GO NOT DOWN
Glory be to God, our Father, for bearing us through another quarter and bringing us into this new quarter. He is the one that did it and not we ourselves. So let us bow before Him and worship Him with thanksgiving and praise and adoration for He is a good God. You must count and recount your blessings and name them one by one so that you can appreciate Him the more. If your faith will increase then you must mark your past Ebenezers for it is they that will forbid you to think that the Almighty will abandon you on this journey into your inheritance.Glory be to God, our Father, for bearing us through another quarter and bringing us into this new quarter. He is the one that did it and not we ourselves. So let us bow before Him and worship Him with thanksgiving and praise and adoration for He is a good God. You must count and recount your blessings and name them one by one so that you can appreciate Him the more. If your faith will increase then you must mark your past Ebenezers for it is they that will forbid you to think that the Almighty will abandon you on this journey into your inheritance. As you enter into a new quarter and the last for the year, may you trust Him again so that He will bear you all through this quarter till the end of the year and grant you much progress and uncommon victories over every enemy opposition and manifestation. As you go I hear the Spirit of God say to you: Go not down into Egypt; ….
This is the same word that God sent to Isaac thousands of years ago when he was on his own journey. His father Abraham had made that mistake before when there was a famine with very uncomplimentary consequences and he was about to do the same. We are living in very difficult times. Jobs are not available and even those who are working are not getting their wages regularly. Yet parents must pay rent, put food on the table, clothe the family, pay school fees, etc. Young people who are due to marry are not able to do so because they are not able to meet up with the expenses, etc. I am hearing you say that there is a famine in so many ways. Only inanimate objects do not react to adverse situations. Abram went down and in his own time Isaac was already going down when the Word of God came to him and arrested that descent. Friend, go not down into Egypt. Do not go down into debts. Do not go down into compromise. Do not go down into depression. Do not go down into unbelief showing in bad confessions. Do not go down into unbelief. Do not go down into the mode of misplaced aggression. Go not down into… When you go down to Egypt you lose time, lose your consecration, may lose your Sarah (God’s provision to help you succeed). There are no altars in Egypt and your devotions will go. And since you are not going to die there but keep living you may acquire some worldly lifestyles that will war against your soul. Of course you will lose time that cannot be recouped. Then you may come back with some ‘attachments’ to your life that may ruin your life. Lot prospered materially there but got a wife that terminated his discipleship and located him in Sodom, making him permanently displaced from the Divine placement of God for his life. Sarai picked a house girl – Hagar. Up till today the consequences of that apparently innocent decision has plagued the entire earth. Friend, please do not go down. Abram’s journey was almost terminated after Egypt. Apart from loss of time it changed his testimony permanently. So what do you do?
Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great: For he had possession of flocks, and possessions of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him. (Gen. 26:12-14)
Friend, you must borrow wisdom from this. Isaac stopped thinking of going down and sojourned there and faced the famine until it was over. Infact it is as if the famine helped him to become more resourceful and brought out some inert qualities that were dormant in Him. He sowed in that dry land and God blessed him abundantly. The evidence of God’s blessing was so evident that even his neighbours envied him. Note that the man waxed great (grew consolidately) and went forward. God will move you forward and you will know progress and prosperity but you must sow now. Nobody sows in a dry land so it must be a step of faith and God will give you the secret of irrigation in a dry and parched land but you must go ahead and begin to sow immediately. Times of famine are times of scarcity and everyone who is reasonable tries to keep the little they have but you must sow some of it. Sow (share) some of your meagre resources with those who are less priviledged than you. Open your heart and your hands towards them (Heb. 13:16; Gal. 6:9,10). Sow into private praise and worship. Offer Him a sacrifice of praise (Heb. 13:15). Sow into your discipleship (Heb. 13:17). This is not the time to be an independent ranger and loner. This is the time for fellowship and relationship especially with those that God has placed over you. Sow into prayers for others (Heb. 13:18). Sow into good works – evangelism, teaching, etc. Sow into your family relationships. This is a time to find time to spend with your wife on ever deepening communication so as to become more intimately bonded. Sow teaching and training into the lives of your children and family members. Do not neglect to build your home because this may be the source of your strength and wisdom. Rebecca is not mentioned but she must have played a great role from the background if Isaac would sow and sustain the effort in those difficult times. The bedrock of all these are your altars starting from your personal altar. Keep sowing into this whether it is dry or not. It is as you dig into the Bible, like digging a well, that you get water (revelations) that you will use to irrigate your plantings. God only blesses seed sown into the ground of peoples lives, etc. When you have not sown there is nothing to bless and give increase to. Friend, do not go down, but settle down and sow and God will bless you and move you forward, in Jesus Name.
