STAND IN YOUR PLACE

Juliet K Nsubuga


Genesis 3:8-9 (AMPC)

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord called to Adam and said to him, where are you?”

Are you in the right place?

In the beginning after the creation, God always made time to go to the Garden of Eden to meet with Adam and Eve. In this present day we can relate this to the place and time we as believers have set apart to pray and commune with God. God values the time you set apart for Him because it is the time He comes to talk and commune with you. But from the scripture above we see God pause a question to Adam; 'Where are you?' 
This means that God expected to find Adam and Eve in their usual meeting place but they weren’t there, and God being omnipotent probably knew that they were not in the usual meeting place though He went ahead to ask him. You as a believer need to ask yourself if you are in the right place as a Christian, father, mother, child, minister etc.

As Christians, we are in a family setting where we are acquainted with each other, however, many times we do not seem to 'know our place' and thus we confuse position for place; for instance the place of a married woman in a home is to be the helper (Genesis 2:18) even though she is the breadwinner. We are many members in the church who make up one body, which is Christ. The bible reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (TLB) that; “Our bodies have many parts, but the many parts make up only one body when they are all put together. So it is with the “body” of Christ. 13 Each of us is a part of the one body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But the Holy Spirit has fitted us all together into one body.  We have been baptized into Christ’s body by the one Spirit, and have all been given that same Holy Spirit 14 Yes, the body has many parts, not just one part.”

All members in the church have a part to play. We all have our designated place which must be well kept otherwise God will fail to find you when He comes to look for you, simply because you are somewhere else where you have chosen position over place. People often want to be seen in positions they do not belong to. You have to know who you are and thus keep your place in order to see what God has planned and purposed for you. When the time has come and God desires to bless you in your rightful place, He will ask; “where are you?” If you are wrongly placed, you will watch others give their testimonies while you sit for another good number of years to wait for your turn because you moved from your place and God could not find you.

God blesses people in the Right Place.

When God places you somewhere, He will also give you the grace and provision where He has placed you to fulfill His purpose, and even bless you. Sometimes we do not receive what we are praying for because we are wrongly placed; for the angel assigned to deliver your package will fail to locate you if you are not in your assigned place.

If your ministry in the church is to lead people in worship, make sure you do so wholeheartedly; if it is to intercede, do so with all your strength, and if it is to stand at the pulpit and share the word of God, do it like it is the end of the world. Unfortunately some Christians do not have a revelation of this and therefore go about fighting for different positions and eventually lose their place. Such people will find that the prophetic words given in the church are not working for them to the point that they start to doubt the servants of God. There are things we need to do personally and some of which we already know but find it hard to execute, probably because we devalue the places where we are planted; but understand that God has put us in various places and given us responsibilities because there is something He wants us to do in His Kingdom and that is where He will bless us from.

We have been given opportunities to serve in the church and therefore we are all ministers because we make up different parts of one body, so let us not abandon that place; however, now and then we want to be somewhere else preferring to serve in a different capacity from what we have been called and purposed to. Many of us know the truth and the ways of God but we have still failed to stand in our place.

After resurrection, the angel gave these specific instructions to the disciples in Matthew 28:7 (TLB) “And now, go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and that he is going to Galilee to meet them there…….” God is specific; He chooses places - whoever was not in “Galilee” did not see Jesus! There is a 'Galilee' concerning your work, breakthrough or miracle; God earmarked a place where He is meant to meet you, but some of you have left the right place and out of ignorance missed out on God.

Misplaced, Displaced!!

2 Samuel 19:1-8 (MSG)

“1-4 Joab was told that David was weeping and lamenting over Absalom. The day’s victory turned into a day of mourning as word passed through the army, “David is grieving over his son.” The army straggled back to the city that day demoralized, dragging their tails. And the king held his face in his hands and lamented loudly, O my son Absalom, Absalom my dear, dear son!

5-7 But in private Joab rebuked the king: “Now you’ve done it—knocked the wind out of your loyal servants who have just saved your life, to say nothing of the lives of your sons and daughters, wives and concubines. What is this—loving those who hate you and hating those who love you? Your actions give a clear message: officers and soldiers mean nothing to you. You know that if Absalom were alive right now, we’d all be dead—would that make you happy? Get hold of yourself; get out there and put some heart into your servants! I swear to God that if you don’t go to them they’ll desert; not a soldier will be left here by nightfall. And that will be the worst thing that has happened yet.” 8 So the king came out and took his place at the city gate…….”

David was a king which meant that he had people that were constantly in his presence. Unfortunately one of those meant to be looking out for him was his son Absalom, who decided to fight against his father so that he could take his place as king. However, the king’s men fought for him and one of them Joab killed Absalom. David should have been celebrating the death, however when he heard about it, he instead started to weep for his son and put the blame on himself. One thing we learn if we read right through from the eleventh Chapter is that all this would not have happened to David if he had stood in his rightful place at a certain time - while other kings went to war, David did not go but instead stayed home which led to various destructive events in his life. 2 Samuel 11:1 (NIV) says; 
“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.”

While David was on the palace rooftop, he saw someone’s wife taking a bath, sent for her, slept with her and, even went ahead and killed her husband (2 Samuel 11). When you do not stay in your place, you will end up doing all the wrong things and misplacing your blessings; you end up blaming people for your mistakes and bad decisions; you cover your sins with other sins but God is watching you. When David did all this, the man of God Nathan told him in 2 Samuel 12:9-13 (NLT) that;

“Why, then, have you despised the word of the Lord and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife. 10 From this time on, your family will live by the sword because you have despised me by taking Uriah’s wife to be your own. 11 “This is what the Lord says: Because of what you have done, I will cause your own household to rebel against you. I will give your wives to another man before your very eyes, and he will go to bed with them in public view. 12 You did it secretly, but I will make this happen to you openly in the sight of all Israel.”

This is actually how Absalom ended up doing what he did - he was just living in the word of prophesy that had been spoken forth; so instead of David celebrating his enemy’s death, he was crying for his son which made those who had fought and protected him very disappointed. Take note that when you don’t stand in your place, the devil is going to outwit you so as to keep you from realizing all that God has planned and purposed for you.

Take Your Place

Joab told David to go out and talk to the people because they had saved his life. Do you have such a friend in your life? You need such friends who know your right place and will endeavor to make sure that you do not lose it or take a detour. You need a 'Joab' in your life to edify you otherwise the devil will take advantage of you because that is his desire – "for he came to kill, steal and destroy" (John 10:10) and that is not about to change. So David went to talk to the men at the gate. The scripture says in 2 Sam 19:8 (MSG); 
“So the king came out and took his place at the city gate. Soon everyone knew: “Oh, look! The king has come out to receive us.” And his whole army came and presented itself to the king.”

There is a place where David had to sit so that people could see him and know that the king was with them. There is a place where you have to sit steadily for God to meet you, because our God is a God of right places. If David had not gone out to take his place at the city gate, what would have followed would not have been suitable for him and his kingdom

There is a place where you are supposed to be and if you do not keep it and walk away from it, the Lord will ask where you are. For us to see the blessings that God has promised, we must be in our place. There are some people who say they know where they are supposed to be but the church has not given them a landing, so they go to another place in search of their so called rightful place, but it does not work that way. One thing we should know is that the anointing flows in a sanctuary (2 Chronicles 7:16) and on a person with a covenant. The anointing for the things that are supposed to happen in your life is on the servant of God and for that anointing to work in your life, you need to be in the right place; that is where the Lord will meet you to lift you and deal with your concerns.

Stand in your place and you will see the salvation of the Lord