Welcome to September. I think everyone has a month he or she dreads. America welcomes every September with chilly memories since 2001. It is exactly ten years today, when the unprecedented terrorist attack on the twin towers in America took place. Three thousand lives were lost. Not many events have shaken America the way 9/11 did. I don’t want to talk about terrorism; I just want to talk about evil, its fear and the antidote to evil. I also remember September with some chills. It was in September exactly four years on friday that I lost three colleagues to a road accident on their way from work. September, last year I escaped being lynched by an irate mob who were carrying weapons; I missed being killed by whiskers. But I did say, everyone has a month of dread. My Alma Mata will never forget July. I was still a student when a number of cultists carried out a commando-like attack that shook that campus to its spine. It was gory. After that incident, the government took serious steps to clamp down on campus cultism in my country. Some nations dread some months. Japan and which other countries had the Tsunami? That was a December event. Then, there was an August event recently that established terror in my country. The UN building in the capital city was bombed. It was the Federal Police Headquarters the previous month. That was Nigeria. I know someone who fears June. She says as if every bad thing that ever befell her came in June. Do you have a similar story? Which is your month of fear? Our experiences in life differ one from another; but have you noticed any cycle of evil attached to any month? Do you have memories that make a particular month a necessary nightmare? I am about to share some missile that is able to shatter your fear from its root. I lead prayers in a vigil recently and the devil is nursing a broken head at the moment. I want to teach you how to deal him just one blow. One blow only.
I am picking on September; but this will actually help you every other month or day of your life. Truly, 9/11 globalized Terrorism. Terror is more than the act; Terror is fear of a probable act. What is probable may not happen, but fear will hardly go once conceived. Fear torments. Only one thing is more frequent now than evil; it is the fear of evil. You see, in my part of the world there is a general phobia for the ‘ember’ months. ‘Ember’ months consist of the months in the last quarter of the year of which September is first. Do you have this infectious fear for the ‘ember’ months too? I have tried to point out to people that some of the worst calamities in our nation and the nations of the earth took place outside the ‘ember’ months. And we easily forget that Jesus said ‘there is enough evil in every day’. (Matthew 6:34, paraphrased). Jesus made that statement while admonishing us not to worry about tomorrow. Which means you have enough to worry about in today, why add tomorrow’s? Every single day of every single month of every single year is loaded with enough of its own evil. So why demonize the ‘ember months’? I would rather sanctify every day- ember or not. That was why Paul said in Ephesians 5:15; ‘(redeem) the time, because the days are evil’. If the devil means to take you, why should he wait for ‘ember months? Am I sounding like a pessimist? Oh, I try to be as realistic as possible and there is no greater reality that in the spiritual world. Just look around you now; there are far much more things you cannot see- and they are as real as the ones you can see. It is a fool that says there is no God; he is also a fool who says there is no evil. Even God does not deny the reality of evil. But does God fear evil? That is the point. Jesus taught us to pray to God saying ‘deliver us from evil’. And when He was going to pray for us, He said ‘(Father), I do not pray that You should take them (we His children) out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil (one).’ (John 17:15). Do not be deceived, the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one; those are the exact words of John in 1 John 5:19. But happy are you if you are of God! John said ‘we know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one’. Two realities; God and the evil one. That is what I was talking about; wake up brother, this life is live- you have no other channel to tune to. I use to tell the devil ‘now that I am here, it is you that will give me space’. Why am I so bold? Scriptures say ‘whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world’ (1 John 5:4). Oh yes, that is why I have no respect whatsoever for the devil- but I do not deny his reality neither do I underestimate him.
Let me tell you something about how God created each day, and then we can move on to the main thing for today. God made every day. (see Psalm 118:24). God makes every day- and you should be glad and rejoice in every day. Everyday is your day. The devil did not and cannot make a day. He has no day in his brand. All he does is try to spoil your day, and he has been doing this for long. You see, in the beginning when God was creating each day of the week, a subtle but very real drama played out between God and the devil. I will show you, but let me tell you this; Satan is not the ‘opposite’ of God. There is nothing with which you can match our God, no one- not even the devil; but because Satan is not as wise as we think, he rebelled against God. Anyway, when God made the heavens and the earth in the first verse of the Bible, the next verse says ‘the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. I’m sure the devil thought he was in charge at that point. Darkness covered the earth- but the Spirit was there! Then God said in verse 3, ‘Let there be light’. What do you think? The devil was embarrassed. Let me stop a bit, and show how that is relevant to you. In Isaiah 60:1-3, the prophet prophesied saying ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come… For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth … deep darkness…. but … (God’s) glory will be seen upon you… the Gentiles shall come to your light’. The drama in the Genesis between darkness and light was put in a prophetic capsule by Isaiah for us to experience. Did Jesus not say we are the light of the world? See, it is the devil that should give you space. Okay, let’s return to Genesis. The devil’s first embarrassment was the coming of Light. But notice that God did not erase darkness. In verse 4, God separated light from darkness. Please also notice that, the sun and the moon were not created until the fourth day (Genesis 1:16-19). So what happened in Genesis is not that light comes and darkness disappeared. John gave us an idea of what really happened. He said in John 1 that ‘In the beginning… light shines in darkness’ and that is what the darkness cannot comprehend! Hmmm. Notice that in verse 5, God already delineated Day and Night before He made sun and moon. So what you call day and night is dictated by the rising and setting of the sun; that is not what it was in the very beginning. I hope you have your Bible with you. Okay. No wonder Jesus said in John 11:10; ‘… if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not IN him’. Please notice ‘the light is not in him’. Why is there one ‘eternal’ day in heaven and not on earth? Maybe you forgot, there is no night in heaven. (Rev 21:25). And you wonder why God does not sleep or slumber. There is no night in God. Well, we are men so we need to sleep. But like I said, the spiritual realm is more real. The earlier you step into God’s time zone, the better for you. But really, this is where I am going. Please notice that for every day God created, He would create a particular feature for that day- for instance He made the firmament in the midst of the waters… and the evening and the morning were the second day. This scenario of ‘and the evening and the morning were the so-so day’ played out all through in the creation of each day. In other words, before God considered a day ‘full’, ‘done’ or ‘well cooked’, He allowed the evening to test it. Evening is Night. Night is darkness.
