OPEN HEAVENS DEVOTIONAL - MONDAY - 13/1/2014 - GOD HAS A SUBSTITUTE BY PASTOR E.A. ADEBOYE

GOD HAS A SUBSTITUTE

MEMORISE

And Samuel said unto him, The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.

1 Samuel 15:28

READ

1 Samuel 16:1

1 Samuel 16:1 And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.

MESSAGE

One important thing we need to learn in today’s reading is that God always has a substitute. If God says He wants to use you, rejoice! However, be careful, because even as He is choosing you, He has already prepared a substitute. 1 Samuel 2:27-30 tells us about Eli. God chose Eli and his family to serve Him. God later changed His plans because He only honours those who honour Him. One thing about God’s rejection is that the devil takes the place of the resultant vacuum that is created. This was what happened to King Saul. We also have the case of Judas Iscariot in John 13:26-27. He was a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. The moment God rejected him, Satan entered him and he ended up hanging himself. Psalm 75:6-7 tells us something interesting:

“For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.”

Whenever God gives you an opportunity to serve Him, please humble yourself. It is better for God not to use you at all than to use you and then push you aside. Once He pushes you aside, this gives room for the devil to come in. I pray that God will never substitute you with someone else.

In today’s reading we see the rejection of King Saul and his replacement by David. No one would have heard of David if King Saul had not lost his crown and position; just as nobody would have heard of Esther if Vashti had not lost her position. God has given us these examples so that we can learn a lesson. God told Samuel to stop mourning over King Saul because He had already rejected him. He told Samuel to fill his horn with oil and go anoint one of the sons of Jesse as king. Samuel said Saul would kill him if he found out about his mission. This is an interesting statement because it shows clearly that Saul had degenerated so badly that he could kill a servant of God. It is a terrible thing to backslide. This is why you must never touch sin. We need to study the lives of the people that God rejected in the Bible so that we can learn one or two lessons from their cases. We have to know what God saw in their lives to make Him reject them, so that we can run away from their mistakes. Why was Esau rejected? The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:15-17 that he was rejected because he could not control his appetite. I pray that your stomach would not send you to Hell. Some people have never fasted since they became Christians. I pray that your appetite would not put you into trouble to the point where God would reject you in Jesus’ Name.

PRAYER POINT

Father, have mercy on me. Help me not to embark on a path that will lead to my rejection and replacement in Jesus’ Name. If I’m on such a path, please salvage me from it now.

BIBLE IN ONE YEAR

2 Corinthians 10-13;

Psalm 15-16