’GO BACK TO THE WORD OF GOD’

Remain in the Word. We see disappointments and failures because our eyes are sharp. The flesh brings us our reality and our reality is found in the Spirit. Be in the Word, that is how you can be sustained and kept. Don’t have a conversation with your emotions, thoughts, and circumstances because that is not your reality. Your reality is found in the Word and you can only know what is real if you remain in prayer. Many of us fall because we think the Lord has disappointed us but we have shifted our eyes. We are falling because we think the Lord has left us but we have left Him. He is still where we left Him. You have shifted from your position. Do not allow the situation to be the reason to leave the Lord today. Do not allow material things to be the reason for you to leave what is important. There is and can only be one Master in your life.

Do not move, remain in the Word. Joshua says ‘Do not let this book depart from your mouth, meditate upon it day and night’. The moment you feel like you are fading away or your flesh is taking over, run to the Word. Do not run to a company of people who will tell you what you want to hear. Do not text someone who is going to encourage you with your feelings. The Word does not encourage our feelings nor sympathizes with our emotions. It gives us who we really are, it does away with the flesh. It is not an overnight thing hence you need to meditate always because it is progressive. You cannot be in the Word today and expect a miracle tomorrow. It is a relationship that you need to build through prayer, meditation, and reading the Word. Allow God to take you away for a moment from the crowd.

Have a relationship with God. Do not exchange that relationship with earthly things, it is not worth it. Your reality is in the Word. You might be feeling pains in your body but the reality is in the Spirit. Know one voice which is the voice of the Lord. Shut the voice of the flesh. The flesh will try and show you what is happening around you but that is not true. What is real is in the Spirit not in the flesh. Even though there are winds and storms; you need to fix your eyes on Jesus.

God wants us to have a relationship with Him. I love to say that if He did not want us to have a relationship with Him, He would not want us to pray. He already knows what we are about to say before we say it. If He did not want a relationship with us He wouldn’t trust us to carry Him within us. His answers are ’Yes and Amen’ even when He says ‘No’. It is in my heart today that we need to remain in the Word. It is re-engraved in my heart. We ask God to sustain us but we forget to ask Him to teach us how to maintain the Word that He has given us.

[John 1:1]
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”
We cannot find God if we do not search for Him in the Word. We need to go back to the Word of God. Most of us instead of having a relationship with God we have a conversation with our feelings. If we are not careful enough, those emotions are going to become a ’god’ in our lives. In this temple, only one God can rule. You need to decide who is your God in your life and when do you communicate with Him. We can only be sustained in the Word. That is the only place we can find joy and strength.

We see our brothers falling in this pandemic and we pray to God that we do not want to fall like them but how if we are still conversating with our emotions? It can be a progressive fall if what comes first in your mind is your WhatsApp before God. Some of us fall when we stop praying. Some used to say ‘Good morning Holy Spirit’ but now you have stopped, who are you talking to? Who are you replacing God with, in your life, and is it worth it? In the beginning, was the Word(first love). Go back to the first love, the Word of God. That is where you left Him and that is where He will always be.

We see failures because we have shifted our eyes. Hannah am I not worth more than ten sons? Am I not more than that situation? His Word is alive and sharp. The problem is that we want things to be seen in the physical first for us to understand. Believe is not in the physical, it is a spiritual thing. Do not stop doing the little things that you used to do with God. Do not go with the wind, the storm, and do not burn with the fire. Hold on to the Word of God.

[Luke 19:1-7]
“…So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way”.
Zacchaeus was in a situation of being short. Many of us allow our situations to stop us from seeing who God is in our lives. We allow our situations to give us a new pair of eyes. Your situation defines God instead of God defining your situation. That is not the truth. The tax collector could have just said ‘I am short.’ Who defines God in your life? Is it the Word or your situation? Is it a sickness? Some of you have been sick and you have been complaining. The problem is we do not want to know what God is saying now but we want to know when the situation is going to end. What if by being in pain is how God wants to teach you long-sufferings and endurance? But He cannot teach you because you are not enquiring from Him. You see an unjust God. You see God who cannot heal but the Word says by His stripes we are healed. Does the Word lie?

I want to pose a question today. Who does your situation say God is and is it true? What speaks first when you are in that situation, is it the Word of God or your flesh? Can you confidently say that I can hear the voice of my Master louder than my flesh or does it become a battle? Does God need to fight first for you to listen to Him? Is that the type of relationship that God wants with us? We cannot have a relationship with Him if we are not in the Word. Are you going to be like the short man and say no matter how short I am, I am going to see the Lord or you will reason and say I am short so I can only go this far?

(Verse 7)Everybody knew the situation of the rich man but he did not allow that to stop him from seeing the Lord. Many of us see the sinner in us more than the image that God has given us and that makes us disqualify ourselves from having a relationship with Him. Even though the Word says that the Word of God cleanses us and this is what we should believe. The way we see ourselves makes it an obstacle for us to have a relationship with God. We don’t see ourselves the way God sees us.

