TODAY’S DEVOTION (Friday 12th November 2021)
“My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise. Awake, my glory! Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn.” Psalm 57:7-8 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 315TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF HIGHER HEIGHTS.
We give glory to the LORD God for giving us another day. His steadfast love has been the reason for our living. It’s strength and presence in our lives is stronger than what a billion haters can do in our lives. That is why we have not been given over to their will.
If people who hate us and call us all kinds of names were doing it in God’s will, surely we would have been given over to their wicked hands for a kill and a destruction. But thank God they are not doing any of that in God’s will. They are executing the will of their master the devil. That is why we are still alive.
The wickedness of the heart of the wicked is the reason the LORD will keep making them small while we grow and become very great on the face of the earth. Yes, our enemies and those who hate us will remain small and those who love us will be great. That is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us.
Some of these people did not start as haters. They started as lovers of what the LORD is doing by our hands, but because they could not keep their hearts with all diligence, weeds form hell grew in it and turned them into haters. The responsibility of keeping our hearts healthy is in our hands.
This morning we will be looking at matter of the hearts and refreshing our spirits with things we have shared on this platform before on the heart. I hope you are ready for a word from the LORD.
To start with, everyone must understand that our hearts are the seat of our moral or immoral life and not allow it to grow weeds or THOUGHT SYSTEMS from hell and turn us into ungodly beings.
Our hearts are gates between the visible and invisible. That is why they must watch over them carefully like a top security agent watch for the enemy, and not allow anything ungodly and wicked to fester on them.
Yes, we must realize that if a man’s life will be better, it will depend on the realm his heart is connected to.
SCRIPTURES SAYS WE SHOULD GUARD OUR HEARTS WITH ALL DILIGENCE FOR OUT OF IT ARE THE ISSUES OF LIFE.
As earlier stated, the responsibility of keeping the heart from growing weeds or thought systems from hell lies on our will. Are we willing to set our hearts to the right realm – the realm of God, or the wrong realm – the realm of men and darkness?
A song writer once wrote; “There are days I wake up feeling on top of the world. And there are days I wake up feeling the world is on top of me”. This is very true of all humans but it all depends on which realm our hearts opened to shortly before we slept.
If you do not treat your heart as a gate of the invisible realm (either good or bad), you will get your life stuck with things that will defile it and produce problems you cannot handle over time. Everyone who has ever related with God was made to tune his or her heart to the realm of God over time.
They spent quality time with God’s word day and night. They never lied down on their beds at night or in the morning thinking about those who had sex with them and how it was like, and all that nonsense. They did not spend their days brooding over things that do not produce righteousness in a man’s life. They spent their days and nights filling their thoughts with words from Heaven.
If you want to be like our Bible fathers in your walk and talk with God, not like one of those who will spend eternity in hell, you must follow their footsteps. Joshua comes to mind here. God spoke to him saying;
“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 1:8-9 NKJV
That was why we cannot see this man of God with many women like David or thousand like Solomon. While Solomon was spending his days thinking about the laps, faces, beauty and voices of seductive women, Joshua was spending his mediating on God’s word.
If you read the book of Songs of Solomon, you will realize while the man had a thousand woman as wives and concubines. He never allowed his heart to rest form thinking about women. If you follow the same way, thinking about the opposite sex every now and then, you will be having sexual dreams and getting yourself defiled with sexual sins every now and then.
Sadly, If you are under ministries that are influenced by the demon of deliverance, you will be told “you have a spirit husband or wife” depending on your sex. You will be using heretic books or your preacher’s deliverance manual or prayers points to deal with what can only be handled when you clean up your thought system or become pure in heart.
WHAT GROWS IN OUR HEARTS OVER TIME IS WHAT MAKES US HOLY OR UNHOLY, GODLY OR UNGODLY, PURE OR IMPURE, AND PERFECT OR IMPERFECT.
I shared about the life that God’s servant Smith Wigglesworth lived. He was a contemporary father of faith who set an example for us in matters of keeping the heart spiritually sound and morally excellent using the word. He broke forth, not just into Holiness as a result but power also.
Genuine power flows from the womb of Holiness not filthiness.
Though many have copied and desecrated what He did, he remains an example of faithful men to us. The man never read any other book in his life apart from the Bible. He never read News Papers, or exposed his heart to any information apart from the Bible. He called News Papers “the devil’s thing.”
