RCCG Open Heavens Devotional Friday 8 February 2013 SIN STARTS FROM WITHIN By Pastor E. A. Adeboye

RCCG Open Heavens Devotional Friday 8 February 2013 

SIN STARTS FROM WITHIN  

By Pastor E. A. Adeboye

Memorise: "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me" Psalm 66:18
Read: Psalm 66:17-20


Bible in one year: Daniel 1-3
Action point: give 80% attention to inward cleanliness and 20% to outward cleanliness. Prayerfully select a House Fellowship Centre around you, and be committed to its growth.

Hearing and obeying God’s Word are central to receiving your breakthroughs. When you go through the Scriptures, you will discover among other things that when God has made up His mind to destroy a group of people, He will first deafen their ears so that they will not hear God’s Word (Isaiah 6:1012). One of the greatest challenges Christians have today is our inability to listen to the Spirit. When the Word of God is coming to us, we tend to believe that Word is for our neighbour, not us. We are quick to see what others are doing wrong or not doing but fail to meaningfully reflect over our thoughts, actions and inactions. 1f you have been in Christ for some time, you would have observed that when a new convert or a baby Christian prays to God just for five minutes, the answer would come, but the Christian who had been saved for several years might experience something different: if he prays for others, the answer wilt come, but if he prays for himself, it would appear nothing is happening. Why is this so? it might be because that believer is failing to listen to God’s Word. Some Christians only count how many years they have been in the faith of Christ but never care about having growth commensurate with their age in the faith. Are you becoming too big to hear and obey God’s Word? Some people are now too big to ask others to pray for them: they think it is humiliating to request for prayers from those the Lord has put under them. While all of the aforementioned conditions are bad enough, a worse scenario is when God says that His child be left alone like it happened to Ephraim (Hosea 4:1 7). Are you doing something that can make God not only to leave you but also to tell others to leave you alone? If you are, immediately beat a retreat in humility and ask for His mercy today. Psalm 66:18 says

God will no longer hear me if I harbour sinful thoughts in my heart. The Lord does not gauge from the outward but searches the heart. He separates Himself from a heart where sin thrives. God is no respecter of persons. If you entertain sin in your heart. God can no more be your guest at that point. Some brethren ensure no one catches them committing sin openly but inwardly their hearts are defiled. Always keep the heart pure because sin starts from within.