It Is All About Jesus September 12, 2021 bizadmin “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.” Matthew 8:17 You might be familiar with the verse Isaiah 53:4, which says, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” But notice how the author of the gospel of Matthew quoted it in today’s scripture. I love the word Himself because it is so personal and so intimate. Surely He Himself took our diseases and our infirmities. It wasn’t an angel. Your health and wholeness were too important to Him, so He Himself bore your every sickness and disease. Take some time to meditate on the Word Himself. Take some time to remember the One who suffered and died for you, the One who took your infirmities and bore your sicknesses, so you need not bear them. Jesus Himself did it because you are so precious to Him. Whatever condition the doctors have diagnosed you with, Jesus Himself has taken it upon His own body. Don’t focus on looking for healing; focus on the Lord Jesus Himself. Focus on the One “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by His stripes, you were healed” (1 Pet 2:24). Many times when you seek Him and spend time in His presence, your fears and worries melt away. You find that in His presence, there is shalom-peace. There is healing. There is wholeness. And when you look for your symptoms, you find them no more. Why? Because you are in the presence of the Healer. When God told the children of Israel, “I am the LORD who heals you” (Exod. 15:26), He was introducing Himself as Jehovah Rapha. He was not saying, “I will give you healing” or “I will provide you health.” He was saying, I AM your healing, and I AM your health. When you touch Jesus, you touch healing. He does not give healing as though it were a thing. He gives Himself. You don’t have to seek after healing, provision, and protection. When you have Jesus, you have all you need. If there is an area of death in your body, the Lord says to you, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). If doctors have told you that you will die young, the Lord says to you, “I am your life and the length of your days” (Deut. 30:20). If you have received a negative diagnosis and are fearful, the Lord says to you, “Do not be afraid. I am your shield” (Gen. 15:1). If you have been dealing with relapse after relapse and the discouragement is overwhelming you, the Lord declares to you, “I am your strength and your song” (Exod. 15:2)!
The Power of Redeeming Thoughts September 4, 2021 bizadmin Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Philippians 4:8 NLT THE POWER OF REDEEMING THOUGHTS What mental movies are you playing in your head today? Are they thoughts of defeat and despair or thoughts of victory and favor? Faith is simply saying what God says about you and seeing what God sees in you and your situation. It takes a thought to heal a thought. Unlike the world, which teaches you to empty your mind to achieve peace, God’s way is to fill your mind with fresh, powerful, and redeeming thoughts. The apostle Paul tells us, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8 NLT). So it’s not just trying to blot out bad thoughts with your willpower. It takes a thought to replace another thought. It takes a right belief to replace a wrong belief. You need God’s truth to replace the enemy’s lies that have kept you in bondage. My friend, if a wrong, bad, or negative thought is lodged in your mind today and you can’t seem to shake it, stop trying! Perhaps you’re lying in a hospital bed and can’t help but think of the worst-case scenario. You’re attempting to suppress it, but it’s not working. Well, stop! Please stop trying to erase it from your mind. That won’t work. What you need to do is replace that destructive thought with a thought that’s from God. That’s the only way to deal with a wrong thought and begin the healing process. Start to meditate on truths such as, “Surely Jesus has borne my sicknesses and carried my pains. The chastisement for my wholeness fell upon Him, and by His stripes, I am healed. With long life He will satisfy me” (Isa. 53:4–5 and Ps. 91:16). Begin to play mental movies of yourself getting well, being discharged from the hospital, having fun with your kids, or going on a nice holiday!
Faith Comes by Hearing July 23, 2021 bizadmin So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NASB FAITH COMES BY HEARING How does one change his mind from hiding from God to running to God? Well, today’s scripture tells us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” In Matthew 8, the man with leprosy had enough faith to come out of his hiding place and head straight for Jesus to seek healing because of the gracious words he had heard while Jesus was preaching to the multitudes. If our Lord had preached a hellfire-and-brimstone message of condemnation, do you think the man would have dared to approach Him for healing? Of course not. He would have walked away fearful of punishment and feeling more condemned and hopeless than ever. But because he heard words of grace—how God wanted to be a loving Father to him and provide for all his needs—faith arose in his heart, giving him the confidence to approach the Lord Jesus for his miracle. My friend, what you hear about God is of utmost importance. It can mean the difference between receiving your miracle and remaining where you are in your lack of bondage. It can draw you close to God or drive you further away from Him. Faith comes by hearing, but fear also comes by hearing. If you’ve been hearing about a God who is mostly angry and out to get you for your sins, how can you have faith to look to Him for help? If you’ve been hearing that He gives people (even believers) sicknesses and punishes them with horrible accidents for their sins, how can you look to Him for healing? If you’ve been hearing that He wants you and your family in poverty to keep you humble, how can you believe Him for financial breakthroughs or deliverance from mounting debts? How can you possibly trust God for anything good to happen to you if all you’ve been hearing are sermons that make you feel more condemned and fearful of His judgment? It’s sad, but the things I’ve just mentioned are the very things people hear about God. Just look at the movies made about God today—God is always portrayed as mean, judgmental, petulant, destructive, and even murderous! How they’ve perverted Who God really is—“compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love” (Ps. 103:8 NLT)! Please understand me. God does have anger, but the Bible never defines God as wrath; it defines God as love (1 John 4:8, 16). Did our Lord Jesus ever condemn the prostitutes and tax collectors, those despised and rejected by society? No, He was a friend of sinners! Did He ever take away from the poor or inflict the sick with more diseases? No, He fed a hungry multitude with twelve baskets full of leftovers and healed everyone who sought Him for healing wherever He went! The Bible tells us that Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38). What does that tell us? God wants to do good, not evil, to us! If this were not true, God would not have been with Jesus, backing Him up. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14:9–10). If you want to know what God is really like (and not what man portrays Him to be), look at Jesus in the Gospels. He is God’s will in action, and He went about doing good—saving, delivering, healing, restoring, providing, guiding, and loving the unlovable. That’s our God!
