Destined to Reign (32 page)

And have you seen how some people fast? When they fast, they make sure that the whole world knows. They smell bad, their hair is unkempt, they are grumpy, they get angry with their wives and children, and they even kick the dog! I can just imagine one of these guys saying to his wife, “Woman, don’t you know that I am fasting today? Why did you cook such a wonderful meal for the kids? I can smell it from my study! Don’t you know that you are causing me to stumble?” And when his child runs to him and wants to play, he curtly brushes the child away: “Go away, boy! Daddy is busy in the Word today. Go and play by yourself. Stop disturbing me.” If that’s what happens when you fast, well, I think it is better that you break the fast. Go eat something and enjoy your family!

If you are fasting, the whole world doesn’t need to know about it. Please wash your face, shampoo your hair, put on some cologne and brush your teeth! That’s advice from the Bible
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, by the way. It says that you should not declare your fasting to man so that they will be impressed by your efforts. Instead, you should anoint your head with oil!

Now, do I fast? Yes, I do, in the sense that many a time, I am so preoccupied with the Lord in prayer or with studying His Word that I forget to eat. He opens up my eyes to certain truths, one verse leads to another, and in my eagerness to read more of His Word, I unconsciously miss my regular meals, and I even find myself forgoing sleep to be in His presence. But I don’t consciously go on a fast, believing that fasting would get me my miracle.

Are You Twisting God’s Arm?

When you do not understand what it means to come under the law or to come under grace, you can end up trying to twist God’s arm with your efforts to convince Him that you deserve a breakthrough or miracle from Him. Do you really think that because you have fasted 40 days and 40 nights, or prayed for 12 hours straight, that God has to answer your prayers? Are you trying to twist God’s arm with your works? Come on, my friend, the only reason that God answers our prayers today is the finished work of Jesus. Don’t be deceived any longer. God is a debtor to no man. Our efforts to pray long, hard prayers and our fasting don’t impress Him. No man can deserve God’s blessings by his self-efforts. It is not about our sacrifices. It is about
His
sacrifice!

By virtue of Jesus, all God’s blessings and His miracle-working power are already yours when you believe in His Son.

All God sees is the work of His Son on the cross, and by virtue of Jesus, all His blessings and His miracle-working power are already yours when you believe in His Son. Listen carefully to what Paul said to the Galatians who were depending on their self-efforts:

Galatians 3:5

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… He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Look at all the people who received miracles from Jesus during His ministry on earth. Not a single one of them deserved it. They did nothing to earn their miracles. They simply received their miracles because of His grace. On the other hand, we don’t find any record of those who were trying to deserve blessings from God — the Pharisees — receiving anything from Jesus!

When You See Jesus In His Grace, He Sees You In Your Faith

A few years ago, the Lord spoke to me and said, “
When My people see My grace, I see their faith
.” Do you remember the woman with the issue of blood who had been bleeding for 12 years? She did not only see Jesus as being full of healing power, but she also saw Him as being full of grace. How do we know that? It’s because she would have known full well that according to the law of Moses, she was considered unclean because of her condition, and was not supposed to touch anyone, let alone be found squeezing her way through a crowd. Yet, she believed that if she could just touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, she would be healed.

Instead of expecting punishment for breaking the law of Moses, she was expecting to be healed! She did not see Jesus as hard and condemning. She saw Him as a gracious Savior overflowing with mercy and compassion. The moment she touched the hem of His garment, immediately, the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Was she ever conscious of her faith? No, she was conscious only of Jesus and His grace. When she
saw His grace
, He turned around and
saw her faith
. With great tenderness, He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.”
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Faith for any breakthrough or miracle in your life springs forth when you see His grace.

You do not have to try to conjure up faith for healing or finances. Faith for any breakthrough or miracle in your life springs forth when you see His grace. He died so that you might live! You did not deserve it, but He still did it for you. See Jesus on the cross for you. That is the demonstration of His grace. And when you see His grace, your faith becomes unconscious and miracles will break forth!

The Secret To Great Faith

Do you know that there were only two people in the Bible whom Jesus said had “great faith”?

The first was the Roman centurion
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. He came to Jesus and said, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed and he’s suffering,” and the Lord said, “I will come and heal him.” The centurion replied, “No, Lord, I am not worthy to have You come under my roof. Just speak the word and my servant will be healed. I am also a man under authority, having soldiers under me. When I tell a soldier to come, he comes. When I tell a soldier to go, he goes.

And when I tell my servant to do something, he does it.” Now, listen to Jesus’ reply. He said, “I have not found such great faith, no, not in Israel.”

As I was reading these scriptures one night, the Lord asked me, “Why did that man have great faith?” I immediately replied that it was because he, being a Roman centurion, was a man of authority and thus understood the authority of the Lord Jesus. I was confident of my reply, having been taught that to have great faith, we need to understand the Lord’s authority and the authority that He has given to the believer.

The Lord said to me, “Good, and what about the other person whom I said had great faith?” He was referring to the Syro-Phoenician woman who had a demon-possessed daughter
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. She had gone to Jesus and beseeched Him to cast the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” Jesus was saying that it was not good for Him to cast the bread meant for the Jews to a Gentile. But the woman replied, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” And Jesus said, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” That very hour, her daughter was healed.

