Category: Daily Devotionals

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” ~ Proverbs 18:21

Words are powerful, we hear this in the pulpit all the time. Proverbs 18:21 is a popular scripture, God has given us the power to speak life or death and it’s up to us to decide how we are going to use our words. But when I took a deeper look into the power of words, I was amazed at the intelligence of our creator, and how strategically He has established the earth and everything in it. Words are indeed powerful, but I don’t think we understand the extent to which we have the power to shape our environment with our words. Let’s take a look at the science behind it.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake was one of the first scientists to mention a phenomenon referred to as the ‘morphogenetic field.’ It is the idea that all information is stored in the shape of a vibration. For example, the morphogenetic field for the word ‘thank you’ is increased when the word is thought or said. It becomes easier for people to say these words as the morphogenetic field strengthens.

This approach is highlighted with the phenomenon of the hundredth monkey. It was discovered in the late 1950’s on a modern Japanese island when a group of behavioural scientists noticed that the monkeys would wash their potatoes before eating them. It is possible that one monkey started doing it and then the other monkeys copied the behaviour. They probably learnt that the potatoes tasted better when they were clean. After a while, there were 100 monkeys on the island, washing their potatoes before eating them. It was only a short while after that something amazing happened, and all the monkeys on another island began to wash their potatoes despite the fact that they had no contact with any of the monkeys who had started it.

It is the phenomenon of the 100^th monkey that is used to explain the theory behind the morphogenetic field. The behavior of the first group of monkeys created a field of vibrations containing information that “potatoes taste good washed.” The hundredth monkey was the critical mass that caused the field to develop such a strong intensity that the other monkeys were able to tune into it.

According to research, words also have a morphogenetic field, this was discovered by a Yale University professor who wanted to test Rupert Sheldrake’s theory. He combined some Hebrew words with words that he had made up and showed them to his non-Hebrew speaking students. He didn’t inform them that some of the words were bogus, and as they were shown each word, were asked to guess the meaning. There was a statistical approximation for the correct interpretation of the Hebrew words. Simply put, they were able to guess the correct definition due to the fact that they had a strong morphogenetic field because the words had been said so many times by Hebrew speaking people; and therefore, they were able to tap into that vibration.

what you say about yourself and how often you say it will determine where you end up. Click To Tweet

So what does all this have to do with your spiritual life? Because what you say about yourself and how often you say it will determine where you end up. One of the easiest things to do is to speak death, we are surrounded by it. Every time we turn on the television, open a newspaper or turn on the radio, we are bombarded with negative information. Our time is then spent discussing what we have seen and heard with friends and family. When things go wrong in our lives, the first thing we do is jump on the phone and talk about it. When we get frustrated with people, we respond by speaking evil against them. According to James 3:8, no man can tame the tongue; in other words, it is extremely difficult to discipline how we speak.

Despite how arduous, we must be determined to make it a habit to speak life at all times. As you have read, your words are vibrations, and when they are released, everything you have called forth will find its way to you. To make something a habit, you’ve got to practice, here are some tips on how to do so:

• Daily Affirmations: Write out some positive affirmations and start and end your day by speaking them over your life.
• Condition Your Mind: Meditate on the word of God so that your thoughts line up with His will. Your words start as thoughts, if your thoughts are focused on the Father, His words are what will come out of your mouth.
• Spend Time in God’s Presence: Your strength comes from God, the more time you spend in the presence of the Lord, the stronger your inner man will become.
• Eliminate Negative People: I said this in the last post, and I will say it again. The people you are influenced by will determine your conversation.

There is no magic pill you can take that will tame your tongue. It takes daily, and consistent practice. Choose life and fill your mouth with the word of God.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

We are currently living in a new era of COVID-19; according to the experts, the best way to protect ourselves from the virus is to wear a mask, wash our hands often, use hand sanitizer and practice social distancing. It is not guaranteed that taking these precautions will ensure we don’t get the virus, but they will significantly reduce our chances of becoming infected.

Additionally, some people exercise, eat a healthy diet and drink plenty of water to keep their physical body in good condition. They understand that if they eat fast food, consume fizzy drinks and live a sedentary lifestyle, the body will deteriorate, which will lead to sickness and premature death.

My question to you is what are you doing to protect your spiritual life? In order for the spirit to remain strong and healthy, it must be exposed to the things that will benefit it. You can’t watch TV and movies or listen to music full of negativity and expect your spirit to stay in good health. There are several ways you can protect your spiritual life, and one of them is by paying attention to the company you keep.  

