When I first learned to cast my cares on the Lord, I was down in south Texas preaching a meeting that no one was coming to. I’m telling you, people were staying away from that meeting by the thousands; and after a service or two with just the preacher, one or two others and me in attendance, I was starting to sweat it. But the Lord said, Cast that care on Me, so I did.
How many blessings are you going to receive from the Word of God? It depends on how many you expect to receive. When God measures them out to you, He’ll be using your measuring stick, not His own. He always works that way.
Two people can hear God’s Word about healing, for example. One will measure it with faith. “Praise God, by His stripes I was healed!” he’ll say. “I believe that with all my heart, and I’m going to keep on believing it until I receive my healing.”
I’ve often heard people say, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” That’s nonsense. If you play the game right, you’ll win!
Any coach will tell you that part of playing the game right is having a winning attitude. That’s what God wants us, as believers, to have. He wants us to have so much faith in Him that we expect to whip any obstacle the devil brings our way. He wants us to expect to win at the game of life.
The devil has used the traditional teaching of Paul’s thorn in the flesh to talk believers out of the blessings of God for years, to try to convince us to settle for everything from sickness to sin—and to do it of our own free will.
It is perhaps the most destructive and the most widely accepted misinterpretation of Scripture that exists in the Body of Christ today. I’ve gone into countries to preach to people who hardly had any knowledge of the Word at all and still I have found that somehow they’d been taught about Paul’s thorn.
And most of them have been taught wrongly.
Years ago Satan started a rumor. He told a few Christians they had to live like the world, sharing all the same misfortune, defeat, poverty and failure as those around them. Well, the word spread. You may have heard the rumor yourself. But I am telling you right now that it is a crafty lie.
The Word of God says in Psalm 91:10, that evil can’t even come near your house if you are abiding in Him.
Very few believers today understand the mystery of the apostleship and priesthood of Jesus. We think that an apostle is some kind of supersaint. But apostle actually means “sent one.” So, Jesus has been sent from God to do something for us.
He’s been sent to serve as our High Priest. Again, many believers don’t have the first idea what a high priest does. They picture a person walking around in strange clothes performing religious rituals.
When you run into an impossible situation, a situation you simply don’t have the strength or the ability to handle, are you often tempted to simply give up and accept defeat? Don’t! Instead shout, “Glory!” because the Word says God’s strength is about to be made perfect in you.
The word translated “strength” in this scripture is dunamis. It means “God’s miracle-working power.” Just think about that. When your human strength ends, God has promised that His miraculous power will bring you through!
As a believer, you actually have residing in you the same new life God gave Jesus when He raised Him from the dead. The old sinner you once were has died. You’ve become a new creation on the inside.
You are full of the resurrection life of God!
But sin, disobedience and living a selfish, carnal life will keep that resurrection life from flowing out. Sin will separate you from the power of God, even though you’re born again. Resurrection life will lay dormant in you if you walk in sin.
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.