salvation

Do you ever have trouble believing the Word of God? Not just agreeing with it mentally, but really believing that what it says will work for you?

I do. There are times when the promises in the Word stagger my mind. There have been times when I’ve felt so defeated and the circumstances around me looked so bad that it was tough for me to believe I was “more than a conqueror” even though I knew God said I was.

What do you do when your mind staggers like that at the promise of God? You meditate on that promise.

Do you really believe that you need to watch over your mouth? Most believers don’t. You can tell that just by listening to their conversations. They profess, for example, to be trusting God concerning their health. But you’re likely to hear them say something like this: “I’m just sure I’m going to get the flu. I get it every year. I’ll be sicker than a dog too, you’ll see....”

Do people like that have what they say?

Did you know that Jesus has unlocked the prison doors of guilt that have kept you captive? It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve been. I don’t care if you’ve been a prostitute, a murderer, a thief, a drug dealer or a churchgoer who’s never made Jesus Christ Lord of your life. The Bible says that today is the day of salvation.

A new life is only a prayer away.

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Gentleness. Goodness. Faith. Meekness. Temperance. Powerful forces the Bible calls the fruit of the spirit. They’re the character traits of God Himself and when the Holy Spirit came to dwell in you, He brought them with Him, so they could become your character traits too.

They’re designed to bubble up inside you, to gush forth like a powerful stream constantly protecting and cleansing you from the inside out.

Do you need a miracle? Then believe it, confess it and receive it!

"Oh Gloria, I just don't know if I can do that."

Yes, you can! You've already done it once. When you made Jesus the Lord of your life, you believed, confessed and received the greatest miracle in the universe, the miracle of a reborn spirit! Every other miracle you receive will come in exactly the same way.

You start by simply believing what God's Word says concerning your area of need, by letting that Word change your heart and mind.

We're surrounded by a world which is ruled for the most part by Satan. How can we avoid getting caught up in it? How can we stand apart?

You'll find the answer in John 17:17. There Jesus was speaking to the Father about all those who would believe on Him. "Sanctify them through thy truth," He says. "Thy word is truth." Sanctify means "to separate unto." So Jesus was saying, "Separate them by the Word." The Word separates!

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.

Is the devil giving you fits today? Is he causing trouble for you at every turn?

If so, turn the table on him. Start making him miserable for a change. You have the power to do it, you know. You have the power residing in you to destroy his works, to heal, to deliver, to set the captives free. You have so much power in you that every time your alarm clock goes off, the devil should wail, "Oh no! That troublemaker is up again!"

If you think like the world thinks, eventually you will act like the world acts. Unrestrained thoughts produce unrestrained actions. So control your thoughts by bringing them into obedience to the Scriptures.

Program your mind with the Word of God. The Word is spirit and it is life. When your mind is totally saturated with the Word of God, your will becomes strong to exercise authority to overcome every ungodly thought and evil habit.

Death. It’s not a popular topic—even among believers. In fact, a great many are just plain scared of it. Oh yes, they talk about having eternal life. Yet when the devil tries to threaten their earthly survival with sickness or calamity, they panic.

Since God doesn’t save anyone against their will, does it really do any good to pray for people who consciously refuse to receive Jesus as Lord?

Yes. Yes! Yes! It does!

You see, in spite of the fact that most all unbelievers who have purposely refused to receive Jesus as Lord think they’ve made that decision of their own free will, the truth is, they haven’t. The Word of God says they’ve been blinded by Satan. He’s blocking their perception of the truth. So their decision hasn’t been freely made at all.

The devil has used the traditional teaching of Paul’s thorn in the flesh to talk believers out of the blessings of God for years, to try to convince us to settle for everything from sickness to sin—and to do it of our own free will.

It is perhaps the most destructive and the most widely accepted misinterpretation of Scripture that exists in the Body of Christ today. I’ve gone into countries to preach to people who hardly had any knowledge of the Word at all and still I have found that somehow they’d been taught about Paul’s thorn.

And most of them have been taught wrongly.

As a believer, you actually have residing in you the same new life God gave Jesus when He raised Him from the dead. The old sinner you once were has died. You’ve become a new creation on the inside.

You are full of the resurrection life of God!

But sin, disobedience and living a selfish, carnal life will keep that resurrection life from flowing out. Sin will separate you from the power of God, even though you’re born again. Resurrection life will lay dormant in you if you walk in sin.

When your alarm clock goes off tomorrow morning, don’t just wake up to another day. Do what the Word says to do and “awake to righteousness”! Reawaken yourself to the glorious fact that you’ve been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and given right-standing with Almighty God.

You know the story. Satan came to Adam’s wife in the form of a serpent and deceived her into disobeying God. Adam, although he was not deceived, followed suit.

When Satan came into the Garden that day, he didn’t have any power at all. He had to come in like a sneak, not even talking to Adam directly but talking to his wife.

Now Adam was standing there, and he should have kicked him out right then. But he didn’t. He set aside the command God had given him and did what Satan told him to do instead. And when he did that, he made Satan his lord.

How much love do you have for sinners?

That may sound like a strange question, but it’s one I want you to think about today. All too often, once we get saved and get our lives cleaned up a little bit, we lose our compassion for those who are still lost. We look at the drunk stumbling down the street or the guy at the office who lies to the boss and tells dirty jokes and turn up our spiritual noses.

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!

Have you ever thought about the fact that man is the only creature God created who has to wear clothing to cover himself? All the other creatures grow their own coverings. Some grow fur, some feathers, others scales or leathery hide. But all are clothed from the inside out!

Most people don’t realize it, but in the beginning, man was clothed that way too. He was made in the image of God. And, if you’ll look in Ezekiel 8:2, you’ll find that God is clothed in fire from the loins up and from the loins down. That fire is His glory emanating outward from His innermost being.

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.

Born again. Do you know what Jesus had in mind when He said those two words to Nicodemus? He was talking covenant talk. He was telling Nicodemus what it meant to have a covenant with God.

Let me paint the picture I believe was in Jesus’ mind. Imagine a baby, a little baby born of an unwed mother. No one knows who its daddy is and no one wants to know. He is a child no one wants. He doesn’t belong to anyone.