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Scripture reading: Hebrews 12:1-2

I have noticed that some of us go to God in prayer and say, “Oh, God, I’m so poor and needy. Lord, God, such and such a person did me so and so. Oh, God, they talk about me. They do this and that and the other.” You are complaining to God everything that God knows already! What God wants to know is what you want to do about that!

So you go to God and say, “Father, You and I have a blood covenant and I want to see righteousness come forth in me!” Oh, God is so glad to hear that! He is going to give you every opportunity to be righteous. That means He will let the trouble come down on you. He will let the devil loose on you. Yes! He said, “All right, you are strong enough.” Let the devil loose on you, sit down and watch how you handle the devil. Amen.

Hebrews 12:1 says that the brethren who have gone on before are a cloud of witnesses watching us and seeing how we run the race. What does that mean? That means that there are certain things happening to you because God wants to find somebody who He can let those things happen to in order to give an object lesson to those who have gone on before who did not overcome! Let me give you an example: you have a temptation to drink. Some of you hide it, of course. You have a temptation to drink and every now and then you go take a little sip. The angel of God is watching you. He wants you to overcome that spirit because it is a spirit that is coming and taking you. Yes. He wants you to overcome that spirit because Tom Stokes (or whoever) who is in heaven did not overcome the spirit. I know mighty men of God, who never overcame the spirit of drinking. For example, Brother Allen. I knew him personally. I worked with him, and he couldn’t stop drinking. The man was one of the most powerful men you have ever seen. He would come in and command the devils out of people! They brought to him a mad man, chained, and he just commanded the devil out of him. It was because God gave him the gift and he practiced, he knew what he was doing. God would not take the gift away from him. He had the faith yet; God gave him the faith. He should have used it on his own behalf.

Brethren, use the faith you have been given to overcome the spirits in your life. You see, first, you have to believe. But then, you have to go forward. You say, “I am going to do it. I am going to let God have His way.”

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 11)

Thought for today: Go to God and say, “Father, You and I have a blood covenant and I want to see righteousness come forth in me!”

Begin to Believe God

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Scripture reading: Mark 11:24

Brethren, let me tell you a secret today. Do you know that you have the power to create? Do you know that God has put in our hands the power to create that which is not, to make it be? He said in Mark 11:24, “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” If you can believe, then you shall have it. Not may, not probably, but SHALL. So if you can believe, it creates the thing! Yes! It creates the thing. But one of our problems is that sometimes when we ask for the thing and God gives us what we need, we find a gap between what we want and what we need. But God is going to give us what we need! Amen.

I’ve heard some people who ask God for a husband or a wife, and after they get the husband or the wife, they start wondering if it was God because they are running into deep waters. That’s a crime! Anytime your heart is satisfied that it is God, then it is God! For God will not allow you to be deceived believing it is God! What am I saying? I am taking you into deep waters. If you believe without the shadow of a doubt that this is what God says and God doesn’t tell you that you are wrong, you are right! Of course, I am speaking to the pure heart now, because people do deceive themselves. People deceive themselves! But God gave us a promise in the Word. This promise is in John 7:17, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” I hold God to it! It is a bit not too clear, but what Jesus actually said was that if any man desires to do the will of God, the responsibility is no longer his, but it is God’s to know what to do. Do you understand? You desire with your whole heart to serve God. I know, and God knows, and you know that you won’t serve God perfectly today, if you just get the desire. But you got the seed, that’s the first step in desire. Do you understand? You must have a godly desire, and the desire must be of God. The desire must be pure, the desire must be perfect. In other words, you have no “maybe” or “probably.” “I desire this, but maybe…” No, God says anyone who wavers is like the waves of the sea and he will receive nothing from the Lord (James 1:6). If you waver you will receive nothing from the Lord.

God said that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). You must have the substance before you have the evidence. So, what you need to do is to get the substance. “Lord, how do I get the substance?” I get the substance from God when I open myself to God. For example, when you sing, you open up yourselves to God (or at least, that’s what you should be doing). You begin to sing and open up to God and let the Spirit flow through. The thoughts of the song begin to form something in you, that is, you are being made, you are not finished. None of us is finished; we are being made. So, YOU must actively begin to seek the substance to make your house right for God. Things will come to you; God will show you things that are wrong with you in particular. And sometimes you don’t have to tell anybody. You don’t go around and say, “Brother So-and-so, I’m a thief. Sister So-and-so, I’m this. Brother So-and-so, I feel this way bad against you, and the other one…..” No, no, no, no. Go to God. Let God heal His temple. For God is coming into His temple, and within a few years, not many years from now, when the destruction comes, God is going to hide us in His pavilion by incorporating us with His Spirit. But we have to start from now. If we don’t start now, we are going to be left behind. We have to begin to believe God.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 7-10)

Thought for today: You must have the substance before you have the evidence. So, what you need to do is to get the substance.

Walk by Faith

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Scripture reading: Hebrews 11:1

Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about faith, what it really is and how to walk in it, because sometimes you know a thing but you don’t know how to do it. That is a real problem. We will look at Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is the substance of things that we hope for and when you have the substance, you have the evidence. In other words, when you go to court, the first thing they ask you is, “Where are your evidences?” You have to have different people come and say, “I saw so-and-so,” and then the judge believes it. But God is saying that faith is not only a substance, but it is also evidence.

Now, let us consider what kind of a substance this is. Let me give you an example: if you want to make a podium here, you have to go and get wood. After you get the wood and get it all cut into the right place, you have to get a cover for it, maybe something laminated. You had to get the substance for this particular thing. But when you have the substance, you don’t have the podium as yet, do you? But you have to use the substance to produce the podium with some labor. It does not take just one BAM and the whole thing comes at one time, but you have to walk it out. You have to get the nails, the fasteners, whatever it is, and you have to walk it out.

