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Posts Tagged ‘Faith in God’

“God, Have Your Way!”

Posted in Faith in God, tagged , , , on August 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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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!”

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Walk by Faith

Posted in Faith in God, tagged , , , on August 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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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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A New Order of Priesthood

Posted in Faith in God, tagged , , , , , on May 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Exodus 19:6, 2 Peter 2:9

Do you know that when you lay hands on a person that you are actually putting your life on the line for that person? Did you know that is what it means? Did you know that God made the people of Israel lay their hands on the priest and confess their sins over him, and their sins left them and went into the priest? Amen. You know, I have seen it happen. We had situations where brothers laid their hands on people but they didn’t have the spiritual virtue or energy to counteract the thing that was in that person and it came back upon them.

One day, we were called up into a mountain top to go pray for a woman who was possessed with some devil. We all left to go but this young man took a short-cut through the bushes and got up there first. What he wanted to have was the glory of being the person who delivered the woman. If you have those kinds of things in you, keep away from demons. They will kill you because they can spot a wrong thought anywhere. The boy ran up there. He laid his hands on the woman. When we got there, his hand was crippled, withered; and we never got him better. He started having epileptic seizures and had them until he died. We could not bring deliverance to him.

You have to beware of how you lay hands. Do you remember in Hebrews 6:1, Paul speaks of the “laying on of hands” as part of our foundation doctrine? You need to have that foundation doctrine well secured in your foundation. Because in the laying on of hands, you are actually accepting unto yourself the problem that the person has.

There was a woman in the Bible that had the issue of blood. You can imagine that it was some sin that gave her that issue. Now-a-days we might say it was some sort of venereal disease. She grabbed the hem of Jesus’ garment and Jesus said, “I felt virtue come out of Me” (Mark 5:25-33). Do you realize that when you lay hands on a person, you are giving out virtue? YES! He said, “I felt virtue come out of Me.” His disciples said, “But everybody is touching You and rubbing up against You.” Jesus responded, “No, no. Something else: there was a deliberate action that pulled the virtue out of Me.” Do you know what action it was? Faith. The woman believed it! I am telling you – you do not know how strong faith is!

FAITH! By FAITH then, we are going to fit the bill of God – not because we are righteous, not because we are pretty, not because we are good, not because we are better than anybody else – BUT BECAUSE WE BELIEVE WHAT GOD SAYS. He will make you a royal priesthood.

Now, God created the priesthood to be a mediator between God and man. Do you know that is what a priest is? When Jesus Christ came, Jesus became the mediator between God and us. So, the priesthood was abolished. But then, He said He had a new priesthood after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:11). Who is this Melchizedek?

Abraham went to battle and he overcame the five kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. When he was coming back, there came a man to him. Abraham said, “Who are you?” The man said that He was the king of Salem (Genesis 14:18-20) and Abraham recognized that it was God and gave Him a tenth of all, his tithes. You know, I always wondered what God did with it. Maybe He just put it up into smoke or something. But Abraham gave it to this King of Salem; and Salem is Jerusalem. Yes! City of peace! So this situation brings us into something new – a new order of priesthood has been created.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, February 2007, pg. 36-38)

Thought for today: By faith we are going to fit the bill of God – because we believe what God says. He will make us a royal priesthood.

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First Step Towards Being Dead in Christ

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on April 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Romans 6:10-13

The beginning of every spiritual achievement is founded in FAITH. From the depths of our sin-prone estate we look to the dizzy heights of Christ-like achievements like being “dead in Christ,” and some of us feel a deep kind of despair in that such an achievement is humanly unattainable. Humanly, yes, but IN CHRIST we can make it.

The first question therefore is how do I do it? The answer is loud and clear in the above passage in Romans 6 – by faith reckon it so. This is not some kind of mental or metaphysical exercise of the will, but a God given ability to believe God. The reckoning of the death of Jesus Christ to be my death can only be brought about by the knowledge of His life being my life, and the sure faith that the life of Christ in me will kill the Adamic life, which is ever present in the form of sin within my members.

One of the greatest signs of the life of Christ in me is the fact that I can see the Adamic nature within my own members.

There was a day in my youth when I went to God with the feeling that I thought I was free from all sin. But He said to me that I should sanctify myself. Naturally I asked Him how, and He told me to watch my members and keep them free from sin. The first few hours were disastrous…. I had sinned with my feet, my ears, my mind, my mouth, and my eyes – there was lusting, idleness, carnal mind, prying ears, and evil speaking. It was quite a shock for someone who thought he was holy. Only the Holy Ghost can reveal one’s sin to himself. The difference between God revealing sin, and the devil doing it, is that when God reveals sin it blesses the believer, the motive being to lift him up. When the devil does it, it is to cast down and deride.

If therefore, we are to reckon ourselves dead, we need first to know that we are not dead (dead to sin), but that we desire to be, and that this is attainable through the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

If we believe that we are joined to Jesus Christ by His death, and that His death is the death of the carnal man within us, then our reckoning this to be so will create within us the death to sin which we desire.

This is the first step towards being “dead in Christ”. In our next devotional we will deal with the second step that follows.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, August 1984)

Thought for today: Even though being “dead in Christ” is humanly unattainable, it is reachable IN CHRIST by faith.

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Faith Born of God

Posted in Faith in God, tagged , , , , , on April 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: I John 5:4

Faith, “born of God,” is the victory which overcomes the world. What do we mean by “faith born of God?” Faith can be born of greed. Someone can have faith to win the lottery, or to play the horses, or to get property. Faith born of God cannot be selfishly motivated. Faith born of God cannot be competitive or prideful – i.e. to have the biggest auditorium in the U.S.A. or the biggest congregation in the world. The root of the faith that is born of God is in God. “Whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.” Finally faith born of God overcomes the world.

I see the children of God struggling under the burden of worldliness. Even the kids are made to uphold all the worldly standards and be a part of every whim of the world which the kids of the non-Christians uphold. Instead of being taught of God they are taught by the devils of the system. Their paragon is not Jesus Christ and the holy men and women of the Bible, but the cursed televised demons of Hollywood, Paris, San Francisco, and New York. It does not matter how much faith you have for miracles and how much results you might have in this area, if you are not overcoming the world, the flesh, and the devil, then your miracles are nothing but condemnation because you believe in a God of miracles and deny the greatest of all miracles which is the victory over self and sin and Satan.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, May 1986)

Thought for today: Faith born of God overcomes the world.

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