TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 5TH MAY 2022)
“Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.
“So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. Exodus 23:20-26 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 125TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
Glory be to the LORD GOD for another day. It has been 125 days of His amazing grace and amazing acts in our lives. We will not take it for granted. It is not cheap to be kept alive even for one day. Ask those on life support. But the LORD has kept us for 125 days of this year alone.
To Him be the glory!
The 125 days of amazing grace reminds me of a psalm of David. Psalm 125 is a very significant psalm so long as the Christian race is concerned. With all the hazards of this world and all that the enemy try to do to harm us, it carries a promise that reveals GOD’s special care for us, His elects. It says;
“As the mountains surround Jerusalem, So the LORD surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.
For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, Lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity.” Psalm 125: 2-3 NKJV
We have survived these 125 days, and believe will survive more days, not because of our prayers or fasting, as good as they may be, but because the LORD surrounded us like the mountains that surround Jerusalem.
The Promise went on to say that the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity. If iniquity will be the reason believers will be in hell according to Matthew 7:20-22, then it is important to Heaven that we be protected from things that will push us to stretch our hands unto it.
We have been looking at Cry of the Holy Spirit on practical Christian living, and we have said that our primary calling in that area is to be vessels that Christ can dwell in and touch the world through. Practical Christianity will win the world very easily to Christ because they will see and touch Him in us.
But yesterday we saw that Practical Christianity involves living a healthy life because it takes the healthy to touch the lives of others effectively. That does not mean GOD does not use sick people, but we will do a better job when we are healthy. Once you become sick, your primary focus will be how to be healed. It will never be how to touch the lives of others through practical Christian living.
Today we will build on that revelation.
JESUS WAS NEVER SICK ONE DAY. BUT HE SPENT HIS LIFE HEALING THE SICK.
That is God’s plan; that we be the ones bringing healing to the sick not the ones getting sick and being in need of healing all the time. That is why He spoke to us on taking care of our bodies and health yesterday and urged us to stop over spiritualizing health matters.
So many people have died because they over-spiritualized their health.
I remember this story told by a dear man of GOD of how a woman refused medication, saying that GOD will heal her. She had been taught to operate by faith very wrongly, so when she fell sick, she refused to take drugs saying taking drugs is a demonstration of doubt.
I have met quit many who caught HIV and were placed on anti-viral drugs abandoning their drugs in the name of faith. We have always encouraged them to keep using their drugs because medication has never prevented divine healing, rather it had facilitated divine healing, those who obeyed were eventually healed of HIV. We have them in the church today, alive and well, serving the LORD.
So, the women got faith wrongly and refused to listen to the voice of reason. She was a wonderful child of God, loved by all but she got how God heals His own wrongly.
Because no one wanted her dead and because of the love many have for her, so many preachers spoke to her to allow the doctors to take over her case and adjuster medical care to her but she refused. Persistent and loving doctors came to administer drugs to her, but she resisted. Sadly, she died finally and was buried. Do you think God will be happy welcoming her that early to Heaven? No!
The Bible says the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon us. One of the scepter of wickedness it is the scepter of foolishness treated as faith in GOD. It has rested upon so many wonderful people of God and made them Rest In Peace to early in life, while refusing medical care and believing God to heal them.
The truth remains constant; any faith that tells you not to use medication is a wrong one. It could be the voice of the spirit of death speaking to you because death kills in so many ways, and one of the ways is to make men foolish, by twisting facts; it is to make people believe what is not true and die taking it to be true.
True faith is built on the foundation of God’s word, and there is no place where God forbade anyone in scriptures from using medication.
HE SAID TO ADAM;
…..“See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I HAVE GIVEN EVERY GREEN HERB for food” and it was so. Genesis 1:29-30 NKJV (Emphasis mine)
The scripture made it clear that even before the fall, God gave man every green herb for food. The word herb has to do with leaves that keeps one healthy or eliminates the possibility of being sick. Medication are manufactured from them (green herbs). So, refusing the take it, especially when you are sick, is like Adam looking at God and saying “I believe you can keep me healthy without taking the green herbs you have given me for food.” That will be rejecting God’s plan for his health.
