TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 12TH OCTOBER 2022)
“Now while they were talking about this, Jesus Himself took His stand among them and said to them, Peace (freedom from all the distresses that are experienced as the result of sin) be to you!
But they were so startled and terrified that they thought they saw a spirit. And He said to them, Why are you disturbed and troubled, and why do such doubts and questionings arise in your hearts?
See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Feel and handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.
And while [since] they still could not believe it for sheer joy and marveled, He said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, And He took [it] and ate [it] before them.
Then He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you: everything which is written concerning Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
Then He [thoroughly] opened up their minds to understand the Scriptures, Luke 24:38-45 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 285TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
Glory be to the LORD God for giving us another day. I believe the gift of this day also came with its daily bread (life) for each and every one who will ask for it.
Yes, asking God to do what He only can do and should do is a privilege given to us by the LORD. Yesterday we shared some truths on what the Bible calls the daily will of God for us in Christ Jesus; things we are to be doing on daily bases.
The things are, rejoicing, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks always.
People who fill their day with the three will never miss the delivery that Heaven has for them in life. Rejoicing always helps our hearts to be lifted to the LORD, giving thanks always helps us to cultivate the spirit of gratitude, a necessity of life. Then praying without ceasing eliminates worries.
Depending on the kind of prayer, Praying without ceasing makes miracles available. It cultivates our spirits towards God and helps us build faith in Him. If it is done rightly, it builds the presence of God around us and helps us flow in the Spirit powerfully.
It is one way we collect our daily bread from the Throne of GOD to our lives on earth. In guiding us on the pattern to take on the prayer knee, Jesus said;
“In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.” Matthew 6:9-11 NKJV
Apart from food, bread also means life.
Jesus made prayer something we are to be doing without ceasing because through it we collect the life we need to thrive on earth. We are to begin our day by rejoicing or praising Him in gratitude, and then ask Him for our daily life or food.
Friend, if our earthly lives are not lived from the life that oozes from the throne of God, we will have a lot to contend with. Because Our lives are too fragile and vulnerable to be lived without the life that oozes out of God’s Throne.
THE LIFE THAT OOZES OUT OF GOD’S THRONE WAS THE VERY LIFE THAT SUSTAINED MANKIND BEFORE THE FALL.
Once Adam became cut off from it, all hell broke loose in his life. But the Bible made it clear that there was the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who came and restored it. That was why He stated in His own words saying;
….. “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:7-10 NKJV
Jesus came with access to the Life that oozes form the Throne Room of God.
In fact, He is the access to that life, and He is that life because He is the lamb that sits on the Throne. It may not make sense to say so but its true, He is both the access to the life and also the very life that oozes from the Throne of God.
When He left the earth physically, He ushered in the substance of that life, the Holy Spirit. It is the revelation of that substance that we have been looking at on this platform.
The substance is a person. He is called the Spirit of the LORD, because He is Jesus in Spirit.
Someone said, “the Holy Spirit is Jesus everywhere.” Yes, He is Jesus who can be everywhere all at the same time, in invisible form. That is why He does not speak of His own because He is the Spirit of Christ.
The spirit of a person is the person. It has no other identity or resources. The Spirit of Christ is Christ Himself, He has no other identity. People who use the Olive oil to symbolize Him do not really know Him. If they know Him, they will throw away the Oil.
They will know Jesus Christ can not be a symbol, so His Spirit also can not be a symbol.
One of the major assignments of the Holy Spirit of Christ is not to lead preachers to pour oil on your head but to set your life in order. Life in divine order is the primary assignment of the Holy Spirit, that is why you are not helping people as a preacher reducing Him to a symbol of oil in a bottle.
EVEN IF YOU ARE DIPPED IN A DRUM OF OLIVE OIL, YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE YOUR LIFE SET IN ORDER.
Lives are not set in order today by pouring oil on them. They are set in order by Christ Baptizing them in His Holy Spirit and fire, which then prepares their hearts for the truths to come in and burn in them with its mind transforming power.
These are the things we have Bern sharing!
Now, apart from living truths burning in us to transform our minds, there is another miracle that must happen in our minds to have our lives set in order. That is what our devotional text today is all about. The entire text says;
“Now while they were talking about this, Jesus Himself took His stand among them and said to them, Peace (freedom from all the distresses that are experienced as the result of sin) be to you!
But they were so startled and terrified that they thought they saw a spirit. And He said to them, why are you disturbed and troubled, and why do such doubts and questionings arise in your hearts?
See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Feel and handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.
And while [since] they still could not believe it for sheer joy and marveled, He said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, And He took [it] and ate [it] before them.
Then He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you: everything which is written concerning Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
Then He [thoroughly] opened up their minds to understand the Scriptures, Luke 24:38-45 AMPC
This text is not about a story but about a set of revelation. The first part in the set that we can see here is the revelation of the kind of Body we will have in the New Heaven and the New Earth where Righteousness dwells.
The earth as we know will come to an end one day. A New Age full of the glory of Christ will emerge.
