Dependable God

Friends, don’t wait until you have problems before you seek God, to know His mind.  The end result is not always good. Seek God every second. Let Him guide your every thought, direct you in all ways and lead you in every step. Talk to Him all the time and seek His counsel before you take any step. If you do this, you will not regret in life and you will not become a bad example in the house of God like Jeroboam.

Still talking about Jeroboam, when his son became sick in 1 Kings Chapter 14, he suddenly remembered that there was a prophet who told him that he would be king over Israel. If only he had remembered that when he took the foolish steps he took in 1 Kings 12:25-33, and asked for guidance from God as to what to do to make sure that the people of God would continue to serve God without going to Jerusalem, God would have spoken to Him through His prophet as to the appropriate steps to take and he wouldn’t have sinned against God and all the horrible judgement God pronounced on him and his generation would have been averted.

Lessons from the story

1. *If you are in doubt as to the appropriate steps to take about anything, go to God in prayer and ask Him to lead you as to what to do. Isaiah 30:21 says: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”
2. *Seek counsel from trusted men and women of God that have been tested and can pray along with you to seek God’s face for direction. “But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the Lord.” (1 Kings 22:5)
3. *If you know where God started with you, anytime you are in doubt, go back to your source. Jeremiah 29:13 “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” God will always be found by those who seek Him.
4. *When you make God your last resort after incurring His wrath, the judgement that Jeroboam received from God in 1 Kings 14:7-13 may be the answer God will give such individual. Don’t make God your last resort. Let Him be your first thought.
5. *Whatever you can think of getting from God when you are in trouble, don’t wait until the trouble starts; go to God before it starts, to seek His counsel.
6. *Always seek to please God in all you do. Don’t ever think of disobeying Him. He owns your life. He owns everything about you. He can decide to lift you up. He can decide to demote you. He can decide to cut you down and there is nothing you can do about it. Ask King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 and 4, he will tell you to refrain from pride and submit to God. “But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.” Psalm 75:7

Meditate on these passages:

“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29).

“The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God” (Psalm 14:2).

“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1).

Prayer: Father, please give me the grace to seek you every day of my life, for the rest of my life. Don’t let me wait until trouble starts before I start looking for you and as I seek you, let me find you in Jesus name, amen.

The Bible recorded Jeroboam’s story in 1 Kings 11 and 12 majorly, but his name kept on being mentioned anytime Israel sinned against God after that. He was the son of one of Solomon’s servant, Nebat. He also became one of Solomon’s trusted hands. Verse 28 of 1 Kings 11 said about him: “And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.”

He was just a servant of Solomon and that was it. He never knew he could become a ruler in Israel. A time came however, when Solomon, the man that God loved, decided to commit the sin that God had warned him several times not to commit. He abandoned God and was running after other gods. He loved strange women and those women turned his heart away from God (1 Kings 11:1-8) and God’s judgement came on him (1 Kings 11:9-13) – (Take time to read this yourself).

God told him He would take the kingdom away from him and give it to his servant, but that He would not take everything, He would give ten tribes to his servant, and give just one tribe to his son. You would think that this horrible judgmental statement from God would make him to quickly repent of his sins and come back to God, but he didn’t.

Soon after that, God sent prophet Ahijah to inform Jeroboam that He would rend his master’s kingdom from his master, give him ten tribes and give his master’s son just one (I Kings 11:26-39). The prophet tore his beautiful new garment he was wearing to twelve pieces, gave him ten pieces as a sign, and told him what God said (I Kings 11:31-32). That was how he got the promise to become a leader without sweat and without working for it and God specifically told him that if he would serve him faithfully, He will be with him and build him a sure house (I Kings 11:38). You will think that a man in his right senses will obey the God who told him that, to the letter; but the reverse was the case. (I kings 11:25-33.)

