JUNE 5TH: DEAL WITH YPUR JUDAS HEART BEFORE JUICY JULY
ECHOES OF TRUTH 2026
THEME: GETTING SET FOR THE SHOWERS
“God will not share His glory with your distractions. If your eyes are wandering to the world while your knees are on the floor, you are wasting your time. A divided heart receives nothing from the Lord. It must be all of you, or it is nothing at all.” – The BUD Family Africa
One of the most sorry cases, most pitiable perhaps in the Bible, would be the story of Judas Iscariot.
What a man! What an ending!
We must understand that the various characters in the Bible are there to either show us how to walk with God or how not to walk with Him.
In the story of Judas, one has to stop, think, then ask how a man will walk with God for more than three years only to end up betraying God?
Certainly, when Jesus chose him as one of the twelve disciples, he was as raw in potential as Peter, James, John, Matthew and the others were.
God must have seen in Judas potential as great as what He saw in apostle Paul. God must have seen the possibility of how a man can become a great lamp bearing the light and life of Christ in himself, igniting many other lives to do the same like the apostles did.
When Jesus gave the disciples the commission to go two-by-two or when He sent out the twelve in His name, Judas was there. Judas witnessed the miracles of Jesus. He saw Jesus pray for him. He saw the Father’s love through Jesus. Judas saw Jesus walk on water, raise Lazarus from the dead, feed five thousand, heal the sick, heal the blind, the crippled and all that we know of Jesus life in the Gospel.
Judas saw the Word come alive in Jesus, he saw the fulfilment of prophecies said many centuries ago become fulfilled in Jesus. He saw that Jesus was the breakthrough he needed to be delivered from himself. Alas, Judas did not take it!
All that he had ingested from Jesus for over three years only ended with him taking his own life. His selfish decision was to contribute to the death of Jesus.
Also read Juicy July 2025: Abba, Father!
But what could have truly happened?
His heart was divided!
He was hypocritical in his life!
He appeared to be right before the eyes of men but God who sees the heart saw his divided heart. He was with Jesus, calling Him Master, but he was secretly paying attention to another master. Judas was occupied with affections for something he considered more rewarding, more satisfying, more fulfilling, and more loving than an intimate followership of Jesus.
His other master, money, controlled by the prince of Babylon, had been spinning Judas’ heart in a web of deceit where he thought that he could serve both Christ and mammon.
He wanted to submit a portion of Himself to Christ while submitting the other portion to himself to satisfy his lusts and sinful desires. He did not know his heart had been captured by the world.
God certainly saw that where Judas was headed, he would not be suitable to bear the glory of the Gospel nor would he be fit to remain in God’s eternal agenda considering his divided heart. God saw exactly where Judas had fixed his eyes on. This flooded his life with darkness, giving him a divided heart.
A divided heart can never know what it means to be wholly devoted to Christ nor can it ever be free from the chains of this world that weighs one’s heart to make and keep it earthly-minded.
We would be no different from Judas if we are also of a divided heart before the Lord.
If the lures of the world keep our gaze away from looking up to Jesus, we are deserving of getting nothing from the Lord.
If we would rather believe the world and its claims over the Truth and reliability of God’s Word, we are no different from Judas.
If the realities we are more concerned with are earthly-minded and not heaven-minded, self-led and not Spirit-led, me-centered and not God- centered, we simply cannot offer God anything that is birthed from such a state. It would be an abomination.
God won’t attempt to do anything in us if the glory will not return to Him.
Juicy July should only proceed for us when without deceiving God nor man, God has all of us, nothing left out of His reach. This is the true pathway to freedom in Christ.
If we will have a meaningful and Juicy experience with the Lord, it needs to begin with a surrendered heart in need of the Lord’s freedom, freedom away from worldly entanglements, sinful webs, and the constant seductions of the flesh.
Jesus said we must make sure that our eyes are fixed on the right things to be saved from the world’s allures. In Luke 11:34-35, He says:
‘The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. 36 If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.”
In light of the above text, whatever we fix our gaze, attention, devotion on, will either illuminate our lives or plunge us in the darkness of despair.
The gateway to our heart is our eyes, what holds our affections and attention. Many things may seem legit and appropriate but they are mere distractions disarming the move of God in our lives and filling it with darkness instead of the light of God that should fill us.
The more we are fixated on Christ and heavenly-minded things, the more we are transformed in His Presence, from glory to glory by the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17-18), receiving the fulness of God.
If we are beholding Him, we are definitely not far away from His presence.
Unlike Judas who was physically there with Jesus, his eyes fixed on what flooded his heart with darkness, hence, his end was failure, emptiness, and eventual destruction.
As we anticipate Juicy July, we must begin to realign our gaze to the cross, to Jesus, to the throne of Grace, to obtain mercy from now on. We must begin to detach ourselves from every distractions and become wholly devoted and committed to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
What God intends to do in us will only come to be when He has the right of way in us and nothing will contend with His glory over our lives.
Of what use is the world when the Lord is offering us Himself with the willingness to flood our lives with His light and glory?
Let Us Pray
Father, we acknowledge that our hearts does not fully belong to You as it should. We often fall prey to many distractions thus hindering us from absolute devotion to Christ. Today, we humbly ask that my the help of the Holy SPirit, our gazes will be realigned that we may begin to behold Christ so He can flood our hearts and life with light. We ask for grace to not fall into the deception of hypocritical living before You that we may truly walk with Jesus to the end of our lives and even in eternity, in Jesus name, Amen.
You may listen to what Bro Zac Poonen says about Judas Iscariot
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Take the world from our hearts Lord, we covet not the joys of this world.
Father, have your right of way in us.
Amen