O God, restore us

And cause Your favour to shine upon us, and we will be saved - Psalm 80:3

PRAYER INTENTION

1. We pray for the grace and gift of discernment to recognize favour especially when it doesn't look like favour in the beginning .

2. We pray for the ability to recognise that favour may not always bring laughter and celebration at first sight.

FAVOUR AND GRACE MAY NOT BRING LAUGHTER AND CELEBRATION AT FIRST SIGHT...

Let us start on an offbeat note, you may not like this particular message, but it’s a spiritual truth you must hear, for your own good and spiritual safety and progress

The life of anyone is mixed with periods of joy, sorrow, laughter, pain, challenges, solutions, problems, etc. This is life, if you think you can go through life without any form of pain, challenge or trouble, then you are living in the clouds.

God did not promise a trouble free life, Jesus himself admitted that in this world we will face some trouble, however we should not worry, He has overcome the world- so by extension we too are overcomers, but it is not rocket science, the only way you will overcome the world in the days of trouble is when you have a relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Am not being a prophet of doom, am just stating the facts, trouble will find you, challenges will find you, sorrow will seek you out, evil days will come, the only leverage you have is to develop your spiritual muscles now, through prayer, reading of the bible and getting closer to God, so that when those days come, like a car with a good shock absorbers, you will go through the potholes of life without self-destructing.

But if you lose sight of building your spiritual capacity and these evil days come, trust me, you will be found wanting, unprepared, restless and totally confused.

You will observe that when I pray for you, one of the things I keep praying for is Favour and I encourage you to always pray for God’s favour. Well, let me shock you, you should know that when God announces favour on you, there is the possibility it may not look like favour in the beginning. It might in fact look like trouble.

I need to teach you about this dimension of Favour, because some of you have the “ hen that will lay your golden egg ”, but it is in the form of TROUBLE now, so you can’t see the future prospects it offers and you unintentionally throw away the “ hen that was to give you your golden egg ” because of your lack of discernment.

Am not a sadist and am not proposing that EVERY PAIN you go through has dimensions of favour, in fact spiritual statistics reveal we bring a lot of pain and problems on ourselves due to our negligence, disobedience, ignorance about spiritual truths, stubbornness, lack of discretion, mis-application of wisdom and the lack of the spirit of discernment.

Let me break it down, when you pray for blessings and favour, sometimes it comes directly and when you see it you know this is favour, and you are all excited, jumping and praising God.

However most times the favour and blessings COME alright but are hidden in trouble, pain, sickness, challenges, and all the negatives you don’t want to be associated with. And if you are not careful, without the spirit of discernment, you will pray that favour away again. My people not every negative thing that happens in your life is demonic ooh, some of them are favour. Hard to believe it, but that is what it is.

We have grown into a culture of casting and binding, and we are inclined as a people to associate every negative happening in our lives with the devil- but we have to be people of the Spirit to DISCERN. The way to the throne is the cross, you cannot by pass the cross and say you have put a crown on your head- the way to the throne is the cross.

Here is where I need to state emphatically, that there are some of us the orchestrations in our lives are not caused by demons- rather they are the constraints that God must subject us through to cause us to get to know him better.

Scripture says “ yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death- I will fear no evil "- we live in a generation that sees demons and evil everywhere and in everything and the least thing we want to BIND and CAST.

We don’t have discernment to know whether it is from God or not, whether it is a furnace that God is using to purifying us- because we are bankrupt spiritually. We cannot sit down and discern what is happening- so anything which is unfavourable to our senses we cast out and that’s how many of us have casted realms from which power was to come to us- don’t forget, the law of recognition, anything you despise and do not honour will leave your life. We want to escape every pain almost immediately forgetting that pain can be used by God to lift you to another level

Let’s prove the point am making using scriptures, so that you see am not just ranting about the fact that “ FAVOUR AND GRACE MAY NOT BRING LAUGHTER AND CELEBRATION AT FIRST SIGHT ”,

let’s start with Jesus, in Luke 2:52 “ And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. ”

Luke 4:1 “ Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days …”

Now take a look at the life of Jesus, someone who is God ooh, who grew in WISDOM , had FAVOUR before GOD and MAN and was full of the Holy Spirit.

• First of all, he who is full of favour before God and man is driven into the desert to be tempted by the Devil.

Then this personality who had favour and full of the Holy Spirit had no place to lay His head. No house, the dude was homeless. In Luke 9:58, someone proclaims his wish to become a follower of Jesus. Jesus responds: “ Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head .”

This sense of homelessness pervades the gospels. Think for a moment: where exactly is Jesus’ home base of operations? He really has none. He is constantly on the move with His disciples, counting on the hospitality of their families or others. If there is any geographical centre of gravity to His ministry it is Jerusalem, where He is crucified.

• Furthermore this man-God who had God’s favour and was full of the Holy Spirit had no honour in His own hometown. They had no respect for him. At one point in His ministry, Jesus is rebuffed by his hometown of Nazareth. “ and he will respond, hmm A prophet is not without honour except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house ,” Jesus remarks in Mark 6:4.

Hear me when I tell you that, when God announces favour it is not always full of laughter at the beginning...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Shalom and God bless you.

#monkreflections

#💥Grace&Favour

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