Expect Answered Prayer!

One of the greatest stress relievers I know of is answered prayer. One of the most spiritually productive things you can do is to develop your faith in God to answer prayer!

 

I was raised in church and frequently heard that when God answers prayer, He sometimes says yes, sometimes says maybe or wait a while, and sometimes says no. And I heard that if prayer was not answered, then what was prayed must not have been the will of God.

 

All of this is carnal thinking! As I began to read the Bible, I saw clearly that the Father wants to answer prayer! And not with a no or a maybe, but with a resounding yes! So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Luke 11:9-10).

 

First, find scripture that covers what you are praying about. That is, make sure according to the Word that what you’re praying about is the will of God. Once you do that, pray, stand your ground in faith, and expectantly wait for the answer!

  

Prayer is a sure cure for worry, which is really faith in reverse! Prayer is an excellent way to release your faith in the Father to work in the circumstances of your life. Don’t worry and brood over problems that arise. Pray and ask the Father to work them out! Expect Him to answer your prayer!

  

Make these scripture a part of your daily meditation. They will build up in your faith in the Father to answer your prayers!

  

And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive (Matthew 21:22)

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:24).

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you (John 15:7).

And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full (John 16:23-24).

And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight (1 John 3:22).

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him (1 John 5:14-15).

The Healing Promise

So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you (Exodus 23:25).

 

God originally planned for us to live in these bodies for eternity. Sin marred God’s plan and introduced its offspring, sickness, disease, and death. Our redemption in Christ guarantees us freedom from sickness. And eventually our last enemy death will be destroyed by the Son of God!

  

When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, He made a covenant of healing with them that was perpetual and was more sure than the rising of the sun. And said, If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you  (Exodus 15:26).

 

This healing covenant is still in force, and is now a part of our inheritance in Christ. We have a better covenant established on better promises! We are redeemed from the curse of the broken law (Galatians 3:13). This involved poverty, sickness, and spiritual death.

 

It’s important that we keep our faith built up for the healing and health of our bodies. Faith comes by hearing the word! Take time to feed on the promises of God for your health. Don’t allow sickness to trespass in your body. You have a legal right to health under the terms of your covenant! You must insist that Satan keep his hands off your body!

 

The moment symptom appear in your body, command in the name of Jesus that they leave! Believe right then that you receive healing based on your covenant with God. Remind Him of His promises, and act like He heard you! Don’t sign for the “package” of sickness that Satan brings by confessing the symptoms. Refuse it and tell him that it’s not yours!

 

Expect the Holy Spirit to quicken your body! Expect health and healing to be yours life long! How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him (Acts 10:38). That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses (Matthew 8:17). Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness — by whose stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24).

 

Keep the healing Word of God built up inside of you. Meditate on these healing promises daily! Speak health and healing, not sickness and disease. Expect the Father to bless your food when you eat, and expect Him to keep sickness away from you!

The Holy Spirit is a Jealous Lover!

Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously? (James 4:5).

The Holy Spirit is a jealous lover. He is jealous over what occupies our thoughts, our time, our ambitions, and our daily lives. His major job is to make Jesus real to us.

He works constantly to keep us on the path of righteousness, bearing conviction through the Word when we go astray. His goal is our Christ-likeness. We should be thankful for this jealous lover that the Father has placed within us.

 

The Holy Spirit wants us to hear the words well done good and faithful servant when we stand before the Father one day. He works incessantly to keep us out of trouble and close to Jesus and the Father.

We should be careful not to grieve Him through neglect of conscience, bearing unforgiveness towards others, or by the wrong use of our words or our anger.  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:30-32).

 

The Holy Spirit is chosen by Jesus and the Father to be our constant companion throughout life. Listening to Him will keep us out of trouble and will enable us to fulfill the will of the Father every day. He is very sensitive to the Word. One of His major responsibilities is to open the Word to us, making it real and applicable to daily life. He feels neglected when we don’t spend time with the Father in the Word.

I’ve found that one of the best ways to pray for fellow believers that goes astray is to pray for this jealous yearning of the Holy Spirit to rise up within them. I pray that everywhere they are and everywhere they go the Holy Spirit will woo them and make then uncomfortable with wrong living. I’ve seen some wonderful answers to prayer by this method.

Honor the jealous lover in your life today. If you do, He will give you His joy and peace. These only come through obedience to the Word and obedience to His incessant pull away from the world and toward Jesus and the Father. Remember, you are never alone!

