Faith Builders Devotional - Victory Word Center- Tokyo, Japan

Daily Devotional

May 3 - May 9 2026

May3

An Amazing Machine With Purpose

Psalms 139:14

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. ESV

I don’t know about you, but when I look at my human body I see an amazing machine. It is not because we are some superhero or something. It is because the way that God created this outer shell (my body) that houses me (my spirit and soul) is simply amazing. It is a perfectly designed machine. Think about it.

You eat food each day. That food (or fuel) is converted into energy and used to nourish and power your body. The bad items and excess is passed through (you know, those trips to the toilet). If I stop eating, I cease to exist. I must nourish and build my body if I expect to live long on the earth. If I abuse my body or don’t take good care of it, it will serve me a short time. If I strengthen and protect it, life will be long.

When I walk along the road, I breathe in oxygen through my nose. My nose has a natural filter (that stuff you see in your tissue paper from time to time) that protects my internal system from taking in excess dirt and filth into the body. If I take in two much junk, the system reacts and I sneeze to expel the junk. This oxygen fills up my lungs and goes into my blood. My blood is the lubrication of life. With good blood, I can run, jump, and flow in an expedient way. It powers my muscles, nerves, and thinking. If my blood is poisoned or lost, I could die. Water is a natural lubricant that runs throughout my body. Healthy people drink lots of water. Water cools the body and works in the blood to deliver the necessary nutrients around the system.

My eyes are covered with a natural cleaning brush called an eyelash. My eyes blink 720 times an hour perfectly lubricating them in their sockets. The eyelashes protect the eye from incoming debris and dust that is floating in the air.

There is so much more that I could say about the human shell. This body is so perfectly designed, to even think that we have no master designer is ludicrous. Thousands of years ago the psalmist said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. If I think about most electronics, heavy equipment, and automobiles, these are designed by man much along the same lines as the human body.

Like a body, a car without fuel will take you nowhere. You must fuel the car and maintain the car. It takes in air that passes through air filters before it comes into the engine. The engine take the fuel and processes it like the body processes food, converting it into energy nutrients. The excess is passed through the exhaust system. Like the blood in the human body, the vehicle requires oil to lubricate the parts of the engine, and water to cool it. Even the wind-shield has wipers to keep the shield clean much like the eyes have eyelashes. There are some great cars out there, however they are nothing compared to this body that houses our soul and spirit.

You are no accident, no mistake. You weren’t born just to live for a time and just die. Your body was designed for you to be born into this earth. God has an awesome plan for your life. The amazing thing is that he has a different plan for every single one of us. Hallelujah!

May4

Everyone Knows

Acts 17:23
23	for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you.. NKJV The great missionary, preacher, writer, and teacher Paul was traveling from Israel to other countries. When he got to Greece he noticed that they had a lot of gods that they prayed to for this or that. There was a god for love and prosperity, there was a god of war, there was even a god of wine. As he was living in Athens, he noticed that they had these various “gods” or idols dedicated to those so-called gods displayed around the city. For a believer to go to India, Japan, Indonesia, and these various other countries and see these statutes, temples, and shrines here and there it is sad. We see how lost people are to be praying or bowing down to these images of men, animals, nature, demons, and the various mythic creatures. You hate to see people so far lost that they think praying to these images (or the demons behind many of them) will really matter, as if the idols really care for them. Paul saw a glimmer of hope as he was walking around in Athens, Greece. He saw an open space dedicated to “The Unknown God” and saw that they people did realize that there was more to life than just these idols. You see, every human being has it created in him or her to know that there is an Almighty God who created us. Romans talks about that in Romans 1:20 saying of God,
20	For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Verse 21 goes on to explain how everyone knows but they deny or withhold the truth. You can say you are an atheist (someone who says they know ‘without a doubt’ that there is no god) , or an agnostic (someone who says I don’t know if there is a god or not but I don’t care) but inside you, you know that there is an Almighty God. Everybody knows. It is the way that we are created. Those who deny Him will be eternally separated from Him in a very horrible dark place. Those that acknowledge Him will be with Him forever and ever. We will be in heaven, a place that is much like this earth with trees, streets, buildings, mountains, and rivers. There are people and houses. There will be no sun, but heaven will be lit up by the presence of our Awesome God. We have to tell unbelievers about Jesus. It is a matter of life or death (eternal separation from God) for them. If you know someone who says they are agnostic, or even atheist, please pray for them. Pray for the Holy Spirit to draw them. You may even have to bind and rebuke demons or demonic influence on these people that are trying to blind them.

