Topic: Take This Ride! [Monday 9, January 2017]
Memorise: The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. – Proverbs 11:25
Read: Proverbs 11:24-26 (KJV)
24 There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
25 The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.
26 He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.
Bible in One Year: Matthew 18-19, Isaiah 7:10-25
MESSAGE:
For all those who have received the gift of righteousness through the finished work of Calvary, the design of God for our lives is that we live by His favour. The psalmist spoke prophetically about this in Psalm 5:12:
“For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.”
The reality of this was manifested in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 2: 52), and the early church also experienced the same (Acts 2: 47). However, there are some keys that unlock the door to experiencing God’s favour. One of these keys is found in today’s Bible reading, which says:
“The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.” – Proverbs 11:25.
Before you can access the fatness and abundance you desire from heaven, you must first learn to give to the Lord what you treasure: your best and your all. This is what brings about the difference in results experienced by a person living by God’s favour and a person living by labour; one is definitely easier to achieve than the other. Towards the end of a particular year, one of my sons preached on the difference between labour and favour. He cited two examples: Jacob and Isaac. According to him, when Jacob wanted a wife he laboured for 14 years before he could get his heartthrob, but when Isaac wanted to marry, he just went on a stroll. One laboured but the other was favoured. I have decided to enjoy divine favour. I am tired of labouring. I want to continually live in the realm of divine favour, and to do so, I will sow as I have never done before, because favour responds to the law of harvest.
Are you not tired of increase dependent on labour? Why exert everything you have for several years to get a particular blessing, when you can pay a little price through sowing and still get great results in a shorter time, without much stress? One effective way of redeeming the time, as admonished in Ephesians 5: 16, is to dump less effective methods for better, faster and less stressful ways of doing things. You are not redeeming the time when increase only through labour. This implies that so many things will have to wait until you have the strength to work for them. Why go by labour when you can rise on the wings of divine favour? Choose the vehicle to your place of destiny today!
Action Point: The price you pay to ride a flight by favour, through sowing seeds, is far cheaper than what you have to pay through labour.
Open Heavens Daily Devotional guide was written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the largest evangelical church in the world and also the President of Christ the Redeemer’s Ministries.
