DEEPER IN PRAYER

he intimacy that God desires with His children can’t be emphasized enough. He wants us close to Him, and He’s proven this by giving us the gift of eternal life. This means that He wants us around a really, really long time. Not only is it important that we comprehend the depth of God’s desire for relationship with us, but we must guard against the world’s attempt to devalue our love, worship, and praise of our Heavenly Father. Social media has shown just about every facet of worship and praise in Christendom. For some, a more subdued posture is preferred. For others, an intense joy and gratitude through dance and praise is expressed. Our jubilance and adoration to the Lord has many dimensions, but wherever we are, God has given every believer the privilege and responsibility to swell to new levels of spiritual richness. We can witness increasing demonstrations of God’s love and power and fresh anointings. This is all spearheaded and achieved as we increase focus, faith, and the amount of time dedicated to the Father in prayer.

Romans 1:17(NKJV) tells us, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”” This verse perfectly describes what God intends the journey in Christ to be. As we grow in Christ and increase in spiritual maturity, everything about our relationship with God gets richer and deeper. The power of God’s Gospel continually expands us as we learn more, but it is the revealed knowledge of the righteousness of God that transports us to the stratosphere of His unyielding glory in our prayer lives. We must trust in the righteousness of God with our whole hearts, and to understand it with greater clarity, we must examine God’s relationship with the descendants of Abraham in the Old Testament. Although we often refer to them as the children of Israel, God did not consider them His children, but His servants. He said in Leviticus 25:55(NLT), “For the people of Israel belong to me. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” At first glance, we might look at this and think they were slighted in some way. This was definitely not the case. The distinction of a servant is not of lower rank. One of the greatest gifts that God has given humanity is the wonderful honor and privilege of serving one another.

The law was a curse to God’s people living in Old Testament times not because the Ten Commandments were imperfect. The Ten Commandments paint a beautiful portrait of God’s righteousness. It is a wonderful lesson about His nature, but it was a curse to the children of Israel because they continued to sin and reap the consequences of that sin. They continued to reject the laws of God and abandon His righteousness. Going against the grain of God’s love was how they chose to demonstrate their free-will choice. Delving a bit more under the hood, we can see the uncompromising righteous quality of truth and justice that God holds Himself to. Our God could not forgive our sins unrightfully. That would not be justice. Justice demands that there is a righteous basis for the forgiveness of sin.

In general, a law-abiding judge within our justice system does not dismiss charges against a guilty person. If judges behaved that way, and let criminals get away with crimes, most of us would say that the justice system is broken. It is common knowledge that there is a price to be paid for a crime committed. Why is this? It is because the righteousness of law demands a charge against unrighteousness; a penalty must be imposed. This is fundamentally justice.

Our Heavenly Father is supremely just and righteous, and He tells us in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin, the cost that must be paid for sin, is death. By God’s law, our disobedience to His Word and Will should cost us our lives. We should have been crucified for our sins, but because of God’s mercy and grace, Jesus Christ became our substitute. He took our place. Because of Christ, the road we travel is not death to death, fear to fear, disappointment to disappointment. It’s faith to faith as the glory of God is etched more deeply in our hearts and minds. God has always wanted to be close to us and to show us more sides of His unconditional and unlimited love. At the appointed time, when we were mentally and emotionally able to digest the fullness of the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ and appreciate it at the deepest level, God sent Christ to fulfill the mission of our redemption. Understanding and appreciating this awesome revelation allows us to do as Hebrews 4:16 admonishes, which is to approach God’s throne of grace with boldness and confidence in our prayers, so that we can find grace in our time of need. ■ ebrews 11:1(NLT) teaches us that “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Another helpful way of looking at it is to see faith as the title deed to the thing we are believing to receive. Within the laws of this country, a deed is a document that serves as evidence of a person’s legal ownership of a property or thing, and it is recognized by all authorities as proof of ownership. In a spiritual sense, our faith is the legal evidence of our belief in God’s willingness and ability to bless us. God has decreed that it is unquestionably accepted by everything in heaven and beneath it. Our faith is the proof that we have legal ownership of the blessing we’ve prayed for even before it actually arrives on the scene. Faith is right believing, and Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. This tells us that faith involves our minds and hearts, because faith demands that we be- lieve in something we cannot see. In our everyday circumstances, most of us don’t have a problem believing God for small things, but some of us struggle to believe Him for really big things. Whether it’s minor or major, our minds must be focused on the goodness of God and His willingness and ability to bless us continually. Faith demands that we guard our hearts, and not allow thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors to move us off it’s path. This requires us to continually renew our minds to God’s promises so that our minds and hearts equal the goodness and bounty of the blessing we are praying to receive. This can be challenging for us, because we’re hooked into the way we have always thought, spoken, and behaved in our every day lives. We’re so connected to our cell phones that they’re almost an extension of our bodies. We’re constantly distracted by many things that are going on in the world, and this is exactly what the devil wants. Interrupting our mental discipline so that we will not believe and trust God as we should is the devil’s main objective.