As believers it is important to understand that everything about our life is spiritual; we belong to the Kingdom of God, and each one of us has been given a specific assignment on earth. There are also people who belong to the kingdom of Satan, and they too have been given a specific assignment on earth which involves ensuring that the people of God do not complete their mission. Therefore, you must be on guard at all times, because not everyone in your social circle is on your side.

When you study the story of Samson and Delilah, you will find that her main aim was to find out the source of his strength so that the Philistines could capture him. He was so blinded by her beauty and his feelings for her that he willingly told Delilah that his strength came from his hair. The next thing he knew, she had cut off his hair, and the Philistines had taken him prisoner and gauged out his eyes.

This story highlights the fact that the devil can’t do anything to us unless he has the right information, so he will send people to get it. Delilah was Samson’s lover, she was a part of his inner circle, the enemy is not going to send a random individual to get personal information from you. The Romans would not have found Jesus if it wasn’t for Judas, and who was Judas? One of the twelve disciples.

Jesus knew exactly who Judas was; He had enough discernment to understand that He was connected to His destiny, but Samson did not. He was totally ignorant of His surroundings, he was consumed with his fleshly desires and as a result, the devil was able to encroach on his territory.

When you stay connected to God through prayer, fasting and studying the scriptures, your spiritual eyes will remain open, and the Lord will begin exposing the Satanic agents that have been assigned to take you out.

On another note, it is also important to keep negative people at arm’s length. I once heard a saying that,

It is easier to pull someone down from a table than it is to pull them up onto a table. Click To Tweet

“It is easier to pull someone down from a table than it is to pull them up onto a table.” In other words, it is harder to remain in a positive state of mind than a negative one. Afterall, this world is corrupt, we are constantly bombarded with bad news, it is not hard to find something to complain about. When you are surrounded by people who are always gossiping, slandering and speaking all manner of evil, you are either going to wear yourself out by trying to steer the conversation in a positive direction, or you will end up participating in unwholesome conversations.

Your words frame your environment and shape your life; Ephesians 4:29 states, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” Equally, Proverbs 6:2 says, “You are snared by the words of your mouth; you are taken by the words of your mouth.” Words create, God spoke the world into existence, and He has given us that same power. For this reason, it is essential that you discipline your tongue, and when you are surrounded by people who don’t share the same values, this becomes very difficult to achieve.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

Faith does not operate in comfortable surroundings. The very nature of the term demands that what you are seeing in your spirit is in conflict with what you can see with your eyes. ⁠
⁠
When I was found guilty, I stood at the crossroad of faith and fear, I had to choose which direction I was going to take. I chose faith because I knew that fear would lead me to one destination – death. ⁠
⁠
I shut out every other voice and tuned into the frequency of the Spirit. I didn’t know when or how I was going to get out, but I knew I was going to get out because that is what God told me. Eventually, my faith collided with the word of the Lord and the prison gates were open! Praise Jesus! ⁠
⁠
Your situation might look impossible to you, but the word impossible does not exist in Gods vocabulary. Your deliverance is at hand, wait on the Lord.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

Whatever you focus on is magnified in your life. When you are going through trials, keeping your mind fixed on God and not on what’s taking place around you is not an easy task, but it’s possible. ⁠
⁠
I felt the sting of my incarceration daily, but my time became a lot easier when I stopped defining myself by my circumstances. Instead, I changed my perspective and chose to walk in my calling. My days were spent encouraging women and planning how I was going to live my life after my release. ⁠
⁠
The more life I spoke, and the more hope I gave to others, the more joy I felt. There is no greater blessing than being able to inspire someone to keep pushing despite their pain. To witness the glimmer of hope in a persons eyes. Or to hear that they were thinking about giving up on life until I delivered a word that recharged their dying soul was heart warming.
⁠
Living everyday with purpose strengthened me, and filled me with joy. Five years is a long time to spend behind bars, but to me, that time went by very quickly. And I believe it was my joyful spirit that accelerated my victory. ⁠
⁠

You might be in a difficult season right now, but look for the blessing in it, because treasure is always found in dark places when your eyes are fixed on the Lord. Click To Tweet

You might be in a difficult season right now, but look for the blessing in it, because treasure is always found in dark places when your eyes are fixed on the Lord. ⁠

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.
⁠

Nehemiah had a heavenly burden for the children of Israel. He wanted them to prosper, he wanted them to become everything that God had called them to be. A part of this burden involved rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem to protect the nation. ⁠
⁠
When he made this decision and motivated his team to join him on the mission, the enemies of Israel were sent to discourage and cause confusion in an attempt to stop the work. ⁠
⁠
In spite of the obstacles, Nehemiah strengthened his hands and continued building. As he was building, he prayed for wisdom and discernment while he carried out the work of the Lord, and he was successful. Nehemiah saw the opposition but chose to rise above it and complete his assignment.