May5

Making Things Happen In Your Life

Isa 55:6

Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near. NKJV

If you want to make things happen in your life there is one response I have for you. Seek. That’s right, seek Yahweh with everything thing you’ve got. Arm yourself with the Word of God. Have a Bible on you at all times. Instead of looking out the window and daydreaming on that bus or train, pull out that little New Testament you have in your pocket and start to meditate on the Word. If you are driving, get a good audio Bible and listen to that. Of course, you can read the newspaper during that time as you are transported from one place to another. But the news won’t feed your spirit.

That’s right, when you study the Word of God, it feeds your spirit. Can you imagine this? You wake up late one morning, you rush to work without breakfast. Just as you are about to go to lunch, your boss calls an “important” meeting at 11:30. The meeting goes long and you have to go back to work. You grab some type of snack as you are working, but it just isn’t as good as having a meal. Finally, you get home and by about that time you are famished. You are shaking because you’ve not properly nourished your body.

Many of us believers are spiritually starving. If you want to be satisfied spiritually you must spend time in the Word. No time on the internet, watching that favorite TV program or anything else can replace that precious time in the Word. We are not in the Word so when the time comes for needing some godly wisdom at the workplace, we find ourselves disconnected from the Holy Spirit. When it comes time to speak to that unbeliever that we have been praying for salvation for months, we do not feel the full power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When someone comes to us for prayer, we have not spent time in His presence so we don’t feel His power as usual when we lay our hands on the sick.

If you want to walk in His prosperity, you’ve got to seek Him. If you want to pray for others with power, you’ve got to seek Him. If you want wisdom for your daily life, you’ve got to seek Him. If you want to feel His love, you’ve got to seek Him. If you want peace in a tense situation, you’ve got to seek Him. It is all about seeking Him. Have you thought about this? Jesus would rise up early in the morning (when everyone else was asleep) and go to a quiet place to spend time with His Father. He is the Messiah, He is the son of the most High God but yet He had to go off and seek the Father when He walked on the earth as a human like us. He had to spend time in the Father’s presence.

If the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords had to do it , then how can we think we are any better? Isaiah 55:6 says we should seek the Lord while He may be found. Won’t you seek Him today? But don’t let it stop there. Seek Him the next day, the next day, and the next day. Don’t let the inspiration and the power stop.

If you want to make things happen in your life, you’ve got to seek Him. As you seek Him, you will be amazed at the breakthroughs He’s got for you.