Souls in Christ who will make it to that age through the rapture of the Church, will have a glorified body, just like the one Jesus had when He came out of the grave in the text.
TODAY THAT BODY HAS BECOME MORE GLORIOUS THAN IT WAS WHEN HE RESURRECTED.
In fact, Saul of Tarsus could not withstand its radiance just few years after His resurrection, come to talk of now. He described him then as one who dwell in unapproachable lights.
He created the Sun, but the radiant of His resurrected body has become brighter than the Sun over the redemption years that has passed on the earth. That is the heritage that we will shared when we get there; a major work of the Holy Spirit.
The Bible says;
“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 1 John 3”:1-3 NKJV
Yes, we know that when He is revealed, or made manifest, we shall be like Him. For we shall see Him in the New Heaven and the new earth, as He is and be like Him in spirit body.
Sadly, many believers are ignorant of this future blessing that is coming.
They crave for the mundane and earthly has filled so many minds, killing this blessed hope that should have been our ultimate hope. That is why Holiness and righteous have become very low these days. But the Bible says those who know these things, purify themselves just as He, Christ, is pure.
Which brings us back to the subject of our 31-day journey of faith. We purify ourselves by yielding to the purifying fire Himself. Yes, by yielding to the Holy Spirit to do His job and align our lives with God’s ways and will.
THE DIVINE ORDER THAT HE SET OUR LIVES IN, IS THE ORDER OF GOD’S WILL AND WAYS.
The next revelation we can glean from our devotional text is about the process the Holy Spirit uses in setting our lives in divine order. We have seen so many processes; from pulling back our flesh, to transmitting truths that burn in our hearts, and to transforming our minds not to conform to the customs of traditions of this world.
The next process was made manifest when Jesus spoke with the disciples. Our devotional text says;
“Then He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you: everything which is written concerning Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
Then He [thoroughly] opened up their minds to understand the Scriptures, Luke 24:44-45 AMPC
In this text we can see the LORD “thoroughly opening up the minds of the disciples to understand the scriptures.”
This is another process the Holy Spirit of Christ uses in setting human lives in divine order – the process of thoroughly opening up our minds to comprehend the scriptures.
I call this “the miracle of the mind.”
The miracle of the mind is what you experience when you sit under apostolic and prophetic teachers of the word. And that is what Christ designed that we experience in our Church services, but it does not happen everywhere.
That is why many struggles with curses in their lives. That is why they are given oil, water, salt, and told to use sand and all the inventions of the demon of deliverance in prayer.
If the miracle of the mind takes place where they worship, such nonsense will never be practiced. They will not be engaging themselves in charismatic witchcraft.
The Holy Spirit is not the spirit of any type of witchcraft.
Whenever you see any type of witchcraft on display, and people calling it Holy Spirit, is a blasphemy. And do not forget, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit attracts terrible consequences and we can see them in the lives of those who call charismatic witchcraft Holy Spirit.
THEY DO NOT HAVE REST. THEY ARE ALWAYS IN ONE PROBLEM OR THE OTHER.
If you want to save yourself this end time from these false spirits parading themselves in the church today, most times through the hand of both false and some true but ignorant men and women of God, you must separate yourself from wrong places and join a local assembly where such displays are not present.
Make yourself part of a spiritual house where God open up the minds of people to comprehend the scriptures, not places where the secrets of men’s lives are opened to astonish people and present the preacher as true and powerful.
Places where the minds of men are opened to comprehend the scriptures are very few today. Most of them are demonized by wicked Christians called all sorts of names.
. For instance, we here in East African are being called all kinds of names by the perverted Church because of the miracle of the mind that takes place in our ministry. People no longer fear ancient devils and false prophets.
The truth remains, when God open your mind to comprehend the scriptures, you will no longer fear. When you are properly fed spiritually, fear will disappear from your heart.
I grew up to discover that When you sit under your God given pastor, one thing that disappears from your life is fear.
Sadly, the false preachers and heretic teachers love to fill their victims with fear-stricken messages and teachings. They use the principle of fathering to put them in the shackles of fear.
But once the victims turn to the LORD, and the fear is taken a way, they move from dying sacrificial lambs of greedy preachers, to conquering lions of the Lion of the tribe of Judah through the miracle of the mind.
Though it is is a beautiful thing, the only problem there is when that happens, the minister God may have used to do the job, will become the target of the greedy, heretic, false preachers, or teachers and prophets.
We have been targeted severally by this breed in Kenya, but our God have been helping us! You need the miracle of the mind more than any other miracle to make it in life.
It is my prayer that the LORD order your steps right and bring you to the place of the miracle of the mind in Jesus precious name. Amen!
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” says the LORD.
Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel against the shepherds who feed My people: “You have scattered My flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for the evil of your doings,” says the LORD.
“But I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them, and bring them back to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase.
I will set up shepherds over them who will feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, nor shall they be lacking,” says the LORD. Jeremiah 23:1-4 NKJV