Monday, January 31, 2011

CREATING AND RELEASING THE POSITIVE


We have learned that we have dominion and that faith, love and hope work together. And that we have been given the power to create since we are made in the image and likeness of God.

Now we have to learn that before we can release that power; before we can create by the creative power of the Spirit, motivated and indwelt and anointed by the Spirit of God; before you can release that anointing into the earth to go out and create in the Name of the Lord, you are going to have to start making some new memories. and some new visions.

Have a Picture/Imagination
How do you create? How does an artist create? He has to have a picture in his mind of what he is going to make. He has to have a picture. You as well have to have a vision.

If you do not have a picture in your mind of what it is that you are asking God for; of what it is that you are wanting to create by the power of the Spirit, then where will you even begin?
But we come to the Lord in prayer and say, "Lord, bless me."I can see the Lord saying, "Sure. What kind of blessing would you like?""Well Lord, that’s up to You. I just want to be blessed."

Unless you have a clear positive picture/vision in your mind, you cannot create anything but negative.You did not have a picture of what it is that your spirit was going to create.

Released Through The Soul
Your mind has to be involved. Do you know why? Because the power of your spirit has to be released through your soul and through your body into the earth. The power of the Spirit has to come upon the physical creation, and before it can do that it has to come out. And if it is going to come out, it is going to come out via your soul and via your body and into the earth. Then those forces of faith and hope and love are going to go forth into the earth and they are going to move upon the physical creation, and they are going to make something.

The Mind
If they are going to come out through your soul, there are three functions there – the mind, emotions and will. And if the forces of the Spirit are going to come out, they are going to come out through your mind, emotions and will. So you have to start with your mind. You must have a picture of what you are going to create when that energy goes forth.

The Emotions
Then your desires, your feelings, your emotions must be part of it. You must earnestly desire this thing.

Have an Earnest Desire
Your emotions have to be involved in this.I hear people say, "Well, I don’t really want anything. I’m happy with what I have. But if the Lord wants to bless me that’s up to Him."It is not going to happen for you, because what blessing God gives, He put into your spirit. Remember, we saw that in the beginning. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us …" He put it in your spirit. And the energy and the force of your spirit has to be released out to bring about that creation in this world. If you do not earnestly desire it, God is not going to force it on you.

If you are happy with nothing then you can stay with nothing. God is not going to impose blessings on you that you do not want. He already gave them to you in spiritual essence. If you do not want to take that spiritual essence and use the recipe to make it into something that you can use, then you can just sit with the ingredients and die with them. It is entirely up to you.
God has given you a free will and free agency in the earth. And if you think that it is unspiritual for you to want things, and you would rather just serve the Lord in poverty, then you will stay a pauper. If you think that God is glorified in you walking about in pain all the time and that you want to remain that way, then you will die with that sickness and disease, because God has placed in you the spiritual essence to create your healing through Jesus the Healer, and to create your provision. And if you don’t want to use it, God is not going to impose it on you. You must earnestly desire. You must feel within that you want this thing to be manifested in your life.

The Will
Then your will has to be involved as well.

Released in Speech
How is your will involved? How is it involved in releasing the power that is in your spirit? Your will is involved in the faculty of speech. Remember we saw that spirit and words were linked together. We saw that when He created, the Spirit of God hovered over the creation, and He spoke forth words. We saw that God made man in His own image, and gave him the faculty of speech, which the animals do not have.

Speech and Spirit Linked
Speech and spirit are linked together. Your tongue is directly connected to your heart.And when you open your mouth to speak, what you speak is coming from your spirit within, did you know that? Did you know that every time you open your mouth to speak, those very words came not from your mind, but from your spirit?Try it. Try an experiment. Just say something and have a good look at where those words came from. Did you think in your mind, "I .. am .. going .. to …" just like a computer. No you didn’t. You got a concept in your mind. You had a thought, you had a picture, you had an idea and you opened your mouth and spoke your heart.

If you are one of those types that do not like to speak a lot and get very unemotional and intellectual, the chances are you are going to choose four or five words to say what needs to get said, and that is it, you are going to shut up. It is coming out of your spirit, coming straight out of your spirit, not out of your mind. Yes, your mind is involved, your emotions are involved, but when you open your mouth to speak by an act of your will, you release the power that is in your spirit.

Romans 4:17 says, "(as it is written, ‘I have made you a father of many nations’) before Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things that are not as though they were."

