Now faith is......

It seems to me that it is hardly possible to read through the pages of the bible, and to search through the gospels as we see Jesus ministering to people with the power of God, without being made aware of how important our faith is to God.
From Genesis to Revelation it is the cord that ties men and women to God, it is what gives us a "good report" and we are told that which pleases God.
By faith we are told the old testament saints of God subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness,obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,quenched the violence of fire,escaped the edge of the sword,out of weakness were made strong,became valiant in battle,and turned to flight the armies of aliens.
In other words they overcame and received Gods powerful hand of deliverance from death and destruction, and worked the righteous works that God had ordained for their lives all by faith.
And we are surrounded the bible tells us by this cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on now from heaven, to excel and run the race of our callings taking their example and bearing our own testimony to it,by the works that we will do by faith.
Paul puts it the most bluntly in the new testament when he says that whatever is not of faith is sin.
Having said all this it is therefore a tragedy to see how little faith and the development of faith in a believers life is taught or emphasised in the church.
A multitude of misconceptions swirl around the head of many Christians when it comes to the subject of faith, what it is and how we can grow in it, and exercise it to bring glory to God.
Some people reject what they call faith teaching citing it as presumption, others dismiss their own struggle for faith with the excuse that some Christians seem to have more than others and evidently they are one who does not have much faith.
Yet others think that the path to grow in their own faith is through greater prayer and fasting,while yet others view those who are bold in their faith as arrogant and boastful.
It is important for us to root out those areas of unbelief in our own hearts because they are what will hinder us in going forward in our obedience with the Lord.
When was the last time that you honestly prayed that the Lord would root out the areas of unbelief in your heart and replace it with strong faith?
When was the last time that you heard a sermon dealing specifically with the call to relinquish unbelief and to embrace an attitude of faith that was directed to believers and not to the unsaved?
I venture to say for many it would be a long time if ever.
In this blog I would like to begin a call and challenge to all who read it to rise up and become the men and women of God that we have been called to be, and we can only ever achieve that by growing in our our capacity to use and exercise faith.

A number of years ago I know a woman who had a spiritual experience where she was "taken "by God in a vision and looked down upon many nations and continents as if she was flying over them.
In this vision she saw a great darkness covering people and nations but here and there she began to see lights piercing through the darkness.
She began to recognize these bright lights as Christians and the light as the presence of God and the Glory of God radiating out of them to all in darkness around them.
She also was made aware of other Christians in this experience however instead of having this aura of light surrounding them they seemed to be under a weight of heaviness and affected by the darkness that was surrounding them.
In the experience she sensed almost overwhelmingly the heart of Gods griefs for those in the vision who were still in darkness, and imagined that it must be for those who were lost.
The Holy Spirit spoke to her and said that His grief was for those Christians who were still succumbing to the darkness and she was given to understand that the Christians who walked in great light were those who walked by faith.
These were the ones who trusted God implicitly and took Him unfailingly at his word.
Those Christians who were not taking God at his word were not radiating the light of His Glory in the same manner and to the same degree.
This encounter which happened over twenty years ago deeply impacted this woman of God and is I believe a powerful illustration of how our faith appears in the spirit realm not only to God but also to the forces of darkness.
I have seen this in my own life as I have observed people of great faith there is an aura of joy and inner strength that seems to pour out of them, and a tangible sense of the presence of God.
So why is there so much misconception about this vital subject of faith?
In part I believe that it is because our enemy the devil has assiduously tried to muddy the waters to put stumbling blocks before believers so that they will not take their responsibility to exercise their faith as they can and ought.
And he accomplishes this through lying to them.
There is as I have said a common but insidious misconception about faith that runs along the lines of thinking that some people have more and some less.
God however is no respecter of persons and the bible says that he has dealt to every man the measure of faith.
"For I say,through the grace given to me,to every one who is among you,not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,but to think soberly,as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.(the authorised says "the measure")
God is most emphatically no respecter of persons.
He did not come to us when we were saved and decree "To you I give one portion of faith, and to you I give four measures", and yet again turning to a third person say "And to you I apportion ten measures of faith"
Spiritual gifts and callings are different but when it comes to faith the bible is clear and unambiguous, that he has dealt to every one of us a measure of faith.
Irrespective of who you are when you got born again the Holy Spirit placed within your spirit a measure of faith.
How you develop that faith in order for it to grow is up to you, but nobody was dealt insufficient faith when they were born again.
This scripture in Romans chapter 12 lays to rest the misconception that God arbitrarily doles out faith in different portions and in different measures.
That is therefore that first root of unbelief that we need to lay the axe to in our thinking.
Another very informative scripture is found in Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 8 - 10 which says,
"For by grace you have been saved through faith,and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God,not of works,lest anyone should boast.
For we are his workmanship,created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
In this scripture we are told that our salvation was a free gift not by works but by grace and it came through faith.
But the faith itself by which we are saved is also a gift for we are told,
"By grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God."
Faith, the faith by which we are saved is a gift of God.
When you made Jesus the Lord of your life the Holy Spirit deposited this saving faith into your spirit and faith in God was kindled inside of you.
God in that moment imparted to your spirit a brand new nature and one of the fruits of that nature was faith.
Faith is a real substance, it is a spiritual force that resides on the inside of every child of God and as we learn to grow in our faith and put our faith to work it is the primary key in our spiritual lives by which we learn to overcome.
I believe that one of the reasons why the woman that I cited saw an aura of Gods powerful presence surrounding those Christians who walked in faith is because faith is what enables us to overcome whatever obstacles life may throw at us.
We are not meant to be under life's burdens but rather to experience victory in the midst of every challenge that life throws at us, and faith is the key to this victory.
John the Apostle put it this way
"Whatever is born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that has overcome that world even our faith." 1 John 5 ,vs 4
Do you realize that as a christian you have world overcoming faith in you.
Because you have been born of God and are His child and have this gift of overcoming faith abiding inside of you, you can face squarely every one of life's challenges and crisis with the joyful expectation that you have already overcome, and therefore the challenge that you are facing can never destroy you.
Peter in his epistle calls this faith "exceedingly precious"and to be sure it is,far more so than any other earthly or material treasure that we may find.
How tragic then is it when Christians go through life with this exceedingly precious gift of faith lying dormant and barely believing God for anything at all.
The truth is that much of the church is still living by sight and not by faith inverting the order that God intends for us.
Rather we should be walking by faith and not by sight, for we live in a supernatural realm, the world of the spirit,and faith is the main thread of this spiritual life.
If we do not live by faith in God then we will live very much within the "safe" boundaries of our five physical senses of what we can touch and taste and handle and feel and see and appreciate by the evidence of our natural sight and natural reason.
That is like a goldfish being won at a fair and brought home in the confines of the plastic bag that it is kept in, and instead of be placed in a tank kept in the bag, eventually it would perish.
We are created to walk in the spirit realm and live in that realm, not in some mystical way but to live and abide and walk in the spirit which means to live by faith in God out of this new life and out of the new center of this new creation which God has given birth to inside of us.
It means to live with your spirit and not your soul in the ascendancy.
Imagine if that fish was let lose in an ocean and free to swim as far and as fast as it desired to.
This is or should be a picture of a believer living in the spirit and walking in the spirit by faith.
Faith has to grow, because it was designed by God to do so.
However you and I know that if you were to take any seed and plant it in the wrong environment and fail to water it it simply will not grow
Our reborn human spirits are the soil out of which our faith grows and what we feed our faith on makes all the difference in the world.
In 2 Thessalonians Paul writes
"We are bound to thank God always for you,brethren,as is fitting,because your faith grows exceedingly,and the love of every one of you all abounds towards each other."
Paul commends these believers in Thessalonia because the initial faith which they had received has now grown, and grow not just a little but exceedingly.
This is the expectation of our heavenly Father for each and every one of us.
There is a phrase in the scripture which I quoted from Ephesians chapter 2 that is of paramount importance to us in understanding how faith operates in our lives.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith,and that not of yourselves;it is the gift of God"
This faith that God deposited inside of us when we were born again is not of ourselves it is of God.
What does this mean.
It means that it is faith from God and of him, not a human faith but a spiritual supernatural deposit of the faith of God himself that came out of His heart and was measured to you.
There is a law called the law of reciprocals.
When you take a magnet and place the right end on end they lock together but if you try and invert the ends they actually repel each other.
This faith which we posses is not of ourselves, that is it does not belong to human nature.
It only locks in to God and to what he has said.
It is designed to be attracted to the living God and the words of his authority.
It will never work if we are placing our faith in human words or human ideas or human circumstances.
It was never intended to do so.
It is not of ourselves it is of God, and feeds and grows when it is built upon Gods word and nothing else.
Many people say "You should have faith in me"
No I should not.
I do have a responsibility to love you and to pray for you but I only am meant to place my faith in God.
Others may say "I have faith that my circumstances will change",but again we need to be careful over our wording.
My faith is never to be placed in my circumstances but only in God and in what he has said.
Certainly we can believe that God can change our circumstances but my faith is set upon him not the circumstances changing.
The word of God is the spiritual food that we must feed upon in order to grow in our faith
"So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God"Rom 10--vs 17
In Hebrews chapter 11 which has often been regarded as the great faith chapter we read the following words,
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,the evidence of things not seen."
Notice the insertion of the word now.
Now faith is.
Like the children of Israel who daily collected the manna in the desert faith is always for now, it never reminisces over yesterdays blessings or daydreams only about the future being different.
Rather faith now is.
It is never "I used to believe",or "I will believe",rather it is always "I do believe"
Faith reaches into the future and affects it for positive change,but it is rooted and grounded in what we currently believe and what we are presently thinking
Faith is something that we must exercise "Now" in order to change our tomorrow's.
The passage in Hebrews continues,
"For by it the elders obtain a good report.
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible."
What a powerful sentence.
Everything that we see around, all of creation, every leaf and flower and living organism and natural resort, every piece of furniture carved from wood that came from tree that grew out of the earth came originally from what God said when he spoke these things into existence.
"The things which are seen were not made of tings that are visible"
In other word there is a prior greater reality behind everything that is visible and that can be seen and it is the greater reality of Gods word which at one point was spoken and brought all these things into existence.
So faith always builds upon the unshakable foundation of who God is, upon His throne and the Word of His power.
"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God"
And by faith we understand that our worlds are framed by what God has said and that everything is subject to change when we believe what God has said and hold fast to our confession of his word unwavering until the end.
The Genesis account of creation shows how God framed the worlds by his word,
"Then God said,.............And there was "
The entire creation account reveals this pattern of God the creator speaking forth his heart and minds intent and so it became.
And the book of Hebrew reveals to us that it is by that same word that all that he has created is being upheld and sustained.
Can we not see the centrality of Gods word to the development of our own faith?
Gods word has lost none of its power or force to create and bring change and transformation and new life.
It is full of Gods life and the book of Hebrews tells us living and active.
Not an archive of past events and dead.
No living and active.
Able to bring change into your life and into mine if we will speak it and confess it over the circumstances of our own lives.
And if we will become completely assured of it truthfulness where we are concerned.
You may say "I would never doubt the bible"
However if we believe what God has said then there is always a corresponding action to our faith.
James says that faith without deeds is dead.
We cannot say "I believe" and then by our actions negate and deny our confession.
If we truly believe then our lives very often would be different and then we would bear more fruit to God.
Abraham understood this principle so well as he was placed in the position of having to believe for the impossible, in this case a son.
Then after the son of promise was born he needed to exercise his faith in the power of God to literally raise his son from the dead after he had slayed him with a knife and offered him up as a burn offering upon the altar of sacrifice,which is fully what he expected to do.
He also believed that through his seed a nation would be born, and Jesus said that "Abraham rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and was glad."
So it is also evident that Abraham's faith was in the coming redeemer who would be given birth through his natural line of descent.
Not bad for an elderly man who could not by the law of nature have a son with his elderly wife.
Everything that God has called you and I to do that originates from him is humanly speaking impossible, and therefore will always require faith to bring it to pass.

