JUICY JUICY 2023
DAY 30TH
THEME: THE EMPOWERED WOMAN
TEXT: LUKE 1:41; ACTS 4:31
BIBLE STUDY: JOHN 2
This is the second to the last day of the Juicy July 2023.
You’d think that today, we will be doing things like 11th Hour miracle prayers, Acceleration prayers or the likes.
But the Lord wants to take us in a different route entirely.
The Lord doesn’t just want to give us fish but He wants to teach us how to catch fishes ourselves!
He wants us to leave this year’s edition of Juicy July with lessons and blessings that will abide- if you will let Him!
The Empowered woman!
Who is the empowered woman?
What is the power in the word ‘empowered’?
Is she the woman that is carrying placards?
Is she the woman that has her heart full of the world, self, hate, fight and bitterness?
Who is the empowered woman?
How can we live an empowered life from today till tomorrow and even till eternity?
The Lord will be expounding His Word in our hearts shortly. But in the main time, shall we take this song together, please?
Welcome Holy Spirit by Hilde M Bedsvaag
Welcome Holy Spirit
Be here with Your presence
Fill me with Your power
Live inside of me
You’re the living water
Never drying fountain
Comforter and counsellor
Take complete control
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There is a great and powerful entity known as the Trinity!
It comprises:
The Father
The Son
The Holy Spirit
Three separate entities, yet one!
Many people have tried to get to the root of their oneness so they could sound like huge professors and explain God, but hey, God cannot be explained!
The Word of the Lord is infallible and that is what we are holding on to without any question. He said it and that makes it true!
Not only did Jesus say it, even Godly people have the witness in their spirits that the Oneness is real!
If you still have questions in your heart about that, you need to ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you so the reality of God can come alive in you.
That is not the focus of our study for today, so we won’t be diverting into that.
After the fall of man, someone needed to come into this world through a woman to conquer sin so that God’s initial plan can be fulfilled and the works of the Devil might be totally destroyed!
Someone needed to walk the streets of this world like Adam did but the person must not fall like Adam did! The person needed to completely overcome sins, so that He could shed his sinless blood and through him, the whole world can retrace their steps back to God!
Sin is God’s greatest enemy!
It is submission to the Authority of the Devil!
Well, Jesus, God the son, offered to come into the world to die for the sins of the world because without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sin!
1 John 3:8 (ESV) says:
“Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”
The reason Jesus left Heaven was to come into this world to destroy the works of the devil!
Sin and its wages- death!
He needed to overcome this!
So, He came into this world.
Jesus was God! Jesus is God! Jesus was great! Jesus is great! He is immortal! He is omnipotent. He is omniscient! He is the Creator! He is the Messiah!
Yet, He left His glory!
His power!
His immortality!
Everything that made Him God, He left above and came down!
Many people think that Jesus came into the world as God and that was why He lived sinless and powerfully.
But, no!
God is not a magician!
God could have just wiped the whole world off and all but no, He needs us to be able to choose Him and renounce the works of the darkness!
That was why Jesus came!
To be an example that can teach us how to cheat sin and death!
How to overcome sin and death!
So, He came into this world as a man!
He cried like we cried!
He ate like we ate!
He was tempted as we are tempted!
He loved as we loved!
He was betrayed as we were betrayed!
He was exactly like us!
He did not only conquer sin, He cheated death and destroyed it!
Through Him, we now have forgiveness of our sins if we come to the Lord and ask for His mercy,
However, how was He able to live a sinless life then?
How did He please the Lord so much?
If He was really human like we are, how did He make it?
Through the help of God, the Holy Spirit!
Like I explained to you during the prayers about the womb that we did the other day, Mary was a worthy vessel that God could trust to bear Jesus!
And she did not train Jesus by her power!
She was filled with the Holy Spirit!
Merely meeting with her cousin Elisabeth, Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit!
So, this woman and obviously, her Godly husband must have brought Jesus Christ up in the ways of the Holy Spirit!
At 12 years old, Jesus was already filled with the Holy Spirit, studying the Word and enjoying God’s Presence!
Luke 2:41-51 says:
41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.
42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom.
43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it,
44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him.
46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
48 And when his parents[a] saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”
49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[b]
50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.
51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. When Jesus submitted himself to be so that we can know that through Him, we can also be sinless in such a corrupt world!
Can you see Jesus?
That was how He was able to live in this world successfully!