He built with one hand, and fought his enemies in prayer with the other. Click To Tweet

He built with one hand, and fought his enemies in prayer with the other.⁠
⁠
Sanballat was one of Nehemiah’s most aggressive enemies, in Hebrew his name translates as “bramble bush, enemy in secret.” In other words, when you are building, your opposition may not be visible which is why communication with the all seeing God is essential. ⁠
⁠
The Lord will empower you with wisdom and discernment to manoeuvre around your silent enemies in order to complete the task that he has set before you. ⁠

I took my case to trial, was found guilty and got a 12 year prison sentence. Due to the crime I was accused of, I was housed in M dorm. They nicknamed ‘M’ for ‘murder’ because it was home to some of the most violent women in the state of Florida, many of whom were serving life sentences without parole. But I refused to lose hope!⁠
⁠
I was surrounded by hopelessness; it was a tangible presence. I saw it in the eyes of the women who had been incarcerated for 10, 20 and 30 years. They couldn’t see a way out, and it was killing them. I found great joy in feeding them words of encouragement. They couldn’t find it within themselves, so everyday, I would make it my mission to give someone hope. ⁠
⁠
There was nothing left for me to do but hope that one day, I would taste freedom.

Hope is not just something you wish for or you dream about. It is a deep knowing that what you desire will manifest. Click To Tweet

Hope is not just something you wish for or you dream about. It is a deep knowing that what you desire will manifest. Going home was all I thought about, my mind was free to transcend the prison walls and dream about a life of no limits. ⁠
⁠
Hope kept me alive during a time when death was fighting to snatch my soul. But the light of the Lord will always outshine darkness, and here I am today, as free as a bird. ⁠
⁠
Don’t allow your trials to take you under, keep hope alive, and one day, you will be set free. ⁠
⁠
May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds. out of the mouth of God.” ~ Matthew 4:4

Without food, the body will die. It needs nutrients, vitamins, supplements and much more to function in the way that it was created to. We are reminded in this verse that physical food isn’t all we need. We also need the spiritual food that comes from the word of God, prayer and fasting.

In the same way the body is starved if we neglect to feed it, the spirit is also starved if we neglect to feed it. The more time you spend in the presence of God, the closer you get to Him and the easier your spiritual walk becomes.

Life as a Christian is difficult. Because of the fall, it is not in our nature to live the way God designed us to. As a result, there is a constant battle between the flesh and the spirit. Paul talks about this in the book of Romans: “For the good that I will to do I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now, if I do what I will not to do, that it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” Romans 7: 19-20.

The more you indulge in the things of the flesh, the more the flesh will desire those things. There is no easy way to overcome the battle between the flesh and the spirit except by feeding the spirit, because when the spirit is fed, it has the power to control the flesh.

Consistency is key when it comes to feeding the spirit. You will not get everything you need from food if you eat once a week. In the same way, you will not get everything you need for the spirit if you pray once a week. Click To Tweet

Consistency is key when it comes to feeding the spirit. You will not get everything you need from food if you eat once a week. In the same way, you will not get everything you need for the spirit if you pray once a week. Therefore, make your prayer, studying and fasting life a consistent daily habit. As you do these things, your desire to satisfy the flesh will decrease and you will start to excel in the things of God.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

A few weeks back I sent out a tweet and somehow it ended up in the atheist group. For about three days straight I was bombarded with insults from their members. Their messages were cruel and vicious and if I didn’t understand spiritual warfare, I would have wasted my time engaging in a battle with these people.

God desires for everyone to be saved; however, there are some who will never believe in God and that He sent His Son to die on behalf of mankind. It was evident that many of the responses to the tweet came from a place of anger. People are unable to understand how a supposedly loving God can allow such evil to continue in the world. This is a valid argument and I actually believe that they are rightly justified in dismissing the notion of a God, especially if they have personally experienced or know others who have experienced tragedy. This is a question that has been asked since the beginning of time, I wrote a blog post about it here. And we will not know the answer to that question until Christ returns.

Some atheists genuinely want to understand our belief in God, as far as they are concerned, since we can’t see Him, how can we prove He exists? And there are some atheists, (like the ones I encountered in this twitter group), who simply hate God and everyone who believes in Him. They spend much of their spare time trolling Christian forums picking arguments for the sake of it.

