Some people say you need to “give till it hurts.” Don’t you believe it. God doesn’t want gifts given in pain. He wants gifts given in joy! In fact, those are the only kinds of gifts that please Him.
That’s why He tacked His promise of abundance onto His command about cheerful giving. The two are connected.
Do you ever have seasons in your life when it seems like every time you go to church and every time you spend time in prayer and every time you open the Bible, you receive a revelation from God? I do. Spiritually, everything will be going great. I’ll be higher than a Georgia pine. Then, suddenly, something starts to happen. I start drying up in spiritual things.
It seems like it doesn’t make any difference what I pray or how much I read the Word, I can’t get anywhere spiritually. I’m so dry my spirit’s creaking!
There’s a spiritual flood coming. God has promised it. He’s promised us an outpouring of Holy Spirit power that will bring in the greatest harvest of souls any of us have ever seen.
As believers, we’ve been reading about it in the Word and hearing about it from the pulpit for years. We’ve been staring toward heaven so long, waiting for it to come, that we’ve gotten cricks in our spiritual necks. We’ve had this mental image of God pouring down His Spirit from some sort of big heavenly pitcher above us.
But you know what? We’ve been looking in the wrong direction!
If you hang around God very much, it won’t be long before you’ll start wanting to do things the world considers supernatural. You’ll start wanting to lay hands on the sick and have them recover. You’ll start wanting to cast out demons. You’ll start wanting to cast mountainous problems into the sea.
What’s more, you can do it if you want to!
How? Not by jumping out and “trying” to do supernatural things, but by obeying God one step at a time. By doing the things He’s already given you power to do.
As believers, you and I are part of a conquering army, constantly claiming new ground for the kingdom of God. Right?
Well, yes, that’s the way it should be. But just about the time the army tops the hill and is ready to advance, it seems that Satan pulls out his big gun—division—and scatters believers in every direction.
How can we strike back against the strategy of division? By launching an even more powerful attack of our own. By using one of the most powerful resources given us by the Lord Jesus: the prayer of agreement.
There is nothing—absolutely nothing—that is more important than learning to love. In fact, how accurately you perfect the love walk will determine how much of the perfect will of God you accomplish. That’s because every other spiritual force derives its action from love. For example, the Bible teaches us that faith works by love. And answered prayer is almost an impossibility when a believer steps outside of love and refuses to forgive or is in strife with his brother.
Never underestimate the importance of praise. It’s one of the most powerful spiritual weapons you have.
Praise is more than a pleasant song or a few uplifting words about God. It does something. It releases the very presence of God Himself. And, when the presence of God comes on the scene, your enemies are turned back. Sickness and disease can’t stay on your body. Poverty can’t stay in your house.
It’s time we, as believers, began to enter into the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17:21. It’s time we held on to one another in good times as well as bad. It’s time we realized that we need one another.
We do, you know. I need your faith as much as you need mine. Together, we can face anything and win in Jesus.
You and I are living in the most exciting days this earth has ever seen. All around us God is pouring out His Spirit in preparation for the endtime revival that will bring this whole age to a glorious close.
Some of God's children are just standing by as spectators, watching Him work. Others, however, have become a vital part of it all. They've volunteered for service in this great end-time army. They've become what the Bible calls the servants and handmaidens of God.
One area of our lives we believers have particularly neglected is the area of our relationships. We simply haven’t heeded the Word of God where they’re concerned. We’ve fussed with one another and criticized one another so much that we’ve hindered the forces that God has given us to make us successful in this world. That’s right! Strife causes trouble in the spirit realm.
It opens the door to the devil. It keeps our prayers from being answered. It even keeps our angels from moving on our behalf!
Too often we ask God to fix the problems around us when what He really wants to do is solve the problem within us. I did that myself for years where my weight was concerned. I prayed and prayed for God to help me lose weight. Yet I experienced repeated failure. I lost literally hundreds of pounds, only to gain them right back again.
Finally one day, I made a firm decision. I told God, "I am not going one step further until I find out what to do about this!" Then I went on a fast, shut myself away from everyone, and determined to hear from God.
As a believer, you have the power of the Holy Spirit inside you. But that power won't go to work until you put it to work!
The Holy Spirit won't just muscle in on you. He won't come in and turn down the television set and jerk you up off the couch and say, "Now you listen to Me."
No, He's a gentleman. He's sent to help you to do the will of God, to strengthen you, to counsel you...but He won't do a thing until He's asked.
That's why the book of James says if you're in trouble or afflicted, pray. It's prayer that puts the power within you to work.
As a believer, you're destined to be molded into the image of Jesus, to grow in spirit until you look just like Him. God's supernatural power began that process the moment you were born again. You were changed on the inside instantly. How successful you are in allowing this change to progress to the outer man is mostly up to you. We grow up spiritually just like we grow up physically.
What can you do to speed this growing process along?
When you made Jesus the Lord of your life, one of the privileges you received was the right to come to the throne room of God any time you want to. Think about that! You have the right to go boldly before God and obtain whatever you need.
Even though that's clearly what the Bible says, many people don't act like the believe it. They don't go boldly into the throne room. Instead they think, I could never go in to where God is. I'll just stand out here and yell and hope He hears me. I used to be guilty of that myself.
Love. It is the first and foremost command Jesus gave us, yet all too many believers neglect to follow it.
I'm talking about believers who can quote tremendous amounts of scripture and who may speak the Name of Jesus 35 or 40 times a day, yet they're rough and insensitive to the needs of their friends and family. They're so busy "serving God," they don't have time to serve people. Strife is their hallmark.
How long has it been since you were backed into a corner, hemmed in by a seemingly insurmountable problem? If you're anything like most folks, it hasn't been very long. Some of us spend years trying to work our way out of financial binds only to end up more bound by debt than ever. Others work fanatically on marriages that, despite their best efforts, deteriorate from year to year. Still others fight battles against fear or depression, drug addiction or disease.
Do you know what Jesus was really talking about when He said those words? He was talking about the mourning of the intercessor. He was teaching about the comfort that comes to the intercessor when he is assured by the Holy Spirit that he has prayed through.
To pray through means "to break through the barriers that have stopped the work of God in the lives of others." It means using your spiritual armor to push back the forces of darkness that surround them.
Considering how much the devil hates people and how dead set he is on destroying them, it's no wonder we see so much tragedy and disaster in the world. In fact, it's amazing that we don't see more!
I asked the Lord about that one time and He told me it takes the realm of darkness a long time to set up major disasters. Take the aviation industry, for example. It's highly regulated and works hard at policing itself because safety is its product. You take a highly regulated system like that and the devil has to work terribly hard to cause disasters.
Believing. That's the key to everything in the kingdom of God. It's the way we tap in to the very power of Almighty God. Most of us know that. But few of us are sure exactly how to do that kind of believing. We don't know how to put it into action.
Actually it's so simple, it's startling. It's as simple as saying, "I believe I receive."
The Greek word translated afflicted doesn't mean the result of sickness and disease. It means "troubled."
If you're in trouble, you need to pray. That's what the Word says. Notice it didn't say your pastor needs to pray for you or your friends need to pray for you. It says you need to pray.
Too often we try to find a quick fix to our problems by asking everyone else to pray for us. There's nothing wrong, of course, with having others pray for you, but you'll never get your life to a place of permanent victory until you begin to pray yourself.