TODAY’S DEVOTION (SATURDAY 8TH OCTOBER 2022)
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.
All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 281ST DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
The LORD be glorified for another day.
To Him who sits upon the Throne, governing the planet, be glory and honor and power forever.
He has done great and significant things for us for 281 days. That is why we are still alive. It is important that we remember every detail of His acts of mercies and kindness and glorify Him.
The Psalmist say;
“Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul; and all that is [deepest] within me, bless His holy name!
Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul, and forget not [one of] all His benefits—
Who forgives [every one of] all your iniquities, Who heals [each one of] all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and corruption, Who beautifies, dignifies, and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy;
Who satisfies your mouth [your necessity and desire at your personal age and situation] with good so that your youth, renewed, is like the eagle’s [strong, overcoming, soaring]!” Psalm 103:1-5 AMPC
I love this Bible Version’s rendering of the beautiful Psalm 103.
Those first words that says “affectionately, gratefully praise the LORD, or my soul; and all that is deepest within me, bless His Holy name!” are indeed beautiful.
The next set of words that beautifully presented what the LORD did, which we can also find in our own lives today, are on point. The words were beautifully presented as;
“who forgives everyone of all your iniquities, who heals each one of all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit of corruption, who beautifies, dignifies, and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy.”
Child of God, if Our God were a god that punishes like the deities our biological lineages worshiped, none of these words would have made meaning to us.
In fact, they would not have even exist in the scriptures. But you God is full of compassion and mercy.
When Moses requested to see His glory, He responded with words that tells us more of this very nature of His.
THE BIBLE SAYS HE RESPONDED TO MOSES SAYING;
…..“I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Exodus 33:19 NKJV
From this scriptural passage, we can see that Our God is full of goodness, that is why He made it pass before Moses.
He is full of graciousness and compassion that is why He said “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” It is what you are full of that controls how you relate with others.
If you are a Bible student, you will also understand that the name of the LORD that was proclaimed to Moses that day was the LORD Jesus, who is also our mercy seat.
Clearly our God is full of Mercy, grace, and compassion. He demonstrated all that proclaiming the name of the LORD before Moses. That was how the man of God met the LORD Jesus Christ in His pre incarnate form, and for the first, before He met Him again on the mountain of transfiguration in His incarnate form.
That is what happens whenever the eternal come into time! We gain access to eternal mysteries that were before the age began.
Obviously, it was the same encounter that led to Moses conceiving the revelation of creation and documenting it down for us.
The Psalmist continued sounding what the goodness, mercies and compassion of our God can accomplish in a person’s life, and relatively, what it has accomplished in our lives, with more gracious words;
“Who satisfies your necessity and desire at your personal age and situation, with good, so that your youth, renewed, is like the eagle’s, strong, overcoming, soaring!”
THIS IS THE SECRET OF SOUNDNESS BOTH IN OUR HEALTH AND OUR SPIRITUAL LIVES.
It is what God supplies that keep’s a man healthy both spiritually and naturally. It is when He satisfies our necessities and desires at our personal age and situation with His good that we are renewed to be strong, overcoming whatever may come our way like the eagle.
The details for the things you see, when you use amplified version of the Bible to read same scriptures that you have used the King James Version to read, over and over again, is amazing. That is why I have always encouraged believers to do what we call “comparative study” of the Bible.
A lot of erroneous teachings in the Body of Christ were conceived by preachers who just cut off something from the raw King James version and begin to teach without comparing it with other versions of the Bible to know what it really means.
I know a preacher in Nigeria who after discovering the meaning of Isaiah 10:27, from other translations of the Bible, where it had nothing to do with the use of olive oil, decided not to use that translation again or any other Bible translation apart from the raw king James Version, which presented that verse in such a way that he can easily use it to promote the validity for the use of olive oil in prayers.
There is so much you will learn about our God if you engage yourself in comparative study of the Bible.
We have been looking at the Cry of the Spirit of God on the blessed Holy Spirit with the aim of improving our walk and talk with Him, and coming to the place of having His fullness in our lives at all times.
One of the major things He will do in your life when He lives in you is to accurately teach you the Bible. That is why, If we engage ourselves in comparative study of the Bible, we will be amazed at truths He will lead us into.
That is when You will fully understand why the first unveiling of the Holy Spirit by Christ to His disciples, and by extension to us, was His manifestation as “the Spirit of Truth.”
OUR DEVOTIONAL TEXT CONTAINS THE VERY WORDS JESUS USED IN MAKING THAT KNOWN.
He said;
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.
All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore, I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15 NKJV
He began these words with a revelation of what all those who will serve Him in any generation will face in the hands of religious establishments.
For the immediate disciples, He said they will be put out of the synagogues because of the progressive truths the Spirit of God will bring through them to set FREE those trapped in the systems and take them to the next level of God for their lives.
For us it will not be the synagogue of the Jews but another form of synagogues system where witchcraft is used and all kinds of anti-scriptural devices are practiced.
Do not forget, Stephen the first Christian martyr, was killed because of the progressive truths the Spirit used Him to bring to that generation. They threw him out of the synagogue and stoned him to death.
