Expectation (part 1)

When I was in the shower Sunday, I just got this sense that the Lord was telling me to focus on “expectation” in my message. That changed what I’d originally planned, but I went with it.

Matthew 7:7-11 (NKJV) “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

A few points come across really strong to me in this passage:
- ask, expecting to receive
- expect to receive something good, not something bad
- Ask recognizing we’re talking to our Father

I want to develop these points further over the next few days.

Doug

Wherever you go, God goes

Have you ever thought about God being inside you, and what it means?

2 Corinthians 6:16 (NKJV) And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people.”

Where you go, God goes. Not just in His Omnipresence, but in His personhood inside you.
When you speak to someone, you are speaking as one with God inside, who has the ability to hear God’s voice (John 10:4)
When you pray for someone, God is inside your hands.

We are Christ’s ambassadors – His representatives (2 Cor 5:20). But unlike earthly ambassadors, the One we represent is inside us, not just in a far-off land.

This truth needs to be mediated on more within the church.

Doug

Worship is noisy!

There are many traditions for worshipping God within the church today. I was reading Isaiah 6 one day and realized that worship in heaven is NOISY!

Isaiah 6:1-4 (NIV) In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

That’s a powerful shout, if it’s enough to shake heaven’s doorposts.

The above passage was set about 740BC, according to the NIV Study Bible. If you fast-forward about 835 years to 95AD, the seraphs are still at it:

Revelation 4:6-8 (NLT) In front of the throne was a shiny sea of glass, sparkling like crystal.
In the center and around the throne were four living beings, each covered with eyes, front and back. The first of these living beings was like a lion; the second was like an ox; the third had a human face; and the fourth was like an eagle in flight. Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered all over with eyes, inside and out. Day after day and night after night they keep on saying,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty— the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”

We also see 24 elders speaking and the throne thundering. In Revelation 5, we see the elders with harps singing, and millions of angels singing loudly. They were declaring the worthiness of the One on the throne and the Lamb. Let’s let our own worship do the same thing.

Doug

All believers are righteous

We’re all familiar with Romans 3:23 – “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (NKJV). This is one of the verses that contributes to a “sinner saved by grace” mindset, rather than a “righteousness of God” mindset.

Let’s read it in context:

Romans 3:21-24 (NIV) (21) But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. (22) This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, (23) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (24) and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Verse 22 says that righteousness – being in right-standing with God – is through faith in Christ Jesus, and it is to all who believe. “For there is no difference” says to me that all believers are righteous – not that some are more righteous (have better standing with God) than others – all believers have the same right-standing with God even as all have sinned.

Verse 24 says that those who believe are justified (“just as if I’d never sinned”), or “declared righteous” (paraphrase from NLT) freely by grace as a part of the plan of redemption.

Kenneth Copeland once told the story of a man – a known heavy drinker and wife-beater, but considered a member in good standing of his church. He started to see that he was righteous, and quit doing that stuff. He started telling people in his church that he was righteous, and they kicked him out of that church within 90 days! They couldn’t deal with a man saying he was righteous, I guess.

Why should we hang on to the sin tag that Christ redeemed us from?

Doug

All things are possible for believers

In my last post, I wrote about all things being possible with God. This post is the flip-side of that post.

In Mark 9, a man had asked Jesus’ disciples to cast a demon out of his son. They were unable to. Jesus asked that the son be brought to him. The father asked if Jesus could do anything about it.

Mark 9:23 (NKJV) Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

In Matthew’s account of this story (Matt 17:9-21), Jesus follows up this deliverance with these words:

Matthew 17:20 (NLT) “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

We find statements like this throughout the gospels.

• In Matthew 9:29, Jesus told two blind men asking for healing “According to your faith will it be done to you.” (NIV)
• In Matthew 15:28, Jesus told the Syrophoenician (Canaanite) woman that her faith was great and her request to deliver her daughter from demon possession would be granted.
• In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus saw the faith of the men that opened the roof to let their friend down into the house.
• In Mark 5:34, Jesus was speaking to the woman with the issue of blood. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (NIV)
• In Luke 17:11-19, he told the leper that returned to give thanks “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.” (NLT)

Where is our faith at? Who is our faith in? Do we have that mustard seed of faith?

Doug

With God, all things are possible

Two verses in particular state make the statement that nothing is impossible for God – Luke 1:37 and Mark 10:27 (both NLT here).

