Happy New Year!

First off I want to wish all the readers of this blog a very blessed 2013 – may you receive all the abundant blessings that Jesus paid the full price for!  That is what I’m determined to receive this year, and I wish it for all of you too.

Then the next thing I want to do is share a message with you that I heard on the 30^th of December because it made a huge impact on me.  It is once again a message that I stumbled across – I was watching TV while DH was taking a very long nap and there was just nothing on the regular channels, and when I saw that Cref.lo Dol.lar’s program was on TBN, I decided to watch it as I wanted to see one of his programs for a while now, but somehow just never got around to recording one.  I believe the Holy Spirit was guiding me to watch this specific program…  Since I did not plan to watch it I did not record it, so I’ll have to tell this from memory, and I hope the message comes across as strong as I heard it…

Luke 1:26-38 (NKJV):  “²⁶ Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”

²⁹ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. ³⁰ Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. ³³ And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

³⁴ Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”

³⁵ And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. ³⁷ For with God nothing will be impossible.”

³⁸ Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.”

Just put yourself in Mary’s shoes here for a moment.  Just think how difficult it must have been to believe that what the angel said was true.  Never in all of history was a baby conceived without the act of intercourse with a man.  Even in today’s day and age it is generally thought to be impossible.  Any doctor will tell you so.  It’s just us Christians who actually believe that is what happened.  But Mary never heard of such a thing, yet she believed the angel Gabriel.

The angel Gabriel told her; “³⁷ For with God nothing will be impossible,” and she believed him.  More than that, she replied; “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”  In Mary’s case God’s Word acted as a sperm and fertilized one of her eggs, because the Bible says in John 1:1-5: “¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. ⁴ In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehendit.”  The Bible is speaking of Jesus here, calling Him the Word.

Now just think of all the impossible things in your life and this New Year start to believe for that.  Believe that all your debts would be paid off supernaturally, or that you will be miraculously healed of something that the doctors say cannot be cured.

“For with God nothing will be impossible.”

Do you think it’s impossible to fall pregnant?

“For with God nothing will be impossible.” 

Do you have a problem that makes it impossible to get pregnant naturally?

“For with God nothing will be impossible.”

Whatever your problems are insert them in here:   ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“For with God nothing will be impossible.”

³⁸ Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”

Why don’t you insert your name here in verse 38; “³⁸ Then ……………… said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word,” and speak this verse out over your life.

Not only that, but go to God’s Word (the Bible) and see what it says about your specific problem and speak that over your life too.  Let God’s Word act like a “sperm” in your life too, like it did in Mary’s life, so that you too can become “pregnant” and receive the impossible in your life.

I’m sure your problem is not as impossible as what Mary had to believe for, but even if it seems impossible to you, stop limiting God, and just trust that He will take care of the impossible for you…

Read Full Post »

The spiritual world and the physical world:

Here is some more from the teaching of An.drew Wom.mack that I started yesterday:

“See God has already given, but we look at our experience – well, so and so died, it couldn’t be God’s will to heal everybody.  See here is the problem – most people interpret God’s word by their experience.  They say, “Here is what God’s word says, but here is what happened!”  What is the answer?  Well, they come up with all kinds of things.  “Maybe it wasn’t God’s will.  Maybe God says no.”

God will never say no to something He’s already said yes to.  2 Corinthians 1, I believe its verse 26 says, “All the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him amen unto the Glory of God.” That means they are all positive, they are already yes, anything God promised you when He says that it’s His will that you be in health and prosper even as your soul prospers then God has already said yes to that.  You don’t have to wonder whether God is going to say no.  It’s not God saying no, God said yes!

But here we’ve got a conflict – every one of us can probably see examples in our life where God’s word promised us something to the best of our knowledge, we did what God said, and we didn’t see it come to pass.  How do you harmonize the 2?    Well you start with the scripture that I used this morning, Romans 3:4 says, “Yea, let God be true and every man a liar.”  You can also put in there, let God be true and your circumstances be a liar.  Don’t interpret God’s word by your circumstances; interpret your circumstances by God’s word.

If you’ve got a circumstance that says, “well, I asked God, I believed with all of my heart, and yet it didn’t work…”  The natural conclusion is therefore, “it doesn’t work for everyone.  Not everybody gets healed.  It isn’t God will for everyone to be set free.”  That’s the natural conclusions.  You need to change that, you need to go to God’s word and say, “Can I find a scripture that says that God doesn’t heal every time?  That it’s not God’s will to heal?”  If you can’t find it, then you tell your circumstances that they are wrong…  Amen!

Here is an explanation of this:  There are 2 worlds, there is a spiritual world and there is a physical world, and most people aren’t really aware of the spiritual world and what’s going on in the spiritual world, but it does exist.  As a matter of fact the spiritual world created this physical world that we see.  It says in Hebrews 11, “We understand that the worlds were created by things that are not seen.”  It didn’t say things that don’t exist, they do exist but they aren’t physical.  Everything physical was created by something spiritual.  There is a spiritual reality for everything physical we see.

There is a whole spiritual world out there – did you know that the Bible says that there are angels assigned to each one of us?  Everyone of you have angels that are with you constantly, for your own protection, and I personally believe that in the Old Testament there was a 186 000 angels assigned to one person and if that is so, then what we’ve got makes that look like nothing in comparison!  According to 2 Corinthians 3, every one of us must have hundreds of thousands of angels to our disposal.

Now if you take hundreds of thousands and multiply it times the number of people in this room, then this room is crowded, Amen?  We’ve got all kinds of spiritual things in here but you don’t see it, and most of you, if you don’t see it you don’t think it, and you don’t believe it and you don’t know it exists and therefore you don’t draw on it.

Look at this in 2 Kings 6, this is an example of what we are talking about, this is Elisha, he was the successor to Elijah.  Elisha was a mighty prophet of God and the king of Syria was fighting against the Israelites and every time he would go down and set a trap for the king of Israel, Elisha would be told by God, and he would tell the king of Israel, the King of Israel would send spies out there and they would find that it was true and he would escape.  After a few times of this happening the king of Syria says, “one of us is a spy for the king of Israel.”   One of his servant girls, it was a captive that they’ve taken out of the land of Israel said, “it’s none of us, but there is a prophet in Israel that tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bed chamber.”  When this king heard that, he decided that he is going send his armies down and that he would capture Elisha.  So here is the story of it in verse 13, it says, “Go and spy where he is so that I may send and fetch him, and he was told, in saying, behold he is in Dothan, therefore send he forth horses and chariots and great hosts, and they came by night and encompassed the city about and when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold an host encompassed the city with horses and chariots and his servant said unto him, ‘alas my master, how shall we do?’”

