TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Friday 16th July 2021)
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
“Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Isaiah 9:6-7 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 197TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS!
God be praised for giving us another day to serve Him and fulfill His plans and purposes. Days are not really for us, since He created all things for His pleasure. Days are for Him. Days are given to us so that we may fulfill God’s purpose for our lives.
It is like the car. No car was manufactured for the car. All cars are manufactured for the purpose of the manufacturer to be fulfilled – man. We bring our lives to ruin if we do not spend our days fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives.
Yes, sometimes it can be difficult spending your days around a routine, but that is the safest thing to do if that routine is serving God’s eternal purpose or assignment for your life. It will give you peace, Joy, sense of fulfillment, and etc. It will unlock your prosperity and make you a man or women of impact in the lives of others.
Heaven will look at you with pleasure and bless you in seasons. Believe me, hell will also look at you, but with displeasure to try to stop you. Yes, you will receive all kinds of assaults from the gates of hell but will always see the salvation of the LORD!
The life of Paul comes to mind at this point. He spent his days in a routine that was around God’s assignment for His life. He said;
“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,
if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” Philippians 2:10-14 NKJV
Show me a man or woman with this kind of passion and drive in life, I will show you a man or woman who hell will give so much troubles and Heaven will rejoice over. That explains why this man of God went through so much, and why He did so much. He laboured more than the rest of the apostles.
It explains why he turned so many hearts to the LORD and still do so today through the letters he wrote hundreds of years ago to the Churches he planted and the people he raised.
HE SPENT HIS DAYS, EVEN IN THE MIDST OF THE WORSE TROUBLES FROM HELL, HAVING ONE DEEP CONCERN AND ONE STRONG ROUTINE.
The routine birth great Christians and Churches and kept him deeply concerned about them. It was so strongly built around God’s plans and purposes for His life that his hands never grew weak even in prison, or the attacks on his life; persecutions, hunger, thirst and etc. He said in his own words;
“From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep;
in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—
besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?” 2 Corinthians 11:24-29 NKJV
If you look at what this man of like passion went through, you will realize just one thing. Satan hates focused people. He hates people who are focused on Gods assignment for their lives. He hates those whose daily routine is built around why they are here on earth.
He will do all he can to either kill them tragically, or take them subtly out of that routine, even if it means giving them what looks like a better job, a promotion, a better life, or even a great marriage. You must understand that the highest fear of Satan is having your life around God’s assignment for it.
HIS HIGHEST FEAR IS TO SEE YOU SPENDING YOUR DAYS AS YOU SHOULD UNDER GOD!
You can see that in all Paul went through.
Sometimes people back out from building their lives around God’s assignment for it because of the price. But if you want to led a blessed life or a life that will make generational impact, your routine must be strongly built around God’s assignment for your life. No distractive move, persecution or adversity from hell should successfully neutralize it.
You may go through a lot because of that but the power you will generate on earth despite what you may be going through will still be speaking long after you are gone.
Most people are weak, powerless, poor, and immature because they are not focused. They are worried about many things like Martha hence dissipating their God given energy on things that has nothing to do with their assignment on earth.
I want to submit to you that God created you just for one thing to be done with your life. God did not create you for many things to be done with it. If you spend your days around many things instead of that one thing, you will remain where you are in life. Your life decisions will be poor, leading to very unpleasant results of life.
Even the global Church was born just for one thing. A major highlight in our devotional text says;
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder.”
Hidden in this statement is the apostolic function of the true Church (I mean the Church global). The Bible says the government of Jesus will be on us because we are His shoulder. Don’t forget, He is the head of the body. The Bible also says He is the governor among the nations. As our Head and His shoulders, we are called to carry out His governmental functions on the face of the earth.
THE FUNCTIONS ARE IN TWO FOLDS OR PHASES.
The first is the demolition phase; which involves rooting out what He has not planted in the nations, and pulling down what He has not built in the lives of men, destroying every evil works and throwing down anything that exalts itself against the knowledge of GOD. The second is the reconstruction phase; which is to build lives and get His redemptive will planted or established on earth as written in Heaven.
