It must be God's Way I

Thursday 9 July
READ: Luke 4: 5 - 8
MORE LESSON: Luke 12: 50

Jesus had a vision to go and die on the cross and resurrect. He needed to die and resurrect so that He might win the whole world back to God and strip the devil of the authority he stole from man. The Cross was the way to redemption. It was the divine method and strategy for bringing man back to the life that he lost. Jesus' death on the Cross of Calvary is God's way of redeeming man.
But the devil came to Jesus and tried to convince Him, 'I know your vision and goal. You want to take the key of life from me and restore the dominion that man lost. Well, that is fine. You don't have to go through the horror of death of the Cross to achieve that. Let me propose another way of fulfilling your vision. Just worship me and I will give you the whole world and its dominion.' When the devil told Jesus to worship Him and have the dominion of the whole world, that temptation was not just about materialism. The devil was actually tempting Jesus with an easier alternative of fulfilling His vision. He was proposing to Him to choose bowing rather than dying as the means of achieving His destiny of becoming Lord of all.
It is a very difficult temptation when you are presented with an option that will take you to where God has promised you but the option is not God's predetermined way of taking you there. This is because it is not enough to insist on fulfilling God's vision for your life, you must also insist on fulfilling it only in God's way. There is always a cheaper way of achieving a vision. But a person who is determined to please God will insist that it is only the way that God endorses that he will take even when all the other ways look like they will lead him to where he wants to go.
So Jesus knew how God wanted Him to achieve His purpose and nothing would deter Him from doing it that way. He made up His mind that He was going to follow God's methodology – the Cross. It was because of this determination that He defeated the devil. Know today that the devil may not even wrestle with a man about his vision but he will be ready to do all to get you adopt the wrong way or method of achieving it. God gave you a method and a way, you had better follow it. If other people are succeeding by their methods, thank God for them. But stay on the one God gave you. It is not mere succeeding that is the most important thing, it is succeeding by God's way. Be careful to follow God's way in fulfilling your God given vision and don't give the devil any chance to mar your testimony.

Prayer/Action
* Ask God for grace to insist on God’s will and grace in all things.
* Ask God to help you face challenges with courage and trust in God’s promises.
* Ask God for wisdom to do His Will.

PROPHETIC PRAYER
God of Boaz, Abraham and Jabez overturn every arrow of impossibility in my life and make me an amazing testimony, in the name of Jesus.