Jeroboam’s Sins

1. He did not trust God to fulfill His promises to him.
2. The devil dropped a thought in his heart concerning how people still go to the temple in Jerusalem for special feasts and celebrations. He thought since Jerusalem was located in Judah, the Israelites’ hearts might be turned against him. This may even be regarded as a legitimate concern but he would have taken it to the Lord in prayer, but he didn’t. Instead, he shared it with those around him (many leaders are always surrounded by sycophants). He took counsel from them, and based on this, he set up new places of worship and placed golden calves there as object to represent God. He flagrantly violated God’s law by making the molten image. In other to sustain what God gave him free of charge, he used his human wisdom to want to keep himself in power.
3. He chose his own priests his own way, not following the laid down precepts of God to choose priests from the sons of Levi.
4. He made Israel to sin against God and God was angry with him and his house forever.

 Lessons from the story

1. Don’t help God. If God says He will do something for you, He knows how to carry it through without your help. Jeroboam became king based on God’s choice. He didn’t lobby for the position. God sent a prophet to tell him ahead of time, and when the time came, the people invited him to be their king. Having realised that God took him to the throne, he would have trusted God to keep him there, as long as he is doing God’s will.
2. If God has given you something free of charge, why not trust Him to keep that thing for you? Has God given you a position in your office? In your church? In the community? In your school? Trust God to sustain it for you. Don’t because of fear, begin to look for power where there is no power, to consolidate your position.
3. Leaders should pray that the right people should surround them. If, when he shared his thoughts with those around him, they told him not to do that, it is possible he might have taken their counsel. Remember when Naaman (II Kings 5) was wrought with Elisha’s instructions, it was his servants around him that advised him to obey Elisha. Though he was a might army general, he listened to them and was healed. May God surround us with the right kind of people in any position we find ourselves in Jesus’ name.
4. Never, never, make the people of God to sin against God because you want to entrench yourself in whatever position God has placed you free of charge. By the action of Jeroboam, he became a reference point for evil even long after he had died. He left a bad legacy of being a leader who influenced his followers negatively. We must be careful of the kind of legacy we will leave behind. May we never become bad reference point in Jesus’ name.
5. Jeroboam had opportunity to retrace his steps and correct his ways but he did not. God sent the young prophet to him while he was offering sacrifice in the temple he made. Instead of repenting, he stretched his hand forth to order for the arrest of the young prophet, but the hand withered. He pleaded for healing and he was healed immediately, and his hand was restored back to him. With this encounter, he ought to have retraced his steps and order for the abolition of idol worship in Israel, but he didn’t. May God help us to repent anytime we are confronted with our errors, in Jesus’ name.
6. Lead the people of God to love God and make sure you love God yourself.
7. Serve God with everything you have, according to His laid down precepts and whatever position He has given you, will be sustained by Him, and nobody will be able to bring you down.

God bless you as you continue to meditate on His word. Find time to read 1 Kings 11 and 12.

Shalom!

We are in the end times and so many things are happening. Are you close to God? Do you hear him when He speaks to you? Are you sensitive to His nudge? What do you do when someone senior to you in the faith is saying the contrary? I was reading the story of the young prophet and the old prophet in the Bible and these words kept coming to my heart. Do you remember the story in 1 Kings 13: 1-end? The young Prophet got a message from the Lord to prophesy against the altar which king Jeroboam had built and God gave him specific instructions as to what to do in Israel and what not to do. When King Jeroboam asked him to go back home with him to refresh himself after he had restored his arm back, he specifically told him in verses 8 and 9:

8” And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: 9 For so was it charged me by the word of the Lord, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest.”

He was obedient to that point and verse 10 told us: “So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel.”

There will always be an old prophet

An old prophet heard all what happened through his sons and he went after the young prophet, not to encourage him, but to destroy him. When he got to where the young Prophet was, he invited the young prophet home and the young prophet answered him, not affirmatively, as he answered the king, but compromisingly. He said in verse 16 “And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place: 17 For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest.”

Did you notice here that he had changed “I will not” that he told the king earlier to “I may not”? That was what got him into trouble. So, when he told the old Prophet that, the old Prophet used that opportunity to sell him his poison, and because he was tired and hungry, he fell for it. The old Prophet said to him in verse 18: “… I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.” The bible told us that as they were eating, God used the same old prophet to prophesy his doom and he died uncelebrated.

