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| Some time ago I met a young man who said that he was involved in a new Bible study outreach called �Beggar�s Bread�. He said, �We are just beggars reaching out to other beggars.� An objection rose up in my spirit and so I said to him, �Excuse me, but that�s not right. If you are born again, then you are not a beggar � you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and Psalm 37 verse 25 says, �I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread.�� Later in the conversation with this young man who was a student and also worked a part time job, he rather excitedly reported that he could probably now qualify for Social Security. Now, praise the Lord for social security for those who would have nothing without it, but it is hardly a goal to be aspired to! And so another objection to this young man�s reasoning arose within my spirit. I said to him, �The reason that you can get excited about social security is because of the way you have been thinking of yourself as a beggar � you need to repent of that mindset and come into your inheritance as a child of God.� The reason I am relating this incident is that this young man left our encounter with the words, �I think we will have to come up with a new name for our Bible study.� What had happened here? There was a turning from �wicked ways� � from a �lie� to the truth of God�s goodness! Jesus said that He was anointed to preach good news to the poor. Does that mean that He came alongside them and said, �Hey guys, look, I�m the Son of God and I�m poor too!� No! Jesus came to the poor and He ministered to them from His money bag, and then He shared with them the good news that they didn't have to be poor anymore. He shared with them that they were on God�s heart, that God loved them, that God had made provision for them. |
| It�s time to repent of our wicked ways � our despising and rejecting of God�s goodness! We need to repent of the fact that too often we are not a demonstration in the earth of the goodness of God - simply because we have exchanged the truth of God and of His goodness for a lie that says God is not good all the time! We are talking about Revival NOW � God is the God of the NOW � He is the great I AM! Let�s look at John 10: 10 � 11. The first part of verse 10 reveals the devil�s mission statement � he comes solely to steal, to kill, and to destroy. However, in the second part of verse 10 we have Jesus� mission statement � He has come so that we may have life and have it more abundantly � a super-abundance, an excess, an overflow, a surplus, over and above, more than enough, profuse, extraordinary, more than sufficient LIFE! A never ending, continual, perpetual overflow of LIFE! In verse 11 Jesus goes on to say, �I AM the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.� That is how we can have life. Jesus gave His life so that we could share in HIS LIFE! The life that we now enjoy is not the natural life that we had before we were born again � we now have a supernatural life, resurrection life. We died with Christ and have been raised again with Him to walk in newness of life � resurrection life! Paul said, �I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.� � Galatians 2: 20 Our new life is not inferior to our past life - it is superior! |
| Often we try and �humble ourselves� in the wrong way. We think of �humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God� as grovelling in the dirt with a �worm� mentality. But the person who is truly humble is the one who is completely submitted to God�s will for their life � the person who thankfully and gratefully accepts who they are in Christ with all the privileges, and who walks in the abundance of God�s provision every day! Sometimes people think that if they declare who they are in Christ they will become proud � but when the Bible says to �humble ourselves under God�s mighty hand� it means you can come boldly into the presence of God just as a child runs to his father! We don�t need to come to God on our bellies � God is BIGGER than us, and He is always going to be bigger than us � we can�t outgrow God! Anyone who attempts this will discover the same as lucifer did � that God resists the proud! Some folks are so proud of being �humble� that they never receive anything from God, but �God...gives grace to the humble.� Where do we get this grace? �Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need� � Hebrews 4: 16 We can never outgrow God � He will always be God and we never will, we will always be us! Very often in the Bible when you see people coming into the presence of God they fall on their faces. God is so awesome that falling down in His presence is a very natural reaction, but God doesn�t stand on their heads and rub their faces in the dirt just so that He can remind them of who He is � He says, �Get up!� or He lifts them up! Sometimes we thought that if we could just bury our faces in the carpet a bit deeper, then maybe, just maybe we could be acceptable to God. But God lifts us up - He says, �Get up � I want to pour My life into you, I want to bless you so that you can go into the world and be a blessing!� |
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