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Dominion by Direction
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We begin this morning with Psalm 23, a foundational scripture for understanding divine guidance. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake.
Last week, we clarified an essential truth: when the Lord is your shepherd—when He is your guide—you will not want for success, progress, or fulfillment. All the blessings in Psalm 23 are predicated on the Lord being your shepherd and guiding you.
Life is like a wildlife park. Just as those featured on Animal Planet or National Geographic show animals in Kenya, Botswana, or South Africa, we too navigate a landscape full of hidden dangers. When you enter such a park, you don't know where the lions, zebras, or wild animals are located. But the wildlife guide knows—and knows how to handle them.
You don't simply walk into the park on your own, thinking, "I want to see the lions." No. The guide is there to protect you and preserve you. Similarly, the Holy Spirit serves as our guide through life's dangers. He helps us navigate life itself, which contains evil, wrong people, and wrong steps alongside right steps and right paths.
Why is this critical? Many of the sorrows we experience are rooted in misguided steps. That is the agitation driving this month's teaching on dominion by direction.
Proverbs 14:12 states: There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Think about this carefully. Nobody sees death or sorrow and then deliberately runs toward it. The problem is that the path appears right, yet it leads to destruction.
You don't marry someone simply because she seems right. You don't leave your country because it just seems right. You don't make a career or business decision solely because it appears advantageous. Something that seems right can lead to complete ruin.
The New Life Version puts it starkly: There is a way that people think is right, but it leads only to death. This should awaken us to be more sensitive about every step we take. We cannot judge things only by how they appear physically—appearance is deeply deceptive.
Many people live by appearances alone. "The building looks nice, so that must be my next flat. The man looks handsome, so he must be my husband." We make critical decisions based solely on what we see.
But the things that are seen are temporal. Something beautiful on Monday may be problematic by Friday or next month. If Lot had known that Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed in a few weeks, he would never have gone there—yet it looked nice, beautiful, glittering.
In contrast, the things that are unseen are eternal. This is why Isaiah 11:1-3 is so vital:
There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears.
Notice: He will not judge by appearance. The New Life Translation says, He will not judge people by the way things look. He will not judge by listening to rumors or following social media to make investment decisions or life decisions.
You cannot make critical decisions based merely on what seems good in the moment. You must ask: What will this look like next week? Next year? In fifty or sixty years? That is what matters.
Acts 16:16-19 illustrates this powerfully:
And it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, "These men are the servants of the most high God who proclaim to us the way of salvation."
Think about this. A demon is saying something that is literally true. Paul and his companions were servants of God proclaiming salvation. Yet something troubled Paul deeply.
And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And he came out that very hour.
Paul's annoyance was a function of spiritual discernment—a gift of the Spirit. He could recognize that while the words were true, they came from a wrong spirit, not the Holy Spirit.
If you lack discernment, you might elevate that girl as your closest daughter or son. A pastor without spiritual awareness might say, "This is my loyal spiritual daughter. She respects the anointing. She should join the ministry team." But what is behind the words matters more than the words themselves.
Apply this to your own life. A man trying to deceive a woman will flatter her. A business partner will speak words that sound appealing. But you must be spiritual. You cannot judge only by what appears or what you hear. Something can be greeted sweetly while harboring deception underneath.
Why did the demon speak truth? Because if Paul had not recognized the deception, the demon's strategy would have worked. The demon would have remained, the girl would have continued her profitable enterprise, and the city would have been infested with more demonic activity. One slave girl becomes five; five becomes many; and divination becomes the lifeblood of the community.
People are not always what they seem. Someone calling you every day doesn't mean he is your husband-to-be. Someone hailing you doesn't mean they're your best friend. You must go deeper. You must test the spirit.
Proverbs 3:5-6 gives us the process:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.
Don't be smarter than God. It's good to be smart and to continue developing through education and experience. But when it comes to critical decisions and the future, trust the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding or say, "I know what to do."
Talk to God, who owns the future. Then, in all your ways, acknowledge Him—get Him involved. When you do, He will order your steps.
The key practice is this: Learn to pray in advance about the future so that you can sort it out in the realm of the spirit. When you arrive at that moment physically, it will be hard for the enemy to hijack it because it has already been soaked, tied up, and bathed in God.
I learned this practice during my university days. When June approaches, I begin in mid-May to pray extensively about the coming thirty days. Lord, I'm looking at this month ahead. I need Your help. I want each day to fit into Your agenda for my life. I pray daily, and eventually, I receive what I call a note of victory—a spiritual assurance that the month has been settled.
What happens next seems like coincidence but is actually a spirit incident or God incident:
It looks coincidental, but it isn't. You had prayed it. Everything begins to click because it was settled in advance. One advantage of praying in advance is that you pray without fear or anxiety. When you are too close to a situation, anxiety enters. But distance allows purity.