Call It the Way It Will Be
What does God do? God calls. He speaks words. And the words that He speaks are not based on what you can see with your eyes. He calls it the way He wants it to be. Do you remember when Jesus was called to go and pray for His friend Lazarus and He stayed a couple more days and Lazarus died, and eventually He went?
Jesus said to His disciples, "Our friend Lazarus is asleep and we are going to go and wake him."
The disciples said, "Hey Lord, if the guy’s tired, let him sleep. What do you want to go and wake him up for?"
They did not know that Jesus was talking about the fact the guy was dead. And Jesus had to eventually come down to their level and say, "He’s dead man!"
Jesus would not see it that way. As far as He was concerned, he was asleep.
He did the same with Jairus’s daughter. When they were all weeping and wailing there at the house saying, "Oh, she’s died," Jesus said, "Stop your wailing man, she’s just asleep."
"How dare you say that! You know she’s dead."
Jesus refused to call it the way it was. He called it the way it was going to be. He spoke words that came straight up out of His spirit.


Paint Positiveness
You see, the way your soul is going to respond is going to determine what kind of power is going to come up out of your spirit. And if the picture in your mind is one of negativity, you get a pain in your chest and what is the first thing you think? "My heart! I’m going to die!" That is the picture in your mind. That is what you are creating.
Somebody says, "So how are you feeling?"
"Oh man, I’ve been suffering so. Oh, man you should know what it is like. Nothing helps. Oh, it’s terrible. I just don’t know how long I can go on this way. I hope I make it through the month."
You’ll probably die. You just created it! You felt it, you thought it, you saw it and you spoke it. That is the template you gave to your spirit.
You said, "Okay, spirit, this is what I want for you. Put me in hospital and let me die. Have them take away my house and my car and everything. Make sure that I get no money. Make sure that there is no provision. Make sure that my kids starve." That is what you told your spirit. That is the template that you offered to your spirit, and your spirit is quite obedient.
Your spirit says, "Well I can’t understand what you want to do this for, but hey, if that’s the template you are giving me, let’s go to work."

Do you understand what I am saying? You need to build decent memories and outlooks/visions. You need to build the kind of vision that the power of the Spirit can use to create something meaningful and something that is a blessing in your life.

Create According to His Will
Now you need to do a few things. Firstly you need to know that what you are wanting to create is the will of God. Because, after all, the Scripture says, "If we ask according to His will He hears us." So before we can even begin to release the power of our spirit, to let the Holy Spirit work through us to accomplish and to create in the earth, we had better know that He wants to do it. We better know that it is the will of God.How are we going to find out whether it is the will of God, "Because maybe God got out of bed on the wrong side this morning, and maybe He doesn’t feel like giving it to me huh."? I am just so glad God is not a man.

His Will is His Word
God has told us what His will is. He has been quite verbose about it too. It takes us a while to get through all of it. Most people never bother getting through all of it, that is why they do not know what His will is. They didn’t bother reading it. It is His ‘Last Will and Testament’ actually. He cannot change it, He has put it in writing. And when you put it in writing and sign on the dotted line it becomes a legal document, and you cannot take it back. You cannot change your mind afterwards and say, "Oops, made a mistake there. Can you just scratch that?" It is too late. It has been recorded.

God will never go back on His Word. If you want to find out the will of God, read His Will. And if God says in His Word, "My God shall provide your needs," He is planning to provide your needs. If God says in His Word, "By His stripes you were healed," He meant you were healed! If God says in His Word that, "You have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places," He means to back it up. He is not going to change His mind. He has given some promises, and when God gives a promise He will always keep it!
But I hear people say, "Well maybe it is the will of God that I don’t get healed right now."
Then God is a liar. (God cannot lie)
"Maybe the Lord wants me to battle in poverty."
Promises are Always Yes
Then He is a liar, (God cannot lie) because in terms of His Covenant (you can look way back there as He offered His Covenants to man all the way through) go and read Deuteronomy 28 and see what your blessings are.
(see Deut. 28:1, read the blessings)
That is your blessing.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Faith, Love and Hope


Last week we talked about faith, this time what goes with faith?
Love & Hope
The kind of love the Bible speaks about, agape love, is something that can only come from the Spirit of God.

There are three kinds of love. You have probably all heard this so many times. There are three different Greek words that describe love.