One day in the service, many, many years ago, before some of you were born, the Lord spoke and said, “Faith is an unseen light that shines more and more every step of the way you venture to take!” Now, that’s not in the Bible but the Lord said it. Faith is an unseen light. If you can see it, it’s not faith. If you make a plan to get so much and to do so much, it is not faith. It is a plan. But God is talking about raw faith.

God said that faith is the substance. Brethren, I am going to ask you a very serious question. Do you walk by faith? Come, let’s get back to this morning. You got up, you had so and so to do, so and so to look after breakfast, clean house, do this, do that. Do you really walk by faith? God is challenging you. Walk by faith! Do you know what it is to walk? Let me show you how people walk; maybe you forgot. You go right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot; that is how you walk. But what if I jump forward? Did I walk? No, I jumped! Some of you believe that, because you have faith, you must jump from one place to another. God says, “Walk by faith.” Do you understand what that means? It means that you must make little steps, step by step, step by step, step by step. You are not going to be all good the same day, but you must walk by faith.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 4-6)

Thought for today: Do you really walk by faith? God is challenging you. Walk by faith!

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By Mavis duCille

Scripture reading: Psalm 51:6

There is a song we sing and it says:

Faith in the Father and faith in the Son,
Faith in the Holy Ghost, victories are won,
Demons will tremble and sinners awake,
Faith in Christ Jesus will anything break.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that faith in Christ Jesus will break anything? The end of our salvation is faith. The beginning is faith and the end is faith. Praise God. There is no space in between to lack faith or lay faith aside. It is the beginning and the end of our salvation. Amen. So, he that endureth to the end shall be saved (Matthew 10:22). He that endureth to the end shall be saved. Make sure that we are enduring, because we have the faith to tear down mountains, the strongholds that are in our lives, and all the ancestral spirits that plague our lives. Hallelujah.

But I have discovered that there is something we have to make sure that is anchored in us, and that is truth in the inward parts, because there is a thing that the enemy uses against us. He either condemns us or he makes us complacent and deceives us that all is well when it is not. So, as we have truth in the inward parts and we stand before the Lord, He brings to us a picture of where we are and what we are. There is a scripture that says, when you look as in a mirror, when you stand before the Lord and you see yourself, try not to forget what you have seen (James 1:23-24). Have you ever been praying and the Lord shows you you? He exposes your inward parts to you. And the Word says: don’t forget what you have seen. Always remember what you have seen, because when we stand before the Lord, He reveals us to us. Amen. That is a marvelous thing that the Spirit does, and we must not forget, we must not sweep it under the rug, we must deal with it until the last thread of it is gone and we can stand before the Lord. You see, one day, we will have to stand before Him. One day, we will have to give account for all that is done in this body (Hebrews 9:27).

So, as we hold on to faith, it will help us. It has helped us where we are, to where we are in spite of our failures and the battles that we fight. Some we win, some we don’t win. We don’t feel good when we don’t win. We want to have the victory and we are cast down, we get discouraged. That’s another tool of the enemy. But faith in Christ Jesus will anything break. So, if there is anything that you have that you feel that cannot be broken, you are being deceived. You have just not applied the weapon. David said that Abner died like a fool with his sword in his sheath (2 Samuel 3). We have the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17), that the devil hates, and God makes it so simple that you can use it anytime and anywhere. Praise God. Amen.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 3-4)

Thought for today: There is something we have to make sure that is anchored in us, and that is truth in the inward parts.

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Scripture reading: John 1:9

We thank God for bringing us to a table again where we can really feast upon His Word. It is not everybody who can feast upon God’s Word. Some people are so sick spiritually, that no matter how loud God shouts to them, they will not hear. But blessed are they that can hear, that have ears to hear. Jesus said, “Let him hear.” Thank you, Jesus. We are very, very happy to be in a position like this, with appetites for the Word of God and ability to hear. Hallelujah. In this last day, the difference between those who perish and those who overcome will be the ears, spiritual ears, whether you can hear God or not.

I have been praying to God and asking him about what is going to happen to all these Muslims, all these Hindus, all these people who believe in false doctrines. The Lord asked me, “What is going to happen to all those Christians who believe in false doctrines?” The same thing that is going to happen to the false doctrine Muslim is going to happen to the false doctrine Christians.

Now you may ask, “What is going to happen?” God is going to reach out with His mercy to them. Oh yes! God will reach His mercy out to them. God’s mercy will be offered to them just like He is offering it to the Muslim. If God offered the false doctrine Christian mercy, and didn’t offer the false doctrine Muslim mercy, God would be partial. Amen.

The scriptures tell us that if any man desires to know anything of God, God will teach him. The scriptures tell us that, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). So, the moment you are born, whether you are a Muslim, or whether you are a Hindu, or whatever you are, God’s light is promised to light you. And do you know something? God said that, “…this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). That means that when Jesus Christ died on Calvary, He died for every Muslim, He died for every Hindu, He died for every no doctrinal person, in other words, agnostics. He died for them all. Amen.

Now, the point is that none of those can go to hell unless they reject Jesus, but none of those can reject Jesus unless they know Him. How are you going to reject Jesus if you never heard of Him? In other words, God must reveal Himself to every human being who is born on the face of the earth.  Many people who we think are going to hell will make heaven, and many of those who we think are riding high to go to heaven are going to make hell. Do you know why? Because they have rejected Jesus in the fact that they knew Him, but didn’t want Him. They would not let Him reign over them, they wanted something else, and they chose a false doctrine because they didn’t want Jesus. Amen.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, May 26, 2002, pg. 4, 8-9)

Thought for today: In this last day, the difference between those who perish and those who overcome will be the ears, spiritual ears, whether you can hear God or not.