TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL (Thursday 22nd July 2021)
“Those who do wickedly against the covenant he shall corrupt with flattery; but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.” Daniel 11:32 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 203RD DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS!
For us at the Spiritual Family of the Cry of the Spirit Ministries, it’s been 203 days spending time with the word to build our lives around the Kingdom power and glory of God! This we have being doing through our daily devotionals, daily or weekly word and prayer on our television channel, the MCTV Global, and fellowship meetings in our apostolic center.
By God’s grace, our lives are changing to the glory of God! The Bible says;
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 NKJV
What you build your life around will ultimately affect you negatively or positively. That is why it’s dangerous to do wickedly against the covenant. Life can be strongly shaped by what we build ourselves around.
For instance, if you build your life around pornographic pictures – motion or static – no amount of prayer will be able to save you from sexual perversion. It will form a stronghold of sexual perversion on your mind.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU BUILD YOUR LIFE AROUND.
If you build your life, as a man, around the habit of looking at the backside of women or their secrets parts, you are bound to commit something sinful. If you do the same as a woman, looking at men lustfully, you are bound to live a life of sexual sins. You just have to disconnect from things that will pollute your internal life to lead a holy life as a believer. Most times this is done painfully.
If you build your life around people who hate God or turn their back on the gospel, or you build your life around believers who do not want to go deep in their relationship with God, you will become like them. But if you build your life around God chasers; people who will want to have nothing less than the glory of God, you will also become like them.
If you build your life around churches that are full of hypocrisy, sexual defilement, and lies, you will become like them. If you build your life around Churches that function like the gate of Heaven on earth, you will become like them, leading to a portal of heaven opening over your soul. Anything we build our lives around, will be made manifest in our lives.
We absorb whatever we expose ourselves faithfully to – good or bad.
Our spirits are like soft materials that absorb the spiritual content of whatever we hang around – clean or unclean. That is why any generation that will not hang around the true God, will have devils hanging around them. Our devotional text said,
“those who do wickedly against the covenant shall the devil corrupt.”
Doing wickedly against the covenant is one of the spiritual plagues plaguing many in the Church today. We do not even know that salvation is a covenant, sealed with the blood of Christ. A covenant to be kept or a call to a covenant walk with God.
We must understand that our relationship with God is structure by dispensations and by the covenant. There are four basic covenants to build our lives on as Christians. If we do not build our lives on them, whatever we may have is not Christianity. The first of the four is the covenant of grace.
The covenant of Grace demands that we build our lives continually around Jesus Christ, His word and His Spirit. Anything short of that will expose us to the corruption of the devil. Sadly, we treat as believers today are heading to hell deceived that they are heading to Heaven.
IF YOU DO NOT KEEP THE COVENANT OF GRACE YOU WILL LOOSE YOUR SALVATION
And very few realize when they have lost their salvation. Many do not realize! You find them singing for God during service and singing on the beds of sexual immorality for the devil after service. You find many crucifying Christ again, and causing His heart to bleed without even realizing it. Yet singing “I am a friend of God”
A friend of God hands around God not sin!
The Bible made it clear that the fruit of hanging around God is holiness – a life of no darkness because God is light (holy) and there is no darkness at all in Him. But it’s not so in the lives of even those who claim to be hanging around God – moving from prayer forest or mountain to another!
You find us preaching and praying on Sunday, even against sin, and forget all we said to God on Monday while lying on the laps of other men’s wives or husbands, or with single men or women who have no respect for values and morality.
The covenant of grace is bastardized by our spiritual rascality and recklessness!
We commune with God at noon and commune with Satan at night. We say we are “born again” but our lifestyles defy our claims. We profess to know God, but in works we deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. We spend hours with movies but cannot spend a minute with Jesus. We spend hours with men of God but cannot spend even 10 strong minutes with the God of men.
WE MAKE PRACTICING PROSTITUTES AND HUSBAND SNATCHERS USHERS AND PASTORS.
We make unrepentant thieves, adulterers, liars, and cheats Church Elders. We now have gays called men of God, lesbians called women of God, with a distorted view of grace in our spirits. Doing wickedly against the covenant is the reason for all forms of satanic defilement in the Church today.
Whenever you do wickedly against the covenant of grace, you will be DISGRACED BY THE DEVIL.
Whenever you do wickedly against the covenant you become food for your enemies. Instead of being the head, you will become the tail, instead of your enemies running in seven ways each time they come against you, you will be the one running. If you truly take stock of your life this year, you will realize that the enemy had the upper hand when you did wickedly against the covenant. But you can make the rest of the year a season of “doing righteously” for the covenant.
You may ask how? Our devotional text gave us the answer. It says,
“But the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.”
Hallelujah!
To know God, is much more than having head knowledge of Him. The word “know” in Daniel 11:32 is the same word that was used when the Bible said AND ADAM “KNEW HIS WIFE”. The result was conception. It is a word that denotes intimacy – it calls for spending time with God until conception take place in our spirits.
It calls for hanging around God until we conceive the riches of His grace, the riches of His glory, and the riches of His mercies in our spirits. Only then can we begin to do exploit.
HANGING AROUND GOD WAS THE ULTIMATE PASSION OF CHRISTIANS OF ALL AGES WHO CARRIED OUT GREAT EXPLOITS FOR GOD!
It took them from ordinary to extraordinary. Today our extraordinary men and women are sorcerers and diviners called prophets. They hang around witch doctors and come out with all kinds of lying wonders to astonish the innocent!
But I studied the lives of extraordinary men and women who lived in the last two centuries – women like Katherine Khulman, Maria Woodworth Etta, Amie McPherson, and so forth. Men like Smith Wigglesworth, Charles Finney, Lester Sumrall, and the like. They all had one thing in common; “hanging around God, His word, and His Spirit” was it.
That was what made them extraordinary. That was what powered them to do exploit. Our generation has lost it. Today we prefer running after famed preachers instead of God. We prefer hanging out with men and women who are financially successful instead of God. That’s why we are powerless.
That is why many struggle with terrible sins like Masturbation, Lesbianism, homosexuality, and etc. That is why many cannot be free from ancient devils, curses and deadly diseases.
You don’t break these things by sowing seeds, drinking oil or giving any sacrifices to a prophet. You break from them by hanging around God under the spiritual tree of your spiritual father!
Christianity was designed to spring from god on daily bases. It is what spring from God on daily bases that make our Christianity true.
True Christianity is not a religion but a Heavenly life on earth. Hanging around God is the only way you can have the Heavenly life on earth. That is why we do not get tired of teaching sessions at the Cry of the Spirit ministry. We love hanging around God!
I want to urge you to make the rest of this year a season of greater glory by determining to be a Christian who hangs around God! Begin the adjustment today. That is why God sent this word your way!
You won’t fail in Jesus name. AMEN!!!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” Acts 4:31 NKJV