Abundant Life In The Word
BIBLE READING: JOSHUA 1:8
At fellowship last Wednesday we studied the Book of Ezekiel 20 and a particular verse kept coming back to me even after the fellowship ended. When this happens, I know the Holy Spirit is calling my attention to that Scripture because He wants to share a life-changing secret with me. As I began to meditate on that Scripture, the eyes of my understanding were opened as God began to connect different Scriptures together to give a better understanding of what He was saying in those Words.
God speaking to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 20:11 (NLT) said “There I gave them My decrees and regulations so they could find life keeping them.”And in Ezekiel 20:13b (NLT) He said, “They wouldn’t obey My regulations even though obedience would have given them life.” As I pondered on these words the first place the Spirit took me to wasJohn 1:4 (NLT), which says, “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone.”THE WORD OF GOD GIVES US LIFE!!! We know from John 1:14 that Jesus Christ is the Word of God and He confirmed His purpose for coming in John 10:10b (NKJV)when He said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
As I began to meditate on the Scriptures, I began to see even more clearly the importance of meditating on the Word of God. It is life itself. Without meditating and obeying the Scriptures we are powerless here on earth. Every victory will come with us understanding and believing the Word of God. You can be a Christian and remain powerless because you refuse to study and obey the Word of God. Salvation is a free gift but to obtain the kind of power you need to succeed here on earth, you have to study and obey the Word, without that you cannot prosper and succeed. The Bible says in 2Corinthians 1:20 (TPT) “For all of God’s promises find their ‘Yes’ of fulfilment in Him. And as His ‘Yes’ and our ‘Amen’ ascend to God, we bring Him glory.”What this simply means to me is as a child of God, it is in trusting and agreeing with Jesus Christ (The Word) that I will see a fulfilment of His promises in my life. A few months ago I wrote on the Power of Agreement and one of the things I spoke about was agreement between your heart and your mouth, by that, I mean believing with your whole heart what you mouth is saying. A lot of us confess God’s Word without believing the Words we speak. We just say the Word because the Word says so, not because we trust the Word to work for us. The Word finds fulfilment in our lives when we believe and trust the Word we are confessing into a situation. David did not trust the weapon he was given by Saul to fight Goliath, so he used the weapon he trusted and defeated Goliath. He knew God, Who had delivered him from the bear and the lion using a stone and a sling while looking after his father’s sheep, will also deliver him from Goliath. He didn’t trust the weapons of men, it weighed him down, he looked to the weapon he trusted and even though it looked silly to man, he knew it was God Who would use the tiny weapon in his hands to bring down the giant.
The only weapon we have been given as Christians is the Word of God (The Sword of the Spirit); we fail because we keep looking to the weapons of the world to fight our battles. Jesus Christ used the Word to defeat the devil, like David, let us use and trust the weapon used in our own Kingdom. Remember the Bible tells us the day we gave our lives to Christ, we became citizens of God’s kingdom. We are not citizens of the earth; we are spirits in human bodies living on this earth as ambassadors of God’s kingdom. When we activate the Weapons of our warfare, we will prosper and succeed in all we do but there is a lot of training before we activate it. David spent a lot of time training for his purpose on earth in fields while guarding his father’s sheep. He spent a lot of time meditating on the awesomeness of God as evidenced by some of the Psalms while away from home. Growing up, his father must have told him about the God of Israel and while away from home, he spent a lot of time meditating on what he had learnt and putting all he had learnt to test and that is why he was so confident and found it funny that Goliath could be bragging against his God. He knew his God would use him to bring down this giant with his sling and a stone and he was right.
Is your confidence in God? God told Joshua, he would prosper and succeed if he mediated on and obeyed His Laws. Could it be we are not prospering in some areas of our lives because we are using the methods of the world in that area?
Let me stop here and allow you to ponder on these questions, we will continue next week by His grace.
UNDER GRACE UNDER MERCY
ATINUKE OLASHORE