Because the season the nations and the peoples are in speaks to a nighttime experience akin to Israel’s situation in Exodus 14:21, we close this month with these sure admonitions for every loving reader.

**Usually, God’s purposes are revealed, and His power displayed, in our darkest experiences, when like Gideon you ask, “If the Lord is with [me], why has…this happened?” When there seems to be no rhyme or reason, God’s promise is, “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord…who [calls] you by name” (Isa 45:3 NIV).

Anybody can be faithful in good times but standing “by night in the house of the Lord” (Ps 134:1 NIV) takes real commitment. Hymn writer George Matheson wrote: “Will I remain in God’s house at night…love Him for who He is…know I desire not the gift but the Giver? When I can remain…during the darkness of night and worship…I’ve accepted Him for Himself alone.” When the Israelites faced their greatest challenge, the Red Sea, the Bible says, “All that night the Lord drove the sea back” (Ex 14:21 NIV). Be encouraged, God is working, even though you can’t see Him. **Taken from Steve Lummer

I encourage every elect to enter this night challenge, when loving priests serve and sing the song of blessing unto God; not petitioning, not supplicating, just singing the song of blessing of our God; and not for a limited period but lifting holy hands in holy worship through the night watch.

I paraphrase Bro Arayomi’s recent statement which speaks to another dimension of the night challenge ‘prophets need intercessors, for only intercessors can cause the necessary shift in the spiritual warfare, for this is not the purview of the prophet’.

**After all, how can God give us “songs in the night” (Job 35:10) if the sun always shines? Jesus said, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight” (Mt 10:27 NIV). It’s in life’s dark places that God shares things which strengthen you and encourage those around you.**Taken from Steve Lummer

Listen beloved, the song and the mandatory acts of the elect are summarised in Psalm 135:

1. Vs.1-4 articulating the duty of the elect in these times of overwhelming darkness,
2. Vs.5-7 reveals and reminds the elect of the power that chose us,
3. Vs.8-13 unveils the acts of our God in the accomplished redemption from the hands and wrath of the oppressor,
4. Vs.14-18 commands the intentional separation of the elect from the shedim and their dominion that is destined for destruction, and
5. Vs.19-21 the expectations of His elect.

Selah.

Pastor Afolabi Oladele