Lessons from this story

1. When you have heard God specifically on any issue of life, whether by prophesy, word of knowledge, revelation of the word, conviction of the Holy Spirit, audible voice or through whatever means God decided to speak to you, never, never allow anyone, no matter how spiritual, make you doubt the message you got from God.
2. Never allow what is happening around you or what other senior people or more spiritual people around you are saying, to make you doubt what God has told you.
3. If God says, “don’t drink water” and all the senior Apostles are telling you, “What is wrong in drinking water? What is this? What is that? Don’t answer them at all. Nothing may be wrong with drinking water, but God has a reason why He told you not to drink water, and He didn’t tell them. So, they will never understand you, but the onus is on you to obey God and not fall to the pressure from men.
4. When God sends you on an errand and He didn’t tell you to rest on the way, don’t rest. If the young prophet had not taken off time to rest on the way, the old prophet wouldn’t have caught up with him.
5. After delivering any message God has given you to deliver, always ask God for a refill of energy and grace, because virtue would have gone out of you and a refill will always be needed.
6. Never doubt what God has told you, no matter the pressure from whosoever. Never change your “will not” to “may not”, if God did not tell you Himself. There will always be old prophets in our midst. People that God has abandoned because of one reason or the other. Why would God send a young prophet from Judah when the old prophet was on ground in Israel? The old prophet must have compromised his stand in Israel. God might have spoken to him several times to tell the king the message and because of fear, he had disobeyed, until God had to raise a young prophet from Judah to come and deliver the message.
7. God’s work will always get done. Instead of it not to get done, it is the man that will be changed.
8. God may still use abandoned vessels when he needs to use them and He showed us an example here in the case of the old prophet. God used him to prophesy the death of the young prophet and it came to pass. Be careful that you don’t fall for the tricks of the old prophets around you.

There are so many old Prophets now who have because of ‘fear of whatever’, can no longer speak the truth of God’s word in simplicity, and would want to silence any young prophet that God wants to speak through. Are you a young prophet? Refuse to be silenced. Deliver whatever message God has given you, even at the risk of losing your life and after delivering your message, don’t rest on your oars, continue to obey God to the letter; put your hands in His hands every day in prayer, in reading His word, in living holy, and you will not die before your time.

Read 1 Kings Chapter 13 again and may God open your inner eyes and inner ears to see and hear what He wants you to see and hear, in Jesus name. Shallom!

Before Numbers 27 in the Word of God, if a man dies without having male children, his female children will not be able to inherit his property. I’m not so sure however, whether there had been such a case before then, but in this passage, the five ladies: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher,  made up their minds to re-write history by not keeping quiet about their predicament.

They were aware that the lands were going to be divided and they knew they would be at a disadvantage if they refuse to speak up at the right time, at the right place and to the right people. So, instead of murmuring underground or looking for people to advocate for them, they decided to take the bull by the horn and be advocates for themselves. They went to Moses and Eleazar the priest and they pleaded their case.

“And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father.” Numbers 27: 1-4 (KJV).

Moses took their case to God and God acceded to their request. “And the Lord said to Moses,  “The daughters of Zelophehad are right. You shall give them possession of an inheritance among their father’s brothers and transfer the inheritance of their father to them. 8 And you shall speak to the people of Israel, saying, ‘If a man dies and has no son, then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter. 9 And if he has no daughter, then you shall give his inheritance to his brothers. 10 And if he has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to his father’s brothers. 11 And if his father has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to the nearest kinsman of his clan, and he shall possess it. And it shall be for the people of Israel a statute and rule, as the Lord commanded Moses.’” Numbers 27:6-11 (ESV).

Imagine what would have happened if the ladies had not taken their destinies in their hands and spoken out, their destinies would have been shortchanged forever and upcoming generations with similar issues would have also lost out.

Lessons

• Be bold to present your case to God or His servants, if you have a case. Don’t keep mute, especially, if you are a woman.
• Don’t murmur or complain underground. Look for the appropriate people to talk to, and make your requests known to them.
• Look for the appropriate time and the appropriate place to present your case, prayerfully.
• Always remember Mathew 7:7 if your courage is failing you. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. Mathew 7:7 (ESV).
• God may be waiting on you now to hear your voice, why don’t you speak to Him and let Him know your problems. If you ask, you will be given.