Eros - Love of the Passions

There’s the Greek word ‘eros’ which refers to the love of the passions. Your dogs and cats know how to do that kind of love. There is nothing special about it. It is physical. It changes with the wind. It varies from one day to another.

Phileo - Love of the Emotions

Then there is ‘phileo’ love. That is the love of the emotions. It is the ‘feely’ love, the love that says, "I feel good and I feel something towards you. You make me feel good so I love you. And I’ll carry on feeling good until you say something nasty to me."

That kind of love is easy to create. Just be nice to people and they will love you that way. You end up in performance orientation – performing for people to get them to love you. Be nice to people, become what people want you to be so that you get their emotions stirred nicely towards you; so that people look at you and say, "You’re such a nice person. She really is great to be around." Then you go into another crowd and they have another set of rules and standards, so you have to start being nice to them in a different way.

Agape - the God Kind of Love

Phileo is not the the kind of love I am talking about. The kind of love I am talking about is the Greek word ‘agape’. It is the word that’s used in 1 Corinthians 13, describing that divine love. If you read 1 Corinthians 13 and look at all those kind of loves, and if you try and look at them from the point of view of your feelings and your emotions and passions, you cannot love that way. Then just to make it worse, God commands us to love that way.

God says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind." Well God is fairly easy to love because He blesses us all the time. "And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

"Husbands love your wives."

"Well, if she’s submissive and does what I say, that’s easy enough. If my neighbor is friendly and doesn’t cause me any grief, that’s easy enough. I think with a push I could handle that one."
"Okay, ‘Love your enemies.’ "
"What?"
"Yup! Love that guy who says nasty things and goes out of his way to tear you down; criticizes you behind your back; throws stones through your window; gives you prank calls in the middle of the night; turns all your friends against you; does his best to make your life a misery."
"I must love that person?"
"Hey, don’t look at me. It wasn’t my idea. Love your enemies."
"But I can’t! I can’t. I can’t drum up feelings for somebody that I hate."
Who said anything about feelings?

From the Spirit of God
Agape love has nothing to do with feelings. Agape love is a commandment. Where does it come from? It comes from the Holy Spirit. That is where it comes from. Romans 5:5 says:
And hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

You are going to get that love only one way, by causing your spirit to come into communication and communion with the Spirit of God. And you come into communion with the Spirit of God the power of the force of love, which is the very nature of God. The Bible says, "God is love" not, "God loves." God is love.

Light, Life and Love

That is exactly what your human spirit is like. If you want to have this force of love, you are going to have to get into the presence of the light. And you know what is interesting? The Bible uses three words that always refer to the same thing. They are light and life and love. Do you know that light and life and love in the Bible are used almost interchangeably?

Switch on the light and the darkness goes. Switch on the love and the hatred goes. Switch on the life and the death goes. They cannot exist together. You cannot have light and darkness mixing. You cannot have love and hate mixing. You cannot have life and death mixing. You either have one or the other. And the moment you put one of those in, the other one gets displaced.

Spend Time with Him

Love, the love of God, comes from the communion of the human spirit with Him. How do we get it? By coming and bathing in His love. That is how you get it, just by bathing in His love. I am not talking about spending hours in prayer praying, because I tell you what you are doing when you are coming to pray, you are coming to bombard the Lord with all your petitions and your requests. I am talking about coming into His presence just to be there.

All you need to do is come into the presence of the Lord and tell Him that you love Him, and tell Him that you love Him, and tell Him that you love Him. Then tell Him some more that you love Him. Then just be quiet and listen and you will hear Him telling you that He loves you. You will hear it coming up deep down inside.

"I love you. I love you. You’re special to Me. That’s why I died for you. That is why I gave My all for you. You are important to Me. You are very important to Me. I love you."

Listen, you will hear it. Get into His presence, just like a loving couple. You do not have to say anything. Just be there. Hold your spirit up into His Light, and you will find it begins to pour forth. Something begins to take place deep within you. A charge begins to build up. Maybe you will get butterflies in your stomach like a person does when they are in love.

The power of love is just get into His presence and be with Him and hear His words of love, and you tell Him over and over again, "I love you, I love you Lord. Oh Lord, I love you so much. You mean so much to me. You are all the world to me."

Forget about your needs, forget about your cares, forget about the problems. Just come and tell Him that you love Him, and hear Him tell you that He loves you.

