Scripture Reading For Today: Hebrews 4:1-2; 1Corinthians 9:24-26
Welcome to Day 19 of this year’s fasting and prayers. If you’ve made it this far, I congratulate you on your persistence and perseverance. I pray that you reap the fruit of your labour in Jesus’ Name.
The word of the Lord that I keep hearing in my spirit today for this season we are about to enter into, is “preparation”.
In a way, that’s generally part of what we’ve been doing over the past 19 days — preparing ourselves for what God has got planned for us in the new year! But particularly, it has more to do with the specific things that God would have us do, to position ourselves for what God is about to do.
God will always prepare you before He presents you at the place, or on the day of your promotion.
Preparation is the process that you have to endure before the moment of your presentation comes. And that is the key word right there — “moment”.
Sometimes the breakthrough, deliverance or the opportunity that we have been praying and hoping for, is presented in a moment; it may not necessarily be an event or an occasion; just a fleeting moment that you may miss if you have not prepared well for it. David had but a moment to sling the shot at Goliath, but that moment had been honed in over several days maybe even weeks and months of practising with the catapult.
Will you be ready and prepared for when your opportunity comes? Will you even recognise it as an opportunity when it does? Friend, God is ready and willing to do more than you can ever ask or imagine, but He’s waiting for you to prepare yourself for your presentation!
Are you really prepared for the breakthrough and blessing that you are praying for? Maybe that situation that you have been going through is part of the training? Could the pain and difficulties of that issue be part of your training as well?
The questions you also need to answer today are:
• What are you really preparing for?
• How are you preparing?
• How should you be preparing?
Again, the answer to these three questions boil down to a key theme we have been meditating on — strategy.
If you don’t know what God has got planned for you, you will not know what you are preparing for. And if you don’t know what you are preparing for, how then would you know how to prepare for it?
Many times, God will prepare us for our destiny in ways that are totally at variance with where we think we are going or what He has said He will do in our lives.
He prepared Jesus for a three and a half year ministry in a carpenter’s workshop. David was prepared for kingship by learning to lead a few sheep in the backside of the wilderness, while Moses was trained to lead a nation through the wilderness by being trained as a prince in the courts of a king!
Joseph was trained in adversity, through betrayals and disappointments in places that were far removed from where he would eventually end up; and Apostle Paul, well, listen to what he had to say about his own “training” —
“So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing” 1Cor 9:26 (NLT)
Can you say the same thing about your life?
Selah,
Pastor Wale Ola
Prayer Focus
Order my steps according to Your word.
Let me run with purpose in every step that I take in this new year.
Peay for patience to remain in the place of your appointment while God Works toprepare and perfect you.