That is one of the heritages of carrying the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth.
You will not be able to stand errors if the Spirit sit in your life as the Spirit of Truth, and on the flip side, people profiting from errors will not be able to withstand you either, hence stoning you instead of repenting and submitting to the word of the LORD!
We in Kenya have received so much from the religious establishment in the Evangelical circle that promotes the use of oil and other forms of charismatic witchcraft activities, in the name of prayer caravans, deliverance services and all that.
What we said that stirred the hate against us was simple, truthful and reasonable, just as what Stephen said (which was also simple, truthful and reasonable). We said “the true Holy Spirit will not lead you to pour olive oil on the street, but to get people filled with His power and transforming presence. It is a counterfeit Holy Spirit that will lead you to pour oil on the street.”
AND TRUST ME, EITHER YOU BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THE CHURCH TODAY’S IS FULL OF THE COUNTERFEIT.
That is why we have a church that have become worldly and a world that have become churchy.
At the beginning of this 31-day journey of faith, we said the first goal of the Holy Spirit when he comes is always to set our lives in order. We have seen two major things He does to do that; the first is to set our affection on eternal things, and the second, to progressively take us away from our old ways.
Now, there is a third thing He will do to put our lives in order. He will expose us to transforming and sanctifying truths. That’s what we will be looking at today.
You see, it is His sanctifying truths that puts our affection on things above. It is His sanctifying truths that helps us to walk away from our old nature and come into the new nature of righteous deeds.
That is why you will always go back to your Old ways, and tragically adjust your theology to fit the tragedy, if you give your life to Christ without being exposed to the sanctifying truths that the Holy Spirit teaches.
There is a scripture I want to bring to our attention at this point. It is about the incarnation of Christ. It tells us what the authentic Christ is full of. I have to use the word authentic because of the false Christ’s being presented now.
Do not forget, we began this devotional by showing us what God is full of. We saw that He is full of grace, mercies, and compassion. But this scripture tells us what Christ is full of.
It says;
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ ” And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John 1:14-17 NKJV
THIS SCRIPTURE MADE IT CLEAR THAT CHRIST CAME FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH.
The purpose of God’s mercy, goodness and compassion, is to deliver us from the penalty and practice of sin.
Before the cross (that is under the law), God’s mercy, goodness, and compassion could only deliver people from the penalty of sin through the animal sacrifices, but it could not deliver them from the practice of sin, hence the destruction that broke out in their lives each time they went back to their wicked ways..
There was, therefore, the need for a final solution, so Christ came with he final solution, grace and truth. He came full of what can deliver us from both the penalty and practice of sin.
He came full of grace and truth.
It may interest you to know that Grace delivers us from the penalty of sin, and truth delivers from the practice of sin. And since the goal of God remains to make sure you and I do not perish in eternal fire, we will need deliverance from both the penalty and practice of sin to make Heaven.
Now we are in a different dispensation, so When Jesus left, He handed over the work of our redemption to the Holy Spirit. He made Him the executive officer of our salvation and final redemption.
Now, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the LORD, and as the Spirit of the LORD, He is full of grace and truth. If you experience the grace of the LORD through Him, you will also experience the Truth of God through Him. That is how He saves us from both the penalty and practice of sin.
Sadly, our generation love God’s grace but hate God’s truth. They love God’s grace because it forgives our sins, but hate His truth because it tells us to go and sin no more, by pointing out what will happen to us if we keep sinning.
We persecute those who bring God’s truth to us. We stone them, hate them, malign them, call them names and accuse them of being the enemies of the Church.
Like the Pharisees and Sadducees did to the LORD, accusing Him of being the enemy of the law of Moses, so are these people doing.
JESUS HAD TO TELL THEM THAT HE DID NOT COME TO DESTROY THE LAW BUT TO FULFILL IT. YET, THEY WOULD NOT LISTEN.
Finally, they handed Him over to lawless hands to kill Him. They killed Him, not because He stole, or did any criminal act. They killed Him because He told them the truth of God. He called them who they really were, and it pissed them off.
The truth of God will not pamper you but will call you who you really are.
Grace may pamper and show you who God is. It will show you how compassionate merciful and kind God is, which is very good. But truth will show you who you are ( how wicked, sinful or spiritually lost you are) and what God wants you to be from who you are. No religious establishment want to know that; none really want to know who they really are. That was why they killed the LORD.
But understand that the Holy Spirit cannot set your life in order without spewing liberating truths to you.
His first manifestation in your life will be to bring the fullness of God’s grace and truth to you. That He will do by bringing the presence of the LORD that is full of grace and truth to you. You must be ready to be told the Truth if you want your life back in order.
You must be ready to be purged. You must be ready to be purified. You must be ready for bitter truths that will make your heart better.
You must not be like the religious establishment that hate any of that. You must not be like those who love and crave for the grace of God but hate the truth it brings along. You cannot have one without having the other.
We will pick up from here tomorrow.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.
But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. 41 You do the deeds of your father.”
Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word.
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.
Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”
Then the Jews answered and said to Him, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” John 8:39-48 NKJV