There are so many Christians who are allowing themselves to become sidetracked away from the plan of God for their lives, as a result of the deceitfulness of the riches of this world.
Instead of putting their trust in God’s word and promises, they have decided to put their trust in the world’s system. The devil is working diligently to destroy their God’s given dreams and visions.
Without a clue about what the enemy is using to ensnare them, they have taken their eyes off God’s word for the fulfilment of what’s promised them, as they’re making daily choices that are gradually taking them away from trusting in the Lord God.
It’s important to be keeping a closer look at your daily choices and decisions as a child of God. Are those choices and decisions keeping you in step with the promises of God? Are you daily dependent on Him to do what He promised you?
Those choices and decisions that you are making every day do have the ability to shape your dream and vision. They do have the ability to impact the actions that you’re taking to propel yourself into that vision of God.
The enemy does have the ability to influence you in making decisions or choices, which may seem biblically and spiritually sound to you; but which are being engineered by him to kill the plan of God for your life. The devil is the master of trickery.
Most of his choices for you will often make common sense. They will often appeal to your reasoning and feelings. The devil knows how to appeal to your reasoning and feelings, so as to get you deceived into making bad choices.
Those choices may even seem acceptable before God in your own opinion and reasoning, but they may not necessarily be scripturally sound. They are not God’s best for you, even though they are acceptable to Him. Remember that it is your choices in life that God will work with in fulfilling your dream and vision.
If you are ever confronted with choices in life, that are making you feel uncomfortable. Or if there is even a slight nudging feeling about a decision or a choice that you’re about to make, then you know for sure that the devil has his fingerprints on it.
Those nudging feelings are from the Holy Spirit. He is the One who is warning you by making you uncomfortable with that decision or choice. It’s not all the time that He will speak directly to you, but He has numerous ways of alerting you of dangers.
The problem with many is that they are often ignoring those inner nudges or witnesses. They don’t even ask the Lord in prayer before making their decisions or choices. It’s important to always consult first with the One who gave you the vision, because He knows much more than you about what you’re doing.
So, spend more time to pray in the spirit about it, until the Holy Spirit gives you the instruction or direction about it.
Satan has the ability to influence your ability to discern accurately, especially if you are not praying much in the spirit. He is the master manipulator of spiritual truth. That’s why in order to be spiritually alert, you have to be devoted to praying in the spirit, even when it’s not comfortable for you to be doing so.
The devil may appeal to your feelings with the aim of taking hold of your mind, so as to control you and make you pick from his numerous choices. That’s why it’s important to daily renew your mind with God’s promises about your vision and dream.
The Prophet Habakkuk says:
“…Write the vision.
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time.
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it.
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry”.
Habakkuk 2:2-3 NKJV
By writing down the vision and God’s promises you are positioning yourself in your daily choices and decisions to run with it. You will become a doer of what it says.
By writing it down and confessing it daily, you’re establishing yourself in it, while reminding God of His promises to you.
So, if you’re not doctrinally sound, you’ll easily fall for the tricks of the enemy. He is sly and will present biblical truth to you, with his lies and deceptions in order to undermine biblical truth to you.
That’s why in order to sharpen your spiritual discernment, it’s important to always practice the habit of meditation on God’s word.
If the devil could undermine biblical truth to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, he surely will do it with you as well (Matthew 4:1-11).
Be alert and spiritually vigilant, most especially in your prayer life. The more you are praying in the spirit, the more it will become impossible that you will fall for his tricks.
Praying in the spirit will cause you to be spiritually alert, in detecting the schemes of the devil afar off. You will be ready to instantly break his snares before they get near you.
As an example, what you’re doing on a daily basis may have changed, without you even noticing it. You may need to get smarter by retooling and re-energizing, what you’re doing on a daily basis to fulfill your dream and vision.
You can do this without necessarily allowing the changes from the world around you, to impact what you’re doing daily. This may require focus away from the distractions of the world, but it’s the sacrifice that you have to make so as to get to where God expects you to be.
Stop taking those baits of the enemy!
The devil is vigorously seeking to prevent you from walking in the purpose of God for your life.
Therefore, guard your heart diligently. If the world and its pleasures of sin can keep you away from God’s word and the pursuit of holiness; then ultimately your obedience to God’s word and your pursuit of a holy lifestyle, can also keep you away from the temptations of the world and the pleasures of sin.
