QUALITIES OF SALT

READ: JOHN 16:6-14

The common salt is so easily affordable yet it is indispensable. Salt performs several functions in every household. It adds taste to meals and prevents items from decaying. It also freshen things. Today, we shall examine what salt stands for. Salt is symbol of the Holy Spirit. Salt is pure and the Holy Spirit is pure. Salt is white and the symbol of holiness is white. Salt is beautiful and I am sure you will agree with me that the Holy Spirit is beautiful. Salt is powerful and the Holy Spirit is powerful. Even a child knows that salt brings sweetness. This is why I pity those who do not eat salt, for whatever reason. Salt cannot kill. There is nowhere in the Bible where we are told not to eat salt. The Holy Spirit acts like salt. The Holy Spirit brings sweetness into lives. The Holy Spirit replaces sorrow with joy. In John 16:7, the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter. Salt is a fertiliser, even though it may be expensive. It makes plants grow. The Holy Spirit makes the barren fruitful when brought into contact with Him. Salt is a disinfectant. Salt can be used to keep a wound clean from contamination. In the same manner, the Holy Spirit has a way of keeping the body of Christ healthy by destroying error. Salt prevents decay. The Holy Spirit has a way of keeping a person or a particular group of people from degeneration by exposing among them wolves in sheep’s clothing. Salt in a healing agent, and if you allow the Holy Spirit to come into your life, He will replace your illness with health. Salt preserves life. The Holy Spirit replaces death with life. Medical doctors and scientist agree on the fact that salt is good and that it makes good whatever it comes in contact with, in a pleasant way. The Holy Spirit is also good and if you come in contact with Him, you will become blessed. You will also become a source of blessing.

MEMORIZE: JOHN 14:26 –But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

BINDING THE STRONGMAN

READ: LUKE 14:28-30

There is a strong link between a strongman and a stronghold. Strongmen are attached to strongholds. In the olden days, when someone captured a slave, he put the slave bound in what was called a stronghold. A stronghold is always a fence with a mighty wall round it so that the fellow would not be able to escape. Of course, there would be somebody guarding the place. When you want to set your beloved one free, there are three principal things to do. The first thing is to bind the fellow supervising the stronghold. Secondly, you have to loosen the bound person. Thirdly, you have to pull down the stronghold around your beloved one so that, after freedom, he will be able to escape. The question then is how do you get inside the stronghold to loosen the captive, pull down the stronghold and get out? In Matthew 12:29, the Bible says: “Or else how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.” Here, the Bible states that the first thing to do is to bind the strongman. There are all kinds of strongmen. By the way, the strongman is not the devil. The strongman is just one of his agents that he put in charge of his slaves. The time bind the devil for a thousand years by an angel will come later. You do not bind the man but the spirit. It is the evil force controlling your beloved one that you must bind. When you bind the demon, you will be able to rescue your beloved one. If you simply talk to a strongman he will not budge. He is a stubborn personality. The only language he understands is the language of binding and loosening. When you bind the strongman, you put a full stop to his activities.

MEMORIZE: MATTHEW 18:18 –Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

THROUGH THE FIRE

READ: ISAIAH 43:2-6

God is everywhere. This assures me of safety, anytime, anywhere. It is for this that the Bible says in Psalm 46:1 that: “GOD is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Anytime you find yourself in trouble, as a child of God, you will find God by your side. He will answer you anytime you need Him. You don’t have to doubt this at all. The fact that God is everywhere is however likely to make some people uncomfortable, especially those who wish to continue to live in sin. They would want God to take His eyes off them once in a while. But if he takes His eyes of you, the lion will get you. God is ever-present help in the time of trouble. Of course, there some times when we think that God is slow and we wonder why He does not seem to be acting as quickly as we would want Him to. God is never slow or late; He is always on time. God is everywhere all the time, whereas the devil can be only in one place at a time. Because God is with us every time, that is why he says in Isaiah 43:2 that He will be with us when we pass through the river and through fire. On those occasions when we pass through fire, God will be with us so that it will not burn us. He will also keep neutralising the bullets of the enemies, according to Isaiah 54:17 that says: “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” He is aware that some people will constantly be fashioning out new weapon to try against us. But if they try them against God’s own people, they will not work because God will be by the side of His people. The enemies may gather themselves together but God will scatter them. God is for us; not one can be against us. He is our shield and buckler. In fact, He is our strong tower. Just as mountains surround Jerusalem; our God surrounds us with impenetrable walls of fire. Therefore, we are untouchable.

MEMORIZE: PSALM 57:7 –My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise.

ANGELS OF LIGHT

READ: EPHESIANS 4:25-32

Satan is adept at making counterfeits. He counterfeits every good thing God makes. Currency counterfeiters work very hard to ensure perfect deception, by making the fake money look very much like the real thing. It is the same case with Satan. When Satan propagates his own gospel, he backs it up with the Bible. We would look at some of the Bible passages Satan often uses to send people to hell. Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath.” Satan loves to use this passage to confuse people that what the Bible really means here is that they can be angry only they should not prolong the anger. He knows too well that five-minute anger can spoil all that a man has spent thirty years building up. Satan has deceived many with this Scriptures. Once, while conducting a prison fellowship, I met a brother who was serving a life sentence for slapping a person to death in anger. That anger did not last till the second day, nor did it last for five minutes. Yet, in the split seconds that it lasted, he became a murderer. There are many verses of the word of God that admonishes us not to be angry at all. One is in Ephesians 4:31: “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.” Also, Proverbs 14:17 says, “He who is quick-tempered acts foolishly, and a man of wicked intentions is hated.” Proverbs 16:32 says: “Who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” Again, Ecclesiastes 7:9 admonishes us: “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.” Anger is temporary madness. Anger is terribly bad and it spoils a lot of things. Satan knows that when you are angry, there is nothing you cannot say. He knows that whatever comes out of your mouth is recorded in heaven. He knows about Matthew 12:36: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.” Why then does the Bible tell us to be angry but not to sin: When is it allowed for a child of God to be angry? This is when he comes across someone blaspheming the Almighty God. This is because you know that what such a fellow is doing constitutes an affront to the Almighty. At such times, you can rise up to defend the glory of God.

MEMORIZE: EPHESIANS 4:26 –Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath.

THE EVIDENCE

READ: ISAIAH 35:1-5

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every mortal. The only thing that can fill this void is inner purity. No one can experience purity without inviting Jesus, or Saviour and Sanctifier, into his or her heart. Are you guilty of hidden and open sins? Repent right now and ask God to come into your heart and cleanse it so that He may dwell in it permanently. Say: “Lord, forgive me of my unclean thoughts, lying, pride, covetousness, laziness and every other way I have sinned against you. I affirm that I will never be lustful, proud, covetous, untruthful, unforgiving or lazy again. I am a child of God and so I want to behave as my father does. Come into my heart right now and cleanse it of all sins so that you may dwell in me fully and completely; fill me with your Holy Spirit that I may work the works of Him who sent me.” Finally, how can you be sure that you are pure? You can be sure that you are pure when you are longer overcome by temptation. You can reach this stage of Christian maturity if you will receive it from God in prayer. If you are already a child of God, repeat this prayer loud, humbly and sincerely: “Lord, I do not want to be impure any longer. I want to be as pure as light. Take my life and make it holy and divine by making it wholly yours. So fill me with your Spirit that I may walk always in purity and light.” If you are not yet Christian, these daily devotional thoughts may not mean much to you because until a person is born again of the Spirit of God he does not have the power to live a holy life. No child of the devil can be pure. Religion cannot make you free from sin. Holiness is impossible for those who cover themselves with the filthy rags f religious righteousness. Purity is possible only through the power of a new life. Make it a point of duty to come into a decisive encounter with the Saviour today.

MEMORIZE: MATTHEW 5:8 –Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

THE GREAT COUNSELLOR

READ: 2 KINGS 7:1-7

The kind of breakthrough you receive is directly proportional to the quality of your faith in God. Little faith produces little breakthrough while mighty faith produces mighty breakthrough. Don’t be doubter; be a believer. There was a certain lord who, as a trusted counsellor and adviser to the king, would rather have his own report listened to than that of the Lord. The man of God had said that there would be supernatural abundance and a breakthrough but the king’s counsellor replied that even if God made windows in Heaven, the things predicted by the prophet of God could not happen. The prophet of the Lord turned to the adviser to the king and said it should be unto him according to his faith. Who is your counsellor? On whom do you lean? Who is your adviser? The answer you give will determine quite a lot about your future. There is one Counsellor that I have and I am willing to make Him available to you too. His name is Jesus. Isaiah 9:6 tells us about one particular person that God, in His infinite mercies, has given us: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Jesus Christ is the Wonderful Counsellor. Jesus is the One who has been counselling the Trinity before the world began. He is the One in the trinity who counselled the others to make Man in their own image. We are made in His own image because God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are Spirits. Today, God the Son is sitting on the right side of the Father like a man. He is the Great Adviser. He will never lead you astray. Let Him be your Counsellor.

MEMORIZE: ROMANS 11:20 –Well said. Because of unbelief they ere broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear.

THE SHOUTING SIDE

READ: 1 SAMUEL 1:9-13

There are many prayer patterns. There are times when we have to shout to verbalise our burdens in prayers. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and the time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7). With the permission of the Almighty God, one may say that there is a time to keep silent and a time to shout. There is a time for silent prayers: the time when only your lips move in prayer. We have a good example in our text. It is the story of Hannah, when she poured out her heart to God. When Eli saw her, he thought she was drunk. This tells us straight away that, in the olden days, when people prayed in the temple, they prayed aloud. On this occasion, Hannah was doing the exception: praying without making a sound. This made Eli think that she was drunk. There is a time when all you need do is sigh and God will hear. God heard the sigh of the children of Israel in Egypt (Exodus3:7). They have prayed for 400 years without anything happening and all that they could do was to sigh. According to Psalm 46:10, the Bible says: “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” There is a time when you have to be still in the presence of the Lord. In Habakkuk 2:20, the Bible says: “But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” On some occasions when you feel the presence of God, the best thing to do is to be silent. In Zechariah 2:13, the Bible says: “Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD, for He is aroused from His holy habitation!” Occasionally, when we feel the Almighty God rising up in our midst, it is time for silence. However, there is also the time to shout. As a matter of fact, the Almighty God prefers that His children should shout. The shouting side is the winning side. Wherever there is a shout there is life. In Psalm 100:1, it is written: “Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!”

MEMORIZE: PSALM 46:11 –Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!