Month: November 2024

TEXT: 1ST CHRONICLE 7:1-3, ROMANS 11:30-32

The Bible text in the book of 1st Chronicle 7: 1-3, depicts God to be a good entity whose mercy is not seasonal. It says His mercy endures forever because He is always good.

But with our experience as humans with limited understanding, it is difficult to understand how God’s mercy could be at work amidst pathetic situations we face. How can I be starving for lack of funds and still be with the notion that God’s mercy is at work?

To the one who is carnal and devoid of the word of God, such an understanding is insane. But for us who know that all things work together for the good of those whom God loves, we understand that God’s mercy that brought us out of the quagmire is the same force that took us there in the first place. The Lord’s mercy caused the Jews to deal with God in unbelief in order to cause His mercy to save the Gentiles who was never with any knowledge of His power and glory. The same God in His same mercy will cause the Jews to believe through the belief of the Gentiles in due time according to the Romans 11:30-31.

This is to say that the true children of God by God’s mercy, through the enlightenment obtainable from His Word are aware that heaven or hell, in richness or poorness, in health or sickness; the mercy of God never cease to flow. His mercy brings one to a downfall; because the fall is needed to impart an awareness that is profitable in terms of better knowing God. Every Egypt was made by God for His children for the purpose of deliverance.

The word of God says in Hosea 11:1; ”out of Egypt I called my son”. The truth is; God’s mercy that called the son out of Egypt, equally sent him there in the first instance. And all for a purpose. A good purpose for the Lord is good and His mercy is forever.

My brethren, regardless of what you are currently facing, good or bad, Know that is for your own good. It is for the good of your soul that is only using the body to navigate through this realm we are in, in order to garner all the needed experience to purify us. The roots of all our problems could be traced to our over-identifying with the body as who/what we are.

Know who you are. Know that you belong to a good God whose mercy endures forever. Know that you are a spirit subservient to a God who is also a Spirit. And you can only worship this God in the knowledge of the truth. This knowledge inspires you to worship God in spirit, the only truth.

I pray God bring our way to an encounter that will deliver us from the ignorance of the truth.

God loves all for His mercy is not discriminatory. The Lord is good and His mercy is forever.

What you carry inside of you depends on how readily available you make yourself for use by Holy Spirit or unholy spirit.

Know this: The Holy Spirit detests all characters that stem from covetousness, greed and lustful passions. Summarily, what this in other words implies is; the Holy Spirit is hovering around in search of those who are willing and prepared to purify their existence by living a holy life first, then, enabling Christ to assist them in living His righteousness which of course is the only valid righteousness a man can portray before the Almighty Father.

Most times, we are driven by all, one or two of the aforementioned trio of force without our knowing. Still, out of genuine humility, we can ask God to open our eyes to know what it means to be good to ourselves and our neighbors, so we don’t get deceived by the father of all liars, the Devil.

This journey of living a holy and righteous life begins with seeking an original word of God from a true man of God or better mentioned; man from God. Beware of the rubber-stamped-fake- man- of- God. They were trained to be smooth talkers. They are Snakes with all kinds of subtle maneuverings who are out to do their father’s bidding of killing, stealing and destroying destinies.

Next Sunday is another one to seek God; who are you running to for deliverance; for the greatest of all exorcisms comes from the inflow of God’s undiluted Word.

What is day to the followers of Christ is night to the adherents of the Devil. The state of your heart will determine how pure your perception will be.

You don’t belong to this world as a follower of Christ. As a result, do not expect the world to like you. Do not struggle with trying to make any sense to the world. Just mind your business; the works your Lord, your God has put in your hands to do.

If the Devil and his children claimed this world belongs to them, fine. But let’s see where they will go when the world and everything in it comes to its inevitable end. Because heaven and earth shall pass away but the Word of God will forever remain.

Oh, just occurring to you that what you call heaven will equally come to an end according to the statement above? Yes. Heaven, as elicited I the Bible has a beginning because the book of Genesis affirmed it was created in the beginning alongside other abodes like for example; Earth. Therefore, if it has a beginning, then certainly, there must be an end to it.

Only those who are pure in heart are capable of transcending these limited abodes to reach where the unlimited God dwells.

We must therefore pray to God to assist us in getting our hearts pure enough in order to be able to see him as elicited in the beatitude that says; ”blessed are those pure in heart for they shall see God”.

Not all is qualified to see God; only the pure in heart. Purify your heart by your thinking. How? Let the foundation of your thoughts be rooted in the truth that you do not belong to this world.

All the years Joseph spent wandering from one problem to another. From the pit to Potiphar’s house to the prison, and finally to the King’s palace. All that while, he couldn’t have occurred to him to contemplate what his contemporaries were busy doing which by conventional wisdom, a-must-do to be dubbed responsible.  But this is not to say Joseph was doing nothing. As a matter of fact he was doing a lot more than those who seemed to be busy doing something ‘’responsibly’’. He was doing better than those who at that time were in the universities studying to get a degree, those who were planning their wedding engagements, those who were learning the presumed best-selling trade skills at that time just like every Tom, Dick and Harry throng after tech skills today just because of the mouth watering paycheck associated with it and other endeavors rooted in the need to keep up with the joneses.  

