The Sons Of God
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. Romans 8:14-17
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Romans 8:18-21
Legally, we did indeed “get everything” when we were born again. According to God’s word when we became a child of God, we were made “an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ” and potential sons of God. Legally, from that point on, we were entitled to share Christ’s whole inheritance with Him. Experientially, however, we were only at the beginning of a process that takes a lifetime to complete. The Christian life could be described as a progression from the legal to the experiential. Step by step, in faith, we must appropriate in experience all that is already ours by legal right through our faith in Christ. We must do what God commanded the children of Israel to do to go in and possess the land and drive their enemies out. God’s word is true:
I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers-to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-to give to them and their descendants after them.' Deuteronomy 1:8
'Look, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up and possess it, as the LORD God of your fathers has spoken to you; do not fear or be discouraged.' Deuternomy 1:21
" 'Rise, take your journey, and cross over the River Arnon. Look, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to possess it, and engage him. Deuteronomy 2:24
Some of us are blind and cannot see what land God has given for us to posses. We need to pray and say, Holy Spirit, I open my heart and mind to You. Reveal to me the blessings that Jesus has obtained for me and how I may receive them. God desires that every one of His born children, heirs of God and a joint-heir with Jesus live and walk by faith in the fullness of God and by the power of God exercising the dominion and authority that will result in bringing deliverance and liberty to mankind. However God does not entrust authority to children, but to sons. And many in the Church are still children, suffering the same afflictions, oppressions, failures, Family crisis and stagnation as the world, because: the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all.
God’s children have to grow up and develop into being sons of God before they can be entrusted with power to do great wonders and signs among the people. Only sons are vested with the authority to be signs and saviours in the kingdom (Obadiah 1:21). Power is never put in the hands of children, because they themselves are under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father. That is, until they develop into sons. When they becomes sons all elemental forces must obey them. Sickness, disease, failure and frustrations must hear and obey them. God’s word is unchanging:
"how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. Acts 10:38
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; Ephesians 4:11-13
Many Christians who should be solution providers are still cry babies. Believers who should provide the answers are still locked up in sickness, poverty and all manner of satanic bondages. But that is not God's will. Yes, God's desires to see the world filled with the manifestation of His sons, where every man and woman in the Church is a worker of signs and wonders, where everyone will be operating on the frequency of the first century apostles, emitting the same quality of fire, producing undeniable results. God’s word is unchanging:
"He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. John 3:31
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ...2 Corinthians 5:20
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 2:6
Just like God anointed and made Moses a god to Pharaoh and in the same way He made Jesus, He has made us gods to our generation. As a result of the new birth, we who were once flesh are now spirit and are seated in the earthly realm. Yes, we have been raised up together with Christ Jesus, and are now seated with Him in heavenly places. We are now a citizen of an entirely different kingdom, the kingdom of God. Our presence on earth is simply ambassadorial; we are simply representing the interests of our place of origin - heaven.
Our new birth established a change in our citizenship, from earthly to the heavenly. Just as in the natural, ambassadors enjoy the immunities of the nations they represent, as an ambassador of Christ here on earth, we can enjoy all the immunities that the kingdom of God has to offer. Just like ambassadors enjoy comfort proportional to the wealth of the country they represent we can enjoy the wealth and comfort of heaven. We are to be a sign of distinction, affluence, divine health, progress, etc. Wherever we go, we should be recognized as a sign-carrier and wonder-worker.
Before the fall everything about Adam was extraordinary. His body was superb, hence there was no provision for drugs; all the herbs in the garden were for food. His mind was great. He single handedly named all the animals intelligibly, without repeating any name. His spirit was in union with God. But then Adam blew it by his act of disobedience swapped his dominion over everything that the Lord had made for a life of oppression. Although he was king of the earth, he sold off to Satan, and legally transferred his right to live in the miraculous to Satan. Whereas previously whatever Adam said was law, after the fall, he lost control and was no longer in charge.
But Jesus Christ the last Adam who became a life-giving spirit redeemed us from all the curses that came of Adam and those of the flesh and restored to us all that Adam had lost including authority and dominion in the earth over all things. Hence as anointed ones we can speak and act with the authority and dominion that God has given us. God’s word is unchanging:
Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me: "Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, To root out and to pull down, To destroy and to throw down, To build and to plant." Jeremiah 1:9-10
So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20
"Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Luke 10:19
When they brought to Jesus those who were demon-possessed He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick (Matthew 8:16). And now God expects His anointed ones to do exactly the same.