That’s old English for saying, “Man, what are we going to do?”  And then he panicked – he saw these armies and he knew why they were there.  And look at Elisha’s answer.  He said, “fear not for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”

You know if you don’t understand that there is a spiritual world, and that it is real and it exists, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it don’t exist.  Now if you don’t understand that, people would think that Elisha lied.  See a lot of people when it comes to confessing the world of God and saying, “By His stripes I am healed,” and any idiot can look at you and tell that you aren’t healed, Amen?  I mean you look sick, you feel sick; you act sick, anybody can tell that you are sick!  You’re just lying!  It’s just positive lies!

I don’t know if any of you have ever been taken to task for confessing the word of God when it didn’t look so, well, see people who would believe that way would say, “Well, Elisha lied!” He said that there were more with him then there were with the enemy.  And yet you could look out there and count the enemy by the thousands, 1000, 2000, 3000 and here Elisha was saying, one, two…  Amen?  And there was more with him than there was with the enemy?  How do you explain that?  The answer was, that there wasn’t more physically but see in the spiritual realm there were more.

It says in verse 17, “Elisha prayed and said, ‘Lord, I pray that you open his eyes that he may see.’  And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around about Elisha.”  Praise God!  He was speaking the truth.  A person that says that it is a lie to say that you are healed, when you don’t feel healed, what that means is, you’re only looking at the natural realm.  The only thing that you consider to be true is what you see, taste, hear, smell or feel – you’re 5 senses.  And if that is what you consider to be facts, then yes it’s a lie, because according to your physical senses there are times that you speak that you are healed and you don’t feel healed.

But see, one of the keys to walking with the Lord is recognising that you’ve got to walk in the spirit.  There is a spiritual world out there; there are spiritual realities you can’t prove in a test tube.  How do you know what spiritual realities are?

I mean if you want to see the physical truth, if you want to see if your hair is combed, you go look in a mirror.  I have no idea right now if my hair is combed.  I hope it’s combed, but you know I can’t tell by my 5 senses.  I have to look in a mirror and I’ve got to trust what I see in that mirror.  How do you know that mirror is telling you the truth?  You’ve never seen the top of your head, all you’ve ever seen is a representation of it, a reflection of it, you don’t know….  “Well, I’ve seen a reflection, well, I’ve seen a picture…”  You have to take by faith that what you are seeing is true.  Well, see the Bible says that John 6:63, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.”  God’s word says that this is spirit, this is true.

What you read in the Bible is what spiritual truth is, so if you want to see if your hair is combed you go look in a mirror, and if you want to see what your spirit is like or if you want to see what is happening in the spirit then you hold the Bible up and look at it and whatever it says you just believe it.

The Bible says that Elisha had angels and chariots round about him and the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3 that, “What they had, had no glory compared to what we got.”  It says in Peter that, “They were longing for the day that we live in because what we got is so much better than what they’ve got.”  If Elisha had angels and chariots round about him, praise God, I’ve got at least as many as he had and more round about me!  If he was able to take an entire nation captive with the power of God, then praise God I can do the same thing.  There is a whole spiritual world that exists out there.

You know our sister that got born again this morning, praise God for seeing her today, I was talking to her before the service, and I said, you’ve now got Jesus living in the inside of you and the same works that Jesus did you can do also (John 14:12).  You can do all of these things.  She was just looking at me kind of stunned!  That’s the truth – she’s now got God Almighty on the inside of her and as much as she can renew her little peanut brain – I’m not speaking specifically about you – all of us have a little peanut brain – and as much as we can renew our little peanut brain, we can receive this life of God in the inside of us.

But see one of the things that limit it, is we only think in the physical realm.  We say the Bible says, “Ask and you shall receive,” “I asked and I didn’t receive…,” well how do you know?  “Well I didn’t see it!”  Just because you didn’t see it, does that mean God’s word isn’t true and that God didn’t do it?

I want to propose to you – and a lot of you never thought of this, that God can answer your prayer and you don’t even know it.  Because see, God is a spirit, John 4:24 says, “God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship Him and in spirit and truth.”  Did you know that when God answers your prayer He doesn’t give it to you in a physical form?  He gives it to you in spiritual form…  If you ask for finances, finances are material; do you know what God will do?  He will release the spiritual power that it takes to produce those finances into your life, and He will always do it.  If you ask, you do receive.  God gave it.  If you seek, God will give it to you.  God is faithful; God always, always, always answers everything.  If you prayed for healing – God gave you healing, but He gives it to you in spiritual form.  And God’s operation independent of you ends in the spiritual realm.

God is not the one that is going to manifest it into the physical.  Do you know what does that?  Faith!  Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance,” substance is talking about physical tangible reality. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Faith brings into physical tangible reality things that already exist in the spirit.  Faith doesn’t make things happen in the spirit.  They already happened by God’s grace, but your faith brings what God has accomplished into physical reality.  Is everybody following that?  God answers your prayers, but God gives it to you in your spirit and then your faith brings it from the spirit into the physical realm.  So if you’re praying for healing, God releases healing into you, but that don’t mean that you are going to see healing, unless you believe, unless you know how to co-operate.  Faith brings spiritual things into physical form.

An example of this is like radio.  Do you know right now we are using radio for you to hear me?  This microphone is a wireless radio, that’s what it is.  It’s broadcasting the signal over there and it picks it up and is broadcast over the speakers, but did you know that there is more than just this radio signal in this room?  There are literally dozens of radio signals and television signals in this room.  If you say, well, I don’t believe it, why?  Because I can’t hear it?  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t here!  That just means that you aren’t very smart!

There are things that exist beyond your capability to comprehend them with your physical natural ability.  You can’t hear radio and television signals even though they are in here and they are loud.  Do you know why you can’t hear them?  Because they are broadcast at a very high frequency, a frequency that is outside the human hearing range.  But they are in here and those signals are just as loud as this signal that we are tuned into.  There are many signals in here but the difference is that you can’t hear them; they are out of your range.  But they are here and they do exist and it is a physical, tangible reality.  But what happens is you get a receiver that can hear those things and it picks out an individual signal.  It can choose which signal it wants, it picks that out and then it re-broadcasts it, it demodulates it down a number of octaves and re-broadcasts it in a range that your ear can hear and that is the reason you hear me instead of all of the radio and television signals, but did you know they are also in here?

It’s just like God. God answers prayer, God will give it to you, but many people they don’t even know that God’s answered their prayer.  They aren’t able to perceive it, they aren’t able to get it and they aren’t able to put it down into the realm where they can perceive it and operate in it in their physical realm.  So they say, well, God didn’t do it.  Well, see the radio station is faithful.  The radio station – the signal is here – but whether you tune into it, turn it on, get it to the right frequency, whether you know how to make that thing work or not, has nothing to do with whether the power has been generated and whether the signal is released.