Constant, continual. perpetual , daily reliance on the Holy Spirit!
Mark 1:12 says: At once the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness,
Luke 4:1 says: Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Luke 6:12 says: In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.
One of the best ways to show our reliance on the Holy Spirit is by praying!
Praying!
It is in prayers that we witness the Power and the Presence of the Holy Spirit!
Mark 1:35 says: Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
He was emptied of self so much that all He did was totally rely on the Holy Spirit!
The Holy Spirit empowered Him!
He led Him!
He revealed things to Him!
He strengthened Him!
Till He could say:
IT IS FINISHED!
The job of dying sinlessly is finished!
The job of passing where Adam had failed was finished!
The perfection of everyone who would come through His Blood was done!
Oh glory!
After conquering sin and his life left Him, He conquered death by being raised from the dead. And He finally ascended into Heaven!
All these are so symbolic!
That if we walked like He walked, rely so much on the Holy Spirit, pray alone a whole lot, we will be raised up from the state of death!
Death of different types would have no power over us anymore!
We’d have gained unto ourselves LIFE through HIS BLOOD!
And finally, like He ascended into Heaven, we would also ascend!
But wait, it is only by the Holy Spirit!
That was who helped Him to do all these things!
That is the only person that can help us achieve the same thing and even more!
When Jesus arose from the dead, his disciples must have thought that ‘Oh now, we have our Lord with us!’
But Jesus suddenly broke their hearts by saying He had to go.
After saying that, He told them that a Comforter would come! A great help would come!
He was invariably saying ‘The One who helped me will come and help you!’
John 16:7 says:
However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable (good, expedient, advantageous) for you that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you [into close fellowship with you]; but if I go away, I will send Him to you [to be in close fellowship with you].
You see, Jesus was a mortal!
He could be only in one place at a time.
If the gospel was going to reach the end of the earth, He would have to go!
He couldn’t be in Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, Australia at the same time!
He couldn’t be in the room and outside the room at the same time.
He could only be with us, He couldn’t be in us!
He was as human as we are!
So, He had to go!
Therefore, I repeat, He had to leave!
He had to leave so that the person who could do it could come!
The One who could be everywhere at the same time!
The One who could be in you and I at the same time!
The Holy Spirit of God!
The Same power that is the Spirit of the Lord God Almighty Himself!
The Same Power who Jesus relied so terribly on while on earth!
He is available unto us!
Jesus promised that He would come!
And He has come!
If you are a child of God, you have Him in you!
But I don’t know how active He is in you!
That is another thing!
It is one thing for people to have electricity in their homes, it is another thing for them to make use of the electricity!
Why some only use it for their bulbs, some put off all the bulbs so that they can conserve energy so the electricity wouldn’t burn off.
But there are others who are making a huge use of the electricity!
They are using it for their washing machines, their blenders, their hair dryers, their chargers, their fans, their air conditioners, everything in their house, they use the electricity for! And the electricity isn’t complaining!
That was what it was made for!
In actual fact, the electricity can even do much more than that!
It can drive huge machines, break things build things, repair things, destroy things!
So, this is the same thing with the Holy Spirit!
He is inside of us but we need to allow Him do everything for us!
Let Him plan your life!
Let Him teach you how to live!
Let Him tell you who you should marry!
Let Him teach you how to submit to your husband!
Let Him raise those children for you!
Hand them over!
Let Him glorify Himself in you!
Let Him take over those selfish desires of yours!
Let Him cancel those devilish plans of the enemies over your life!
You just:
– Rest
-Pray to Him
-Hand everything over sincerely to Him
-Listen to Him
-OBEY!
That was what Jesus did!
That was what Paul did!
That was what Mary did!
That was what Elisabeth did!
That is what we should do!
If there is anything I would love you to leave this July with, it is that you should so lose confidence in your own self, plans, wills, timing, that your sole confidence is poured without reservation on the Holy Spirit!
You are a woman!
You need the Holy Spirit!
Much is expected of you, you need the Greatest Help ever!
Moods, hormones, monthly bleeding, breastfeeding, emotional needs, childbirth, child raising……
Yet, serving God, loving God, yielding, training your children in His ways, submitting to your husband as you would do to the Lord,
These things don’t come easily!
And these things are no excuses for your failure!
Women who have gone ahead of us have conquered their moods!
They put their hormones in their rightful places!
They defeated themselves!
They submitted to the Lord!
The Will of God was their will!
