Jesus our Security

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"                                                 Psalm 27:1     NKJV

Whenever King David was fearful or in the middle of trouble, the first thing he did was pray - 'But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.' 1 Samual 29:6. He may have killed bears and lions in the past while looking after his father's flock; he may also have slain Goliath, that very large awesome giant, but he knew that he could never make it through any day without his Heavenly Father. And this is exactly what we should do as well. We can never make it on our own.

When we put God in the centre of our troubles, He lifts our heads and our hearts. This is because He is our refuge  and our fortress. There's no need to be afraid of anything. He is our security and our protection. You may remember when you were young, that to go out in dark nights was the ultimate in scariness. I lived in quite a rural place with hardly any street lamps if there were any, they hardly lit anything up. They were more like candles. It was scary to walk about. There were noises of foxes, cows and of course, the eerie call of an owl. Yes it was scary to venture out. However, when we look at our text, God is our light. At the creation, He called out, 'Let there be light,' Genesis 1. He still creates light today, His name is Jesus. He says, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.' John 8:12.  He lights up the way for us through all of the trouble that may come our way. Therefore, we have nothing to fear or be tormented about.

He is also our salvation. Now this is an interesting word. In the Greek, it means soteria and means, deliverance, preservation, soundness, prosperity, happiness, rescue and general well-being. This salvation is a present possession with a fuller realisation for the future. Jesus not only delivers us, He preserves us too. His desire is to ensure that we are happy and prosperous in all areas, not only finance but our well-being. However, soteria also offers us salvation in its fullest extent - eternal life. When we ask Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour, we qualify for all of these benefits, the greatest being, we will live forever with Jesus in heaven.

Jesus is our security. He offers us Himself and will escort us wherever we go. He will also escort us through death. He will be right beside us. Psalm 23:4. Jesus Christ offers the best insurance policy that could ever be obtained and, what's more, it is free with no hidden agendas.

What more could you ask for?

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE

Doubt asks questions - Faith makes declarations

"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 be done, he will have whatever he says."                                      Mark 11:23     NKJV

Our title for this study today, was from a word delivered by Pastor Keith Moore of Faith Life Church in Branson, Missouri, and highlights all we want to cover this morning. God doesn't respond to your need, He responds to your faith. This is why Jesus says, 'he will have whatever he says.'

Jesus says here, that whoever says to this mountain (this means an obstacle that is standing in the way of walking successfully in the Holy Spirit), be removed and doesn't doubt (that's the big one), but believes that what he has asked for will be done, he or she will have it.

Let's look at this more closely, say for example we asked for healing. God's Word has already said that we are healed by the stripes of Jesus; therefore, we believe it and receive it into our hearts. We don't  keep 

praying and asking God for it. Why keep asking God for what He has already given you? No, instead of keep asking, we thank Him for our healing and keep on praising Him until we receive the full manifestation of it. When we ask for healing, we are initially in the natural realm. As we wait on God for the healing to manifest, we are in the supernatural realm with our spiritual eyes focused on Him.

It's the same for anything that we ask God for. We may need a job or a new house; family to be saved or any other personal need. Therefore, we ask Him, believe Him and receive from Him. In other words, we begin to see what we have asked for in our spirits. Now, as we know, some prayers are answered instantly. Someone, somewhere can be prayed for and 'POW', they are made well. We see this time and time again in scripture. Others may not be. There may be a time-lapse before the answer comes. Of course, there may be something that God wants us to clear up and put right in our life before He acts. He may wants us to forgive someone; receive forgiveness ourselves or generally put something right. This is not always the case. Just because a person has to wait for the answer to come, doesn't mean that something is wrong. It's just the way it is. At times, some people do not appear to be healed - at all. We don't know the answer to this; it is one thing we'll have to ask Jesus about when we get to Heaven. However, this should never stop us from receiving in faith for healing, salvation for someone or whatever else. We need to keep thanking and waiting.