Did you know God has answered our prayers?  Anytime any of you have ever prayed for anything based on God’s word and you prayed in faith, God gave you your answer, but He gives it to you in a spiritual form, and whether you get it into the physical and whether you see it, is not dependent on whether God answers your prayer, it’s dependent on whether you can receive from God.  Amen?  That is important.

When I saw this, what it did – you see I had experiences in my life, like this girl I was telling you about that Jamie and I saw die, that really affected me.   And I guarantee you I had problems with it.  And I had a decision.  Was I going to get bitter and say, “God why didn’t you do it?”  Or was I going to hold on to, “God, you are faithful, You didn’t miss it, we missed it.”  I had a choice to make.  I just chose to believe that, “God I believe you answered our prayers, I don’t know why it didn’t work and it took me about 3 years before I began to find out some of the reasons why.

Every one of you have had instances where you have prayed or are in the process of praying for something and you haven’t seen it manifest yet.  You’ve got a decision to make.  Are you going to say, “Well, God why haven’t you done anything yet?”  The Bible says, “You’ve got to believe before you receive when you pray,” not when you see it, but when you pray.”

Read Full Post »

Receiving Blessings from God:

Yesterday morning while I was just about to get up out of bed I felt this burning desire to share a specific piece of scripture with you. I can’t actually remember if I’ve already blogged about it or not – I knew I’ve wanted to in the past, and I actually might have, but I guess it does not really matter much as I feel the Holy Spirit is telling me to do it now.

Let me start this post by sharing with you something that my friend “G” said to me a while ago. For those who don’t know who he is – he is a 62 year old man who also volunteers with me at a feeding scheme for the poor and unemployed in our city centre. Now “G” has had cancer for the past 25 years or so. He is a Christian and loves God dearly but he does not believe in the laying on of hands for healing. The reason being that he has known a lot of people with cancer and quite a few had believed in healing this way and have not been healed and have in fact died. He does believe God can heal, and God has done some awesome healing in him, since initially the dr’s gave him a short while to live, yet he is still alive today, but he is not completely healed. He has had numerous operations and many radiation sessions and even one course of chemo, but the cancer keeps on coming back.

We were talking about stuff and I was trying to convince him that God does want to heal him and want to bless him and he said something like, “I know this guy who is so arrogant that he demands blessings from God, and he says I must demand healing from God. I don’t think that is right, we cannot demand anything from God, He must want to give it to us…”

When the Holy Spirit laid the following scriptures on my heart, I immediately thought back to this instance and I wished I had thought of these scriptures at that stage, but right there and then I didn’t know what to say.

Genesis 32:22-30 (NIV): “Jacob Wrestles with God ²² That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. ²⁴ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶ Then the man said, Let me go, for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, I will not let you go unless you bless me. ²⁷ The man asked him, What is your name? Jacob, he answered. ²⁸ Then the man said, Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome. ²⁹ Jacob said, Please tell me your name. But he replied, Why do you ask my name? Then he blessed him there. ³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

I think we can say that Jacob was arrogant here to demand blessings from God, but he got it! Isn’t that amazing? It totally blows my mind – I would have never thought that God would do something like that. Especially when we look at who Jacob was – he deceived his father, and cheated his brother out of his birthright; Jacob was not a nice guy! Yet God blessed him, why? Because God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and God cannot break His word or His Covenant.

The good news is that we also have a covenant with God. We have a new Covenant, where Jesus was the sacrifice, the lamb, who had to give up his life so that we can partake in the covenant. What is covered by Jesus’ sacrifice? Firstly he died so that we can be saved – he took our sins upon Him so that we don’t have to be punished for our sins, Galatians 3:13 (NIV): “¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

But what a lot of people don’t know is that there are other things also covered by this sacrifice, like healing: 1 Peter 2:24 (NIV): “²⁴ He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” The other things that were covered by the atonement (what Jesus paid for with His sacrifice) is deliverance from evil, eg, demonic oppression, depression etc, Galatians 1:4 (NIV): “⁴ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,” and financial blessing and prosperity, 2 Corinthians 8:9 (KJV) says that, “⁹ For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”

Now I’m not saying we should be arrogant and demand the above things from God, mostly because it is not necessary. God is not the one withholding the blessings from us. God wants to give it all freely, and has, as a matter of fact, but we are deceived and we don’t know what we are entitled to, and a lot of the time we are actually limiting God by believing that we don’t deserve anything from God, so we cannot receive anything from Him.

That is true, we don’t deserve anything, but we don’t have to because Jesus has already paid the full price and that was enough! We cannot add anything to that! Our acts will never be good enough in the eyes of God, because we are sinners. That is what makes Jesus’ sacrifice so special – he gave up His Godliness, became a human for our sakes, a human who never sinned and he sacrificed Himself, shed his precious blood, just like they did in the Old Testament when they made covenants, so that we have a chance to not only be saved, but to share in God’s glory. Know that the full price was already paid – all the blessings are available to us, we must just receive it!

Once I knew this truth, it was so much easier to receive our blessings. I knew it was already done – God has made provision for it and He wants me to receive it, no matter who I am. He is gracious, even though I am a sinner and I do not deserve anything from Him, He still wants to bless us. No strings attached. Why don’t you also receive freely what God wants to give to you?

Now, you might wonder what are the blessings that God wants to give to us, over and above what is covered by the atonement? Any scripture in the Bible where God promises something, like for instance: Exodus 23:25-26 (NIV): “²⁵ Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.” Or Philippians 4:19 (NIV): “¹⁹ And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

See this previous post of mine about a lot of the promises God makes to us.  Why don’t you find out what blessings God has in store for you?   Learn the truth, believe that God wants to give it to you and that He in fact already has given it to you, and receive those blessings!

Read Full Post »

Why is it so hard to believe in miracles?

This something that has been bothering me a lot, especially since I got pregnant. Because believe it or not the way a lot of people, among them Christians, have acted suggested to me that they do not really believe my pregnancy was a miracle. They nod as I tell them my testimony, but only a few sentences later they say something that proves to me that they just think we got lucky or something…

For instance, when we were organizing my mom’s funeral with our minister at church, I gave him a short version of our history, about how long we tried and what treatments we have been through and I ended up by saying, “but at the age of 40 God blessed us with this miracle pregnancy without any treatments or help from any doctor or any medication.” Do you know what he said a few moments later? “It’s not that difficult to get pregnant at 40, my mom had me when she was 40, and I’m the youngest of 5 children…” He could just as well have slapped me in the face, I had the same reaction. I’m sorry but getting pregnant at 40 after already having 4 children is not the same as trying for 11.5 years, doing many IUI’s and IVF’s and then getting pregnant naturally. There was something wrong with us before and we were healed by the grace of God – his mom didn’t need to get healed.

A lot of other people have said that we just had to wait for God’s timing – that eventually our time had come and implying that for some people it takes one month, for others maybe a bit longer, and for us it had to take 11.5 years. Too say this to me is almost the same to me as saying, “why don’t you adopt, then maybe you will get pregnant too.”

