confidence

Years ago the devil started a rumor. He told a few Christians that as long as they lived in the world, they had to suffer as the world did. He told them they had to share the diseases and the defeat, the poverty and the failure of those around them.

It was a crafty lie—and it worked. Believers accepted it and began to spread it among themselves. You may have even heard it yourself. If so, I want to help you put that rumor to rest today. I want to help you get the facts straight once and for all.

I talk a lot about faith. But there’s another force that goes along with it that’s just as important. It’s patience—the ability to stand fast on the Word of God even when your victory seems slow in coming.

Patience is not automatic. It won’t go to work unless you let it go to work. So many people don’t understand that. They somehow think faith and patience will go to work for them without their help. They just let the devil tear their lives apart and then they say silly things like, “Well, I guess God sent that trial to strengthen my faith.”

Something very serious has been happening to the Body of Christ. We've often let the things which we have heard—the message of faith and righteousness—slip.

I'm not just talking about those believers who've been so surrounded by religion that they've never heard about the power that's theirs in Christ Jesus. I'm talking about those of us who have heard the Word and have known the thrill of living by faith.

Spiritual bumps and bruises. Inner aches and pains that just don't seem to go away. Most all of us know what it's like to suffer from them but too few of us know just what to do about them.

We limp along, hoping somehow those hidden wounds will magically stop hurting, thinking that maybe (with a little extra sleep or an extra helping of dessert) that nagging sense of depression will finally disappear.

But does it ever happen that way? No!

I know. I've been there.

You can never get away with disobeying God.

Some people think they can. They think that if no one finds out about it, it won't hurt anything. After all, God is merciful. He's not going to hold it against them, right? And if no one else knows...what's the difference?

Are all your needs met today? If not, why not?

According to the Word of God, it's either because you're not praying about them at all or because when you do pray, you're praying wrong.

What does it mean to pray wrong? In many cases it simply means to pray without expecting results. Many believers do that, you know. They use prayer as a kind of spiritual wishbone. They just play around with it. This probably won't do much good, they think, but who knows? It won't hurt to give it a try.

How does the devil see you? Does he see you as a terrifying and mighty warrior of God...or does he see you as a wimp he can whip in a minute?

The answer to that question depends on you. I realized that one day as I was studying the children of Israel and their failure to enter the Promised Land. The key to their failure is found in these words: “And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

Most of us don’t have any idea what grace really is. Oh, we know some basic facts about it. We know we were saved by it (Ephesians 2:8). But we don’t even begin to understand the real power it can release in our lives now, today!

If you want to get a picture of what grace can really do, look at what happened to the early Christians in Acts 4. They’d been threatened by the religious leaders of Jerusalem and commanded not to speak or teach anymore in Jesus’ Name. So, they were praying about the situation.

Did you know that the battleground for the problem you’re facing right now is in your mind and on your lips? If you’ll hit the devil with the Word and cast the care of the situation over on God, you’ll win.

Let me warn you though, hanging on to the Word isn’t always easy. The devil knows that if he doesn’t steal it from you, you’ll use it to enforce his defeat.

When I first learned to cast my cares on the Lord, I was down in south Texas preaching a meeting that no one was coming to. I’m telling you, people were staying away from that meeting by the thousands; and after a service or two with just the preacher, one or two others and me in attendance, I was starting to sweat it. But the Lord said, Cast that care on Me, so I did.

I’ve often heard people say, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” That’s nonsense. If you play the game right, you’ll win!

Any coach will tell you that part of playing the game right is having a winning attitude. That’s what God wants us, as believers, to have. He wants us to have so much faith in Him that we expect to whip any obstacle the devil brings our way. He wants us to expect to win at the game of life.

When you run into an impossible situation, a situation you simply don’t have the strength or the ability to handle, are you often tempted to simply give up and accept defeat? Don’t! Instead shout, “Glory!” because the Word says God’s strength is about to be made perfect in you.

The word translated “strength” in this scripture is dunamis. It means “God’s miracle-working power.” Just think about that. When your human strength ends, God has promised that His miraculous power will bring you through!

So many believers wring their hands and worry about whether or not they’re praying according to God’s will. “Oh, dear me,” they say, “I certainly can’t expect God to do something for me that’s outside His will.” And they’re absolutely right.

But they don’t need to waste time standing around looking puzzled. They need to grab their Bibles and find out what the will of God is.

Have you ever been in prayer and suddenly had the disturbing sensation that God simply wasn’t listening?

It’s happened to all of us. But few of us know just what to do about it. We just limp along praying the same old prayers, half-hoping those prayers are heard and half-suspecting they’re not.

Have you ever had a Holy Spirit-inspired dream, a dream of doing something really great for Jesus? A dream of being so prosperous, for instance, that you can finance a nationwide revival? A dream of leading thousands of people to the Lord?

At one time or another, you probably have, but perhaps you backed away from it. You thought, Oh my, I couldn’t do that. Satan’s kept me defeated for so long I have a poor self-image.

New Covenant. It's a familiar phrase to most of us. But do we really know what it means?

No we don't. Because if we did, every one of us would be faith a giant. Instead of struggling, "trying" to believe the promises of God, we'd be like Abraham: "Strong in faith...fully persuaded that, what [God] had promised, he was also able to perform" (Romans 4:20-21).

For God so loved the world that He gave...and He gave...and He gave.

That is the message the Bible brings us from beginning to end. It sounds simple enough. Yet few of us really comprehend it.

We can understand the idea of a God of power. We can understand a God who desires to be served. But an Almighty God who loves us so much that He desires, above all, to give to us? That can be hard to believe.

Being peculiar. That's not something most of us work to achieve, is it? But, you know, we should.

God has called us to be peculiar—to stand out from the rest of the world as living proof of His power and His love (1 Peter 2:9).

He doesn't, for example, want us to share the ailments of the world. He doesn't want us to share their sickness and poverty and failure. He's never wanted that for His people.

You may be facing a giant today. He may be a giant of sickness or failure, of financial shortage or another kind of trouble. But don’t let him scare you. You have a secret weapon. A weapon that once turned a shepherd boy into a bear-busting, lion-killing, giant-slaying champion. That weapon was a blood covenant with Almighty God.

Back in David’s day, circumcision was the sign of that covenant. So, when he called Goliath uncircumcised, David was saying: “This guy may be a giant; he may be strong; but he has no covenant with God and that’s why I will defeat him.”

Have you ever wondered what it will be like when your body dies and you go on to heaven? Well, according to the Word, when that time comes, this flesh and blood tent you live in will die, but you won't feel a thing. You'll just take off the cloak of your flesh, lay it down and go to a better place.