All of Joseph’s experience were preparatory to his stepping into the promising future God foretold him repetitively in the dream couple of times.

The Bible says in Gen 39:23 that the attention of the prison’s warder were shifted from Joseph while He was in the prison and succeeded at all he did. A carnal person will wonder what kind of success is obtainable in the prison. But what is success to the divine is failure to the carnal.

But why did I say Joseph was doing better than most of all his busy contemporaries despite his being in incarceration? It is because He was under God’s tutelage. His kindergarten experience he had while still with his folks in his father’s house, elementary education he had when he was in the dry pit, he was enrolled in the potiphar’s house for his high school needs and within the confines of the walls of an Egyptian prison; he undertook his university education. God was busy using all of his life’s challenges and persecution on different fronts to deconstruct him and bring him into a new awareness of self in preparation for the main level God wants him to be to handle the main event.

He rode on the ebb and flow of a divine order and orchestration. He did not struggle with the tide. It is not by power and not by might; says the Lord of host. Zechariah 4:6.

Joseph was never busy pursuing economic development strategists that most probably could be rife in his time, or do you think madness like that is just beginning in our generation? But at last, did he not have access to stupendous wealth? I mean holistic one. Money, power and respect (MPR), all combined in one for one man. What even if at the end he did not have access to money like he did, what does it count? To serve God is not a license to getting millions of Naira. Whether you will have a lot of money or not is your maker’s prerogative. You have no right to query Him. This was why Jesus said whoever is not willing to leave his/her family in order to follow Him is not worthy to be called His disciple. But what is more familiar to one than one’s desire? If you are not ready to forego your desire to be rich and allow only God’s will, then you are not willing to be part of God’s kingdom.

Joseph did not eventually become wealthy because he desired to be wealthy but became rich because it is catalytic to his life purpose coming to fruition. His Staying in the purpose of God will automatically give him access to money, power and respect because it is a necessity for him to do the work of God peculiar to him.

This is why Joseph must have unlimited access to MPR (money, power, respect): God has ordained him to be the siphon  planted in Egypt, through whom the Egyptian wealth to be employed in cultivating the children of Israel to that numerical strength He wants them to attain before making them slid into slavery and eventually delivered, shall come.

God promised Abraham the deliverance will be great and awesome ages before Joseph was even conceived; hence having them like the numerous stars pervading the night sky he showed Abraham in a vision must occur. It is part of the game plan and somebody is needed for God to achieve all of these through. Joseph made himself available.

God had to train Joseph to the point he is trusted enough to make a godly use of the MPR God had reserved for him in Egypt that happened to be a foreign land to him because neither by nativity nor birth, he belonged there. Imagine a foreigner from an unknown background with a rough and squalid antecedent, becoming a prime minister. The citizens obviously must be sleeping. God is involved, hence, nothing is impossible.

God would never have entrusted such position in the hands of an ungodly or a carnal individual with lack of self awareness who when might have gotten to this position will be busy using the resources to fund his insatiable and lustful appetites.

Imagine he is not God-conscious; he would have destroyed his brothers when they came to Egypt for foods on account of how cruelly they dealt with him in the past. Is destroying them not destroying the plan of God to grow the first few that arrived Egypt to settle? Those whom God later multiplied into the mammoth population preserved to fall into slavery and eventually delivered?

No life pursuits matter except God’s purpose and will for you. In this is wrapped all you needed to be fulfilled in life. When your pursuits are the Kingdom of God which in other word is the will and purpose of His for you and your doing its righteousness which is tantamount to yielding to it, then, your chase is not in vain like King Solomon  seemed to generalize. He uttered these words based on his personal experience about life which was rooted in how he wasted it on pursuits of worldliness. He did not realize his vain pursuits while he was dinning and sipping on exotic wine with his bevy of beauties in his palace. He uttered this statement when Mr. death was hovering above him on his dying bed. His experience compelled him to realize and talk like that.

In the contrary, death did not compel Jesus Christ our Lord to murmur vanity upon vanity while nailed to the cross; rather, he confidently told God, ‘’I have glorified you Father, glorify me’’. He was able to talk in this manner because of his experience too. His experience took its root from living not for himself but for God alone. He allowed nothing to lure him from walking the path God the Father had called Him to walk in while on earth. He did not allow a call to come take up a political position or indiscriminate use of his powers to turn stone to bread for the sake of the belly even amidst a compelling hunger to make him derail from the way.

When it’s time for you to die, what are you going to utter silently or loudly with your mouth or within your heart? Are you going to tell your maker; I have done for you well, please do me well too. Or you are going to repeat vanity upon vanity like Solomon did? It is up to you. You have the grace to live the life God has called you to live here on earth which is only through Christ. This is the original freedom. Any other is counterfeit.