STRUGGLES OVER
Welcome to 2017 and to God be the glory. That you came across into this New Year is His doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. All glory, honour, majesty, thanksgiving, be ascribed unto Him. We must all praise Him for His mighty hand that took us through 2016 and brought us into 2017. If not for Him it would have been a different story as the enemy would have dealt with us mercilessly and destroyed many. But the LORD protected and provided for us and gave us grace and brought us across. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture and our good shepherd has led us into a new beginning. Not to acknowledge and praise Him will make us ingrates, so we must thank and praise Him and then put our hands in His own to bear us again this year.
Now His sure promise to us is that your warfare is accomplished; your hard service has been completed; your struggles are over… You must apply this as appropriate to yourself and move accordingly from now onward. If only you will make a way for Him, the glory of the LORD shall be revealed over your life and all humans will see it. So where things had been very hard for you things will be easy now; where you have experienced stiff opposition over time you will operate with ease; where you had to knock and knock before, doors will open effortlessly. The glory of the LORD will do this for you because He says so. Your days of sweating are over and you will see things happen like automatic doors open as you approach them.
Now let me give you one key about this. It will no more be by your might or by your power but by His Spirit. The energy of your flesh must be discarded and left behind and you must learn the way of the wind and ‘fly’ effortlessly. Your days of applying your might and power – (intellectual power; pecuniary might; human connections; muscular energy; schemings, etc.) – should be over. You must now let go and let the Holy Spirit. That is why the LORD is talking of making a way for Him. Of course you must avoid sin like plague but beyond that every thing about self must be forsaken and left behind and the Spirit must be trusted fully.
This will be a year of seeing greater things than before. It will be a year of progress and advancement. The cloud has already lifted. Take your journey under the cloud. You are already under cover in the shadow of the Almighty. No evil shall befall you and your family. He will surely bring you into all He has ordained for you for this year. May His grace never depart from you and may He grant you God-speed.
YOUR DAY II
Friend, as we go on with our study on time, remember that it is to make you aware of time and its nature so that you can become urgent with the time given you by God as a good steward, manage it well and maximize it. As the truth comes to you, you must practice it. The LORD wants you to be urgent and strategic so that you will be a faithful steward and be given more trust and return home to heaven without much regrets about the things you left undone.
Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeks the light of the world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. (John 11:9-10).
This was Jesus’ response to His disciples who thought that He should not go to Bethany to raise Lazarus from death because of the threat of the Jews. The Lord asked the disciples whether there were not 12 hours in the day. Actually a day is made up, technically, of 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. The day is the time to walk – live actively – and do all that you need to do. Night is for sleeping and rest and if you attempt to walk then you will stumble because there will be no light to enable you see. What the devil was trying to do was to make Jesus afraid so that He would not walk in His day and do what He was sent to do and help mankind but he refused knowing that His day would be wasted if He did not use it because of fear or for whatever reason. The devil did this so many times through the Pharisees, disciples, His family, etc. At one time the Pharisees told Him to, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. An ordinary man would have scampered away into hiding from wicked Herod but notice Jesus’ reply: And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. Here again the Pharisees tried to intimidate and frighten Him to run away from the Agenda Heaven had set for Him. Jesus shows that He was not going to be stopped from carrying out His mandate by a Herod. Infact He called him a fox implying that the threat was all a plot to make Him abandon His mandate and waste His day. He was resolute and vehement that He would keep casting out demons and healing sicknesses until His day elapses – to day… – and He is perfected – doing all He came to do. If we do not adopt this same attitude our day shall be stolen away from us by the enemy and our lives will waste or not be fully profitable.
Now, there are 12 hours in Your Day and this Day is given to you by God to fulfill a mandate, the Agenda God set for your life. The enemy may try to steal it or part of it but you must refuse vehemently. We will later look at time stealers and time wasters but in the mean time let us look at time a little bit more.
While this earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. (Gen. 8:22).
