Daily Devotions

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Are You Hearing God?

(12-6-22) MELISSA — How do you know if what you are hearing is God? Well, does it line up with His Word? For instance, murder and adultery… not God! Also, He trains you to hear Him. “The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.” (Proverbs 2:12)  Sometimes we train ourselves to ignore the prophetic lifestyle because we “don’t want to be weird”.  This really is an epic life we are meant to live—not fairytale or fantasy, but epic.  Why epic? Epic is quite unlike fairytale or fantasy that denote magic, rainbows and butterflies, and other-worldly superhumans. “Epic” denotes work, grit, fight, humans living their destiny and winning.  So, don’t ignore His training.  Don’t ignore that relationship.

Making God-Changes That are Within our Reach

KATHY—How much have crooked persons and entities distorted the Rule of Law and the Constitution as they deliberately try to change our history.  There are those who fully intend to redefine who we are and distort the God-purpose and destiny within us.  We need an Awakening to stop the madness in both the Church and the Nation!  We need to follow Hezekiah’s lead in such a time as this!  He made the God-changes that were in his reach!  He could reach their idols and he tore them down . . . and it PLEASED God!  Of course, it didn’t necessarily please everybody else because Awakening always upsets the norms.

Desire the Unction

As the people of God assemble today may they deeply desire the unction that they have from the Lord. May their hearts and minds be enlightened and be endued with power to have the same light Jesus had and to do what Jesus did with that same unction when He was on earth. Acts 10:38, ESV—“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Holy Dissatisfaction

Yahweh has shown us in His Word that His sons/daughters are expected to call upon Him and know the breadth, length, depth and height of Him (Eph.4:18). We are also expected to embrace the provision of our Lord (Eph.4:12) that we might receive “perfecting” [completing] and come “unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph.4:13). That large mouthful of descriptive words does not leave room for maintaining a present level of acceptableness and biding our time until we can get some relief at the coming of the Lord. In Paul’s writings we find a great example of a holy dissatisfaction. Phil.3:12,Amp—“NOT that I have now attained, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me…”  In the ensuing verses he adds terms like “straining” “reaching forward” and “pressing”. There are levels and potential awaiting us.

The Control Factor

MELISSA—We are dealing with evil on center stage trying to control the narrative, our lives and pave the future. This is literally the kind of stuff sci-fi and horror movies are made of. The control factor for this evil is fear produced from propaganda and the rules of engagement are simply: do what we say, don’t defy us and you won’t be a horrible person and you won’t die. Those are the rules of engagement from the evil spirit of the age.  Excuse me?  It’s obvious by the shape society and the church are in that we have abided by those rules for a very, very long time. I don’t think we’ve realized what was going on until now.  It has taken this awakening to expose how subjected we are to society’s rules and demands. These rules and demands have overreached in the areas such as what aging looks like, how to deal with disease, relationships, what love is, how the church should look to keep up, what to do to be happy (because that’s the goal), etc.  Those rules have made God look like a weak humanist, which has been the end game all along.  So, how do the rules of engagement change?  The heirs of the Kingdom actually awaken to who they are and stop playing by these rules.  This is all part of the ongoing awakening that we are experiencing.

(Melissa will be leading worship and speaking at Kingdom Congress 2023, March 1-3, 2023 at Grace Church Willis. Info: martygabler.com/kc2023)

No Snake on a Stick

KATHY—Like Judah in 2Kings 17, we need an awakening. In the next chapter, 2Kings 18, Hezekiah became king of Judah and Awakening began. Hezekiah was AWARE they needed God and He took action to begin sanctifying the nation.  He destroyed the local shrines, tore down the images of foreign gods, cut down the sacred pole for worshiping the goddess of sex and fertility and he also smashed the bronze snake Moses had made in the wilderness.  Remember when fiery serpents were biting and killing them in the camp?  God told Moses to put a brass serpent on a pole so people could see it and be healed.  That was a one-time obedience that led to the intervention of God for their nation.  Keeping that pole as a testimony from history to teach their children about God was understandable, but sticking that pole among the idols they were worshiping and making sacrifices to dishonored both God and the acts of God in their behalf. That generation had to have cooked the books (unethically change the meaning) of their own history to justify worshiping a SNAKE on a STICK. Our confidence must not be placed upon any past event or monument. Our confidence comes from the faithfulness of God.

Getting Ready for the Next Level

Just about everything in our nation that darkness has to offer, has gone to the next level of what it was before the nation-shaking events of the last couple of years. Our lives, families, churches and communities have been deeply affected and events have hurled a need, nay a challenge, in our faces to overcome them. I think that a sober consideration of those events and their fallout will show us that we cannot continue to operate at the same level we deemed satisfactory heretofore. It is hard to just settle for what is presently evident in our lives and in our environment when God Almighty has shown us in His Word that His sons/daughters are expected to call upon Him and know the breadth, length, depth and height of Him (Eph.4:18) that we have not known before and even expect to be filled with “the fullness of God” (Eph.3:19). 

Engagement and Awakening

MELISSA—Where do rules of engagement fit into awakening? I looked up a definition and here’s what I found: “a directive issued by a military authority controlling the use and degree of force, especially specifying circumstances and limitations for engaging in combat.”  This makes sense in military terms, but how does this fit in everyday life? I began to think about what we went through in 2020, and are currently dealing with in 2022 and rules of engagement took on a whole new meaning.  Rules of engagement for us is how we handle the war we are in and how we see the outcome of said war.

They Forsook the One True God

KATHY—We need an Awakening as badly as Judah did in 2Kings 17. They had forgotten their God.  They had forsaken their one true God, Yahweh and even closed the door to the temple and nailed it shut.  2Kings 17:16-17, could be copy from today’s newspaper:  The people  disobeyed all the commands of the LORD.  They made idols of gold and built altars to gods and goddesses and they worshiped the stars. They indulged in all the black arts of magic and sorcery. . . They sank so low as to sacrifice their own sons and daughters! These things are literally happening in our churches, neighborhoods, schools, businesses, small towns, movies and even cartoons, but most assuredly, (as it reads in the last line of verse 17), GOD HAD ENOUGH. 

Sensitive to What Holy Spirit Says

As the people of God assemble today may their sensitivities be turned to what Holy Spirit is saying to the churches for this hour. May their ears, eyes and hearts be focused to receive instruction and leading that is necessary for the people of God to walk in the way that is effective to the glory of the name of the Lord and the advancement of His Kingdom for the saving of many. Matt.13:16-17,Msg—“But you have God-blessed eyes—eyes that see! And God-blessed ears—ears that hear! A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had the chance.”