Loving the Unlovely

How will I know when it is there? Well for a start you will be able to love the people that are unlovely without even trying. You will start to glow. All of a sudden you will find those ill feelings just gone. You do not even need to grit your teeth and try. It is just there. It flows. You will be able to forgive the people who hurt you and you will not have to force yourself to do it. You won’t have to grit your teeth to do it. It will just come naturally.

Love Gives

Then you will become generous. Yes, you will become generous, you know why? Because love always gives. You cannot help it. If you have love you want to give. If you love this person you want to give them your all. The Bible says that, ‘God so loved the world that He …’ ‘hogged it all to Himself.’? No, ‘that He gave.’

Jesus said, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friend. God commended His great love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

Even when we were His enemies, He gave His life for us. Love has to give. And you know the amazing thing about giving is when you give something to somebody they kind of cannot help but love you back. Do you know that? You be nice to somebody and keep giving and keep giving and keep giving to them, after a while they kind of start feeling a bit obligated to you, and they just want to give back to you. Because you have blessed them so much they just want to bless you back again. The Scripture says that, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’

If you want to see the force of love go to work in your life, start giving, giving and giving. I am going to show you shortly that faith and love work together. If you want to release the power of faith, you are going to need love to go with it. And

Hope

There is one third force, and it comes from the spiritual capacity of wisdom, or premonition, or foreknowledge. It is the force of hope. Do you recognize those three – faith, love and hope? You will read it all over the New Testament, especially in Paul’s epistles. "And now abides faith, hope and love, these three …"

You will find that when Paul wrote to his churches, he commended them for their faith or their hope or their love if these were there. And if there was one that was missing he would say, "Well, I thank the Lord for your faith and I thank the Lord for your hope, and I’m praying that the Lord will show you His love now." You read it carefully when you read the New Testament and look for those three and you will see them intertwined all the way. So what is hope?
"Well, I sure hope that things are going to get better. I sure hope the Lord provides for us in time. I sure hope this pain will go and the Lord will heal me. I sure hope …"

A Positive Expectation
Forget it. You are not hoping at all. That is not hope. Hope is not negative. Hope is positive. Hope is a positive expectation. Why? Because it comes out of a premonition in your spirit. It comes out of a spiritual foreknowledge. It comes out of an assurance that what you are looking for, what you are believing for is going to come to pass.

It is a visualizing of the goal. Hope paints a picture in your mind where you can see; you can literally hold in your hands the thing that you are believing for. Hope is positive and strong.
Well, where do we get it from? How do I get it? Do I get it by trying hard? Do I get it by forcing pictures in my mind, forcing myself to visualize this thing? Where does hope come from?

Enduring Under Trial
Romans 5:3 says:
And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation causes patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.
Hope comes from endurance under trial. You were not expecting that answer were you? It comes from endurance under trial. If you want to develop hope you are going to have to get ready to go through the fire. Because you see, the Scripture says that tribulation causes, or produces patience. What is patience? Patience is persistence, endurance. And when you learn to hang on to your faith and hang on to your love, in spite of circumstances, you begin to develop an anchor of hope. You hang onto it strongly, and you learn through experience.
What happens when you hit a disaster for the first time? You go to pieces, but you learn, after a while, that it came to 'pass.' It did not come to 'stay.' You learn after a while of going through experiences like this, that you did not die; that actually God had a plan in this, and God worked it out, and He brought you through the situation. And you learn, when you face a similar situation in the future, to go back on your experience, from previous tribulation, and from previous problems.

Now you can stand firm in hope. You are not caught by surprise anymore. When it comes upon you, you say, "Hold it, I can handle this one. I’ve been through this one before." It is endurance under trial. You begin to learn. If you had never been through that before you would go to pieces, but you have been through it before.

How can we develop it and strengthen faith, love and hope? By filling ourselves with the Word. Romans 15:4 says:
For whatever things were written beforehand were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
In other words, we can learn from other people’s experiences, too. We can learn from our own experiences, and we can learn from the experiences of others.
How do I know when it is there? When I am not moved by what I see or by what I hear. When I expect my faith to work, even though it looks impossible. Even though there is no sign of any movement, I expect my faith to work.

Putting them Together
These are the three spiritual forces - faith, love and hope. And as we release those forces into the earth, they are going to go out and accomplish, and bring about that creation from our human spirit.

