MIX

Mix The Word With Faith

 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. Hebrews 4:1-2

For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,  Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him. Isaiah 64:4

After accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, we have entered the Promised Land where we are supposed to inherit the great blessings that are in store for us. There are indeed blessings that men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, for those people redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus Christ.  These blessings are the good of the land we have now entered through the Blood of the Lamb. No men have not heard, nor perceived by their ear, neither hath their eye seen these great blessings reserved by God for the Church. In order to inherit these blessings, that God has prepared for us since the beginning of the world we  have to obey God’s Word and His voice as well as not touching  not unclean things and mixing the promises of God with faith. God’s word is unchanging:

"Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.  "And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God: Deuteronomy 28:1-2

"If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Matthew 5:29-30

The promises of God are revealed to us by His Spirit that we may lay hold of them; but facts are facts, and they remain facts whether we believe them or not. If we do not believe the facts of the Cross they still remain as real as ever, but they are valueless to us. It does not need faith to make these things real in themselves, but faith can 'substantiate' them and make them real in our experience. We need to mix the Word of God with faith for the real things to become real to us.  Watchmen Nee wrote:

Whatever contradicts the truth of God's Word we are to regard as the Devil's lie, not because it may not be in itself a very real fact to our senses but because God has stated a greater fact before which the other must eventually yield. I once had an experience which (though not applicable in detail to the present matter) illustrates this principle. Some years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no sleep. Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely than before. The enemy asked,' Where is God's promise? Where is your faith? What about all your prayers?' So I was tempted to thrash the whole matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and this Scripture came to mind: " Thy word is truth " (John 17. 17). If God's Word is truth, I thought, then what are these symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy, 'This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and God's Word to me is truth.' In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well.

Now of course in a particular personal matter such as the above it might be quite possible for me to deceive myself as to what God had said, but of the fact of the Cross there can never be any such question. We must believe God, no matter how convincing Satan's arguments appear.

A skilful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skilful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I do not deny the reality of the ' flesh '. … But I am speaking here of our being moved from a revealed position in Christ. As soon as we have accepted our death with Christ as a fact, Satan will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by the evidence of our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or God's truth? Are we going to be governed by appearances or by what God says?

…" We walk by faith, not by appearance " (2 Cor. 5. 7, mg.). You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed, and all went well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact ; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after him.

All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God's Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact- failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion-and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. But the trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan's lies are often enough true to our experience ; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God's Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan's lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively totally with that Word.[i]

We are to rest in all that Jesus Christ has accomplished on Calvary. Jesus Christ has substituted all things on the cross for us and exchanged it there for us. Our death, defeat and poverty and curses have been nailed to the Christ. On the Cross Jesus Christ not only won real victory and redemption over sin and death and the world, but also over the wicked arch enemy Satan and all his angels who had made the Cross necessary by what he did to Adam and Eve.  The enemy had deceived and entrapped Adam and Eve to sin against God and live a life that was cursed and full of toil and trouble.  But on the Cross Jesus Christ did the great exchange.  He exchanged His sinlessness for our sins, His righteousness for our unrighteousness, His strength for our weakness, His boundless supply for our needs, His stripes for our healing, His riches for our poverty, His victories for our defeats, His triumphs for our disappointments, His glory for our nothingness, His Honor for our shame, His joy for our sadness, and His fullness for our emptiness.  But all of this is also something that must be revealed to us by the Holy Spirit before we can understand and partake of it fully. Yet it is all our birthright and the blessing of the fullness of the gospel of Christ.

The message of the cross and the Gospel is not only that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. He is now is seated at the right hand of the Father with all power given unto Him in heaven and earth waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool.  But the message of the cross and the Gospel is also that as a result of the victories Jesus won on the cross, He has now given and shared all that He has with us and He is also with and for us continually.  God in Christ Jesus has literally become our inheritance and great reward; as well as everything else which we need, including our healer and deliverer. As result of the Cross, God said about Jesus and of us who have become strong and overcomers:

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53:12

As a result of the cross, in Christ Jesus, we are rich, victorious and have a new life in Christ Jesus, as we walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh.  The empty Cross now also stands as a reminder and says to the world and to all the demons of Hell “You did your worst, but God gave His best.  Now things are no longer the same, because Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father waiting for His enemies to be submitted to Him. He has also now given us the power to subdue all His and our enemies through the use of His name and Word and dependence of the Spirit. Hence the Cross is also a real testimony of what God’s power can do no matter what the Hell or injustice that the world or the devil will throw at us.  For Jesus’ resurrection after a cruel and awful death signifies the real possibility of total and complete victory in our lives, hearts and circumstances as well in the current time of life as we trust in God just like Jesus did. The empty Cross now says to you and I, that for every defeat there is victory in its place, for every failure there is success, for every weakness there is grace, for every sickness there is healing, for every hatred there is love, for every injustice there is justice and for every poverty there is riches. All of this and much, much more belongs to each child of God because of what Jesus did and won on the Cross.  Hence we can by the Holy Spirit understand what the Lord said to Apostle Paul:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Our strength and victory comes from God Himself and all the victories He had won for us on the Cross of Calvary. Although in the annuals of time and history, our Creator God died on the Cross-on Calvary, but He didn’t stay there. He arose triumphant and victorious over everything, over the worst that the devil or others could throw at or do to Him and to us.   Because of the cross of Christ, God has reconciled all things to Himself whether things on earth or things in heaven for Jesus having wiped out all the enemies of His people and especially the requirements that were against them, He has taken it out of the way having nailed to the cross. It is when the power of Christ rest upon us, because of our weakness, that we are truly strong. For it is then that we rest upon the Lord and walk in the power of His might and Spirit and not our own. As we by faith tap into all the riches and resources of heaven which are now ours by Christ Jesus because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross two thousand years ago we become more than conquerors.

We are to lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. It is be noted God's own act that put us in Christ, and we are to abide in Him.  The fact remains that Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God, ready to use His power on behalf of the good of His true children; to make them more than conquerors in all things that the world, the flesh and the devil would throw at them. For His word is unchanging:

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.  "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.  "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.  "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciple John 15:1-8

“And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. “Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. John 16:23-24

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

In the world lack of strength and dependence on others is considered weakness, but in the kingdom of God weakness that causes us to depend on and trust in the Lord is great strength and blessings. For it is when the power of Christ rest upon us, because of our weakness, that we are truly strong. As it is then that we rest upon the Lord and walk in the power of His might and Spirit and not our own. As we by faith tap into all the riches and resources of heaven which are now ours by Christ Jesus because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross two thousand years ago we become more than conquerors.

As a result of the victories Jesus won on the cross we are now delivered from the hand of our enemies, and are able to serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life. Just like Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit stated about God and us:

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel,  For He has visited and redeemed His people,  And has raised up a horn of salvation for us  In the house of His servant David,  As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets,  Who have been since the world began,  That we should be saved from our enemies  And from the hand of all who hate us,  To perform the mercy promised to our fathers  And to remember His holy covenant,   The oath which He swore to our father Abraham:  To grant us that we,  Being delivered from the hand of our enemies,  Might serve Him without fear,  In holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.  Luke 1:68-75