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 3)
YOUR MID-WEEK TRUTH TURN-UP (DEVOTIONAL) BY COACH TOYIN
Meditate on this: Isaiah 53:1-12 (Please use The New Living Translation here)
Features verses: “Yet it was our weaknesses He carried; it was our sorrows that weighed Him down. And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for His own sins! 5 But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all” – Isaiah 53:4-6 (NLT)
A couple of weeks ago I began this series titled ‘Occupy The Whole Mansion’, and this series is near to my heart because it is the product of my journey with God. You see, for years, I felt like I had been conned into a faith in Christ that had no power to change my life where it mattered most. It felt like I had gotten ‘saved’ only so that one day when I die, I would go to heaven (hopefully) but till then, I was abandoned here on earth to struggle with life like everybody else, unable to get free from habitual sin, living from a broken identity, struggling to connect with God, clueless about my God-given purpose in life. In other words, I felt there must be more to being saved than what I was experiencing. Praise God! Because He is true to His Word that “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6). My desperation for a better quality spiritual life, opened the floodgates to God’s ever-flowing river of life, and in time, I began to understand how to experience the fulness of my salvation.
In this series, I liken “the God-life” to a ‘Magnificent Mansion” with four rooms, all of which we are meant to occupy. The first room is Intimacy with God (Delightful closeness with God), which I took you through in Part 2 of this series. This week, we will go through the second room, which is Power over Sin and Healing from Brokenness.
Let me first define sin and inner brokenness. Sin is any act done in accordance with self-rule, instead of in accordance with self-surrender to God. So anytime you live according to your own dictates, rather than God’s that is sin. This means that what makes something sin is not whether it feels ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but rather whether it was done out of self-rule or out of obedience to God’s standard. Likewise, the ‘sinful nature’ is the nature that all humans are born with, which inclines us to reject God’s standards and live by our own standards. Now as regards brokenness, I define this as the identity that is formed in you as a result of the pains and sorrows that often accompany life in a sinful and wicked world.
Our featured verses for this week tell us that with every lash, every stripe, every gruesome stabbing, every spittle of saliva that landed on Jesus, He was taking on our shame, our sorrows, our weaknesses, our brokenness and our sins, and when He died, He willingly paid the price so that we could be free from the power of sin and inner brokenness. If Jesus went through such ghastly torture so that we can be free, why do we who genuinely believe in Jesus, still experience so much defeat in the war against sin in our lives? Why do many of us still live from broken hearts and identities?
In fact, I know from past personal experience, and also through the work I do, that many Christians are not only battling sin and inner brokenness, they are also weighed down under guilt and condemnation, because every time they fall into sin, the very same devil who tempted them to sin will come back to taunt them about their fall and convince them God could never save them now!
Dear child of God, am I describing you? Have you been barricaded out of this all important room in ‘that Magnificent Mansion’ that is ‘the God-life’? Have you tried so hard to say “No” to certain sins, without any luck? Have you given up on ever finding true healing from the sorrows and pains that life has dished out for you? Are you a “Christian, but …”, meaning a Christian who has settled into your broken identity and permitted yourself to remain sinful because you just don’t see how it is possible for things to be any different?
If this is you, I want you to walk away from this week’s devotional knowing that THERE IS NO WAY that God would allow His one beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to go through the horrific torture and death that He went through, just so that you could ‘manage’ with a sinful and broken life here on earth. No way. Child of God, there is more, and my prayer for you is that today, you will allow your passion for access into every single room in ‘the Magnificent Mansion’ called ‘the God-life’ to rise. If your passion rises, I promise … God promises that He will fill you up, and you will begin to experience every single room in that Magnificent Mansion that is God’s gift to you.
Before we pray it out, I’d like to suggest you consider enrolling for THE B.O.O.M WALK PROGRAM, which is my 9-session online coaching program that equips you to grab hold of your victory over sin and inner brokenness. This is an intense program that that takes you deep into a process of transformation that will unravel you and put you back together … if you allow it. You can access it here.
Let Us Pray:
Please listen to and pray with this song: Break Every Chain by Elevation Worship
Lord Jesus, I thank You for Your passion for me, which You demonstrated by choosing to take on the price for my sin and life’s sorrows. You did all that so that I would not have to live a life struggling with sin and inner brokenness. I am entitled to be free even while I am here on earth, and I am no longer willing to settle for anything less than the whole ‘Magnificent Mansion’ that is ‘the God-life’. Father, I desire it, but many times, my desire wanes. Help me Lord. Stir up my hunger and passion for righteousness. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Coach Toyin, Christian Transformation Coach, 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 Study:
Isaiah 61:1-3 and Luke 4:14-21 What I like to call Jesus’s Statement of Self
Matthew 5:6, Psalm 107:9 For those who hunger for righteousness, God will fill
John 3:14-21, John 8:36 If the Son makes you free, you are free