[2/7, 11:37 PM] Pastor NseAbasi Francis Harry: ULTIMATE CARE DEVOTIONAL.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2023🍎💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦THEME: 👉I LOVE THE LORD“I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications”.TEXT: PSALM 116: 1MESSAGE📕First, loving the Lord requires knowing Him, and that knowledge begins with His Word. And to know Him is to love Him.To love God is to worship and praise Him. “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only'” (Luke 4:8). The book of Psalms provides many beautiful examples of how to worship and praise our Creator (e.g., Psalms 8, 19, 23, 24, 67, 99, 117, and 150).To love the Lord is to put Him first in everything you do. The number-one commandment is to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). It’s an undivided love. God is our priority. If we love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, then we won’t allow other things to crowd in. Our love for God is manifested by loving people (Mark 12:31), but we do not love the things of the world. “Earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). We cannot love this present world and God at the same time (1 John 2:15); love for what the world offers can lead us astray (2 Timothy 4:10).To love the Lord is to desire Him, to yearn for His righteousness, His Word, and His grace. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). Once we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), we want more of Him. If we love God, we will be like Mary of Bethany, “who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said” (Luke 10:39). If we love God, the psalmist’s description of the Word of God will resonate within us: “[it is] more precious than gold, than much pure gold; . . . sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb” (Psalm 19:10).The Psalmist declared in Psalm 116:1, “I Love the Lord…”. When we truly love someone or something we readily talk about the object of our love. Think about what you truly love – your heroes, your sports teams, your job, your favorite activities, your favorite food, your spouse, your boyfriend/girlfriend, your family. How often do you talk about what you love? Probably frequently – because we do readily talk about the object of our love.So, it was natural for the Psalmist to talk about his Lord and his love for His Lord. Psalm 116 is very personal, so much so that it is what we can all called a first- person testimony. The Psalmist shares, first, REASONS FOR HIS LOVE. Reason number one is in verses 1 & 2: “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.” I love the Lord because HE PAYS ATTENTION TO ME. We all like people who pay attention to and listen to us. We like people who put down the newspaper, lay aside the remote, set aside the IPad, tablet, or computer and look at us when we talk to them. So, says the Psalmist, God listens to and hears us – He pays attention to us. When we call out to God there is no busy signal, and no recorded message. He listens, he hears, He remembers.The Psalmist, in fact, uses two different words for ‘heard.’ “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice…;” here ‘heard means simply ‘listened.’ But in “…he heard my cry for mercy…” the word means God ‘inclined to me.’ That’s what’s emphasized in the next sentence: “Because he turned his ear to me…” The same word is used in Prov. 7:21 to describe the response of a man who is seduced by a harlot and turns aside to her; and it appears in 1 Kings 11:4 where it describes how Solomon’s wives turned away his heart after other gods. (1) So, says the Psalmist, God turns aside from what He’s doing to bend towards us. It brings to my minds the olden days before hearing aids – people with trouble hearing would place a funnel type device in their ear and turn it towards whoever was speaking so they could hear better. Or it’s like leaning over to hear the faint voice of someone lying in bed in a weakened condition. It’s what God does to us whenever we call upon Him.Why does God pay such attention to us? BECAUSE HE LOVES US. It goes back to Dt. 7:7-8 (MSG) where the Israelites were told: “GOD wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. GOD stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery, freed you from the iron grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” God pays attention to us NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT WE ARE BUT BECAUSE OF WHO HE IS. That’s why He hears our cries and prayers, why He bends down to us? I pray that you will bend low to receive Him, accept Him and serve Him. This is where your love for Him lies.PRAYERS🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿Heavenly Father, I thank you for your love and care over my life and destiny. I love you because you first love me. Thank you, Father. Father, I pray for the love of God in my life, soul and spirit, let the manifestation of your love begins in my life to your own glory in Jesus mighty name, Amen.Father, I command that all forces of evil today be turned down to hell. Powers from the evil foundation of my father’s household and my mother’s household be turned to hell. I decree that the shadow of the Almighty God overshadows every form of evil encompasses around me and consume them all, in Jesus mighty name, Amen.BIBLE READINGPSALM 116BIBLE READING PLAN FOR THE YEAR,2023.MORNING: 2 CHRONICLES 4: EVENING: 2 CHRONICLES 5💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Author: Pastor NseAbasi Harry💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦HAMMER WORD BIBLE CHURCH, ABAK, NIGERIA CARES ⛪💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦[2/9, 12:48 AM] Pastor NseAbasi Francis Harry: ULTIMATE CARE DEVOTIONAL.