Your word is my shield and buckler. No matter what enemy David was facing, he consistently fled into the refuge of God's word. He meditated on it day and night until He saw God move.
“As the living Father
hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” (John 6:57)
How do we eat Jesus?
“Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat that which is good,
and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” Isaiah 55:2
We hear him, and we keep hearing him until faith is born.
When faith is born, we enter into the substance of the unseen. When faith has
been born, some work or experience will follow. Until then, it is dead. Like a
tiny seed, the promise yields its peaceable fruit in due season; new fruit of the Spirit, or freedom from some opression. But first, we
have to chew, and chew, and chew. This is actually the biblical metaphor for
how we are to labor to enter into the rest of God.
“Let us therefore fear, lest, a PROMISE being left us of
entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it…but the word
preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”
Hebrews 4:1-2
The word mix, in the Greek, is used in regard to saliva
that is released to break down food by the act of chewing, so it can be digested
and used by the body. Faith is released in the same way, as we chew, or hear
the word of Life! We need to focus on what we need when we study the word and seek Him.
All that we experience and become in God comes to us through the promises lavished upon us in Christ’s work. If we add anything to this most holy sacrifice, Christ our Redeemer, we profane the Sabbath. We work, and thereby dishonor God who gave everything for us to be made into His image, and to have dominion over the tyranny of Satanic oppression. (It is also not effective.) We grieve Him when we work instead of rest in His Sabbath rest (Is 55).
“Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This truth is alive in my spirit right now. We need His Kingdom in us. As we keep seeking God, prayerfully chewing, or hearing, the word, it becomes life in us. If you want vitamin A for your eyes, what do you consume? Carrots! You don’t eat black beans because they don’t have what you are needing for your eyes. It’s the same way with the word and the promises in Christ.
How long will you wait to enter into the
land that the Lord God has given you, Joshua asked the Israelites (Josh 18:3).
But we see those giants with our natural eyes, which is why more labor in the word is needed. We see the sin nature alive in us and we doubt. We see the symptoms and feel the pain, and we falter. Or look at our own strength, and say I don’t think I can go in. Or we look at what happened to another believer and doubt God will fulfill his promise. (That is one of Satan's greatest weapons in the body of Christ, but God said to believe His word, not another person's experience. That is just more satanic reasoning, and often it is said with "compassion" but it's just stealing our bread.)
All Satanic warfare is against our faith. He wants to steal the word of life. He may use pleasure, pain, offense, or distraction; it matters not. All that matters is that we lose faith and our vision of God. If he takes our faith, we can't enter into the promises of God. We become paralyzed, just like the Israelites who reasoned based on their own understanding, perception and thoughts.
Lord, I feel like Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down these walls!” In my desperation, I have labored in the word and experienced the resurrection power of Christ exploding inside my spirit like an atom bomb that totally decimated all Satanic bondage! Faith always brings forth, or it is dead. But in some ways, it has grown dim. The enemy sowed some seeds into my heart that choked it. (That's a whole other topic, but many were seeds and thorns from very subtle religions leaven/suggestions like "I have to do more", or "That's selfish", or "God has bigger concerns." I didn't believe them, but my faith was being impacted by them and I didn't know it. All lies.)
I am contending for living faith once again. I want to see Jesus Christ high and lifted up above very vile, Satanic power.
Jesus repeatedly rebuked the religious leaders saying, “Why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” Why do we allow thoughts to arise in our hearts at the hearing of the word and the promises?
Lord, tear down everything in me that stands against the knowledge of God! Tear down every thought and belief system that has built up a strong hold against the knowledge of God! Jesus said that you are a good Father, and that it is your pleasure to give the Kingdom to us. We don’t have to earn it, and we can’t earn it. Freely we received, so freely we must give what we have received.
Jesus said that the Father is happy to give you
the Holy Spirit. The Spirit administers the Kingdom. Taking artistic license here, I hear him saying, "You know, that Kingdom that I administer when
I drive out demons, heal the sick, and transform sin-sick hearts with my love? That kingdom. Guess what?! It’s your, it’s yours, it’s yours. I want you to understand it's His pleasure to give it to you!" Show us the Father.
Modern Christians can shy away from the very thing that grants us access to God’s kingdom because of the myriad of horrible examples that come to mind when we say the word, faith, especially if it's linked to any experiential benefit. Yes, it is possible to have faith and no love. It is actually possible to have faith and to sleep with your secretary and bilk millions from the sheepfold. We are told as much in the famous chapter on love. Faith without love makes us clanging symbols, noisy and empty of life, and it can be very destructive.
This morning, what sparked this blog was that I wondered, how is this possible? To have faith and no love? Then it struck me. The Kingdom of God is based on what we seek. Jesus said, “seek, and ye shall find.” Some seek only to move mountains, and they do! But they do not seek to be filled with His love, or to serve others, or to love their enemies, which is the very heart and point of the gospel of the King and His Kingdom.
We will find what we seek, and what we
don’t seek from God, we will not find. Pure hearts find God and will experience His love shed abroad in our hearts. (Romans 5:5) If we shy away from faith, we won't enter into anything.
“Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst after righteousness.” That’s seeking.
Jesus often asked, “What do you
want?” What are you seeking? He was locating their heart, and their faith.
I see a key in Hebrews Chapter 4. We are admonished to mix the word of life with faith. Our spirit has to hear the quickening, living word spoken into the inner man, but how do we do that? That's a God thing. This is the labor that is required
to rest.
“Let us fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it…but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”
The land was there for the taking, which is
the fullness of God inside of us. He is our Sabbath rest from the dominion of Satan, and the wages of
sin that had us bound to every oppression and disease. Now that the Lamb has taken our penalty, Satan
no longer has any right to oppress us!
We don’t take it all at once, for if they
had taken the land all at once, the wild beasts would have overwhelmed them.
They had to learn how to stand and occupy the land, and so do we, so we take it
town by town, from faith to faith, and glory to glory, from one firey trial to
the next.
This takes me back to my meditation, because this word is a fire inside of me right now, where the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. He shares the Lord's prayer and then he says to stay with it. Keep asking, seeking, and knocking. We don’t stop chewing the carrot before we swallow it. We can’t “wait for our healing” if we aren’t focused on the word that promises the healing in a very active way. As we actively pursue (i.e., labor) to take the land that was given (lambano, “aggressively seize”), faith will come alive and only then will we enter into the land. (Lambano is the greek word for "take" as in when Jesus said to "take" my body broken for you. It is an aggressive taking, or a seizing of his word.) And let's remember, when we are in a faith battle, which is every battle, Satan will be putting his word in front of us hoping that we will "eat" his word.)
To eat and chew is a biblical metaphor for hearing. We must
hear, and keep hearing, chew, and keep chewing UNTIL we receive. Fasting is a
powerful weapon only because the spirit becomes sensitive to the word. Faith is
born in our fast. This is how we labor, to rest.
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