Mighty Ones

Transcript

Greetings in Jesus’ name!
Welcome to this beautiful new morning!
I hope that every decision that we make today will demonstrate our trust, our reliance and our faith in the Lord.
Every word we speak, every transaction and decision or choice that we make, is it proclaiming our love for the Lord or our love for the world? Is it declaring our faith in the Lord or in the systems of this world?

Now, today I want us to understand that sometimes, it is not that we have to necessarily leave the Lord to serve the world, but we are in the danger of trying to do both of it together!
And that is when God looks at us and says, “Guys, when you choose to parallelly serve the world, you are technically forsaking me. Now in your heart and mind, you actually believe that you love me and you serve me but when you are parallelly serving or depending on other people or other things, then it is equivalent to you actually forsaking me”.

Let me read 1 Samuel8:8. This is when the nation of Israel comes to Samuel and asks him to appoint a king over the nation. They didn’t necessarily say that they didn’t want God to be their king but parallelly, they just wanted another human ruler who could be their representative, who could be like the systems of the world, like the leader who could lead them into battle, like every other neighbouring country.
Let’s see God’s reply to Samuel in 1Samuel 8:8; God says, “According to all the works they have done, since the day that I have brought them up out of Mitsrayim, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other mighty ones. So, they are also doing to you”.
The Lord is telling Samuel, “What you are experiencing is nothing new. They’ve been doing this to me over and over again. Yes, they’re not necessarily declaring with their hearts or minds that they’re rejecting me but what they’re also doing, is that they’re constantly in search for these mighty ones”.

I like the word that God used there: they are looking to serve other mighty ones.
Now the thing is, there are always going to be those figures even in the church or outside , who will look like the mighty ones. And the temptation for the child of God is going to be, whether they will put their trust in God or whether can also parallelly seek help, depend on or hope in these mighty ones.
Please understand that when the Lord wants to bless you, He is going to use people in your life. He is going to send some men or women of God. When He wants to bless you financially, He is going to give you a generous employer. They may not necessarily be godly. It could be somebody like a Pharoah, a Nebuchadnezzar or a Xerxes.
But when they are appointed over your life, they will be used by the Lord to bless you, to provide for you, to help you and to speak into your life: there’s no doubt about it!
The problem happens when we continually keep going back to these people instead of going back to God who put these people into our lives.
We keep expecting our pastors or our prophets to help us, when we should actually be going back to God who brought them to us with the word.

The Bible says about the Israelites, that they were constantly looking for these mighty ones/mighty warriors who could parallelly help them, become their plan B, their symbol of identity, when it came to the wars that they had to fight.
God looked at it as a sign of rejection, of forsaking Him, of rebellion and disobedience against Him.
This is the danger that needs to be avoided at all costs.

We are trying to develop our faith in this season. This is not possible unless we constantly disconnect from those mighty ones, who are parallelly receiving our praise, our dependance, our worship, the glory.
God is very jealous for you. He is not going to want to share you with anybody else.
So this morning, can we take a minute to evaluate who the mighty ones are who have a strong place in our hearts , whom we feel we cannot do our life without, whom we are deeply dependant upon. Some of these people may be given to us by the Lord Himself. But the moment these people become our sole affection, desire and dependance, then they may become the mighty ones whom we are depending on parallelly to the Lord.

God spoke to Ezekiel and said, “I’m going to take away the desire of your eye”. The very next day, Ezekiel’s wife died. His wife was given to him by the Lord. Now that she had become the desire of his eye, to the extent that he couldn’t see the Lord clearly, God had to intervene and take her out of the picture.
It’s better that we learn to deprioritise certain people, things, affections that we have, so that God can continue to use those people in our lives. So that He can continue to allow those blessings and providences in our lives.
This morning, let’s bring all those mighty ones before the throne of God and say, “Lord, you are our everything. You are my strength in need. You are my strong deliverer. You are my stronghold. You are my mighty one”.

Father, we thank you for this word that has come to us this morning. We believe that you are increasing our faith. And we thank you for the grace to surrender every other mighty ones or strongholds that we have in our hearts or our minds. We thank you for our pure affection, love and dependance will be to you in this season. In the mighty name of Jesus we pray. Amen.