This saddens me so much, mostly because I can see that so many Christians just don’t believe in miracles anymore, and that makes me wonder, “what do they actually believe in?” But the fact is that God doesn’t get the glory He deserves, because He has just performed a miracle and people just explain it away with a few words, as if He never did anything…

But the absolute saddest part is when I meet someone who is struggling to get pregnant themselves and they cannot believe that God would do a miracle for them, or someone who is sick, with cancer for example, and they just cannot believe that God will heal them…

I never had any doubt that the miracles that are mentioned in the Bible aren’t true. I always knew I had to believe in the whole Bible, everything that is said there, or I can just as well not bother to believe anything in it, because if I believe some things and not other things, how would I know what to believe and what not? So in the 18 months that we took a break between IVF#1 and starting treatments again in June 2009, I fully believed that God could heal me, but I had a provision attached to it, I thought it was up to God’s will and I didn’t know what God’s will was, I believed He had a different will and plan for everyone. And today I believe that was the main reason why I didn’t get healed and pregnant then.

So when I started to look for messages of hope last year, I concentrated on teachings from people who believe that God still heals today, but I also looked for teachings about miracles. People who believe in miracles, who have witnessed miracles and who have with the help of God, have participated in miracles. One of the books I read then was “The hea.venly ma.n” by Bro.ther Yu.n, and I recently came across another book of his, called “Li.ving Wa.ter” and in there he talks about the many miracles they have seen in the prosecuted house churches in Chi.na and then when he came to the west he was surprised to see that the churches here were dead in comparison, and there were no miracles performed in almost all the churches he visited. He has some ideas about why that is and I want to share some of them with you.

“After I arrived in the West, it didn’t take long for me to realize that something fundamental was missing in the body of Christ. That missing thing was the power and presence of God. I don’t say this to condemn anyone, but rather I point it out in the hope that it will speak to your heart and help the church. Thousands of churches today do not preach the word with the authority and power that Jesus promised to all who follow Him. This is a tragedy as such powerless churches end up relying on human wisdom to see “results”. The fruit of such half-baked gospel invariably produces a harvest of half-baked believers, most of whom will fall away at the first sign of trouble.

Countless churches, missions and families are full of deadness. This is a terrible stain on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the living God. Everything He does produces abundant life. Jesus said that Satan “comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) Jesus never attended a funeral where the person remained dead. The same applies today. If He turns up, our homes and churches will be dramatically changed.

The good news is that Jesus has not changed! All our human methods and techniques will result in failure and amount to nothing if God is not with us in His power and glory. When Jesus comes in, He breaks off the shackles and people’s lives are instantly reformed. You never have to look for help from big-name preachers when the glory of God is present! It is all about God, not man. One second in the presence of God’s glory can achieve more than years of human endeavour!

These days there are many preachers who have attended seminary and learned how to speak in public, but if that is all they have, you will do well not to listen to their messages. If the words being preached are empowered by mere human wisdom, they will not benefit the listeners in any spiritual way. The apostle Paul was a very smart, highly educated man. Yet he was careful not to rely on those attributes when he shared God’s Word. Pay careful attention to what he told the Corinthians: ”My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor 2:4-5)

Did you know that it is possible for your faith to rest in the wrong place? Paul wanted the Corinthians’ faith to rest on God’s power and not in the wisdom of this world. When this sound advice is followed, it produces strong followers of Christ who will not fall away when tested. In Chi.na most people come to Christ after they see a demonstration of the power of God. Perhaps they are healed from an illness or set free from oppression. After people experience the power and authority of God for themselves, they have no trouble believing the gospel and giving their lives to Christ. Not to do so would be to deny the reality of their experiences.

Do you believe that God can work through you in such a way? Can He use you to do miracles so that Jesus Christ may be glorified and many people experience salvation? The apostle Paul issued a challenge to some of the believers in Corinth: “I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” (1 Cor 4:19-20)

Satan wants people to think that the sustenance they need to live a successful life can be found inside themselves or in the things surrounding them. They search for substitutes in a bid to procure the true joy and peace that only come by knowing Jesus Christ. The moment people fall for the lie that they can prosper without God, they cut themselves off from His presence and power, for “the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” (Rom 8: 6-8)

During the times of strongest revival in Chi.na, miracles were so commonplace that we didn’t even think about them much. They were as natural as breathing the air. They helped thrust millions of people into the kingdom of God and strengthened the faith of all who experienced such miracles. Even young children went out and shared the gospel with other children, and mighty miracles of healing, deliverance and signs and wonders accompanied them wherever they went. This was not considered strange, because the Lord Jesus promised us, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (Mark 16:16-18)

When you present the gospel to somebody, it needs to come with demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. This may occur in a variety of different ways, such as through a healing, or a word of knowledge about a person’s life, or the working of another gift. The demonstration of God’s power convinces unbelievers that the message is true and that Jesus is alive today! When the power of the gospel is truly demonstrated, only the most heard-hearted of people are unwilling to respond to the claims of Jesus Christ upon their lives.

Miracles and signs and wonders are not just for within the walls of your church building. No! They are to be demonstrated among the people, in the marketplace, on the bustling city streets, and in the homes of those who are trapped in darkness. This is where Jesus and his disciples did most of their miracles. They knew nothing of scheduled “healing meetings” inside church buildings. The power of God accompanied them wherever they proclaimed the good news that the kingdom of God is available to all who put their trust in Jesus Christ.

Christianity without the power of God is no Christianity at all! Power is a fundamental part of God’s workings with humankind throughout history. On every page of the Bible, you can read about God’s miraculous power in operation, beginning with the very first verse of the Bible, when “God created the heavens and the earth.” It continues throughout the Old and New Testaments, right up to the conclusion of the book of Revelation when Jesus declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Rev 22:13)

Did you ever wonder that God is so powerful He didn’t even need to create the universe with His hands? He simply spoke, and it came into existence. Our God is not just powerful. He is all-powerful. In speaking of the majesty of our Lord, the Bible records that “earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them.” (Rev 20:11) His power is beyond compare!

What kind of message does your church preach?

Is your faith based on men’s wisdom or on God’s power?

The Bible warns us that in the last days there will be some people “having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” (2 Tim 3:5)

Many Christians have developed a warped view of God. They think He only works the way they want Him to, according to their own plans. Such thinking is terribly sad and dangerous. God can never be limited. He is God! When we lose a proper perspective on God’s power and love, we harm ourselves and those around us. Such limited thinking becomes like a cancer, devouring our spiritual life and bringing death where God intends there to be life.

If you are a Christian I encourage you to examine your heart and ask God to reveal those areas of your life where you have placed limits on Him.

You may know in your head that God is powerful, but have you allowed Him to use His power to break you free from the prison of sinful habits and attitudes?

