TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 12TH JUNE 2022)
“So Joseph pleased [Potiphar] and found favor in his sight, and he served him. And [his master] made him supervisor over his house and he put all that he had in his charge.
From the time that he made him supervisor in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the Lord’s blessing was on all that he had in the house and in the field.
And [Potiphar] left all that he had in Joseph’s charge and paid no attention to anything he had except the food he ate.
Now Joseph was an attractive person and fine-looking. Then after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and she said, Lie with me. But he refused and said to his master’s wife, See here, with me in the house my master has concern about nothing; he has put all that he has in my care.
He is not greater in this house than I am; nor has he kept anything from me except you, for you are his wife. How then can I do this great evil and sin against God?
She spoke to Joseph day after day, but he did not listen to her, to lie with her or to be with her. Then it happened about this time that Joseph went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the men of the house were indoors.
And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me! But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out [of the house].” Genesis 39:4-12 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 163RD DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
Blessed be the name of the LORD for another day from the Day Himself. We give Him praise and are very grateful to the One and Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, for waking us up this morning.
To say it is out of His mercies that we are not consumed is an understanding.
Indeed, if the LORD will mark iniquity no one shall stand. But there is forgiveness with Him so that He may be feared. That is what made God’s mercies a seed, with the fear of God as the expected harvest. Which is why if He shows us mercy and did not see His fear in our hearts thereafter, He will be disappointed the way He was with the fig tree.
You remember the story of the fig tree and what happened to it, which represents Judaism? He will first bring us under chastisement by allowing our sins to be finding us out. If that did not work, then we will be abandoned us to our carnal cravings or give us over to ourselves.
In other words, God will give us up to the very sins His mercies have sort to save us from, which we resisted through lack of repentance and kept committing.
The Bible describes this occurrence this way;
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their [own] hearts to sexual impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin],” Romans 1:24 AMPC
It is very dangerous to be abandoned to the degrading power of sin. Yet, that is what happens when we do not make use of God’s unending mercies to come out of a life of sin or a life of secret sins.
For instance, There are lot of us preachers who have been abandoned to the degrading power of sexual sins or sexual impurities because we would not make use of God’s mercies to repent of them. There are other believers who have been abandoned to the degrading power of sexual sins and impurities, and some other kinds of sinful deeds because they refused to make use of God’s mercies to repent.
A LOT IS HAPPENING WITHIN OUR ‘HOLY HALLS’ CALLED CHURCHES!
The depraved ones among us, and many others who have been given over to themselves by the LORD excuse the abominations with statements like, “The Church is not for perfect people.” But Scriptures like Ephesians 5 and many others tells us the opposite.
Ephesians 5 alone tells us that the Church is a blood washed, word sanctified people who have become without spots or wrinkles, pure and holy and without blemish. Meaning, we may come to Church wicked, sinful, and immoral but are not expected to remain that way.
But the case is different in so many local assemblies. You find entire churches living in sins, especially sexual sins, bitterness, unforgiveness, hate and all that and calling it weaknesses. With some of us hoping we will make Heaven despite our sinful living or we will repent shortly before death reach us; a very deceptive way of going to hell.
When we are given up to the degrading power of sin, the conviction of the Holy Spirit will disappear from our hearts.
It is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that creates the experience of an utter dreadfulness of sin in our hearts that makes us avoid it like a plague or repent with great sorrow from it, as soon as we fall into it. But all that will be lost if GOD give us over to the degrading power of sin due to our stubbornness.
In other words, it will become impossible to experience that utter dreadfulness of sin and avoid it at all cost or repent from it because of the resistance we have built against it over time. The truth remains, a true child of GOD will fear sin the way Joseph did and ran away from it when Potiphar’s wife presented it to him on a platter.
If we have not been given over to ourselves, we will treat any sin, especially sexual sins, the way Joseph treated Potiphar’s wife. But if we have been given over, we will no longer see anything wrong with it.
WE WILL JUST BE LIVING IN IT AND HOPING NOTHING BAD HAPPENS.
We will have a boldness for all types of sins and even be quoting scriptures to the detriment of our eternal lives. There are so many believers who are currently in that state. Sons of hell who were once Children of God.
Friend, we no longer find the conviction of the Holy Spirit at work in many so-called Christians today!
The conviction of the Spirit does not just create a dread of sin (or an understanding of what you will lose to the sin if you commit it) within the believer, it also helps one to see the darkness of one’s sin in contrast with the beauty and perfection of God.
That is what melts the believer’s heart to see how much he or she has fallen and draws him or her to the Old Rugged Cross for deliverance from the practice of sin. That is what pushes the believer to seek and desire to become like the sinless Christ by the enabling grace of God.
Yes, that is what make the believer to recognize that his or her sin dishonors GOD.
But like we said earlier, when we are given over to ourselves by the LORD, none of this will be happening in the life of a believer any longer. It will all be lost leading to a boldness to live and keep living in sin; sometimes knowing we are doing wrong but hoping nothing wrong happens.