Your Natural Life is a Direct Reflection of Your Spiritual Condition!

Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives' tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly. Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it (1Timothy 4:7-9 - New Living Translation)

Your natural life is a direct reflection of your spiritual condition. What you are on the outside is the result of who you are within. The mental habits that you have spill over into every crevice of life, both natural and spiritual.

 

Our outward world parallels our inner world. When you make strides toward God, and increase in spirituality, there should also be a change in natural behavior, or it’s not true spiritual increase!

 

If you’re late for work, you’ll also be late in being faithful to a ministry obligation. If you’re not passionate about natural life responsibilities, you won’t be passionate about spiritual responsibilities. If you see no value in obeying natural law, you may show the same disrespect for spiritual authority. IF you’re a lazy bones naturally, and find it hard to get motivated to perform, you’ll be lazy bones spiritually and will lack spiritual passion.

 

If I look in your car and see all kinds of debris in the floorboard and seats, it tells me that you don’t value excellence, and you’ll be prone to under perform spiritually! If I walk into your home and it’s consistently untidy, that tells a lot about your values. Excellence starts with thinking, and will filter into all we are and do.

 

When God started the process of changing my life with His Word, my natural life began to feel the pressure to change! And it’s been changing ever since!

 

When I’m looking for those to help me in ministry, I look at these natural areas first. You can pray fervently, shout loudly, and preach with absolute passion! But if natural things don’t sing the same song, it’s all a bluff!

 

Give yourself a check-up today. What’s your natural life saying about what  you value right now? Remember, your natural life is a direct reflection of your spiritual condition.

Remember the Eagle and Its Young When You're in a Tough Spot!

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself (Exodus 19:4). As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the Lord alone led him, And there was no foreign god with him (Deut 32:11-12).

An eagle must lead his young to maturity or they will die. The baby eaglet is helpless at birth and must be fed and cared for by its mother. High in a nest on the crag of a mountain cliff, the baby eagle is protected from anything that would bring harm. The mother had lined the nest with her soft feathers prior to the eaglet’s birth, and the first part of the eaglet’s life is filled with comfort as mother brings it daily food.

 

But the baby eagle will soon become so large that the mother cannot carry it enough food, and the nest will become too small to support its weight. If the eaglet’s wings are not strengthened, it will one day die of starvation.

So one day the mother eagle comes to the nest after a time of hunting for food, and to the eaglet’s surprise, begins to tear the down feathers from the bottom of the nest, leaving sharp thorns and twigs exposed. Chaffed from the thorns, the baby eaglet jumps to the side of the nest, and to its shock, the mother hits it with her beak and pushes it off of the nest.

It plunges toward the ground below to what looks like a certain death. But just before it hits the ground, the mother swoops down and catches the eaglet on her back and flies safely to the nest, only to repeat this process over and over.

What the baby thinks is harshness is really the mother loving her child enough to train it to fly. Without the seeming harshness, the dependant eaglet would one day die of starvation.

The Father in a similar way deals with us as children of God. As we mature, the challenges of life come to us. Sometimes His Spirit leads us down a path filled with uncomfortable things that force us to exercise our faith, and to believe in what we cannot see. His gentle firm hand is leading us to walk by faith so that we are not choked by circumstances in our future. He teaches us to navigate life by faith. In doing so, in His wisdom, He allows the difficult to come our way.

 

Don’t forget that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The Spirit of God actually led Jesus into a hard place. He may lead you there too. Without the hard places of life, you’ll not develop spiritual muscles that will lift you above life’s circumstances. I’m not talking here about God putting sickness or disease on us, or causing hurtful things like accidents or tragedy. I’m referring to God purposely leading you into a place that demands faith!

 

Some of the greatest growth places in my life have also been the hardest. God was kicking me out of the nest. He wanted me to develop my character and my faith.

When your way seems challenging, remember the little eaglet. The Father wants you to stretch your faith wings and learn to live by faith! Don’t despise the hard place. Allow it to help you grow!

Expect Your Needs To Be Abundantly Supplied!

The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it (Proverbs 10:22).

It’s never been the will of God for His people to be poor, broke, or lacking. In fact Jesus said that if we seek first the kingdom of God all these things would be added to us (Matthew 6:33). These things He mentioned are natural things, food, clothing, and shelter.

