DEVOTION FOR TODAY

When I was in school back in those days, I learnt the five P's to success: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Your preparation will determine your performance. Heb. 12:11 paints a picture of what preparation for any performance can look like.
1. Chastening. If this is just discipline, it is easy to go through. But when you see what is used in Heb. 12:6 to chastise you, then, it is not pleasant. Scourges are used to chastise sons. A scourge is a whip used for flogging a son. The proof you are a son will be determined by the fact that you were scourged or whipped by your parents. The message there is that if God is taking you somewhere, the whippings you will get will determine where you are going or what you will become. That's why we don't get the same whippings because we are becoming different from the other. Don't compare yourself with another because your whips are not the same. 2. Training. Another word is exercise. Trainers know that our body structures determine the kind of training to produce certain results. You can't train like everyone and become yourself. You train to become yourself. Don't train to look like your parents or priest or president. No one trains to become the pope. You can never unless you are chosen. You lose yourself when you end up like someone you admire. God created you to solve a problem that only you can solve. You have to be you in order for God to use you as you to accomplish what He created you to do. Going through chastening and training is always not pleasant but painful. Your pain is just a passage. It will produce the fruit of right standing and doing eventually. Let your eyes be on the lasting impact of the peace and prosperity your preparations bring. As long as your eyes are on the medals, your mind will not take the marks on your body as marks. Instead, those marks become the miles that made you. Miles become milestones. Partner with me to reach 30 million souls in 50 nations this year.Bishop Michael O. Amamieye -www.aggressivefaith.org.