The plan of God became their plans!
The ambition of God became their ambition!
They did this by the help of the Holy Spirit!
They were self control by the Holy Spirit!
They obeyed their own husbands as the Word of God says, by the Holy Spirit!
These women were filled with the Holy Spirit and they raised spirit-filled children!
There marriages were extraordinary!
Don’t think you can be the woman the Lord asked you to be without the Holy Spirit!
Don’t think you can win spiritual warfares without the Holy Spirit!
Don’t think you can conquer your flesh without Him!
No amount of discipline and accountability measures would work if you don’t allow them come from the Holy Spirit Himself!
Don’t think you can overcome that addiction without the Holy Spirit!
Don’t think you can sustain the fire of the grace you have received from Juicy July 2023 without the Holy Spirit!
Don’t think you can live a successful Christian life, without the Holy Spirit!
You cannot even marry well without Him!
If you trust Him for marriage and you got it, you need to continue to rely on Him to keep that marriage if not, it would be blown off in a twinkling of an eye!
We cannot love without the Holy Spirit!
We cannot have the Fruit of the Spirit without the Holy Spirit, most assuredly!
We cannot make it to Heaven without the Holy Spirit!
No amount of seminars on child raising can work for you if you do not rely on the Holy Spirit!
The Holy Spirit is the best therapist ever!
The Best counsellor ever!
The Best Friend ever!
The Revealer of all truths!
The Greatest teacher ever!
The Best Guide!
The Mightiest Director!
And He’d be in you continually if you continue to pray!
If you continue to study God’s Word!
If you continue to OBEY!
If you would cease acting and let Him have His way!
Woman, you cannot do anything without the Holy Spirit!
Philippians 2:13 says: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”
Zechariah 4:6) says “…Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts”
John 15:5b says ‘….for without me ye can do nothing.’
Sisters, can you see where you have been failing?
Can you see why you are rising and falling?
Because you are not relying FULLY on the Holy Spirit!
A true reliance on the Holy Spirit is proven by your:
-Full obedience to God
-Growing love for God
-Fiery and rich daily devotion with God ALONE!
-Running to prayer immediately temptation arises!
-Hating the Devil and His works so passionately
Can you see why you see no good in your husband?
Because you see all the good in yourself!
Only the Holy Spirit can help conquer you so you can see your husband as God does and love him as He does!
So, who is the Empowered woman?
She is the woman who the Holy Spirit has conquered!
The woman who the Holy Spirit is in charge of!
The woman who has won the friendship of the Holy Spirit!
The woman who daily learns of the Holy Spirit!
The empowered woman!
Instead of a woman who is on her feet screaming and shouting ‘We no go gree’, we see a woman on her knees saying ‘I am thine Lord, do with me as You please’
The woman who wouldn’t allow her emotions, hormones, feelings, moods get in the way!
The empowered woman is the woman who has the wisdom of God in her!
The wisdom of God is the Holy Spirit!
What a great gift!
What a changed life we will live if we let the Holy Spirit have His way in us!
Can we sing this song together?
Come Holy Spirit by Heritage Singers
Come Holy Spirit, I need Thee
Come sweet Spirit, I pray
Come in Thy strength and Thy power
Come in Thine own gentle way
Come like a spring in the desert
Come to the withered of soul
Lord let Thy sweet healing power
Touch me and make me whole
Come Holy Spirit, I need Thee
Come sweet Spirit, I pray
Come in Thy strength and Thy power
Come in Thine own gentle way
Come in Thine own gentle way
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ROLES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE LIFE OF A BELIEVER?
To renew, sanctify and make us holy as believers.
To enable us to have eternal life in God.
To enable us to bear good fruits of the spirit.
To have a personal and intimate relationship with God.
To do the works that Jesus did.
To keep Christ’s commands.
To stand in the face of rejection.
To preach the gospel.
To give us strength, help, comfort and guidance.
Revealing God’s thoughts, teaching, and guiding us into all truth.
Helping us in our weakness and interceding for us.
Saving, filling, sealing, and sanctifying us.
Giving us power, love, and self-discipline.
Enabling us to preach the gospel and perform healing miracles.