YOUR DAY VIII – TIME STEALERSFriend, time is a great resource of God that if you do not have it you cannot do anything. It is most valuable and a treasure that is priceless. Time is equal to opportunities; time is money, etc. You need to appreciate time so that you can value it and maximize its use. Unfortunately time can be wasted and squandered and have a man do little or less than he should have done in life. One of the things the enemy specializes in doing is to impoverish you and make you full of sorrow and regrets, when you look back, is to steal your time and render you unprofitable and even bitter at last. Look at this testimony: Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed. This is the land that yet remaineth:… (Joshua 13:1-2)
Joshua was a man that God called when he was young and gave him his life’s assignment. He showed him the boundaries of his call and all He wanted him to do. He gave him all that he needed to do it and was ready to give him more if need be. He was told to be urgent because it is only the place that the soles of his feet treads upon in all the lands given to him that will be his possession. The life and destiny of the entire nation depended virtually on his doing well. He was not given a time frame and he seemed not to know at the beginning that he was going to get old as time went on. He started with vigour and energy and seemed to have done much with much human applause. But when you look at God’s verdict he was bitty, not strategic and orderly. He slaughtered many kings but that is not equivalent to taking the land. He fought many battles very well and skillfully but that does not equate to taking the land. At the end of his day when the night had come, God’s verdict was that, he was old and stricken in years and yet there remained much of the land earmarked for him to be occupied. Then God began to carefully outline the lands he should have taken in an orderly manner and it was indeed much. Men were clapping but the Lord Who gave him the task assessed him as having not succeeded. Unfortunately this was coming at a time when he could no longer do much. The best part of his day had been stolen and he probably did not know it. Joshua 12 shows that there was a celebration of his achievements until the LORD came and opened the true verdict. What happened to Joshua can happen to you and that is why we must look at it and learn. Time stealers will not make it obvious to you that your time is being stolen. It is like a sales girls who keeps stealing your money little by little until the whole shop is finished. If you are not discerning and always taking stock you will not know that your business is going down. There is a way to arrange your goods and use mirrors so that once you come in you think that the shop is full. That is one of the things that happened to Joshua. The enemy kept nimbling at his time and gradually his day and energy were going. Friend, what is your testimony now and what will it be at the end of your day when you are old and stricken in years? As I look at Joshua I see that he was not strategic and listened more to human praise and applause more than checking with the LORD. So many times, he was distracted and presumptuous like when the Gibeonites came and deceived him. I do not see any clearly defined plan for the work given to him. Many a time he kept reacting to the enemy not following a properly planned route, as if he was doing fire fighting. He was not a good delegator and deployer of men. His greatest omission and undoing was that he did not raise any faithful replacements and so he did not have faithful partners and once he was not there everything he has achieved was rolled back as if he did nothing in his day. Friend this is your time, this is your day. You can already begin to see that Joshua understood the call of God for his life, had every resource to accomplish it, probably started well and yet did not receive Divine commendation. The matter that does not seem so obvious is that he did not understand time wasters and stealers and he was not checking from time to time. It is obvious that laziness, inertia, personal life disorganization, applying your strength on tangential issues, etc, can waste your time but time stealers are not so obvious. Even before we look at some of these wasters and stealers you need to wait a bit before God and check what you are achieving with your time in this your day, lest you will also hear when it is late that you have not done much of what you are supposed to do. More of God’s grace to you.