It hadn't been more than a few days since Jesus had risen from the dead, defeated the devil and all of hell with him. It hadn't been but a few days since Jesus had looked the disciples straight in the eye and said, "Now, you go into all the world and use My Name to cast out devils. You lay hands on the sick and they'll recover" (see Mark 16:15-18).
I can just imagine Peter saying, "Hey, John, you know that crippled beggar down there by the temple? Come on, let's go use the Name on him!"
They could see themselves doing what Jesus said they could do. Their hope was "white hot." So they went charging down to the temple and said to that cripple, "...in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."
When they said it, they grabbed him. He had to walk, brother! They yanked him completely off the ground!
What made them do such a thing? Expectancy!
They didn't tiptoe up to that gate, look around to make sure no one was watching and then whisper, "Dear Lord, if it be Thy will, heal this poor crippled man."
The only people who pray "if it be Thy will" are those who don't have any hope or expectancy. If you've been praying that way, stop it! Go to the Word and find out what God's will is. The Word of God is His will. It is His will for you to be well. It is His will for you to be prosperous. It is His will for you to lay hands on the sick and it is His will for them to recover.
So stay in the Word until you're so confident and expectant that your neck is stuck out in anticipation. Meditate on the Word until your hope gets crisp and that image inside you gets strong and clear.
Stay in there until you're so full of expectancy that when someone walks up to you and says, "Good morning," you jump on them like a chicken on a bug saying, "Yes! Bless God! It is a good morning. Do you have anything wrong with you? I'll lay hands on you right now and you'll get healed!"
Once hope gets that strong, it becomes courage...and hope plus courage equals the spirit of faith in action!
The Spirit of Faith
The Apostle Paul refers to the spirit of faith in II Corinthians 4:13 saying, "We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak."
The spirit of faith speaks! It calls things that be not as though they were. It makes faith confessions - not because it's "supposed to" or out of desperation, but because it's so full of eager anticipation and confident expectation it can't keep its mouth shut!
The spirit of faith says, "I don't care what God has to do, He'll turn the world upside down if He has to, but He will change this situation for me."
Every time I talk about the spirit of faith, I think about my high school football team. For years, the teams from that school had been losing teams. But something happened to the bunch on my team. A spirit of winning got into them.
When we were sophomores, we were on the B-squad. We were the nothings. But we somehow got the idea that we could win. Every year the B-squad would have to scrimmage the varsity team, and usually the varsity just beat the daylights out of the sophomores.
But the year our B-squad played them, that changed. We didn't just beat them, we had them down by several touchdowns, just daring them to get the ball, when the coach called off the game. He was so mad at the varsity team, he didn't even let us finish.
What happened to that little B-squad? We reached the point where we expected to win. We had an inner image of ourselves as winners, and it eventually took the best team in the state to beat us.
The same thing happened to Gloria and me in 1967 when we went into the ministry. We began to have an inner image of preaching the Word of God to thousands upon thousands of people. It was 10 years before we could gather up more than a handful of them at a time for one service, but we didn't let that stop us.
We saw the thousands in our hearts and in our minds and we just kept our necks stuck out - in more ways than one - expecting God to bring the people. Sure enough, He did.
Of course, there were some hard times. Times when people stayed away from our meetings by the millions. Times when I preached to 17 people with the same intensity that I would preach to 6,000.
That's what hope does. It keeps you intensely focused on God's promise. It keeps you seeing that promise on the inside, even when you can't see it on the outside. It keeps you operating by the spirit of faith.
When you have hope, the devil can't beat you down. He can't tear you down. He can't stop your faith from working. Everyone around you can just stop in their tracks, but you'll keep right on going.
When the devil knocks you down, you just get up with a deeper resolve to hit him harder the next time...and harder the next time...and harder the next time.
You get to the point where you expect God to move with such vigor that all the distractions in the world can't turn your head. All the failures of the past drift into nothingness. You can't even remember them anymore because you're so absorbed with the expectation of what God is about to do.
When that happens, you no longer sit around wondering what went wrong. You blast off into the glory of God, laying hold of His promises and watching your dreams come true. You live the kind of life that those who give up hope will never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment