OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL For Thursday 17 April 2014 "CHRIST FOR YOU" - PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE

OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL For Thursday 17 April 2014 "CHRIST FOR YOU" BY PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE

Memory Verse: Romans 8:31

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

Read: James 4:5-8

5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

Message

Apart from Christ being in you, another dimension of Christ in relation to you is “Christ being for you”. The phrase “for you” in this context signifies approval of or support for you. The implication of ‘Christ for you’ is encapsulated in Romans 8:31:

“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

I pray that God will give you the revelation of this in your spirit. With Christ for you, you become an unstoppable juggernaut. Every opposition against your forward movement is bulldozed away. It is a great thing when God is for you because anyone trying to curse you would merely be wasting his time. We see this manifested in the life of the children of Israel on their way to the Promised Land. Because God was for them, all attempts to curse them failed. In opposition to their onward journey to the Promised Land, Balak the king of Moab hired Balaam – a prophet, to curse them. God dealt with the prophet by warning him against his mission through the donkey that spoke like a man. Besides this, three consecutive times, at the point of pronouncing curses, God intervened and in fact made Balaam to pronounce blessings upon God’s people.
“How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied? Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!”
Numbers 23:8&23

How then do you obtain His support? It is by drawing near to Him. James 4:8 says if you draw near to God, He would also draw near to you. This means that you don’t serve Him only with the mouth, but also with your heart. Drawing close to God means spending quality time in personal fellowship with Him. Fellowshipping with Him means you talk to Him and He talks back to you. Study how a man and woman in courtship get close to each other and apply this to your relationship with God. They talk to each other, they share moments of ups and downs together, they parade each other around, they express their feelings of love and dissatisfaction in songs, poems and letters, they study each other’s character and they shed relationships not approved of by their partner and several other things. If you apply this principle to your relationship with God, you will be shocked at how real He will become and for sure He will stand up in your defence just like a man will stand up for his woman if confronted by danger while in courtship.

Prayer Point

Father, fill my heart with your love, cancel any curse upon my life and bless me.

BIBLE IN ONE YEAR : AMOS 1:1-5:17 and PSALM 83