The big thing we need to deal with is doubt. It will always kick in with reasonable excuses why we should give up on the idea for healing, or receiving some other blessing. If we listen long enough to the doubt, it can convince us; don't forget, Satan has had some practice in the art of doubt. Resist doubt at once, take it captive and refuse to be steered off the right course. Then make your faith declaration. This way, you can be assured of your prayers being answered.

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE

Do you waver?

6 "But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.'

                                                                                                           James 1:6-8    NKJV

When we ask God for wisdom on any given thing, He will give it to us. But at times, the answer we receive from God is different to the one that we were hoping for. We can then be out on a limb as we struggle with what to do. The thing is, if we have asked God by faith, to give us wisdom on something, He has done it and we need to accept it even though it may not be what we were expecting.

It can be the same when we ask God for direction on something. We may believe that God is calling us to do a particular thing. When we ask Him for clarification, and He confirms that we are taking the right road, we can become scared about it because deep down, we were hoping that he would tell us to be more cautious and leave it for a while. In both examples, we are doing what James described, being a double-minded man. 

Being double-minded is showing that we are in conflict with ourselves. One moment our minds are set on God, the next it is set on the world. We vacillate between belief and disbelief sometimes thinking God will help, the next giving up all hope of it happening. This is called wavering or staggering about, confused about the next step. We wonder if God has actually told us what to do or whether it was our minds playing tricks on us.

When we act this way, we're not really very effective at all. We are like a YoYo, one minute up, the next down. We need to work on our stability in God. Don't waver when you ask in faith. Consider only what God says, no matter how things may look and how much your flesh is screaming for you to do otherwise. Stay focused on the promise God has given you and don't stagger about.

I mentioned recently, 2 Corinthians 4:18, 'while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.' 

Basically this is encouraging people of God not to comment on the problem, just thank Him and declare the solution which you can only see with your spiritual eyes. This is faith, we may not be able to see that we have been healed in the natural realm, but we live and operate in the supernatural realm and our spiritual eyesight picks up on that fact. 

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, 'without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.' We need faith and we need to live in this 24 hours of each day. We have the study guide book, the book of rules and the wealth of knowledge that the Bible gives us; we just need to put it into practice.

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE

The burden will be taken away - Final part

"He restores my soul"                                                                 Psalm 23:3    NKJV

Today we come to the end of our teaching concerning Yokes and Burdens as seen in Isaiah 10:27. We've looked at Bitterness, Rejection, Failure, Health and Jealousy. There are many more areas that we could discuss, and we will, at a later time. For now, realise that if you have studied these areas, taken them to your heart and prayed over each one of them, it is as if you have placed the burden of each one of them into the buckets on the Yoke frame you were carrying on your shoulders, and you are free of them. When we do this, God anoints us with fresh oil (Psalm 92:10) and He restores us as our text declares. 

God restores our soul, which is made up of our mind, will and emotions. The mind includes our thought life and what we take on board; the will is what we do about any given thing, how we react and finally, emotions is how it affects us, the damage, bad emotions can cause or the blessing of good thoughts. Daily restoration of the anxious, weary soul is a major human need. Jesus is our Bridegroom and He is preparing us - His Bride, for the Wedding Feast in Heaven. He is getting us ready. 

This is what looking within ourselves is all about. When the Bride is prepared, Jesus will return for us and the intimacy that was broken in the Garden of Eden, will be completely restored. We will once again become one with Christ and with God as Jesus prayed in John 17.

Have you ever thought what it must have felt like for God when, after creating the Garden and Adam and Eve, they broke that early covenant with Him by eating the forbidden fruit and allowed sin to enter this perfect world. He must have felt devastated by it all, even though He had a plan. Notice how He still had compassion for them by making clothes for them to wear prior to being banished from the Garden. Anyone who has ever had a child leave home, will know how it feels in the heart to watch them leave.