That’s why King Solomon said:
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.”
Proverbs 4:23 NKJV
The good choice of life comes from the heart. That’s why it’s important to guard it very well. Your heart is untouchable by the devil, because you are a child of God. The only way he will try to get at you is through your thoughts and feelings.
At the end of it all you will have to decide, whether you are going to cave to the pressures from the world or to your personal feelings.
You also do have the choice to be training your heart diligently, so as to be susceptible to the voice of the Holy Spirit who lives in you. This is very important to sharpen the discernment ability within you.
Whatever you are doing today comes as a result of your daily choices. You see God has offered life to you, even as the devil is offering you death also from the world (Deuteronomy 30:19). You will have to decide to either choose to follow God or the devil.
Joshua told the children of Israel during his last speech before his exit from the earth:
“And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua 24:15 NKJV
It was a matter of choice for Joshua to serve the Lord. He had been standing by that choice from his youth. And he had seen how it had paid him off.
The choice to serve the Lord prospered him. Life became easier for him by making the wise choice to always obey God no matter what. Joshua’s life and posterity was preserved as a result of this.
This was a very simple decision for him to make. Joshua had seen how those who disobeyed God had suffered the consequences for making bad choices. He never wished that for anyone among the Israelites who were being led by him.
Joshua made it clear to the Israelites that God still depended on their choice to serve Him or not to serve Him. God will never force anyone to make the decision to live by faith in His word.
People make choices every day to follow the world of evil and its sinful ways. The devil can’t decide for anyone. People make decisions or choices every day that are taking them to Heaven or to hell.
For some the baits of the enemy with the deceitfulness of the riches of the world has ensnared them.
You choose either the blessing or the curse.
The Bible says:
“Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, So a curse without cause shall not alight.”
Proverbs 26:2 NKJV
The choices that you are making on a daily basis has the ability to position you, for either the blessings of the Lord or the curses of sin and death. A curse does not come without a cause. The door must have been opened for the curse with some bad choices before it comes.
Troubles don’t just come without an opening for it to come upon you. Some bad choices do come with severe consequences.
In the same manner the blessing often comes as a result of the decision to simply obey the Scriptures. Disobedience to the scriptures opens the gateway of hell in manifesting the curse.
It’s just as people are making bad choices, which are getting them sick every day. At the same time some other people are making the good choices, which are making them healthier daily.
The choice of the food that you are eating on a regular basis (as an example), can adversely affect your health. Those choices of food can either make you healthy or sick.
That’s how the curse of sicknesses and diseases comes on people to kill them. And it’s also how the blessing of long life and prosperity comes to people (Psalms 91:16).
Most of the sicknesses and the diseases affecting Christians these days comes as a result, of poor dietary choices that they are making. Every child of God was created by God to be healthy. God does not ever see any of His children in sicknesses and diseases. He sees you healthy and prosperous always.
There is no sickness or disease that is designed for the people of God. But some of God’s people are getting sick anyway, because of the bad lifestyle choices that they are making.
The devil had been programming their minds and feelings, to make bad food choices that are making them sick.
This was his tactic right from the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). And he had never changed. He used the choice of food over the blessing to deprive Esau of his birthright (see Genesis 25:29-34).
He uses bad food choices always to target those who are created in the image of God. Bad and unhealthy food choices are aggressively being manipulated by the devil into the mind of the believers in Christ Jesus.
In other words, fast food is just as bad as a death sentence. People across the world today are dying faster by eating fast or drive thru foods, because they are often not well cooked or only prepared for making profit for the business owners. And fast foods are not necessarily for your health benefit.
The Christians who are joining the world in this craving for fast food, are putting themselves under the same judgement of sicknesses and diseases like the ungodly people in the world.
Be very careful about what you’re eating daily. Many people are dying faster, because of unrelated health problems, that has come on them through unhealthy daily food choices.
The devil is seeking to make Christians sick through their unhealthy food eating habits. He knows that he cannot get at you, because of your Covenant of Healing and good health with the Father. He knows that you cannot get sick because of the protection by the Blood of Jesus Christ over your life.
But he will target your thoughts with the aim of manipulating your feelings, so as to make you pick the unhealthy choices of food. Once he is able to get you addicted to such bad food diet, he knows that it’s the easiest way of getting you sick with something.
