Andrew Carnegie, a well-known billionaire, had 50 millionaires working for him. He said, “No man ever became a millionaire by putting a million dollars as his goal. He did it by putting excellent service as his goal.”
Money is not a strong enough or worthy enough goal for life. You need a goal worthy enough to die for, so you can put your energies into it and live for it!
It’s important to pick a goal that will glorify God. Write down what money could do if you had it, then make those things your goals. Millions of Communists died for their goal, but because it was the wrong goal, those who remained later ate the bitter fruit of wasted lives.
Our goal should never be to make as much money as possible. Money is not the end-all, but rather the by-product of our life. Our goal is not our job–we all have jobs. Our work is different from our job. Our work deals with our attitudes and our thoughts before God and our actions before people. A worthy goal for a spiritual person is to be a positive influence on the job to transform attitudes and hearts!
“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13).
We live in a secret kingdom. All around us is a world unseen to the natural eye. If you are born of God by faith in Jesus Christ and He is your Lord, then you have a spirit alive to God’s guidance. You do not have to fall for the manipulations of men or for mere external appearances. You have every right to the life of the secret Kingdom.
We don’t have to live below our privileges. For many years I lived in a foreign country, and I learned that it’s very important to learn the language of the country or else you will be called functionally illiterate. You can’t take advantage of the laws of the land if you can’t read them, and will find yourself at the mercy of others.
We are not at the mercy of the devil when we know our place in Christ!
My husband and I were preaching in a small village in Mexico. At one of the meetings there was an elderly man who could not walk. He listened to the Word of God and heard that Jesus was still alive and that He loves and heals. Nobody prayed for that man; nobody touched him, and suddenly he jumped up and began to sing and dance, because God touched his body and healed him!
Dear friend, I want you to know that that precious old man from Mexico is not any different from you. Jesus loves you so much that He gave His life just for you to be healed! God loves each one of us so much that He Himself dwells among us and heals us. And if today you need healing, He will heal you. All you need to do is believe!
Sickness and disease are the precursor to death and all are a result of sin. When we see a miracle in operation, once again we see God initiating good. Anything you can do sick you can certainly do better healthy! His miracles are confirmation to us that He restores life.
In the beginning when God said “and it was good,” sickness and death were not a part of His original creation. So now when we see a miracle in evidence, we recognize that miracles come to us as a demonstration that God is with us, and His will to do good and not to do evil, to be a blessing and not to harm, to give life and not to curse; He is for us and not against us!
When I receive Jesus into my heart, He lives in me — His Spirit, His holiness, and His righteousness live in me. When I walk, He walks, and when I talk, it’s like He’s talking through me. When I heal or I lay my hands on someone, it’s like He is touching that person through me.
According to Colossians 1:27: “Christ now lives in you.” So where is the presence of God? I’m not looking forward over here or looking backward over there, or begging for it up there. I am relishing the abundance and living in the glory of His love and His life and His Spirit in me, right now. I come boldly to His throne of grace and receive what I have need of from Him. I recognize that He lives in me, I live in Him, and His presence surrounds me.
This is one of the foundational premises for our miracle life, practicing and recognizing the presence of God!
Right now you and I can embrace the perspective which says, no giant of sickness and disease, no giant that comes against the living God, can exist in the presence of the One who lives in us, who believes in us, and who goes about doing good and healing all who are oppressed of the devil.
Jesus said in John 6, “I am the bread of life, and whoever comes to me will never hunger, and the one who believes on me will never thirst.” Have you pulled up to the table today? Have you taken hold of the promises that God has for you?
God’s original dream was to start a family with the potential to walk and behave like Him. Adam failed. He disobeyed God and did not fulfill God’s dream. But God sent Jesus, whom Scripture calls the last Adam, and He did not fail. Jesus is the model for us to follow.
How do we model ourselves after Jesus? Do we wear long robes with long hair and beards? It is interesting that in the four Gospels the writers did not talk about His appearance; His nose, the color of His eyes, His muscles, his height, His posture, or His hair. This is how popular writers describe their heroes in the books written today, but the Gospels are different. They are full of His words and His wonders. He is our model in response, action, compassion, authority, wisdom, purpose and power. We duplicate Him through the power of the new birth! The new birth is the ability to become God’s children. To as many as received Him, He gave power to become the sons and daughters of God. Paul tells us to put on this new man that is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him.
All the potential of Jesus as the Son of God was placed, in seed form, into you as a child of God!
Many have found Jesus as Savior, but are not aware of His healing power. God said in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
Even today some church leaders are offended by miracles, saying that miracles have long passed and are no longer part of the Christian life. That could be true if God has changed or Jesus has changed, but the authority of God’s Word says that neither one has changed. In fact, God says of Himself, “I am the Lord and I change not” (Malachi 3:6).
Jesus knew His mission. He was set to go to the cross, and on that cross He would pay the price for our sin, for our peace, for our sicknesses, and for our diseases. He took upon Himself all our punishment on that cross.
Remember, the miracle of salvation occurs without a touch. What happens to the body when the Spirit of God, Who created the whole universe, fills it? Our bodies need life just like our spirit needs life. When we respond to words that heaven backs up, then Life infuses our system and oftentimes, without even a prayer, transformation occurs. Scripture tells us that the same Spirit which raised up Jesus is now making our mortal bodies alive (Romans 8:11)!
There is nothing better than a good piece of toast with coffee in the morning, but our daily bread is much more than that. What is our daily bread? In the story of the Exodus as the children of God were deciding whether or not to cross the Jordan River and fight, Joshua shouted out to those who were backing out of the idea. He said the call of God to possess the land made every giant in the land as BREAD for them.
“Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” Numbers 14:9
There was no protection for their enemies as they pursued the will of God!
With this truth on our side, we in the 21st century can look at the giants that stand before us and say they are bread for us. We are not to be worried over as problems, mountains, or impossibilities. We eat them as bread!
Our victory nurtures us for future conquest. Your giants are nothing before your God! Your God lives in you, so there is defeat in the heart of your enemies who stand before what God wants to accomplish in your life. Rahab said to the spies that they had dreaded the day when the children of God would cross over. Defeat was already in their enemy’s heart.
We are seeing Europe and the republics and regions of the former Soviet Union experience a great revival through bold evangelistic tent meetings, and we continue to expect the grace and favor of God on all who make those giants as bread for these dynamic evangelists!
A Presbyterian evangelist named Charles G. Finney, who lived from 1792-1875, successfully popularized the altar call. Finney referred to the altar call as coming to the “anxious seat” or to the “inquiry room,” and began using it in his evangelistic services in about 1820. Evangelist D.L. Moody took Finney’s altar call and refined it, and in turn it was passed on to its modern champion, Billy Graham.
In Finney’s time, most denominations were not preaching a gospel that allowed you to publicly call on the name of the Lord for your conversion to Christ. They were preaching a gospel of predestination, which said you were predestined to be born again so you would eventually find Christ on your own.
Finney was willing to challenge the status quo, and he preached his emotional messages with altar calls in all the churches. Of course, he was highly criticized for challenging the accepted Christian theology of the day. He faced many difficulties because the religious hierarchy didn’t believe you could stand up on the platform and call the people down front and have them call on the name of the Lord to be saved. Yet, undeniably his preaching ushered in one of the greatest revivals ever experienced on the North American continent.
To comprehend our position on miracles, like Charles Finney, we must challenge the broad understanding that it is ok to ask Jesus into your heart, but not ok to ask Him into your heart and expect healing at the same time!
