salvation

God is faithful. He's full of compassion. His mercies are new every morning. As a believer, you know all that. But simply knowing it is not enough.

For it to do you any good, you have to recall it. You have to remember it again and again in order to rekindle your hope and stir your faith.

So, make it a point to remind yourself of God's faithfulness every morning. Remind yourself of the benefits that are yours in Jesus.

What are those benefits? Psalm 103 spells them out:

1. He forgives all your sins.

2. He heals all your diseases.

Disciplining the flesh. For many believers that phrase stirs memories of frustration and failure. They know it's important—the Word of God clearly teaches that. But they're not sure exactly how to go about it.

Some have given up, shrugging off such discipline as impossible. Others are still fighting stubbornly to get their flesh under control—and losing one battle after another.

But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, we can't afford to let it be that way. It will cost us too much.

Do you ever have trouble hearing from God? Do you find yourself caught in confusing circumstances needing guidance, and yet even after praying and reading the Word—you're still not sure what God wants you to do?

I've had that experience. I knew His written Word and acting on it changed my life. But I was uncertain when I had to make decisions about things the Word didn't specifically address. Things like whether to move to one city or another, for example.

Man was created to be a winner. The Bible tells us so. We read in Genesis, for example, that man was originally put on this earth as a dominating lord. God gave him dominion over the earth and everything that crept, flew, crawled and breathed there.

Man didn't even know what losing was until he separated himself from God through disobedience in the Garden of Eden. When that happened, he ran headlong into defeat. He was forced to accept failure as his lot in life, lowering himself to a subordinate position—a position he was never meant to occupy.

The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that can never be brought into question by any born-again believer. Our very salvation rests on the fact that Jesus Christ is divine, the second person of the Godhead, God—the Son.

The beloved disciple and apostle, John, forever puts to rest any doubt about that in John 1:1,14. Anyone who doubts what those verses say could not possibly have been born of the kingdom of God. For the deity of Jesus forms the very foundation of our faith in Him.

Hopelessness. As this age draws to a close, that's a feeling that's going to be more and more common among the people of this world. But, you know, it's something we as believers never have to feel! Because no matter how much pressure comes on the earth, no matter how dark the natural circumstances around us are, we know that we have hope in the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Victors! More than conquerors! That's what the Bible says we are. I know you've heard that many times before, but today I want you to let the reality of it really sink in. I want you to spend some time meditating about what those terms actually mean.

The dictionary says that victory means "final and complete supremacy or superiority in battle or war, success in any contest or struggling involving the defeat of an opponent or the overcoming of obstacles."

God has raised us up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus! That's what the Word of God says. Very few of us have actually dared to believe this. We've uplifted Jesus. We've exalted Him—and rightly so! But at the same time, we've unwittingly belittled what He did by not allowing Him to bring us alongside Him.

That was God's purpose at Calvary: to bring us alongside Jesus. To make us what He already was.

I once heard about a great man of God who looked in the mirror every day when he put on his suit and said, "Suit, everywhere you go today, God goes in you." And you know, he's right. If you have united yourself to God by receiving Jesus as Lord, everywhere you go today...God goes too!

As believers, we need to start becoming more conscious of that. We need to train ourselves to be constantly aware of God inside of us, talking to us, teaching us, counseling us, empowering us and enduing us with Himself.

When Jesus said those words, He wasn't just giving us a prescription for getting to heaven. He was telling us how to live a superior life right here on earth.

You see, there's a high life that we can live right here, right now. But to get in on it, we have to lay down the way of life that most of us are accustomed to. We may have to let go of the very things we've been trying so hard to latch on to. We have to set our hearts instead on doing what God wants us to do.

We often think of "laying down your life" for someone else in terms of dying. That's what Jesus did. He loved us so much He laid down His life by dying in our place so that we could live.

But now, He's asked us to lay down our lives in a different way. He's asked us to show our love, not by dying for others, but by living for them.

Exactly what does that mean?

Grace teaches us! The "Spirit of grace" instructs us from the inside. Let the Holy Spirit of God counsel you and teach you how to live in this present world.

It's wonderful to know you've been set free from the law of sin and death. It's glorious to know you never again have to submit to the slavery of sin. But what do you do when, in spite of those wonderful, glorious truths, you still miss the mark? What do you do when you stumble and fall into sin?

Run to your Father and repent!

I used to worry about making decisions for God. I used to be afraid to step out on faith and declare I was going to do something new that He’d shown me to do. I’d think, What if I fail? I was so scared of failing, I’d muddle around in indecision for weeks. Then one day I found out it wasn’t my power that was going to carry it out anyway. But it took my decision to move God in on the scene. Once I decided what I was going to do, and committed myself totally to it, God backed me!

Liberty. If you could put the will of God into one word, that would be the word. God wants people to be free. Free from sin and sickness, poverty, oppression and every other curse.

It’s time to set the record straight. Angels are not kid stuff. They’re not little fat babies with long blonde hair and bows and arrows in their hands. Angels are big, strong warriors. They are real. They are powerful. And if you are a believer, they are a vital part of your life.

We see examples of what angels can do all through the Bible. For instance, when the children of Israel were fleeing from Egypt with Pharaoh’s army hot on their heels, the Bible tells us that suddenly the wheels on the Egyptians’ chariots got fouled up. They just quit rolling!

When someone hurts us, our natural human reaction is to strike back...to ask God to clobber them. But that’s not God’s way.

I realized that one time when some relatives of mine got robbed. I was praying about the situation and puzzling over it. “Lord,” I began to ask, “why did You let that happen? Why didn’t You just knock that thief over the head when he tried to do that?”

Suddenly, God enabled me to back up from that situation and look at it with spiritual, instead of just purely natural, eyes.

Jesus came to earth and gave Himself as a sacrifice for sin in order to buy back for you everything that Adam lost. He came to destroy all the works of the devil...sickness and disease included. Once you receive Him as Lord of your life, all the rights and privileges God originally intended you to have (the right to things like fellowship with God, health and prosperity) are restored.

But you are the one who has to exercise those rights!

If, as God tells us in 1 Timothy 2:4, it’s His will for all men to be saved, why aren’t we seeing more of the masses of lost people born again every day? Have you ever wondered that?

I have...and as I’ve sought the Lord about it, I’ve come to realize that, for the most part, it’s because those of us who are already saved don’t pray persistently for those who aren’t. Instead of persevering—staying before the Father, praying for them to receive the bread of salvation—like the man in Luke 11:8 did for his friend, when we don’t see immediate results, we simply give up and go home.

Isn’t it exciting to realize that you can hold the thoughts and feelings and purposes of God’s very own heart in your heart? Isn’t it thrilling to know the Creator of heaven and earth wants to be one spirit with you and transmit His thoughts to your mind?