The Lord said through David in Psalm 46:10,

 

"Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth."

 

David said this in Psalm 105:8-15, talking about the Lord God,

 

"He remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance, when they were few in number, indeed very few, and strangers in it.

 

When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people, He permitted no one to do them wrong; Yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes, saying, "Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm."

 

Our God is a covenant making God and He watches over His word to perform it! When He makes a covenant, you can go to the bank with it! He is not a man, that He should lie, not the son of Man, that He should repent! Num. 23:19, (NKJV)

 

"God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?"

 

There are so many prophecies in the Bible that are waiting to be fulfilled. Isaiah 11:6-9, (NKJV)

 

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the young goat, The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; Their young ones shall lie down together; And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra's hole, And the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

 

This is just a sample of what is to happen in the world. Do we believe these prophecies? You will say, "Yes, I believe these prophecies!" James said in Ja. 2:19-20, (NKJV)

 

"You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?" 

 

We can say, "Oh, I believe every word in the Bible is true!" But do we add to our believing, faith? Faith is and active verb. If you believe that Jesus was the Son of God and He only spoke the truth and never lied to us, are you doing what He told us to do? Jesus said in Mark 11:23-25,

 

"For verily I say unto you, "That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 'Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he says shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he says.' Therefore, I say unto you, "What things soever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."

 

Wow! That is a mouth full! Notice, that we are to believe that what we say will come to pass. That can only come to pass if we really know who we are in Christ Jesus! That is possibly the greatest statement Jesus ever made. He was teaching His disciples about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of authority. Jesus is the King of Kings and He has given believers the authority to declare what they desire and know that those desires will come to pass.

 

So many prayers are prayers of unbelief. By that I mean, Jesus said that we have the authority to speak to the things that we are faced with and declare what we desire. If we go to Him and, instead of declaring what He told us we can do, we ask Him to do it for us, we are showing a lack of faith!

 

So many times, we are asking God to do something for us, when He is waiting for us to declare His word to the situation. We can get by with that if we are babes in Christ, however, the day will come when we have to grow up and be an adult and declare what His word says!

 

Another example is that when we pray, we ask the Lord to forgive us all of our sins. Well, that sounds good, but if you search the New Testament to see if Jesus or any of His disciples ever told us to ask Him to forgive us, you will find none. Jesus did give the people of His day a prayer in Matt. 6:9-13,

 

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

 

This is a prayer example given to the Jews while they were still under the Law. Jesus had not yet paid the price for our sins. However, after Jesus paid the price for our sins, when the people ask Peter what they needed to do to be saved, Peter told them in Acts 2:38

 

"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

 

Notice that Peter told them to repent! The writer of Hebrews in Heb. 8:10-13, recorded what God said,

 

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he says, A new covenant, he has made the first old. Now that which decays and waxes old is ready to vanish away."

 

John said in 1 John 5:13-15,

 

'These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he hears us: And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him."

 

Let me ask you a question. Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life? Do you know that when you die you are going to heaven? Let me share with you, without going into an in-depth study, an account of a lawyer coming to Jesus in Luke 10:25-29,

 

"And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him,  "hat is written in the law? What is your reading of it?" So, he answered and said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And Jesus said to him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live." But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

 

I'm sure you have read this many times and have a surface understanding of what it means. Let me make a very bold statement to you! You will never know the deep things of God without them being revealed to you by the Holy Spirit! I was taught as a child that we don't need prophecy or any of the gifts of the Spirit, listed in 1 Cor. 12, anymore because we now have the Bible and all we have to do is what it says. However, if you want to know the mind of Christ, you must seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

 

I want you to notice that Jesus said, "What is your understanding of it?" >You can read the Bible through every year, but what is your understanding of it? The lawyer gave Jesus what the letter of the Law said and Jesus said, "That's right!" But the man wanted to justify himself and asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor!' Jesus answered him and said,

 

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So, he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.' So, which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him,  "Go and do likewise."

 

To understand this parable of the Lords, we need to know something about who Samaritans were. This is the name given to the new and mixed inhabitants whom Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria brought from Babylon and other places and settled in the cities of Samaria. After the return from the Captivity, the Jews in Jerusalem refused to allow them to take part with them in rebuilding the temple, and hence sprang up an open enmity between them. The bitter enmity between the Jews and Samaritans continued in the time of our Lord: the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. (John 4:9; compare Luke 9:52, 53). Our Lord was in contempt called "a Samaritan" (John 8:48). Many of the Samaritans early embraced the gospel (John 4:5-42; Acts 8:25; 9:31; 15:3).

 

Those who professed to be the chosen people of God passed by the injured man and never offered to assist him. Then came along a Catholic, or a Pentecostal, or a Nazarene, or a Jehovah Witness and attended to the man's needs. Someone that the Jews looked down on! How like the Jews we are sometimes! We think that we are the very chosen of God and yet we fail to keep His commandments!

Can you understand now, it is one thing to know what the Bible says and an entirely different thing to do what it says! This is a very fundamental rule in the Kingdom of God. Jesus said in Matt. 7:12, (NKJV)

 

"Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

 

Jesus also said in Matt. 7:26-27

 

"But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."

 

Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:11-15,

 

"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abides which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire."

 

As we learn to walk by the Spirit of God, we will find that these things will become natural for us to do! Just as natural as breathing in and breathing out. Paul said in Gal. 5:22-36,

 

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another."