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2023🎁💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦THEME: 👉I LOVE THE LORD 2TEXT: PSALM 116: 2-3MESSAGE📕Recalled; To love the Lord is to put Him first in everything you do. The number-one commandment is to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Loving God also implies seeking the kingdom of God first and His righteousness (Mathew 6:33).“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (MATHEW 6:33).Once you love God and seek the kingdom first, God will fight for you and deliver you. Let fall back to the Psalmist in Psalm 116: 2-3; The Psalmist loves the Lord because the Lord heard his cry. “The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came over me; I was overcome by distress and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the LORD and said “LORD, save me!”. Trapped in a difficult, perhaps life-threatening situation the Psalmist called on the Lord. And he experienced deliverance THROUGH THE PROTECTION OF AND SAVING BY THE LORD. (PSALM 116: 5-6) “The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The LORD protects the unwary… when I was brought low, he saved me.” God saves us and give us life as well. In 2 Cor. 1:8-10 (NLT) Paul wrote, “We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it”. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us.” Through Jesus’ death God has saved us from the penalty of sin, and will – as we see in Revelation – save us from the presence of sin. In the meantime, as Paul indicated, He is saving us from the power of sin – He will continue to rescue us and give us life.The Psalmist also loves the Lord because, he says, HE CARES BOUNTIFULLY FOR ME. Here he speaks to his soul (PSALM 116 Verse 7): “… for the LORD has been good to you.” The word ‘good’ has the meaning of ‘bountiful.’ GOD PROVIDES IN EXCESS. (Phil. 4:19) “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” With God it’s not just mercy, it’s tender mercy; not just kindness but loving kindness; not just life but abundant and eternal life. It’s not just provisions, but abundant provisions (2 Cor. 9:8-11 MSG) “God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done… This most generous God who gives seed to the farmer that becomes bread for your meals is more than extravagant with you. He gives you something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way…”Believer, look back through all thine experience, and think of the way whereby the Lord thy God has led thee in the wilderness, and how he hath fed and clothed thee every day—how he hath borne with thine ill manners—how he hath put up with all thy murmurings, and all thy longings after the flesh-pots of Egypt—how he has opened the rock to supply thee, and fed thee with manna that came down from heaven. Think of how his grace has been sufficient for thee in all thy troubles—how his blood has been a pardon to thee in all thy sins—how his rod and his staff have comforted thee. When thou hast thus looked back upon the love of the Lord, then let faith survey his love in the future, for remember that Christ’s covenant and blood have something more in them than the past. He who has loved thee and pardoned thee, shall never cease to love and pardon. He is Alpha, and he shall be Omega also: he is first, and he shall be last. Therefore, bethink thee, when thou shalt pass through the valley of the shadow of death, thou needest fear no evil, for he is with thee. When thou shalt stand in the cold floods of Jordan, thou needest not fear, for death cannot separate thee from his love; and when thou shalt come into the mysteries of eternity thou needest not tremble, “For I am persuaded, that neither death; nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Now, soul, is not thy love refreshed? Does not this make thee love Jesus? Doth not a flight through illimitable plains of the ether of love inflame thy heart and compel thee to delight thyself in the Lord thy God? Surely as we meditate on “the love of the Lord,” our hearts burn within us, and we long to love him more.PRAYERS🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿Heavenly Father, I thank you for your love and deliverance over my life. I appreciate you Lord for your lovingkindness. Thank you, Father. I pray for your love in my heart and peace of God in my life.Father, I subdue all forces of evil today and turn them to hell. Demonic powers from the evil foundation of my father’s household and my mother’s household, I silence you in the grave by the power of the Holy Ghost. I decree that the shadow of the Almighty God overshadows every form of evil around me and consume them all by the fire of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus mighty name, Amen.FURTHER BIBLE READINGPSALM 116BIBLE READING PLAN FOR THE YEAR,2023.MORNING: 2 CHRONICLES 4: EVENING: 2 CHRONICLES 5💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦🍎 Author: Pastor NseAbasi Harry💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦HAMMER WORD BIBLE CHURCH, ABAK, NIGERIA CARES ⛪💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