Just Believe….But God!

There have been many books written on the subjects of healing, prosperity, all with their different formulas and methods, it can lead people to a sense of hopelessness. The great thing about God and His Word, is that he has made it so simple. Instead of listening to man and allowing man to complicate things. We should turn to God’s instruction book; go to the source that controls the situation.

            The first thing we must realize is we are to expect tribulation. In John 16:33 Jesus is giving his disciples his instructions for when he goes to be with the Father. In verse 33 ‘in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” We are to expect tribulation; we tend to think that it is strange that bad things are happening to us. We feel picked on, we say how unfair it is, but Jesus warns us we shall have tribulation. It will be apart of life. God did not create us to have this kind of life, but because sin came into the world, the world and our bodies became imperfect; we became susceptible to disease, to attacks from the ruler of this world. Satan. We all must realize we are at war; we have an adversary that seeks to steal, kill, and destroy us, and all that we have. He is a thief, trying to take life away from your family and you. He is constantly seeking an advantage, II Corinthians 2:11 “lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.” The problem the church has become ignorant of his devices. They don’t realize they are at war. War consists of battles, skirmishes, a realigning of troops. All to win the war, there are times when you don’t hear the sounds of war, but the war continues, and your war with Satan continues until you are with Jesus.

            Once we realize that there is a war going on, then what? What do you do? We must know a few things. The most important thing is to know who is on our side. Most know that God is there, but we do not really grasp just what that means. We don’t realize what an advantage he brings to us. He becomes as an unused gift card. We have been giving a resource to meet a need, but we don’t go to the store and use the card. You may need a vacuum cleaner. I mean your house is dirty; you complain and worry about how you are going to vacuum the house without the vacuum. Someone finds out and buys a gift card at the local hardware store, they even make it easy and take you to the store, but we must hand over the card. God has provided everything we need. Salvation means so much more than going to heaven. The word salvation also means healing, prosperity, deliverance, and victory! God has provided us with everything we need to “be in health, and prosper”; we only must take the gift and use it.

            Our view on God needs to be changed. God is three things 1) God is Good, 2) God is all-powerful, 3) God is willing. We must realize these three things in order to receive from God.

God Is Good!

            The first thing we need to know of God is he is Good. He is not capable of bad, it is not apart of who he is. God is good, and only does good things. We again must know where the bad things come from. They come from sin and the prince of this world, not God. If you go to the “Garden of Eden,” that’s how God intended for us to live. When he was finished he called it good. Death, sickness, tribulation is not from him. He doesn’t make us sick to teach us things. He doesn’t take our lives because he needs more voices in his choir. His view on death is negative. In I Corinthians 15:26 we are told “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” In Ezekiel 18:32 “God has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.” In Psalms 34 & 37, it speaks of his desire to give us the desires of our hearts, how he wants to deliver us from all our afflictions. He is not angry with us; he is not looking to withhold things from us as punishment. In Psalms 84:11 “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. Our problem is we give into the lie from Satan of how unrighteous we are. How bad we are deep down, how we fall short of the mark. These are all lies, because you received the atonement, you are now seen through his eyes “as white as snow.” We can go boldly before the throne, not because we see ourselves as right, but because he sees us as right. It is one of Satan’s tactics to bring guilt, or a feeling of unworthiness, so that we won’t even ask God for the thing we need and the answer that God wants you to have. Satan has no power to take Gods promises away. What he does is to get us to a place of not receiving the promise. He throws darts of doubt; guilt at us to get us to not believe the promise is for us. He has us focus on the problem and not to the promised outcome. He does all this to bring us to the place of unbelief. To get us not to believe in Gods word, his love toward us and his power to We must first realize just how much he loves you. He wrote your members down when you just were conceived. He knows the number of hairs on your head (which is constantly changing). We cannot hide from him, Jesus told us about how much he truly loves you. He spoke of how God knows when a sparrow is sold, or when one falls.   If he has this kind of knowledge about an animal. If he cares that much for a bird, what about us, whom he sent his son to die for. He didn’t send his son to die for animals, yet cares for them deeply. He sent his son to bring salvation for you; he wants you to receive all the benefits of that gift. He no longer is seeking justice; your debt has been paid. He has restored us back into the garden. A place where he wants to meet all of your needs from the most serious to just our wants. God has proven his love toward us by sending his son to die for us, what more can he do to prove it? Death, sickness, tribulation are the enemy of God. Because they affect the very creation that he cares most about. You must realize his individual love and goodness toward you before you can receive the benefits of that love.

God Is Powerful!

