HIS MERCY IS SURE
Psalm 23

“Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray, according to the greatness of Your mercy, just as You have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” (Numbers 14:19) This is a prayer of intercession by Moses on behalf of the children of Israel after one of their rebellious acts that made God react against them during their wilderness journey. At any point in time, have you complained against Him or have you found yourself in a situation that is not well with the experience in your wilderness journey? It is worth it to pray the kind of prayer that Moses prayed because it was all written for our learning. Great is the faithfulness of God and He is abundant in mercy. In His hand is His mercy and He can choose to have mercy on us and He can also choose not to have mercy. However, He said in His Word that we should ask and not faint. When we ask constantly and consistently according to the greatness of His mercy, He will no doubt hear us from Heaven and His mercy shall be given unto us. The Psalmist knew to ask for His mercy when he prayed, “Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:1) The phrase “have mercy on me” should be an adopted signature tune for each and every believer. In the absence of His mercy, there could be a merciless destruction by the liar and his agents of wickedness. Just for His mercy alone, the Lord is worthy of great and mighty praise and adoration. He is a good God and His mercy endures forever. The Psalmist considered it as very important to acknowledge this fact when he repeatedly testified in the first verse of Psalm 106:1, 107:1, 118:1, 136:1, “…Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good For His mercy endures forever.” Indeed He is good and His mercy endures forever! It is His mercy that we need when all have rejected us as hopeless and condemned. The mercy of God is all that we need to consider us. “Have mercy on me, O Lord! Consider my trouble from those who hate me, You who lift me up from the gates of death.” (Psalm 9:13) God will not run out of mercy; except we run outside of His mercy. The Bible says His mercy endures forever. Can you trust in His mercy? Trusting in His mercy is trusting in His name because His name is merciful.

Prayer for today: Lift up your hand, pray and ask for His sure mercy. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” (Psalm 23:6)

COMBINATION THAT WORKS
Job 2:1-10, Acts 19:11-20

Good intention without integrity is the same as spiritual emptiness. For every man who wants to be good without having integrity of backing up their good intention, there will be nothing in place to move God. The American Heritage College Dictionary defines integrity as: “steadfast adherence to a strict ethical code; the state of being unimpaired; soundness; the quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness”. Can you imagine God testifying you as being a person of integrity? God testified on behalf of Job in Job 2:3, “Then the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause..” God, by Himself, qualified Job as a man of integrity. For God to have described Job as a man of integrity, Job must have walked the walk and lived the Word. He earned it all before God, but yet the enemy was accessible in touching him. At the time the enemy was allowed to touch Job, among all who should have been encouraging to Job and not be a discouragement was his wife. Job’s strength before God was his integrity and sadly it became the tool for his wife in her attempt to discourage him because she questioned Job by asking, “…Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) Despite the discouraging statement by his wife, his integrity remained intact with strong intention. The wife was supposed to be a helper to him, but in his situation, however, she rather turned into discouraging him.Keep your head straight up and your eyes only unto God in your current situation. With steadfast intention, hold on to your testimony before God. Job did not waver but held onto his testimony of integrity. Like Job, it could be that your current situation is your way to be multiplied in the blessings of God. In the New Testament, the case of good intention with no integrity was that of the itinerant Jewish exorcists. The itinerant Jewish exorcists, “…took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, ‘We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches’.” (Acts 19:13) These itinerant Jewish exorcists had the intention of casting out evil spirits, but the level of integrity that would cause God to look in their direction was absent from their lives. Faulting in the line of integrity does not require a big or consistent case of lying, but even a very simple and what can be considered as a minor lie is enough to disrupt your testimony of integrity.

Prayer for today: O Lord, help me and allow good intention and integrity to add up in making me a vessel of honor to the glory of Your Holy Name.