The devil has got one job, and that is to steal, to kill and to destroy (John 10:10). One of the things he wants to steal is our time, and he will assign people to waste it. I could have spent days going back and forth with the atheists from the Twitter group, but it would have been a waste of my time. Instead, I deleted the messages and blocked the people sending them.

When I first got saved, I was so excited about Jesus I was running around telling everyone. But the reality is there are some people who are not interested, and they never will be.

If you don’t have any discernment, the devil will have you wasting time ministering to people who God has not sent you to. Click To Tweet

If you don’t have any discernment, the devil will have you wasting time ministering to people who God has not sent you to. Before you know it, you are exhausted, and you don’t know why.

Believers are passionate about their God and that’s great. But God doesn’t need anyone to defend Him, He can do that all by Himself! Yes, we must all have a ready answer for why we believe in Christ; however, when an atheist is being antagonistic, don’t waste your time engaging with them.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

Destiny is the divine purpose that God has for your life. Jeremiah 1:5 tells us that before He formed Him in the womb, He gave him an assignment to fulfil on the earth. In this post, I won’t be talking about the Satanic agents assigned to hinder your progress, as I believe it is a discussion we have way too much. Instead, I will be discussing how we can be our own destiny killers.

As far as I am concerned, the religious institutions have hoodwinked us into believing that we are not responsible for arriving at our place of purpose. The notion of personal accountability has been eradicated from the pulpit. Instead, when someone is financially irresponsible, their inability to become economically fruitful is blamed on demonic forces. Congregations will spend all night crying out to God for deliverance from financial strongholds when that time could have been invested in educating themselves on financial literacy.

“I am waiting on God” is a popular slogan for those who don’t have the drive to work for what they want. Click To Tweet

“I am waiting on God” is a popular slogan for those who don’t have the drive to work for what they want. Instead, some church members are taught that the Lord will open the door at the right time. Meanwhile decades have passed by and nothing has been achieved because before God can open the door, you’ve got to do some work.

When God told Jeremiah that He had appointed him as a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5), his response was, “Alas, Sovereign Lord, I don’t know how to speak I am too young” (Jeremiah 1:7). What he was saying was that he did not have the ability to take on such an important role. He was insecure about his position in life. What Jeremiah said is a form of self-sabotage.

Many of us are guilty of sabotaging our destiny’s through inaction. If you truly believe that God has called you to something, you are going to do everything in your power to prepare yourself for the work you have been given to do. Preparation meets opportunity, if you are not ready when the door opens, you have no right to blame the devil for your failure.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.

Whatever you have been assigned to do on earth is going to take dedication and effort on your part. There is no escape from this. If you are not prepared to do the work, don’t expect to arrive at your place of purpose. Don’t be fooled by these name it and claim it, spin around and claim it, dance and claim it preachers. It takes a lot more than running around a church to fulfil your destiny.

The biggest hinderance to fulfilling our purpose is our inability to focus. We have so much irrelevant stuff going on that it’s impossible to get anything done. People spend hours on the phone talking about nothing. Then they spend hours scrolling through social media; they’ve got to turn up to every event, or they are always in front of the TV.

There are only 24 hours in the day, if the majority of your time is spent on frivolous activities, you are never going to get anywhere in life. To reach your goals, you’ve got to make sacrifices, that means cutting out your social life, turning off your phone and the TV and focusing on what you need to do.

When you make a commitment to your destiny, you will experience opposition. Click To Tweet

When you make a commitment to your destiny, you will experience opposition. Your friends won’t understand why you no longer want to come out every weekend. In fact, they will taunt you for it. Family members will mock you; people will do everything in their power to discourage your efforts.

The problem is that the majority of people don’t have a vision for their life. They have resigned themselves to a 9-5, marriage, kids and a couple of holidays per year. When anyone around them starts aspiring to anything greater than this, they get intimidated and it is expressed through disdain at what you are doing.

In the process of reaching your destiny, you will lose many friends. They will accuse you of thinking you are better than everyone, that you’ve changed, you are not who you used to be. Some will even tell you that what you are trying to achieve won’t work. You will find that the people you hoped would support you have no interest in the new path your life is taking.

The road to destiny is a lonely one, and few people are bold enough to make the journey. But when the hand of God is on your life, your spirit is compelled to move in the direction of your calling no matter what it takes.

Unfortunately, you can’t take everyone to the top, elevation requires isolation and there are some people you will need to leave at the bottom of the mountain. Don’t be dismayed by this, God knows who is for you and who is against you, let the naysayers go, they will only hinder your steps.

May God bless the hearers and the doers of His word.