Walking on The King’s Highway, Constantly Going Higher

Ref. Pastor W. F. Kumuyi

TEXT: ISAIAH 35:8

there are many ways and paths in life and many of them lead to despair and the dungeon. there is one highway, the highway of the king, anyone who treads on it goes up. all you need to do today is be sure to discover the king’s highway, decided to walk on it, an determine to remain on the highway. a little step which we call baby steps, one step at a time and you focus on the destination you want to get to. after some months and years, you will get there in Jesus’ name.

Isaiah 35:8 “a highway shall be there…”, unmistakable, a highway shall be there made by the God of heaven, made for everyone who wants to go up. It shall be called a way of holiness, no unclean thing shall enter therein. Even though you are ignorant and unwise, once you step on and keep walking on the highway, you will begin to make progress.

So, it takes determination and dedication for you to take the right steps forward every day. to go up higher, if you are told to stand, you cannot continue to sit down, otherwise, you don’t understand that standing is an action word. When you are told to come and you remain where you are, and there is no desire, decision, or response from you, you don’t understand the word.

No matter how high up the higher ground is, and you look up, the instruction is not to jump up higher because the architect who designed the building has built a staircase and with it, you can go one step after the other till you get higher. The great Architect of heaven, the Creator, Builder, the Provider of everything knew He would call us, so He built steps for us to go up. One step after the other, you will get up there.

Everyone starts at the ground level. Nobody is born a Doctor, Engineer, achiever, conqueror, or militant soldier, we all start from the ground floor. God has built steps so that you don’t remain on the ground floor.

All these lead to determination. The wind will blow and there will be a distraction here and there, but you will determine to move away from despair and discouragement. You will determine that the higher ground you have envisaged, you will get there.

Apart from all of these, you must be diligent in everything you do so that every day and every action will add to your destiny which is higher. You also have devotion in all you do to get here. Then you make a petition and demand God to help you, and the help, assistance and promise of God that cannot fail gives a decree to confirm your demand.

Going higher is a journey; you must never forget where you are going. You will never forget the determination and the destination: higher, higher, higher. You will reach there in Jesus’ name.

Point 1: Dissatisfaction with The Hedged Way of Limitation

Deuteronomy 1:6-7; 2:3; Proverbs 15:19

There are lives that are hedged in and around, as a result, they are limited. Just like when you tie a goat to a rope, one end of the rope is around the goat’s neck while the other end is tied to the pole. The goat can move around but can never go beyond the length of the rope. The circumference and radius are determined already. A time comes when you are dissatisfied with the merry-go-round, hedged path you are in, and you want to break free and move forward.

In many lives, when their brackets open, there is a hedge, limitation, and merry-go-round, as they were last year, so they are this year. As they are this year, they might be next year. They do the same thing, plan and walk the same way for all years of their lives. All they have is a limitation upon limitations. You have to be dissatisfied and you cannot decide to continue that way.

Deuteronomy 1:6. You have stayed on this point, hovering around this place for so long. You have been limited for this long so long. What have you been doing remaining in the same location of failure and disappointment? You have to turn now and make your journey to the mount. The failure, disappointment, and merry-go-round of the past is enough, movement without progress, work without achievement, work without purpose, enough! Have you thought about your life, character, behaviour, habits, spirituality, and achievements in all you’ve been doing? Are you not trying to have action and no progress? It is like when the way is hedged, and what you did years ago is what you are still doing now, all because of hedges that we are not removing and we are just there and limited.

Let me close the bracket with “Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward”. Why did the children of Israel move around in the wilderness for 40 years and didn’t get to the promised land? Working and expending energy, working, rising, exercising with no proof of anything better coming up in their lives. Let me tell you some things about them so you can learn the lessons:

1. Deliverance Without Devotion

The Lord delivered them from Egypt but there was no devotion from them to their Deliverer. Same with us, we go to prayer, and for deliverance, but there is no dedication to the goal. We get healed when we are prayed for but there is no goal or dedication to any particular purpose for God.

2. Manna Without Manners

They got Manna from heaven every day but they didn’t have good manners, character, behaviours in the sight of God. Manna is provision from God but no manner, changed life and behaviours in them. The Manna they ate did not help them to go higher to the Promise Land.

3. Triumph Without Tamed Tongues

They triumphed over their enemies in the wilderness, over Pharaoh at the Red Sea but they didn’t have victory over their tongues. When people have triumphed over their challenges and they don’t have tames tongues, their tongues will keep bringing them down.

4. Healing Without Holiness

God brought them out of the Promise Land and there was no feeble person among them. He made a healing Covenant with them but they didn’t have holiness joined to the healing. That was why many of them did not get to the Promise Land.

5. Song of Praise Without the State of Purity

The children of Israel were excited people, but happiness alone cannot take them to the Promise Land. Many people have happy and excited life, but it is necessary to add to it a state of purity.

6. Water from The Rock Without Willingness for Righteousness

And the miracle water they drank was not enough to make them go higher, they were still doing merry-go-round. In our lives, we must look at the water of life that God gives, and then have the willingness for righteousness that He wants us to have.

7. Demand for Milk and Honey Without Desire for Movement Towards Heaven

What success or privilege do we have on earth if we have all earthly supplies and we don’t have the desire and willingness to get to heaven?

Below are what God wants to do so that the hedges around our lives which have been there all this time can be removed and we now have the desire and determination to get to higher ground.

1.We must have the decision to follow Christ,

2 There must be devotion to following the way of the Lord.

3 We must have good character and behaviour of true believers.

4 That the grace of God transforms our tongues, many people talk when they should be quiet, they talk, talk, and talk, not looking at the weight and value of what they say. When the grace of God comes, our tongues and lives are transformed.

