Friday, 7 September 2012

Open Heavens Devotional: DELAYED OBEDIENCE IS DANGEROUS – Friday, September 7, 2012 By Pastor E.A. Adeboye


Memorise: Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Philippians 2:12
Bible in one year: Daniel 10-12
One major undoing of the church in Laodicea was pride. Lucifer was created perfect in beauty and also had position and power from God. But the day he became proud of what he had (as if they came from him) and began to rub shoulders with God, God simply pushed aside all His investments in Lucifer and began to deal with him based on his pride. If you are carrying out exploits for God but you are proud, don’t be surprised if you make it to Heaven, and you are told there is no record of your achievements there. Do away with pride now before it completely erodes all your gains! Everyone who is proud is indirectly saying he or she is self-sufficient and does not need God for anything. A proud person sees God not as God but as a mate. A proud person cannot show God respect. It takes humility for you to respect God. Are you proud?
Another problem with this church was lukewarmness. They were indifferent to whatever God asked them to do. They were neither hot nor cold. The Lord hates lukewarmness with passion! Earlier, Paul wrote to the Bishop of this church named Archippus to take heed to the ministry so as to fulfil it but he simply paid deaf ears to it (Colossians 4:16-17). Down the line, the Lord could not see anything good in the church he was overseeing any more. From this we learn that we should do things at the appropriate time. If you fail to take correction concerning a particular area, and you think things will remain the way they are, they won’t; things will only get worse. The longer you leave a restitution undone, the more difficult it becomes to do the same later. If you were uneducated in the 60’s, how will it be some 30 or 40 years later? You may think it is still the same level of ignorance only to discover that the very little you knew had become so obsolete that you have totally gone out of relevance. Make those little corrections in your life, family and ministry today before they get worse. Obey the Lord’s warnings now before they get out of hand. Carry out those little restitutions today before they become issues in your life and permanently keep you from Heaven.
KEY POINT:
The right time for obedience is now.

No comments:

Post a Comment