             After we see that he has good intentions for us we next need to bring to our realization of how powerful he is. God can handle the situation that is facing you. This seems like should be the easiest thing to know, but when a crisis arrives, fear has a tendency to give us amnesia. We quickly forget that to God cancer is like a cold. We forget that he effortlessly spoke all things into existence. We forget he has an endless supply of power. He knows our body better than any doctor, scientist, even better than ourselves. After all he created us all things are from him. Nothing is more powerful or on equal power as God. Satan is a created being. I have given Satan more power than he actually had. At times in my life I put Satan on the same level as God. Satan was created by God (God created Lucifer he chose to disobey God and became Satan, he like us was created with a free choice), God has all the power and we have been giving access to that power to place Satan under our feet. There is not an impossible situation or thing for with God all things are possible. We must believe this in order for the impossible to happen. It is important to remind us though of this very thing.  He is powerful enough to change any situation. “Is anything to hard for the Lord?” Genesis 18:14 says, and the answer is no. Blind eyes can see, limbs can grow, the dead can rise, marriages restored, forgiveness giving, even our minds can be transformed or metamorphosis. We can expect the impossible to become possible. We must realize that what we read in the Bible are true stories. Either it all is true or its not we each individually have the choice. His power is everlasting; there is no measurement of His power. It’s an infinite supply of super natural power. In Isaiah 26:4 “for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” He is just waiting to use it in your situation. We should expect supernatural things to happen in our lives. As I said when we began this section this is probably the easiest part to remember, but when a crisis comes we quickly forget the power we have at our disposal.

He Will!

            After we recognize that God can do anything. After we recognize he has good intentions toward us that he is good. We then must know that he is willing to do it for you, today. The stories in the Bible are not just stories they are truth. He still wishes to be that kind of God today as he was in the Bible. This is where most people are misguided about God. They think that God either won’t do this for them, or that God will do something when he wants to. They think of him as inconsistent some even think he is moody like we are. There are days when you want to do a lot of things. Then there are days that you just do not feel like doing anything at all. We think God is the same way, we beg him to try and get him to act. We fast to get his attention, we cry out, we go and do good deeds. We do all this in an attempt to get God to move for us. He is our heavenly Father and he says he will be a better father than any earthly dad. He even has been proactive to help us in the world. He has already taken care of all our disease, infirmities, sins, he has giving us weapons to defend ourselves, and weapons to go on the attack. God has already spoken your victory. You no longer must get his attention you must use what he has giving you. Your only must trust that he will. God is no respecter of person, what he has done for one he will do for everyone. God is waiting on us to ask, to believe, then to receive. He does not act until we give him the permission. We have a law called “The Good Samaritan,” it is to protect a person who performs first aid on someone. When you go through first aid training one of the first things taught is we must ask the victim if we may permission to perform first aid. With God we must grant him the authority to act on our behalf. There is a story about a man who needed money. So he prayed to God and asks God to let him win the lottery. Week after week went by and each week his frustration continued. Finally after again failing to win, he ask God why he to not answer his prayer. God responded by saying “you must first buy a ticket.” Jesus said “ye have not, cause ye ask not.” We cannot receive the help until we ask for it. We are all created with free will and part of that means that God has to have permission to be God to each of us individually. His desire is to give us all that we dream and imagine. He has prepared the way for it to come to pass but he has to be given for permission. God will do what he said he would do but it is up to us to grant the permission. God will give you what you need he is true to his word. If we are not receiving then we need to look at something other than him.

Just Believe

            Now we go through all this to get to the point of this. God has made the plan of salvation the simplest possible. The plan was not easy to fulfill but the result of salvation is. When we accept Christ, the only thing we are required to do is believe. Hebrews 11:6 says “he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. We are saved by faith, and we are healed, delivered, provided for also by faith. Faith is simply believing that God will do what he said he would do without having it first. It is knowing that you are healed before a doctor or even your own body says it. Its taking God’s spoken Word as truth over what your senses say. As you read through God’s word you find out that it is not hard to receive from God. In Matthew 9:28-29 “and when he was come into the house, the blind man came to him: and Jesus sayeth unto him, believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, yea Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying according to your faith be it unto you.” Mark 9:23-24; Mark 1:40-42; Mark 9:26-29. All these references speak of simply believing, believing that God can and will do what he said. We are to just believe, the problem we have though is not in trying to receive more faith, but casting out the unbelief. In Mark 9 23-29 we have the story of the disciples trying to cast out a demon and not being able to do it. Now they have done this before it was not their first time. Yet they could not so they take the person to Jesus and after Jesus does what was needed the question is asked why they could not do it? Jesus responds that their problem is unbelief and then tells them how to rid that unbelief. He tells them by praying and fasting. In order for you to receive from God and experience the kind of supernatural life they lived in the Bible we must get rid of our unbelief and what the Bible calls a hard heart. When you are saved you are given the “fruit of the spirit” and in you all these things listed in Galatians 5:22-23. We do not have to ask God for any of these things, peace, faith, etc. What we need to do is draw out what we have and rid ourselves of unbelief, of fear. God has given us tools to overcome all these things that we are susceptible to in our weak flesh. Faith is one of those things we don’t need more of in Matthew 17:20 you only need the faith of a mustard seed to remove mountains. We increase our faith and rid our unbelief through 3 things.

