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Author: Seer Paul Rees
Matthew 23:37
Matthew 23:37
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that
killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often
would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
We are living in the days that demand a high level of spirituality
and sensitivity to the Spirit. Jesus our Master mourned over Jerusalem because
they didn’t know their day of visitation. They could not discern Him nor those
sent to them and they suffered. The most
painful thing for any generation is to stone or kill those sent to them.
I want to believe that every generation and the people God
will raise and send to that generation. It is our responsibility as God’s
children to discern and master the secrets of handling or treating those people
well. Mirroring the sad lives of these Jews in the above will mean missing our
deliverances and miracles. May such not befall this generation!
I find the scripture below too very interesting for our
discussion;
Matthew 23:34
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and
crucify….
The
mistake any generation could make is to kill those sent to them from God. To
avoid this grave mistake of stoning those sent to us by God, we need to master
the secrets of handling people through love. This is important because it is
only through love that we can identify those sent to us.
Hear
this!
Hebrews 13:2
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
There
are two types of people God uses to bring change in any generation and
individual lives. These are men and divine beings (angels). These people are
not easy to recognise but they can be known. These people are called strangers by the Apostle Paul. Strangers
in the sense that they know you but you don’t know them.
The
greatest pain is to miss or reject those sent to you. Ignorance, they say, is
not bliss!
Only
Jesus knew why He wept over Jerusalem! May this generation not reject those
sent to us!
I
want to show you two (2) important keys to help you identify these strangers
sent to you from the Lord. Some of you reading this have missed certain
visitations and miracles in the past as a result of not knowing these. After
reading this, you will come to the realisation that some people around you are
not just men but are strangers sent to you by God for your future.
1.
Love
Hebrews 13:2
Be not
forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares.
Love is a
character that must developed by all. It takes love to entertain strangers.
Love is a must! Watch it closely, any person who entertained or hosted angels
in the Bible all did so by the forceful force of love. It takes love to be
hospital. Men like Abraham and Lot didn’t see any unique appearances about
those men they entertained. It was their love nature that drove them to those
hospitable acts. Unknown to them, the entertained guests were divine beings.
Had they not developed their ability to love, they
could have missed those angels and that could have been very detrimental.
Angels love to be entertained but that can only happen through love. True love
is from the heart and of the heart. It is an attribute of God that must not be
winked at by the Believer. Should any Believer or generation not miss their
divine visitations from God, they must do so by learning how to handle those
sent to them through love.
If we must be successful in entertaining angels who have been disguised as
strangers, then the above scripture must not be taken lightly. An angel can be
any of these two – a divine being or any person sent by the Lord into your life
to help you get to the place God has predestined for your life.
Elijah was sent to the woman at Zarephath (1Kings
17:9-14) to help sustain her and the son throughout the famine. Jesus was sent
to the Jews but unfortunately, majority of them did not receive Him because
they misjudged Him and miss their miracle. Know those sent into your life at
certain times and seasons of your life and treat such with love. They may not
look physically appealing in your eyes but they carry the words of life from
God from your life.
2.
Sensitivity
Many lovely and righteous people have missed certain
blessings, visitations and miracles simply because they were looking from the
flesh point instead of the Spirit.
How will you identify a person sent to you from the
Lord? Many divine beings (angels) have appeared to some and were not aware or
conscious of who they were. Some have even engaged in a conversation with them
and had escorted them to certain dangerous places and did not know who they
were. Angels sent to us look like men.
The 1st Century Christians were used of
seeing angels in the form of men that when Peter was released from prison by an
angel and had gone knocking, they were convinced that it was Peter’s angel not
he himself. ( Acts 12:13-15). Later, Apostle Paul had to tell the Hebrew
Christians to be careful in the act of hospitability to endeavour to keep doing
that because some had already entertained angels without knowing. Obviously,
most of the strangers they entertained were not human beings but divine beings.
They were not aware because they had not been
spiritually sensitive or spiritually aware. There is a natural awareness but
there is also a spiritual awareness too. One can be physically aware of their
surroundings and may not be spiritually aware.
Three (3) people were walking close Abraham’s tent as
others normally do. They were men but something about them was more revealing
than meets the natural eye. Others saw them and casually by-pass them but
Abraham could not let them go without inviting them in. Abraham’s spiritual
sensitivity was in place unlike the others. Unknowingly, they were divine
beings from Heaven – the Lord God Himself and two angels, all appearing as
ordinary men. Others were naturally aware of them but they were not
spiritually. Abraham had developed his spiritual sensitivity through daily
communion with God and that was what made him entertained them and had
mysteries revealed to him.
What can also be said of the great woman of Shunem?
(1Kings 4:8-17). She was a great woman but she had needs that her greatness
could not do for her. She was called a great woman not because of her wealth
but because she learnt how to be sensitive to the voice of the Spirit. For she
said to the insensitive husband,
‘ …Behold now,
I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually.’
(vs.9).
Elijah the servant of God had been continually passing
in front of their house. One day, it just dawned on her that that man is a holy
man of God – a prophet. She had been in need of a child all these years and had
none. But the moment she learnt to be spiritually sensitive, ‘bam’, her miracle
child came. In the case of Abraham, it was divine beings but in the case of
this great woman of Shunem, it was a human being.
All these people (both the divine beings and human
beings) were all strangers that were entertained. Spiritual sensitivity was
what paved the way for such miracles to be released to those who entertained
them.
Watch it and be very careful and sensitive to those
strangers sent into your life by God. Avoid the attitude of stoning or killing
those sent to you by the way you look at them with fleshly eyes and not
spiritual eyes.
Mine is that the Lord should anoint our eyes with eye
salve and cause every scale to fall off so we can recognize those sent to us in
Jesus precious name! Amen!