Today I want to
transition a bit between our last blog series from "Standing on the
Promises" to "Walking in the Promises." First we must learn to stand on
the promises and then we can learn to walk in the promises. We must be
diligent, first of all, to discover what the promises are. They are
found in the Word of God, and depending on who you ask or Google, there
are anywhere from a hundred to several thousand promises in the Word. I
happen to believe that there are thousands of promises . . . some
subtle, some not so subtle.
As you remember, God is
not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent.
Paul said that all of the promises of God are, "yes and amen!" Now, in
Ephesians chapter 6, the Apostle Paul says in verse 13, "Therefore
take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the
evil day." Here's what we really want to focus on, "and having done all
to stand." We discovered last time that the phrase, "having done all
to stand," is somewhat of a militaristic term and literally means,
"having conquered, be prepared to conquer again."
All of us can look back
on our lives and see apparent victories; we have all conquered to some
degree. We have conquered, thanks be to God, thanks be to the blood,
thanks be to the Shepherd, and to the power of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture says that we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved
us. So basically Paul is saying, "You have already conquered, and you
have already obtained some victories in your life; therefore, be ready
to conquer once again." And many times, the current battle is greater
than those we have experienced previously. Why is that?
I believe the answer can
be found in part in Romans chapter 1 wherein the Apostle Paul says, "I
am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." We've all heard that
before, and we declare that. In fact, we make that declaration
oftentimes to express our boldness and our faith. "For it (the Gospel)
is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes, to the Jew
first and also to the Greek." Then we must read on to verse 17 to
capture the concept of what is being communicated. "For in it (the
Gospel), the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it
is written, the just shall live by faith." This is just one of at least
four places in Scripture that we find the phrase, "The just shall live
by faith." Please note that it doesn't say the just should, the just
could, the just might, but it says the just SHALL, which means it's a
given. Why? Because it takes faith to be just; it takes faith to be
justified.
We read here that we are
to be going from one level of faith to another level of faith. So here
is a question that we all need to ask ourselves: Am I growing from faith
to faith? Can you look back on your life and determine whether or not
your faith is increasing? Your level of faith should be going upward and
onward. It is a false assumption to believe that the longer you walk
with God, the more faith you acquire. We probably all know people
(perhaps even ourselves) who do not have the faith today that they might
have had ten, five, or even two years ago.
Paul prayed for the
Corinthians that their faith might be increased, and so are we to be
moving from one level of faith to a greater level of faith. That's why I
referred to my own life years ago that "having done all to stand" for
me at one point was being able to pay my light bill. It was conquering
to be able to pay my bills on time and to keep the telephone turned on.
What a relief! Some of you might not even know what I'm talking about,
but if you've ever had your phone or electricity turned off because you
couldn't pay your bill, then we can relate.
So for me, it may have
been a great victory just to be able to pay my bills or put gasoline in
my auto. I can remember times when I was driving my old Pontiac down the
road, and I would see the little red needle would go weeeelllll below
empty, and it didn't take me long to find out exactly how far down it
would go! You know how you find out? If you run out of gas enough times,
suddenly you discover you can let it go this far, and no farther.
I can remember traveling
down the road and having to believe God. Back in the day I'd hear great
testimonies about people pouring something else into their gas tanks,
and their engines still ran. But I was always a little fearful of that. I
mean, my old Pontiac, it wasn't much, but it was all I had.
So we're to be going
from faith to faith. I like to put it this way: I've gone from ten
dollar faith to tens of thousands of dollars of faith. I've seen my
faith increase because today in my life, ten dollars isn't going to
make a whole lot of difference. See, God doesn't take you directly from
ten dollar faith to ten thousand dollar faith; there's this little
thing between the two called "process." This is a significant portion of
growing from faith to faith. We'll cover the importance of "process"
in my next blog.
Thank you very much for joining me as we talk about His promises and how to claim them and make them your very own!
~ pg
No comments:
Post a Comment