Righteousness! Chapter Fourteen
John made a very interesting statement in John
5:16-18, and if we are not careful we will skim right over it. He said,
"So, because Jesus was
doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to
them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am
working.” For this
reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the
Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal
with God.
Can you image what those people would say today if
they heard us call God our Father? I bet that you never saw yourself as an
equal with Jesus! If we call God our Father we are making Jesus our equal. If
God is Jesus Father and we are His brothers and sisters, what does that make
us? Equal with both God and Jesus!
Anyone that is born again is an equal with both God
and Jesus! Let me emphatically say
that we are not our Father and we are not Jesus and never will be, however, we
are of the same kind because we have been born of God and it is not blasphemy
to consider yourself to be equal with God and Jesus! Paul told us exactly how
we should consider our self in Phil. 2:5-7,
"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in
the form of God, thought
it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men: "
Jesus was in the form of
His Father, God and so are we. In the very beginning God said, "Let us make
man in our image and our likeness and let them have dominion...!" This is
the same God who spoke the world into existence and calls things that be not
into existence! Rom. 4:17
We have the same ability to call things into
existence!!! Jesus said in Mark 9:23,
" If you can believe, all things are possible to him
that believes."
Jesus told His disciples in Matt. 18:19,
"If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that
they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
He also told them in Mark
11:22-26,
"Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto
this mountain, Be removed, and be 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 so ever 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. But if
you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your
trespasses."
The carnal mind really has
a difficult time believing these things! We know that these things are true
because of our faith in Jesus. We know that Jesus would never tell us to do
anything that was impossible for us to do! Don't we???? If you will take the
time to think and meditate on these thing and get the doubt out of you carnal
mind, it will change your life.
It is one thing to say I
believe the word of God, but it is another thing to have faith that the Word
will work for you!!! Faith is an active word! We are always asking our
Christian friends to pray about something. If we really believe the words of
Jesus, it will only take someone who will agree with us to pray and it will
come to pass. It does not take a multitude of believers praying to get the
results. It only takes two people to agree and walk in faith that God has heard
their request to get the results.
10,000 Christians praying
without believing that it will come to pass will not get the job done! It will
come to pass if we can find two people who will agree and believe that they
have received the object of their prayer!!!
Someone will say,
"Well, Dave, what am I to do after I have prayed believing that I have
received from God? Can I ask Him every day about what I believed?"
If you go back to our
Father and ask Him again for the same thing, it only means that you didn't
believe that He answered your prayers the first time but if you believe that He
answered your prayer the first time, then you can thank Him every day for the
object of your prayer coming into existence!
This is activating your
faith because you believe that you have received what you asked for. Because
you believe you have received the object of your prayer, you can rejoice and
thank God for answering your prayer! Someone will say, "Well, why if it is
not God's will to give me what I asked Him for ?"
Listen very carefully to
what John said in 1 John 5:14-15,
"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 hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we
desired of him.
This is why we have to work on having our minds
renewed according to the Word of God. Get in the Word of God and see what God
has promised to you and what His will for you is. Do you know what Paul had to
say about this very thing? Maybe you should mediate on what he said in 2 Cor.
1:18-20, (NIV)
"But as surely as God
is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not “Yes” and “No,”
but in him it has always
been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are
“Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory
of God.
He also said in 2 Cor.
4:18,
"While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things
which are not seen are eternal."
Paul said that we don't look at the circumstances that are seen!
The things that our minds can see will tell us that in the natural what we are
seeing is the real thing and it is very easy to believe this because that is
what our eyes are telling us. However, because we believe in the integrity of
God's word, we don't accept what our eyes are telling us and we choose to
believe what God said because He is not a man that He should lie! Num. 23:19
The life that we live as Christians is lived by faith and not by
sight. We have five senses that tell us what to believe while we are in this
body of flesh. However, God has told us that we are not to accept everything we
see or hear as the truth. Through out the New Testament we are told that we are
to believe God and walk by faith. This is not always easy to do when our eyes
are telling us something else. Our lives, or the way we live them, are to be
lived by faith in God and what He says about us is true!
Jesus told us to have faith in God!!! Mark 11:22 Faith is what calls things that be not in the
natural to come into existence! If we really believe in God and what He says,
we will say the same things that He says, irregardless of what our five senses
are telling us.
What we see with our eyes does not always agree with what the word
of God tells us! However, we do have the authority to declare how things are
going to be! Mark 11:22 Walking by
faith is not always the easiest thing to do! This is why it is so important to
be in the Word of God and declare what His word says is the truth!