When the devil comes, we need to say, 'Glory to God! here's a chance for me to use my faith!'Then throw the problem back to him with God's Word and we will come out stronger than when we went in.
As long as we live down here, we're going to have trouble with the devil.He tries to stir up negative circumstances, symptoms, thoughts, imaginations and trials.He does anything he can to discourage us and make us want to quit.It's a fact we must face!
Faith helps us fight and overcome the enemy when he attacks us with problems.The only way that we will never have any more troubles with the devil, is to die.We can count on him to bring trouble our way.John 10:10 says "The thief [devil] comes not but for to kill, steal and destroy."
"Fight the good fight of faith,lay hold on eternal life,whereunto thou art also called,and hast professed a good professionbefore many witnesses.1 Timothy 6:12
God's Word is full of truths to empower us to cast off symptoms, tests and trials that may come.We can walk in victory!
The more we push off the enemy's attacks [symptoms, tests, trials, temptations] the stronger our faith will get and the quicker problems will leave.
Who wants to take on a cold and sit back saying, "Well, I'm going to learn from this cold"?What can be learned from a cold anyway......except that not ever wanting another one.
We can either let tests and trials get into our lives and put pressure on us
or we can use our faith to push them out of our lives.
We must decide if we are going to go after those tests and trials and conquer them!
When symptoms come, we tell our bodies:"You're healed because Jesus bore our sicknesses."After all, we're not the sick trying to get healed.We are the healed trying to stay well!
People will either grow using their faith against tests and trials OR they will go under when they face the same tests and trials.It's what we do or how we stand against the problems that makes the difference. Faith grows in trials by believing what God's Word says.
Patience is a steady, consistent endurance.When we walk in patience, we're not up some days and down on others.We base everything on God's Word, not our feelings for the day.
We're not perfected because of a bunch of problems that have come along.We're perfected because we stick with the Word of God in the middle of the problems and patiently endure.That's when patience has its perfect work.
James didn't say, "Let those tests and trials have their perfect work."He said, "Let patience have her perfect work. . . ."Trials and tests don't perfect us. It's what we do with them that counts.
"2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
.3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
.4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."James 1:2-4
We develop faith by using God's Word when problems come against us.The Word works for us when we work the Word!
Strong faith only comes by exercising the faith we have against something that is not of God's Word.
Every time we defeat problems in Jesus' name we gain strength spiritually.
It is what we do with tests and trials that makes the difference.We won't be strong in faith unless we exercise faith in them. Every time we overcome problems in Jesus' name we get stronger.
Though we're not of this would, we still live in this world so tests, trials and temptations are bound to come our way.Many think tests and trials come to make us strong. Some even taught that sickness and disease come to teach us lessons.The truth is that none of them will ever make us strong.
Our God moves in many different ways as He leads us into healing and whatever else we need.We must stay sensitive to His Spirit so that wherever He leads, we follow His flow.
Sometimes God wants to demonstrate His love and compassion for us.He knows we will retain and understand a greater amount of what we both hear and see.He will also go out of His way to demonstrate to us that the Holy Spirit flows in many different directions.
God says we are healed by the stripes that Jesus bore.That healing Word is truth in our lives because we believe it and act upon it. We act healed, we talk healed and we think healed.
Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:18 say God cannot lie or fail to keep His Word.So just as surely as we can trust that the "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" in Romans 10:13, we can believe "by His [Jesus'] stripes ye were healed" 1 Peter 2:24.
When we say God does something sovereignly, we simply mean God does something according to His Word at His own discretion. He initiates it.God cannot and will not sovereignly do anything outside of His Word because He's bound Himself to His Word.
Faulty religious thinking believes God will take our money, steal our health and knock us in the heads to keep us in line.
They believe that's just the kind of mood God is in most of the time.
One thing is for certain, religious people who think that way don't know God or His Word.
Religious people who don't know the Word says, "God is a sovereign God. If He wants us healed, we'll get healed. If He wants us sick, we'll stay sick. But God may want us sick and broke. Whatever will be, will be."According to that way of thinking, it wouldn't do us any good to believe God's Word because we'll still get whatever God wants us to have.
God is good to us and shows us in His Word how to receive the blessings He's provided.We receive by faith the healings we desire.
God expects us to use faith to get our own miracles.We are to reach out by faith and take ahold of whatever we need from God's Word.It belongs to us!
We can move into the realm of faith to receive answers any time we need them.When we exercise our faith in God's Word, we release the same power and get the same results as when God moves sovereignly.We don't have to wait to see if God sends a miracle, we walk by faith, not by sight!
Sometimes people get healed out of the blue.It doesn't look like they did a thing to receive it.They weren't standing in faith; they just got healed!
Happy New Year 2012
