Grace Notes Grace House Church

It is eternally settled that God will never leave you. His commitment to you is unwavering. Even if He wanted to, He couldn’t abandon you. You mean everything to Him. He gave up everything, left the ninety-nine, and came down from His throne, chasing after you when you were neck-deep in sin. God is so invested in you that He can’t walk away. No matter how grave your sin is today, He will not turn His back on you. As the Apostle Paul states, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). Therefore, never let past mistakes or shortcomings prevent you from basking in God's mercy and moving forward.

Offense works primarily as a stumbling block to short-circuit the power of God from flowing where it should. And over time, there have been offenses that have come to communities, and people groups because certain Christians acted apart from the dictates of the word of God.

The scripture likens the tongue to a little fire that eventually consumes a forest. This should let you know that the tongue does not just govern the direction of your life in one-off statements, each word sets off a chain reaction that eventually determines the rest of your life. Proverbs 18:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit." This means that death and life don't just happen. You have to wield the tongue to whittle the infection, the bad habit, or the debt. You also have to wield the tongue to prop up the family, the money, and the business.

If you study the entire 1 Corinthians 14, you would find that God is impressing on the church a system of tongues to prophecy. The scripture says, "For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries" (1 Corinthians 14:2). The word, "speaks in a tongue" in this verse refers to uttering words in God's language through the enablement of the Holy Spirit.

If prophesying is speaking the Word of God into being under the influence of the Holy Spirit, as we have said in a previous devotional. How do you come under the influence of the Holy Spirit so that you can speak His Word into being? There are seven ways to do this but we will start with the most obvious one: Speaking in tongues.

The word "prophecy" has been used in the Bible to communicate different things. First, prophecy means to tell forth the mind of God. And it is expected that every Christian ought to be able to tell forth the mind of God about and in any situation. In this regard, prophecy is not to be conflated with the operation of the ministry gift of a prophet. Acts 21:8-10 gives a clear distinction between these two. It says, "On the next day we left and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. Now this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied. And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea."