jesus

Did you know your name has been changed? It's no longer the same as it was before you were born again. You gave your old name away when you made covenant with Jesus.

To fully appreciate what that means, you have to think about it in the light of what we know about blood covenant. When someone enters a covenant of blood, he is giving himself completely away. He is no longer his own. His assets and his debts, his strengths and his weaknesses belong forever to his covenant brother.

There are times when you know what God has called you to do, but you just don't feel you have the inner resources you need to do it. Somehow you've simply run dry. You know the Word says that "out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38). But, during those times, you can't even find the creek bank, much less the river.

The Word of God tells us how to handle those situations through a clear command: "Stir up the gift inside you."

One thing the world needs to see is good examples. They need to see believers walk in love and purity and faith in their homes, in their schools and in their businesses.

There's an old Full Gospel tradition that says God gets glory from the wonderful way His children bear pain and agony and that the world is impressed by that. What a lie! That's simply a tool of the devil to keep God's children in bondage.

People of the world already have all the pain and agony they want. They aren't looking for a way into it. They are looking for a way out. They don't care what you preach. It's the religious people who get worried about that. The world, the sinners, are smarter than that. All they care about are the results.

Do you want to know why the Body of Christ has been in such a mess over the past few years? Do you want to know why the devil has been able to make a public display of our weaknesses? Do you want to know why, instead of being unified and strong, we've often been torn apart by division and criticisms that come not from without but within?

It is because, as the Lord said in Hebrews, the people of God have need of milk and not of strong meat. They're babies! The people of God for the most part don't know His ways.

All of us know what it's like to go round in circles. To pray our way through one financial disaster only to be met by another. To receive healing for one illness just in time to be knocked off our feet by the next.

Oh, we try. We pray. We exercise our faith. But we keep getting caught in the same old problems over and over again. Why? Because all too often, we don't actually know what it is we need to be praying for.

What do you do when you're facing a particularly stubborn problem? A problem that resists your every effort to solve it?

Put the power of love to work on it! The power of love is the greatest power in the universe. It's beyond defeat. It never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).

The Bible says God is love. So when you release love into a situation, you have released God into it. Think about that! When you start releasing love into a situation, Jesus becomes responsible for its success.

What is this love I'm talking about?

Disciplining the flesh. For many believers that phrase stirs memories of frustration and failure. They know it's important—the Word of God clearly teaches that. But they're not sure exactly how to go about it.

Some have given up, shrugging off such discipline as impossible. Others are still fighting stubbornly to get their flesh under control—and losing one battle after another.

But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, we can't afford to let it be that way. It will cost us too much.

We're to live in hope. We're to rejoice. So, when Satan comes to steal your victory and tell you that God is not going to help you this time, you just think on the Word of God and start rejoicing. Rejoice that you're in Him. Rejoice that heaven is your home. Rejoice that greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. Rejoice. Brag on God today. The devil can't stand it!

Remember when you went to school and learned your ABCs? You learned them by using your five senses and your logical abilities to gather information and sort it out. That kind of knowledge is called natural knowledge and it's the only kind most people know anything about.

But in the kingdom of God, there's another kind of knowing. One that works its way from the inside out instead of from the outside in. It's called revelation knowledge.

The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that can never be brought into question by any born-again believer. Our very salvation rests on the fact that Jesus Christ is divine, the second person of the Godhead, God—the Son.

The beloved disciple and apostle, John, forever puts to rest any doubt about that in John 1:1,14. Anyone who doubts what those verses say could not possibly have been born of the kingdom of God. For the deity of Jesus forms the very foundation of our faith in Him.

I wonder when God is going to do something about this problem! Have you ever asked that question? If so, you may be surprised to find out that the answer depends 100 percent on you.

There's an incident in Mark 5 that will show you what I mean. Jesus had just gotten out of a boat and people were pressing all around Him, "thronging Him," it says. They had Him shoved up against the shoreline when suddenly there came a man moving through that crowd to get to Jesus.

Hopelessness. As this age draws to a close, that's a feeling that's going to be more and more common among the people of this world. But, you know, it's something we as believers never have to feel! Because no matter how much pressure comes on the earth, no matter how dark the natural circumstances around us are, we know that we have hope in the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who do you turn to when you need help, when you need an important answer to an important question? Do you ask God first?

So many believers fail to do that! They'll stand around wringing their hands and talking to each other all day. They'll inquire of their pastor. They'll inquire of their friends. They'll inquire of their husband or wife. But do they inquire of God? No.

Don't make that mistake.

I once heard about a great man of God who looked in the mirror every day when he put on his suit and said, "Suit, everywhere you go today, God goes in you." And you know, he's right. If you have united yourself to God by receiving Jesus as Lord, everywhere you go today...God goes too!

As believers, we need to start becoming more conscious of that. We need to train ourselves to be constantly aware of God inside of us, talking to us, teaching us, counseling us, empowering us and enduing us with Himself.

What is God's reason for prospering His people? Is it so we can watch bigger TVs? So we can buy finer houses and more luxurious cars?

Establishing God's covenant on the earth and giving to those in need: Those are God's purposes for prosperity!

When Jesus said those words, He wasn't just giving us a prescription for getting to heaven. He was telling us how to live a superior life right here on earth.

You see, there's a high life that we can live right here, right now. But to get in on it, we have to lay down the way of life that most of us are accustomed to. We may have to let go of the very things we've been trying so hard to latch on to. We have to set our hearts instead on doing what God wants us to do.

Envying, strife and divisions had reduced the early Corinthian Christians back to the natural, or carnal, state that they were in before they were born again. It had so stunted their spiritual growth that they couldn't understand the things the Apostle Paul wanted to teach them.

We often think of "laying down your life" for someone else in terms of dying. That's what Jesus did. He loved us so much He laid down His life by dying in our place so that we could live.

But now, He's asked us to lay down our lives in a different way. He's asked us to show our love, not by dying for others, but by living for them.

Exactly what does that mean?

In Jesus' Name. It's more than a phrase we tack onto the end of our prayers. All that God is and does is represented in the Name of Jesus. The Amplified Bible says when you ask in His Name, you present your requests to the Father on the basis of all that Jesus is. So you can boldly expect to have those requests granted—not because you're worthy, but because He is!