Welcome to Day 4
Opening Prayer
Thank you our Shield, thank you our Refuge, thank you our Protector. The source of our peace. We pray that our hearts are open to receive from you tonight. We receive with meekness the engrafted Word of truth which is able to save our soul in Jesus' name, amen.
Tonight, we will be reminding ourselves of our covenant of protection from Ps 91
9You trust in the Lord for protection. You have made God Most High your place of safety. 10So nothing bad will happen to you. No diseases will come near your home.
11He will command his angels to protect you wherever you go. 12Their hands will catch you so that you will not hit your foot on a rock.
Tonight, we are getting into the responsibility part (please see the intro discussion for details about the Rights & Responsibilities). We have earlier stated how it is the responsibility of God to protect us. How it is impossible for us to protect ourselves all the time and we have spent the bulk of our earlier discussion on how God takes up the responsibility of protecting us. Tonight, we will start with our own part of the covenant which is to TRUST in the Lord for protection. Trusting Him to the point where we make Him our place of safety. What does it mean to trust? One of the good definitions of trust I have heard is casting our cares on God, getting our heart into a place of abandonment in who He is; Expecting Him to do what He has promised. The whole plan of the devil on earth can be summed up as creating distrust between us and God. He told Eve, did God say you should not eat it? You shall not surely die, He knows when you eat it, you will be like Him. That's attacking trust. He used the same tactics with Jesus too. Just after God announced from heaven that this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, the devil came to Him and said "if truly you are the son..." In essence he was saying validate what God is saying, let the external changes in the environment be used to validate God's Word. It's all about trying to create an atmosphere of distrust. If truly God can protect you, how come a pastor just got kidnapped and killed.
Another thing is how the enemy uses the media. Sometimes I have fear in my heart and I have to trace it to the root. There are times that by the help of the Holy spirit I am able to trace the source of some fears to 10 years ago.
HOW can we trust God?
Preventing sources of mistrust. Bibles talks about (a) guarding our heart with all diligence. News & social media are great sources of casting mistrust; they don't tell you about the 500 airplanes that land safely, they only tell you about the single one that crashed. They don't tell you about the 1 million people who travelled and arrived safely, they only tell you about the 3 who were involved in an accident. They are designed that way. Can you identify the sources of mistrust? Someone was telling me how he started watching a movie and stopped after few minutes; these could be sources of mistrust. When these words get into our heart, after that they will get into our mouth because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Before I got married, my husband and I went to see a Pastor of his who had just lost his wife while giving birth and we went to greet him. The man was telling us how his wife loved God and concluded by saying He knows it is the will of God for His wife to die while giving birth. I know it is not the will of God that we die early, I know we have covenants of long life. No one can convince me otherwise. So he talked about how it is her time and all. Because he was grieving, we could not start showing him scriptures that contradict what he said. However, when we stepped out of his office, we discussed how we know all the things the pastor said about his wife's death being the will of God is not true. So we brought out scriptures that talks about long life and we began to wash ourselves with the Word. We began to wash away that contamination spoken by the man. We started washing away the filthy word that was said. even though the man did not do it on purpose, he only spoke based on the sincerity of his thoughts but it still wasn't right. There are times you may need to put off the TV, stop a film, walk out of the cinema although you have paid 1,500 for the movie, quit a conversation, switch off from a discussion (you are there but your mind is absent) picture a bouncer, how they guard the entrance to a place, bouncers with muscles, in fact when you see them and you are uninvited, you don't want to go in. that s how we should guard our hearts against every form of unbelief.
(b) the second way of trusting God is by worshiping Him. The more we worship Him, the more we see His awesomeness.
Psalm 34:3-4 King James Version (KJV)
3 O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. 4 I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.
When we magnify God, we see Him as being BIG, BIGGER than our problems and the doubts. When you use a magnifying lens to view an object, the object is still the same size but YOU see it differently, bigger. When we magnify God for what He has done in the lives of others or our lives, it changes the way we see him. Most of the prayers we have been praying on this platforms have been giving thanks and it may look strange but the more we behold the lamb seated on the throne, the more we cry HOLY.