            The first way step to do is prayer. Praying is just simply communicating with God. It’s giving him our petitions, telling him our wants, praising him for who he is. Jesus is to be our example and as you read through the gospels you see many instances of him going out early in the morning, late at night praying to the Father. Prayer is an essential part of your Christian life. It should not be looked upon as a duty but as a necessity to living. The more you pray the closer you get to God.

            Secondly you must fast. It is not an option it is an integral part of crucifying the flesh. You are a three part being, the spirit, the soul, and the body. The spirit is your intellect part; it’s where your knowledge of good and evil is. This part is sealed at the point of salvation. It is now perfect this is where you have the mind of Christ. It will ascend to heaven in its present condition, which is perfect. We also have a soul, this part consist of our emotions desires, appetites are centered. This is the part of us that must be focused on God and not on the world. It is hear where Satan is constantly attacking with temptations, thoughts. This is the part that needs to be transformed to having Godly desires and thoughts. Fasting is one thing we can do to help gain a majority in our being. When the spirit and soul agree, the body must follow. But when the soul and the flesh agree your spirit becomes limited.

            The third thing we do to rid ourselves of unbelief is studying and meditating on God’s spoken Word. “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Romans. Unbelief limits our ability to receive from God. It is not a problem on his end his power is always ready, but we must position ourselves to receive. You do this by reading his word. Every time you read the Bible you are filling yourself with his power. In Hebrews 4:12 it talks about how the word is so powerful it cuts through all three parts of our being. We cannot act upon the promises of this word unless we read it and know its there.

             Just believe means that no matter what it looks like on the outside. God loves you unconditionally; you don’t have to change before receiving his forgiveness or healing. He wants to meet you where you are at right now. He will help you change but he first wants to show you that he loves you. Jesus preformed so many miracles in the gospels and he always asked the person or the person confessed that they believed he was able and willing to act.

…But God

             What is but God about? When you have a particular disease the doctor will inform you of what lies ahead for you. When I was diagnosed with it I was given 2 weeks to live. When you jump off a building the result is you will fall and if the building is high you will die. If you play sports and you’re short of players the result of being short would be losing. While this is true with everything we face in the world, job situations, emotional need, physical hurts all have there expected end. Those who receive Christ can expect different results than the normal. In the Bible there are examples of the “but God”. Israel was totally surrounded by an enemy several times. They were out numbered and sometimes even without weapons to defend themselves, to give them a chance. This would normally result in defeat destruction, but God intervened. God preformed miracles several times without Israel picking up one single weapon. Without one Israelite fighting, they lived a supernatural life because of their unwavering belief in but God. They were trapped by Egypt nowhere to go because the Red Sea was before them and the Egyptians behind, but God parted the Red Sea and they crossed over on dry land. Battles were won because of God swooping down and caused them to turn on themselves. David was hiding from Saul and his relentless pursuit of his life. Saul seem to have him trapped in the wilderness but God allowed David to remain hidden fro Saul and his men while at the same time his family, friends and high priest would find him. David in Psalms talks of his flesh failing his heart giving up, but God came and became my strength. No matter what you are up against, whatever sentences you where giving. You have the “but God”, once an addict always an addict, but God took it away forever, never again having a desire to pick it up again. Trust lost in your marriage, you just can’t seem to forgive and forget, but God can give you a new Love, a perfect kind of love. One that forgives one that changes the marriage forever. Depression fear anxiety has a grip on you? People are telling you just to cope with it. You have the “but God,” you have one who can break down those strongholds once and for all. Did a doctor give your child or you a sentence of a condition or disease? Did he give you what you can expect from now on? You have someone who can, will, and does change things. In Gen. He asked Moses a question “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” In Numbers he asked again “is the Lord’s hand waxed short?” With God All  things are possible. Nothing is too hard for your Lord and Savior, the only thing you must do? Ask Just Believe IN But God