For example, if you have an eight-year-old son, his marital future may not concern you now. Your worry is school fees and which school he should attend. When you pray about his future marriage now, you are praying anxiety-free, without options or preferences, from a place of pure conscience. This is the best time to start.
Contrast this with praying when he is twenty-seven and unmarried. Then anxiety and fear set in. When will you marry? When will you give me grandchildren? Such prayers are clouded with emotion and desperation, not pure faith.
We are holding a prayer and fasting day on June 16th to pray for the second half of the year—July through December. Don't wait until August to panic. Sort out September while you are still in June. It is far better to arrive at a month having already resolved it in the spirit than to arrive confused and overwhelmed.
Sometimes I pray about 2030—a year that seems distant but will arrive. I want to arrive before I arrive. I want decisions about that time to be made in the spirit realm so that my voice sounds loudly when the physical decisions are being made.
This applies to everyone:
Isaiah 66:7-8 captures this:
Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child. Who has heard such a thing? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth.
When I pray in advance about the future, I am travailing. I am laboring. I am giving birth to July, to September, to future seasons. But I must labor in the spirit through prayer.
This is why people experience different things entering the same month. One person says, "This is the worst month of my life." Another says, "This is the best month of my life." The difference? One was super prepared in the spirit; the other was careless and unaware.
Things must be resolved in the spirit for them to be okay in the physical, because the physical is temporal. We use the spirit to structure the physical.
This is fundamental. You don't wait until the physical problem manifests. You sort it out spiritually first.
To take this deeper, there is an uncommon advantage in praying in the Holy Spirit about the future. When you pray in understanding, there is impact: Father, I pray for the month of July. Help me. Guide my steps. Keep me from evil. That's fine. You pray scriptures. But there is a deeper realm.
Romans 8:26-28 reveals this:
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. But He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Consider this: In twelve months, much happens. New brands, new products, new names emerge. Someone wins the Champions League. In one year, countless events unfold. Nobody on earth, except by revelation of the Spirit, can know what will happen in the next twelve months. This is why we must be broken enough to pray to God about it.
When you pray for September now, what specifically should you tell God? Do you know what will happen on the highway? Do you know which teachers will teach your children in their new school session? Do you know what new classmates they will meet?
You don't know. But when you pray in the Spirit, you structure it differently: Whatever or whoever will tamper with my child's destiny, I pray that person out of my child's way. You pray with details in the spirit that your natural mind cannot articulate.
One of the African presidents called an elder statesman of faith in an emergency. He needed him to come immediately and pray about something urgent in the nation. The president was so serious that he sent his own jet to pick him up. But as the elder prayed, the Holy Spirit said, "Do not go."
The president felt insulted or disappointed. But the elder obeyed. On the day he was supposed to arrive, a coup took place. He said, "If I had arrived the day before or on that day, they might have shot me or entangled me in the mess."
How could he have known a coup was coming? He couldn't pray about it in understanding. But praying in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit protected him by revealing what the natural mind could never know.
Here is the profound truth: You have a fire—a destiny fire. God has ordained a program for your life.
He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is. He knows what God has ordained for your next phase, what you should be doing in the next five or ten years. When you pray in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit goes to that file and causes you to pray that chapter into manifestation.
Suppose the next chapter of your life is to move to Uganda and do ministry. It's in God's file. You don't know it yet, but God does. When you pray in the Spirit about the future, the Holy Spirit searches that file, sees Uganda as your next phase, and gives you utterance to pray about it. You might not even consciously know you're praying about Uganda. You simply pray. The people you should meet, the doors that should open—these get sorted in the spirit.
When that time comes, everything clicks because the chapter has been settled. The same applies to praying for your children and their futures.
If you pray like this, you cannot mismarry. If a person is not in your file, you pray them out of your pathway. Even if they come into your path, the prayer you offered will make it impossible for things to gel. Do you understand?
This is why all things work together for good—when you have prayed in advance and aligned yourself with God's agenda.
It is important to pray in advance concerning your life. If you are fifty now, pray about the next ten years. Don't wait until you're fifty-five to pray about fifty-five. If you are sixty, pray about the next ten years. Some pray twenty years ahead. Stay on it. Keep praying about it.
Praying in the Spirit is your optimal advantage. It is wise to sort out the future before you arrive there. Some of the difficulties you face now may be things that were not properly sorted out before you entered them. Now it feels like a state of emergency, and you must agitate and pray urgently to sort it out—which God's mercy enables. But it is wiser to sort it out before it comes.
When you do this, you live from peace to peace, from victory to victory, from testimony to testimony—because everything has been resolved and sorted out in the spirit first.
