TODAY’S DEVOTION (SUNDAY 16TH OCTOBER 2022)
“Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do super abundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—
To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).” Ephesians 3:20-21 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 289TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
The Spirit of the LORD has made us, and the breath of the LORD give us life. Day unto day He have been with us, feeding, saving, favoring, healing, strengthening, schooling, and sheltering us.
To Him belong all the glory!
There is no God like our God who does wondrous things.
For 289 days of this year, we have seen His mercies, compassion, faithfulness, steadfastness, consistency, amazing acts and glorious deeds. We have seen so much than we have imagined. That is why we are alive.
The Bible says,
“There is none like God, O Jeshurun [Israel], Who rides through the heavens to your help and in His majestic glory through the skies.” Deuteronomy 33:26 AMPC
Our lives are living proofs. Our help has been in His name. I grew up to discover that if God is your help, it does not matter who may be against you. If God is your help it does not matter who may not be your help. If God is your help, it does not matter the obstacles that may be on your path.
If God is your help, all giants of life will become dwarfs in your sight. That was why David was able to deal with the giant. The LORD was His help and he was not afraid. He said to the giant;
….“You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.
This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
Then all this assembly shall know that the LORD does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give you into our hands.” 1 Samuel 17:45-47 NKJV
You do not talk like this, especially in the day of battle, if the LORD is not your help.
You cannot stand this bold before an enemy that is a thousand times bigger and better than you except the battle be the LORD’s and not yours. If you take the battle to be yours, you will never be able to talk like David spoke.
He did not say “this day I will kill you and deal with you.” He said “this Day the LORD will deliver you into my hand.” He did not privatize the enemy. He allowed the battle to be the LORD’s while he remains one who just came to pick the spoils of war.
HIS LIFE HERE HAS A LOT FOR EVERY GENERATION OF BELIEVERS. HIS CONFIDENCE WAS SUPERNATURAL BECAUSE OF HIS INTIMACY WITH THE LORD.
His intimacy helped him to understand that in the Kingdom of God enemies and the challenges of life are not measured by our size. They are measured by the size of our God. And since God is bigger than the biggest, if our life challenges and enemies are measured by His size, they will always be smaller in our sight even if they are a thousand times bigger than us.
That was what happened with Joshua and Caleb. The two were amazing in their description of the enemy that occupied the land the LORD gave them. Moses had sent 12 of them to go spy the land and bring back reports. Ten of them brought what the Bible calls an evil report. But they brought what the Bible describe as good report.
The word says;
Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there.
The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”
But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.”
And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature.
There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Numbers 13:27-33 NKJV
THE GRASSHOPPER MENTALITY THE TEN SPIES DEVELOPED WAS CREATED BY THEIR ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THE ENEMY THEY WERE TO FIGHT.
What they said was factual but it was a description of the enemy by their size not by the size of their God. Whenever you describe the strength of your enemy by your size, you develop a grass hopper mentality. You look small in your sight. You develop a smallness that makes you food for your enemy.
Caleb described the enemy by the size of their GOD who have been riding the Heavens to help them since their days in Egypt.
He said “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” When you describe the enemy by the size of your God, you discover that you are able to go up against him and come our victorious even if he is a thousand times bigger than you.
Worry, fear, despair, and shrinking back is always a child of describing our problems or the things we face in life by our strength and abilities. Once they are described by the abilities of God, we become bold, our worries disappear, hope comes in in place of despair and there will be no shrinking back in fear.
God will always honor those who describe their problems in life by His size, but those who do not understand will pick up stones to stone them because they do not understand where they talk from.
The Bible says Joshua and Caleb spoke differently and God honored them but what came before that honor was an attempted stoning. When the people believed the report of the ten spies against that of the two, obviously, for their lack of faith in God, there was chaos and even Moses, the powerful man of God, as a human being, fell to the ground in frustration.
THE BIBLE SAYS
So, all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night.
And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness!
Why has the LORD brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?”
So they said to one another, “Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.”
Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. Numbers 14:1-5 NKJV
From this scripture we learn that Strong leaders can go down by reports that are based on carnal opinions from those around them. The way they see and report things to their leaders can ruin or raise the leaders.