[ Luke 7:25-27]
When you have a relationship with God, what is it that you want to know? Do you want to know when are you going to be healed or you want to know who God is? We cannot manipulate God. We cannot be in the Word for material things and not for Him. It is Him who gives if we are not there for Him then who will give? We are here for God and for His heart; He will add everything else on the package. God is more than our healing. Let us go back to what has been there from the beginning, what is true. We go through challenges so that God can prepare us for what is going to happen in the future but we do not see that. God trains us differently. Who have you come out to see? You will know whatever you have come to see. The Word of God is alive in us.

[Luke 2:15-19]
“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”.
When Mary pondered these things in her heart, I believe she was in the secret place with the Master. Most of us our secret place has become people. A place to draw strength is no longer a spiritual place but someone’s phone number. It was a prayer when Mary pondered the words in her heart. We speak in our hearts but is it holy? What are we pondering in our hearts? We go to people because they tell us what we want to hear. You do not want to go to God because you know what He will say. Let us go back to the Word of God. We are replacing what is precious with what can be rebuild. We are replacing God with things that are not worth it. Some of you, He makes you feel lonely in the midst of people. The void cannot be filled because God wants you to come back to the Word. Do not make people your hiding place. (Verse 15) – Mary could have said, ‘the angel came and told me this and that’ but she did not.

Our secret place knows even the deep things that God has told us to keep to ourselves. You involve a third person in your relationship with God and that person does not come alone; the person will come with their burdens and will cloud the room where it used to be you and God. Go back to where it used to be you and God. If ever you feel lonely in the midst of people, know that it is God. It might come in a form of depression, know that it is God, and when you go to Him put those headsets away. Some of you might feel irritated, it is God. You have been too busy, God wants you. You ask God to give you His heart yet when you feel lonely you want to respond in a fleshy way. You want to respond to the loneliness of God through the flesh. You are trying to fill the void that God has caused in your heart with physical things. It is always going to be there until you go back to God. How many times did Jesus retract and move away from the crowds? The very same God who humbled Himself and took the form of a human being, but you cannot do it for even a mere minute. He is calling you back to the Word.

Go back to your prayer walks, your prayer jogs, go back to that first love. The love that you had, in the beginning, was like fire shut up in your bones. When you stopped, you thought it was maturity but you did not realize that you are losing a relationship with God. You stopped writing, you stopped waking up in the middle of the night; go back. It is not maturity if it is drifting you apart from God, it is foolishness. You were deceived by your flesh. Remember the devil came in the form of an angel of light. Your flesh can come in a form of maturity. You might think that you have made it, but your flesh masqueraded itself. In as much as the world is evolving, the flesh evolves. The flesh knows how to get to you now hence the devil has the confidence to speak to you because he has evolved.

The Word of God is true and alive. Do not suffer the consequences because you refused to listen. You want to be taken to the slaughter every day so that you can hear God. If God really wants you, He will paralyze that flesh. Sometimes we cause unnecessary beatings in our lives. You would not be going through what you are going through right now if you listened to God at that time. God wants us to come back. (verse 15)- What is it that God has told you today that you have told your physical hiding place? What is it that the Lord has entrusted you with that you have shared with other people? Go back to the Word of God. You may speak to someone and yet feel that void because it is not the person’s place to fill that void but it is the Lord. It is not that person’s place to tell you that they love you. Go back to prayer. He is going to wake you up, do not waste that precious time by doing things that are not worth it. He is going to enforce that loneliness, you are going to feel it. It is going to be heavy. You will have to respond to the call of God. Just because the Master is quiet in the room, it does not mean that He has left. Hold on to the truth. Do not allow those situations to define who God is in your life. Stop wondering, God has answered you.

[Genesis 3:1-5]
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden”.(Verse 5) How do you know that you are poor if your physical eyes are closed? There is some knowledge that must be given to you for you to know and realize that you are in a certain situation. What you listen to and who you listen to is important. Be careful that you do not allow yourself to agree with the flesh that speaks to you. The flesh does not always speak to you through you. If God could use a donkey, then your flesh can use your friend to tell you what you want to hear. Be careful of who you speak to because they might open the eyes of the flesh in the Spirit. Do not cut off but uproot. Do not prune but uproot.

When you cut off, it does not mean that after a certain time the tree will not grow back to its original size. Uproot everything that leads you to sin and everything that leads you to neglect your relationship with God. Dig out from the root. We are not investing for now only but also for the future. If you chop, you are going to water unaware and the tree is going to grow again. It does not grow if there is no seed. Go back to the Word and accept the Word’s rebuke.

There is more to God than material things. There is a character that is going to teach you how to maintain those material things. We are going back to the heart of worship. Respond to the call of God. Be a vessel that is always ready to receive and respond. A cup receives whatever that you pour in it so respond to what God is calling you to. God is calling you to Himself. You can receive everything you want but through the Word. Do not choose what you have to receive. Let God teach you how to maintain the Word that He has given you. Let God take everything away from you but not His Word. We need to be in a place where nothing matters except the Word of God. It has always been about Him. He is the One who will take care of you. You know your relationship with God, go back to Him, and let Him restore you. You know what you have lost. Let Him restore that fire and it will be like fire shut up in your bones.

YESHUA; A CITY ON A HILL, THE LIGHT THAT CANNOT BE HIDDEN