Believer's default setting? Faith

Paul begins Colossians 3 with: [1] If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
[2] Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
[3] For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

The  “if” there doesn’t mean maybe you were and maybe you aren’t. If you’re saved, you were crucified with Christ, buried with Him and raised with Him and you’re alive unto Him, says Richard Jordan.

You say, “How do you know?” Because that’s what God’s Word says. I know in the Scripture that the Word of God says that when I trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, that His death at Calvary became my death. He died, I died with Him and Paul says I’m crucified with Him. That’s the spiritual reality of your life today.

You wonder what’s going on down inside of you? You can listen to your emotions; you can listen to the things you sense and feel. You can go out here and think of yourself the way your emotions tell you to think of yourself and you can sense the inferiority, the insecurity, the inadequacy, the guilt, the shame, the fear, the depression, the anxiety, the anger . . .

Or you can look at it and say, “No, here’s what I am. I’m a child of the most high God. How do I know? That’s what God Word says. I have the full assurance of understanding. I know that because that’s what God says. I’ve been accepted in the Beloved.”

If you’re saved, this is the reality. You ARE risen with Him, and if that’s true of you, then SEEK those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Paul’s just saying, “You need to live in the reality of who you are.” And that’s what it comes down to.

When you seek something, what do you do? You make a conscious effort to find it; to get it. “Seek those things which are above.” Seeking something takes a conscious, willful effort and determination and focus.

That’s why I always tell you, “The default for the Believer is faith.” I’m going to say, “This is what’s true.”

I’m going to look at that and I’m going to make the conscious effort and choice of faith. I’m going to put in my mind what God has told me is true. That’s what’s going to be in my thinking process.

By the way, if you seek those things which are above and you renew your mind, you won’t have to worry about forgetting the other stuff. You can’t think about two things at once.

When you think about truth, what happens to error? Well, you only think about one thing at once. What error does is it says, “Wait, wait, wait,” and argues with you and then what do you do? Your faith says, “No, this is what’s true.”

Your emotions say, “But don’t you remember?!” and you feel what you remember, and faith says, “But I’m seeking this; I’m pursuing this.”

Then verse 2 says, “Set your affections on things above.” Once you’ve sought the truth and found it, here’s what God says: “Fixate your mind on that. Set—tune your mind to that,” and don’t change the doctrine.

When you set your mind to something, you fixate; you concentrate on that. The way you overcome sin, failure, whatever it is, is not by trying to stop it.

The only thing that will ever stop sin in your life is the Crosswork of Jesus Christ; you never will. You don’t have the capacity to stop it. You don’t have the capacity to stop evil thinking. The Cross does that. So what do you need to focus on? You need to focus on starting, not stopping. Starting to think on who you really are.

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Paul says in Romans 5:2, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

You’ve got the future where we rejoice in hope and then the present peace with God. All that God’s provided for us in Christ Jesus you have access to. 

You have the capacity to have the Holy Spirit take you by the hand and lead you right into all of those assets and make them real in your experience by faith. That’s by that deep consciousness that’s produced in your inner man simply by believing God’s Word.

Faith isn’t you deciding something’s going to be a certain way. Faith is finding out what God’s Word says and believing what God’s Word says is true. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”

You find out what God’s Word says about it and you say, “That’s what’s real no matter what my experience says, no matter what my emotions say, no matter what the advice of others say, no matter what my reason says. What GOD says is true!”

Now, maybe my circumstances and my reason and everything else lines up with what God’s Word says, but it isn’t true because of all of that; it’s true because of what God says!

Most of the time, your senses and your experience want to go the other way, but you still stick with what’s . . . it’s “by faith we have access to this grace wherein we stand.” The identity you have in Him, you access it by faith.

First, the access is by faith that “comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God,” and that accesses that consciousness; that confidence in your inner man that’s produced by believing God’s Word.

Listen, when you believe what God says, it has an impact in your inner man. Ephesians 3:12 says, “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.” Notice in verse 11, God’s doing some things “according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

When you truly begin to understand what God’s doing, and this eternal plan He has in His Son—this cosmic reality God the Father has planned to be the reality for the universe in His Son, the one the Father’s going to use to do all of that—it's in Him we have BOLDNESS and access with confidence. Why? By the faith of HIM. Because of who HE is we have boldness and access with confidence.

I don’t have to wonder whether God’s going to accept me. I don’t have to think maybe, possibly He will. All of the questions anybody’s ever going to ask me about my access to God have been answered! And I can come with confidence. Yea, I can come with boldness.

Now, that’s not brazenness where I’m coming because of me. I can just come with that bold confidence of one who has the access of the Father’s ear. Because every question that’s ever going to be asked of me has been answered in Christ.