Good Plans

Every school teacher spends most of August planning and preparing for the next school year.  It is a time to look at ways we can improve and to imagine how much we are going to accomplish.  It seems that good intentions, like hope, spring eternal.  . 

There is nothing wrong with making good plans, but.....     Proverbs 16:9 points out "A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  In other words, unless the Lord is in it to "will and to work for His pleasure," the plan will not bear fruit.  Isaiah 30:1 even goes so far as to say "Woe to those who devise plans, but not of My Spirit."

We know God works all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Part of that "for good" is opening our heart to realize we need Him, because the temptation in the garden was for man to think he is "like God," and therefore, does not need the God's help.  Yet Ephesians 1 points out that as we grow in "wisdom and revelation of Him" our understanding will be enlightened until He becomes "all in all." 

Jesus spoke and demonstrated that love is laying down His life for His friends.  This same principle can be applied to loving God with all our mind.  We love God by laying down our thoughts and plans and submitting to His.  God wants us to use our mind, only in harmony with His ways.  Therefore, the necessity of seeking Him and learning to hear His voice must preceed the making of plans.  He is not far away, but literally is within our spirits ready to help us know the way.

My instruction, if you wish to walk in victory, is to lay down your thoughts before Him, and ask Him for His plans for the day.  Then be obedient to do what you beleive He is directing.  This step may be easier if you write down what comes to mind as you wait on Him. blessed are those who hear and do His Word.   There is such a sense of peace and accomplishment when you obey and see the fruit of your deeds.  Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph. 

Moses prayed in Exodus 33:13, "Show me now Your way, that I might know you."   The more we seek and find God's way or plan to overcome, the more we will experience knowing the character of God.  God promises to satisfy those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  The key is to desire God's right way of doing things and refuse to settle for anything less than what his peace confirms.  May His peace keep your mind and heart in Christ Jesus as you follow His good plans.  

Fall Like Lightning

 The 70 disciples came back to Jesus with joy saying, "Even the demons are subject to us through Your name."  Jesus replied, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."  (Luke 10:17-18)  Satan has fallen and is defeated.

Jesus, who declared that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him in Matthew 28, also declared that we have been given the right to represent Him through use of His name. When He sent the disciples out He called them together and "gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases."  With His authority what could possibly stop us from overcoming?

In the parable of the sower it is revealed that even though the Word is an incorruptible seed, it can be choked by the weeds (other thoughts and cares) that we allow to live in our hearts.  We see the same principle working in the situation (Mark 9) where the man brought the demon-possessed boy to Jesus.  When he asked Jesus, "If you can do anything?, Jesus replied all things are possible to him who believes.  Notice in the man's response that he did believe, but he also had unbelief.  These weeds, contrary thoughts and soulish cares that produced unbelief, choked his faith and rendered him powerless.   

Jesus is not impressed or moved by many words. He even taught us not to pray like the heathen who repeat many phrases or chants. He is moved by those who declare His Word with authority.  "Let your eye be single" suggests that our focus is on the truth and power of the Word, refusing to look at the waves and the wind that would cause doubt.  He who dies to himself, finds life.  Rejecting what our soulish nature, called our flesh, dictates through the natural senses and choosing to hear the Word which is spirit and truth, produces life. 

The Holy Spirit bears witness to Jesus.  He leads us to know the truth of what Jesus has accomplished.  He further pours the love of God into our hearts so we can by faith understand the absolutely awesome gift of divine nature God has allowed us to share in Christ.  So much so that 1 John 4:17 states, "As He is, so are we in the world." 

Jesus established His church to bind and loose things on earth with the same authority and power of heaven, assuring us that the gates of hell would not prevail. He meant for believers who receive His free gift of righteousness to rule in this life.  He also gave us instruction of how to pray, including the imperative commands, "Thy kingdon, Come!" and "Thy will, Be Done!"  We as the Body of Christ are to do the works that He did and greater ones.  

