TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 20TH AUGUST 2022)
“Then the LORD said to him: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria.
Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.
It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
So he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle on him. 1 Kings 18:15-19 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 232ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
The Mercies of the LORD and His amazing love has been our survival wings all this year. If the LORD had not made the year our Year of Amazing Grace, there would have been no way we would have made it to this day.
The events that have happened this year alone are enough to snap the life of anyone who is NOT sustained by the LORD away.
The venom of the enemy, the anger of the aggrieved, and the lies of those who feel threatened by our being alive and kicking in the LORD, would have flooded our lives like a River if the LORD had not been on our side.
It pays to serve the God who has a history of not giving His precious ones to the will of their enemies. To God be the glory who sees ahead and takes care of things before they show up.
Before now, He saw into the year and sent a word before the year began; a word that has kept and watched over us. The word watched over us because God watches over His word, to see that it come to pass in the lives of his people.
The Bible made it clear that time is lying bare before Him. He sees things afar off before they come. He even hears thoughts afar off before they enter into the minds of men.
That is why when we are passing through a process we do not understand with the LORD, or having an encounter with Him that make us search for the reasons why, we should understand that there are things He may have seen afar off and is dealing with us for their sake before they spring up.
In simple terms, God lives in the future, sees our past and understand our presents.
HE STANDS IN THE FUTURE HE LIVES IN, TO DEAL WITH US IN THE PRESENT.
That is a major attribute of His Fatherly love and care. Which brings us to the subject of our 31-Day journey of faith with the Cry of the Spirit; a spiritual fathering built around the tree of life.
If you look at the realm of biological fathering, you will see something that maybe you have not considered.
God arranged fathering to be in such a way that before Children arrives, the prospective father has seen or is living the future that the kids are to grow and come into.
In simple terms, the father is living in their future. That is why upbringing involves guiding kids according to the future you live in as a parent.
For instance, you have been a Child, a teenager, a student or an under graduate (if you went to school), and you are now a wife or a husband (if you are married), and you have seen and are currently living a life that they are yet to come into. You are living in their future.
That is how Biological fathers live in the future of their sons and daughters; especially if there are doing some feats for GOD.
Now, what is true of the biological is true of the spiritual. One of the major ingredients of spiritual fathering is living in the very future that sons are designed by the LORD to come into.
This also is one reason you do not choose a spiritual father in the flesh. You must be led by the LORD because He alone knows the future He has designed for you to fulfill, hence the very farther who lives in it in the present.
If we are to be allowed to choose by ourselves, we will all look for fathers with global influence and great fortune because that is the future that a carnal mind looks for.
But God does not give us fathers based on their economic might. He gives us fathers based on the might of the future He wants us to come into. You see that in the life of Elisha.
Economically, Elisha was richer than Elijah. He owned what would be termed today as tractors and was a mechanized farmer; a rich farmer by the standard of Bible days.
If economy was part of it, Elijah was not fit to be his father because the man had no house to even live in. No one was sure how he survived.
HE HAD NO HOUSE AS OF WHEN HE WENT FOR ELISHA. HE JUST CAME BACK FROM A THREE- AND HALF-YEAR EXILE.
In fact, a widow had to be used by the LORD to keep him for the three and half years he was in exile. If there were no miracles, he would just have died of either hunger or lack. That is not a spiritual father a present-day believer would want to have.
He does not fit into the vision of the financial future many in Church today dream of.
However, though he never fit into the financial future than one would have dreamed, he fit into the destiny future that Elisha was designed or predestined to come into.
When we say your spiritual father should live in the future you are coming into, we are referring to the destiny future, not a future of personal ambition or man-made goals.
Elijah, may not have had the very economic might that Elisha had but he was the very destiny future that God deigned that Elisha come into. For some, the future is like a seed that your father transmits to you; their job will be to birth it into a glorious fruit or a much greater harvest.
Our devotional text says;
“Then the LORD said to him: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria.
Also, you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.
It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
So, he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle on him. 1 Kings 18:15-19 NKJV
This scripture made it clear that our spiritual fathers ought to be the very future God predestined us to fulfill on the face of the earth, and sometimes eternally.
IT MADE IT CLEAR THAT JUST AS ELIJAH WAS ELISHA’S DESTINY FUTURE SO OUR SPIRITUAL FATHERS OUGHT TO BE OUR DESTINY FUTURE.
That is why you should not have a spiritual father whose life is not built around the tree of life. If you do, you will fulfill a future that is not your destiny future.
It is important to understand that there were two trees in the garden. If the life of a spiritual father is not built around the tree of life, obviously it is built around the other tree that led to the expulsion of Adam from the Garden and the spirit it represents.
Adam-out-of-the-garden was not the future God ordained for him. But he fulfilled it nonetheless leading to the need for redemption. That is what will happen to anyone who is not fathered by a spiritual fathering system built around the tree of life.
There are so many people today who are fulfilling a future that God never predestined for them because of either not having spiritual fathers at all, or having those whose lives are not built around the tree of life.
The life of your God given spiritual father will have a prophetic photograph of the very destiny the LORD has predestined you to fulfill on earth, and your heart will be knitted to it as soon as you meet him or when you get yourself planted under his teachings or ministration.
In fact, that is one way we know who the LORD has appointed to be our father.
When the LORD said to Elijah “return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive …. Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place” He was making it clear that Your father will carry the photograph of the destiny future God has designed for you.
It was not just Elisha, even Hazael and Jehu all had their destiny future in Elijah’s mantle. The mantle of your spiritual father contains the revelation of your destiny future. That future is the harvest to enter into because the man has labored.
It will only be unveiled to you if you are a son in spirit and in truth.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!
And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.” John 4:35-38 NKJV