As ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is imperative that we be merciful, but it is impossible for us to be merciful if we have not learned our own need for mercy and practiced receiving it from the Lord. It is our own weaknesses and failures that cause us to have compassion on the weak and erring.
I am sure that if I were perfect I would expect everyone else to be perfect also. When I have a memory lapse concerning my own faults, I sometimes find myself being too harsh with others. At such times, God is obliged to remind me of my own frailties once again. He has a way of hiding in the shadows and allowing us to get into enough trouble to keep us humble and therefore useable. He stands back and allows our weaknesses to surface so we must trust Him and not ourselves.
As evidence, please consider this passage written by the great Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians:
For we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about the affliction and oppressing distress which befell us in [the province of ] Asia, how we were so utterly and unbearably weighed down and crushed that we despaired even of life [itself ].
Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the [very] sentence of death, but that was to keep us from trusting in and depending on ourselves instead of on God Who raises the dead.
2 Corinthians 1:8,9
Jesus Himself gave instruction concerning the importance of being merciful, when He told the religious leaders of His day, Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy [that is, readiness to help those in trouble] and not sacrifice and sacrificial victims. For I came not to call and invite [to repentance] the righteous (those who are upright and in right standing with God), but sinners (the erring ones and all those not free from sin) (Matthew 9:13).
Under the Old Covenant when people sinned, they had to make sacrifices to atone for their sins. In this passage in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus was introducing the New Covenant, which includes freedom from the need to sacrifice. Jesus became the perfect and final sacrifice for all those who would believe, and He now instructs us to receive mercy from Him for our failures and to give mercy to others who fail.
This does not mean there is no correction or punishment for sin, but God always tries to draw us into righteousness through His love and mercy before dealing more harshly with us. We can understand this principle better when we think of our own children.
I have said many times: “I give my children my word first. If they listen, all is well. If they don’t listen and get into trouble, I will show mercy and tell them again and sometimes again and again. But eventually if they don’t pay heed to my word, I will touch their circumstances.” I don’t do that because I want to, but because I have to in order to help them.
It pays not to be stubborn. Repenting and receiving God’s mercy is much better than enduring His chastisement.
I have learned to take this same approach with our employees and others over whom I have authority. I always show mercy first and quite frequently for an extended period of time, but I know in my spirit when it is time to deal with issues more sternly.
Some people cannot appreciate the mercy of God until they have experienced a bit of His wrath. God is never wrathful against His people; His wrath is always against the sin in their lives. He hates sin, and we must learn to hate it also.
Like God, we must hate sin, but love the sinner.
You may have a call into full-time ministry, or you may be a lay person who desires to minister to others in your everyday life. If so, I cannot stress enough how important it is that you learn how to give and receive mercy. Remember, you cannot give away something you don’t have in you.
If we do not receive God’s mercy for our failures, we will not have any to give to others when they fail us and disappoint us. We cannot lead people into powerful relationships with the Lord through harshness, hardness, rigidity and legalism. We must show them that the God we serve is merciful, patient and long-suffering.
God is love, and all of these things we are discussing are facets of His love. Walking in love is the high call on the life of every believer. There is no possibility of true ministry without walking in love.
No one can have a powerful ministry who does not display the love of God, nor can one put faith in something unknown. God’s grace, favor and mercy were available to me all of my life, but I did not start receiving them until I was more than forty years old. I could not receive them because I knew nothing of them and did not even believe in them.
I pray that this chapter has given you a better understanding of the words receive, grace, favor and mercy. Properly understood, they will release power into your life and ministry.
9
BELIEVING AND RECEIVING
9
BELIEVING AND RECEIVING
…all things can be (are possible) to him who believes!
MARK 9:23
In a certain sense the word receive is synonymous with the word believe. We cannot receive something if we don’t believe in it.
In the spiritual realm, when you and I believe something, we receive it into our heart. If a physical manifestation is needed, it will come after we have believed — not before. In the world, we are taught to believe what we see. In God’s Kingdom, we must learn to believe first, and then we will see manifested what we have believed (received, admitted in our heart).1
I know from Scripture that God has a good plan for each of our lives. I began to aggressively believe that several years ago, and I am now experiencing it. The good plan for me was available all along, but for most of my life I did not believe it; therefore, I could not receive it.
