#60: OPEN HEAVENS II

By -

The boy Samuel was serving God under Eli’s direction. This was at a time when the revelation of God was rarely heard or seen. (I Sam 3:1, MSG)

Two things that the LORD wants to point our attention to this week through this devotional; these are the intrinsic characteristics of a generation or community or individuals that are living under a closed heaven:

…serving God under Eli’s direction: a generation that does not have direct contact with heaven will always need some other scheme to link up. From the days of creation, the LORD has always wanted a personal relationship with man. At some point, we could be relaxed and conclude that Eli was playing a discipler’s role to the young lad-Samuel, but I see God coming into the scene to save Samuel’s hunger to serve the LORD and serve Him rightly because Eli could be nearly blind physically, but spiritually, he was blind and deaf and insensitive to the move of God, and this was whom the whole nation of Israel was looking up to; this was whom Samuel served the LORD under.

...the revelation of God was rarely heard or seen: Going through scriptures, you will notice that God does not speak carelessly. He speaks when He has an audience. I can presume that everybody was busy with the doctrines of Eli and did not give time to meditating on the book of the law day and night. Samuel must have had a conviction that there was more to serving God than what Eli’s detectorship was giving. That must have been why his sleeping position was beside the Ark of Covenant. Even when God called out to Samuel, until Samuel was ready to hear, heaven remained mute.

Action Point: in your local assembly, are the brethren having a personal revelation of the LORD, or is the fellowship or church moving at the direction and pace of the President? Heaven is shut because there is no one to be ministered to. Make yourself ready and God will begin to move in your group. Serve God under the direction of His Spirit and not under the schemes of men.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#126: The Story behind the Hymn I: When Peace, Like a River

By -
Author: Horatio Gates Spafford  (1873) In November, 1873, Horatio Spafford sent his wife and four daughters on the French ship  Ville du Havre  from their home in Chicago to a vacation in France, planning to set out a few days later himself. Somewhere in the Atlantic, the  Ville du Havre  collided with a British ship coming the other way, and sank in just 12 minutes. Of his family, only Spafford’s wife survived.  Spafford took the next boat over, and as he passed the spot where the ship went down, began to write, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll,” and continued until he had the text, “It is well with my soul.” His good friend, Philip Bliss, composed the tune for his words, naming it after the ship, VILLE DU HAVRE.  In this hymn, Spafford has given all of us words of comfort and assurance in times of physical and spiritual crisis, paraphrasing those familiar words of Julian of Norwich: “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all m
Read more

#152: FIRE

By -
Image
“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Mathew 3:11) I’ve been going through the book of Mathew for a while now and you won’t believe what I saw. Well, you may have seen it before, but as for me, I had just seen this for the first time in my life. I sure had read this verse a couple of times in my lifetime, but I just never saw what I had just seen. This was what I saw, “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. The word that struck me was the ‘and’ between the Holy Spirit and Fire. Questions began to run through my mind like; Is the baptism of the Holy Spirit different from that of Fire? But Isn’t The Holy Spirit fire Himself? For days I looked upon this verse; I couldn’t forge ahead until I got light.  In the midst of my search, I fell ill; seriously ill that I couldn’t do anything, not even to pray or stu
Read more

#147: THE FORGOTTEN ONE'S 1

By -
Image
“But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.” (Acts 1:8 [AMP]) I once heard a preacher say that the reason his church was not growing in size over the years was because the members were not living right; if they lived right, many would see the evidence of Jesus in their lives and follow them to church. That’s partially true, but not 100% true. I once heard another preacher say that the reason they were depreciating in number was because evil was looming around the church and preventing new members from coming in. Well, that could be true to some extent, but not 100% true. I sat wondering year after year why it was the same people I saw in church every Sunday. There was no single new member and the only difference was that these people were getting older and dying while children were born to others to rep
Read more