May6

God’s Eyes, Changing The World

Psalms 33:18
18	Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy, NKJV Somebody is watching you. That is, if you are fearing Him. We know from the Word, that to fear God is to hate evil, to hate doing wrong. If you love God, He is watching over you. To me this scripture is a promise that He’s got His eyes on me if I am fearing Him. If I am not fearing, ignoring him and not caring, about Him and His Kingdom, then He is not watching over me. Fear God and He will watch over you, ignore Him and you’re on your own. That is pretty easy logic to understand. Being a believer is all about seeking Him. In 1947, we lost one of the most amazing men of God. His name was Smith Wigglesworth, from Bradford, England. He was illiterate and had to work from when he was child in the factories of the UK. He was lost without hope. But one day, he met believers on the street. They invited him to church and he went. It wasn’t a cultural church where there was no power, no victory, no joy inexpressible, it was a spirit-filled church. There were people talking about what Jesus did for them, healings, miracles, and people excited about what God had done. Smith saw what was going on, believed, and was forever changed by repenting and turning to Jesus. God’s eyes were on Smith. He had gone into plumbing because he had learned to deal with piping in the factories. When he turned to God, he began to learn to read. He got excited about God, and God started working in His life. He wouldn’t even bother reading the newspaper saying something like, “God’s Word never changes, the news is so unreliable it changes every day”. As God worked in His life, he would talk about it. He would tell people about Jesus, and people would turn to God. He would tell people about how others had turned to God, and even more would turn to God. He prayed for the sick, and they were healed. More people would see the love of God through the faith of Smith Wigglesworth and turn to God. From historians, we hear that about 20 people were raised from the dead through his life and ministry. People saw his life and came to the King through that testimony. Isn’t that amazing? Smith Wigglesworth knew how to walk with God. To me, he is the best example of how close we as believers can walk to Jesus. In John 14:12, Jesus said,
12	"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. “ Jesus did amazing works, but Smith Wigglesworth did as well. Was it because He was better or more powerful than our Messiah? Absolutely not! It was because he was reliant on Jesus, immersing himself in the Word, spending time in God’s presence all the time, and most importantly, acting in faith and compassion just as our Lord did for the people around Him. Yahweh’s eyes are on those who fear Him. He wants to work through you and I through faith in Him and the power of the Name of Jesus. Do you want to start changing your world? Start by living by faith. His eyes will be on you as you believe! We ARE world changers!

May7

How The Holy Spirit Works

John 16:8-11
8	And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. NKJV If you are a believer, and you feel helpless to the world then you probably need to need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Many churches, or shall we say many believers think that just because they repented and turned to Jesus that they automatically were filled with the Holy Spirit. This is absolutely wrong. Just because you turned to Jesus doesn’t mean that you get everything all at once. We know that we are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), but this is talking about our spirit being reborn then and there. We know we still have to renew our minds through the Word of God from Romans 12:2. This is why we see believers dealing with emotional issues (remember that is in our soul area that includes our mind, will, and emotions) even after turning to God through Jesus’s work on the cross. Jesus said that He was going to leave the earth in His human body and that when He left, the Holy Spirit would come. In John 14:6 we see that the Holy Spirit is our Helper. No, He is not our maid, He is God. The Greek there is parakleetos, which literally means to be summoned or called to one’s side. We need the Holy Spirit more than anything as believers. He is there at our side if we recognize our need and call. It is possible to be a believer but not filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul found some people who believed but were not filled in Ephesus in Acts 19:2
2	He said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" So they said to him, "We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit." We believers are not to be walking in defeat, we are to be walking in power. Just because you repented and turned to Jesus does not mean that you are filled with His Spirit. Being filled with His Spirit is having God Almighty, through the power of His Spirit, right there to help you and I, even though we are imperfect humans. The Holy Spirit helps us to be perfect, to perfect ourselves. We know God is, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is three yet one. Much like water can be liquid, ice, or even gas when heated up but yet the same thing. What does the Holy Spirit do? What is His job? From John 16:8, we know He does at least three things. He 1) Convicts the world of sin 2) Convicts the world of righteousness 3) Reveals coming judgment This is why when you are praying for the unsaved, you should pray that the Holy Spirit convict them. I have prayed for God to ‘save’ people, and will never forget when the Holy Spirit stopped me from praying such an unscriptural prayer. I now pray that wherever these lost people go, the Holy Spirit will put believers across their paths in life just as the Ethiopian man met Philip and was totally saved. Finally, the enemy is judged and has limited time. Both the devil and his demon friends have only a little bit of time left to deceive people on the earth. I refuse to allow those whom I meet and know me, not hear about my King and deliverer. I tell everyone and am not ashamed. The decision is their responsibility. If you are a believer and do not sense the Holy Spirit working in your life or have His direction you probably need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Go to a church that has people filled with His presence, His joy, His miracles, and His power and ask them to lay hands on you and pray for the infilling of the Holy Spirit. How can you tell if you were infilled? For me, I received the gift of tongues, where I pray in a language that I didn’t learn but sense His power and presence all over me when I speak those words that come to my mind. It is so powerful. Get that prayer today, or even Sunday after church. You will never be the same.

