Thursday 15 September 2016

The Authority of the Believer ~ Rabqa

Today we are continuing on with the
authority of the believer.


Num 14:8 "Do not rebel against the LORD, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the LORD is with us! Don’t be afraid of them!”



Allow the Lord to develop in you the spirit of Caleb & Joshua. Follow the Lord wholeheartedly.


God desires devotion from His people, the lives of Caleb & Joshua provide outstanding examples of the devotion that God honours. They stand in bold contrast to Israel's unfaithfulness.


Thousands of years ago God told the children of Israel to go up & occupy the land He had given them. He told them to take it without force & without fear, from the ungodly ones who were living there.

He is still saying that today. God is still trying to get us, as His people, to take up the good land He has given us. He is still trying to get us to use the power He has given us to run the wicked one out.


You see, this earth doesn't belong to the devil, it belongs to God (Ps 24:1) The earth is the Lord's, & all it's fullness, the world & those who dwell therein.


The devil has just moved in & taken control of things all because we believer's haven't stopped him.


That is our job, Jesus took satan's legal right away from him on the morning of Resurrection Sunday. Then Jesus put us in charge of enforcing satan's defeat. The Scripture's say that Jesus is going to sit at the right hand of the Father till His enemies are made His footstool (Heb 10:12-13). This means that Jesus is waiting for us to kick the devil & his cohorts out of the affairs of this earth. He is waiting for us to carry out the victory He won at Calvary & occupy this land.

Just like Israel had to rise up physically to take the land of Canaan, you & I have to rise up in the spirit if we are going to establish the dominion of God on earth. We are going to have to move, instead of just sitting around waiting for
something to happen.


You may or may not know that we are at war. We are in a spiritual battle - & we are winning. In fact, if you realised what was already established in the spiritual realm, you would laugh at the devil every time he showed his face. So if today the devil has control of an area of your life,- your church or your community, rise up in the spirit through faith, prayer & the Word & start taking that territory back. Do not be afraid. His defence has departed from him. He has not got a weapon that can stand against you.


The Lord is with you. Rise up & take back the land.


We see in Exodus 14:10-21 that water was in front of the children of Israel & Pharaoh & his army were behind them. They were trapped & had one of three options: Surrender, trust God or fight. But we need to be still as God works, then we will see His deliverance.


Godly living is living with God in your life & His life in you. He give us guidelines to help build His precepts in our lives. God calls us to acts of faith to that build godliness. Without faith, our acts
become vain religion. 

Godliness embraces godly practices & shuns vain religious acts.
Num 33:51-53 Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: When you cross the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, you must drive out all the people living there. You must destroy all their carved and molten images and demolish all their pagan shrines. Take possession of the land and settle in it, because I have given it to you to occupy.


God Has given you a promised land it's a place that is flowing with milk & honey, where your every need can be met. a place where you can keep sin underfoot as you rule & reign with Christ. A place where no weapons formed against you will prosper. A place where you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, far above principalities & powers—far from oppression.


You may be saying, yes, that sounds great in theory, but I'm dealing with reality. The rent is due, & all I see is sickness, oppression & fear. That doesn't look like much of a promised land to me.


Are you still letting the devil live there? He's not going to pack up & go home, you know, God has promised you victory, you must to kick him out.


Don't let that scare you, God has given you the power to do it. Remember What Jesus said. I give you power to dread on serpents & scorpions, & over all power of the enemy; & nothing by any means shall hurt you (Luke 10:19).


Not only that the devil is totally unarmed! col 2:5
In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. The A M P puts it this way When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities [those supernatural forces of evil operating against us], He made a public example of them [exhibiting them as captives in His triumphal procession], having triumphed over them through the cross

Be aware of empty threats which can stop you cold if you believe them. So don't. Instead Believe the Word of God, use the Word & the name of Jesus to drive the devil out of every last detail of your life. Do not let him dwell in your territory. Force him to pack up & go home. & start progressing in your promised land.

