Destined to Reign (17 page)

This is sad because the power to overcome sin is found in knowing that you are righteous. When a believer is struggling with sin, it is a case of mistaken identity: He thinks that he is still a dirty rotten sinner and as a result, he will continue to live as a dirty rotten sinner. But the more he sees that he has been made righteous apart from his works, the more he will be empowered to live righteously.

Your answer lies in right believing.

Believers are struggling with sin today precisely because they do not realize that they are righteous. The Bible says, “Awake to righteousness, and sin not.”
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This means that the more a believer realizes that he is indeed righteous, the more he will start to behave like a righteous person. It is time to awake to righteousness!

Now, commit this to memory:
Right believing leads to right living
. Say it out loud with me for this is a powerful revelation that you cannot afford to miss:

“Right believing always leads to right living!”

To understand this truth, you need to realize that everything that you see in creation came out of the spirit realm. God, who is a Spirit, spoke all the things that He created into being. In the same way, long before your blessing manifests physically, it is first in your spirit. The Bible says, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things.”
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In other words, your life today is a reflection of what has been hidden and carried in your heart all this time.
So if you don’t want your life to remain the same, the solution is not in changing your circumstances, the solution is in changing your heart, changing what you believe
. My friend, for every area of weakness, failure and defeat that you may be experiencing right now, I assure you that there has been some wrong believing in that area. Search the Scriptures for Jesus and the truth. Your answer lies in right believing.

For generations, the body of Christ has been defeated and put under a constant siege of condemnation from the accuser because they believe wrongly that the Holy Spirit convicts believers of their sins. Start believing rightly today. Read this chapter over and over again. Meditate on the verses that I have pointed out. Let the truth sink in and be set free by the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is your Helper, given by God to convict you of righteousness. You are the righteousness of God in Christ!

Right Believing Leads To Right Living —  A Testimony

There is a precious brother in my church whose life started to turn around when he received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. However, he was still struggling with a smoking habit. He had been smoking for many years and not a day passed without him going through at least one pack of cigarettes. He shared with me that he felt really lousy every time he smoked. He felt condemned and constantly heard the voice of the accuser bombarding him with accusations:

“How can you call yourself a Christian? Look at you — you are still a smoker!”

“Give up! You are not worthy to be a Christian.”

“ You are such a hypocrite.”

He kept hearing these accusations and the more he heard them, the more he smoked. He said that he really tried to muster all his willpower to overcome this destructive habit, but he just could not do it. He knew that his body was a temple of God and he sincerely wanted to glorify the Lord, but there was no power to do so. He started to condemn himself and was prepared to throw in the towel.

Then, he heard me preach on how the Holy Spirit is present in him to convict him of
righteousness
, and how the more he believed that he was righteous because of Jesus Christ, the more his behavior would start to line up with what he believed. So he began to confess this daily: “I am the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ.”  Every day, he would wake up, stare at himself in the mirror and say, “I see a righteous man standing in front of me.” Even when he succumbed to the temptation and lit up, he would still confess, “I am the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. Even right now, the Lord sees me righteous.”

This brother really believed that he was righteous, not because of what he did, but because of what Jesus had done. And the more he believed that he was the righteousness of God, the more the power of his nicotine addiction faded. He began to have a supernatural strength to cut down his daily tobacco intake within a short span of time. He began to replace the voice of the accuser which said, “You are a hypocrite. How can you call yourself a Christian?” with the voice of the Holy Spirit which declared, “You are righteous in God’s eyes. God sees you as righteous as Jesus Christ today.” The voice of the Holy Spirit became louder and louder until it completely drowned out the voice of the accuser.

This precious brother finally stopped hearing the voice of condemnation and heard only the voice of righteousness, and one day, he woke up and realized that the desire for cigarettes was no longer there! Hallelujah! He was delivered from his destructive habit simply by believing the voice of the Holy Spirit and seeing himself as the righteousness of God every day. Just being faithful in believing and confessing, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ,” caused a power to be released in his life that made the craving for cigarettes fall away. This is powerful, my friend!

His Grace Is Greater Than Your Addictions

Are you overwhelmed by an addiction today? It may be smoking, pornography, alcohol, drugs or gambling. Whatever it may be, my friend, God’s grace is greater than any addiction in your life. His grace will swallow up your addiction. Today is your day of freedom and liberty. Today is the day that the Lord will set you free from every lie, guilt and condemnation that the accuser has been bombarding you with. Now, I want to pray this prayer with you:

“Lord Jesus, I thank You for the cross. I thank You that when You died for me, Your blood cleansed me from all my unrighteousness and the sins of my entire life. You are my Lord and Savior. I give You all my addictions today. I am sick and tired of being defeated and condemned by the accuser. Today, I confess that because of the blood of Jesus Christ, I am right now the righteousness of God. By the supernatural strength and power of the Holy Spirit who is present to convict me of my righteousness, I will be reminded every day that I am the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. Amen!”

