FAITH CAPSULE: God can choose to delay His judgment but He cannot be deceived.

Proverbs 6

Do you care to know if you are wicked? Jeremiah posted his question before God, “…Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” (Jeremiah 12:1) After his question, he followed through by identifying the character of the wicked. “You have planted them, yes, they have taken root; they grow, yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth but far from their mind.” (Jeremiah 1:2) Inside the character of the wicked ones as identified by Jeremiah is knowledge of God with the Word of God near in their mouth, but with the Word far from their heart. Indeed, it is pure wickedness to be near Him by having the Word in your mouth but doing with your heart all that is against the Word of God. Are you wicked? Do you speak the Word on Sunday and speak another from Monday through Saturday? God can choose to delay His judgment, but He cannot be deceived. The identity of the wicked cannot be emphasized enough as in Proverbs 6:2, “A worthless person, a wicked mouth man, walks with a perverse mouth.”  If you are one considering that none of the above can be identified in you, it is better to look further into six characters of the wicked ones as identified in Proverbs 6:13-15. The first one is winking with his eyes. There are many that will run into you with the Bible in one hand and show you a flash of light winking, but it does not come from the heart; just from the eyes. The second one is shuffling his feet. This is an ambiguous trick to deceive a fellow brother by making you think they are there while they are not. The third one is pointing fingers. A demonstration of pride is the inability to accept fault. The fourth one is perversity in the heart. This entails being persistent in what is wrong. Only pride will make man to be persistent in what is wrong. The fifth one is devising evil continually. When there is no application of the Word of God, to continually operate as evil genius becomes inevitable. Lastly, the wicked sows discord. Those who seek discord are self-seekers and do not love. Not loving is an act wickedness. As a believer, do not assume escape if you have engaged in any character of the wicked. The portion of the wicked one as stated in Proverbs 6:15 is, “Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly; suddenly he shall be broken without remedy.”

Prayer for today: Search my heart O Lord and see if there is wickedness in me. Deliver me and lead me in the way everlasting.

FAITH CAPSULE: The devil will not shy from attempting you, but failure is his portion.

Matthew 6:25-34, Luke 10:38-42

Heaviness is a spirit and one of devil’s strategies to terminate man from the journey of life. Inhabited in the spirit of heaviness are: worry, trouble, concern, anxiety and many more. The devil is stubborn and never shy to attempt man. Although his attempt is not a guarantee to terminate you, he will not stop looking for opportune times to try. Once, he attempted Jesus but failed. In the devil’s failure, the Bible records, “Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:13) The point here is that the devil will not shy from attempting you, but failure is his portion. Is heaviness having a place in you without your knowing? Could be that you have invited Jesus into your house but do not know that heaviness agents are at work. Martha invited Jesus into her house, but then agents of heaviness were also in disguise as guests. The Bible records that Martha welcomed Jesus into her house. (Luke 10:39) While Jesus was in the house, Martha was overwhelmingly distracted and had to take her complaint to Jesus.  She said, “…Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” (Luke 10:40) Martha welcomed Jesus into the house while forces of heaviness were also active in the house. Does this sound like you? Jesus, the Lord of all, knows all and He identified the problem of Martha with the response, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.”(Luke 10:41) In Martha’s helping and operating as one that enjoyed serving the Lord and Savior, worry and trouble, the avenue for heaviness, was at work in Martha’s (house) life. Can you carefully examine yourself, identify and deny the silent agent of the spirit of heaviness in your life. If Martha, with Jesus in the house, could be trapped, not even your title in the church would be enough for you to take a cover from the spirit of heaviness. It does not matter what your concern or worry is because Jesus said not to worry about your life or about anything because with worrying, heaviness will have its place. Heaviness will derail the flow of fellowship at every given time you have given yourself to it. Heaviness will not announce itself before or during his visitation because it is the character of the thief that has come to steal, kill and to destroy. Listen to the Word of God from Paul, the apostle, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

Prayer for today: Deliver me O Lord from every spirit of heaviness.

FAITH CAPSULE: Pride did not announce its partnership to Naaman in its attempt to terminate Naaman’s healing.