5 And we pray with the transformed tongues, the Lord puts righteousness and holiness in our lives, He gives us blessings for our bodies, brains, and our hearts lives and we are holy by His grace, then we are truly going higher.

6 He will put the willingness to be righteous in us everywhere we are, we know we are there to represent Christ well, then we move up higher.

Those who are slothful, idle, with no plan or purpose and any perseverance of moving up higher, they are hedged around with a hedge of thorns and cannot rise or move up higher. But when you tell the Lord that you want a higher ground and what the Lord has ordained for you, you will get higher.

Point 2: Dedication on The Highway of Life’s Liberation

When the Lord comes to liberate and set you free and all the limitations that hold you down, you are liberated and free indeed. You are ready to go, run and come up higher.

In Liberation, the Lord takes you out of the life of dissatisfaction and despondency and blesses your life with salvation and sets you free with new life in Christ, that is when your journey to the higher place begins. The Lord has given us the promise for higher ground, He said come unto me all you who labour and are heavy-laden. You make up your mind, get up and go in the direction of God who is your Liberator.

Anytime anyone come to the Lord, He will ask what he wants Him to do for them. He has the power to take and put you on the highway of holiness. You can’t do it on your own, how can you liberate yourself from all yokes and bondage? He is the One who can set you free from all things that will not allow you to have progress.

He can take you from the poor situation you are to put you on the throne to reign with the Lord. All the things we can do and achieve by our ourselves are not enough to take us to higher ground. Whosoever comes to the Lord He will not cast off. Come to Him and depend on Him and He will lift you higher. He is the only Liberator.

What steps are you to take since getting to higher ground is step by step?

1. Leave all your sins and self-centeredness behind.

Talking about sin, some people say they hate left all, but how about idleness? He who knows how to do good but fails to do it is sin. How about bringing all your gifts to be useful for God? How about reading your books and prepare for your exams? You need to turn around so that the hedges will fall off and move on with determination and devotion and everything will fall into place. All other sin, and misbehaviours you put aside because he who is lawless will not come to leadership position. You need to have all that Christ provided in our liberation.

2. Lean on The Saviour of Sinners

You can lean, trust, depend and have confidence in Him. You can have your petition sent to Him as well.

3. Learn from The Scriptures for Success

When you learn from the Scriptures, it will reveal to you that the path to success is not by stealing, or spying on others and taking their work to be yours. To get to higher ground, cheating must be out of your life, you must not steal the research work of others, make some alterations and make them yours. That is not how to succeed.

4. Live Loyally in The Faith Steps of Christ

Who is the model and pathway to success? Who is the perfect example for success? Christ our Lord and Saviour. The Pacemaker who goes ahead and we follow. You will always ask, what will Christ do? This is how to succeed in the realm of the Kingdom. You cannot follow the way of the world because it cannot take you to heaven. You might have earthly gains but you will not have heavenly riches and value.

5. Love Lawfully in The Sunshine of His Sermon

He has given us the sermon on the mount and the way up, the way to discover what we have if we follow the Lord. When we give our hearts and lives to Him, and His goodness penetrates our lives and we live according to His Word, then He leads us to higher ground.

6. Lose Yourself from The Shackles of Satan

If some gangs and secret societies have won you to their side and they encourage you that that is the in-thing, you say No to them all, walk in the steps of the Saviour and lose yourself from the shackles of the devil. Christ lifts and liberates us and we move on and go higher.

7. Labour in The Strength of The Lord

This is what takes us from where we are to where we ought to be.

Part 3: Diligence in The Heavenly Way for The Lord.

Proverbs 22:28-29; 2 Corinthians 8:22; Hebrews 6:11-12; 2 Peter 1:5-11,13-14; 2 Peter 3:13-14

In many parts of the Bible, we were told to put diligence to what we are pursuing, that is, our mind will not turn from here to there. A man of one goal, purpose, desire, dedication, and power and you are on and on, going higher. The Lord will help you.

Solomon is asking a question; he was a diligent man from his youth and had the willingness to follow the way of the Lord. He was not the only one who was diligent till he got what he wanted. Jesus said, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men”.

Have you seen a student, boy or girl, a researcher diligent in his or her way? A focused and diligent man or woman, he will stand before kings, he will work in the office of the President. Being diligent in everything we do, knowing that the way you do one thing in life is the way you do other things in your life. Learn to be diligent in one area, and that will affect other areas. Diligence in prayer and supplication, studies and profession, then you have the place you ought to have in life.

The way to get to the top is the way of God, salvation, peace, righteousness, truth and truthfulness. You may lie your way to the top, you may defeat the people all the time to have dust and cement of this world, you may have this and that, but you cannot deceive the all-seeing eyes of God Almighty.

You must follow consistently the way of His steps. Christ has left us an example. If Christ were in your situation today, what way will He follow? What steps will He take? What action will he have in every area of life? Always ask yourself what will Christ do? Will He struggle for space? Ask what Christ will do, and how He will act and react in following the way to the top.

He has the power to save and grant us holiness and peace. Follow peace with good and bad men, without which no man shall see the Lord.

Have a desire in every area of your life. Don’t be a cake burnt on one side and raw on the other. In every part of your life, physical and secular, professional and purified, personal, in the family, congregation, in the office, school, college, have a desire for a high level of living. In the area of your private and spiritual endeavour, have the desire to live as you ought to.

As a married and professional person, the way you live, stand, and the things you do and say, you must ensure that every step and deed is by the grace of God which helps you to please Him at all times. He is able. Desire, decision, determination, dedication, diligence and God will take you to where He has ordained for your life in Jesus’ Name. Amen!