TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Friday 4th December 2020)
“Listen to my words O LORD, consider my groaning and sighing. Heed the sounds of my cry for help, my King and my God, For to you I pray.
In the morning, O LORD, you will hear my voice; In the morning I will prepare (a prayer and a sacrifice) for you and watch and wait (for you to speak to my heart).
“For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil (person) dwells with you” – Psalm 5:1-4 Amplified Version
WELCOME TO THE 337th DAY OF OUR YEAR OF REJOICING
When the circumstances that surrounds you begin to run contrary to the prophetic promises made concerning you, it will take faith in the faithfulness of God to still walk with Him. That is how many fall away; it is also the only way we can differentiate between true and false worshipers.
One of the major things God will require that we do these end times is to be patient and develop capacity to endure.
Making Heaven this trouble times has become more difficult, which is why I guess there is more grace from the LORD. There has been no time that men accept evil as good like now. Concerning these things and what I will like to describe as Christianity in the end times, Jesus prophesied saying;
“And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Matthew 24:10-13 KJV
When you read God saying “he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” He is simple saying there are things that will happened to us these end times that whatever we do in His word to come out of them will never bring us out.
There are situations, circumstances, matters, persecutions, and troubles that will happen to us that Heaven will not intervene in ways we expect.
We will be expected to go through and endure them.
Yes, He is saying there are things we will be caught up with that even prayer, word application, fasting, giving, praising and etc. will not be able to eliminate and bring us out. We will just have to go through and ENDURE each and every one of them, if we will make this Heaven.
Child of God, I am here to inform you that we are right in the days of “he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Expect the most senseless and craziest things to happen.
Yes, expect things that do not make sense to happen, because we are in days where Heaven will watch the righteous go down without doing whatever the righteous expects in the midst of it all.
WE ARE IN DAYS WHERE THE RIGHTEOUS IS EXPECTED TO ENDURE TROUBLES BY KEEPING THE FAITH TILL THE END.
If you do not understand this, you will be among those who are will fall away because bad things started happening from the day they decided to live a righteous life before GOD. Many will be the affliction of the righteous this end time, but the LORD will deliver us however not in way we expect.
For instance, I expected our sister who just passed to be delivered from her ailment through healing. But God decided to deliver her by giving her a final rest from her sorrows. He decided to deliver her, not from the messenger of death called cancer of the liver, but from the body of death itself. Living us heartbroken.
Before God, especially in this case, her deliverance was coming out of the body of death. But to us who prayed her deliverance should have been healing from the ailment. That is what I meant by God delivering us from our afflictions, but not in way we expect Him to do it.
I have seen Him deliver so many people from diseases by my hand even through Television, but this time He decided to deliver this one from the body of death itself and not the messenger of death. He gave these other people a healed body but decided to give our sister a glorified body! There is nothing we can do other than to endure to the end.
You may have your own issue that Heaven seems to be silent about.
Yes, things that you did nothing to bring upon your life but are all around making your life a pain. You just have to build your faith to endure; we all have to learn when and how to switch our faith to endurance mode this trouble times; that is if we will be saved or remain Heaven worthy at the end of our days on earth.
There are, and will be more temptations to endure, and fiery trials to go through.
This is the time for the saints to build their faith to endure things that Heaven will not send interventions in ways we expect. Sadly, many will run away from the LORD and abandon the faith when things like that begin to happen, forgetting that our fathers went through the worse, in their days.
IF YOU FALL AWAY LIKE THAT, YOU WILL FILL THE HEART OF THE LORD WITH TEARS AND LOSE YOUR SOUL TO THE TORMENT OF SHEOL.
We must all build our faith to stay on with the LORD and not to run out of the faith because of the bad things that may be happening to us!
Now let me talk to another set of precious people in the faith.
There are people who were having peaceful lives until they decided to live a Holy and Righteous lives before the LORD! They were okay till they found good churches and became truly committed to the LORD, then all hell broke loose upon them.
These breed includes people who got tired of fornication, adultery, masturbation, living in lies and practicing charismatic witchcraft; they got tired of even the prosperity of the wicked they had ‘enjoyed’ and decided to find good churches to help them lead a consecrated Christian life. Then Pharaoh came after them.
Friend, if you are one of this breed, you must understand what the LORD expects of you. He wants you to endure to the end. We are not expected to give up. Any Christianity that lacks that kind of affliction is false and fake. Christianity is living Egypt for Canaan. If you have really left Egypt, then Pharaoh will come after you. If you find Pharaoh not coming after you, then you are still in Egypt.
What am saying is, if we have really left a life of sin, hypocrisy and all the likes, Satan will come after us. If we are living a Christian life that He is not coming after us, then we have not left his way of life. If we depart from his way of life and he comes after us, we are expected to endure. It is those who endure that shall be saved!
The Bible did not even say those who pray, fast of give but those who endure. Praying, fasting and giving may unlock great faith and grace from the LORD, but not the faith or grace to come out of the situation. They will unlock the faith and grace to endure.
THERE IS FAITH TO ENDURE AND FAITH TO COME OUT. GOD WILL SUPPLY THE ONE TO ENDURE DURING THOSE MOMENTS.
Now, it is not easy to endure. God knows that very well. Hence supplying both the faith and grace to.
That brings us to few things we can draw from our devotional text this morning. The first tells us something about prayer, and the last, the relationship between God and the wicked. But let us stay with the first.
Whenever things we must endure happens to us, we do not always know that they belong to classes of trouble to endure. We do not always know that they do not belong to the class of things we are to be delivered from in ways we expect. The first thing that we always do is to pray, expecting God to act the way we are demanding.
During those moments Heaven understands, but most times earth do not! Earth will get disappointed and discouraged. But Heaven will keep supplying the presence of the LORD we need to keep the faith and remain in grace.
In those moments, we do not always sound prophetically intelligent.
Well, sometimes we don’t have to sound intelligent to be heard by the LORD. Like our devotional text puts it, we just pray anyhow, expecting the LORD to “Listen to our words, consider our groaning and sighing.” We groan and sigh in prayers expecting Him to “Heed the sounds of our cry for help, being our King and God,”
Our devotional text is one of the Psalms of David.
David’s Psalm have a way of showing us what he faced in his days. He must have faced similar things in His days. Hence crying unto the LORD like we all do when faced with similar circumstances;
“Listen to my words O LORD, consider my groaning and sighing. Heed the sounds of my cry for help, my King and my God, For to you I pray.
In the morning, O LORD, you will hear my voice; In the morning I will prepare (a prayer and a sacrifice) for you and watch and wait (for you to speak to my heart).
“For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil (person) dwells with you”
But did the LORD listened and intervened the way he expected? There was a time men rode over his life until he could no longer cry. Many are indeed the afflictions of the righteous.
What is the message this morning? The message is simple. We are in days of enduring certain things. We are in days when Heaven will not intervene in our life circumstances in ways we expect.
We are in days of seeing God not answering our prayers and passions the way we expect, living us even in the pains of mockery from a lost world; the pain of hearing mouths say “they trusted in their God, now where is their GOD? They went to Church and pray daily, now look at what has happened to them!”
Friend, God will not move to kill them, because Enoch tells us that there is a day He has reserved for their punishment. He will only move to strengthen you!
Do not forget, if Pharaoh is not coming after you, it is not because he is dead, it is because you have not left Egypt. You are still building Rameses for him in Egypt.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY
“These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage.
But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts.
These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever.” Amen. JUDE 1:16-25 NKJV