The result was amazing. He got his heart connected to the right realm – the realm of God – all his Christian life.
I shared with us how he was invited to attend a funeral service of a particular man. That man was his friend. While the body of the dead man was laid in a little space within the place for viewing, people sat in the main hall participating in the funeral service. The body was alone at that place and there was a door leading to where it was laid for viewing.
Then the man of God walked in and went straight to where the corpse was lying. No one was with him and none followed him behind. He went in and took the corpse and placed it on the walk and commanded it to walk. But it fell! He did it again and it fell. And finally it walked. He said to himself and to all who saw what happened, “God never told me my friend was dying when I left for missions.”
He did the same thing with His wife who passed when he went for missions. The story had it that he returned and commanded her to wake up and she did. Then the women said to him “Oh Smith, why did you disturb me. I have fulfilled my days.” Then He said to her, “but you never told me you were leaving.” The women said, “Now I have told you” and she died back and they buried her.
THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHRISTIAN. OUR GENERATION HAS LOTS IT.
We have lost it because our hearts have grown weeds from hell, especially through the social media. Hence we cannot manifest anything from Heaven like these men did in their days. The Bible says,
“And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16:17-18 NKJV
Until our hearts follow the word of the LORD the way that of Smith did, the wonders of the word will not be performed in and through us.
Jesus Himself said anyone that the word of God comes to, in the frequency it came to Smith Wigglesworth, will become a small God on the face of the earth – He will become a true delegated authority of God on the face of the earth.
Time to reject a low level and powerless Christianity and accept the higher height of faith God has set for us.
I will not ignore the season of low moments in the life of a Child of God. Because we still live in an imperfect world, low moments are bound to come. However, what we do when such moments come is what really defines our strength in God. The Bible says
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
Deliver those who are drawn away to death, and those who totter to the slaughter, hold them back [from their doom].
If you [profess ignorance and] say, Behold, we did not know this, does not He who weighs and ponders the heart perceive and consider it? And He Who guards your life, does not He know it? And shall not He render to [you and] every man according to his works? Proverbs 24:10-12 AMP
Each time I read this scripture I see the expectation of God for our lives. God does not want our low moments to consume us. He said if they seem to be doing so, it’s because our strength is small. It is not because what we may be dealing with is bigger than us. It is just our strength that is small.
This scripture made it clear that we should be spending our days and night stocking pilling our hearts with God’s Rhema word. Only then will we have the reserved energy to handle the lows of life.
If we put the words of a strong God in our weak hearts, we will always have a reservoir of power within our hearts to carry on in life. The reservoir of power that Smith Wigglesworth had within him was built out of hours, days, weeks, months and years he spent putting the words of an infinite God in his finite heart. That was why he saw life where others saw death, healing where others saw sickness, light where others saw darkness and etc.
He was an unusual man because he spent his days eating the words of an unusual God. The word took him off the plane of human feelings to the plane of supernatural faith.
As we bring this devotional to a close, permit me to ask, what are you allowing to grow in your heart when you are alone on your bed or in your room? Doubtlessly, it will grow Weeds form hell. That is why you must cultivate the habit of spending moments when alone or when lying on your bed at the end of a hard day work, meditating in God’s word.
There are things that can be of help if you will not grow weeds from hell. Read a book that will stir your faith or watch a movie that will unlock divinity in you. Get an information that will provoke a reformation in your heart every day before you sleep, and each morning before you leave for work.
You heart was created by the word of the LORD. If you fill it with the word that created it, every day and night, you will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You will never see a weed from hell grow out of it to defile and influence you to sin against the LORD with your body.
Don’t be like the wicked who love absorbing things from the foot steps of the wicked, the company of mockers, or the ways of sinners. Walk in the ways of the Righteous. God wants Heaven to fill our hearts with Heavenly things. He does not want us to lead lives that will have hell fill our hearts with weeds from there.
It is our responsibility to make that happen using our will.
We must develop the culture of not allowing hell fill our hearts with weeds form there. If we do not, we will be like the wicked that the chaff of the flesh and carnality blows away, every now and then, into a life of sexual sins, abominations and other wicked deeds.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.” Psalm 1:1-4 NIV