To be restored is to bring back into existence or use; to re-establish and put back into a former position or location. This is what Jesus does for each one of us that call on Him. If you have done this, you can be assured that He has heard your cry, and restored you. You are no longer the way your were, you have been transformed into His image. We all have hang-ups; we all carry burdens that become so heavy we stumble under them; but when we cast them over to God by putting them into the burden bucket fitted on the yoke frame, we become free, in fact restored.

Today, why not give Jesus a special thanks, an offering of gratefulness for all He has done for you. No one else could have helped you, only Jesus.

'Lord Jesus, we offer up our praise and thanksgiving to You, Our Mighty God and friend, who cared enough to come down to earth to set us free. We give You thanks.

Amen

 

The burden will be taken away. Part 6

"You are still worldly, (controlled by ordinary impulses, the sinful capacity). For as long as there is jealousy and strife and discord among you, are you not unspiritual and are you not walking like ordinary men, (unchanged by faith?)  

                                                                                1 Corinthian 3:3  Amplified Study Bible

Today we look at a very common area to us all - JEALOUSY. 

Jealousy can be described as resentment against a person enjoying success or advantage. The common symptoms of jealousy are:

ANGER towards a person or situation that is interfering with something you care about.

RESENTMENT of a friend or partner when they can't spend time with you for some reason.

DIFFICULTY feeling happy for a co-worker when they receive something you wanted.

We only have to look at Joseph in the book of Genesis to get the idea. He was favoured by Jacob, his father, and therefore, received all of his love and attention. His brothers began to resent this and it led to their jealousy towards him so much, that they plotted to kill him. They eventually sold him into slavery. Genesis ch 37 - 50.

The New Living Translation quotes our text as:

For you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn't that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren't you living like people of the world.'  1 Corinthians 3:3.

The word 'Worldly', in the biblical sense, is used for immature Christians that lack control in this area. They are on the milk of the word. No one should expect this condition to last though. Here, Paul was surprised that the Corinthians had not yet grown into spiritual maturity and become able to distinguish between good and evil. Their behaviour displayed envy, strife and was divisive.

If we are not careful, we can all become envious towards someone who always seems to receive accolades while we are forgotten. However, we need to guard our hearts and, at the first sign of jealousy, we should nip it in the bud before it becomes dangerous. We need to bring, 'every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.'  2 Corinthians 10:5.

Are you prone to jealousy? Many are but we need to accept that it is spiritually immature to do so and we need to rectify it before it gets out of hand. Commit yourself to read and study 2 Corinthians 10:1-6. It will enrich you, helping you to combat any wrong thinking in the future. You will feel better for doing so.

'Lord Jesus, I come before you this morning and ask you to search within my soul for any sign of jealousy. With Your help, I give it notice to quit - to leave my body in the Name of Jesus and to fill that space with Your Grace. I choose to live for You Lord.

In Jesus' Name. Amen

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE

The burden will be taken away. Part 5

"while we do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

                                                                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18     NKJV

Today in our series of Burdens and Yokes, we look at the area of our HEALTH. Some people suffer bad health and others, good health. It is similar to why some healthy people go out of the house, have an accident and die, whereas, many unhealthy people live long lives, but suffer bad health. There is an impasse in our thinking here and all we can say, is that life goes that way. It is unexplainable.

In our life as a Christian, we really shouldn't have bad health, because the Word of God tells us that we are healed by the stripes of Jesus, Isaiah 53:5/1 Peter 2:24. According to our text today, in a spiritual sense, what we see as illness is temporary; the world looks upon this as possibly permanent. But being temporary, the Word of God is saying that it is subject to change. It is receiving your healing by faith.

Dr Bill Winston comments:

'Maybe my natural eyes see a sickness. This is what the natural world is telling me. But I am to look at the promise in the Bible which says, 'by His stripes ye were healed.' 1 Peter 2:24. That is the eternal truth that will overcome the temporal situation I am dealing with. My total health and healing may not be seen in the natural , but I see it in the Spirit - and the Spirit realm overrides the natural realm.'