While Heaven is against us spending our monies on medication or surviving by it, God’s plan for our health involves proper medical care when we are sick. It will not prevent divine healing. In fact, if you have a living faith, it will facilitate divine healing. You will be telling God to use the drugs as a similitude to heal you completely so that you will not need them again.
From Biblical point of view, you will therefore be lying on God if you fall sick and say He said you should not receive proper medical care. There are even very foolish men and women whose children fell sick and the denied them medical care, saying GOD will them. The children died carelessly and the blamed it on curses.
It is like in ancient times when there were no vaccines or proper medical care. So many diseases that can be cured today where incurable then, and the witch doctors did a lot with people’s lives, the way some preachers are doing today. They will say to the sick, the kings and the chiefs, that the gods are angry with the people, and that they need to offer some sacrifices to stop the pestilence.
I REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED IN MY OWN VILLAGE;
I was told how entire communities were wiped away by diseases that could not be cured then but can be cured now. So, it is part of the plan of the devil for people to either reject proper medical care, not have money for it, not have access to it at all, or over spiritualizing it, maybe calling it arm of flesh, doubting GOD, or trusting in man.
But when God said;
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited” (Jeremiah 17:5-6 NKJV),
He was not referring to proper medical care or advice.
If in our spirituality we call proper medical care arm of flesh, we are being foolish. It is very important that we heed to the voice of the LORD this morning on these issues. A portion of our devotional text says;
“Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. Exodus 23:20-24 NKJV
It is important that we obey the voice of the LORD this morning and stop bowing to all these heresies on health and medical care so that we will not destroy ourselves. Only then will God be an enemy to all the diseases making life difficult for many and an adversary to them.
Proper medical care is not the arm of flesh because man did not plant the green herbs and other organic chemicals used in making medicine on earth. God planted them because He knows how our bodies function. Our bodies were made from the ground just as the green herbs, and will need them to stay healthy or eliminate diseases.
SO PROPER MEDICAL CARE IS APPLYING WHAT WAS MADE FROM THE GROUND TO WHAT WAS MADE FROM THE GROUND SO THAT IT CAN BE HEALED. SIMPLE!
If you ask me, I will say you need to live healthy, have a good doctor in your life, and above all have Dr Jesus also. So that when the good doctor fails, Dr Jesus will come in to help, or when the good doctor is treating you, Dr. Jesus will lay His hands in his and use him to heal you. People who have this three will not leave the world earlier through disease. They will fulfill their days!
A portion of our devotional text says,
“So, you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.” Exodus 23:25-26 NKJV
God promised to take sickness away from us, but many do not know how He does it. Most of us think it’s just through prayer. But there are three basic Bible ways that God take sickness away from us. He will either us the power of the herbs He created (medical care or advise), the power of healthy living, or the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are those who may twists this and beginning to go for herbs administered by witch doctors. But when we say the power of herbs, we are not referring to the concoctions that witch doctors serve people; most of them engage the power of demons, and we know Satan will always come for those he heals after a while. That is why most die suddenly after that.
The phrase green herb describes medical care and the intake of green plants God made to grow from the ground to take care of certain diseases without making incantation to any deity.
God will take sickness from us when we live healthy and eat healthy. He will take it from us when we use the green herbs of the field, follow medical advice, and submit to proper medical care. He will take it away from us when we pray and ask Him to heal us by the power of the Holy Spirit, sometimes using our healthy living, medical care and intake of the green plants He made to grow to deal with certain diseases.
Do not forget, Satan will keep us ignorant to kill us with diseases. He does that in so many ways. He could keep us ignorant of the right medical care to go for, or the right green plant to take to be healed by filling our hearts with fear. He can even master mind wrong diagnosis to kill or position his agents in hospitals as nurses and doctors to kill. That is why we must not substitute any of the health or healing provisions discussed here with doctor Jesus. He must keep reigning in our health and guiding us by His word.
If we spend our days in the shadow of the almighty, He will make sure the rod of the wicked do not rest upon us even if we come in contact with agents of the devil that works as doctors and nurses in hospitals. He remains our healer, because by His stripes we were healed.
He took away our sicknesses on the cross to take away the legal right to be sick. My prayer is that what He did on the cross for us, will find full expression in our health lives in JESUS precious name. Amen and amen!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
Surely, He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole. Isaiah 53:3-5 AMPC