All Three Needed for Results

Those three forces faith, love and hope are like the three primary colors of light that must be mixed together to make the purity of white light, before you are going to get results. They are going to have to flow as one. You are going to have to have all of them working together. Because if you do not have all of them working together you are accomplishing nothing, absolutely nothing.



Wednesday, January 19, 2011

FAITH


The Scripture says, "The just shall live by faith." Jesus said to the Devil, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." It sounds like the same two Scriptures to me. "Man shall live by faith … Man shall live by the Word."

Believe and be Convinced

What is faith? What is it? Faith comes from the verb ‘to believe’. Faith is the noun. It comes from the Greek verb ‘pisteuo’ which means, ‘to believe’. We looked at those Scriptures there now. "All things are possible to him who believes." You can say, "All things are possible to him who has faith." It is the same root.

What does pisteuo mean? It has two main meanings. There are several others, but two main meanings. Firstly it means to be convinced; to be fully convinced of something. And to be convinced of something means that you have heard something that you are convinced of. So it links with words somehow. Can you see? "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word …" "The just shall live by faith."

Based on Words
Faith is based on words. The Scripture says that, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." Faith means to be ‘fully convinced’.

Romans 4:20, speaking about Abraham says, "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform."

Faith is based on words. Faith involves believing words. Faith involves being fully persuaded, fully convinced, and knowing without a shade of doubt that what the Word says is true.

Involves Trust
Faith also means ‘to entrust oneself’. That means faith is based on a person. Because when you entrust yourself to someone it means that you have the fullest of confidence and trust in that person. You will find in the Amplified Version of the Bible that the word ‘believe’ is normally translated as ‘to trust, to cling to and to rely on’. Faith is based on words, and faith is based on confidence in a person. And if you have confidence in a person, and if you trust them implicitly, then you believe the words that they speak. Faith involves complete trust in Christ Jesus. and the Words He speaks.

Producing Faith
You have had faith in people's words before. Where is your faith in the Word of God? Where does faith come from? Faith, the kind of faith that God would have us to exercise, comes from the Word of God. So Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Rhema Word of God."

There are two Greek words that are translated ‘word’ in the New Testament. The one is ‘logos’ and the other one is ‘Rhema’. The difference between the two is, logos is a tangible word like the written word. Your Bible is the logos. It is written down and it is tangible and available. The Rhema words are the words that come out of the mouth, fresh on the tongue; spontaneous words. The words that I speak are in a Rhema form in that they are the active words of my mouth.

Rhema Words
So when I speak to you as an individual and my words are addressed specifically to you, and they are coming to you from me specifically in direct communication, that is Rhema. But when I write it down in notes, and anybody can pick it up, it is logos. When I pick up a note that somebody else has written, and it is not specifically addressed tome , I look at it and I begin to wonder whether it applies to me or not.

People open the Word of God and they read, "My God shall supply all your needs," and they say, "Yes, but Paul wrote that to the Philippian church."
"By His stripes you were healed." They say, "Yes, but Peter wrote that to the early Christians. Isaiah wrote that to Israel. It’s not to me."

You see, it is still logos. In order for it to become Rhema, it has to become, "Thus saith the Lord to you,...., by His stripes, you ..., were healed!" Now it becomes God taking the Word afresh and speaking it in His lips to me specifically as an individual. That is what produces faith.

You see, we all know that God can heal. We all know that God can provide our needs. We all know that God can make the mountain jump up and be cast into the sea. We all know that God can make the fig tree die from its roots and a sycamore tree be plucked up and cast into the sea. We all know that God can do these things. He is God. He is able to do it. But I do not know if He will do it for me.

All Things are Possible
Jesus said, "All things are possible to him who believes." If you read the context of that verse, it actually comes even stronger than the way we read it, because the verse that we read earlier says, "If you can, all things are possible to him who believes." That seems to give us the idea that believing is a very difficult thing, and Jesus was saying, "Well it’s really hard to believe. But if you can … if you just can … then all things will become possible to you."

"All things? But you don’t know the problem that I have. You haven’t seen the situation we’re in. It’s impossible for anything to be done!"

All things are possible, no exceptions, to him, who really works hard; who walks so close to the Lord and lives a holy life and prays every day for hours? No, to him who believes.
believes.

That is why He gave that Scripture in Mark 11:23:Whoever shall say to this mountain, ‘Be plucked up and cast into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart but believe …, he shall have whatever he says.