We had earlier said that we do not want to venture into a scientific definition of time or go philosophical. We only want to take time simply as day and night. God’s covenant with man is that day and night, among other things, will continue as long as this earth remains. So one day consists of day and night. This day and night is broken into hours and minutes and seconds. 7 days make a week and 4 weeks make a month and 12 months make a year. Your lifetime is made up of the years allotted to you by the Maker. We are repeating and emphasizing this because you need to appreciate this. To waste seconds every day will add up to wasting some portion of your life at the end. So you must be watchful and endeavour to ensure that no seconds are wasted and so on.
The first matter is to appreciate that time is a gift of God and so makes you a steward which means that you are going to give an account of all the time given you. Stewards are managers, accountants, caretakers, etc., and not owners and landlords. Many people appreciate that they are going to give an account of how they used their gifts and talents, their bodies, their money, etc., but they have not come to realize that time requires good stewardship and that it is one of the most important provisions God has given to any man. Time is precious and you need to appreciate this. Without time you will not live on earth and without time you will not achieve anything. So the first thing is to appreciate time as a very precious gift of God and to cherish it and appreciate God for it. As we have shared, your Day is within your life time. It is that portion of your life within which you must accomplish the work of Him that sent you. It is God’s gift and provision for you to accomplish your divine mandate and be fulfilled and you must cherish and manage it well. It is precious.
Then time is inelastic in the sense that once it passes it cannot be retrieved. For example, 1st of January, 2017 has passed into history and will never come again. If there were some things you should have done then that you did not do, you may never do it again forever. For example, if there was someone you met that day and was supposed to speak to about Christ but you did not and missed that opportunity you may have lost that forever. God will have to create another time and opportunity if you will ever speak to such a person in your life time. Now this is frightening but it is the truth. Time is not in your control even though you can decide what to do with it. Even now time is going but you may be unaware of it and once it passes it will not come again but has gone forever.
Friend, time is constantly going and your life time and your Day is running. You are constantly growing older and the 12 hours of your Day is slowly but speedily ticking away. Every tick of the clock means that your life is going and your Day is being expended. You have no power to change this. All you can do is not to stop time but to do your best with time and be prompt and time conscious. Stop procrastinating and sleeping when you should be awake and in motion. All the things you planned to do last year but did not do may never be done again. And even if you try to do them you may not get the same result. A right thing done at a wrong time is still wrong. You must move in time and on time. God must help you to understand this so that you will not waste time but be a good steward of time and be prompt and maximize it.
Again, time is fleeting – passing quickly. Job said that: My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, And are spent without hope. (Job 7:6). A weaver’s shuttle is pretty fast and Job, in his suffering saw his days going like that and coming to a hopeless end as he thought. Friend, the truth is that your life time is racing by and moving to its end on earth and it must not end on a hopeless note with nothing achieved or with much land still not possessed. Time can be a great pressure and is one chief problem or need for a growing person, especially when you have come into your Day. You seem to have less that 24 hours in your days because there is so much to do and so many things competing for your time which will not increase. This is why it must be managed well. Everyone does only what he chooses to do in his life time and Day. You will always find time for what you want or choose to do. You cannot do everything that calls on you so you must decide what you want to do and concentrate and spend your time doing it and doing it well. This year will soon pass and what you will achieve depends on what you will do with the entire days, weeks and months in the year. You cannot afford to be untidy, disorderly and careless and achieve little. To do too many things and not really do anything tangible is laziness also as much as slothfulness is. Once you have seen what to do (vision) set your goals, commit yourself to it and pursue it with all your might trusting in the LORD to give you increase as you plough on. It is those that sow in tears (seed time) that will reap with joy (harvest).
The Lord Jesus knew that there were 12 hours in His Day and that those 12 hours were fleeting away. So He would let nothing either detract nor distract Him but set His face like a flint to finish the will of He that sent Him. If you will not follow in His footsteps like this you may regret it at the end of your life. If you will not catch just anything and have your name changed from what Heaven called you and planned for you to do before time, you must now settle down and face your Day. Planning is good because if you do not plan then you are planning to fail. But after planning you must arise and execute. Now, press on with purpose in every step unto accomplishing your mandate in this your day. Remember that to do this the bedrock remains your walk with God and communion with Him. God bless you and grant you Godspeed.