How do we rule?  Jesus is revealed in Revelation as having a two-edged sword coming out of His mouth.  Likewise, Psalm 149 speaks of believers having the high praises of God in our mouths and the two-edge sword in our hands.   God has entrusted to His faithful ones the authority to use the Word, so He can confirm it with power and signs following.  Therefore, the Holy Spirit is teaching believers today to declare His Word over all situations, and to stand in His authority.  The climax of the armor in Epesians 6 is to "stand therefore, and having done all to stand, stand."  1 Peter 5 calls us to resist steadfast in the faith until God perfects, establishes, strengthens and settles us in the victory.  

 Satan has fallen from heaven like lightning.  Jesus made a public example of him (Colossians 2:15) by defeating him through His death on the cross, and triumphed over him through His resurrection.  The battle is finished, and God is looking for those who would believe it in their hearts and declare it with their lips.  Without faith it is impossible to please God.  Speak the Word in faith.  Fight the good fight of faith by refusing to let the weeds of unbelief detract you from standing strong in Jesus' name and authority.  Faith pleases God and causes us to overcome the world (1 John 5:4).  

 

Apart From Me You Can Do Nothing

Nothing offends our flesh like the truth.  Yet when Jesus pointed out that "apart from Me you can do nothing" in John 15, He wasn't putting us down.  Rather, the purpose was to set us free from self-reliance so we could become fruitful uniting with Him.  Jesus also shares the resulting promise, "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full."

Man was created to walk humbly with God.  Adam and Eve were given the ability and the commission to keep and maintain the garden, but as we all know, sin destroyed their harmony with God and their capability to rule righteously.  Sin produces death not life.

However, in God's infinite wisdom He sent Jesus to destroy the work of the enemy and restore the God-given position and role for which man was created.  This restoration comes because believers are now brought into an amazing new creation, called "in Christ" in the Scriptures.  As Galatians 2:20 declares, "I am crucified in Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live is by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."  The book of Ephesians further explains that in Christ is "every spiritual blessing" and that God "raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."  Through Jesus, and in Jesus' righteousness, we have received His gift to rule as kings on the earth again.  

As the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 reveals the son of the virgin shall be called Emmanuel, God with us. Since man did not and could not obey the law to produce life, God chose to send Jesus to accomplish the necessary work of redemption, which opened the way for the Holy Spirit to produce an indwelling of God Himself in us.  In the awesome miracle of new creation or restoration, we become a temple of the Holy Spirit and God Himself personally and permanently dwells in us.  Through the infinite unity of the Godhead, John 14:23 reveals that if we love Him and obey His word, Jesus and the Father "will come and make our home with him."  We are meant to live in Christ and Christ in us, and through this glorious mystery have God in us.  

We, as kings and priests of God's kingdom, have been given authority and called to rule in this life on the earth (Romans 4:25).  However, fleshly wisdom and doing just what is right in our own eyes will only produce strife and every evil thing.  As the founding fathers of the United States sought to establish a government based on the principles of God's Word (In Isaiah 33 God is declared king, judge, and lawgiver, which represents the three branches of the new government.), George Washington rightly stated that it is "impossible to rule without God."  

Psalm 72 starts with an honest prayer request, "Give the king knowledge of Your way of judging, O God, and the spirit of Your righteousness." (Amp)  God's thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than man's ways and thoughts, so the only way we can "rule" is to have His ways of judging and His discernment of what is right.  It is likewise impossible to parent effectively, to make wise decisions, or to be a godly influence on other people without seeking His wisdom and discernment to know how to handle things in His way.  

Many people are shaken about what is going on in the world and are wondering what God is up to in the current situations.  At least two major things are indicated by the Scriptures.  First, as Jesus prayed in John 17:21, "that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me."  God plan, which will open the hearts of people in the world to believe, is to change the hearts of believers to be in unity. The good news is that Jesus' prayer is sure to be fulfilled and the world will stand in awe as Christians love one another.  Before the Spirit fell in Acts 2, the believers were of one heart and mind, so likewise this unity of beievers will be accompanied by a fresh anointing of the Spirit. Note the anointing promise in Psalm 133 when brothers dwell in unity.  