(c) pleading the blood of Jesus on your heart (we will post a 5 mins video about that at the end of the discussion). I believe believers should take Holy communion very regularly. Jesus said "do this in remembrance of me" (Lk 22:19). This is a great way of reminding ourselves of the accomplishment of Jesus and His blood.
2. Dealing with existing mistrust. There are times that the seed of doubt has been sown into our heart. Before you could turn of the laptop, you have heard your favorite movie character talk about how hard it is to be safe in this world; the seed of mistrust has already been sown. You went to console a family and before you know it, the person you are consoling starts to talk unbelief and from there, mistrust gets in. When this happens, it is important we wash ourselves with the Word. I will also be happy to share a teaching at the end of this teaching titled "those who trust in the Lord SHALL NOT be disappointed".
Ps 91
10So nothing bad will happen to you. No diseases will come near your home. 11He will command his angels to protect you wherever you go. 12Their hands will catch you so that you will not hit your foot on a rock.
10-11 tells us the privileges we will enjoy when we trust in God. I love the v10; nothing bad will happen to you. A good teacher, Andrew Wommack was talking about how his son was brought back to life after dying for 5 hours. After that incidence, he had so much courage that he could easily pray for the sick to be well because he felt if he could see God raise the dead, how much more the sick. God turned what looked like a bad situation for His good.
V11. The ministry of angels is so real. Bible says there are angels around us. In fact some have entertained angels without knowing. There was this story by a guy who was in the military during the World War II I think. He was in his tent and heard his friend call him to come out and help him but he didn’t want to go, the friend called the 3rd time and he decided to go. The moment he stepped out of the tent, a bomb dropped on his tent and it exploded. When he later asked his friend why he called him, the friend said he never called him. Bible talks about how angels came to Lot. These angels looked so much like human that the people of Sodom wanted to sleep with them. It shows they were like humans. The angels pulled him by hand when he was getting slow. This is why we need to be sensitive to the ministry of angels. Atimes when we have humans consistently warning us about a danger then the angels may just be speaking like humans. There was this story of a man who was going to board a plane with his children, his wife was the one who first told him to not go because she had a dream; as he was about to board, the pilot also told him to not board the plane but he was a pastor. He decided he was boarding. He boarded and the plane crashed before even travelling far, he and his children died. God will warn you before any danger happens. He will even sometimes set obstacles along your way.
I heard the story of how this woman was going to travel and she stopped by a shop to buy some things. The shop owner who have known her for some years just started pleading with her to not travel. She even held her hands but the woman didn’t understand why so she traveled and never return. I believe angels can come in the form of man to protect us.
V12. Another way the angels can protect us is by catching us so that our foot will not be dashed on a stone. I think there are different ways God can protect us, there are times we are thrown but then he catches us from getting hurt. I remember the story of this lady who heard a knock at her door and opened, the guy was a serial rapist, pushed her down and put a knife to her neck, attempting to rape her and she started reciting Ps 91. The guy melted and started crying. He said he has raped every woman he attempted to but could not rape this woman. Why was it Ps 91 that came to her head? Why is she not thinking of begging him to take her money or property? She said she has meditated so well on her covenant of protection. This covenant also covers rape. Do you stay alone in your house? Are you afraid armed men can just burst in? Our covenant covers this.
Prayer points
Worship God for showing us our part of the covenant
Thank Him because nothing bad shall happen to us and no disease will come near our home [Ps 91v10 So nothing bad will happen to you. No diseases will come near your home].
Thank Him for His blood which seals his covenant with us and for his angels
Ask that He will teach you how to trust Him
Please Feel free to share with us how you have been building trust in the midst of the uncertainties around you.
References and resources
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B0h4ZIul7tY/?igshid=q9ng7mt8ig0m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtjHPY2RAf4&t=1742s