“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7
Holy greetings. Today I bring you a short word from Monday Devotion. There is a deadline I must meet and surely time is not on my side today. So I will make this a short one.
A while back, I was in a revival meeting where a man who walked with God shared an encounter He had with the Lord. While the encounter was going on, the devil came and stood between him and the Lord. He could not hear nor see the Lord. He waited for the Lord to do something about it but the Lord did not take action. The encounter stopped abruptly. In tears the man of God went to seek the Lord, ‘Lord, what happened, I could not see you nor hear you? Lord, why did you not stop and rebuke the devil?” The Lord let him know that it was not His responsibility.
My beloved friend, there are things that will not be answered by prayers alone because mankind must do what they ought to do. We must take responsibility and do our parts, as God is also faithful doing His part. The Lord told me once, "do not leave all responsibility to me! You must be faithful doing your part."
This past week, the Lord taught me why sometimes many problems take place and why some prayers can go unanswered, even if we prayed deeply about them, simply because it was not prayer that was needed to solve it but action.
A man kept coming to receive prayers because his tooth was hurting for many years. We prayed, healing did not come through prayer but one day he was encouraged to go to the dentist and they found it was a decaying wisdom tooth that was causing him pain. Once they pulled the tooth out and all the pain he endured for many years was gone like that!
We must pray right. We must make sure we are not praying to God asking Him to do what is supposed to be our responsibility. Jesus said, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” We have freely received but instead of giving, we are still going to God asking Him to give to others; we forget that sometimes He gives through us. Even though Jesus said, “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead”, we are still asking Him, “Lord come down, heal the sick!” That we can do too, to ask to do it together with us but we must remember that He gave us power to command it in Jesus name! We are still asking God to drive out demons while we have the power in Jesus name to cast them all out. Yes, it is our responsibility to drive out demons.
One time, the Lord told me he was going to preach on a Sunday morning. I thought He would open the eyes of everyone and preach instead of me. As the time to preach came, I stepped aside for the Lord to preach. The Lord was there in His manifest presence but instead of Him going to the podium, He motioned me to go and that day as He promised, the anointed word came powerfully but it was through me. So the Lord works but often times He does work through us.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7
Man must do the asking, the seeking and the knocking. When man does his part, then the Lord will give; the Lord will let Himself be found and the Lord will open the door. If we wait for the Lord to do the asking for us, we would have to wait for a very longtime and in the meantime, nothing will get done.
Today God wants us to reflect, examine ourselves and make sure we are taking responsibility with action. Sometimes we wonder why He is not moving on our behalf but it is because we failed to do our responsibility. We are even commanding the mountains to move and sometimes we see that no mountain is moving. Why? Because if we look carefully, the mountain is there because we did not do our responsibility, we did not do our homework and our chores.
There are those who spend time praying for something that they were supposed to do all along and when nothing happens they call it warfare. This is the time to reflect and make sure we are good students who do our part.
Did I do my part? Did I follow the rules? Did I sit down and plan and strategize? Did I do my homework? Did I act? Did I do my job at the right time? Is there anything I neglected that I should do now? Have I taken responsibility and do my part?
Everyone, let us do the work that we must do and at the right time. If we do not, we suffer consequences. We must remember that we are short sighted, we do not know as we ought to know; we do not see everything. This is why we must ask the Lord to give us wisdom everyday for us to know what we must take action on. Where there is action, faith is perfected and the name of God will be glorified.
God bless you all my friend today. Share this article if it has helped you in some ways.
Praise God! I was about to do my devotion but I woke up late, this one is very convenient I just checked my email and this popped out. I am so blessed with this message Pastor. What a wonderful message to start my day! God bless you pastor!