The Power of Faith
Jesus first said, "Have faith in God." The Greek there says, "Have the faith of God." All Jesus showed us there was the power that there is in this force of faith. All things are possible to him who believes. The force of faith is able to accomplish anything. And the Scripture says, "By faith we know that the worlds were framed …
"
If you read Hebrews 11 you will see again and again, "By faith … by faith …" somebody did something. "By faith …" this miracle was performed. "By faith …" that was accomplished. All things are possible to him who believes. There is nothing that is impossible to faith. It is a very, very powerful force, and it comes from the intuition of the spirit where you know that you know that you know.

Have No Doubts
That is why Jesus said, "If you will believe and do not doubt …you will have whatever you say." If there is doubt there then there is no faith. You cannot believe and doubt at the same time.

God is a Faith God

Unless that force of faith is at work, and unless you are sending forth that force of faith from your life, you are accomplishing nothing for God in this world at all. And God can do nothing with you or through you, because He works through that power in your spirit. God works in your spirit. And as He works in your spirit and the power of faith is released within you, that power must go forth from you to accomplish what needs to be done in the earth.








Friday, January 14, 2011


Forces of the Recreated Spirit

Matthew 21:22:And all things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.
Mark 9:23:Jesus said to him, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes."
Mark 11:23&24:For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will come to pass, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
Mark 16:17&18:And these signs will follow those who believe: In My Name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.

What does it mean when a person says, "Well, we’ll just have to go by faith."?

Most of the time when people speak about doing things by faith, that is the idea that we have isn’t it? We have the idea that faith means rejecting all common sense and just doing something irrational. What is this faith? Is it something that God gives only to select individuals? Or is faith, perhaps a sixth sense that we are able to develop and use? These are some of the issues that I want to try and address here.

Creative Spiritual Forces
So I want to share in this message on the forces that dwell in the human spirit, and specifically the recreated spirit in Christ; the human spirit that is indwelt with God’s Holy Spirit from the moment of the new birth. There are spiritual forces there. There is spiritual energy. There is power. the Word says dunamis/dynamite power.

God has given to man the ability to use the power that is in his spirit to create, even as He created, using the power of his Spirit; the Spirit coming to bear on the physical creation and causing a change to take place in it. Well, if Spirit has the power to change the physical then there must be some kind of force, some kind of energy, some kind of power that is in the Spirit that enables it to bring about those changes.

God has made us to be a spirit dwelling in a body, and therefore possessing a soul that mediates between spirit and body. By our spirits we are in touch with God’s Spirit and His realm, and by our bodies we are in touch with this physical realm. And somehow we need to cause the forces that are in our spirit to flow out into the physical.

Functions of the Spirit
As we look at these three parts to our being we see that each of these parts has functions that are built into them. They are created to function in certain ways.

Spiritual Knowledge
God has made the human spirit, and all spirit, to have three main functions. The first one I call spiritual knowledge, spiritual knowing. A word that is often used is the word "intuition". Supposedly women have more of this. In a sense that is true, because women tend to develop more of that capacity, that creative spiritual capacity. Intuition is knowing; the ability to know deep within your spirit.

Spiritual Communication
Then there is spiritual communication, or communion, or fellowship. That is the ability of one’s spirit to communicate with and to have communion with another spirit. That is when two spirits can touch each other and communicate, not like we communicate in the flesh, but there is a touching of spirits that takes place.

Spiritual Wisdom
Then there’s a third function in the human spirit, which I call spiritual wisdom. Wisdom always tends to have an orientation towards the future. It has an orientation involved in decision-making. It is the ability to be able to anticipate what is going to happen, to make decisions, and to change your circumstances and move in a specific direction, based on that inner knowing. Sometimes people use the word "premonition" as related to this. It is a sense of foreknowledge.

God has made the human spirit in the same image as His Holy Spirit, and spirit has these functions.

He has put into man; what God has designed us to have, and what God by the power of His Spirit wants to highly amplify in us, in order that we as His children may rule and reign in Jesus Christ in this earth.

We Rule in the Earth

The Scripture says, "Those who received the abundance of grace will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ." We are meant to be reigning in this earth as kings, but we are groveling. We are groveling under the powers of darkness. We are groveling under the forces of this world, because we are allowing ourselves to be dominated by this world, and by those people that the enemy is using in this world system . We are allowing ourselves to grovel and saying, "I wish God would do something when the ball is in our court.


