance of the erring not his or her destruction. But the consistently righteous, will be decked with an uncommon glory by the LORD. If you are therefore, looking for uncommon glory in your life, you must be consistent in living a sinless life by the grace of GOD upon your life.
In as much as God forgives us each time we fall into sin and approach His throne for mercies, His ultimate desire for our lives is that we become consistent in righteous living. He does not want us to remain in the brazen altar of confession of sins and repentance from the same, He wants us to proceed to the golden altar of becoming burnt offerings for Him on the face of the earth – a place in GRACE where we become consistent in right living.
There are a lot of things that do not allow many of us stay consistent in right living; some of them are so close and so near that we cannot do away with them. This is not just about people around us, because you can stay with people who are really sinful and not become sinful yourself.
THIS IS ABOUT THE THINGS THEY TRANSMIT INTO US AS WE LIVE TOGETHER WITH THEM.
Until filthiness is transmitted into us, no matter how close we are with people who are not living right, we will never fall into sin. It is when our internal resistance system is down that we fall into sin and become inconsistent in right living. And it seems to me that Satan knows this more than most of us, that is why his focus has always been to weaken us from the inside.
You may be wondering why I say Satan knows it more than us!
Well, if you look at us, we don’t really concentrate our devotions on building and strengthening our internal resistance system in our walk with GOD. We concentrate so much on the outside.
We focus on our financial, marital, and physical needs. We pray for this miracle or that blessing to come upon us. We seek the LORD for lands, houses, wives and husbands. We do all that without focusing on our need for strength in the inner man. The few of us who know, do little or nothing for the inside us yet expects the outside us to be great.
We do not know that things in God’s kingdom do not work that way! That is why the Bible says;
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.
Put away from you a [a]deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.
Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil.” Proverbs 4:23-27 NKJV
THE ADMONITION TO KEEP OUR HEARTS WITH ALL DILIGENCE IS AN ADMONITION TO FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING OUR INTERNAL RESISTANCE SYSTEM.
This scripture presents some ways to do that. Some of it says, “Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you.” In other words, do not be intimate with people who lie and walk in perversion because a perverse lip is a sign of a perverse heart.
If we do not put things that breaks our internal resistance system down away from us, especially thoughts and imaginations that rise within us, we will never be internally strong enough to overcome any sin.
Talking about consistency, no one can be consistent in right living if his or her internal resistance system is weak. It does not matter how anointed or powerful he or she may be in Christ, if our internal resistance system is weak, we will find ourselves falling dangerously into sin every now and then.
Jesus came as man to show us the way, but if His internal resistance system was weak when He was here on earth in His physical form, He would have fallen into sin like all of us do. But it was strong, that was why He was tempted in all points like us, yet without sin.
Today His Holy Spirit is here to help us. One way He helps us, is by strengthening our internal resistance system as we seek Him to do so in prayer, fasting, and feasting on the word.
That is why His first approach whenever we sin always focuses on strengthening our internal resistance system, and most times warning us of the devils we are opening our lives to. Grace is collected in the place of repentance as an inner strength to resist sin. Yes, it manifests as a refreshing in our souls not to go back to our sins again.
OUR DEVOTIONAL TEXT THIS MORNING IS FULL OF GREAT TRUTHS ON THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
It tells us so much about the power of GOD’s grace when it is at work in our lives.
Personally, I have come to discover that when we come under grace, we receive the enabling power to rise back to righteousness when we fall into sin and approach the throne of GOD for mercy. It is the same enabling power that is responsible for all who are consistent in right living. It keeps their inner man strengthened against the pressure of sin.
A portion of our devotional text this morning says,
“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.”
If sin will not reign in our mortal body to the point of we becoming its slave, we must begin to focus on strengthening our internal resistance system and not just the external things we need from the LORD.
We must begin to operate like the Eagle that withdraws from its daily activities from time to time to the mountain to renew and build its internal strength. We must stop working like the bee so that we will stop falling like they do. The Bible says,
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:30-31 NKJV
When the Bible says “Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young man shall utterly fall” it is not talking about physical age. It is referring to those who have overcome both sin and the evil.
In effect, the prophet was saying, “even those who have overcome sin and the evil one may faint, be weary, or utterly fall.” In other words, the warriors that everyone sees as people who have overcome sin and the evil one may faint, be weary, or utterly fall. Why? Because of the possibility of a sudden collapse of their internal resistance system.
The prophet went on to say
“but those who consistently seek the LORD, or bind themselves together with Him to strengthen their internal resistance system, will renew their strength and mount up with wings like the Eagle.”
As we bring this to a close, I want to submit to us that there is something called the Internal Sin Resistance System (The ISRS) in every Child of God. Our job is to focus on building it up and strengthening it from time to time.
A people who will not focus on spending time with the LORD like the Eagle to strengthen their Internal Sin Resistance System (ISRS), will keep presenting their bodies as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. Yes, we will not be able to present ourselves to the LORD as being alive from the dead, neither will we be able to present our bodies as instruments of righteousness. Sin will be reigning or having dominion over us.
Friend, it is dangerous to lead a Christian life that is dominated by sin. The Bible makes it clear that we will not see the kingdom of God if we lead such a life and die that way!
LET THIS SCRIPTURAL BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY:
“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: [a]adultery, [b]fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
envy, [c]murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 NKJV