As a leader, If you have close people working with you, who tell you things that are carnal, bias, mischievous, or based on their doubts and worries, and you do not discern it properly, you will be frustrated like Moses and Aaron were. That is why people like Joshua and Caleb should be the ones working with great leaders and warriors in God’s kingdom.
Because in the midst of all the chaos that ensured, the two young men, Joshua and Caleb remained strong and confident. The destiny of an entire nation shifted and was now lying in the hands of their faith.
Those are the kind of people to have around you if you are a leader.
We, in end time battles, do not need people like the ten spies around us. People with capacity to killed the faith of powerful leaders like Moses, a man of honor who was one of the templates of an end time leader in the battle of the LORD, are not needed around us. Do not forget, leaders in God’s kingdom are still humans and can be badly affected by reports from people they trust.
If we, in leadership, are blessed with the Joshua and Caleb kind of close quarters helpers, there is nothing we will not be able to do in God, we will be able to minister to the people of God and steer them into their eternal and prophetic destinies in Christ Jesus.
THE BIBLE SAYS;
But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes; and they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying:
“The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’
Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them.” Numbers 14:6-9 NKJV
But like I earlier stated, instead of the entire nation believing in them and moving on, the decided to pick up stones to stone them.
Think of it; in their carnality and stupidity, they picked up stones to stone people whose faith was to determine their destinies. But the glory of the LORD appeared instantly, to judge them and honor Joshua and Caleb.
The Bible says
“And all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Now the glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel.” Number 14:10
If you do not know how to measure your enemies and life problems by the size of your God, you will do things that will make the glory of the LORD to judge you instead of lift you. You will become either stagnant, or begin to go backward instead of forward in life.
Sadly, if you are under a charlatan, they will blame your position of birth as responsible or your fathers house or something else.
God would later decree a death sentence on those who resisted Joshua and Caleb by the attempted stoning of the two. He would later replace them with their children within a space of 40 years.
The tragedy was created by measuring their enemies by their size instead of the size of GOD.
We do not know how much we have suffered in life doing the same thing. We have lost so much to not measuring our life challenges by the size of our GOD. The nation of Israel, instead of going forward went stagnant for 40 years. The people had to wonder in the wilderness until all the elements that withstood Joshua and Caleb that day were eliminated by time.
ALL THAT WAS DONE BY THE GLORY OF THE LORD!
The glory of the LORD today is the Holy Spirit. He remains the most sensitive part of God. If we keep doing things that grieve Him like what these men did, we will keep weakening His power in our lives and preventing progress from happening.
Our devotional text says;
“Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do super-abundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—
To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).” Ephesians 3:20-21 AMPC
It is what is working in us that determines our progress in life. Something progressive worked in Joshua and Caleb, but something destructive worked in the ten spies and they spread it to the entire nation. The Bible calls what worked in Joshua and Caleb “a different spirit.”
God Himself testified about one of them saying;
“But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.” Numbers 14:24 NKJV
Your life right now is a product of what you have inside you. In other words, what have been working inside you from the day you were born to this day is responsible for how your life has turned out. If you do not like how your life is, do not blame evil foundation and all that.
Just meet God to change what is working in you and you will begin to see glorious things happen in your life.
The destiny of an entire nation was almost wiped away by what was working in them. The greatest gift to receive from God is the Holy Spirit because if He becomes the power that works in us, there is nothing we cannot do in God. There is no height we cannot attain and no giant we cannot bring down.
We will be measuring our enemies and life problems by the size of our God and making strides in life.
Yesterday, we shared about the life style that will put us in a position where the Holy Spirit cannot fill our lives, leads us or be the power that works in us. We must reject that kind of life. We must lead lives that will make the Holy Spirit the power at work in us.
May the LORD use these words to keep building us up and giving us an inheritance among those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus! Amen
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR US TODAY!
And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against Me? I have heard the complaints which the children of Israel make against Me.
Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you: The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above.
Except for Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in.
But your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised.
But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness. And your sons shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and bear the brunt of your infidelity, until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness.
According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection.
I the LORD have spoken this. I will surely do so to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.’ ”Number 14:26-37 NKJV