You may know in your head that Jesus said, “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18), but do you ever pray in faith for someone to be healed or to be delivered from demons?

You may know in your head that the historical Jesus is powerful, but do you realize that He wants to share His power with you so that you can be His ambassador to a lost and hurting world?

The time is short and God is looking for people who are serious about His kingdom. He wants to empower you to walk in purity and to proclaim the gospel throughout the earth.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, it’s time to wake up and stop living in a weak and pale way that denies the power of God. Repent from such a narrow, impoverished view of our Lord, and ask Jesus to reveal His power in your life.”

The main reason I brought this topic up today, is that I learnt about two miraculous pregnancies yesterday, so I want to share them with you, so that you can know it does not happen to a select few, God can, He wants to and He will help you if you just let Him! Both of them were posted on Fertilicare:

First Daryl shared a testimony of friends of hers: “I just heard yesterday that 2 dear friends of mine are finally pregnant after 7 years of prayers. The DH has basically no sperm, but didn’t want any treatment as they believed God would answer their prayers, and He has.”

Then Believe posted her good news: “It is cycle day 36 today. I usually have 28 day cycles with a few 30 day cycles when I have been on meds… So the question that myself and DH was asking, was what is wrong now that my cycle is suddenly a week longer than usual…

Over the weekend we thought about buying a HPT, but due to so many negatives in the past, we decided to leave it a few more days. I am currently on a slimming programme and another treatment was scheduled for today, but I did not want to go should there be a very small possibility that there may be a little miracle growing inside me. Then again, how many months have we been hoping and praying…for our miracle…

Soooooooooooo this morning before work, I decided to go and buy HPT’s. I have never bought HPT’s ever before. DH always does this for me, as I do not have the energy of bumping into someone I know and them then thinking that I am expecting when they see the HPT in my basket.

When I reached work I went to the ladies with two tests. And what do I see after a few seconds…My very very very very first two lines. I decided to test on another test, and jip, there it is…2 lines…Could not believe my eyes and sent DH a photo via BBM of the test results. He was crying when I spoke to him as he is soooooooooo very very very very happy. He will make a fantastic dad.

I went for a blood test during lunch time just to make sure that this is really happening, and yes, we have a healthy beta, and will be testing again later this week, and have our first scan scheduled for the beginning of November…

This is still so unreal. As I am typing here I still cannot believe that there is a miracle growing inside me. And that we finally have our BFP!

God has performed a miracle – Praise him, praise him, praise him.”

Here is her signature, just for in case you thought it might be co-incidence that she got pregnant:
ME: 31(possible egg quality issues) * DH:31(sperm issues)
TTC: 3 1/2 yrs * Married: 6 1/2 yrs * Together: 11+years
2009
4 x Timed cycles – BFN
IVF/ICSI #1 – BFN
ICSI # 2 – BFN
2010
5 x AI – BFN
ICSI #3 – Cancelled – Slow response – resulted in AI
DS ICSI # 4 – BFN
(P)ICSI #5 – BFN
2011
Hysteroscopy – Small septum removed
IMSI/ICSI #6 – BFN
DE IMSI/ICSI #7 – BFN
POA – Praying for a miracle – Taking Royal Jelly and Staminogro
October 2011 – Natural BFP
Aan die kinderlose skenk Hy ‘n huisgesin, sy word ‘n gelukkige moeder van kinders. Prys die Here! – Ps.113:9
Ek is tot alles in staat deur Hom wat my krag gee – Fillipense 4:13”

I hope those ladies don’t mind me sharing their stories, but I just want to prove that it is possible to get pregnant, no matter what is wrong with you. God is good and faithful and nothing is impossible with Him. I’m nothing special that I got my miracle, as a matter of fact I think that is why it’s so difficult to believe for some of those who know me, because I am as ordinary as can be! I think most of you might even be disappointed if you should meet me in real life. I could not do it on my own, never – it was God who did this miracle for us, and for the above mentioned people.

It really warms my heart to read testimonies like this and I hope to hear of a lot more soon!

Read Full Post »

So how was I limiting God?

Let me discuss all the limitations I put on God.  Some of them I only got revelation on when I listened to the teaching of An.drew Wom.mack (see previous 3 posts) but some of it I learnt a while ago already from other sources.  If you are a regular reader of my blog since the start you will recognize some of the older revelations as they have been mentioned before.  At that stage I didn’t realize consciously that I was limiting God, I just learnt that I could influence things by changing my attitude, or my behaviour.

The first big thing I did wrong was by feeling that I will never get pregnant.  Not naturally or with the help of any FS.   Especially when the IVF’s were are failing.  I didn’t consciously think – I will not get pregnant, I was always hopeful, but those thoughts crept into my mind often.  I remember when I went to my first FS – the sister there was measuring my height and weight, taking my blood pressure, etc and she said, “don’t worry you will get your baby.”  The first thought that jumped into my head was, “no, it will not happen.”  I tried to change that thought off course, one never wants to think it, but I was actually a bit upset after she said it, and I couldn’t figure out why.  Let me tell you we weren’t even trying for a baby very long by then.  Not even a year, so to think those thoughts were totally ridiculous. 

Later I would think very often, “I am infertile and the only way I would get pregnant is with IVF.”  Why?  I don’t know.  I thought it was intuition or something like that, but now I recognize it as a lie from the devil.  Now I see that the way we think limits God.  If I think I cannot get pregnant, then I will not get pregnant, because my thinking limits God.

Thinking and what we believe are closely related.  What started out as thoughts soon changed into believing I could not get pregnant, especially after a few years passed.  The longer it took the more I believed.  Eventually I realized my mistake when I read the book “Super.natural Child.birth” by Jac.kie Mi.ze.  That was just before I had my last IVF.  I was able to believe that I could get pregnant, but only with the help of doctors and with specific medication like Intralipid therapy.  It worked – I did get pregnant, but unfortunately I miscarried. 

After my miscarriage I had to learn that I must believe that I can get pregnant, but without the help of doctors or medication.  It helped a lot to learn about God, who He is, what His will is and what Jesus has done for us.  In the mean time Shumi also got sick and I had to learn to believe that he will be healed from cancer.  It helped off course to listen to teachings like the Div.ine Healing Tech.nician from Cur.ry Bla.ke.

Even though I believed there were times of doubt and unbelief.  Times when things didn’t seem to be working, then I had thoughts of, “this is never going to work, or what if it doesn’t work?”  I must say in hindsight I can see that every now and then when things were going well, something might happen that would cause us to take a few steps back again and usually it was when I doubted, or was in unbelief.  I was still strongly moved by what I saw or heard, and the times when things seemed bad, I would waiver.  In those times I was tying God’s hands again until I was able to get some message of hope or faith, and then things would get better again.