2 Kings 5

Pride can be described as a personal way to self-destruction. Among the spirit that destroys man, there is none like pride. It is built on the word ‘I” with its foundation on self. It is stated in Proverbs 8:13, “Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”  As a believer of the Word of God, have you thought about how destructive pride can be? Proverbs could not relent from exposing the evil of pride when it also revealed, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) Having a haughty spirit, which means to be scornfully arrogant, is also a partner to pride. As a matter of fact, every word that describes wickedness is hardly separate-able from pride. Which of all the words that describe pride do you consider present in you? Often times it is difficult to be able to see the plank in our own eyes rather than others eyes. Pride actually does its best in bringing down people low just as it is written in Proverbs 29:23, “A man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor.” Naaman was described as the commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was also described as a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor, but also a leper. (2 Kings 5:1) He needed to be cleansed from his leprosy and was thus directed to Elisha. When he arrived at Elisha, he received message from Elisha’s servant to go and wash in Jordan seven times. Having received the message, “Naaman became furious, and went away and said, ‘Indeed, I said to myself, He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy. Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?’ So he turned and went away in a rage.” (2Kings 5:11-12) Inhabited in Naaman’s response were the agents of pride such as, furious, I, me, arrogance, self, and rage. Pride did not announce its partnership to Naaman in its attempt to terminate Naaman’s healing. Naaman would have been down as a leper all the days of his life if he had not went back with pride now laid outside of him. Could it be true that pride, a silent and deadly cancer, is quietly hibernating inside of you?
Prayer for today: Father I ask to let the spirit of pride not have a place in my life. 

FAITH CAPSULE: Failure to keep eyes from the past will pass any believer into a self–destruction. 

Numbers 14:1-35

Revelation 22:18-19 gave a strong warning about adding or subtracting from the Word of God. God is not a joker and His command is not to add or subtract from His Word. Disobedience to the Word is equal to deciding for a personal destruction. After God had decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sinful nature of the land, He sent warning to Lot and his wife. “…Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.” (Genesis 19:17) An escape from self-destruction demands setting off sight from the past. The command was obviously too difficult for Lot’s wife to obey because she decided to disobey the Word of God. The Bible records that Lot’s wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26) What is in your past that cannot be forgotten and has caused you not to move forward when God commanded you to move? Looking back comes in different ways. For example, the inability to forgive, forget and move forward is an evidence of looking back when God repeatedly command us to forgive. Also, when God moves you forward to a different ground for your deliverance purpose and you allow complaint to occupy you, it becomes a failure to letting go of the past. The children of Israel were taken out of the bondage of over four hundred years, but their bond with the house of bondage held on to them. The children of Israel vigorously complained, “Now the mixed multitudes who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: ‘Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!’” (Numbers 11:4-6) Complaining does not settle well with God and they did not stop in their complaining. At a point their complaining turned to negative confession before God. God responded in Numbers 14:28, “Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you: The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above.’” (Numbers 14:28) When God says move forward, your looking back is disobedience to His Word. Failure to keep eyes from the past will pass any believer into a self-destruction. 

Prayer for today: Take my days O Lord and let them be concentrated unto Your Word.

FAITH CAPSULE: Stop decaying, stop deception and go ask God for His deliverance in your life.

Matthew 23

As an acclaimed believer of Jesus as Lord and Savior, how clean is your inside compared to your outside? It is important to know that what you present on the outside is not as important to what you carry in the inside. The Pharisees were one of the major sect or special – interest groups among the Jews during the days of the New Testament. Pharisees, meaning separated ones, believed that religious rituals and separation from sinners were the way to please God. Matters such as the laws of tithing and ritual purity were very important to the Pharisees. Jesus referred to them as hypocrites. He said in Matthew 23:25, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence.” Every believer has a need to take a close look at self from the inside to know how much of the spirit of Pharisees inhabits your life. Are you one of those who want to shine on the outside while the inside is dull and cannot be presented before the Lord? Are you a modern day Pharisees that will offer more than what is requested for the outside while the inside is not being attended to? By virtue of the days we are living, every believer does have a need for serious self-examination. Man can be deceived but God cannot be deceived. It is possible to come out on Sundays or on days of fellowshipping, presenting self on the outside as holy and neat while you are having a neglected inside that is dirty and rusty. It does not matter how long you have been getting away with your hypocrisy.  Just think of the fact that God does not and will not overlook sin. It is evil for any believer to think that inside can be neglected based on a flimsy excuse while the outside is being upgraded. Know today that “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” (Ecclesiastes 8:11) If you can consider yourself as one that fits into the identity of the Pharisees, it is never too late to get out from the outside and begin from the inside of yourself for a thorough readjustment. Jesus said in Matthew 23: 26, “Blind Pharisees, first cleanse the inside of the cup and the dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. God will never look from outside to inside, but rather conducts examinations from the inside to the outside.  Stop decaying, stop deception and go ask God for His deliverance in your life.

Prayer for today: Deliver me O Lord and let Your loving-kindness and Your truth continually preserve me.