May8

The Spirit Of Wisdom & Understanding

Isaiah 11:2

And 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 the fear of the LORD. ESV

Isaiah was a man who lived about 3000 years ago, whom Yahweh spoke to about a lot. God wants to speak to His people! Yahweh gave Isaiah great insights about the coming Messiah. We call Him a prophet because he got a word from God, spoke it, recorded it, and was proven true in his prophecies (what he said).

Through Isaiah, we got more details about our coming Lord Jesus who was born about 2000 years ago from now. We knew Jesus would be born from woman who never had sexual relations with a man (a miracle birth), we knew where He would be born, and that He would be guilty of doing no wrongs but yet be killed on our behalf. We even knew from this man of God that the Messiah’s clothing would be gambled for by the soldiers. When you are a God-lover, a God-chaser, He shares what is going to happen with you. There is nothing stopping you from being a present day Isaiah.

In Isaiah 11 we get a feel for the Messiah, who He would be, and what He would do. It also says the Spirit of the Yahweh (when you see LORD in English, that is Yahweh God Almighty) will be on Him. This spirit will be a spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord (to hate evil). What spirit do you think we are talking about?

We are talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus ministered to people by the power of the Holy Spirit! You know what that means? That means that you too can minister by the power of the Holy Spirit. King Jesus was the first human to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Of course, the Holy Spirit moved on people in the Old Testament and we know that from David, Samson, Daniel, Joseph and others. However, Jesus said that He had to leave so that the Holy Spirit could come in fully to help us.

I am so glad He did! Life without the Holy Spirit is life without fire. Think about that. Without fire you can’t heat your home, cook your food, make tools, purify knives, power engines, make some electricity, and power cars. You can exist without fire, but you are missing the beauty of life. We really need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

What does the Holy Spirit do? Check it out! When we are filled with the Holy Spirit we get wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord! Anyone need any wisdom or understanding? I certainly need His wisdom every day.

Develop your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to fill you and develop you. Ask Him to give you all those things in Isaiah 11:2. It is promised to you.

May9

Baptized in Fire and the Holy Spirit

Matt 3:11

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. NKJV

I recently attended a worship concert in Tokyo. It was good as the lead singer is famous for several really good worship songs. I took my children as well, and we all had a good time together there. You could tell that the people there loved Jesus. They told people about how we all need Jesus. It was very good.

On the train on the way home from the concert, we talked about what the preacher said, the musicians, and the overall experience. Although everything was good, the common theme was that there was not that anointing on the musicians and preacher that we have seen at other events. Why is that? We agreed it was the anointing and the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Many people can play instruments. There are some talented people out there, that is for certain. In Japan, you see hundreds of young guys on the train carrying around guitars, cymbals, drumsticks, amplifiers, and other music related things. There is some amazing talent. But when you combine the power of the Holy Spirit with music or a message, there is awesome power there at that gathering.

The musicians and speaker at the concert did their best. But with the anointing and the fire of the Holy Spirit, it could have been even greater. When John the Baptist spoke, he told us that Jesus was coming and that He would baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

When you are full of the Holy Spirit, you should burn with His presence. When you worship, you are glowing with His presence. When you tell people they need to repent and turn to Jesus, your eyes should be sparkling with the joy of the Holy Spirit. People should see that fire dancing as they look into your face.

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? Are you filled with fire? Get out your concordance and look up Holy Spirit in just the book of Acts in your Bible. You will see that there are believers with the Holy Spirit and there are believers without the Holy Spirit. You will find that a sign of being filled with the Spirit of God is a prayer language. Some call it speaking in tongues. Ask Yahweh for the gift of tongues. If He gave it to the people in Acts, He will certainly give it to you.

Don’t you prefer to be with the Holy Spirit? Don’t you want to walk with His power? If you are playing worship music that is one thing; but if you are praising and worshiping Him with the Holy Spirit, power, and His fire people cannot deny His presence in you and in your meeting.

When you wake up each morning say, “Good morning Holy Spirit!” Praise the Almighty God for everything, and with everything you’ve got.

Today