Worthy Devotions - Daily Christian Devotional » Anointing

Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

The Hebrew word for a dried up river bed is “Nachal”. Israel has many of these. Here, in Israel it rains in winter, but not in summer. In the summer, these places stand as a testament of the rains that once fell and of the rains yet to come. Then, when they do come, the Nechalim (nachal plural) almost instantly fill with water. This is what the Scripture means when it says, “I will give you rivers in the desert.” There is a promise in that for us.

We, like the Nachal, were made to flow with the water and the life of the Spirit of God. When we are not connected to God, to His flowing waters, we feel dry and empty — without purpose. But we were meant to be overflowing! Maybe you are feeling dry and empty in your life and walk? Praise the Lord! What an opportunity to allow God to fill you with His rivers of living water!

If you’re dry and thirsty, turn to the Lord today and the waters will flood in again!

Mark 14:3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

This is the touching story of how Jesus was anointed before His crucifixion. But there’s one thing about this passaage that stood out to me as I read it again. Jesus was not anointed with ointment until the box of alabaster was broken! In the the same way, we must be broken before the Lord so that His anointing can be poured out upon us to touch others!

We should never be ashamed to be broken. God will not deny a broken heart and a contrite spirit! When we humble ourselves in His sight and place our pride on the altar of sacrifice, it is then that God’s anointing will be greatest upon us. It will pour out of us like the ointment from that box — and we will be used greatly for His kingdom!

Let’s ask the Lord to break us where we need to be broken this week so that we might be anointed completely to do the great things He’s called us to do!

Matthew 14:23 And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

There were times that Jesus separated himself from the multitudes — and there are times when we need to separate ourselves from our lives and ministry, and spend some time with our Lord.

I love how Jesus climbed a mountain. It made me think of an interesting analogy. Picture the shape of a mountain. It starts out wide at the bottom — the higher we climb, the narrower it becomes — and the more we must stay close to the center. As we go even higher yet, there’s less room to move to the left or the right — and there’s less and less ground that can be compromised — the more focused we need to be and the less we can afford to be distracted. The higher we go, the less room we have to fool around!

Whatever you may be dealing with, you may just need to separate yourself and climb up to spend time with the Lord — get centered on Him and focused on what He’s calling you to.

God wants us to learn to climb to the top and focus all of our lives on His will! Let’s take out some time this weekend to try it!

Judges 6:12 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.

Judges 6 begins with an angel talking to Gideon saying, “thou mighty man of valour!” However, in this passage Gideon isn’t feeling very valiant – he’s consumed with his circumstances — how poor his family is and how he’s the least of his fathers’ house. He doesn’t feel he’s done anything worthy of being called valiant, yet the angel still addresses him “mighty man of valour!”

Gideon is not the only one who struggles with feeling unvaliant, though, is he? Even the best of us struggle with feelings of failure and defeat. But we must remember that we are part of the Lord’s army – and in the Lord’s army we do not depend upon our own strength. We depend upon the power of the Lord! We depend upon the victory that He has already won!

Imagine the countless thousands of saints like Gideon who have passed away before us and now sit in heaven’s glory where every tear is dried, and every wound is healed — who have already fought the battle of life and are calling down to us from heaven saying “Fellow Saint, you can get through this thing! Fight this battle – for we have fought these same battles in our lives and been rewarded with heaven’s glory! So fight through and we’ll see you soon beside us! March forward you mighty man and woman of valor!”

The Lord stands anxiously awaiting our call. He wants us to walk in His power, not our own! Let’s give him our circumstances today and strive to rely on His strength to conquer them!

Matthew 7:24-27 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Recently the rain has been coming down in the Negev Desert — we even had snow yesterday and the schools were closed. There are two rainy seasons that occur in Israel, “Yoreh” the early rain and “Malkosh”, the latter rain. Right now, we are in the midst of the Malkosh.

In this passage, Jesus is talking to Jews, of course. They were familiar with the rain and how vigorously it comes down these seasons. They knew not to build their houses on sand — or else they would quickly collapse when the rains came!

The Lord is warning us about building our houses on weak ground. He knew that stormy seasons would come and He wants us to be prepared! We don’t want to be one of the many whose houses will collapse because they were built on fame, fortune and other things of this world. We must be careful to build our house only upon Him. Even building our houses upon seemingly innocent things like family, tradition and good works is dangerous. We want to be of those who’ve established our foundation upon the ROCK of the truth of His Word and who will be able to weather the coming storms because of it!

Are there storms raging about you today? Let’s hurry and examine whether our lives are completely built upon the Rock.