Waging war with our sinful human nature
Equipping us with spiritual weapons of war
Teaching us the truth that we need to be protected from false accusations or insinuations
Empowering you to fight sin
Helping to produce fruit of the spirit in you
Daily directing your life
Assisting your marriage to glorify Jesus
Revealing the uniqueness of your spouse, the special gifts that only the spouse has, the way in which that individual person is made in God’s image
Ensuring that the two in a marriage become one flesh
Leading you in marriage
Helping you raise great kids for Jesus
Producing a hatred for the world in you and putting in the love for the things of God
EMI MIMO by Omoniyi Oni
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SHALL WE PRAY?
Thank You, Father, for The Salvation of my soul and for The Gift of God The Holy Spirit. Which confirms my Sonship, For As Many As are led by The Spirit Are The Children Of God In Jesus’ Name Amen
Father, in anyway I have fallen short of Your Glory and Expectations by walking in the flesh and not in The Spirit, Please, have Mercy and Forgive me, In Jesus’ Name Amen
God The Holy Spirit, Please, forgive me in anyway I have relegated You to the background in my life, Please, from now on, take Preeminence in my life and in all my ministerial activities, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Father, as I am Born of The Spirit, Please Empower me to live in The Spirit, and to also walk in The Spirit, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Father, Please fill me, afresh, to the brim with Your Holy Spirit and let all the activities of the flesh in my life be completely subdued, In Jesus’ Name Amen
O Lord, I thank you that You are full of wisdom, and that You want to share that wisdom with me.
O Holy Spirit, please increase godly character in me. Make me more like my Lord and Savior through conviction and sanctification. Find in me and remove sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, enmity, jealousy, wrath, envy, and any other sin that consumes my heart in the Mighty Name of Jesus.
Holy Spirit, fill me with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
I want less of me, and more of my God, and I need your guidance Holy Spirit to help me in this regard.
Holy Spirit, Please, grant me Divine Utterance and Grace to always speak forth as Your Oracle and mouthpiece, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Father, Please give me The Grace to walk always in The Spirit, that I may not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Holy Spirit, You are God. I praise you because you are holy, and I thank you for dwelling in my heart.
Thank you for working in my life. You guided me into salvation, renewed my dead spirit, and you opened my eyes to the Truth. Thank you Holy Spirit..
Help me to see you more clearly, Holy Spirit. Help me to recognize your movement in my life.
Make me more sensitive to you so I can follow you more closely, sweet Spirit of God.
Oh Holy Spirit, I ask for your help and comfort today. You know my pain and anxieties very well. Thank you for praying over me. Help me to rest in your comfort today.
Heavenly Father, Thank you for sending your Holy Spirit to comfort me in my weaknesses. You give me strength when I cannot take another step. Please, guide me into all truth, remind me of your ways, and give me boldness to testify about what you’re doing in my life in the Mighty Name of Jesus.
Holy Spirit, today I ask for Your counsel and direction in……….. As it says in Psalm 37:4 to delight myself in the Lord, so I boldly seek to do so today.
Please, Holy Spirit, make following the will and heart of the Father my greatest desire, for I know Your plans are best for me and, in the end, will glorify the kingdom.
Holy Spirit, please lead me by Your wisdom, discernment, and kindness throughout my life in the Mighty Name of Jesus.
Holy Spirit, conquer me!
Holy Spirit, help me!
Holy Spirit, take over me!
Holy Spirit, will you give me a hunger to daily read the Bible and pray?
And could you please supernaturally illuminate what I am reading and give me the ability to comprehend what I am studying, not just for head knowledge, but to help me know You in a deeper way so that I give You the worship You deserve. In Jesus’ Name.
Lord, I pray you would move the Spirit more boldly in my life. I know that any sin can grieve and diminish the voice of the Spirit, and I pray against the temptation to sin. Help me crave your presence more than I crave sin. Help me grow in the fruit of the Spirit and so walk closer with You.
Father, Please, endow me with The Spiritual Gift of speaking in other tongues and Interpretation, and, help me to Pray in other tongues often, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Father, Please, help me to maintain A Holy, Righteous and Consistent walk with You, all the days of my life, In Jesus’ Name Amen
Make me a fiery woman, oh Holy Spirit in the Mighty Name of Jesus!
Continue to pray as the Lord leads you.
Now, raise your prayer journal and hand over the prayer points to the Holy Spirit.
I hand over these requests to You Holy Spirit, Juicy July is coming to an end, perfect that which concerns me in the Mighty Name of Jesus!
You requests, be converted right now into great answers and testimonies for me in the Mighty Name of Jesus!
Let’s round off this prayer session with this song:
Emi Mimo by KK Reubens
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