When we are given over to ourselves, the inward work of the Holy Spirit that convicts us will become missing in our lives, leading to a Christian life that is only different from that of the lost world in Church attendance. Character wise and in the area of morality, we will be like the lost world.
It’s clear, many of us have been given over to ourselves and will not make heaven when we die. A lot is happening.
How can you sleep with a man or woman you are not married to, and sometimes even a preacher and have no ill feeling about it? How can we be doing such wickedness and desire to keep doing it instead running to GOD for mercies?
Indeed, many of us have been given over to ourselves, that is why chastisements and convictions are lost. We are now hell fire candidates calling ourselves born again.
INDEED, MAJORITY OF US ARE MARCHING TO HELL WITH OUR BIBLES IN OUR HANDS.
The LORD has been speaking to us on matters of fear. It is a 30-Day journey of faith with the Cry of the Holy Spirit on fear. The vision is to grant us boldness, but not the boldness to be living in sin and hoping nothing happens. Sadly, that is the boldness that many believers now have.
You see us do so many terrible acts of wickedness without even blinking an eye. Even Judas Iscariot was later remorseful after betraying the LORD, but for many of us there is no remorse at all.
The boldness is the very boldness that repeated sins plants in people so that they no longer dread sin or fear committing it.
There is a part of the fear of the LORD that involves the dread of sin. It involves experiencing an utter dread of sin from time to time. That part is not known by many in our generation, because majority now stand on twisted scriptures to believe “the Bible did not say we should fear sin.”
There is a lot of ignorance of one of the most important work of the Holy Spirit – His conviction ministry. Because of what Jesus said to the disciples in the book of John, many believe that it is the lost world He convicts of sin not the sinning believer.
They forget that wherever there is a life of sin, there will be need for this ministry of the Holy Spirit, else people will die in their sins, in and outside the church.
We must understand that Wherever there is a life of sin, there will be need for the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit. Wherever there is sin, either behind the pulpit (among us preachers) or on the pew (among Church members), there will be need for people to be convicted of sin, judgment and righteousness else there will be no repentance.
This special ministry of the Holy Spirit called “the conviction of sin, judgment and righteousness” is needed in the Church today as much as the world because the Church has become worldly in every aspect. The devils in the world are now seated in the Church.
SO, WE NEED WHAT THE SPIRIT WAS SENT TO DO IN THE LOST WORLD EVEN IN THE SICK CHURCH.
But there seems to be more hope for sinners in the lost world than for the sinners in the sick Church. The reason is, preachers have taught people in the sick church how to call convictions of the spirit condemnation, hence not allowing the Spirit to do His work among them. But we must understand what the conviction of the Spirit is and what it does to escape the deception.
The conviction of the Spirit is the reason people can repent of their sins. It is the reason the sexual immoralist will desist from it and the bitter or hateful person will no longer be bitter and hateful. It is the reason people come to the LORD and stay with the LORD; rejecting their sinful ways and embracing His righteous ways.
The convictions of the Holy Spirit, as earlier stated, create a dreadfulness for sin in a man’s heart, which usually results in a life of purity and internal strength to overcome temptation; the very strength we saw Joseph display before the sin of sexual immorality that came looking for him as contain in our devotional text.
A major part of the text says;
“….Now Joseph was an attractive person and fine-looking. Then after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and she said, Lie with me. But he refused and said to his master’s wife, See here, with me in the house my master has concern about nothing; he has put all that he has in my care.
He is not greater in this house than I am; nor has he kept anything from me except you, for you are his wife. How then can I do this great evil and sin against God?
She spoke to Joseph day after day, but he did not listen to her, to lie with her or to be with her. Then it happened about this time that Joseph went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the men of the house were indoors.
And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me! But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out [of the house].” Genesis 39:6-12 AMPC
We find Joseph doing long before the cross what many of us do not do even after receiving what his dispensation never got. You find him doing what Jesus says we should do when sin come knocking at our door. But we do not do. We rather open the door to let it in calling it our weakness.
We adjust our theology to accept our sinful deeds and lose the boldness to stand in righteousness, replacing it with the boldness to live a life of sin yet calling ourselves born again. Joseph never had that boldness. That was why he ran. That is the weakness we need; the weakness to run from sexual sins and all forms of abominable things that we are tempted to commit.
As we bring this to a close, I want to submit to us that Jesus is our mercy seat. He is also our Judgment seat. His mercies have given us the boldness to approach Him. But not the boldness to live in sin and grandstand. It is rather a boldness that has the weakness to run away from sin and the courage to stand in righteousness when temptation come our way!
What is the Cry of the Spirit on fear today? The cry, among many other things we have seen today, is this “Fear sin enough to run away from it! Be bold in righteousness enough to say no to sin. However, it is not by might nor by power but by the inner convictions and empowerment of the Spirit”
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION TODAY
“Shun immorality and all sexual looseness [flee from impurity in thought, word, or deed]. Any other sin which a man commits is one outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own,” 1 Corinthians 6:18-19 AMPC