WHEN YOU DO…
Matthew 6

God is not a God of accident neither shall He bless anyone by accident. He will not give what belongs to the right hand to the left hand. Man makes mistakes and often blesses wrong people by mistake. God does have all of His Word laid out for us and none of His word will go back to Him without first performing what it set out to perform. He gave Jesus without any condition and He will not bless without meeting His condition for blessing. Jesus, when He saw the multitudes, gave the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). In His Beatitudes, He clearly spelled out different things that need to be done in order to provoke a relevant blessing for what is done. Jesus stated in Matthew 6:6, “…When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” Jesus was not giving a suggestion. It was not a request for “if you pray” but rather it is a command that ask for “When you pray”. His command has to be done for the blessing of having prayers answered by God. Among other commands that were laid out for the provocation of blessing were: “…when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.”(Matthew 6:2-4) Here, Jesus pointed out the blessing that comes for doing charitable deeds. It is not an option; it is a matter of doing and it will always be backed by blessing. Among His teaching, Jesus also brought it to our attention that, “…when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:16-18) Which of these three: fasting, praying and charity, are you actively doing with expectation for the manifestation of its blessing? It is important to do what He asks us to do and get its blessing. The Word of God is not a story but it is power to stir you for His glory.

Prayer for today: Lord I ask for the grace to constantly apply Your words of wisdom as they come to my heart.

A GREAT GAIN
Exodus 2

A great character calls for a great assignment. Moses had a great character and the magnitude of his God given assignment was evident in his life. He lived in one of the greatest palaces of his time for forty years. Without any prior preparation, he fled for his life when his attempt to rescue his brethren resulted into murder. In his fleeing from his adopted home of forty years, he ended up in a desert area. It was an area with nothing to compare with the palace of Pharaoh. For Moses, it must have been a move from comfort to discomfort. Despite Moses’ situation, there is no record of complaint but rather the Bible records, “Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses.” (Exodus 2:21) Manifestly, the foundation Moses needed to be built up for God’s assignment was in contentment. The point here is after living a comfortable life at the highest order; he accepted life at the lowest order. Moses’ approach to life was in line with the fact that, we brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out of this world. With contentment, a man can live a life that demonstrates the fear of God. In the midst of little or plenty, the one with contentment will always acknowledge God for the grace of provision. Contentment will cause a believer to be conditioned to live for God in each and every situation. That is, any believer with contentment will focus more on God with what is at hand and/or when there is nothing at hand. It was the spirit of contentment in the Apostle Paul that prompted his testimony in Philippians 4:11-13, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” To Paul and Moses in their divine assignment, nothing counts but only God who they counted on. What can be compared to leaving a great palace behind for a desert and not demonstrate any evidence of frustration? In truth, the grace of God is sufficient for every believer regardless of any situation. Without contentment, the grace to be able to acknowledge, accept and live on the Word of God could be almost impossible. The Word of God that is written all over Moses was, “Now godliness with contentment is great gain.” (1Timothy 6:6) Memorize it and meditate on the fact that godliness with contentment is great gain. What you had or what you are having will count less but what will really matter is God.

Prayer for today: Ask God for the grace of contentment to manifest itself in your life.

BEHOLD
2 Samuel 11

Whatever you behold will either build you up or bring you down. If what you behold is of good it will build you up for good. However, if what you behold is of evil you are set for destruction. Behold actually means: to observe; look at; see. In most cases, whatever you observe might end up serving you the way you receive it. What you look at will end up in hooking you up to serve your desire. What you see will determine what will become of you. The function ability of beholding what goes around us hangs on to our eyes. Eyes and ears are the major route to our hearts where decisions for action take its place. The Bible records, “It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.” (2 Samuel 11:1) Ideally, King David was supposed to have been at war. Instead, he was at home walking on the roof and, “…from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman.” (2 Samuel 11:2-3) Assuming that King David’s location at the wrong time played one of the major roles in his crime against Uriah, the issue of “behold” ushered him into his crime against Uriah. After beholding the wife of Uriah while she was bathing, he launched into inquiring about her. King David could have turned away from what he observed, what he saw and what he had looked unto. King David could not keep his heart under control and he launched deeper by sending his messenger for her. The Bible states, after sending for her, “she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity; and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, ‘I am with child.’” (2 Samuel 11:4-5) David’s sin could not have gone deeper without him first beholding another man’s wife. Oftentimes what or who do you behold? King David went and behold on an avenue of sin. Once John the Baptist, while standing with two disciples, responded to the approach of Jesus, “…Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36) The two disciples who beheld Jesus followed Jesus. Kind David beheld another man’s wife and went after her. Sin does not have respect for any man who avails himself to be taken over. The two disciples were instructed to behold the Lamb (Jesus) of God. You do the same and have life in Him.

Prayer for today: Many have fallen in the journey of life; many are falling because of what they behold. O Lord my God I ask for the grace of beholding what gives life and not what takes life.