REAPING GOD’S PROMISES!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 21, 2021.

SUBJECT : REAPING GOD’S PROMISES!

Memory verse: "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.” (Isaiah 1 vs 19.) 

READ: John 14 vs 21 & 23:

John 14:21: He who has My commandments and keeps them, It is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.

14:23: Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

INTIMATION:

God's promises are given to His children on the condition of our willingness to listen to His voice and obey His commands. His promises are the heritage of His children, and we must keep His commands in order to receive His provision. Therefore, all we should do is to give God the obedience and lifelong service He desires from us,  and “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.” (Isaiah 1 vs 19.) 

God commands those He intends to bless. If you obey Him, you will experience His blessings. If you disobey Him, you will reap the consequences. Imagine the manifestation of Jesus Christ to you, and the God the Father and the Son making their home with you! Will anything be difficult or impossible with you, when you are the home of the Creator and All-powerful God? Your guess is as good as mine.

Obedience is a command from God. Therefore, not being obedient to His commands is, in my considered opinion, rebellion and stubbornness. Rebellion and stubbornness are serious sins. Scriptures equate them with divination (witchcraft) and idolatry (First Samuel 15 vs 23). Rebellion against God is perhaps the most serious sin of all because as long as a person rebels, he or she closes the door of forgiveness and restoration with God. 

When a man obeys God he gives the only possible evidence that in his heart he believes God. This is because obedience is of the conduct and may be observed; it is an actual and outward result of the inward persuasion and consequent believe. Christians today always make rituals of going to church, taking communion, or paying tithes. But these activities are empty if our reasons for doing them are selfish. God doesn't want these sacrifices and offerings without an attitude of devotion (obedience) to Him. 

God had unlimited blessings planned for Adam and Eve, yet they deliberately disobeyed Him. Their conduct caused them to be driven from the garden by angels with flaming swords. It was the fall of man that, in fact, affected every person who would ever live on earth from that day forward. And it was man's fall that made the cross necessary for redemption. Mary obeyed God, and she was chosen to bring the Redeemer of mankind into this world. 

Elijah and the widow of Zarephath were both commanded of God. Elijah was commanded to go to Zarephath, and God would provide for him there (1 Kings 17 vs 9). The widow was commanded to feed Elijah. The widow "did according to the word..." and she received her supernatural blessings. She received exactly what she gave. She gave food and received food that lasted the duration of the draught in Israel. Both Elijah, the widow, and her son were supernaturally fed all through the drought. 

As soon as she gave Elijah the last bin of flour, and oil in the house, the bin of flour began to fill up by an unseen hand and was never used up. Nor did the jar of oil run dry, "according to the word of the LORD which He spoke by Elijah. Both Elijah and the widow could have missed their promised blessing had they disobeyed God's direction. The woman's obedience also brought revival of life to her dead son. Her son suddenly took ill, and it became severe that there was no breath left  in him. Elijah prayed and God gave back life to the son.

God wants our sincere faith and devotion. The Christian rituals, sacrifices, and offerings are to be outward sign of an inward faith in God. Many today have come to place of more faith in the rituals of their religion than in God they worship. God does not take pleasure in your outward expressions if your inward faith is missing (Hosea 6 vs 6). Though religious rituals can help people understand God and nourish their relationship with Him, but they are helpful only if it is carried out with an attitude of love and obedience to God. When you obey God, you lift Him up, and when you lift Him up, then men will be drawn to Him for their day of salvation. 

Prayer: Abba Father, great is Your faithfulness! Your thoughts for me is of good and not of evil. Endue me with the spirit of complete obedience to You in all things that it will be well with me, in Jesus’  Name I have prayed. Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!