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?
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.
Faith-filled words. That's what changes things. They'll move mountains into the sea. They'll turn sickness into health. They'll turn a sinner into a saint.
They'll also take a sin-ridden nation and turn it into God's own country. That's right. Then, if we believers would back up the prayers we've been praying for this nation with words of faith instead of doubt and discouragement, we'd soon begin to see spiritual resurrection in the United States.
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.
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!
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.
Have you ever really thought about what it truly means to be in Christ Jesus? Have you ever gotten a clear revelation of that? Once you do, it will revolutionize your life.
You see, it’s in Him that we’re raised up from our sins. It’s in Him that we’re made to sit in heavenly places so that God can show us the exceeding riches of His grace. It’s in Him that we’re made the righteousness of God!
Whenever you find yourself stumbling into failure or sin, check your love life. Sit down with the Lord and ask Him to show you if you’re in strife with anyone or if you’ve taken offense. If you have, the devil can come in and trip you up.
As a preacher, I’ve seen that happen countless times. I’ll be preaching about something and some believer will get upset with me about it. He’ll decide I’m wrong and go off in a huff—and first thing you know, he’s in trouble.
God’s going to get you for that! Most of us have said that kind of thing jokingly for years. We’ve somehow believed that God slaps us down with pain and punishment every time we sin. But that’s just not true. There are deadly wages for sin, but God is not the one who’s doling them out.
Resurrection. What do you think of when you hear that word? Most people think of the past. Of a stone rolled away. An empty tomb. And a risen Lord.
Praise God, Jesus is alive today, isn't He?
What we don't fully understand is this: He's not the only One who has been resurrected. We've been resurrected too!
We were spiritually resurrected the day we made the Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives. That day we passed from death to life. The greater part of your resurrection has already happened!
Some people have the mistaken idea that when the direction of the Holy Spirit comes to them, they can just ignore it for a while if they want to and then obey Him later in their own good time. They think to themselves, I know what I'm doing is wrong. I know my lifestyle isn't right, but I'm just going to do it a while longer. Then I'll get things straightened out with the Lord.
Most believers don't know anything about true humility. If you tell them they're the righteousness of God, they'll fight to keep from believing it. You can give them scripture references to prove it, and they'll still argue.
"Oh no," they'll say, "I'm not righteous. I'm just an old sinner saved by grace." They're making a sincere attempt to be humble. But they're sincerely wrong. They're so afraid of being exalted by pride that they've let Satan trick them into falling right into it.
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.
The Bible tells us that under Levitical law, an animal had to be offered every year to atone for the sins of the people. That word atone means "to cover" and it's used continually throughout the Old Testament.
But let me tell you something exciting. It's never used in the New Testament. The Greek word used to describe what Jesus did for us on the cross is a different word altogether. It doesn't just mean "to cover"—it means "to remit; to do completely away with something."
Jesus came to take away sin. Do you realize what that means? It means that God, through the blood of Jesus, has so completely done away with the power of sin that you, as a born-again believer, can live as if it never existed. You can step out from under its shadow once and for all.
God is vehemently against worry. Jesus preached against it. Paul preached against it. The whole Bible preaches against worry because it was designed by Satan to produce stress, strain and death.
Yet many of us still act as if it's an option, as if we're free to worry if we want to. But we're not! Worrying is a sin. It's one of those things the Word of God directly commands us not to do.
Even though Satan lost all his authority on this earth the day Jesus rose from the dead, for the past 2,000 years he's been running around as a spiritual outlaw—continuing to kill, steal from and destroy all who will let him. But, you know, he's not going to be able to do that much longer. There's coming a day when he's going to be put out of business completely. There's coming a day when the evil he's done here on earth will be put totally underfoot by the power of God.
I don't care how badly you may have messed things up yesterday or how many mistakes you have made, I want you to begin this day knowing you are righteous! Not because of anything you've done but because you've received, by faith in Jesus, the very righteousness of God.
Just look at the kinds of benefits the Word of God says that righteousness will bring:
"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree" (Psalm 92:12).
"When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth" (Proverbs 11:10).