"Well the things that I have been doing are not humanly impossible",you may say.
Then you are very likely not following Gods best plan for your life,because He always requires faith in us to bring these things to pass.
We can see the way that Abraham took hold of Gods word and brought it to pass, and certainly we also can take great encouragement to do likewise.
"He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief",
the book of Romans tells us, but
"Was strengthened in faith,giving glory to God,and being fully persuaded that what he had promised he was also able to perform."
He became "fully persuaded"
It did not matter if his wife was to old to conceive and barren when she was not too old.
It did not matter whether he was physically too old to sire another child.
It did not matter that the promise that God had spoken was almost twenty years old, yet he became fully persuaded.
I do not imagine that Abraham got there overnight but thank God he did get there.
I have no doubt whatsoever that had Abraham not been fully persuaded he would not "have become" a father of many nations.
God required him to develop and exercise his faith in the promise of God in order to become what God had called him to be.
The higher the calling upon a persons life the more it will require faith to bring it to pass.
Had Abraham not believed I believe that God would have raised up someone else to carry the promise but thank God he did believe and persevere.
There is too much fatalism in the body of Christ masquerading under the supposed guise of the sovereignty of God.
I firmly believe in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, however I also see how much the scripture places the emphasis on our faith to change our circumstances and to enter into what God has for us.
The doctrine of the sovereignty of God does not change this it simply under girds it.
God will do according to his will both among the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
It is also true that there are certain things that God has planned for our lives that we can go to heaven never having fulfilled if we remain in unbelief and disobedience.
John Wesley once said,
It seems that the devil has counterfeited real heart faith in the church for mere mental assent.
Many christians are living in the realm of mere mental assent rather than with real heart faith and therefore are never able to come to the place of rest that the scriptures call "being fully assured"
When we come to that place we know that our confidence is in the Lord and in his word to come to pass in our lives and we refuse to be either discouraged or swayed by any circumstance in our lives that would seem to contradict it.
Becoming fully persuaded only comes by a process of heeding Gods word and giving it great respect.
Someone once said that many people read Gods word as if they need to consider whether they can embrace what it says and listen to the news as if every word is gospel truth.
This is completely distorted and needs to be the other way around.

There are three foundational principles upon which strong faith is solidly built, and the first of these is always a heart that believes.
In this blog I have touched fairly extensively upon this.
In my next blog I want to develop the other two foundational principles.

Hope and healing.
There is in our society a cry for things that offer hope in these days.
So much of the looming crisis that seems brewing on the horizon challenges us as to whether we will face the future with hope in our hearts and without any fear or succumb to the sense of hopelessness that seems to be overcoming so many.
The Holy Spirit through Paul expressed his desire for all christians to be full of hope in Romans chapter 15 and verse 13 where He said
"Now may the God of hope,fill you with all joy and peace in believing,that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Hope is something that we as christians are supposed to abound in.
Psalms 42 quoting from the authorised version says
"Hope thou in God, for I will yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance and my God."
The amplified translation puts it like this
"Why are you cast down my inner self?And why be disquieted within me?
Hope in God and wait expectantly for Him,for I shall yet praise Him,Who is the help of my countenance and my God."
Hope therefore is an expectancy and an expectation of the desired end which we wish and desire to see.
Because many christians have a vague notion of what hope from the bible truly is they often do not seek to establish a firm foundation of hope in their lives, and to guard their hope for the future jealously.
Perhaps the clearest and most succinct definition of what biblical hope is can be found in the first chapter of the book of Philipians where Paul says
"According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing shall I be ashamed"
Hope is an earnest expectation, that brings no shame because we believe that the good end which we hope for shall surely come to pass.
Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 1 puts it this way "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,the evidence of things not seen"
Hope is here described as the foundation of our faith, for it precedes it, since faith is the substance of those things that we are hoping for.
What does this mean exactly?
It means that since we can only receive from God by faith in any area of our lives we have to have established a firm foundation of hope in our lives first in order for faith to rise up within us and receive what God desires to give us.
Hope is therefore not something vague and wishful and maybe it will maybe it wont proposition.
Hope has guts it has heart it has certainty and it most definitely has courage.
How can I have hope like this some may say?
And the answer to that question very much depends upon from where you and I are deriving our hope.
For hope only ever comes from the Word of God and from the promises of God.
The promises of God have within themselves hope, they are if you like containers of living hope and our job is to lay hold upon this hope by laying up these promises within our lives.
This is why many people fail and falter, because they are looking to find hope in what God has said and something else.
But it is only when we make the promises of God our only refuge that we are sheltered from the storm.
Likewise it is only when we determine that Gods promises are sufficient and need no other thing to support them, it is then that we will diligently seek to lay them up within our hearts and to nurture them.
Sometimes believers tend to place their hope in a change of their circumstance being imminent or a healing quickly appearing or a relationship being radically restored, if there is some evidence that they can see and take hold of first, then they say this will offer them hope.
But in reality this is not the way that hope is gained or that hope is strengthened in our lives,because God wants for us to so lay hold of hope in the promises of God that we need no other supporting evidence or confirming coincidences in order for us to believe that what God has said will come to pass.
It is the attitude of heart that says "even if everything around me or within me seems to show the opposite of what I am believing, I believe that Gods word concerning this issue is going to be the end result."
That is biblical hope.
It lifts our esteem of the word of God to a higher place than any other circumstance of our lives.
This is exactly what Abraham did when he "against hope believed in hope and so he became " the father of many nations.
In other words Abraham took the hope that was delivered to him from what God had said, (you will be the father of many nations) and used it to defeat mere natural hope, which would have be limited to his age and his bodies ability to reproduce.
Natural hope would have only said to him "You are to old and impotent and passed the age, and its too late."
Natural hope depends upon the circumstances being favourably inclined Supernatural hope looks to God alone and believes for the impossible.
I believe that in 2011 and as 2012 fast approaches we need to be a people whose lives are clearly marked by the presence of real bible hope.
We need to rise up and to face whatever the challenges of our lives may be that face us and defeat the voice of discouragement and despair with living hope.
There are three basic areas of our lives that most of us will need greater hope in or three basic areas that we can divide our life up into.
One is relational the second is financial and the third is health and healing.
Most peoples lives will be challenged in one or more of those areas at different times and it is amazing to discover how much the bible has to say about each one of these areas.
In this blog I would like to focus on the area of health and healing and to lay a foundation for real bible hope to arise in our lives for our healing and for our health.
Gods will is to heal us and for us to be in good health.
"Beloved I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers."3 john vs2
In Isaiah chapter 53 we have what is commonly regarded as the great redemption chapter of the old testament.
It is all the more remarkable when considered that it was prophesied over seven hundred years prior to the birth of Christ, and Isaiah peered down the telescope of human history and spoke in detail of the events of the cross.
This prophecy gives to us a picture not only of the fact of the cross, but great spiritual insight into what occurred spiritually when Jesus hung and bled on the cross two thousand years ago.
"Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid as it were,our faces from him;
He was despised,and we did not esteem him.
Surely he has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed him stricken
Smitten of God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement of our peace was upon him
And by his stripes we are healed."

One thing that is of vital consequence in understanding the place of healing in the church is to understand why we are healed.
We are not healed because God has compassion on us in our suffering neither because our prayers have been answered or because we have years of natural life and service left to give to God.
Certainly all of the above are true but they are not the reason why.
The reason why we are healed is because on the cross two thousand years ago Jesus Christ of Nazareth made a substitution for us when he bore all of our sicknesses and diseases.
The cross is the foundation for our healing.
Unfortunately due to an incorrect translation of certain verses in the English translation from Isaiah this fact has not stood out as prominently to us as it should.
The words that are translated griefs and sorrows are the Hebrew words translated Choli and Makob and should have been translated into the English as sickness and pain.
Everywhere else throughout the Old testament where they are used they are translated as sickness and as pain.eg deut 7,15 28,61 1 king,s 17,17 2 kings 1,2 8,8 2 chronicles 16,12 and 21,15.
Also job 14,22 and 33 19 to name but a very few.
The verses should have been translated,

"He is despised and rejected of men,
A man of pains and familiar with sickness."
V4 "Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains,, and by his stripes we are healed." v 5
Why would the translators not have translated these words accurately in there original meaning?
I can only imagine that prejudice had a bearing on this decision.
It is interesting that in the Hebrew bible these verses are accurately translated and they are in some others European languages including Spanish.
However when this was translated into the king james version over 400 years ago there was a root of unbelief existing within the church certainly as far as divine healing was concerned.
It was neither embraced nor commonly practiced, so whilst the intent of the original translators was almost certainly to give Glory to God in presenting the most accurate translation available at the time in the English language, it would seem that human prejudice got in the way and prevented this clearer understanding of what these verses were are saying with regards to our healing from being more widely understood.
Dr Youngs translation of this passage reads as follows,
"He is despised and left of men,
A man of pains,and acquainted with sickness,
And as one hiding the face from us,
He is despised and we esteemed him not.
Surely our sicknesses(choli)he has borne,
And our pains(makob)he has carried them,
And we-we have esteemed him plagued,
Smitten of God and afflicted.
And he is pierced for our transgressions,
Bruised for our iniquities,
The chastisement of our peace is on him,
And by his bruise there is healing to us.

Dr Isaac Leesers translation of the Hebrew English bible translates it as follows,

"He was despised and shunned of men:
A man of pains and acquainted with disease.
But only our diseases did He bear himself,
And our pains he carried.
And through his bruises was healing granted to us. vs 3-5"
"But the Lord was pleased to crush him through disease,vs 10."

Of equal importance is to understand the word borne in verse 4
"Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our diseases."
It is the word nasa and means to "lift up,to bear away ,carry away and remove completely."
It applied to the Levitical scapegoat that bore away the sins of the people on the great day of atonement in Leviticus 16 and verse 22,
"The goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities to a land not inhabited and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness."
On the cross Jesus bore our sickness and our diseases as surely as he did our sins.
He bore them in order to carry them away and remove them.
The same word for bear( nasa) which is used in verse 4 to describe Jesus bearing our sickness and our pains is the same word which is used again in verse 11 and 12 to describe His bearing of our transgressions and of our sins.
In the mind and heart of God there is no difference,the great substitutionary work of Jesus bearing our sins is also the great substitutionary work of Jesus to bear our sicknesses as well.
And the sense of this bearing (Nasa) is to carry it and to remove it far away.
We are forgiven because Jesus put away sin by the sacrifice of himself on the cross once and for all.
And we are healed because Jesus dealt as emphatically with sickness and with pain on the cross.
This is the foundation for our faith.
There are two "streams"of healing in the church today.
On the one hand there is the ministry of prayer for the sick and of the laying on of hands.
There are and always have been those who have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit of healing's and the working of miracles.
They tend to be more especially used to transfer the healing anointing into the sick, however every single one of us, every child of God can and should lay hands upon the sick and pray for their recovery.
The healing anointing of God is a powerful tangible reality and is one means by which healing is communicated to the sick today.
In the gospels it speaks of the power of the Lord being present to heal the sick, which would refer to the healing anointing.
That is one means.
Then there is the individual faith of every christian to receive through Gods word the provision of the cross for themselves.
This is when we begin to appropriate by our faith the reality of our healing that was accomplished for us on Calvary.
Proverbs chapter 4 gives us great insight into how we are to accomplish this in our lives.
"My son,attend to my words,
Incline your ears unto my sayings.
Let them not depart from your eyes,
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh."
We need to understand that Gods word is a living thing and is spoken of again and again in the scriptures as a seed.
It is an incorruptible seed and Jesus in the parable of the sower spoke of the supreme importance of letting this "seed" find good ground within our hearts.
In natural law we see this principal also, according to what is sown so will the harvest be.
If say a farmer plants seed in a field of a certain crop he knows that if the ground is god and the conditions are right he will yield a harvest.
This is not something arbitrary, it is a natural law.
Neither does he go and keep on digging up the earth to see whether the seed is taking root or whether it is growing.
Rather he watches the field knowing that in due course a crop will emerge and it will yield according to the quantity of seed sown.
In proverbs chapter 4 we are shown how to yield a harvest of health in our lives.
We are to "Attend to his words", and we do this by letting them not depart from before our eyes and keeping them in the midst of our heart.
Gods word is described as an incorruptible and an imperishable seed.
It will never return to God void but when believed and acted upon will always accomplish what He desires and fulfill the purpose for which it was sent.
If we require healing then we must look to the promises of healing and health in the bible and begin to meditate upon these until they never depart from before our eyes(our consciousness) and lay them up richly within our heart.
John Wesley once said that the enemy satan has successfully counterfeited true heart faith in the church and replaced it with a mere mental assent.
I believe that his assessment was profoundly accurate.
For well over two hundred years in the church since the so called "enlightenment" reason has sought to replace faith and what is rational is used to dismissed what cannot be easily explained by natural reason alone.
This gave birth to secular humanism as we now know it but its roots were the exaltation of the human mind, the intellect and reason against revelation.
The bible speaks far more about the human spirit than it does the mind.
In the gospels the Pharisees were those that reasoned with their minds and sought to work out how they might trap Christ and humiliate him.
Jesus however spoke of his disciples hearing and understanding his words with the eyes and ears of their hearts which is to say their spirits.
Proverbs chapter 4 is therefore not simply talking about memorizing verses of the bible, rather it speaks of meditation to a place where the promises of God are richly dwelling within us that is within our hearts and ever before our eyes that is at the forefront of our minds.
That is the condition for "finding "Gods word so that they become life to us and health to all our flesh.
It is a great tragedy how many christians never discover the word of God and the promises of God becoming a quickening and vital power of God in their lives because they do not distinguish between the soul and the spirit in their lives.
The word of God cannot be planted into our minds to become this, it can only be planted into our spirits, our inner man that hidden man of the heart as the bible calls him.
It is there in our innermost heart that the seed of the word of God begins to germinate and grows up to become greater than whatever the need may be in our life.
Just as the seed can only do its work in nature by being kept in the ground, so Gods imperishable seed can only do its effective work in us by being kept in the midst of our hearts.
And that is satan ploy according to Jesus in the parable of the sower to try to get the word out of our hearts.
What satan well knows that some christians do not know is that once the word of Gods promise has been received and believed and begun to take root in our hearts, there is no way way that it will fail to produce a harvest in our lives.
If we need to improve our health then we should go to the passages in the bible that promise healing and health and write them down if necessary and begin to meditate upon them until they grow up as living faith within us that grows and becomes greater than any of the symptoms that we have been struggling against.
Gods word contains His healing life and virtue in it,which is why proverbs 4 says that it will become life to us and health to all our flesh.
However just as taking a medication will only do us good if it is administered in the correct way, and usually that means getting into our blood stream, so the healing virtue and life giving properties of Gods word will only do us good if we get it and keep it in our hearts to overflowing.
One of the quickest and most fruitful ways to get the word of God into our hearts and to keep it in the middle of our hearts is by oral meditation.
We need to often and constantly speak the word of God and especially the promises of God to ourselves until they become second nature to us and we can quote them out of our hearts without trying to mentally remember them.
This is a good gauge and arbiter of how much we have truly layed them up within ourselves.
Two years ago as of writing I came to one of the few crisis times of my life.
after a routine operation I was cast into a spiritual battle where I had to take sleeping pills to get to sleep, and beta blocker to stabilize my heart.
It was needless to say not an encouraging point to reach.
In addition I had reached a place of utter burn out in the life of ministry.
During this period God showed how I had erred and how I had let the enemy enter in (I knew some of the areas where I had sinned and compromised but the Lord gave me much more clarity during this time)
I emerged from this dark valley a new man and today I am healthier and spiritually more alive than I ever have been.
I was completely healed.
Partly I needed to shut the door to the enemy by repentance of the known areas of sin in my life.
And also I needed to reconnect with the word of God with my faith in a manner and in a way which I had neglected for many years greatly to my own cost.
I began by finding every Scripture on healing and writing them down, and by reading every book that I could on healing.
And my faith began to grow.
This process did not happen overnight, but daily twice a day I would speak them and speak them and speak them, until they soaked into my spirit, so that today Gods healing promises dwell in me richly.
And to this I continue to speak out Gods healing words (along with many other promises that tell me who I am in Christ and what my inheritance is) in order to keep those words in the midst of my heart,and keep my faith strong in those promises.
Thank God for the power of his word!
Some christians treat divine healing as something almost arbitrary, God is soverign they say and He will heal when he wants to and whom he wants to.
That however releases us of any responsibility on our part to exercise any faith for healing and to grow in our faith regarding it.
It also has little foundation in the word of God most especially in the gospels where it is evident that Jesus looked for and rewarded faith in the lives of those who came to him for their healing.
The foundation for our faith is the cross of Christ, there our healing was secured and there it was obtained.
Gods motive to heal may well be His compassion but the grounds of our healing health and wellbeing is the fact that Jesus obtained this for us on calvary tree.
It is a finished and accomplished thing.
I encourage you do not let the devil rob you of the blessing of healing and the blessing of health to all your flesh.
It is an accomplished fact in the eyes of God.
See it as accomplished in your eyes too.
Rise up in your faith and posses what is legally yours by the blood of Christ.
In this next year I pray that more and more of Gods people may become marked by the presence of this living hope, and be seen as a people of hope with regard to the future.
I will end with the scripture which I quoted at the beginning of this blog from romans chapter 15 that expresses the heart and mind of the Holy Spirit for us, the church in this regard
"Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15 vs 13)

Psalm 91. part 1
Psalm 91 stands out as one of the most eloquent and clear voices in the Scriptures of Gods promise of protection from danger and calamity for his people who trust in him.
Make no mistake God intends to protect his people from danger and from harms way.
The Apostle Paul writing in 2 corinithians chapter 1 says
"For all the promises of God in him are "Yes", and in him "Amen", to the glory of God through us.
In Christ ,in our union with him, God desires that every one of his promises are manifested through our lives to his own glory,as we affirm them as yes and as amen.
Notice he did not say maybe and perhaps but yes and amen.
That includes all of the promise contained in psalm 91.
All of Gods promises are yes in Christ.
And all of them are amen.
Many Christians come to the promises of God with a heart full of unbelief.
They read these promises with qualifiers and caveats and do not take these words as statements of Gods intent to every child of God regardless of who they may be.
Why then do some good and fine Christians die in tragic circumstances, and why do others fail to receive their promised deliverance, some may ask?
That is a good question and one that demands an answer.
The truth is that every one of Gods promises will not automatically fall upon us like ripe cherries off of a tree, for they are conditional.
The promises of God are dependant upon two things our obedience and our faith.
We simply cannot do as we please when we please even living and acting contrary to Gods word and expect these promises to be powerfully manifested in our lives to the glory of God.
And in order for them to be at work in our lives we must combine them with faith.
However if we will walk in the light of these truths and believe them from our hearts then we can and should expect Gods delivering hand of power to be present with us to enforce these promises that he has made.
Surely in this day and in this hour in which we are alive we need to lay hold of every provision that God has made and walk in the powerful covenant promises of the most high God who is also our El shaddai.
The psalm begins
"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide or rest under the shadow of the Almighty."
The two terms here used to describe the Lord are Most High and Almighty, however in the original Hebrew they are El Elyon and El Shaddai.
El Elyon speaks of Gods might and absolute sovereign supremacy over all other things
There is no challenge thrown your way that God is not equal to the task of delivering you from it and giving you the victory over it.
He is sovereign over everything that you face in this life and you and I should never forget it.
This is the One in whom we dwell and in whose shadow we take refuge.
Why if he is sovereign some people say does he allow me to go through this?
Some of the things that we must endure are for our salvation and for our development as Christians but there are other things that the enemy of our souls has determined for our destruction and harm that can occur and do occur because we permit them.
That is simply the truth whether we like to hear that or not.
God commands us to "give no place to the devil" and "to resist him and he must flee from you", which does not imply that we will ever cease to prevent him from attacking us consistently in this life but it does imply that we can prevent his schemes from succeeding in our lives.
The Most high is the One in whom we have found a secret place of refuge and he is also called El shaddai.
That was the name that was first revealed to Abraham and comes from the word shad which means breast.
El shaddai therefore means many breasted one and conjures up all of the associations of a nursing mother with her baby laid to her breast,watching over it feeding and nurturing it, and fiercely protective towards it.
This name implies Gods all sufficiency; the all sufficiency of his grace and of his goodness to nurture us and provide for us and watch over and protect us as a mother does her suckling babe.
This is the God in whose shadow we find protection and in whose shelter we rest.
"Surely he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler,
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with his feathers,
And under his wings you shall take refuge."
When the psalmist here speaks of taking refuge in under the feathers of Gods protective love and being covered by his wings, it reminds us of the words of Jesus when He spoke to the people of Jesusalem just before his arrest and trail and said
"O Jerusalem,Jerusalem,the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together,as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,but you were not willing!"
Even in the face of ultimate rejection from the people whom he was sent to, the heart of Gods love expressed in Jesus is desiring to gather and deliver and save those to whom he was sent.
He desired to gather and to protect them and used the same intimate language of a mother bird covering her young under her wings to describe this covenant love of God.
This love is called in the hebrew language hesed and denotes a loyalty and protectiveness and a closely guarding and a watchfulness.
It speaks of the unchanging covenant love of our heavenly Father to hide us and protect us and gather us close to himself.
It is this love that is being spoken of in Psalm 91 also.
Why does God want to protect us from all evil and from destruction and danger?
Because he has entered into a covenant of love or hesed with us and desires to make known to us the nature of this fiercely protective love and of His goodness towards us.
Sadly satan has done a pretty successful job of distorting the image of Gods nature in His goodness towards us as His children.
What Father is their who would be considered a good earthly father who would willfully and knowingly let his child approach danger and harm without attempting to warn them and save them?
Mens religious ideas have implied that God allows us to experience tragedy and to endure destruction and loss so as to teach us more of His mysterious ways, and so as to deepen our faith and our trust in him in spite of everything that we are experiencing around us.
It is true that in times of great suffering Gods consolation and comfort will and does abound towards us, but to imply that God wants us to experience danger or premature death or injury or calamity for some mysterious purpose unknown at that time to us, is to flatly contradict the promises that he has so clearly spoken in psalm 91.
Remember numbers 21 says that "God is not a man that he should lie neither the son of man that he should repent.
Has he said and shall he not do it, or has he spoken and shall he not make it good"
Consider the words of psalm 91 that he has spoken to us as translated in the amplified bible.
"Only a spectator shall you be (yourself inaccessible in the secret place of the Most High)as you witness the reward of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,and the most high your dwelling place,
There shall no evil befall you,nor any plague or calamity come near your tent.
For He will give his angels (especial)charge over you to accompany and defend and preserve you in all your ways (of obedience and service) vs 8-11.
For us to deny these promises or to doubt them is to call God a liar and that I will not do.
This psalm is written to build into our hearts strong assurance and peace with regards to Gods will to protect our lives from danger,so that we can confidently face our adversary the devil with no fear of what he can do to our lives.
So The Lord who is our refuge and our fortress is also our El Shaddai who nurtures and protects us in His covenant love;and He is El Elyon who is the Most High over all things.
This Psalm is written to instruct us how to access this place of safety in the Most High and one of the first things that we are told is that we must say this of the Lord.
"I will say of the Lord , He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I have put my trust."vs2
The importance of what we say is always stated in the scripture, and here is no exception.
What we say is the barometer of what we believe,"I believed and therefore I have spoken"
However we may need to say something many times before is takes deep root in our hearts.
Many people miss the powerful truth about biblical confession, because they believe that if they say something without conviction then it is only vain repetition.
Firstly we can make the decision to believe, and so if we choose to believe what we are reading is true, and is true for our lives, then it can never be vain to repeat it.
But secondly to think that repeating Gods word over and over again as we say it to ourselves is vain repetition is to misunderstand the nature and power of Gods word.
Both in the Old and in the New testaments we read that "The Word (speaking of Gods word the bible) is very near you , that is in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith which we preach."Romans 10 vs8, Deut 30 v14
The promises of God need to be put in our hearts and in our mouths continually in order for them to become a living reality to us, and in order for our faith in those very promises to be as instinctive to us as our speaking and eating and sleeping.
When we believe that the Heavenly Father cares for us, so as to watch over our lives, and we really believe that then that is an end to fear.
When we know as we know our own names and as we know the love of a loved one for us that our Father in Heaven covers us with the feathers of His covenant love,and that His love has anticipated danger and snares that lie before us, in order to warn us and guide us safely past them, then is an end to fear.
In verses 5 -8 the psalmist lists a number of potential dangers that can assail a child of God both day and night and states that we shall not be afraid.
We need never be afraid of anything that our enemy the devil tries to scheme against us for our destruction or injury because we know the power of Gods powerful protective covenant Love.
God is not impassively sitting upon His Throne in Heaven watching His children as they approach danger and not anticipating that danger and moving upon their lives to provide deliverance and salvation from that danger.
He is a good Father.
Jesus said in Johns gospel chapter 10 and vs 10 that
"The thief comes not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy.
But I am come that they may have life and have it more abundantly."
Jesus came to deliver us, "Who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him."
The devil only ever desires our death and our hurt.
God only ever desires to communicate His life and to do us good.
The devil and God have never changed roles, neither will they.
And yet to listen to some preachers you may be forgiven for imagining that God is somehow glorified in the unnecessary suffering that comes into our lives.
I say unnecessary suffering because there is for certain a necessary suffering that will be our portion in this life, infact Paul said that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
However that does not and should not include unnecessary injury accidents or premature deaths.
These are the domain of the prince of this world, and thank God in Christ we have complete victory over the devil and all of his works.
God is a good God, and if we as earthly parents have a strong desire to protect our children from harms way, how much more does our Father who is in heaven.
But we have a responsibility to "close the door on fear" because our fear gives a place of opportunity to the devil to gain an advantage.
When the Scripture tells us to give no place to the devil, this includes giving no place to fear in our lives.
And our resting in that secret place (which we do by faith and trust)of the Knowledge of our Fathers love, is the way that fear is dissipated in our lives.
There is one more crucial factor which comes in to play here, when we are standing to see the delivering power of God at work in our lives,and that is our willingness to heed the still small voice of Gods Spirit.
Romans chapter 8 says that "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these shall be called the sons of God."
The Greek text is in the continuous present tense, which reads" as many as are being (continually )led by the Spirit of God, these shall be called the sons of God."
Many people I believe have failed to receive their deliverance from danger, because they have failed to heed the warnings and checks that the Holy spirit gave them.
Two ministers were flying back from a conference in the united states, the pastor and his assistant pastor.
During the lay over of the interconnecting flight the pastor had a strong urge not to board the flight that they were scheduled to take.
This was not a fear but a disquiet and strong ill ease in his spirit compelling him to take a different flight.
The practical implications of this were inconvenient to the pastor for it meant cancelling his flight and rerouting by a longer more circuitous route.
This pastor communicated his instincts to his assistant, but the assistant did not wish to change as he had pledged to his wife that he would make it home that night which was his anniversary.
The assistant never made it home, for the plane which he was on went down, killing everyone on board.
Some people may hear that story and wonder why God did not speak to that assistant pastor, but it was evident that he did.
He spoke through the other pastor who in this case did not have a strong motive for returning home early,and therefore could listen to God more objectively.
In another instance a man of God know to Jan and I was killed when the plane that he was on burst into flames as it was landing.
This man was a significant leader in an African nation and not only was he killed but a number of other pastors who were also on board this chartered flight, as they were flying in to an African nation for a mission.
After this event such was the stature of this man to those who knew him, that it caused much soul searching among those who heard.
Some people suggested that though we do not know why, perhaps in some way it was Gods time to take this brother home to his reward.
However I believe that the truth was nearer to what his wife subsequently revealed, that she had pleaded with him not to go on this particular trip, as she felt a strong check and was troubled in here spirit about it.
The leader concerned had overridden his wife concern, saying that it was his duty to go to the people that he had promised.
Again I have no doubt that his life could have been spared had he heeded his wife's concerns and taken it to the Lord in prayer.
John G Lake an apostle to the African nation and in particular to south Africa was once driving down a highway, when he distinctly heard the Holy Spirit saying to him,"Pull the car over right now!"
He obeyed and a few seconds later a truck came careering round an approaching bend in the road, on the wrong side of the road, as its brakes had failed.
Had He not have given heed to that warning he later said he would have almost certainly have been killed in a head on collision.
Again I am sure that had he failed to hear and to obey the Holy Spirits warnings, some would have said "Well it was Gods time to take him"
However this would not have been true since he went on to profoundly shake that Africian nation by the power of God.
That is why I said that the promises in psalm 91 are conditional, they depend upon our faith and obedience to heed implicitly Gods voice when He is warning us of impending danger.
Trust and obey.
Sometimes the Lord will give to us an intercession to pray and to avert danger that lies ahead, and this is one of the great blessings of praying in tongues.
We can "pick up" by a knowing a sense of something being wrong, without actually knowing what precisely it is.
By yielding to the Holy Spirit however we can pray through to a place of victory or of peace, and many times,I believe,have by the Spirits intercession through us,secured the victory and protection of God over a diabolical scheme of the evil one to try to injure or to kill us.
Lyn Hammon wife of Mac Hammon pastors of a great church in Minneapolis,was led to urgently pray for her husband who was returning from a ministry trip, sensing strongly that he was in danger.
Being a woman of prayer she discerned that there was an unusual degree of urgency upon this leading for intercession and prayed through until she knew that she had "hit"a note of victory.
Her husband returned back later that evening testifying that the plane which he was on had encountered difficulties on approaching landing, and though part of it had crashed no one on board was injured.
When we are called to be led by the Spirit this extends to far more then simply not losing our tempers!
As we are led by the Spirit so we shall learn to consistently walk in the Spirit and then we shall consistently learn to enter into and abide in the promises of God.
God is constantly seeking to speak to us, to lead us and to guide us maneuvering us away from danger if we will learn to listen to our spirits, for it is there that the Spirit of God dwells.
And it is in our spirits, in our inward man that the Holy Spirit communes with our spirits as children of God.
If we will believe his promises, and listen diligently to Him,he will lead us away from danger and He will guide us safely through.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I will fear no evil
For you are with me, your Shepard's rod and staff they comfort and uphold me"psalm 23.

Forgiveness.
One of the central themes that runs throughout the entire scripture is that of forgiveness,from Genesis to revelation Gods mercy and His forgiveness towards us and our need to show mercy and to forgive is clearly and unambiguously declared.
Forgiveness is a central theme of the new testament, it is crucial to our discipleship as Christians and essential to our well being and to the development of our faith.
In particular our calling to "Forgive others just as God in Christ has forgiven us" is not only our duty but the only sane response to the incredible mercy from God that each one of us has so lavishly received.
It is my assessment that many Christians know that forgiveness is important to their spiritual growth and yet struggle with unforgiveness, sometimes with issues that stretch back for decades.
It is also to often the case that churches are divided and split apart and friendships between Christians aborted all because of a failure to act according to this one principle that of forgiving others even as Christ forgave us.
So why is this?
If forgiveness is so fundamental to our spiritual growth as Christians, and if it is so crucial to our relationship with God then why is there so much unforgivness and strife in the church?
I believe that forgiveness is a simple principal that can be simply mastered and when we do so it will enable us to walk consistently in the love of God without fear of failure or of being tripped up by the enemy of our souls.
The first reason that many Christians fail to practice forgiveness is because they look to their feelings rather than acting in faith according to Gods word.
If you were to ask any christian who has felt unable to forgive or still nurtures a grudge against another I am sure that the first words that you would hear coming out of their mouths would be "I don,t feel able to forgive"
Some would even say "I have tried to forgive but I can,t forget the offence"
It is evident that many Christians are looking at how they feel as the arbiter of whether they have truly forgiven;when my feelings change that I know that I will have forgiven, when they are still in turmoil then I cannot have yet let go.
Forgiveness however is like any other spiritual virtue in the new testament or like any other discipline something that we operate only by faith.
I believe that it is possible to not only forgive but also to so forget an offence committed against us that our feelings towards that person or about that past circumstance do change entirely, however the way to see this victory in our lives is only ever to act by faith on what God has said in His Word.
Jesus gave us a powerful parable in Matthews gospel and chapter 18 which deals with our attitude of forgiveness vs unforgivness.
The parable is to long to quote in its entirety here now however it deals with a king who forgives one of his servants of a large debt.
This servant owed him an enormous sum but because he is unable to repay the debt he faces both himself and his entire family being sold into slavery.
He pleads for mercy before the king"The servant therefore fell down before him,saying,"master,have patience with me, and I will pay you all."v26
And the king response is one of pure grace and mercy,
"Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.
There are few places in scripture that indicate to us more clearly the reality of our need before God and the willingness of our Father in heaven to forgive then this.
We come to God hopelessly unable to pay the debt of Adam transgression which we have inherited in our fallen unredeemable natures, and we come with the addition of a life of having consistently failed to live as we should and having committed many sins before God and man.
And yet God who is rich in mercy forgave us the debt of all of our sin when we turned in repentance and faith towards Him,and wipes out the record of all of our offences that stood against us, and gave to us a brand new nature that is indwelt by God who is love himself.
In this parable in Matthew 18 the forgiven servant having received mercy goes out from the presence of the king and immediately finds one of his fellow servants who owed him by comparison a small and insignificant debt.
He demands payment and in spite of his fellow servant asking him for mercy in precisely the same way that he had some short time earlier, he refuses to give mercy and casts his fellow servant into the jail until he has repayed all of his debt.
His fellow servants report this to the king who summons the unforgiving servant into his presence and says these chilling words to him
"You wicked servant!
"I forgave you all that debt because you begged me."
"Should you not have had compassion on your fellow servant,just as I had pity on you?"
And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.
"So my heavenly father will also will do to you if each of you,from his heart,does not forgive his brother his trespasses."
The wicked servant evidently had a short memory and forgot the extent of the mercy of that king towards him.
So to we have despised Gods great mercy towards us when we say "I will not forgive" to others who have offended us.
When the bible says that the unforgiving servant was delivered to the torturers until he should repay all his debt the actual Greek word that is used there could also be translated "tormentors"
People who withold forgiveness from another experience no rest in their lives, but it will because a harassing tormenting issue that they can never silence or shrug off, far less forget until they forgive.
The actual offence that was committed against them may have been committed 50 years ago but it is as real and present to them and as fresh in their memory as if it had only just been committed.
No christian should or has to live with torment in their lives due to their withholding forgiveness from another person.
There is a little phrase at the very end of this passage that is a key to understanding how we should exercise forgiveness consistently and freely in our lives.
"So my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you,from his heart,does not forgive his brother his trespasses."
We are to exercise this forgiveness from the heart.
I mentioned earlier that forgiveness is not something that we do led by our feelings, by whether we feel that we can forgive or not.
Rather I said that forgiveness is something that we exercise by faith as we simply act upon Gods word.
But in order to do this we must separate and distinguish between the soul and the spirit in our lives.
You are a spirit you have a soul and you live in a body.
Jesus said that God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
We who are made in Gods image and in his likeness are therefore also a spirit and we have a soul which comprises of the mind and the will and the emotions.
The bible talks about the Word of God separating and dividing asunder the soul and the spirit,and it is so important that we do allow this process to begin in our christian lives.
We need to dintinquish what is of the soul and what is of the spirit or we will remain carnal Christians who are immature in our responses for the rest of our earthly lives.
The spirit of a man is his innermost being his innermost conscience and the place where faith resides.
In the scriptures the word for spirit is most often used in the new testament where greater light was thrown upon the nature of man in his redemption, and the word for heart is more often used in the Old.
But essentially they are one and the same the heart is the spirit and the spirit is the heart.
It is in our heart or our spirit that we believe and it is in our heart or spirit that we forgive.
Our feelings are irrelevant to our ability to forgive and will most often hinder us, especially if we allow them to be at the forefront of our lives when it comes to our decision to forgive.
Rather when we forgive we do so from our spirit and we do so by faith.
We need to have faith that when we forgive we do so not as some empty act or mere ritual but we do so in the Presence of God and that obedience on our part releases the activity of Gods Spirit to work in that situation and in that other persons life(if they are still alive)
The book of proverbs chapter 4 tells us that we should "Guard our heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life"
It then proceeds to tell us to "Put away perversity from our lips and put deceitful speech far from us.
To let your eyes look straight before you and your eyelids look straight ahead.
Do not turn to the right hand or to the left keep your foot from evil"
Walking in Gods love and exercising his forgiveness is walking in a straight path and not departing from it.
But it is most especially in the heart that we are to be vigilant to guard our thoughts and attitude because it is there in our spirits that we have the "issues if life"
It is in our spirit that we have received this new seed of a new nature
It is in our heart or in our spirit that we have received eternal life.
And it is in our spirits that we now are indwelt by God who is love who also has shed abroad his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given to us.
It is so important that we release this love of God by the words that we speak.
According to proverbs 4 we guard our hearts and maintain the issues of life by "putting away perversity far from us and corrupt talk far from us."
We select the words that we speak carefully not engaging in words of strife or resentment and similarly we need to speak out our forgiveness.
Jesus said that" out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks"
The love of God that is in us needs to overflow out of us in forgiveness by what we say.
When someone has taken advantage of you or wronged you or unkindly treated you or acted selfishly towards you, you and I need to be able to say "Father in Jesus name I choose to forgive that person"
"I forgive them of any grievance or complaint that I have have against them"
I choose to forgive from my heart.
As an act of my will I am willing to forgive them in Jesus name."
In the new testament the agape love of God which is from God and which dwells inside of every child of God is always linked to our will.
We chose whether to exercise this love or not.
And how do we choose this?
By simply choosing to act upon God word.
God has told me to forgive anything and everything that I may have against another(no matter how insignificant or small it may seem)And He has told me to do so from my heart.
The bible says that it is the little foxes that spoil the vines, so never be deceived into thinking that any offence is too small.
If it was significant enough to register on you then it is significant enought to need to be forgiven.
Remember that this lifestyle is essentially for your sake not just for the other persons, to keep your heart free from all bitterness or resentment that would choke off the love of God from freely flowing through you and would play havoc with the quality of your faith
In fact if you are not praticised in doing this as a quick and spontaneous response and if you are not accustomed to speaking this out of your mouth as words spoken in a simple act of faith, then it may take a while to learn to bring your feelings into line.
But take heart you are obeying Gods word and he will honour you.
Your mind may tell you this is not working;likewise your feelings may be screaming at you I still feel the same.
Learn to deal with your soul, and your mind and its doubts, and your emotions and its turbulence just as you would an unruly child.
Say to your mind "Be quiet!" And say to your emotions" No! You will not deceive me.
I have already forgiven that person in Gods sight."
I have chosen by an act of my own will to forgive and to do so from my heart.
Say, "That is already dealt with and I have rolled the care of that person and of that situation over upon the Lord.
Now I will not think about that any more or touch that in my thought life."
You may need to do this repeatedly at first until you become established in these things but remember that you only need to forgive once, and then you take your stand of faith.
Littered throughout Christendom are Churches today that have been significantly weakened because of the entering in of strife and a spirit of division and rivalry and where people have taken an offence and others have walked out and others are bitter and determined to contaminate as many others as they can with their words of unforgivnesss.
These things are to our shame.
There is a powerful little scripture in Jeremiah 12 which says
"If you have run with the footman,and they have wearied you,
Then how will you contend with horses?
And if in the land of peace,
In which you trusted,they wearied you,
Then how will you do in the flooding of the Jordan?"
If some Christians are so quick to take offence over issues that are seemingly so slight then how will they fare when a real offence occurs?
If a christian is overwhelmed by someone saying something unkind to them or ignoring them and not giving to them what they feel they need, then how will they possibly stand in the midst of a real trial of unjust provocation?
We need to be men and women of greater backbone spiritually speaking.
It is always helpful to remember this; I am not responsible for what you may think of me or what you may feel about me,or of anything that you may speak against me.
I am not your controller and I am not responsible for your thoughts or actions towards me.
You will have to give account of yourself to God for your own thoughts and words and deeds, just as I will also.
What I am responsible for however if my own thoughts towards you, how I act and feel and think towards you.
I am responsible for my own actions towards you and that is what I am vigilant in guarding over closely.
Some deluded Christians and that is the truth of what they sadly are, feel that it is their responsibility to make someone else change and demand that they change and require them to change their attitude towards them, whilst all the time ignoring their own heart which is full of anger and unforgivness and bitterness.
Some will say," Did not Jesus say that we were to go to our brother who has sinned against us and point out his fault and then to take another with us, and finally to tell it to the whole church?"
Yes he did in Matthew 18, but if ever a Scripture was misunderstood and abused it is this one.
Those in the church who have as they would call it a ministry of exposing the sins and failures of others are operating straight out of a demonic inspiration.
A "fault finding spirit never comes from God"
In that passage of scripture we are told to deal with an offense that is a clear sin or offense against us and to seek personal reconcilation first with that other brother or sister so as to heal the breach before it is necessary for it to affect the whole church. This takes honesty and humility and courage to do it but it is also hugely rewarding for those who do so and obey,especially when you are able to see reconcilation and recovery of a realationship that is on the brink of a complete breakdown.
What it does not say is if a brother sins against you tell it to your pastor and then to everyone who is willing to listen to you.
This scripture is dealing with a serious offence not just a matter of someone giving offence because of a thoughtless word or selffish act or an unkind response.
If we went to point out these "sins " to them all the time then we would be guilty of becoming fault finders ourselves.
Most offences can and should be dealt with in the privacy of our own payer closets between us and God
But when a more serious breach of trust and sin against us has been committed which would put our relationship and christian fellowship between ourselves and that person in jeopardy unless it is resolved then we have been given a clear guideline as to the procedure in taking the steps necessary to win back this brother or sister if they are willing and open to God.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3 vs 3 "For where there are envy,strife,and divisions among you,are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?"
Paul was having to deal with strife and dissensions and disunity among the Corinthians because they were acting as mere men.
They should have been acting like spiritual men.
When we act out of the fallen nature and carnal instincts of our flesh we are acting as mere men.
We may try and justify it to ourselves or to others but the fruit will always speak for itself.
But when we choose to become spiritual men and women and to live in the spirit and to walk in love, then forgiveness becomes a law that we live by and from which we do not change.
Then we will see the greater blessings of God, and then we will see the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
And then we will prove that we are growing up into him who is our head Jesus our Lord from whom the whole body knitted and joined together by that which every joint and member supplies see the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.Eph 4 16

Reading the signs of the times part 1.
We are living in extraordinary times
.All too often when we watch events unfold in the world we are confronted with events of such magnitude that we can wonder precisely what disaster or calamity is going to unfold next.
It is a remarkable fact often overlooked that at least one quarter of all of the scriptures are predictive prophecy.
In other words God alone knows the future and often describes the future to us where we need to know things that lie ahead,in order that we may be thoroughly equipped to serve him and have prepared ourselves for what lies ahead.
Many Christians are worn down by life and by the continued barrage of disasters that are occurring which can sometimes only serve to anesthetize them to being able to discern what is going on in the world.
There is a passage of scripture that I have always loved in 1 chronicles 12 20 21 which says speaking of the tribe of Issachar that "the children of Issachar who had understanding of the times,to know what Israel ought to do"
This old testament tribe of Israel not only had discernment in their times and of their times but knew what God required of them to do.
They knew what their response in the midst of those times ought to be.
This is a very apt description of what we should be like as Christians, not as those who are going about wringing their hands saying what in the world is going on, which is incidentally what a lot of people in the world themselves are saying at this moment,but we should rather be as those that know what God is saying and respond accordingly.
The bible has spoken of the days in which we are alive and mapped out for us precisely where we are going.
In Matthews gospel chapter 24 the disciples are commenting on the architectural beauty of the temple and Jesus startles them with his words that follow.
He says to his disciples in verse 2 "Do you not see all these things?Assuredly,I say to you,not one stone shall be left here upon another,that shall not be thrown down."
Later we are told the disciples come to Jesus as he is sitting on the mount of olives looking out over Jerusalem and they ask him when this destruction of the temple will occur.
"Tell us,when will these things be?And what will be the sign of your coming,and of the end of the age?"
So we see that there are two distinct lines of thought here firstly when will the temple be destroyed,and secondly what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of this age?
Jesus answered both questions describing exactly what to look out for before the destruction of the temple which happened exactly almost 40 years later, and then proceeds to devote the rest of this passage to describing precisely what the signs would be just prior to his coming.
I believe that as we look at some of these we can never doubt that we are alive in that very generation.
The first answer that Jesus gives to his disciples of when will the temple be destroyed is in Luke's account of this same passage in Luke 21 20 22
"But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,then know that its desolation is near.
"Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart,and let not those who are in the country enter her."
This was precisely fulfilled in 70 ad when the roman general Vespasian surrounded Jerusalem and laid siege to it,intent upon its destruction.
Early into the siege however he was abruptly called back to Rome by the senate as he was chosen to be the next emperor.
The siege was lifted and the Roman armies withdrew.
Those Christians however that remembered the words of Jesus recalled that he had said "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies know that its destruction is near.Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains and let those who are in the midst of her depart..."
And that is precisely what the Christians living in Jerusalem did who believed Jesus words they departed and withdrew to a town called pella which was on the east side of the Jordan.
Vespasian's successor Titus reformed the siege and eventually Jerusalem fell.
During that war over 2 million Jews were slaughtered and a further one million sold into captivity and Jerusalem was so completely destroyed that literally not one single stone of the temple remained upon another.
It is important for us to acknowledge that God always means what he says and the He says exactly what he means.
The Christians who believed Jesus words and acted accordingly saved their lives those Jews living in Jerusalem who did not believe were summarily slaughtered.
Likewise for us today when we see unambiguously the words of Jesus prophecy coming to pass we need to take these things to heart and to act accordingly.
In this first blog I want to simply touch upon the initial signs that Jesus outlines for us to look out for and look at the first of these.
In subsequent posts I would like to consider some of the other signs and what our response needs to be.
In Matthews gospel chapter 24 and verse 4 following we read "And Jesus answered and said to them;
"Take heed that no one deceives you."For many will come in my name saying,"I am the Christ,and will deceive many.
"And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars.See that you are not troubled;for all these things must come to pass,but the end is not yet.
"For nation will rise against nation,and kingdom against kingdom.And there will be famines,pestilences,and earthquakes in various places.
"And these are the beginning of sorrows.
vs 12 "And because lawlessness will abound the love of many will grow cold .
"But he who endures to the end will be saved.
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
Jesus refers to the signs of his coming and a sign is just that something that points to and announces the approach of something else.
If we were driving along a stretch of road and passed by a sign announcing a sudden dangerous bend in the road, we may if we were distracted or careless have missed the first sign.
However the sign would be repeated and so if we repeatedly missed the signs and approached the curve in the road too fast it would be because we ignored the signs.
The signs were not placed by the roadside to draw attention to themselves, but instead they were placed there to call attention to the reality of something that the driver is about to encounter further along the road.
Likewise the signs of the end of this age and the second coming of the Lord are not meant to draw peoples attention to themselves but are given by God to point to an impending event the coming of the Lord.
Jesus called the people of his day hypocrites because they had learned to accurately predict the patterns of the weather but could not discern the signs of the times.(Luke 12 56)
The Lord Jesus did not have particularly good things to say concerning hypocrites so we do not want to be in their company.
Today we have spent millions of pounds on satellites that can very accurately predict for us the weather patterns for several days, but sadly all to often even Christians are living in ignorance of the signs of the times.
Some Christians I am sure feel slightly confused about the array of various "end time teachings"that are circulating about the body of Christ, many of them conflicting in their assertions.
However this should not deter us from our responsibility to study what Jesus said concerning these things, or what other of the new testament writers said.
When we break down the words of Jesus concerning these events then we discover that it is remarkably clear and simple to understand.
For Jesus did not teach his disciples these things to confuse them but to equip them and us for what I believe is not about to occur on this earth.

It is important to see that whilst the increase of natural disasters such as earthquakes,famines and pestilences are foretold that is not the number one sign that we are living in the generation before the coming of the Lord.
The number one sign which we will see before the Lord returns is rather that of people being deceived or of deception.
And Jesus answered and said to them take heed;
"Take heed that no one deceives you.
"For many will come in my name saying,"I am the Christ", and will deceive many".
The emergence of false messiahs and false Christs is not going to happen it has already happened throughout the history of the last two thousand years.
One Jewish enclyopedia lists over 40 false Christs or Messiahs which have arisen and come to the Jewish people to mislead them.
However what is also implied from this warning is that there will be an increase in deception in general and Christians need to be rooted in the truth of who Jesus is and of what he has done for them as never before.
The Apostle Paul says the same thing when he gazes prophetically into the future in 2 Tim 4 and states,
Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season.Convince,rebuke,exhort,with all long suffering and teaching.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,but according to their own desires,because they have itching ears,they will heap up for themselves teachers;and they will turn their ears away from the truth,and be turned aside to fables.
Paul predicts an hour of human history when there will be a multiplication of teachers who give to people what "their itching ears want to hear"
Or in other words what their flesh wants to be flattered with.
Truth often stings it always challenges and it always builds us up in faith hope and agape love.
Truth always points us to Jesus and his death upon the cross.
It builds us up in the knowledge of our inheritance in Christ Jesus, and gives light on His inheritance in us.
It establishes and strengthens us, humbles and equips us, and always it brings us into a closer and more vital walk with Christ.
Today many of the foundational truths of the gospel are being denied even by those who call themselves believers.
Truths like the atonement and the new birth the authority of the scriptures and the reality of hell are all under attack.
And this attack is often coming from surprising quarters.
In addition there are today a rising army of "wellness" gurus and self help teachers who spout doctrines extolling the virtues of self discovery and maximising the potential of your self, but say nothing of Christs death burial and resurrection and the relationship of that to all of human kind.
They do not teach the reality that all of human kind irrespective of race colour culture or creed is born into one of two families and one of two natures Adams or Christs, Jesus or the devils life or death.
Political correctness and its counterpart within the church religious correctness have silenced much of the church whilst condemning multiplied millions of souls to hell.
If ever a generation needed to know and to love the truth it is ours.
But this rising tide of deceivers and deception is not something which we are to fear as Christians.
The Bible never points to fear as the answer to deception, infact if we fear a thing long enough we are in far greater danger of being vulnerable to it.
Job said that "what I have greatly feared has come upon me"
Rather it is our vigilance and love for the truth that will save us,not our fearing of deception of any kind.
Paul when he is writing to the Philippian church prays for them that
"Your love may abound more and more in knowledge and in all discernment,that you may approve and discern the things that are excellent,that you may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ."
In other words it was their growth in walking in love that sharpened their spiritual discernment, not their succumbing to a spirit of fear.
Some misguided Christians see it as a God given calling to warn everybody else of the dangers of this deception or that,whilst failing to see that they are themselves focusing on the darkness that they are wishing to warn others away from.
And such preaching almost always only sows increasing fear into the lives of those who are listening.
I remember being told of the process that the US Treasury uses when it is training its bank tellers to recognize counterfeit currency.
To begin with they allow them no exposure to any counterfeit notes, and train them to handle and become completely familiar with the genuine currency.
Only after some time will they introduce a false note here or there and the results are always the same.
The tellers always report "feeling strange" when handling the counterfeit notes, even when there may be no discernable difference between the real and the false.
The hundreds of hours which they have spent working with the true notes have made them instinctively sensitive to discern when they encounter a false.
This is precisely how we should be when knowing and discerning truth from falsehood.
Our propensity to know truth from falsehood should be honed from the amount of time we have spent listening to and loving the truth.
Paul talks in 1 thess about those whom God allows to be subject to delusion becuse he says they would not "receive a love of the truth"
We are kept safe by our love for the truth not by our fear or focus upon the darkness.
Heart motive is so important in the christian life, we may emphatically defend the truth whilst all the time operating out of a motive of anger in wanting to correct those who are being mislead.
Our motive however can only ever be one of love, and we should seek to win others by exhibing a spirit of humility not contention.
But if our desire to help others is based upon our desire to focus upon the truth not upon the lie or the falsehood,and if our driving motive is our love for God and our love of his truth then we will be kept by God in his truth and have no fear of going astray.
Gods word declares that he has not given to us a spirit of fear but one of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Let us believe that and thank God for that and let us walk in the light of that day by day.

The power of a gracious giver part two.
This is a continuation of my previous blog on the subject of showing the generosity of God and being a good witness to the grace of God.
I addressed the subject of the tithe and gave my view on that and spoke of the importance of every christian growing in their confidence to hear Gods voice in the area of how they give and to whom they give.
In this second part I would like to continue by addressing the issue of the motives for our giving and the Lords system of rewards.
When we most often think of motive we of course most naturally think of the primacy of love and this is a truth that can never be overstated.
However I also have come to see that there are other motives that can be a real bind upon a Christians heart and upon their mind and the most significant of these is fear.
Fear will spoil our joy and our ability to freely give and it is important that we learn to eliminate fear in our giving in order to be more effective in it.
There are in most churches a wide range of people from comfortable retirees to good earners to those who may have no job at all.
Yet none of these is immune from fear seeking to encroach upon their giving,and it can never be assumed that because someone has money their giving will be more freely and joyfully offered.
Those who have worked hard and saved diligently may hold back out of a fear of not having enough for the future.
Or they may fear that those in need will come to depend on them in an unhelpful way.
Similarly those who are blessed with good jobs and are industrious may secretly resent those who don't appear to work so hard as they, and feel that their money is the just reward of their labours and should not be depended on by others.
They may feel an unspoken pressure from others to give more and respond to this by actually going in the opposite direction.
And then there may well be those who have low paying jobs or no jobs at all and their concern is that they feel unable to give as they would like.
The common denominator in all of these different scenarios is fear, and fear will always bind and restrict.
It may well be that those who have been materially blessed are looked to, or do feel a certain unspoken expectation placed upon them by others in their local church in ways that are not always helpful.
This I believe is in part because often ministers as well as congregations have not learned to look to the Lord alone as their ultimate source not to any one human channel or lesser source(it is a great temptation if someone of means is in your congregation but it is still wrong)
This simply betrays that our eyes are not on the Lord alone to provide for us and to give to us what we need,and that it is always better to let him speak to those whom he wishes to use than to try to apply subtle tactics and hints.
Gods word clearly states that he rewards diligent labour and hard work,and those who have worked industriously to gain their comfortable lifestyle should feel a sense of entitlement to reap the benefits of their hard work without guilt.
However the Bible is also clear in its instructions to them that,

"Charge them that are rich in this world,that they be not high minded,nor trust in uncertain riches,but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy;
That they do good,that they be rich in good works ready to distribute,willing to share
Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,that they may lay hold on eternal life. 1 Tim6 17 19
God is the One who gives to us richly all things to enjoy;He is not asking of us to strip ourselves down or of those who have to have not.
Rather the exhortation to them is to be willing.
To be willing to share and to be ready to give.
There should be an alertness and an attentiveness to be always ready and prepared to give where ever and whenever the Lord leads.And it should be whatever amount the Lord requires.
Likewise those who may have very little to give should not hold back any the more due to a sense of not having enough.
Rather they should raise the bar and give in the expectation that as they are obedient to the Lord he will reward them.
The bible says that our giving is acceptable according to what one has not according to what one does not have.
Our giving therefore has to be proven in the measure that we can give now not in a greater measure that we hope to be able to give in the future,and as we are faithful God will bless us.
Fear is such a controlling motivation if we allow it, but when fear is not resisted(and we resist it by acting on our heart instinct in spite of any fear that we may have)it develops another attitude which is equally pernicious and that is guilt.
How many Christians I wonder have given financially out of a guilt to give rather than out of a place of faith?
Some may feel guilt that they do not give more and end up giving not by heart conviction but as a gesture to relieve themselves of feeling guilty.
Frankly such giving does not impress God and brings no joy to the giver, and the Bible has much to say about the motive of our heart when we give being one of willingness and eagerness to do so.
So why do many in the church struggle with fears in this area and battle against guilt?
One of the primary reasons I believe is because their giving is not done in a heart attitude of faith and with out faith it is impossible to please God.
There is probably no area in the scriptures as designed to inspire our faith as that of the principal of seedtime and harvest.
Throughout the scriptures the principal of seedtime and harvest establishes a God given law;what you plant is what you will harvest and what you sow is what you are going to reap.
gen 8 22 says that
"As long as the earth remains,
Seed time and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And winter and summer,
And day and night shall not cease."
It is an inviolable law, as certain as the ending of every day and the inevitability of the coming of each night,as inevitable as the change of seasons from year to year.
How foolish we would consider it to observe a farmer standing in a field looking out over his fields in the anticipation of seeing a crop soon come up when he had not planted any seed in the ground.
This law of sowing and reaping is given not just to cover agriculture but as a spiritual law that governs everything.
It is called the law of returns.
"Whatever good thing a man does the same will he receive from the Lord"
"Do to others as you would have others do to you"
"Be not deceived,Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap"
This law of sowing and reaping affects also our giving of the tithe and offerings.
Paul speaking to the Philipians says,
"Now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel,when I departed from Macedonia,no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only.
For even in Thessalonica you sent aid once and again for my necessities.
Not that I seek the gift,but I seek the fruit that abounds to your account."
And he concludes this passage by assuring them that "My God shall supply all your need, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."
Notice that he describes it as the matter of giving and receiving;not just giving,and not just receiving but both giving and receiving.
They were obviously ahead of other churches in this revelation and in their willingness of heart to practice it.
Paul is pretty blunt with them in that he reminds them that "not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account".
We have so much that we need to grasp from this single statement.
God is a God of justice.
He sees and he knows; he marks every good thing that we do to another, and He will reward.
For good or for evil we are going to reap what we sow.
"Do not be deceived whatever a man sows that shall he also reap."
Paul carries this same principal over specifically into the area of our giving financially in " Corn chpt 9
"Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully, and he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly."
And God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance to every good work."
"Now may he who supplies seed for the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed that you have sown and enlarge the harvest of your righteousness."
As I said in the first part of this blog God is our source in everything.
This is the revelation that Abram had and this is the revelation that we too must have.
He is the one who will provide us with both the seed to sow (the means to be able to give) and He will multiply the seed which we have sown.
What does this mean?
It means simply that God will not only continue to provide us with seed to sow as we trust in Him but will multiply that seed that we have sown,bringing increasing fruit to our heavenly accounts from it.
It means that as we are obedient in our giving He will increase our capacity to give, and meet our needs also"He that provides seed for the sower and bread for food" so both are given to us from God.
However our minds should be as focused upon the seed to be sown as the bread for our food or our own needs.
This is not to say that our own needs are neither important or should not have any concern, however it is our giving that generates our receiving and not the other way around.
Far to often Christians have held back through fear of leaving themselves not enough because they have not grasped and taken to heart this principal.
Our needs are not to be met exclusively by our own capacity to provide for ourselves(it is important to take responsibility for our needs,but so to, to be able to receive as we give)
Rather the Lord I believe wants to expand our understand of this Kingdom lifestyle we give as freely and generously and quickly as the Lord enables us to, never holding back.
And in return the Lord causes His supernatural Grace to minister more powerfully towards us in inspiring and increasing our giving and multiplying its fruitfulness, and ministering back into our lives the meeting of those needs which we possess.
This of necessity involves our being willing to receive from others too.
Some Christians freely give to others as the Lord directs because there is a need in the life of the one that they are giving to and that person cannot meet it by themselves.
And yet the same person who gives to help another considers that they need to provide of all of their own needs and would feel embarrassed to receive from someone else concerning an area of need in their own life.
Their attitude is that of "I will help others as much as I can, but I will take responsibility for myself and my own needs"
This may sound commendable but actually it is nothing more than pride.
It is not letting God minister back to you.
It is saying in effect I can do it all myself.
Humility is therefore the key to sowing and reaping.
God wants us to be responsible but not at the expense of learning to trust in Him alone as our ultimate source.
Often our obedience to give may leave us short for a future need, but that leaves us open to be able to see how God is going to minister back into our lives by his supernatural grace to meet that need through the giving of others.
Really this is the most exciting way to live!
There is a religious spirit that has the attitude of
"I give but never to expect anything in return"
That is simply unbiblical.
Certainly we always give with the heart motive of love not looking to anyone in particular to give to us also however the Lord has also given to us the incentive of promising to us that "give and it will be given to you"
Good measure pressed down shaken together and running over will men pour into your bosom, for with the measure that you give it shall be given to you."
This is not just talking of forgiveness, but of every aspect of our lives, and to give looking to the Lord alone to remember is a biblical truth.
Therefore whenever I give I do so not as a duty or an obligation.
I do not give as a debt that I owe but as a seed that I sow and do this in the conviction that the Lord of the harvest will bring a harvest to me from what I have sown.
This area of teaching is one that I believe we need to lay solidly in place especially in these days in which we live.
We have to begin to operate by the kingdom of God in our finances and giving, for it is only that kingdom which shall not be shaken.
We are living in extremely troubling times and I believe that the economic crisis is only about to begin to be unveiled.
The American dollar is going to fail, and the implications of that for us all are immense.
Likewise the basic price of food and oil and other commodities is going to continue to increase.
We will witness a greater surge of fear in the world, but to those of us who know the Lord we cannot and must not allow fear any room for maneuver.
People will suffer real needs in the days to come and the Lord will call us to rise up and help others to meet some of those needs as we reach out in faith and in love in our giving.
And as we do so we can have a godly confidence that my God will meet all of our needs according to his riches in Glory in Christ Jesus.
As we learn to operate in the supernatural grace of God more in our giving (by listening to Him and acting in faith and not fear) so too we will begin to see more powerful demonstrations of Gods grace ministering back into our lives independently of our own labours to earn sufficiently to cover all of our needs.
Is this not the very definition of Grace?
Rather we need to build our lives in every area,no less in our giving upon those principles of Gods kingdom that are found in his word, knowing that as we seek first his kingdom and His righteousness all these other things will be added to us.