A Tip to maximise your Mid-Week Truth Turn Up …

Your Mid-Week Truth Turn Up is a 'meaty' devotional that can re-centre your heart on Jesus as you go along in your week. The devotional is slightly lengthier than a daily devotional and that is because I post them only once a week and they are meant to be your repeat meditation for the next 7 days till you receive the next Truth Turn Up.

My tip is therefore that as your week goes on, you visit and re-visit your Mid-Week Truth Turn up and meditate on the Bible Meditation passage, my write up as well as the Further Study at the bottom of the devotional. Take the whole week to meditate on it and get it into your spirit. Do not try to compress the whole devotional into one reading.

Enjoy (* wink *)

Coach Toyin 

Occupy The Whole Mansion (Part 2)

YOUR MID-WEEK TRUTH TURN-UP (DEVOTIONAL) BY COACH TOYIN

Meditate on this: Ephesians 2:11-22 (Please use The Passion Translation here)

Feature verse: “Yet look at you now! Everything is new! Although you were once distant and far away from God, now you have been brought delightfully close to him through the sacred blood of Jesus—you have actually been united to Christ!” – Ephesians 2:13 (TPT)

“Delightfully close to God”? Oh my! Does that describe you, child of God? Well, for the longest time, that was a promise that I did not believe was possible for me. Let me take a step back:

Last week I began this series titled ‘Occupy The Whole Mansion’, and I invited you to journey with me to explore what I love to call ‘the God-life’. You see, years ago, I reached a point in my Christian life where I could no longer ‘suffer’ under a mediocre experience of Christianity. I was saved but still struggling with sin, inner brokenness, disconnectedness from God, I still had no clue of God’s purpose for my life, talk less of knowing how in the world I would be able to walk in that purpose. I demanded to know, “What is the point of being gifted this ‘Magnificent Mansion’ if I am barred from occupying every single floor and room?” Or in other words, “Why believe in Jesus Christ if I do not get to experience the full abundant life that Jesus promises?”

In these series, I’ll help you identify four ‘rooms’ in this ‘Magnificent Mansion’ called ‘the God-life’, which I believe you were saved to occupy. I’ll challenge you to assess for yourself if you are experiencing each room, and if not, why not, and how you can now begin the journey to occupying the whole ‘Magnificent Mansion’ that is ‘the God-life’ in Christ.

I believe that the four rooms of ‘the God-life’ are:

1) Intimacy with God (“Delightful closeness”); 2) Power over Sin and Healing from Brokenness; 3) Living led by the Holy Spirit; and 4) Living a supernaturally-enabled life. This week we will focus on the delightful closeness that one can have through an intimate relationship with God.

The ‘delightful closeness’ between God and Man is one of the most striking features of the creation event (Genesis 1 – 3). What is more intimate than forming a living being out of dust and then breathing life into his nostrils? Yet God did not stop there; He actually planted a garden, a paradise, and placed Man there to live in it. God provided for every need that man would have, including what he would eat, the way he would occupy his time, and God even gave Man the opportunity to name the animals that He had created. God and Man were so delightfully close that without Adam asking, God knew that he needed a companion comparable with him to do life with, and so God formed Eve in the most intimate way, and brought her into that same intimate union with Himself.

Genesis 3:8 implies that God used to spend time in the Garden with Adam and Eve and we can only imagine that those were times of joyful fellowship, intimacy, exchange of mysteries, wisdom, companionship and more. 

Sadly, this delightful closeness between God and Man was one of the first tragic casualties of Adam and Eve’s first sin. Genesis 3:7-10 tells us that when Adam and Eve sinned, their reality and identity was so altered that they were ripped out of their God-conscious existence; a people who previously drew their very life-breath from a seamless closeness with God, now became people who hid from God because their carnal eyes had been opened and when they realised that they were naked, they were afraid! Wow! The trust was gone. The friendship was gone. The ease of interaction and desire to be in the Lord’s presence was gone … and so, they hid from God.

Our text today teaches that though you were once so distant from God because you were born into sin, when you make a decision to follow Jesus Christ, He brings you back into ‘delightful closeness’ with Himself. Delightful closeness! This has always been God’s plan and deep desire for humanity – for us to be delightfully close to Him. It is your right fit and inheritance as a follower of Christ.

Friend, are you ‘following Christ’ yet you have no ‘delightful closeness’ with Him? Are you emotionally and/or spiritually and/or otherwise disconnected from God even though you genuinely believe in Jesus? Do you feel flutters of closeness to God now and then but it never seems to last? If this is you then friend, you are being barred out of the most critical ‘room’ in this Magnificent Mansion called ‘the God-life’; DELIGHTFUL CLOSENESS. Your experience of every other ‘room’ or manifestation of the God-life flows from you growing in delightful closeness to the Lord. Power over sin, healing from inner brokenness, being led by the Spirit to discover and walk in God’s purpose for your life, as well as walking in and wielding God’s supernatural power; these are all birthed from that relationship of growing closeness with God. This is why the devil fights to keep you disconnected from God. He has you hiding from God like Adam and Eve did; he convinces you that even though you believe in Jesus, your attempts to experience Him through prayer, reading the Bible etc. are futile and ineffective. This is why the enemy keeps you so emotionally, physically and even spiritually busy, that you don’t have the capacity or desire to grow in your relationship with God.

Take this coming week to assess your life. Are you growing in connectedness and intimacy with God? Or is there a deafening silence between you and God? If so, are you ready to accept God’s outstretched helping hand today? He so desires for the delightful closeness you were created to have with Him to be restored; this is the primary reason that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to earth in human form; so that He could pay the death-sentence for man’s sin, and thereby tear apart all walls barricading man from having delightful closeness with God.

Before we pray it out, let me offer you a FREE tool of mine called THE 3-STEP KICKSTART TOOL. This is a quick and effective Tool that I offer to folks who want to kickstart a dead or dulling relationship with God, and who want to see immediate results. You can access it here.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, I thank you because in You, I have received complete freedom and access to the whole Magnificent Mansion that we call ‘the God-life’. I accept Your invitation for me to return to the delightful closeness that You created me to have with You. Wow! How exciting. What mysterious wonder awaits me as I walk closer with You each dayI Please give me grace not to stay the course; I do not want to walk away from You again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Coach Toyin, Founder of The Narrow Gateway

As always, I end this by saying, I am Coach Toyin, fully convicted by my own words and very much still under construction in the hands of the Father.

Further Meditation:

Genesis 1 – 3 The creation event and the fall of man

Exodus 33:11-23. Here we see Joshua’s deep and intimate relationship with God. We also see that Moses loved God’s presence so much that He refused to move unless God promised to be with him. 

Genesis 5:21-24 Enoch walked with God so intimately that he did not die; God took him from the earth

Genesis 6:1-9 Noah walked with God in a time when sin and wickedness abounded so much in the earth that God made a decision that His Spirit would no longer abide with man, and that the life-span of man would be drastically shortened.

Numbers 12:6-8 God boasted that He and Moses were so close in relationship that He (God) spoke to Moses face to face like a man speaks with his friend.