The Lord is willing to take every negative thing that has happened to us and turn it into something positive, if we will only believe.
BELIEVING IS RECEIVING!__________________
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted; He has sent me to bind up and heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the [physical and spiritual] captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes to those who are bound,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord [the year of His favor] and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
To grant [consolation and joy] to those who mourn in Zion — to give them an ornament (a garland or diadem) of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment [expressive] of praise instead of a heavy, burdened, and failing spirit — that they may be called oaks of righteousness [lofty, strong, and magnificent, distinguished for uprightness, justice, and right standing with God], the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
Isaiah 61:1-3
Through the years I have hung onto Scriptures like the one above as well as others and have found from experience that believing God’s Word consistently will eventually turn circumstances from negative to positive. A lot of negative things have happened to me, and Satan used them to sour my attitude toward life and people. I was trapped in my past, because I did not believe I had a future. As soon as I believed, I was released from the past and began making progress toward the good thing God had in mind for me. It did not all come to me immediately in manifested form, but believing gave me renewed hope that kept me going from day to day. Slowly but surely I began to see changes take place in my life, and each change encouraged me to believe more.
Believing is the key to receiving from God!
No matter what has happened to you in the past, if you believe, you can receive the good future that is set aside for you in Jesus Christ Who came to do the will of His Father in heaven.
CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY__________________
The mystery of which was hidden for ages and generations [from angels and men], but is now revealed to His holy people (the saints),
To whom God was pleased to make known how great for the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ within and among you, the Hope of [realizing the] glory.
r /> Colossians 1:26,27
You and I can only realize and experience the glory of God in our lives because of Christ in us. He is our hope of seeing better things.
The glory of God is His manifested excellence. As the children of God, we have a blood-bought right to experience the best God has planned for us. Satan furiously fights the plan of God in each of our lives, and his primary weapon is deception. When we are deceived, we believe something that is not true. Even though it is not true, it seems true for us because that is what we believe.
When we look at ourselves and our own ability, we feel defeated, but remembering that Christ in us is our hope of realizing the glory. It keeps us encouraged enough to press on toward better things. We limit ourselves when we look to ourselves alone and fail to see Jesus.
In John 11:40 Jesus said to Martha, …Did I not tell you and promise you that if you would believe and rely on Me, you would see the glory of God? The Lord has destined His Church for glory. He is coming back for a glorious Church. (Ephesians 5:27.) We can be excellent people with excellent attitudes, excellent thoughts and excellent words. God’s glory can be manifested in us and on us, but only as we believe it is possible.
God is looking for someone who will believe and receive. Start expecting more of His glory in your life. He is waiting to manifest His glory — to you and through you!
RECEIVING GOD’S STRENGTH__________________
No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.
Joshua 1:5
I often think of Joshua and how he must have felt when God told him that he was to take Moses’ place and lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. Moses was an amazing leader. Who would want to try to fill his shoes?
God told Joshua that he would succeed, not because of anything he had in the natural, but because He was with him. Moses was successful only because God was with him. God told Joshua that the same thing would hold true for him if he believed. God kept encouraging Joshua to be strong and confident, to take courage and not be afraid. In other words, He kept telling him to believe!
God asks you and me to put our faith in Him and to believe that we can do whatever He asks us to do. He is mighty to uphold us and make us stand. He will support us and keep us from failing.
God’s strength is readily available to us. We receive it through believing in it, and the promise God has made to give it to us. If we believe we are weak, then we will only manifest weakness, but the Bible says, …let the weak say, I am strong… ( Joel 3:10). When we can say we are strong with a heart of conviction, even though we are weak in ourselves, the Lord will be strong in us — we will experience victory in our lives!
BELIEVERS ARE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE!__________________
I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].
Philippians 4:13
I love Philippians 4:13. It has encouraged me many times in life. I have learned to believe that I am ready for anything that comes my way through Christ, Who gives me the strength when I need it.
Just because we don’t feel strong when we think about a situation does not mean that we won’t be strong when we need to be. God’s strength comes to us by His grace, through our faith, but He rarely gives us the strength we need before we actually need it. In this way we must trust Him, which is our part. God asks us to trust Him, and as we do, He does the part we cannot do.
