TODAY’S DEVOTION (Saturday 29th January 2022)
“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 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 29TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
We stepped into this year just 28 days ago. Today is the 29th. Slowly but surely, we are coming to the end of the first month of the year. May the name of the LORD will remain glorified who has kept us.
I will admonish that if possible, each and every one of us should sit down to check how we have fared this month.
Obviously, the month have not been great for some. I just read that another of TD Jakes daughter divorced her husband after their celebrated marriage. The person reporting was warning people not to go into marriage in their 20s because they do not know what marriage is all about.
She reminded me what I have been teaching on marital fitness. The fact that one is born by a preacher does not mean she can get and stay married. Its marital fitness that counts. Not really the person who gave birth to you. Besides, the teachings you build your life on will determine how you fare in life.
Lately, the church has not been established on sound doctrine.
A lot is happening in preachers’ households that needs urgent attention from Heaven. It appears to me that most of us preachers have abandoned the GOD of our fathers and the pursuits of eternal destiny and ventured into something else, hence these happenings.
Our intercourse with Babylon is killing our values. Our households are feeling the heat and experiencing the consequences. I pray the LORD come through to wake us up from our spiritual slumber and cover our nakedness that is masquerading itself as riches.
OUR WALK IN THE FLESH IS BEEN EXPOSED DAY BY DAY BY TIME.
The consequences of the things we did in the flesh are catching up with us. Our lives are losing the perfect peace of the LORD and marriages under turmoil. We have trained this generation to walk in the flesh by our lifestyles and messages. Producing marriages that do not last. As present-day preachers, we have indeed failed GOD!
I believe the time has come for this generation to learn that Marriages in the flesh do not last. They break in pieces at the slightest heat from hell.
I can’t imagine how a believer will come out and announce that she and her husband are divorcing as if one is announcing the birth of a new born. Something one should be ashamed of as a child of GOD! The announcements are made without sorrow for the very walk in the flesh that took them to the so-called marriages in the first place.
We have indeed become like the lost world.
So, the month has not fared well for some of us. While for some of us, it’s been great with the LORD!
The Bible says we are cities set on hills that cannot be hidden. We are the light of the world. But it’s clear that many of us believers are filling the world with the very darkness we got from it through our intercourse with Babylon.
Though we profess to be, we are not walking with Christ, who is the Light of the world. That is why we have not been able to lead our lives as Cities set on a hill that cannot be hidden; emitting the light of GOD’s ways of doing things to a dark world.
The world is watching us as we follow their ways of solving marital crisis, making money, getting married, pursuing a career, and running an entire life. We follow their ways of doing things, calling ourselves Christians, thereby making mockery of our so-called Christianity.
We seem to have forgotten that our calling is to follow GOD’s ways of doing things; namely, God’s way of solving marital crisis, getting married, dealing with sin, running an earthly life and etc. But we have failed.
By our character, we have not filled the lost world with light because it takes a true walk with the LORD to fill a dark world with the true light.
OUR DEVOTIONAL 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”
By what is happening to us, the book of the Law (which tells us God’s ways of doing things), has not just departed form our mouths, it has departed from our hearts and from our life styles.
We no longer have good success. We now have a trail of a very bad success.
for instance, when you do a celebrated wedding that ends in a divorce, its is bad success. When you run a celebrated Church ministry that is not teaching God’s true ways, that is bad success. When you lie and cheat and by that you become rich, that is bad success. When you live in sin and suffer no immediate consequence, but move from one financial height to another, that is bad success.
If you steal and become great through it, that is not good success that is bad success. If you walk in the way of the world while professing to be a Christian, and become a celebrity by that, it is not good success but a very bad one, because whatever is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of GOD.
If you succeed in what is not God’s plan for your life, that is a bad success not a good one. If you do not follow the way of the LORD to become successful in life, that is not a good success, that is a bad one. The word remains, good success is only possible when we walk in the ways and will of the LORD.
You cannot walk in the way and will of the LORD unless you take the book of the law, and spend quality time with it day in and day out, with the aim of knowing God’s ways and walking in them.
Doing the word of the LORD remains the only path to coming into good success. In other words, obeying the LORD and all He stated in His word is a requirement for good success.
IT IS A REQUIREMENT FOR UNLOCKING YOUR DIVINE DESTINY!
Some false prophets and heretic teachers tell people to buy special padlocks and meet them with some money in other to unlock their destiny. You do not buy special keys and take to prophets to help unlock your destiny. You do the word of the LORD to unlock your divine destiny.
If God’s word says, “do not steal.” Follow what it says! If God’s word says “do not lie,” follow what it says, If God’s word says “do not be involved in sexual sins,” we should follow what it says. If God’s word says “pray without ceasing: follow what it says. If God’s word says “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” follow what it says. Do not say we can not be perfect.
If God’s word says “repent of your evil ways” do not argue with it. Go on and repent. Doing what the word says is the key to becoming what the LORD says you are. We use to sing as little boys,
“I am what God says, I am! I am what God says I am! I am a winner, am not a looser. I am what God’ says I am.”
The key to becoming what God says we are, lies in every one of us doing what He says we should do. When He commissioned Joshua for ministry, He called him “one that no one will be able to stand before all the days of his life.” He said to Him;
“No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Joshua 1:5 NIV
But for Joshua to see all GOD stated in this scripture, he had to spend his days doing what God says he should do. The lesson here is, it is when we do what God’s word says we should do, that we become what He called us to be or what He says we are.
In other words, it is when we do His word, that He changes our world and uses us maximally to change the world of others. This calls for a life of obedience.
People who walk in complete obedience to the voice or word of the LORD will be remembered for the great things God used them to do. It takes total obedience to the voice and word of the LORD to unleash God’s blessings and move from the declaration to the manifestation of His promises.
THERE IS NO ROOM FOR PARTIAL OBEDIENCE IN GOD’S KINGDOM!
If you obey the LORD partially, or do his word partially, you will leave gaps for His enemies to stand and hinder 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 as obedience, but God does not count it as obedience.
Do not forget, Isaiah says,
“as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are His ways higher than our ways.”
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. They do not know or do the word of the LORD, but visit witches and wizards called prophets, and run after them for a word from God.
They do not know or do what is written on the Bible, but want to do what is spoken by the prophets. What a sad development! Many will prefer a word from the mouth of an acclaimed man or woman of God, but will have no time for their Bibles, that carries the more sure word of prophecy.
The so-called prophets love to have people pressing after them for a word form God. They like being like deities. That is why the use the words oracle to describe themselves. They do not get God’s people established in sound doctrine, they rather get then to follow their prophecies, using the Bible as a smoke screen.
A lot of the prophets who do these things are not sent by the LORD, and you know them by the fruits of their ministries on your spiritual life. The Bible says if they do not impart into you the grace to turn from your wicked ways or sinful deeds, but make it easier for you to keep living in them, without fear of judgment or feeling ashamed they are from hell. They could help you to succeed in life, but it will not be good success.
I believe the message of today have been passed!
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY;
“I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds. Jeremiah 23:21-22 NIV