FRIDAY- 12TH AUGUST, 2022
MORNING WINGS DAILY DEVOTIONAL GUIDE - Olusola ADEJUMO
WHY HE SENDS A MAN BEFORE THEM - Lead and Feed Series 010
Read Gen.50:15-21
Psalms 105:16-17, KJV
"16 Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. 17 He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant."
I began yesterday by showing you why God raises or blesses some people exceptionally. Now, don't be confused by the arrangement of the Bible verses above. It seems to insinuate that famine occurs before God sends a man ahead Israel. If that be, then God could have been said to have been caught unawares Himself and Israel would have been starved. It should rather be interpreted this way. God has foreknowledge of the coming famine and so sends a man ahead Israel. This man, Joseph was relocated forcefully to the diaspora in God's plan because of the preservation and redemption of Israel from a seven year's famine to come. God blesses the widow of Zarephath for Elijah too. The blessing, "the barrel of meal won't be spent and the cruse of oil won't fail" just didn't get provoked. It's so that Elijah would be provided for and consequently her host too. Did you see that if any would finance what God ordains, God will finance such too? Tell any who absconds and abstains from commitment to God that they'll have blocked themselves from God's miraculous involvement. We all know that if the grand planner had not sent Joseph ahead of Israel, a whole nation would have been starved to death and Israel might have gone into extinction. Israel is God's own nation. Christians are God's own children. If Jehovah claims Israel as His first born, are you not? Just like God showed commitment to the nation Israel during the stringency and harshness of economic depression, God owes you same in times of need. God could go to any length I'll continue to say in order to meet your needs. Imagine God sending a seventeen years old boy to Egypt against a day that won't come until he's in his thirties. What sort of God is this who cares with much care for His own? Did you see how important you are to God? You're the thought He chews. Imagine God planning for you thirteen - twenty years ahead of an occurrence. Many of us are conversant with parents doing this. God isn't different and He's even a better parent. He takes even orphans up behind their parents. When God sends people ahead you, those people do the hard work while you come to reap where you've not sown. It was Joseph who rose from the agony of slavery with bruised feet by his sustained character and reputation coupled with the available grace of God and his time and word which has come (Psalm 105:18). He built a character and reputation of being faithful, useful, hard-working and relevant under a difficult and tempting weather. This in turn made him get recommended to the higher authority. This is how he secured the placement that could give Goshen to Israel at a time the staff of bread would have been broken wholly. Travelling abroad for any with a call or destiny to fulfill there isn't what you die there to achieve. No, no! Some are already there. They'll amass their fortune and then God would put it in their minds to have you come over. By the time you're ready and have begun dreaming it, they'll invite you over. It is by invitation. All things would have been made ready. We're to enter into rest and the labour of other men if we believe and would wait. They may be acquaintances or total strangers. God will use any and then prosper them for our sake. They will acknowledge that and will call you to be a partaker of why God raised them. Now, watch this. If you're not the commanded financier of an Elijah, it won't enter your mind to show such kindness to him. Even if you want to do it by cheer determination, God will hinder you. It won't work but if it ever does, your invite would be kindly turned down once proven by such Christian or minister that you're not the commanded one to meet his need. Elijah could only collect from the widow of Zarephath and not the king, blacksmith of Zarephath or any other. The instruction was designated to someone. It reads someone's address, identity and location.
I Kings 17:9, KJV
"Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee."
It was a specific instruction to a specific person. Elijah knows and the widow also agrees to same. This is the mystery of divine connection that works. God said, "He had commanded the widow woman to feed Elijah and Elijah also discovered the commanded woman upon arrival." Two of you must be in agreement. The testimony of one isn't enough. God is weary of disciples who collect what is not meant for them. You'll only be disgraced. I heard from a very senior and elderly minister of another minister who was given a car by a woman. He collected it without enquiry from the Lord. When the woman's husband arrived, he questioned his wife's independence to act alone and instructed her to revoke her action. The car was returned but to the shame of that minister. That young minister fell into embarrassment because he gloated over what God was probably not giving him. To shock you, that same car had been afore taken to the same minister who narrated this event to me. He discerned it and kindly rejected the offer after hearing the "no" of God. It was same one took for God's blessings. All these hungry and in a hurry ministers who don't know the commanded hands to receive bread from shall be mocked and called beggars. People would say, "if not for us to them." There's no time God raises people to go ahead that it's not to cushion the coming ones. Any raised for you will never spite or enslave you. Even after the death of Jacob, Joseph didn't revenge his brothers for the evil done him as they suspected he'll do. He rather acknowledged himself as a vessel who God only raised to use for them. He once said to his brothers when they humbled themselves before him as mere servants, "am I in the place of God (Gen.50:19)?" John was sent ahead Jesus to prepare His way before Him. Jesus Himself sent the disciples to reap where they've not sown (John 4:38). Hanging on these, I pray that God will raise forerunners (softeners of grounds) for you. Men who will be hastened, widened and enlarged just because of a ministry they have to give to you as to make you ready to give to some others also.
PRAYER: Let me occur in the minds of all the sent ones for me. Let me be blessed indeed to prepare the ground for others indeed.
BIBLE IN A YEAR: Nehemiah 1:1-3:14; 1 Corinthians 7:1-24; Psalm 31:19-24; Proverbs 21:4
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