Jesus, our pattern for being a son of God, experienced all that He taught. He healed the sick and was never sick Himself. He cast out demons and was never oppressed by any. He carried virtue for prosperity and was not a pauper. Similarly we must rise up vehemently against that stagnation or sickness or any other anti-covenant thing that is hanging around us because the husbandman must be the first partaker of the fruits. It ridiculous for a believer who is to lay hands on the sick to be sick himself, for one who should cast out devils to be oppressed by demons. Every unction passing through us to benefit mankind should benefit us first and foremost. God’s word is unchanging:
"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." So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen. Acts 16:17-20
Good and great miraculous signs and wonders should follow believers! By virtue of their status, they are to be followed by signs, not sorrows. The devil himself is under their feet, so wherever they appear he must disappear! However, until they can grasp the reality of their heritage in God as sons of God and who they are in Christ, they can never walk in the miraculous.
A Christian should be ashamed of sickness the way he is of sin. He should be embarrassed at defeat or failure in his life the way he would be at being caught in adultery. Why? By virtue of his new status in Christ, he should not be under anything anymore. So, God is upset when His children are cheated, defeated and manhandled, because on His part, He has done all He needs to do to ensure they live a victorious life. God’s word is unchanging:
For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly. Psalm 84:11
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:3-6
God has a plan in place for His beloved people whom he has blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly paces in Christ to enjoy divine health and divine prosperity. Next to salvation from sin, God's desire is that they experience salvation from sickness and lack. When God made the first man, he was physically sound and had an abundance of everything. There was no provision made for any form of medication as sickness was not a part of God's plans for man. Sickness came in with the entrance of sin. In other words, the moment Satan took over the government of this world, and in consonance with his name — "the wicked", the first thing he did was to create sickness. Therefore, as long as a person is a child of the devil, sickness, poverty and lack are a part of his inheritance. However, when anyone escapes the kingdom of Satan, into the kingdom of the Son of God, he has also escaped from the horror of sickness and disease and lack.
Until sin came, sickness and poverty did not exist; so when sin goes, sickness and poverty goes with it. More often than not, the presence of sickness in the body of a believer is as a result of ignorance, because sickness thrives on ignorance. But once a believer can contact the truth of the Word, he has located the final solution to any type of sickness or disease in his body. A believer must understand and appreciate that:
1. No sickness is to be treated as ordinary.
2. Sickness is a spirit.
3. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law; therefore, any sickness in our body is a curse from the enemy.
4. Until we curse that sickness and the spirit behind it by ourselves, God is not going to curse it for us.
The good news is that once we are born again, Christ has redeemed us from every curse of the law (Gal.3:13-14), so none can have a hold on us any longer. We are now longer in the domain where curses have a legal right over us. That was why Jesus not only shed His blood, but hung on a tree as well — to secure our redemption from the curses of the law. Therefore the cross of Christ crushed the curse of the law. When sickness or poverty is not a function of sin in a man's life or of ignorance, it can also operate freely under the guise of the curse of the law. God’s word is unchanging:
"If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD, "then the LORD will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues-great and prolonged plagues-and serious and prolonged sicknesses. "Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. "Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law, will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed. "You shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. "And it shall be, that just as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess. Deuteronomy 28:58-63
The truth is that God has done everything on His own part. He has completed His own part of the contract. He has purchased our health at the expense of His Son's blood. But He expects us to enter into it and make it a reality in our individual life. Every sickness in our life now is due for a curse. We are to use our mouth to curse it and rebuke it just like Elisha did to his antagonizers and Jesus did to the fig tree and to the fever Peter’s mother had. God’s word is unchanging:
Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 2 Kings 2:23-24
And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." Immediately the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?" So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done. "And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." Matthew 21:19-22
Now He arose from the synagogue and entered Simon's house. But Simon's wife's mother was sick with a high fever, and they made request of Him concerning her. So He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she arose and served them. Acts 4:38-39
God’s word tells believers, Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers (3 John 1:2). God wants believers to prosper and be comfortable as well as healthy. He saw them in discomfort and sent Jesus Christ to come and give them the abundant life. Man's discomfort was a result of Adam fall from grace and being driven out of the Garden of Eden where he did not lack anything, he was super comfortable. When Adam fell he was driven out of the Garden of Eden into the wilderness and the gates were shut. Thus, no one could gain access into the garden until Jesus came out of the grave and the gates of life flung open (Psalm 24:7). Among those gates was the gate that led back to Eden. That is to say that God is bringing His people back into their Eden of abundance. Therefore, financial signs are a part of believer’s redemptive rights in God and their Abrahamic blessing.
Most of God’s people are deceived into thinking that because they still live in our physical bodies they are human; but nothing could be farther from that! Jesus, who is their example and life was born of the Spirit, yet He arrived the earth very much human. But there was no denying the fact that He was also the Son of God. The same is true concerning believers. When they are born again, they are a spirit being, even though they have a mind and live in a physical temple called the body.