The first was what the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her she would bear Jesus. She asked how this would be possible, given she was a virgin. Gabriel said “For nothing is impossible with God.”

The second place is after the rich young ruler left Jesus (Mark 10). Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to go to heaven. The disciples asked who could be saved. Verse 27

Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.”

Everything is possible with God. Nothing is too big for God.

He can deliver from enemy armies (2 Chronicles 20).
He can pay off a debt (2 Kings 4:1-7).
He can make an axe head float (2 Kings 6:1-7).
He can stop time (Joshua 10:12-14) or turn it back (Isaiah 38:1-8).
He can raise the dead (John 11), heal the blind (John 9), lame (Mark 2:1-12), the leper (Mark 1:40-45), and those with crippled body parts (Mark 3:1-6).
He can feed thousands from one lunch (John 6:1-14) (Listen to my sermon “Multiplication” from 7/26/2009).
He can part the Red Sea (Exodus 14).

If God can take care of all of that, then no problem we face is too big for Him.

Doug

Faith is a fight

Towards the end of Paul’s ministry, he wrote this:

1 Timothy 6:12 (NIV) Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

In the NLT it says “Hold tightly to the eternal life…” You might say “I received eternal life when I received Christ as my Savior” – and you are correct. John 10:10 in the Amplified describes this zoe life as “in abundance, to the full, till it overflows”. Have we actively laid hold on abundance and victory? Do we stake our spot in faith, or just drift along? Do we take full advantage of what has been given to us? Will we fight for it when challenged?

Kenneth Hagin wrote “A good fight is a fight that you win”. Many Christians are passive about their faith, and have attitudes like “If I don’t bother the devil, he won’t bother me”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, we wind up as “target practice” – we’re an easy mark for when the demons get tired of dealing with believers that stake their claim.

Look at Job. He lived such a good life that God bragged on him. The enemy asked permission to attack him because of his goodness – not because Job was messing up his evil plans. And God allowed it! Graham Cooke put it this way: “God will allow in his wisdom what He could easily prevent with his power” (I will develop this further another time). God believes that what He has put inside Job – and us – is able to make us victorious. Job came through his trials. We can too, with the right attitude of faith.

God made us more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). Have you decided to be one?

(See my Recent Reading page for some suggested material).

Doug

Passion and Compassion

Passion. Compassion. As I listened to Heidi Baker recently, I saw how those two words summed up the Great Commandment:

Luke 10:25-28 (NKJV) And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What 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 He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”

What are you passionate about? Who or what drives your life? What thing(s) are your first priority? What do you spend your time doing?

How much do you love your neighbor? The instructor in Moses’ law responded “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus gave the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-36). After Jesus described the (non)actions of the Priest and the Levite, and the compassion of the Samaritan, he said “Go and do likewise” (verse 37).

Jesus demonstrated his passion for His Father, and his compassion for mankind, in both His life and death.

Where is your passion and compassion?

Doug

The praise of men

This passage is talking about believers that were more interested in impressing man than God:

John 12:42-43 (NKJV) Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

Other translations say “they loved the approval and the praise and the glory that comes from men” (Amplified) and “they preferred human praise to the glory of God” (NAB).

It’s human nature to want to please people, as they are tangible, they’re in our face every day, and we have to live with them. The reward is immediate – and so is the criticism when we fall short of what man expects of us. By comparison, we know God’s there, but we don’t get that same sense of tangibility, approval and reward from Him.

I was in meetings in Cleveland this past week with Georgian and Winnie Banov and Heidi Baker. Heidi’s two messages spoke to me. As I was listening Thursday morning, I thought of Ananias and Sapphira:

Acts 4:34-35, 5:1-2 (NLT) There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need…
But there was a certain man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount. With his wife’s consent, he kept the rest.

Read Acts 5:1-11 for the rest of the story. Ananias and Sapphira wanted to impress people with their generosity. They were not required to give everything they had. God would have honored them more for their honesty.

They both died. Did God kill them? I don’t believe so. Exodus 33 shows that God’s goodness and glory are too much for man to see and live. My personal opinion is that they caught a glimpse of the goodness of God compared to their acts, and their hearts failed them.

Did they go to heaven? I believe so, if they had faith in Jesus Christ. They just went earlier than they planned, and instead of leaving a legacy for the kingdom, they leave a warning of the false value of trying to impress men.

Doug