What a time of monumental decisions and changes we’re living in. If there ever was a day when you and I must know God’s will and purpose for our lives, it’s now.
In fact, nothing else is going to work! God is changing and rearranging things, lining them up for the end-time move of the Spirit. If you’re going to keep up, you must know God’s perfect plan for your life—and how to carry it out in His power!
How do you do that? Through prayer.
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.
Very few believers today understand the mystery of the apostleship and priesthood of Jesus. We think that an apostle is some kind of supersaint. But apostle actually means “sent one.” So, Jesus has been sent from God to do something for us.
He’s been sent to serve as our High Priest. Again, many believers don’t have the first idea what a high priest does. They picture a person walking around in strange clothes performing religious rituals.
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.
Years ago, I decided I was going to walk by the Word of God. I told God that, as far as I was concerned, His Word was final and I’d confess it the rest of my life no matter what. That was the most important decision I’ve ever made.
Not too long after that, I decided that no matter what happened, whether I felt like it or not, I’d walk in love. Because the Bible clearly says “faith worketh by love.” It won’t work any other way.
Those two decisions—to operate by faith in the Word of God and to walk in love—are the two most important decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
When an athlete goes into training, he practices to improve his skills. He works hard, repeating the same motions over and over until they become what we’d call “second nature” to him.
Most of us understand how crucial that kind of training is in the physical realm. We know that you simply can’t be a winner without it. But did you know we can train ourselves that same way where spiritual things are concerned?
You’re running the race set before you, moving full-speed ahead with God’s blessing overtaking you at every step. Then suddenly, wham! You hit the wall. It may be a wall of sickness or financial trouble, of spiritual failure or family problems. But, regardless of the form it takes, the effect of “the wall” is always the same. It stops you cold.
The question is, once you hit a wall like that, what will you do? You’ll be tempted to quit, to turn back in defeat. But don’t do it. Because God will enable you to break through that wall and keep right on going.
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.
Once you’ve made the Word of God final authority in your life, your first step to victory over the attacks of the enemy is to go to the Word and lay hold of God’s promises concerning your situation.
Notice I said, “Go to the Word.” It’s good to have the Word committed to memory. But don’t let that substitute for getting the Word before your eyes on a daily basis.
Truly, it’s time for us to stop looking for the living among the dead. It’s time for us to stop wandering around in the cemetery of sin, sickness and failure and to step into resurrection life!
As a resurrected creature, you’re no accident going somewhere to happen. Your life isn’t just a loose web of events and circumstances. God has specific plans for you.
Did you know that as a believer you’ve been redeemed from the curse of grief and sorrow by the blood of Jesus Christ? You don’t have to put up with them any more than you have to put up with sin or sickness or disease.
God started teaching me about this personally several months before my mother went home to be with Him in August 1988. Every time He’d show me something about it, I’d put it into practice. (You ought to do that with anything God is teaching you. Start practicing it now, and you can walk in it when the time comes!)
The Bible calls us kings and priests (Revelation 1:6) and world overcomers (1 John 5:4). But for most of us, those are just phrases. They haven't become real to us. That's why the devil's been able to hoodwink us into living lives of defeat. It hasn't actually dawned on us who we really are.
If you'll look in 1 Chronicles 14, you'll see that David had a similar problem. He'd been anointed king by the prophet Samuel when he was just a teenager. He'd known for years that someday he'd rule over Israel. Yet somehow, it hadn't really sunk in.
If you give the devil place, he will take it. You have to stay alert and keep your shield of faith high because if you don't, he'll turn around and steal back from you the ground you just took.
There have been people who have received their healing and have fallen back into their old thinking patterns of sickness. They let their faith down and gave the devil an opening. When he came along with an old symptom, they weren't ready for him. They fell victim to his counterattack.
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.
Praise precedes victory!
You can see a graphic example of that in 2 Chronicles 20. There, the Bible tells us that a multitude of forces was marching against Israel. The army of Israel was so outnumbered, they literally didn't know what to do. So they fasted and prayed until they received a word from God. "Be not afraid or dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's" (2 Chronicle 20:15, The Amplified Bible).
You may be facing a giant today. He may be a giant of sickness or failure, of financial shortage or another kind of trouble. But don’t let him scare you. You have a secret weapon. A weapon that once turned a shepherd boy into a bear-busting, lion-killing, giant-slaying champion. That weapon was a blood covenant with Almighty God.
Back in David’s day, circumcision was the sign of that covenant. So, when he called Goliath uncircumcised, David was saying: “This guy may be a giant; he may be strong; but he has no covenant with God and that’s why I will defeat him.”
Joy. It's not a warm, happy feeling you're supposed to have now and then when things are going well. It's much more than that. Joy is one of the most powerful spiritual forces in the world.
Look again at Nehemiah 8:10 and I'll show you why. If you were to diagram that scripture and remove the phrase, "of the Lord," you would find what it's truly saying is this: Joy is strength. The two are interchangeable.
That's what makes joy so crucial. You can't live a life of faith without being strong in the Lord—and when God wants to make you strong, joy is what He uses to do the job!
Like the bursting forth of waters. I love that phrase! It paints such a powerful and accurate picture of a breakthrough.
Do you remember the story of the little boy who saw a leak in the dam and plugged up the hole with his finger? He knew that the force of the water flowing through that one tiny hole would have enlarged the leak with every second that passed. And, as the dam gave way to the pressure, that tiny trickle would have quickly become a raging flood.