When we awake on any morning, we don’t know for certain what may happen to us that day. We all hope for easy days in which all of our desires are being met, yet we know from experience that is not always the case. We live in a real world, with real problems. Our enemy, the devil, is real, and he is working through everyone he possibly can to bring discouragement, fear and failure to us because we belong to God and put our trust in Him.
GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND OUR FORTRESS__________________
I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; on Him I lean and rely, and in Him I [confidently] trust!…
You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, nor of the arrow (the evil plots and slanders of the wicked) that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction and sudden death that surprise and lay waste at noonday.
Psalm 91:2,5,6
Psalm 91 teaches us that through trusting God we don’t have to be afraid of the devil’s sudden surprises that stalk us. No matter what may come our way, we should believe right now that when it arrives we will be able. If we trust God, He will make us strong, and we will not be defeated.
We need to remember that we are ready for anything, equal to anything, through Christ Who infuses inner strength into us. Inner strength is actually more valuable than outer strength; we need to stand up on the inside and refuse to believe the lies of Satan.
Paul prayed for the Church at Ephesus to be strengthened with all might and power in the inner man. (Ephesians 3:16 KJV.) He knew if they stayed strong inwardly, they would be able to handle anything that came against them outwardly and be able to do whatever they needed to do.
WAIT FOR THE LORD__________________
But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.
Isaiah 40:31
Isaiah teaches us to wait for the Lord when we know our strength needs to be renewed. Waiting for God means spending time with Him in His Word and His Presence.
There are certain people we can draw strength from just by being around them. Their very presence, the way they talk and approach life, seems to make us feel better when we are discouraged or feeling down in any way. Likewise, there are others who can always make us feel worse. They have a way of putting a negative edge onto everything.
When you and I need to be strengthened, we should spend time with God and with people filled with His Spirit. Spending time in God’s Presence is like sitting in a room filled with sweet-smelling perfume. If we sit there long enough, we take the fragrance with us when we leave. It will be in our clothing, in our hair and even in our very skin.
Moses was a man of prayer, he spent a great deal of time fellowshipping with and talking to God. He knew that if God did not help him, he would fail miserably. Because of Moses’ faithfulness to seek God, he was given an assuring message: And the Lord said, My Presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest (Exodus 33:14).
Moses had to face many hostile enemies as well as try to lead God’s people across the wilderness into the Promised Land. We cannot even imagine the magnitude of the task at hand. There were millions of Israelites — they were murmuring, complaining and finding fault with Moses most of the time. This was an ideal situation for Moses to lose his peace, yet God told him, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Moses believed God, and therefore received God’s promise. I am sure there were times when his faith got stretched, times when it did not look or feel as if God was with Him.
According to Hebrews 11:1, faith is the evidence of things hoped for but not seen, the conviction of their reality. It is still absolutely amazing to me how fast my attitude can change from negative to positive simply by an adjustment in what I am believing.
We can receive from Satan by believing what he says, or we can receive from God by believing His Word. We all believe something, it may as well be something good.
Always remember that it does not cost anything to believe! Try it, you will find your life changing in an amazing way.
DO YOU NEED A CHECKUP FROM THE NECK UP?__________________
Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways
to Zion. Passing through the Valley of Weeping (Baca), they make it a place of springs; the early rain also fills [the pools] with blessings. They go from strength to strength [increasing in victorious power]; each of them appears before God in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7
When our strength is in God, even the difficult places in life can be turned into blessings. That’s why we need to constantly keep our minds and hearts focused on Him and not on our circumstances.
It is wise to occasionally take an inventory of our thought life. It may be that we have lost our joy and are failing to realize why.
I have discovered that when I am unhappy I have a temptation to start blaming my unhappiness on some circumstance or person in my life who is not giving me what I feel I need. That type of wrong thinking can cause us to go around the same mountain again and again, failing to make any progress toward enjoying God’s promises. (Deuteronomy 2:3.)
Most of the time when I am unhappy, it is because of some wrong thinking on my part. Even if I have negative circumstances, I can stay happy by having right thoughts toward them. If people are not giving me what I need, I can either be angry with them or I can look to God to meet my need.
Satan wants us to think that nothing will ever change, that things will only get worse. He wants us to inventory every disappointing thing that has ever happened in our lives and think about how mistreated we have been. We will absolutely never fulfill our destinies and succeed at being all God has planned for us if we don’t think properly.