In the beginning I was limiting God a lot with fear, fear of never having children or fear of Shumi dying.  I realized it was wrong, and even wrote a post about fear, but I didn’t realize exactly what else I was fearful about.  Last week I had a dream, or rather almost a nightmare, where I woke up in the early hours of the morning and suddenly I saw clearly what some of my other fears are. 

Fear of success:  I realized that if I get pregnant and Shumi is totally healed, then this supernatural healing is a huge responsibility.  I would have to help every single person I know, I get into contact with and actually go out and seek others to lay hands on them and get them healed, because if I don’t then it would be my fault if they are in pain, don’t get healed or even die. 

Fear of failure:  Not only a fear of not having children or that Shumi might die, but also that if I do try to help others and I fail, they might get upset with me, or worse they might not believe in God.  A fear that I could actually cause other people to not get saved, or to believe that God is not real. 

Fear of rejection and criticism:  This one is especially hard and I am mostly talking about people I care about.  Like our friends and family and our church.  I am fully aware that most people don’t believe in this stuff, and that they might think I lost my marbles.  I’m also scared they would want nothing to do with me.  Many preachers I have listened to have said that they were rejected by their church, so I know that is a real possibility.  I’m not worried so much about what strangers think of me, or whether they reject me. 

Fear of the unknown:  If I do get over all the other fears and I am successful then I guess I’ll have to change my life completely and that unknown factor is scary.  I’m starting to realize that God might have an amazing plan for my life, which I never would have thought possible, but that would definitely put me out of my comfort zone.  It will take a lot of courage to be obedient to follow God’s leading on this, but I am in a situation where I’m basically at rock bottom.  I’m not willing to give up my dream of having children or letting Shumi go, so I guess that means study, study, study God’s Word and learn as much as I can, and God is also leading me to start to lay hands on others (here comes fear of rejection again!)

The last thing that I learnt about limiting God is that I have to start seeing myself pregnant and to start seeing Shumi completely healed.  That was something I could never do, even after my pregnancy last year.  I would hope that I would get pregnant or that Shumi get’s healed, but I couldn’t see it.  So I’m taking time out every day to imagine these things. 

Some of these things are in the past.  I have learnt and dealt with it and it’s not a problem anymore.  Some things I think are sorted out but every now and then I have to deal with it again, and others I still have to sort out.  But I am working on it, and by God’s grace, I’m sure I’ll be able to conquer it soon.

Read Full Post »

Limiting God (Part 3)

This is the final post on the teaching of An.drew Wom.mack called: Don’t limit God.

“Be obedient to what God is telling you:

Isaiah 1:18-19 (NIV):  “¹⁸Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.  ¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land;”

The Lord is going to ask you to do things and there will be steps and stages in what God leads you to do.  He won’t take you from where you are into the perfect fulfilment of His will all in one step.  There will be steps and stages and a lot of them are for your benefit.  God doesn’t want to give you the whole plan because if you didn’t obey and if you didn’t follow through that will just make you accountable for the whole thing.  Out of mercy Gods just leads you one step at a time and only gives it to you as you are able to bear it.  He told the children of Israel, “I’m not going to give you the whole land all at one time; I’m going to give it to you little by little, lest the beast of the field multiply and all of the fields go fallow.”  He says. “I’m going to let you occupy the land as you’re able to possess it and occupy it.”

It’s the same thing in the spiritual realm.  God is going to show you things step by step and there are going to be a lot of steps of obedience in you following the Lord and if you don’t do what God told you to do it’s going to stop His perfect will from coming to pass.  It’s not because God stops and says I won’t let you because you aren’t worthy.  None of us are worthy, none of us deserve anything, but it does take co-operation on our part.

1 Samuel 13:7-14 (NIV):  “⁷ Some Hebrews even crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear.

 ⁸ He waited for seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul’s men began to scatter.  ⁹ So he said, Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings. And Saul offered up the burnt offering.  ¹⁰ Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.  ¹¹ What have you done? asked Samuel. Saul replied, When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash, ¹² I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD’s favour.’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering. 

¹³ You acted foolishly, Samuel said. You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.  ¹⁴ But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command.”

Saul was established as king, Jonathan went out smote some of the Philistines, and because of that the philistines amassed their people together and they came down and it said in verse 5 that the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight Israel 30 000 chariots, 6 000 horsemen, people as the sand which is on the sea shore, in multitude and they came up and camped against them and because of this the Israelites were in big trouble. 

So Samuel the prophet, the one who anointed Saul to be king, and who was still basically mentoring Saul and had authority and control over him, he told Saul to wait 7 days and he would come and offer a sacrifice before the Lord and entreat the Lord’s favour from them and then they would go out to battle.  Well they waited the 7 days and Samuel was late in coming, so Saul decided to do the offering himself.  As soon as the offering was made, Samuel came. 

A lot of people would read that and think, “Well that’s not so bad!  He was in a bad situation and he just wanted to make sure that he had entreated the Lord!”  They excuse things and they explain it away, most people have situational ethics, it just depends on what the situation is like.  They don’t intend to do anything wrong, but you know what?  If you’re in a situation where you are under pressure and if things happen, it just happens…  You know, that’s the way most people think.  But there are absolutes and one of the absolutes is that if you’re going to take the limits of God and if you’re going to see God’s best come to pass, you need to just get to a place where there is only one God and you are not Him!  You do not have the freedom to pick and choose and decide I’m going to do this.  Saul was not qualified to offer a sacrifice, only priests could do that, but Saul let circumstances compel him to change, and as soon as he did it, Samuel showed up. 

Do you understand what Samuel told Saul?  We sing about David and talk about the sure mercies of David and Jesus being the son of David and all of these things.  If you know anything about the Bible, you know that David was a man after God’s own heart and yet Samuel is saying under the inspiration of the Lord that, “if you would have obeyed God today he would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.”  There never would have been a David.  David wasn’t God’s first choice.  David was an afterthought.  David was plan B.  Plan A was Saul.  Saul was in training, if he would have obeyed God, if he would have just cooled his jets another hour and have waited on Samuel to show up and would have just done what was right, I don’t care how much pressure he is under, it doesn’t matter if you’re fighting an enemy, it doesn’t matter what the justification is, just do what God told you to do!  If it kills you do it!  If he would have done that, we would have been talking about the sure mercies of Saul.

Start using your imagination:

That doesn’t sound very spiritual to a lot of people, but your imagination is a super important part of the way that God made you.  You cannot do anything outwardly that you haven’t already seen and imagined on the inside.  This is just the way that God made you.  As a matter of fact if you took the word imagination, there is 35 times that the Old Testament uses the word “yester”, it’s the word that is translated imagination 35 times in the Old Testament, and that word means, “a form or figuratively, conception.” The word imagination means conception. 

If you stop and think about it, but your imagination is where you conceive things.  Just like a baby has to be conceived.  A stork doesn’t bring babies.  You aren’t just going to pray that you’ll have a child; there are things that you are going to have to do to have to conceive that child.  I think all of us understand that. 

You have to conceive a miracle, you have to conceive the things of God and the scripture, the very word imagination, means conception.  Your imagination is your spiritual womb; it’s where you conceive things.  Brothers and sisters, most Christians don’t use their imagination in a Godly way.  We all have an imagination and we use it constantly but most Christian’s think that this is kind of weird and that you shouldn’t just be thinking and imagining things – you know, “Let’s deal in reality.”  You can’t do anything without your imagination. 

You imagination defined is just your ability to see something with your heart that you can’t see with your eyes.  That’s all an imagination is.  When you make a grocery list did you know you use your imagination?  You go up and down the aisles of that store because you’re familiar with it, you’ve seen it, and in your memory you over and go look around all of the fruit things and think, “I need this, and this and this,” and what you’re doing is you’re using your imagination.

You can’t remember anything without an imagination; you can’t think anything without an imagination.  If I say apple, you don’t see A-p-p-l-e, you see is an apple.  Some of you may see a red apple; some of you may see a green apple.  I could use words to change your picture, I could say, “red apple,” and immediately you would have to change the image that you’re looking at.  You think in pictures.   You can’t understand anything that you can’t picture.

A lot of Christians are missing it.  They have pieces of information like, “I’m more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus.  This is the victory that overcomes the world.  Thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph,” they have that information they’ve heard those words and if you were to ask them, “Are you a winner?  O, yes I’m a winner,” but you know what they haven’t thought on it and meditated to the point that their imagination forms a picture of them being a winner. 

There are a lot of people who have this piece of information, “By His stripes I’m healed,” but they’ve never seen themselves healed.  See, they’ve just got information, but not understanding.  Their understanding hasn’t come alive.  I have told a lot of people this week that if you’ve been sick a long time, you see yourself sick.  You think sick, you dream sick, you don’t dream like normal people that go out and have a vacation and do something fun and find yourself running or something.  You’re sick in your dreams, you see yourself sick, you think sick.  And the scriptures say in Proverbs 23:7: “As a man thinks in his heart so is he…”

If you see yourself sick, you’re going to be sick, it doesn’t matter how many scriptures you know or how much information you have, you could have people lay hands on you until they rub all the hair of the top of your head and you’re going to be sick as long as you see yourself sick.  What you’ve got to do is take the word of God and meditate on it, not just take the information and “O, yes, by His stripes I’m healed.  I’ve heard that, now I’ve got it.”   No, you’ve got to take that and think until you see yourself healed.”

Read Full Post »

Limiting God (Part 2)

The previous post was getting too long so I’ll continue with An.drew Wom.mack’s teaching Don’t limit God. 

“Fear limits God:

There is a natural resistance towards the unknown, a natural resistance towards change.   Most people know that there is more than what they are experiencing, they are praying for change but they don’t want to do anything differently.  They are afraid to do something different.  That’s the definition of insanity to look for change and yet to do the same thing over and over, and to expect different results.  I’m telling you if you want to take the limits off God you are going to learn to deal with fear, because it’s risky serving God.  People are just afraid to do something and yet they aren’t enjoying where they are.

2 Kings 7:3-10 (NIV):  “³ Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, Why stay here until we die?  ⁴ If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’— the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.  ⁵ At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, ⁶ for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!  ⁷ So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.  ⁸ The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also. ⁹ Then they said to each other, We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.   ¹⁰ So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, We went into the Aramean camp and not a man was there— not a sound of anyone— only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.”

This was when the northern 10 Kingdoms were surrounded by the Arameans, and they tried to starve them out, they blockaded the city and there was starvation.  In the midst of this there were 4 lepers outside the city gate and they asked themselves, “Why stay here until we die?”  Man, I like that!  They said, “We’ve got to do something, if we don’t do anything we are going to die.”  There are some of you that know that if something doesn’t change, you aren’t going to make it.  There is not a hope of you living a victorious, joyful, fulfilled complete life.  You know that your life right now is not the way that it’s supposed to be and yet you are afraid to try anything different.    That’s what these lepers said.  These 4 lepers decided that they could just as well go out of the city, what was the worst thing that could happen?  They could die, but they were dying already!  They argued that they at least have a chance of being spared if they go to the camp of the Arameans.  I love that reasoning, I love it!

It’s the same with the disciples when they were in the boat and drowning in the storm.  Jesus came walking on the very thing that was killing everybody else.  They were drowning yet everybody said, “Peter don’t get out of the boat!”  What’s the deal?  There was as much water in the boat as there was outside, they were going down if they stayed where they were and I can guarantee you all those guys in the boat were criticizing him, “you’re foolish to get out of the boat!”  But he was going to drown if he stayed in it.  There was very little difference between being in the boat and out of the boat.  The boat was going down it was the smartest thing he ever did to get out of the boat!  You know you can’t walk on water if you don’t get out of the boat!

There are some of you who want to see miraculous things happen in your life, and yet you are so afraid of doing anything that put you in a position where you need a miracle!  You’re playing it too safe. You don’t ever want there to be a bump in the road and yet you want a great testimony.  You have to have a test before you get the mony.  If you want a testimony you are going to have to go through some things, you’re going to have to get out of what is easy.

Here are some examples of fear that can limit God: fear of people, fear of man, fear of failure, fear of success and fear of persecution.

Unbelief limits God:

This is related to fear, because fear is unbelief or unbelief is fear.  There are so many scriptures on this topic. I don’t even know where to start. 

Matthew 21:22 (NIV):  “²² If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” 

Mark 11:23 (NIV):  “²³ I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.”

If you doubt God then you are going to limit what God can do in your life, and a lot of people don’t recognize this but brothers and sisters we live in a culture that is full of doubt.  We are riddled with unbelief, we are baptized in unbelief and most churches are full of unbelief.  I’m not against the church, I’m for the church, but what I’m saying is that there is a tremendous amount of fear, doubt and unbelief.  If Jesus was to come into our current religious setting today I’d guarantee you He would turn everything upside down.  He wouldn’t last 3 and half years in our religious culture – we would kill Him sooner.  We are riddled with unbelief.

Matthew 17:14-23 (NIV):  “¹⁴ When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him.  ¹⁵ Lord, have mercy on my son, he said. He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.  ¹⁶ I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.  ¹⁷ O unbelieving and perverse generation, Jesus replied, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.  ¹⁸ Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.  ¹⁹ Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, Why couldn’t we drive it out?  ^20-21 He replied, Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Let me say this, today if most people went to a church and said my son has seizures and he falls and he hurts himself and he falls into the fire and he foams at the mouth, how would the average pastor respond to that?  The average pastor would say, “Well what do the doctors say?  Is he on medication?  What treatment?  Well you need to see a specialist, let me pray that God will bless the doctors.”  He will ask God to use the doctors and give them wisdom, that’s the way that most pastors would respond to that. 