To be rich is to have an abundance of provision; to have a full supply. In that sense, God wants His children to be rich. He wants us to be abundantly provided for. And Jesus has made that provision available. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

 

He took our sin, so that we could be free from sin. He took our sickness so that we could have His health! In the same sense then Jesus also took our poverty so that we could have His prosperity!

 

Poverty is part of the curse of the broken law, and Jesus was made a curse for us so

that the blessing of Abraham could be ours! The curse of the broken law was threefold – poverty, sickness, and spiritual death. Jesus became all three so that we could be blessed with Abraham’s blessings which include restored relationship with the Father, health, and prosperity.

The first Adam brought a curse on us through disobedience. But the second Adam brought back to us the blessings of heaven! God created the earth as our habitat and placed within it all the resources necessary for human life to thrive. And God is not withholding the blessing from us! He didn’t place abundance here and then lock it us where it would be unavailable! Adam’s sin let a thief loose, and the thief wants to keep from you the blessing of God.

Meditate on Deuteronomy 28: 1-14. Get rid of any lack or poverty mentality that you may have. As God’s child He wants to bless us not only spiritually but also naturally!

He wants us to be blessing so we can be a blessing! And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day (Deuteronomy 8:18). He wants us blessed so that we can give and finance His causes and purposes in the earth!

 

God is not opposed to our blessing, but He is opposed to our being covetous! Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life (1 Tim 6:17-19).

Expect the Father to bless everything you put your hand to today! Expect Him to prosper you. Be a giver. Be a blesser! See yourself as a redeemed child of the King! You have a rich inheritance. Command Satan to keep his hands off of all that belongs to you! Thank God for His blessing being on you, both naturally and spiritually! His blessing has made you rich! Expect His best!

The Law of God is Still Necessary Today!

We know that the law is good when used correctly. (9) For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders. (10) The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching (11) that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God (1 Timothy 1:8-11).

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, "You must not covet."  (8) But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power (Romans 7:7-8 – NLT).

For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:10-13).

In our witnessing to the lost, it’s important to appeal to the conscience. No person will really long for salvation by faith in the blood of Jesus until they are aware of their extreme need for salvation.

 

Don’t offer a person the cure until they are aware of the illness. A perfectly healthy person will not be interested in the latest pill they will cure a disease that they don’t have.

 

The conscience must be smitten by the conviction of the Holy Spirit before the unbeliever will want salvation. The above verses gives a great clue as to how best to win the lost. As you’ve developed a conversation with a unbeliever, ask them, Have you ever lied, stolen, lusted, disobeyed your parents, committed adultery, or killed anyone? 1 John says that if you hate your brother, you’ve the same as a murderer. Jesus said the look to lust is the same as the act of adultery.  

If I’m guilty of breaking any on the Ten Commandments, I’m guilty of breaking them all! Then at death, the scripture reveals, It’s appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment (Heb. 9:27). The penalty for breaking moral law is incarceration in hell, then the lake of fire!

Once an unbeliever sees his guilty state before God, then the gospel really is good new. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

Too many times we seek to win the unbeliever to Jesus by dangling the carrot of blessing in front of him. Come to Jesus, and He will heal you, prosper you, bless you, etc. While these things are true, they don’t convict of personal sin, and an unbeliever will not be saved without being first convicted of personal sin.

I’ll leave you with these quotes from men of God of yesteryear:

Before I can preach love, mercy, and grace, I must preach sin, law, and judgment…In writing to a young friend, he advised… “Preach 90% law and 10% grace (John Wesley).

They must be slain by the Law before they can be made alive by the Gospel (Charles Spurgeon).

I have found by long experience that the severest threatenings of the Law of God have a prominent place in leading men to Christ. They must see themselves lost before they will cry for mercy. They will not escape from danger until they see it ( A.B. Earle -wrote the hymn – Bringing in the Sheaves).

(On using the Law of God to bring conviction)…But more, there is war between thee and God’s Law. The commandments are against thee. The first comes forward and says, Let him be cursed, for he denies Me. He has another god besides Me, his god is his belly, he yieldeth homage to his lust. All the Ten commandments, like ten great cannons, are pointed at thee today, for you have broken all God’s statutes, and lived in daily neglect of all His commands. Soul! Thou wilt find it a hard thing to go to war with the Law…What will you do when the Law comes in terror, when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave, when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul, when the great books shall be opened, and all your sin and shame shall be punished? (Charles Spurgeon).

Our churches are full of the nicest, kindest people who have never known the despair of guilt or the breathless wonder of forgiveness (P.T. Forsyth).