Secondly, the Spirit was given, as Jesus stated in Acts 1, to make us witnesses of Him to the ends of the earth.  Jesus has paid the price for all men to be saved from the consequences of sin and come to the loving knowledge of God.  He is worthy of His reward (Phillippians 2) for His obedient suffering unto death.  Believers are the light of the world and the salt of the earth that draws others to Jesus.

As the world is challenging Christians and seeking to remove God from the public sector, God is raising up a mighty army that refuses to obey man rather than God.  Notice in Acts 4 how the early Christians, after being threatened by the world to keep quiet about Jesus and His resurrection, cried out to the Holy Spirit to enable them to speak the Word of God with boldness.  God's reply not only refilled them but also shook the house!  So clearly, the second major work of the Spirit today is moving on believers to cry out to God for anointing to be bold witnesses of Jesus Christ.  God is seeking Christian witnesses who refuse to be intiminated but rather speak boldly about the Lord in word and deed.  

Jesus' purpose for declaring that apart from Him we could do nothing, as stated in John 15, is for us to abide in Him and let His word abide in us, that we might bear much fruit, prove to be His disciples, and glorify the Father.  The time has come when the Body of Christ must depend upon God for His ways,  stand in the gap for each other with greater intensity, and be a living epistle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.   Let God be magnified. 

Do What is In Your Power

Anyone overwhelmed by the frontal assaults of the enemy on God's standards for life?  

The very foundations of the purpose of life, such as existence of God, His creating everything, the primary call to know and serve God, the authority of God's Word as truth, the role of marriage, sex, and gender that He established, and His command to love one another, etc. are being openly mocked and deliberately overridden by the new "man-made rules."  How clearly Psalm 11 describes this drastic situation, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"  We are seeing a bad tree bearing bad fruit, much like what happened in Judges when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes."  Man's rebellion leaves the world in a desperate condition.

However, God is not mocked.  This degradation of mankind and the rebellion against God's standards did not take the Lord by surprise.  Notice how Jesus addresses this challenge in John 16:33, "These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Not only has Jesus overcome the world, but He has passed the victory torch to us.  This is revealed in 1 John 5:4, "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that overcomes the world--our faith."  When we were born again and filled with the Spirit, we literally are "Christian" or "little Christs" that walk in the same overcoming life and power of God as Jesus did.  This awesome gift is completely because of what Jesus has done, and has nothing to do with our being good or holy enough to do this. Just as Paul explained to the Romans that those who "receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ."  The torch of overcoming power has been given to us.  What are we going to do with it? 

Consider two defintie instructions that give direction.  First, fight the good fight of faith.  If you remember Jesus, after sharing the parable about the persistent widow seeking justice in Luke 18, asks the question, "when the Son of Man comes,will He find faith on the earth?"  So clearly there is a definite need to"build yourselves up on your most holy faith" (Jude 1:20).  We live by faith, not by sight; by what Jesus has done instead of how strong we feel.  Faith, of course, comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. It is not a little thing to take time each day and give attention to the Word of God.  Come to Him with a hunger and thirst for a "rhema" word like you have to have it or you will die.  There is more truth in that comment than our flesh wants to admit.  We must have faith to please God. 

Secondly, there is a principle with God stated in Proverbs 3:27, "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so."  In other words, do what is in your power.  We can't do everything may be true, but it is not an acceptable excuse.  We can do something.  

We have been given authority in the name of Jesus to destroy enemy strongholds.  We have the blood of Jesus and the word of testimony that overcomes Satan.  We can declare the Word of God and let God confirm His truth.  We can submit to God and resist the enemy causing him to flee.  We are not helpless, but rather fully equipped to stand and see God "crush Satan under our (your) feet!"   

Often the "something" we can do is to be faithful in the "little" things so God can do the much.  Pray, read the Word and release His power by declaring His truth.  Put on the armor and stand, taking authority in the name of Jesus over the powers of darkness that you see working.  Unite with other Christians.  There is great power in being one in heart and mind "when two or three agree."  Do not let yourself be weary in well doing, but be refreshed in His presence,  Do what is in your power and see the salvation, or overcoming victory, that the Lord desires and deserves.  He is worthy.