Saturday, January 8, 2011

THE LAWS OF THE SPIRIT



The Laws of the Spirit

Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

Natural Laws
We tend to live our lives according to certain laws. In fact we grow up in this life being familiar with a certain number of natural laws. We call them the laws of nature. In the world and in science they use terms like ‘Mother Nature’, and they are indicating the idea that certain principles and certain things happen continuously in certain patterns.

There are natural laws. I am speaking here not about laws like, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not …", not those kinds of laws. I am talking about principles; laws like the law of gravity, things that always work. They always work, and unless you have another law that is working against that law, you can always count on it operating exactly the same way every time.

Law of Gravity
So, for example with the law of gravity, that law always applies. If you drop something it is going to fall. Any object that is within the atmosphere of the earth is going to be drawn by the force of gravity and head towards the center of the earth. But the law of gravity can be overcome by other laws, like the ‘Laws of Aerodynamics’. So man has learnt to harness the laws of aerodynamics and get an airplane to fly in the sky and to defy gravity.
Daily and Seasonal Laws
So we trust in these natural laws. We depend on them. When you get up in the morning you expect to see the sun coming up. At night you expect to see it going down. After summer you expect winter. The seasons are there. They are all natural cycles and natural laws. God has set up everything in this earth to work according to specific principles. And if you are ignorant of the law it does not mean that the law does not work any more. If you drop a glass by accident, it still breaks.

Spiritual Laws
Now, I want you to know that there are other laws. There are natural laws, but there are also the laws of the Spirit. There are laws that we are often not aware of, even though we may use them. And even though we may at times say we do not even believe in them, they nevertheless exist, and they function and operate in exactly the same way as the natural laws.
In this study I want to show you some of the laws of the Spirit, and I am going to show you from the Word of God how God applied the laws of the Spirit and how He intends us to apply them. This is just going to be an introduction into this whole subject that we are going to be going into on the Way of Blessing. We are going to learn as we continue along this series, how to take those spiritual laws that God has given and instituted in the earth, and use them to move into what God has for us, because if we do not use them we are not going to obtain results.
I want to first show you how God applied the spiritual laws. If you go back to the passage we have just looked at, I want you to see four things that took place as God performed the creation on the earth. Genesis 1:1 says:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.The creation that took place there was when God created everything out of nothing. It was the original word of creation that took place before time began. The Bible does not give us any insight into that. The curtain is closed. And suddenly in verse 2 of Genesis 1 we read of another creation. It is not the original creation. God did not create the earth without form and void. He did not create it that way. We can go into that as another study and show you from the Scriptures that God did not make the earth that way. The earth was not created that way originally. Somewhere in time something happened that the earth became a wasteland, covered with water, in darkness, and without form and void.

God Used Materials to Create
So the earth was already created. It was already there, but it was a shapeless mass and in darkness. That was the material that God started with in His creation. Perhaps we can rather call it a recreation, or a reformation of what was already in the earth. So God began the creation, and He started with materials. That is the first thing I want you to notice. God started with a material in His hands in order to create.

Spirit of God Involved in Creation
Then the Scripture says that the Spirit of God hovered over, or brooded over the waters. The Spirit of God was involved in bringing about this creation. So before a creation or a reformation of the materials could take place, the Spirit of God came into close contact with those materials. So we start with materials and we cause spiritual power to come upon the materials. That is the first stage that took place in the creation.

God Spoke
Then the Scripture says that God spoke. "And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light." If you read throughout Genesis 1, you will see it happening again and again.
"And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the heavens.’ ‘Let the vegetation come forth.’ "
Again and again you see God said, "Let there be …" And as He spoke what happened is that Spirit that was brooding over the materials, moved in on the materials and shaped them into what God had spoken.

God Named the Creation
Then finally, after God had spoken His Word of creation, He looked down upon what had been created, checked it out to see that it was correct, He said it was good, and gave it a name.