The mind is the battleground of faith, and to remain spiritually strong, we must confess God’s promises and be anchored in His Word. Hebrews 11:6 (NLT) tells us, “And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” When God tells us that something is an impossibility, we had better believe that it is. We cannot please God without faith, because faith is the foundation of our relationship with Him. None of us have ever seen God. We weren’t physically there when Jesus Christ died on the cross and gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins. Neither were we physically there when God resurrected Christ from the dead. We didn’t physically witness what God accomplished in Christ for our salvation. We didn’t see it, but faith demands that we believe it.

Continued on page 27

“Unwavering Faith” Conclusion

Keeping our faith in God strong is the number one thing that believers wrestle with. It can be mentally and emotionally intense because the enemy tries to vehemently come against our believing, messing with our minds with all kinds of defeating thoughts. 1Timothy 6:12 tells us to fight the good fight of faith, because we have already won through Jesus Christ; we just need to stay the course and remain faithful and obedient to God. Our faith in Him brings us in direct proximity to His Will. We cannot be defeated when our faith is unwavering in this way, and the devil knows this.

Romans 8:37(NKVJ) affirms, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Unwavering faith is believing God even when the devil tries to make our situations look impossible to conquer. God is the Lifter of our heads. He has made us more than conquerors in Christ. Because of the strength and spiritual weapons that we have received from Him, we are empowered through the Holy Spirit to stand firm against all the tricks, plots, and devices of the enemy. The blessing of having unwavering faith in our Heavenly Father is something that can’t be compared to anything else. We are on this earth to grow in our faith in God, because this is what deepens our relationship with Him. God will never leave or forsake us and trusting this means that our faith is unwavering. Not trusting it means that our minds are not made up and we are undecided. This will not do. James 1:6(NLT) tells us, “But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.” As children of God, our faith must be solidly planted on the truth of who our God is. We are empowered by Him to strive for this level of believing every day, and if we do, our lives will flourish and our faith in God will not waver.■

Conclusion: What God Says Is Possible IS Possible

It’s ours for the taking. So many of us are asking for material and financial blessings, but we’ve yet to believe in faith to walk in the spiritual strength, love, and power that was downloaded into us with the new birth. We should be walking in the zeal and heft of our purpose in a greater way, but some of us aren’t because the reality that what ‘God says is possible IS possible’ hasn’t flooded our believing. We must change this.

We need to live with expectancy of all that God has said is possible for our lives. Jesus Christ said in John 6:63(NLT), “The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Jesus Christ was not exempt from studying God’s Word. He did so continually. He shared and ministered the Word of God because he understood the power the Word contains. Whenever and wherever God issues His Word, however our ears are blessed to hear it, our response is to believe it. Believe God’s Word with your whole heart so you will be grounded in it, then when you need what others say is impossible, you can draw it down from heaven through your faith.■