Mk 16:17-18 These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe: They will cast out demons in my name, and they will speak in new languages. They will be able to handle snakes with safety, and if they drink anything poisonous, it won’t hurt them. They will be able to place their hands on the sick, and they will be healed 

The signs accredit the gospel message, & cannot be limited to the apostolic age, any more then the Lords commission to carry the gospel throughout the world. The signs therefore confirm the ministries of Christ's ambassadors in every generation. Casting out demons, speaking in tongues & healing all appear in passages of the New Testament, & it is not scriptural for them to cease before the Lord returns. Taking up serpents does not mean handling snakes in religious ceremonies, but casting them away without being harmed (Acts 28:3-6). When Jesus said in Mark 16: 17-18 He intended for us to carry out His command, just as much as in verse fifteen He tells us to take the gospel into all the world. It is such a dangerous business to pick & choose among the Scriptures. If we are going to follow the full Gospel, we cannot take just the Scriptures we are comfortable with & ignore the rest. We need the whole counsel of God's Word & not just bits & pieces of it. 

James 5:7-9 Dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen. You, too, must be patient. Take courage, for the coming of the Lord is near. Don’t grumble about each other, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. For look—the Judge is standing at the door!

 Patience is not just the ability to wait; it is the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting. Now James is not saying to be patient if you wait; he says be patient as you wait. Waiting is a part of life. Many do not wait well, & yet we spend more time in our lives waiting then we do receiving. Ask God to help you wait well. James is encouraging his readers to be patient with the reminder that the coming of the Lord is near, at which time God will fulfil His function as judge to reward the righteous & punish the wicked. We must understand that we have to develop patience to receive the harvest & the crown that you desire, you must persevere. The testing of faith produces patience which is the ability to endure, that is the hallmark of the mature believer. Only under the pressure of trials can the believer see his depth of his faith in God. The established heart will not waver, but will rejoice in the knowledge of the goodness of God.



John 1: 1,14 (AMP) In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. (14) And the Word (Christ) became flesh, and lived among us; and we [actually] saw His glory, glory as belongs to the [One and] only begotten Son of the Father, [the Son who is truly unique, the only One of His kind, who is] full of grace and truth (absolutely free of deception).


We learn that in the beginning is an allusion to Genesis 1 with intention of linking Jesus with the God of creation. The event of Jesus incarnation, therefore, had a cosmic significance. The Word is Jesus Christ, the eternal, ultimate expression of God. In the Old Testament God spoke the world into existence; in the gospel God spoke His final word through His living Word, His Son. The phrase "The Word was God" attributes deity to the Word without defining the Godhead as "the Word."


The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that can never be bought in to 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 & apostle, John, puts it that in John 1:1&14 anyone who doubts what those verse say could not have born of the kingdom of God. For the deity of Jesus forms the very foundation of our faith in Him.


Yet if you search the gospels, you will see that Jesus didn't go around proclaiming Himself as God during His thirty three years on earth. He acknowledged that He was the Son of God, the Messiah, He referred to God as His Father (which enraged the Pharisees), but He never made the assertion that He was the most high God, in fact He told His disciples that God Father was greater & mightier that He Jn14:28).


The reason is simple He hadn't come to earth just as God. He came as a man. The Word says He set aside His divine power & took the form of a human being—with all it's limitations. Since God was His Father He was not born with the sin nature that had been passed along to the sons of Adam. But by being born of a woman, in all other respects He became a man & called Himself the Son of Man.


You may wonder how He did all those mighty works? The answer is the same way He expects us to them today—by the anointing & by the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38) He said, "It's the Father within Me who does the work."


This means that Jesus meant exactly what He said when He said you as a believer, would be able to do the works that He did. (John 14:12).


It means that you as a reborn child of God filled with the same Holy Spirit as Jesus was, have the opportunity to live as He lived when on earth.


In fact, that is exactly what He intends. He went before you as a man & opened the way. DON"T just admire Him for it Follow Him in it today & everyday.