Beware! Be watchful and very vigilant. You still have more things to do for the Lord on the earth. Don’t let the devil get at you with his dirty and silly tricks. Stay healthy by eating healthy foods.
That’s why you need to be careful of making the choice to be eating something, just because everybody else are eating it. Neither should you be eating something just because, people are saying that the food tastes good.
Your taste as a human being is always subject to change as you age in life. That’s how God created the human body to function.
And the devil knows this as well, but he will however manipulate your feelings to be eating, as you used to eat fifteen or twenty years ago.
Evidently the clothes that you were wearing twenty-five years ago can’t fit you today. You have outgrown those clothes. It’s going to make you look stupid if you are still wearing them. So why eat something that you used to love as a child, when you know that you have outgrown that age?
It’s only the devil who can give you such thoughts and feelings, because he wants to destroy your life. That’s how he operates in making sure that Christians die before their time comes, without fulfilling the vision that God gave them to fulfill in life.
Don’t limit yourself with your choices.
The extent to which you can go with your dream in life, is therefore determined by the daily choices that you are making. You can dream big because, that’s the nature of God in you. He loves it when each one of His children are dreaming bigger than their imaginations.
You can never dream bigger than God. He thinks bigger than you can ever imagine (Isaiah 55:8).
So don’t ever even be cultivating the habit of limiting Him in the possibilities of life. With God all things are possible (Mark 9:23).
Dreams are powerful forces – especially the ones that are treasured in our hearts. The devil knows that he cannot stop you from dreaming big. But he will do everything possible to stop you from fulfilling the dream, if you give him the opportunity with your daily choices in life.
Your everyday choices of life are what determines the extent of your reach in fulfilling your dream. The devil will do everything to scheme you out of the way to follow your dream. He will use all types of lies and tricks to steal, God’s word concerning your dream away from you.
He will do it in such a way that you will never be able to detect his evil schemes, because of the sneaky ways that he operates.
But no matter what he is using against your dream so as to stop you, you must always be resolved to bounce back, into the plan of God for your life concerning your dream.
This is because you alone can really stop yourself. The devil can’t stop you. You alone can stop yourself.
Stir up the spiritual gifts in you.
Majoring on the bad choices of life that you are making in following your dream, will hinder you from walking in it. Focusing on the good choices of life will help you in following your dream. They will either help you to work better with the Holy Spirit in your life. Or they may make your faith stagnant and unfruitful, especially if they are bad choices.
So, repent of the bad choices, and you will experience God’s grace to propel you forward with your dream.
That’s why the daily choices which you are making, must be kindling or stirring up the dream of God in your heart. Those choices make a lot of differences between you and your eternal destiny in life.
That’s why Paul told Timothy:
“Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
II Timothy 1:6-7 NKJV
The stirring up of the dream or the vision of God for your life, is meant to keep it alive and vibrant. If your dream and vision is not speaking to you all the time, then evidently you have not been stirring it up. If your dream and vision is not making you to be on the move always, then you do have a problem.
The choices that you are making on a daily basis must be pointing towards your dream and vision. Otherwise, it means that you have not been praying in the spirit enough to stir it up. You have no excuse for not doing that.
Paul was reminding Timothy to never allow the devil to steal his dream away from him. This was the same advice that was given to Archippus of Colossi, when he wrote to him saying:
“And say to Archippus, “Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it.”
Colossians 4:17 NKJV
The world in which both Timothy and Archippus were living was not different from ours in nature. There were all types of worldly temptations around them, that were similar in nature to what we have today.
In fact, the Churches in both places were getting increasingly worldly. But in the middle of a changing world, Paul reminded them not to lose focus on their dreams and visions.
What are you doing with your vision and dream? Are you stirring it up? Or are you just letting things sit on the sidelines?
If you’re not doing anything about it now, the devil will make sure that, you will never be able to do anything about it later.
If you’re not seeking the face of God about your daily decisions and choices, then you will never be led by the Spirit of God into fulfilling your dream and vision.
The devil will make sure that you’re only being led by your feelings and the cues from the world around you. He will make sure that you are a candidate for failure.
But with God failure is never an option for you. So, get up and be on your toes. Put off your television and radio sets. Get rid of those newspapers. Get into your Bible. Pray always in the spirit.
And before you know it, you will find yourself doing what you’ve been called of God to do, as you obey the leading of the Holy Spirit for your life.
