Israel experienced direct empowering and intervention by God in the Old Testament, but it wasn't based on faith. That was the way their program was designed to work.
"One of the biggest handicaps people have in believing God empowers them and strengthens them to a successful, victorious life is they're asking God to do something He isn't going to do instead of doing by faith what He says He is doing," explains Preacher Richard Jordan.
"II Timothy 3 says, [16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
[17] That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
"The new bibles change the word throughly to thoroughly. It's the same word but it's not the same word. Thoroughly means it's completely done. But when you walk through a room, what does that mean? You were back there and you came up here; you go through the whole thing. The reason it says throughly is because the emphasis is not just that it's completely done, but that it's done through. It's God's Word working through you.
"I Thessalonians 2:13 says, [13] For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
"That word effectual is like the word throughly. You see, it's the Spirit of God--the Word of God that the Spirit of God wrote says, 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.'
"Those words come into your spirit, that's how they get in, and your heart believes them and says, 'That's the standard by which I'm going to live.'
"Your mind has those things, thinks those things. Your will makes choices in life based upon that truth and that then tells your emotions, 'This is what's true, this is what's real,' and then you function based on it. God's Spirit works through His Word working through you, inside out, when you walk.
*****
"In Philemon, the last of Paul's epistles, he's praying for Philemon and the saints at Colossi 'that the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.'
"God's Word becomes effectual when you acknowledge who you are in Him and see your identity for who He sees you. You see the resources He's given you in that circumstance to deal with it.
"When you live in a faith reality, trusting in the reality of who God has made you in His Son, your faith is to become life. As long as you're trusting your resources, your wisdom, your smarts, it doesn't work. You short-circuit it to that extent.
"The default position is faith. Faith is a choosing. I set my affections, I seek those things, I make a conscious . . . Paul says in Romans 12, [1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
"I'm living in a conscious choice of faith in the identity God gave me in His Son. It's called active living. The default of unbelief, the opposite of that, is your flesh running you. You're going to live under the tyranny of the revolt of your emotions, which means you're all out of whack.
*****
"The old-timers had a discipline of spending quiet time with the Lord every day and they understood you needed some time focused on God's Word. So here's a story passed on to me:
"One day John got up and told the Lord, 'I want to improve my Christian life so I'm going to start getting up every morning at 5, an hour before I have to leave for work, and spend an hour in the Scripture, meditating and praying, looking at the Word.'
"John set his alarm clock and when five o-clock came the next morning and the alarm went off, he said, 'Oh, okay, it's time to get up,' but his emotions said, 'WHAT?!' and pulled the covers up. They started screaming, 'I'm not going, I'm not going . . . What are you doing, you idiot?! You crazy nut!' They said, 'Look at him, he's getting up!! Oh no, we're not going to let him . . . .'
"John's emotions just pitched a fit, and all the way over there to his chair where his Bible was, his emotions were still, 'This is terrible,' and continued to condemn and holler at him. But he just decided, 'I'm going to go anyway.' He sat down and his emotions whined, 'Look at him, he could be laying in bed, but what's he doing?!'
"His emotions just wouldn't cooperate and the next day when the alarm clock went off they didn't even wait for him to wake up. They started screaming, 'He's gonna get up again and I don't want him to get up!'
"For a week John goes through that kind of revolt with his emotions. They're just hollering and pitching a fit: 'We'll stick him there and make him hurt over here.' In the middle of the afternoon they'd say, 'I know what we'll do. Let's thrash him real good now and make him feel bad because he's tired.'
"They did everything they could to stop him but John had made the resolve, 'I'm going to do it,' and he stuck with it. About the middle of the second week of getting up every day, his emotions said, 'Agh, the alarm's gone off; wonder if he's going to get up today. Yeah, he's getting up. I tell you what,' but they weren't quite as loud.
"Third week into it, the alarm clock goes off and the emotions say, 'You know, he's going to get up anyway. We might as well just go on with him.' They go with him, saying, 'Look at the fool, he thinks reading that book's going to do him some good.'
"Fourth week comes and the alarm clock goes off and his emotions say, 'Yeah, he's getting up. Hey, he don't look so bad today, does he? You know, this looks like it might be doing him some good so let's just let him go.'
"Fifth week he gets up, his emotions say, 'You know, I think this is doing him some good. Hey, John, get up! Wake up! Time to go!'
"Sixth week the emotions are saying to him, 'Hey, John, it's time to get up! Let's go! That stuff over there in the chair, we're enjoying it!'
"You follow the sequence? Those emotions that have been used to running the show so long aren't going to give up like that, but with the power of the Spirit of God working in your heart through His Word . . . How does His Word work? By faith. It transformed even John's emotions.
"When the emotions don't become the willing servants of your will, you say, 'Tough apples, we're going anyway.' Because the fact, the truth, trusted by faith, will produce the fruit and eventually the feelings may or may not come in support of it, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is the truth. What matters is what's right.
"Somebody says, 'I don't know what I'm going to do.' I say all the time to people, 'Do what's right.' You say, 'I don't feel that way.' It's got nothing to do with how you feel; it has do with what's right.
"You know what happens after you do what's right? At first, your emotions get convicted because they've been wronged, but then they get converted. Paul prayed that you'd be 'strengthened with might by his spirit in your inner man,' but that's not just him praying, 'Oh, Lord, go do it for them.' That's praying that God the Holy Spirit can work through you the way He's designed you to work because that's the only way you can walk by faith."
(new article Sunday. I will drive back to Chicago tomorrow with four new tires but a rotted out exhaust system that nobody wanted to fix for under $1 grand. I better take it slow.)
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