A
lot of Christians have problems receiving from God. They fail to receive their
healing. They fail to receive their prosperity. They fail to receive their
promotion at work or in the ministry. Most people fail to receive from God
because they fail to believe God’s Word and they fail to do accordingly. They
have a hard time to believe God for healing, money, spouse, child, promotion,
etc. If you are in that position right now, keep on reading because the Word of
God shall set you free from your failure to receive.
Don’t
be embarrassed of your present condition. Wherever you are now in life, it’s
always a good starting point to live by faith and receive from God. The time has
never been perfect than NOW. If you just turn your life over to God, totally
surrender unto Him, He’ll do mighty works on your behalf and straighten things
up to His standard of living, i.e. an abundant life.
When
I was in Senior High School, I wanted to study Theology because I wanted to know
God. But then I looked at the servants of God who just barely got along with
life. Preachers of the church denomination where I came from, most of them,
lived pathetically (some of them still do). And since my family was not a
rich family either, I got scared at the thought of spending the rest of my life
living a marginal life. So, I backed off and pursued money instead (which by the
way was not a clever decision!). But now that I am a born-again child of God, I
know that it’s not God’s fault that those preachers lived that way. They
could’ve lived a fully supplied life by faith and enjoyed their Christianity
by living in prosperity and good health if they only knew how. Now, let’s find
out how.
Many
people are so sin-conscious. All they can think of is how sinful they were that
they are so unworthy to approach God. They are so mindful of their “sin”
that they always ask forgiveness from God when they pray. Many of them do it
automatically that they don’t even realize they’re saying it in prayers.
They are so afraid that they may sin beyond their consciousness and that will
make God mad at them and beat them up with sickness, poverty, or disaster. I was
one of those people.
Let’s
straighten this out once for all. First of all, “For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to
condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John
3:16-17). He loves you and me because He is love (1 John 4:8,16). God cannot
help it but loving you and me regardless. Second, James 1:17 says, “Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” God only
gives what is good and perfect. He did that since the foundation of the world
and He changes not.
If
all things that are good and perfect come from God, it means that all that are
bad and imperfect don’t come from God, right? If it doesn’t come from God,
the devil must be the source of it. Do you consider sickness, disease, poverty,
and disasters are good and perfect? Or do you consider them bad and imperfect?
If sickness and disease come from God, why do you pray that God heals you? If it
is God’s will for you to lose your child, why do you cry when your child
passed away? You should be jumping and shouting when that happens because
you’re in God’s will. If God sends you a disaster so that you can be
close to Him, why do you pray for deliverance? Shouldn’t you just let disaster
after disaster come your way so that you get closer to God?
Come
on people, wake up from your ignorance. It never was God’s will for someone to
lose anything. If it’s ever been, then why Jesus ministered to sick people and
healed them? Why Jesus even bothered to arise Lazarus from death if it’s
God’s will for Mary and Martha to lose their brother? If it was God’s will
for people to be sick or die young, then Jesus definitely worked against our
Father God by healing sick people and arising the dead. But we know that Jesus
pleased the Father when He did it all. Remember what Jesus said when He stood
before Lazarus’ tomb? He said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard
me. And I knew that thou hearest me always; but because of the people which
stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me” (John
11:41-42). If Father God always heard Jesus when He healed the sick and arose
the dead, it must mean that what Jesus did pleased the Father. So, God never
wanted you to be sick and die young as much as He never wanted you to be poor.
When
you invite Jesus to come to your heart and confess that He is Lord, you were
born again. When you’re born again, you were born of God. If you’re born of
God that means God is your Father and you’re His child.
One
may say, “But I’ve done some awful things in the past. I did this, that, and
those. I was what they call, a BIG sinner.”
Well, this is perfect news for you. There is no such a thing as big
sinner or little sinner. Before the eyes of God, when you’re not born again,
you’re a sinner. God doesn’t care what you did in the past. He didn’t care
if you’ve killed someone. He didn’t care if you were a hooker. He didn’t
care if you were a homosexual. He didn’t care if you were simply unbelieving
“Christian”. His love is big enough to bear it all (read 1 Cor. 13). When
you turn your heart to Him and believe that Jesus is the Son of God and make Him
your Lord, you’re cleansed up by Jesus’ blood and made perfect spiritually
in Christ Jesus (read Ezek. 36:26-27; Eph. 2:10; Eph. 5:26-27).
“Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the
praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved (Jesus). In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness
of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:3-7).
Look
at that! We are adopted as God’s own children through Jesus Christ (verse 5).
Why? It’s because He loves us and it pleases Him to do so. We are adopted as
His own children through Jesus Christ not because of what we do, but it because
He wants to adopt us as His own through His Son. Whatever we do will not make us
adopted as God’s children. Whatever we do will not make us righteous before
the Lord. Our righteousness is of God by faith (read Rom. 3:22; Gal. 3:6; Phil.
3:9). And we also receive forgiveness of our sins by faith in Christ Jesus
according to His grace (read Rom. 4:22). “Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we
conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom.
3:27-28).
No
religious regulations and spiritual rituals can make us holy and righteous
before the Lord. Only our faith in Christ Jesus will make us blameless before
the Lord. Meditate on this and don’t struggle with this anymore. If you are a
born again Christian, you are absolutely perfect and blameless before the Lord
and you are legally adopted as His own child through Jesus Christ (read Col.
1:20-22). Therefore, stop asking for God’s forgiveness every time you pray.
When you miss Him, repent, ask for His forgiveness and receive it by faith, and
stop living in your mistake. Stop calling yourself unworthy because it’s
blasphemy to His ears. If you are a born again Christian, you have the perfect
start with God to receive like a child and live like a king on earth.
One
may say, “I’ve been born again for a while, but how come I’m still in
debt? I still suffer from my childhood sickness, asthma. My husband cannot find
a good job. My children fell into drugs?” Honey, the fact that you don’t
have what you should have had, doesn’t make God a liar. However, it plainly
shows that you don’t know what you’ve inherited in Christ Jesus. And
therefore you can’t claim and receive your inheritance.
You
see, in the natural realm when you don’t know what your inheritance is, it’s
impossible for you to claim and possess it. Even though you know that you have
inherited something from someone, you won’t be able to receive it unless you
know where to go to claim it and know the exact procedure to claim it. It’s
also true in the spirit realm.
“...but
ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ...”
(Rom. 8:15-17). The Word says that we are joint-heirs with Christ. That’s
powerful! It means that whatever Jesus has is ours to have. Jesus doesn’t have
it more than we can have it. We have the same access with Jesus to the
inheritance. Praise the Lord!
Before
Jesus ascended to be with the Father He says, “All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18). Imagine that, Father God gives all power
that ever exists in heaven and in earth to Jesus. If Jesus is given all power in
heaven and in earth, as joint-heirs with Christ we also inherited the same
power. Man, that is enough to shout Hallelujah at the top of your lung! Glory!
The
Word says that we have been delivered from the power of darkness and translated
into the kingdom of God (read Col. 1:13); Christ has redeemed us from any kind
of curses by crucifixion (read Gal. 3:13-14); and we have been blessed with all
spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ (read Eph. 1:3). It all
looks and sounds too good to be true. But the Word of God is the truth, so it
must be true. But how come our lives are not what God says it’s supposed to
be? Where do I miss it? How do we make it true in our lives?
We receive the promises of God by faith. We’re saved by faith. We’re healed by faith. We’re prospered by faith. We’re delivered by faith. How faith becomes the connection to the natural realm? In the next article we’ll learn more about this.