Adam, before the fall, operated in the class of God. His mind functioned in the same frequency as God's. He was a man of authority, a man in dominion. One day, however, he ate the forbidden fruit, and in accordance with God's warning, he died. Adam's death was, however, spiritual, not physical. He was still physically alive, but his spirit was disconnected from God. At that very instance Adam went from the realm of the supernatural to the natural. He descended from the spirit world to the physical world. He also became a victim of what he used to have dominion over.
But God was undaunted, and as in a relay race, He picked up the baton that Adam had dropped and passed it unto Jesus, who did not fail Him. Jesus came primarily to recreate what had died in Adam — his spirit. He came to restore to humanity what had been lost in Adam. He was called the second Adam, because like the first Adam, He was a representative of all mankind. With this restoration, as many as receive Jesus into their hearts can operate in the same class as the first Adam before the fall. God’s word is unchanging:
"The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.1 Corinthians 15:45-47
Satan could not prevail in heaven, so he was cast down to the earth. Two kingdoms are brought to light here. The earthly and the heavenly. Only those who reside in the earthly kingdom are under the wrath of Satan. Those who are born again have been translated from the earthly to the heavenly kingdom. And in the heavenly kingdom there is rejoicing, because there is no place found for Satan there anymore. As a new creature in Christ, we can safely conclude that Satan has no right to be anywhere around us. In our heavenly citizen status therefore, we should be able to display "the riches of His glory" in the face of the devil, not suffering as those in earthly places do. Just like Enoch who was translated so that he did not see death, we have been translated too, so that we do not experience the same buffeting as the world.
The fact that we have been redeemed guarantees us absolute liberty from all forms of oppression of the devil. We are no longer his captive, so he cannot plague our body or tamper with the works of our hand. This knowledge should spur us into reacting against the gimmicks of hell in all areas of your life. Everybody may be complaining about the devil, but God is complaining about the ignorance of His people! There is no mountain anywhere; every man's ignorance is his mountain.
Once we know where we belong, we should be able to confront the devil and secure our victory. Case in point sickness is not our portion in God. So, if we sense an attack of sickness coming, we are to react against it based on the light of God's Word. We are not to nurse or accept it, just fight it off, and enjoy liberty. The advantage Satan has over believers is ignorance. He plays on the ignorance of the saints to buffet, oppress and punish them. The bible tells us: Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. 2 Corinthians 2:11. But Satan has been stripped of all his powers and is left with only wiles and devices (Eph. 6:11). By being conscious of our superiority over Satan, we can "take him for a ride." Instead of living at his mercy, we can turn the tables on him, compelling him to take to his heels at the mention of our name! Redemption guarantees our total liberty. With this understanding, we hold in our hands the master key to rest in all spheres of life.
Jesus took the place of man in sin, sickness, poverty, death, and every evil thing in the world. He was made sin on the cross, identifying with man in the fallen state. He became sin for us. We were in Christ in every stage of it. We were legally present there, defeating the devil when Jesus died. We took part in His suffering (His passion), in His crucifixion, burial and resurrection. He became identified with us on the cross and we with Him. When Jesus was made alive by the Spirit, we were also there. We were raised up from the dead together with Him. And when God raised Him up and exalted Him far above principalities and powers, we were there with Him, exalted as well.
As a result of this mystery of identification, all principalities and powers are under our feet. Through Christ Jesus we are now one with the Father as Jesus was one with Him. As a result we have the same nature with God the Father. Therefore, whatever God can handle, by virtue of identification with christ, we can too! What we carry now is eternal life. We have the life of God inside us, as a gift from heaven. That life cannot be terminated by any ploy of hell. Rather, it is quite capable of swallowing up disease, failure, stagnation, frustration and even death.
The eternal life we carry on our inside is real, not theoretical. It is the exact type in Jesus that made Him immune to sickness and disease. That same life guaranteed His rest even in adverse situations. In it lay all He would ever require to live the abundant life. This same life is what we carry inside us! Once we become conscious of it, sickness cannot survive in our body. Failure itself cannot come near where we are. The Bible says whatsoever is born of God (a carrier of eternal life) overcomes all the hurdles of life (1 John 5:4). This truth will establish us as sons of God licensed of God to displace the devil in any environment we step into. Not guessing, but quite sure of who we are in Christ and what God has done in us when we entered the kingdom of God. God’s word is unchanging:
Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 3:5-6
"He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.. John 3:31
WALTER KAMBULOW
VICTORY MINISTRIES
Gordon Williams http://gordwilliams.com/
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