Laws of the Spirit
Law 1 - The Spiritual Realm Is Greater
I want you to see here some spiritual laws that God applied. I want you to see firstly that the spiritual realm is greater than the physical realm. The spiritual realm - the area, the realm, the power, the force of Spirit - is greater than the physical world. And Spirit, moving upon the physical creation, can cause a change to take place in that creation.
Law 2 - Power Is Released Through Words
Secondly, that power of the Spirit to bring about a change in the physical realm, is released when words are spoken. The power of the Spirit of God to create the earth was released when God spoke words into the earth; when God said. As He said, the power of the Spirit was released to bring about a change in the creation.
Law 3 - A Blueprint Is Needed
Then thirdly, there has to be a blueprint. God had a picture in His mind if you wish, of what He wanted to create. When God said, "Let there be ..." He knew what He was speaking into existence. He did not just throw it together like the evolutionists want to tell us, and it all just went along by itself and decided how it was going to create itself. No! God had a very clear picture in His mind of what each stage of creation was going to be.
So after God had spoken, He looked down to make sure that it looked like He had planned it to look. Then He could look upon it and say, "Yes, that’s good." He called everything good. It matched the blueprint. It matched the pattern.
Law 4 - The Creator Has the Copyright
Then the fourth spiritual law is that the person who creates has the power to control the creation that was made. Here in the Bible you will see the first evidence of copyright. God put His copyright on His creation when He named it. I used to think that copyright was one of those things that man had created and it was very selfish of people to try and keep to themselves some of the things that they had created and to get the benefits from it. But I want you to know that copyright it scriptural. It started right back here again already.

Adam Given Copyright
Actually, when God created He did not keep all the copyright. He gave some of it to Adam. In fact if you look at Genesis 1, you will see that only in the first three days of creation did God actually name the things that He created. After that He did not, until He came to His final day of creation when He made mankind (all our spirits) and then again He formed the first man(body) and named His man Adam. But between the third and the sixth days of creation God did not give a name. Do you know why? Because He gave the copyright to Adam.
Later on when the animals were brought to Adam God did not bring them and say to Adam, "Okay, Adam, this one over here with the big mane is a lion, and that tall one with the tusks and the big ears, that’s an elephant." No, He said, "Adam, I’ve made them, but you have the copyright. Call them whatever you like. The choice is yours."
God gave to Adam, to man, (dominion and authority) control over the creation that He had made.

Creation of Mankind
Now, let’s get to the creation of mankind. You will see that in Genesis 2:7, the Scripture says there that ‘God formed man's body from the dust of the earth. And God breathed into him the breath (the Hebrew is in the plural 'the breaths') of life. And man became a living soul.’

God Imparted His Spirit
But when God created mankind Gen.1:26, He created all our spirits at the same time. Then in Gen.2:7, God spoke forth and formed the body of Adam from the elements of the earth. But then He did something more, in order to complete the creation. He actually caused His Spirit to move down upon that body, and He breathed into Adam the breath of life. The Hebrew word ‘breath’ there can also mean ‘wind or spirit’. God actually imparted to that body, part of His very own essence. He imparted to man, spirit. Man was the first creation to become a partaker of the very nature of God. God gave to Adam something that He did not give to the animals. And the Scripture says that God, when He made man said, "Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness." Man was made in the image of God. What does that mean? It is something that theologians and Bible scholars have debated over a long period of time.

God Gave Man Speech
What is the image of God in man? Well firstly, quite simply, it was the fact that God placed in man a spirit, which has the same nature, the same essence as the Spirit of God. But God gave to man something else that only man has, and none of the rest of the creation has. He gave to man the ability to speak words.

Only man, apart from God, has the ability to speak words. That makes me think that somehow there is a connection between spirit and words. God’s Spirit moved upon the creation and God spoke words. And when He spoke words the Spirit moved. Spirit and words were always linked together. So when God made man in His image He made him so that he could speak words, just like God.

Power Released Through Speech
Do you know what? He made man so that he could release the power of his spirit in the same way that God released the power of His Spirit in creation. He gave to man the ability to, through words, release the power that was in his spirit, so that when a man speaks, what he is actually doing is releasing a spiritual force into the earth. We are going to be developing that and looking at it in a lot of detail, and we are going to see how that power can be used, and should be used, by all believers to accomplish what God would do in the earth.

God gave to Adam the ability to control what takes place in the earth that had now been created. That power was limited just to that. But what God did is He came down every day to fellowship with Adam and Eve and to make available to them the fullness of His power.

Kind of tells us how we should live every day.

Prophetic Joy by guest- Kathy Essig

Prophetic Joy Prophetic Joy is a feeling of celebrating God's presence, even when there is longing. It's a type of joy that can ...