Understand that the Holy Spirit enables God's people to understand & live by the truth.


Obeying Jesus is the primary evidence that we love Him & are His disciples. Our decision to obey Jesus is the key to understanding the scriptural realities of the Scriptures & frees the Holy Spirit to teach us.


I Tim 6:11-12 But you, Timothy, are a man of God; so run from all these evil things. Pursue righteousness and a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have declared so well before many witnesses.


Keeping our thoughts pure & in the will of God is a life time battle. We must fight the good fight of faith according to verse 12
The mind is the battlefield on which we fight. Satan wages war in the realm of our thoughts because he knows that if he controls our thoughts, he controls us & our destinies. As we live our lives & peruse our destinies, there will be times of fighting the good fight of faith, & if we win enough battles, we will win the war. We need to recognise that excellence in Christian ministry often involve long & arduous struggles. Do not give up; stand firm. 

Endure in your struggle for righteousness regardless of the cost. When you are against the wall, do not start begging God to break through it for you. That is not the way He works. He will give you the plan. He will give you the power. & He will guarantee victory. But it is your hand not His that will get the job done. You are going to have to stretch forth your hand by speaking & acting on the Word, even when circumstances are against you. If for example you see yourself say in church on a Sunday morning then you see a fire breathing dragon enter the church, snorting so much fire it almost burns you. 

Then you see Jesus standing there with a sword in His hand, you are wondering to yourself why doesn't He do something, but no He doesn't move, He just stands there frowning, you know He wants you to do something. We read in 1 Cor 10:5 Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. 

Now you see Jesus hand you the sword & point to that dragon, you know beyond any shadow of doubt that you have to take hold of that sword, but before you touch it Jesus turns it lose. The sword stays in mid air of its own accord, you grab it & it begins to pull you up, not only does it hold firm but it begins to lift you. You stand & touch the dragons chin with the sword & split him from one end to the other. You are truly amazed & wonder why you haven't used that sword before. Don't wait for God to sly the dragons in your life. You have the sword of the Spirit, the all powerful Word of God, at your finger tips. Pick it up & start using it today. We learn in Joshua 5:2-7 that after Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land, they needed to be circumcised before they would be ready to conquer their first city, Jericho.

 After the men had been circumcised, the Lord told Joshua he had rolled away the reproach of Egypt from His people. Now they were able to overcome & capture Jericho. The word reproach means "blame, disgrace or shame." When God said that "He had rolled away the reproach of Egypt from the Israelites, He was making a strong point. Egypt represents the world. & after years of being in the world & becoming worldly, we all need the worlds reproach to be rolled away. I think that about eighty five percent of our problems stem from the way we feel about ourselves.

 In my life I had a shamed nature because certain people had told me that I would never amount to much, so I blamed myself for whatever happened to me, despite the fact that this happened in my childhood. Disgrace told me I was no good—not worthy of God's love or His help. I was constantly ashamed of myself—I didn't like myself. I needed God's help to roll away my reproach. He was willing, but I had to believe it was possible. Now I do believe & I am a completely different person, No more shame, blame or disgrace! I am a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Grace is God's power coming to us, it is His free gift to us to help us do with ease what we cannot do ourselves.

 God wants to give us grace & satan wants to give us disgrace, which is another word for reproach. God's action of rolling away our reproach means we have received the
forgiveness for all our past sins. Self-hatred, self rejection & refusal to accept God's forgiveness that is by not forgiving ourselves, not understanding righteousness through the blood of Jesus, & any related problems will keep us wondering in the wilderness. Our mind must be renewed concerning the right standing we have with God through Jesus—not through our own works. 

We never deserve God's blessings or be worthy of them. We can only humbly accept & appreciate them, of how good He is & how much He loves us. The Bible tells we that we are joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17) He earned our blessings by carrying our reproach to the Cross. Let God roll that reproach off you, & experience the freedom from shame that Jesus wants to give you.




Acknowledgement Kenneth Copeland.

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