Hallelujah! When you start believing that you are righteous apart from your works, the voice of the accuser who comes to condemn you will have no more dominion over your life. I look forward to hearing your testimony on how the Lord has delivered you from your addiction. The contact information for my ministry is at the end of this book. Write to us!

Come on, my friend, it is time to awake to righteousness and sin not. Right believing leads to right living. Believe that you are righteous and you will start living like a righteous man or woman of God. Condemnation may be the deepest root, but today, you have found the solution — simply believing that you are the righteousness of God because of Jesus Christ.

Is There Judgment For The Believer?

From John 16, I have established that the Holy Spirit came to convict the world (unbelievers) of the sin of unbelief in Jesus. But for the believer, the Holy Spirit came to convict him of his righteousness in Christ. Today, there are some believers who believe that the Holy Spirit is in them to convict them not just of their sins, but also of God’s anger and judgment toward them. This is just not true either.

I have established in the earlier chapters that God’s anger and judgment for all our sins have been exhausted on the body of Jesus when He hung on the cross. So what judgment is there for the believer today? When Jesus said, “… of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged,” who was He referring to? Believers or unbelievers? The answer is neither. He was referring to “the ruler of this world”, as plainly stated in the verse.

“So who is the ‘ruler of this world’?”

The “ruler of this world” is the devil, the accuser himself. When God created Adam and Eve, He gave them dominion over the world. But when Adam sinned, he handed this dominion over to the devil. That’s why we live in a fallen world today, where we see sicknesses, diseases, wars, earthquakes and floods around us. These are
not
the “acts of God”. They are the acts of the devil! Jesus did not come to destroy lives, but to save lives
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. So anything that you see in the world that is destructive is the work of the “ruler of this world”. But guess what? His lease on this world is running out, and we are edging closer and closer to the day when Jesus will return for us. Hallelujah!

My friend, we’ve seen in this chapter that the Holy Spirit has come to one, convict unbelievers of the sin of unbelief; two, convict believers of righteousness apart from works; and three, remind us that the devil has been judged at the cross. Now, this is called rightly dividing the Word! Confusion occurs when believers read the Scriptures and do not rightly divide whom the speaker is speaking to. All of God’s Word is written for our benefit, but not all of it is written
to
us. The Holy Spirit will never call you a hypocrite, nor will He say, “What kind of Christian are you? “These are the words of the accuser, whose strategy is to spew condemnation on you to disqualify you and make you feel unworthy to enter God’s presence. The Holy Spirit is called the “
Comforter
”
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. He is here to comfort you and to point you back to the cross of Jesus every time you fail. The only thing that He will convict you of is your righteousness in Jesus Christ!

Believe that you are the righteousness of God in Christ and enjoy the blessings that are on the head of the righteous!

Today, beloved, believe that you are the righteousness of God in Christ. Start walking in the freedom from condemnation that Christ has purchased for you and enjoy the blessings that are on the head of the righteous
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!

Chapter 12: Condemnation Kills

The accuser is an astute legal prosecutor who will not hesitate to use the Ten Commandments to condemn you. That’s why the Word of God declares that the Ten Commandments are not just “the ministry of death”, they are also “the ministry of condemnation”
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. Remember, there is nothing unholy about the Ten Commandments. They are holy, just and good, but they have no power to make you holy, just and good. The law is an unbending and inflexible standard. It cannot compromise. When you fail, it cannot show you grace. If it does, then it is no longer the law!

That’s why Apostle Paul said that “the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me”
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. Notice that sin “by the commandment” deceived him and killed him. What that means is that when Paul came under the old covenant of law, he too came under the ministry of death and condemnation.

The law always ministers condemnation. If you are under the law, every time you fail and fall short of God’s standards, you will be condemned. Grace, on the other hand, always ministers righteousness. That’s why it is called the ministry of righteousness, which exceeds the ministry of condemnation in glory by much more.

2 Corinthians 3:9
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For if the
ministry of condemnation
had glory, the
ministry of righteousness
exceeds much more in glory.

When you are under grace, even when you fail and fall short of God’s standards, God still sees you as righteous because of Jesus Christ. God did not give the law for man to be made right through his own obedience. He gave the law so that man would have knowledge of sin. Without the law, sin was dead. Paul described it most aptly when he said, “I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.”
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The law always ministers condemnation. Grace, on the other hand, always ministers righteousness.

The Law Stirs Up Sinful Desires In Man

There is nothing wrong with the law. The problem is with man’s flesh. It is like a group of teenage boys walking down a long street, just hanging out and having fun. They pass by a greenhouse and no one thinks anything of it — it is just another greenhouse. Then, they walk on to the end of the street where there is another greenhouse similar to the first one they just saw. But this time, all around the greenhouse are huge signs with big red letters saying: “Do not throw stones or you will be handed over to the police.”

Now, the first greenhouse had no signs and the boys didn’t think twice about it. The second greenhouse had warning signs all around and now, the boys have stopped in their tracks because something inside them has been stirred. They look around to see if anybody is watching them, and then guess what?