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.
God has given you a promised land. It’s a place flowing with milk and honey, where your every need can be met. A place where you can keep sin underfoot as you rule and reign with Christ. A place where no weapon formed against you will prosper. A place where you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, far above principalities and powers—far from oppression.
As you study the Word of God, you’ll find that’s an accurate description of the kind of victory you should be experiencing in Christ—not in the sweet by-and-by—but right here, right now.
So many believers wring their hands and worry about whether or not they’re praying according to God’s will. “Oh, dear me,” they say, “I certainly can’t expect God to do something for me that’s outside His will.” And they’re absolutely right.
But they don’t need to waste time standing around looking puzzled. They need to grab their Bibles and find out what the will of God is.
Have you ever been in prayer and suddenly had the disturbing sensation that God simply wasn’t listening?
It’s happened to all of us. But few of us know just what to do about it. We just limp along praying the same old prayers, half-hoping those prayers are heard and half-suspecting they’re not.
If you’re born again and have the Word of God in your heart, you can live in victory. You may not have all the answers. There may be a great many spiritual things you don’t understand. But it’s not those things that are most likely to destroy you. It’s the things you know to do—but don’t—that usually make you fall.
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.
Have you ever had a Holy Spirit-inspired dream, a dream of doing something really great for Jesus? A dream of being so prosperous, for instance, that you can finance a nationwide revival? A dream of leading thousands of people to the Lord?
At one time or another, you probably have, but perhaps you backed away from it. You thought, Oh my, I couldn’t do that. Satan’s kept me defeated for so long I have a poor self-image.
In this day and time, trouble seems to surround us on every side. If it’s not a failing economy, it’s a failing business, a failing marriage or failing health. Yet, in the midst of seemingly overwhelming problems, God has promised to deliver us.
What do you do when you’re in a really perilous situation?
If you’re like I used to be, you cry out to God in desperation. One afternoon when I was squalling to God about something, He interrupted me and said, Kenneth, did you know I don’t hear the cry of My children when they cry out in desperation?
“What?” I said. “I thought You did.”
He said, No, I hear the desperation cry of a sinner because that’s all he can cry about. But once you get born again, son, you ought to be crying out of faith. I hear the faith cry.
Have you ever wanted to get God’s attention? You can, you know. There’s a certain kind of boldness, a certain kind of faith in giving that will get His attention every time. You can see that in Mark 12.
Read that chapter and just imagine the situation it describes. Jesus was sitting by the treasury watching as people put in their offerings. Don’t you know there were some sanctimonious displays going on with Him there watching? There was bound to be plenty of pharisaical robe swishing as those wealthy leaders walked up to put in their gifts that day.
As believers, you and I are part of a conquering army, constantly claiming new ground for the kingdom of God. Right?
Well, yes, that’s the way it should be. But just about the time the army tops the hill and is ready to advance, it seems that Satan pulls out his big gun—division—and scatters believers in every direction.
How can we strike back against the strategy of division? By launching an even more powerful attack of our own. By using one of the most powerful resources given us by the Lord Jesus: the prayer of agreement.
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.
No matter how long you’ve been living by faith, no matter how much you’ve learned about it, every once in a while you’re going to suffer a setback. You’re going to run into some circumstances that just don’t turn out the way you expect them to.
When that happens, remember this: Those setbacks are just temporary. You may have lost a battle, but you’re not going to lose the war. Just get up and go at it again.
“But I don’t understand it,” you say. “I did the best I could. I walked in all the truth I knew to walk in. Why didn’t I get the victory?”
Failures and disappointments. Aches and pains from the past that just won’t seem to go away. Most of us know what it’s like to suffer from them but too few of us know just what to do about them. So we limp along, hoping somehow they’ll magically stop hurting.
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.
Self-consciousness is a major problem in the Body of Christ today. It keeps us from doing the things God tells us to do. Instead of simply obeying Him, it makes us start to wonder, Now what will people think of me if I do that? What if I command that person to get out of the wheelchair and he doesn't get up? What if I start believing for prosperity and go broke? What about that, God? I won't look too good, will I?