TODAY’S DEVOTION (Sunday 15TH November 2020)
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying:
“Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them — the children of Israel.
Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Joshua 1:1-4, 8 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 318TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
It’s being our season of looking into the things of God in a Prophetic Apostolic Training School – this times a school of Holiness. God has been faithful in doing great things in our lives and imparting us with strength on our inner man. As we rap up this week’s edition, may the LORD perfect His plans for our lives.
Doubtlessly, God has been so gracious in releasing insights and things to absorb into our spirits at the start of each day on this platform also. The Spirit of Truth has been showing us things that our divine destiny needs to be fulfilled in a wicked and perverse generation.
What is now required of us is “A DOING OF THE WORD” that we have been hearing. Apostle James admonished us in his book to “be doers of the word and not hearers only.” Meaning, if we hear but do not do, the Bible made it clear that we have deceived ourselves. And such self-deception will not allow the plans and purposes of God for our lives to be fulfilled.
The gospel is not preached or heard alone. The gospel is to be preached, heard and obeyed. As a result, it is not the hearers or readers of the word that are actually blessed but the doers of the word. It is a doing of the word that unlocks a divine destiny and bring God’s will and plan for our lives to pass.
Some false prophets and heretic teachers tell people to buy special padlocks and meet them with some money in other to unlock their destiny and see divine promises come to pass. You do not buy special keys and take to prophets to help unlock God’s word for your life. You do the word of the LORD to unlock God’s word for your life.
Mary asked the angel Gabriel, after receiving the promise, “How shall this be.” Meaning show me the process. The response remains the key to unlocking all of God’s promises; “the Holy Ghost will come upon you.” If we do the word, the Holy Ghost will come upon us to perform God’s word in our lives.
Doing the word is the key not following prescriptions from so called prophets and prophetesses.
When God was commissioning Joshua for ministry, one major instruction He gave him was what our devotional text captured.
A MAJOR HIGHLIGHT IN THE TEXT SAID;
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
If you look at this scripture carefully, you will discover that Joshua’s success in the release of his divine destiny was not anchored on sowing financial seeds into another ministry. It was not anchored on even prayer and fasting – as good as it is to pray or fast. It was anchored on doing the word of the LORD.
Now, don’t get me wrong, giving financial contributions to God’s righteous course or praying and fasting are very important acts of worship in the kingdom. These acts of worship have their own place in our walk with God. But nothing can substitute doing the WORD of the LORD in the manifestation of God’s promises in our lives.
When God gives us a promise, we must look for something that will cause His Holy Spirit to rest upon us and His power to overshadow us to do. That thing will be in alignment with God’s righteous ways and acts.
It takes A DOING to unlock a promise of GOD, and have good success in your life. It does not take just a hearing. In other words, if you do not add HOLY SPIRIT LED and SCRIPTURAL BASED ACTIONS to your divine destiny, it will not be fulfilled.
People who walk in complete obedience to the voice or word of the LORD, will be remembered for the great things God did in their lives and through their lives. We must come to the understanding that it takes total obedience to the voice and word of the LORD to unlock a divine promise or move from the declaration of that word to its manifestation.
When Saul, the first king of Israel, became king, prophecies made it clear that his Kingdom was to continue to the next generations. That was God’s promise for His life.
HE WAS FAVORED BY THE LORD TO BE ISRAEL’S FIRST KING AND HAVE HIS SEED LEAD THEM, FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION.
It was a glorious promise based on a divine plan! But that divine plan for His life was not fulfilled. He killed it using the potency of rebellion. He was not part of the breed that could do the word of the LORD. Hence, losing everything!
The same things will happen to anyone who hears but do not do the word!
The first word God gave him to do was an instruction to wait for seven days at Gilgal until Samuel the prophets comes to establish his kingdom over Israel forever. He actually waited, but could not complete his obedience. His was the problem of partial obedience, which equals disobedience in God’s kingdom!
The worse thing about his waiting was him going ahead to do a sacrifice that only a prophet was ordained to do. It was not a sin but a trespass. Sometimes, trespasses can be costlier than sins. What God has ordained only His servants to do, should not be taken over by you. That was what Saul did, and began the process of cancelling his divine destiny.
One trespass can destroy an entire destiny and hinder God’s word from coming to pass in a man’s life. The next word He could not do was the complete annihilation of the Amalekites. Like I said his was the problem of partial obedience. But God used that to teach us that partial obedience is disobedience in His kingdom.
God had sent Samuel to him with this instruction;
“Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt.”
“Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’“ (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NKJV).
The danger of partial obedience can be seen in the life of this man, who was blessed to be the first King of Israel. No one has ever last long in the place of blessing walking in partial disobedience.
You see, if you we obey the LORD partially, or do his word partially, we will leave gaps for His enemies to stand on and sabotage His kingdom at a later date. That is one of the many reasons God does not count partial obedience as obedience.
MEN MAY COUNT IT SO, BUT GOD DOES NOT COUNT IT SO.
Don’t forget Isaiah says
“as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are His ways higher than our ways.”
Saul would later abort his divine destiny and fall under the sword of divine judgment through partial disobedience and other forms of trespasses. The Bible gave two reasons why he died. The Bible says because He did not obey the voice of the LORD and because he consulted a witch.
I have come to discover that it is people who do not love doing the word of the LORD that runs after the witches and wizards we call prophets. They fall victims of lying prophets because they have no love for truth in their hearts. They do not know or DO THE WORD of the LORD but visit witches and wizards called prophets and run after them for miracles.
The preaching and teaching of the word of the LORD will be going but they will not participate in spirit and in truth. They will be waiting for you to finish then they rush you with prayer points. If you do not answer them, they run to charlatans, witches and wizards for help. The Bible says a generation that turns its ear from hearing the word even their prayers will be an abomination.
What is the message this morning?
The message is simple; God’s promises cannot be unlocked except we begin to do His word. That is why He fills our divine destinies with instructions to be obeyed and divine commands to be executed. If we do not develop the mindset of swiftly doing the word of the LORD, we will abort God’s plan for our lives and come to a tragic end like Saul.
That is the message!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the Lord all night.
So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel, saying, “Saul went to Carmel, and indeed, he set up a monument for himself; and he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal.” Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.”
But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” And Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”
Then Samuel said to Saul, “Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.” And he said to him, “Speak on.”
So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel?
Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”
And Saul said to Samuel, “But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”
So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.” 1 Samuel 15:10-23 NKJV