The Lord continued, “Well, if the centurion had great faith because he understood authority, what about this woman? She was not a soldier. She was a homemaker.” Now, the Lord got me there and I thought, “Well, there goes the theory that I had learned in my earlier years, for what authority could this homemaker have understood, not being a soldier?” Then, the Lord said to me, “Son, look for the common denominator between these two people and you will discover the secret to great faith.”

Boy, was I excited. I was about to discover the secret to having great faith! But after more than half an hour, I was still sitting in my study, searching for the common denominator. I was searching and searching to no avail. I simply could not find the answer. Finally, my “lightning-fast” mind told me that I should ask the Lord for the answer. So I said, “Lord, You have to show me because I cannot see it.” One was a man and the other was a woman. One was a solider and the other, a homemaker. I couldn’t figure out what they had in common.

Then, the Lord said this to me, “Both were Gentiles. They were not Jews.” And He said, “One was a Roman and the other a Canaanite. Both of them were not under the law of Moses and therefore they did not disqualify themselves. They were not under condemnation and so they could have great faith to receive from Me.” Wow, what a powerful revelation! The law is indeed the opposite of faith!

Do you know that there is a verse in Galatians that says that “
the law is not of faith
”
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? In Romans, it also says, “For if those who are of the law are heirs,
faith is made void
and the promise made of no effect”
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. So clearly, there is no way that we can give people the law and yet expect them to have faith. The law will disqualify them from receiving any blessing from the Lord. It is only faith in His grace that will qualify God’s people and cause them to have great faith to receive what they need from the Lord. This is the secret to having great faith for any situation in your life!

Don’t just take my word for it. Search the Bible for yourself and see if the revelation that I received from the Lord is scriptural. It is right there in the Bible. I did not learn it from man. Neither did I read it in any book. It was a revelation from Him. And notice that when the Lord speaks, He always goes back to the Bible and He is always consistent with His written Word.

Unconscious Faith

I believe with all my heart that as you come under grace and are delivered from the works of the law, faith will no longer be a struggle or barrier because you will walk with unconscious faith. You will not be wondering, “Do I have enough faith?” all the time, but you will see Jesus in His grace, and faith will just spring forth from the inside. It is that simple. Everything that you receive from God, you receive by faith in His grace. We walk by faith. We fight the good fight of faith. We are saved by faith, healed by faith and made righteous by faith! The Christian life is a life of faith in His grace. The more of His grace you receive, the more faith springs forth. Our problem in the past was that we put our faith in our own faith, and it didn’t work. We should put our faith in God’s grace and love, for the Bible says that faith works by love
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. This is not in reference to our own love, but to His love for us.

Faith is bringing out of the spirit realm what is already there, what is already true of you.

Faith is not trying to make something that is not already there happen. Faith is bringing out of the spirit realm what is
already
there, what is already true of you. I am not telling you to confess something that you are not. Whether you confess that you are the righteousness of God in Christ or not, you are still the righteousness of God in Christ. But when you confess it, you become conscious of it. You sense it, and it becomes powerful and real in your life.

You do not confess that you are righteous
in order to become
righteous. You confess that you are righteous because you
are already
righteous! Similarly, you confess that you are rich not to become rich. You confess that you are rich because you are already rich through Jesus. At the cross, He became poor so that you through His poverty might become rich
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! You confess this to be conscious that through Jesus, you are already rich. That’s not having faith in faith. It is faith in His goodness, in His grace.

Faith In The Blood Of Jesus

Many believers are so caught up in looking to their own faith to save them and bring about blessings in their lives. What they don’t realize is that it is not their faith that saves them. It is His grace, His blood alone that saves them. When you believe that it is the blood that saves you, God sees that as faith in the blood. Yet, it is not your faith in the blood that protects, delivers or saves you. It is simply the blood alone that saves you. Let me illustrate this truth with an enactment of what might have happened on the night before the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt.

On the night of the Passover, God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
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Remember, there were nine plagues, but it wasn’t the plagues that delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. It was the blood of the lamb. After the nine plagues, Pharaoh’s heart was still hardened, so God finally used His trump card and only then did Pharaoh release the Israelites.

God’s trump card was the blood of the lamb. The devil has no defense against the blood. You see, the Israelites’ firstborns were protected not because they were good. They were protected because of the blood of the lamb. If the children of Israel had failed to apply the blood of the lamb to their doorposts, their firstborns would not have been spared — they would have died along with the firstborns of the Egyptians. They were protected not because they were Jews either, but because of the blood of the lamb. God did not say, “When I see your good family name, all your wonderful titles or that you are of a particular nationality, I will pass over you.” No, it was based entirely on the blood of the lamb!
“When I see the blood...”

What does the blood of the lamb speak of? It speaks of the blood of our sacrifice, Jesus Christ. He is the true Lamb who takes away the sin of the world
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. In the same way, today, God does not look at your good behavior, law-keeping, Christian heritage or titles to bless you and keep you from all evil. No, He looks at the blood of Jesus. From the moment you received Jesus Christ, His blood covers you perfectly!

Now, let’s look at how two Jewish families might have spent the Passover night.

In the first family, where both father and son are firstborns, the son asks his father, “Daddy, did you put the blood on the doorposts?”

His daddy says, “Yes, son, I have done as Moses instructed. But I really hope that I have enough faith in the blood.”

“Daddy, Daddy, do you have enough faith?”

“I don’t know,” the father shrugs helplessly. “I really don’t know if I have enough faith in the blood!”

As they hear the screams and cries coming from the Egyptian houses, they hold each other tightly, trembling in fear throughout the night.