                                                         Copyright 2000 Bill Winston The Law of Confession

This is what faith is, looking at something that to the world isn't, but we believe that it is. Jesus tells us that if we believe in Him, we will have a place in Heaven when we die. 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' (John 3:16). That is the only assurance that we have, but as Christians, we believe that it is true. God said it, so we believe it. Therefore, it makes sense to believe also, that if God's Word tells us that we were healed by His stripes, then we are; we just have to believe and receive it.

Many people struggle with this concept. When we stand on God's Word in this area, we may not see the healing with our natural eyes; there may appear to be no difference. However, don't forget that what we are looking at is temporary - subject to change. So at the right time, the full manifestation of God's Word will come into fruition and the healing will come.

You may need healing at this moment. You may have struggled with bad health for some time. All I can tell you, is what the Word tells us and I believe it, God heals today and what's more, He is interested in healing you at this very moment. Oral Roberts once said, 'Believe and receive - doubt and go without.' What will you do?

'Lord Jesus, I believe in Your healing power and I come before You this day. I have suffered with................................... but your Word tells me that I am healed. Therefore, I believe and receive this healing in Jesus' name and confess with my mouth that, by the stripes of Jesus, I am healed.

Amen and Amen.

Now go believing and refuse to consider doubt, no matter what.

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE

 

The burden will be taken away. Part 4

"Love never fails"                                                                    I Corinthians 13:8       NKJV

In our series on Yokes and Burdens as addressed in Isaiah 10:27, we come to the fourth area which is FAILURE.

This is an area where many people have hang-ups. It may have started in the schools years, where peer-pressure and bullies used their intimidation to be-little people. This may have carried on within the home and family, where the art of failure was learnt and adopted. Things may have been said such as, 'He (she) will never make it or do any good.' It may have been, 'He's one of life's losers.' If this happened to you, you may have become so used to hearing it, that you believed the lie. I say, lie,' because that is what it is. Jesus would never say that about you, would he?

As time went on, believing this lie, you may have become so used to this that you began to personalise it by saying things such as, 'I can't do that.' This is not only a lie from the devil but it is in total contrast to what God says about you. Philippians 4:13 says, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' By saying anything differently, you are totally disagreeing with God. He says you can, not you may be able to do it if you work hard; no, He says you can do it. So don't you think it is time that you came into agreement with Him? We can achieve anything that God directs us to do, nothing is impossible for us. And He is most definitely saying to you, that you are not a failure, you can do this, you can achieve what He has put before you.

This is why it says in Romans 8:37, 'Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.' Did you get that. You are more than a conqueror. One who is a conqueror, overcomes by gaining control. You are not a conqueror, but a, 'more than a conqueror'. Therefore, you can overcome much, much more and this rubber stamps that you are not a failure. You belong to God. God is love and Love never fail. He will never fail you. You are in Him and He is in you, so it speaks for it self that you are not a failure.

From time to time, things may wrong, but whereas the world may put something down as a failure, you should be saying, 'this is just another chance to get it right.' Just begin to believe what Jesus says about you. The past has gone and for many, it did them no good. There's a future out there for you - yes you, I'm talking to you. God is saying, 'no matter what you heard people saying about you, you believe what I say about you. You are My child and I love you. You are a priceless jewel in My Kingdom.'

Now that is something to shout, praise and shout some more about. From today, let Jesus take the burden of failure; that yoke that was breaking you down and allow Him to build you back up.

'Lord Jesus, I receive Your Word, the Word that says that I am not a failure but that I am more than a conqueror. I receive it now, by faith and I praise and thank You, in Jesus' Name. Amen.

Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard

dailylifewithjesusbygrahamehoward.blogspot.com 

If you would like to contact me, CLICK HERE