There are times when life on this earth is hard and uncomfortable...and even downright painful. When those times come, you deeply need the comfort that only the Holy Spirit can bring.
How do you receive that kind of comfort?
By doing just what the believers in Acts did. By “walking in the fear of the Lord.”
A lot of Christians have been confused about that issue. So let’s look at what Paul wrote. He stated in Galatians 4:13, “You know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first.” The two phrases we need to fully understand are “infirmity of the flesh” and “at the first.”
The Church is precious to God, and your prayers make much power available to it. Here are some of the best ways to pray for your church.
1. Find scriptures to stand on concerning the strength and unity of your church. It is critical that we stand on the Word when we go to the throne of grace. As you pray over your church, pray according to the Word of God. His Word never returns void.
We need to be continually charged on the inside by the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish God’s will in the earth. Experiencing victory in the Christian life belongs to those who discover the infilling of the Holy Spirit is not just a one-time event, but a constant necessity.
You are forgiven! It’s so important to realize that. Whatever you have done, God forgave you the moment you asked Him and received His forgiveness. At the same time, it is important to understand that forgiveness doesn’t keep undesirable circumstances from coming into our lives as a result of our disobedience.
It's happened to all of us. We get a little of the Word of God under our spiritual belts. We have a few victories. Our lives are going great for the first time in years. Then suddenly we slip and it all falls apart. We find ourselves having to start all over again.
That's what happened to the people the book of Hebrews was written to. They made such great spiritual progress that they got to the place where they should have been teachers. Then they slipped back so much, they needed baby food again. (See Hebrews 5:12.)
What do you do when you're facing a particularly stubborn problem? A problem that resists your every effort to solve it?
Put the power of love to work on it! The power of love is the greatest power in the universe. It's beyond defeat. It never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).
The Bible says God is love. So when you release love into a situation, you have released God into it. Think about that! When you start releasing love into a situation, Jesus becomes responsible for its success.
What is this love I'm talking about?
No weapon formed against you shall prosper. Isn't that great news! Isn't it good to know that no sickness, no circumstance, no problem that rises against you can successfully bring you down?
Some years ago, one of our friends was facing a lawsuit. He and I prayed together according to this scripture and agreed it was the final word in the situation, not the allegations against him. We stood in faith, believing that lawsuit had to fail.
Did you know that the force of faith has the power to rejuvenate your physical body? It's true. You can see that in the life of Sarah. Most people don't understand the full extent of what God did in her life. All they know is that He enabled her to have a child in her old age.
But if you'll look closer, you'll see that there was more to it than that. When Sarah laid hold of the promise of God by faith, it began to restore her physically to such an extent that when King Abimelech saw her, he wanted her for his wife.
When you made Jesus Christ Lord of your life, you became what the Bible calls a “new creature.” Inside, you’re not the same person you were before. You have the nature of God born into you. But it’s not enough for you just to have that new nature on the inside. You have to let it take over the outside as well.
Don’t expect that to happen automatically. You have to make a decision to bring your body into obedience to the new man within you. You must determine to do what Romans 6:12 says and “let not sin...reign in your mortal body….”
If you’re going to grow in the kingdom of God, you’re going to do it just like a seed that’s been planted in the ground. How does a seed grow? All at once? No, it grows constantly—24 hours a day—a little all the time until it accomplishes what it was created to do.
Most of us don’t operate that way spiritually. We study and pray very hard for a few days and then quit. Then, when some disaster comes, we make a mad attempt to pray and stand on the Word, all the while realizing that, for some reason, we’re just not as strong as we ought to be.
Living a life of faith takes courage. Most people don’t realize it, but it does! It takes courage to stand up in the face of sickness and declare you’re healed by the stripes of Jesus. It takes courage to believe for prosperity and put your last dime in the offering plate when poverty is staring you in the face. There are going to be some days when you’d rather pull the covers over your head and hide than take another faith stand against the devil. But you can’t. Because the battle of faith isn’t fought once and then forgotten.
As long as you live on this earth, you’re going to be saddled with a weakness. What is it? The flesh and blood body you live in. It’s a body that’s subject to death. A body that’s subject to the physical world around you.
Your reborn spirit doesn’t want to sin. It wants to be completely obedient to God. But the weakness of the flesh causes you to fall prey to the temptations around you.
Does that mean you’re doomed to a life of failure till Jesus comes and that flesh body is glorified?
So many believers think of the fruit of the spirit as little more than a passive list of pleasant qualities that can help improve their personalities. But it’s far greater than that! It’s pure spiritual power.
Love is so powerful, the scripture says, that it never fails. Patience is so powerful it cannot be stopped. No matter what the circumstances, it will not quit. Temperance is so powerful it can master all the unruly desires of your flesh.
Courage comes from trusting God. It can’t be mentally drummed up. It comes from believing what God says regardless of what the circumstances look like. Courage comes from faith!
Where does discouragement come from? From fear and unbelief. It comes when you listen to the devil’s lies about what God is not going to do for you.
You can't win a victory as long as the problem is the biggest thing in your life!
The Lord woke me up to that fact a few years ago. At that time I was facing some difficulties in my ministry that seemed so big to me, I thought about them from morning till night. Even though I was standing against them, I was thinking more about those problems than about the scripture promises I was standing on.
Then I saw something in Matthew 6:24-25: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life...."
The Word of God is to your spirit as bread is to your body. When your body feeds on physical food, it produces a physical power called strength. When your spirit feeds on the spiritual food of the Word, it produces spiritual power called faith. And just as you can't eat one meal and then feed on the memory of it for several weeks, you can't just remember what the Word says and stay strong in faith. You have to read it. Even if you've read it a hundred times, you need to read it again.
There’s power in unity. The devil knows that. That’s why he’s continually fighting it. He takes the differences between us, differences God put there to make us stronger, and tries to use them as a wedge to drive us apart.
Take men and women, for example. He’s deceived us into fighting about which one is superior to the other. But I can settle that argument right now. Women are superior to men. If you don’t believe that, you boys try having a baby. But then, men are superior to women. If you don’t believe that, you women try having one without us.
We’ve seen some tremendous medical breakthroughs in our generation. We’ve seen “miracle drugs” developed that can conquer many kinds of sickness and disease.
But, you know, in the 45-plus years I’ve been a believer, I’ve discovered another, much more effective, kind of medicine: the Word of God. There’s never been a miracle drug that could equal it. God’s medicine is the answer to every need. It is life. It is health. It is the power of God. And if you put it in your heart and act on it, you will be healed.
One of the reasons Gloria and I have seen the results we have in our lives and in our ministry is because when we realized what the Word of God would do, we literally immersed ourselves in it. We turned off the radio and television, put down the newspaper, and spent nearly every waking moment of the time available either reading the Word, listening to tapes on the Word, or thinking about the Word.
All that time in the Word eventually had a powerful effect on us. It began to revolutionize everything about us. It began to turn failure into success.