The church hasn’t accepted responsibility for meeting the needs of people and so today the average person would say were supposed to be compassionate, were supposed to show sympathy, were supposed to say, “God bless you, I’m going to pray for you, go see the doctor, and as you go off I’ll be praying and interceding for you…”

How did Jesus respond?  He said, “O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you?  How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.”  Jesus was not politically correct.  You know what the most people would preach today is that Jesus should have said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left you by yourselves, this is too much for you, I should have been here, it’s my fault, don’t feel bad, don’t feel bad about yourself, don’t let any guild or condemnation come.”  That’s the way people would approach it today, Jesus said, “O unbelieving and perverse generation!  What’s wrong with you!  I’m not going to be here forever, I’m trying to get you guys to where you can do this!”

Brothers and sisters the church is supposed to be the first line of defense against poverty, against sickness, against depression, against all of these things and the church is not fulfilling its requirements and if Jesus was to show up today, I believe I’m speaking accurately that the Lord would say that we are a faithless and perverse generation.  We live in a culture of unbelief and even the faith churches, even the spirit filled churches to a very large degree aren’t meeting the needs.  Off course the vast majority of the body of Christ doesn’t even believe that God does those things today, but among those that believe that it can happen they have no handle on whether it will happen or not.  I tell you this is not the way that God meant it to be.  I don’t know any way to express these things without causing some unrest among people.  You know before we can fix the problem we have to admit that this is not the way that the Lord meant for it to be. 

We live in a culture of unbelief, outside of the body of Christ there is terrible unbelief, demonic oppression, there is a spirit of Antichrist working, if you don’t realize it we are living in a hostile environment.  Christians are about the only group that it is politically correct to discriminate against. 

The Lord’s not pleased with the church and where we stand today and our inability to represent Him properly and I’m including myself in that.  I’m not doing everything the way that I should, but Praise God, I haven’t arrived, but I’ve left.  I’m still moving in that direction and it’s a goal of mine to see a 100% of the people set free.”

Read Full Post »

Limiting God (Part 1)

I mentioned the teaching Don’t limit God from An.drew Wom.mack in my last post.  This teaching has helped me tremendously and I want to share some thoughts about it with you, because before I listened to it I never realized how much I was limiting God.  This is just going to be short points, I would really recommend that you listen to the whole teaching if you think this might be a problem for you, because I could never do the whole teaching justice in even a few posts.

“The way you think limits God:

Proverbs 23:7 (KJV):   “⁷For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…”

What you think of yourself that is what you are.  Everything outside of us is not the problem – the problem is the way you think!  You might not be thinking, “I want to be sick,” but you have sick thinking.  You might be thinking, “I’m only human, I can’t control this, it’s flu season, everybody else is sick, so I’ll guess I’ll get sick.” 

If you don’t co-operate with the devil in your thoughts Satan can’t do all of these things to us.  The Lord flows through the way we think and if you are limiting God with your thinking then you are going to stop what God wants to do in your life. 

Romans 12:2 (NIV):  “² Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is— his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

The way that God’s will comes to pass in your life is through the way you think.  I want to challenge you to begin to start thinking better and bigger!

You have to co-operate with God:

Psalm 78:39-41 (KJV):  “³⁹For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.  ⁴⁰How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert!  ⁴¹Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.”

In Deuteronomy 7 Moses rebuked the people of Israel and asked them, “How many times have you turned against God and kept God’s will from coming to pass?”  The Lord never willed for the Children of Israel to spend 40 years in the wilderness.  He willed for them to come out, He had a period of time at Mount Sinai where He gave them the covenant and established the kingdom, but within 1 year they should have entered into the Promised Land, but they sent out spies in Numbers 13 and they became overwhelmed with fear looking at the size of the giants and because of that they limited God.  They disbelieved God and they stopped what God wanted them to do and so Moses is remembering all of this and the Lord is speaking through Moses and giving instructions about the next time they go into the land. 

Deuteronomy 7:17 (KJV):  “¹⁷If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?” 

If you doubt, if you say, “God, this task is too big, God I can’t do it.”  Well then God can’t do it though you.  God tells the Israelites through Moses, “If you believe in your heart that these nations are more than I, God cannot dispossess them.”
 
It’s according to the power that works in you.  Ephesians 3:20 (NIV):  “²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”

If you don’t have any power, any faith stirred up inside you, if you don’t believe God for anything, then God cannot do exceedingly abundantly above all you ask or think. 

Before you can start to take the limits of God you’ve got to start believing that you’ve got a say in this.  God is not going to flow through you without your consent (see my previous post).  You have to seek to find and you have to seek with all of your heart and if you don’t you limit God.  “If you say within your heart these nations are more than I, how can I dispossess them?” God cannot kick those people out unless He has a person to flow through!  

Every person has a destiny:

Ephesians 5:14 (KJV):  “¹⁴Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”

If you don’t know what God’s will is for your life there is no way you are going to accidently fulfil it.  This verse isn’t talking about physical death, this is talking about spiritual death or like being in a stupor, and there are a lot of people who live their lives this way, just going through life wasting time. He says awake, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life.  Come out of your stupor, wake up!  Start taking responsibility for yourself!

Ephesians 5:15-17 (KJV):  “¹⁵See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, ¹⁶Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.  ¹⁷Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”

You could turn that verse around and say it this way, “If you don’t know what the will of the Lord is, you’re unwise!”  Yet the average person today, even the average person in the body of Christ doesn’t have a clear direction on what God’s will and purpose for their life is.

You are going to limit God if you don’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has called you, the work, the job that you’re working, that God has called you to be in the church that you are in, that God has called you to do the things that you are doing.  Your life, your efforts ought to be all towards something that you have a calling from God.  Every one of you is called by God and has a purpose and you’re anointed for a purpose.

This should be obvious to Christians, but the church today has been influenced by the world probably more than most generations of the church in recent years and we have this humanistic attitude that in the world that has spilled over in the church to where we just evolved from slime and that we have no accountability to God.  It’s a convenient theology – again people like to believe that, because that means you can go out, live your life however you want to and you don’t have to give an answer to anybody for what you’ve done with your life, but man there are millions of scriptures that contradict that and show that that’s not true!

Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV):  “¹³For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  ¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, ¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

This means that God possessed us when we still in our mother’s womb.  He knew everything about us, He knew every part, He had a plan for you, you are not a mistake, whether your parents knew you were coming or not – God knew you were coming.  You are a creation of God and designed with specific purposes.  God is no respecter of persons; this is applicable to all of us.  God has a purpose for each one of us.  God’s plan for you is much better than what we can plan for ourselves.”

Read Full Post »