We can call this two fold functions of the Church, “The One Thing” God pre-determined or ordained the routine of local churches to be built around.
Meaning, pastors should not spend their days doing any other thing other than this. They should not spend their days running business and being CEOs of this company and that company then come on Sundays to preach one sermon or the other, delegating members to do what we were supposed to be doing.
A lot of Churches have become gates of hell because of leaders who are not doing what Jesus ordained the Church to do. Because of spiritual leaders whose life routine is not built around the eternal purpose of the Church.
Paul was so sold out to the one thing; the eternal purpose of the Church that when he got to cities where there were no people to support his ministry, he would decide to work with his hands instead of manipulate with his teachings to take care of His needs. The vision is that he will not be a burden to people who have not come into the revelation of supporting a missionary with substance.
Sadly, many are standing on this brief moments of his life and ministry to become what they call part-time pastors and etc. dissipating their energies in money making ventures instead of the eternal purpose of God for the Church.
Any church whose leaders are not focused on the one thing God ordained for the Church, will soon become a gate of hell on earth. It will soon become a synagogue of Satan.
When a local Church is focused on the One Thing God ordained the global Church to be focused on, that place will be a gate of heaven on earth, bringing the power to overcome sin and lead righteous lives on individual members of that church.
THE MEMBERS WILL CATCH THE SAME SPIRIT AND CHANNEL THEIR ENERGY TO THAT ONE THING.
I want to submit to you that by God’s design and plan, you are His weapon of war, destined to be used in defeating hell and promoting Heaven on earth. But lack of strong focus on the one thing why you are here on earth could turn you into a creature to be pitied.
Jesus spent His earthly life on earth showing us how to live. He spent it doing one thing and not many things. The Bible says;
Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.
Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!
And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.” John 4:34-38 NKJV
There is so much in this scripture that we cannot unpack in a devotional. But if Jesus as man, who knew no sin and had the highest form of divinity on earth, will succeeded because He was focused on the ONE THING He was here for, then we will be unwise to think we can succeed in life without doing what He did.
If you read the four gospels, you will realize that He was a carpenter until He clocked 30, the age of divine reset.
Yes, 30 is one of the three or four years of divine reset in the kingdom.
That was why in Israel, before 30, you could be doing this or that, but after 30, you are expected to enter into a reset that gets the routine of the rest of your life around the One Thing why you are here on earth.
Whatever you do before 30, is to bring you to the place of building the routine of your life around the one thing why you are here on earth. That was why you find David becoming King at 30, Joseph becoming prime minister in Egypt at 30, and the Levites entering into priesthood at 30.
Practically, anyone with no fortune to inherit, who still cannot tell why they are here on earth at 30, will suffer barrenness in life. They will not be fruitful in whatever they may be doing. They will get to 40, 50, 60 and even above crying and sorrowing, because they never came into the revelation of the one thing their life was created for and built the routine of their lives around it.
Any day you spend outside God’s routine for your life is a wasted Day. Any day you spend outside a routine built around why you are here on earth is a wasted day. Failure in life is most times a child of accumulated wasted days that grew to become wasted weeks, wasted months and then wasted years.
God sent this word to tell you to stop dissipating your energies on things that were not designed to be part of the one thing God created your life to do on earth.
You have a decision to make today; a decision to stop dissipating your energies on MANY THINGS and restrict it to the ONE THING you were supposed to build the routine of your life around.
Someone reading this is suffering because his or her life is full of days not spent around God’s one thing for it. The Devil wants you to be busy here and there, until the days God appointed of your life on earth are gone.
He wants you to be moving from this job to the other job. He wants you busy from this marriage to the other marriage. He wants you here and there. He wants that to be your judgment. But you can stop it today with a righteous decision, guided by this devotional.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
Now as the king passed by, he cried out to the king and said, “Your servant went out into the midst of the battle; and there, a man came over and brought a man to me, and said, ‘Guard this man; if by any means he is missing, your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver.’
While your servant was busy here and there, he was gone.”
Then the king of Israel said to him, “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it.” 1 Kings 20:39-40 NKJV