Trust darkness, it summoned all its forces up till what we call ‘midnight’. Just when darkness has done its worst, morning comes. Aha! No wonder, we read in Psalms that ‘weeping MAY endure for a night, but joy COMETH in the morning’. (Psalm 30:5). One is a probability and has a time frame; the other is a certainty and has no time frame. Why, because by morning, darkness has failed, and your day is made. See why you should be glad and rejoice in every day? That is, if you operate God’s time zone actually. So that was the process through which every day was manufactured. The point I want to make thus far is; devil is interested in every day, any day- but God has overcome.
So, this is the blow you should deal the devil; Psalm 91.
P S A L M 9 1
:1. ‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.’
Your location every point in time matters a lot to your safety. Sometimes ago I had a collection of ‘10 Safest Places in the World’. Now I cannot recall any of them. What is the point? Even if I believe they were so safe, am I going to dwell there and never leave? I want a mobile safety. So when I saw that God has a ‘secret place’ where I could ‘dwell’, I knew He was talk spiritually. I tell you; start taking the spiritual realm very seriously. It is a ‘secret place of the Most High’. ‘Secret’ tells me some may not know. ‘Place’ tells me it is a location; ‘of the Most High’ tells me it is a place in God. It’s a hiding place in the spirit. Paul said our lives are ’hid with Christ in God’. (Col 3:3). In Jeremiah 17:12 we learned that ‘a glorious high throne (exalted from the beginning) is the place of our sanctuary’. Every one of us could have his own place in God. You got to take your own place in God- or it remains eternally vacant Paul reiterated this in Ephesians 2:6; that God made us sit … in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That is where we dwell. Now the secret is out. Let the enemy know; that’s where we are hid. Aha! He knows the No-Go-Area. That is it. If Paul’s shadow was healing the sick and casting out demons, let him come close enough to the ‘shadow of the Almighty’. Goshen was in Egypt, but the plagues did not get there. What goes around does not have to come around; you only need to relocate.
:2. ‘I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress: My God, in Him I will trust”.
Refuge and Fortress. One is used for hiding, or seeking protection from danger; the other is fortified against attack or danger. They are not exactly the same thing. My country has been a Refugee Camp for citizens of a number of troubled African nations; what I cannot guarantee those refugees is the assurance of a fortress. You had better be sure your refuge is a fortress; that what we get in our ‘secret place’. Zion was branded by King David and God stamped it as a type and shadow of His own dwelling. In Hebrews 12:22-24 and Psalm 48:1, 2; we are told Zion is the ‘city of the living God’. In 2 Sam 5:7, 9’ Zion was the fortress where David dwelt, and it was called the ‘city of David’. How did the city of David become the city of God? Oh, it was a secret place known to David and not too many people until the New Covenant came. Now, watch it; I dwell in the ‘city of Deolu’ and it is the same city of God. In this city, you are in God as much as God is in you. Psalm 46:5 says ‘God is in the midst of her (the city as in verse 4) she shall not be moved’. Nothing moves Mt Zion. But this is where the link is; ‘I will say of the LORD… my God, in Him I trust’. Trust. Psalm 125:1 says ‘Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which CANNOT be moved’. ‘I will lift my eyes up to the hills, from where will my help come from?’ David said in Psalm 121. His help comes from the LORD. Where was Everest when God chose Zion? Where does your own help come from? Anyway, your trust in God is your secret code to that secret place. Oh only my own trust in God will keep me in my own city in God. You cannot rely so much even on Billy Graham’s trust, you have got to be able to say of the LORD; ‘My God, in whom I trust’.
:3. ‘Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence’
I like ‘surely’. It’s good to know there are some certainties in life’s vicissitudes, some constants in the equations of life. I also like some ‘buts’. In Obadiah verse 17; ‘But on Mount Zion…’ in Heb 12:22 too, you will see ‘But you have come to Mount Zion…’ There are mountains but only one sure one- Mount Zion. Obadiah said ‘But on Mount Zion, there shall be deliverance…’ Only in Zion is our deliverance guaranteed. A pestilence is bad enough, how about a perilous one? You don’t want to be there at all. But Paul did say that ‘perilous times shall come’ (2 Tim 3:1). I wish I could say that perilous times are here but I feel ‘all these are just the beginning of sorrows’ like Jesus said in Matthew 24:8. We will need this sure deliverance in the days to come, not the one United Nations promise. Don’t even think here we mean fowls. David knew what a fowler was- King Saul. May you not have a fowler on your trail. But this is a better prayer; may you have a sure deliverance from a fowler. If you chose the better prayer, come along.
:4. ‘He shall cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler’
Let’s focus on the last phrase. His truth… Jesus said ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:32). My advice is this; get stuffed with as much of God’s word as possible. Take time out for reading the Scriptures. And this is where I will leave you in this piece. I write mainly to inspire, motivate and empower people. But I am aware my writings challenge many. Let this one challenge you. Why don’t you continue in Psalm 91 and dig out all the truth God will show you in that passage? That is how it works- when you find it yourself.
Somewhere in Psalm 91, it says ‘No evil shall befall you’. if there is such a reality, I’m sure you want to be there.
I will be back.
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