How to Be Led by His Peace July 11, 2021 bizadmin Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way. The Lord be with you all. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 HOW TO BE LED BY HIS PEACE I want you to know that when God becomes Jehovah Shalom, the God of peace, in your life, He doesn’t just soothe your emotions. He will lead you with His peace. For example, you may be making some decisions at your work, for your children, or perhaps even where and when to travel for your vacation. Talk to Jesus about it. He will lead and guide you with His peace. If there is peace from the Lord, go with that decision. If there is an absence of peace and you feel a sense of restraint, back away from it. You will find that guidance from the Lord comes very easily when God manifests Himself as Jehovah Shalom. In His peace, decisions don’t feel forced and full of strife. In His peace, there is a rest. His peace will guide you supernaturally to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. In Judges 6, the Midianites were terrorizing Israel day and night, destroying their crops and pillaging their livestock. The Lord assured Gideon, who was hiding from the Midianites, that He was with him and called him a man of valor, to which his response was: “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites” (Judg. 6:13). Doesn’t Gideon remind us of ourselves? Instead of hearing what the Lord had just called him, he began to complain. “Why has the Lord forsaken us?” Astoundingly, the Lord simply turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?” (Judg. 6:14). What? First, the Lord Jesus calls this man who is in hiding “a man of valor.” Now, He calls this complaining man, who is mad at God, to go in that might of his and save Israel? Shouldn’t it be, “Be gone from My presence, you stinking complainer, I must have found the wrong guy”? I am so glad that the Lord is not like you and me. He always calls the things that are not as though they are (Rom. 4:17). And I believe that as you receive a revelation of how the Lord is the God of peace in your life, you may be fearful and complaining now, but like Gideon, God will send you to be a testimony of His protection. He will send you to all your friends, coworkers, and loved ones who are bound by fear, and He will use you to deliver them from fear!
Cast Out Fear June 18, 2021 bizadmin Keep yourselves in the love of God. Jude 1:21 CAST OUT FEAR As you wait for the doctor’s verdict on the nature of those cells he saw in your scan or as you look at the dark mass on your X-ray, you can’t help but be filled with trepidation. You try telling yourself not to be fearful, but you can’t seem to stop fearing. Do you know why? Because you cannot reason your way out of fear. Fear is not logical. The only way to get fear out of your life is to cast it out, and the Bible tells us how: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. —1 John 4:18 You cast out fear by immersing yourself to the perfect love of God. Keep allowing His love to inundate you and drive out every fear. The Bible talks about keeping ourselves in the love of God. Instead of focusing on the pain in your body or the sickness causing your loved one to suffer, keep yourself in His love. Set your mind on the inexhaustible, infallible, and perfect love of your heavenly Father. You have a God who loves you so much He gave His Son to die on the cross for you. That, my brothers and sisters, is why you can always have rock-solid assurance he loves you. The Bible defines His love for us like this: God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 1 John 4:9–10 NLT The cross is everlasting proof of God’s love for you. The cross is the measure of how much He loves you. You must never judge His love based on your circumstances. The devil can attack your circumstances, but he can never attack the cross. Take your eyes off your circumstances and put them on the cross. That’s where God’s love for you was demonstrated once and for all.
Be Forgiveness-Conscious June 15, 2021 bizadmin Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies. Psalm 103:2–4 BE FORGIVENESS-CONSCIOUS Not too long ago, I was driving out for lunch with my wife, Wendy, and for some reason, every time she made a passing comment, I found myself snapping irritably at her or making an unnecessarily provocative remark. Have you had one of those days? When I reflected on why I was so irritable, I realized it was because I was actually feeling guilty about a couple of matters from earlier in the day. I hadn’t necessarily done anything wrong, but I’d just allowed a little bit of guilt to creep into my heart and unconsciously allowed condemnation to come in. My friend, when you are walking under a cloud of judgment, you can become a really unpleasant person to be around. Trust me, I know what I am talking about. Even if you are an author of books about God’s grace and forgiveness, there can be moments where condemnation creeps into your heart and you are completely oblivious to it. I thank God that when Wendy asked me if there was a reason for my irritability, He gave me that moment of clarity where I could see the condition of my heart. And praise Jesus for a discerning and perceptive wife who didn’t take my remarks personally and knew something was not right with me. I remember telling her to let me know the next time she noticed such behavior from me, because it’s so easy to slip into condemnation and guilt. When you’re under guilt and condemnation, all day long you can feel lousy, and all your answers have a sting in them. That’s not the abundant life, and you know what it all comes back to? It comes back to having a constant sense of God’s forgiveness over your life. Instead of taking in and harboring all the guilt, condemnation, and judgment, we need to stand secure in our perfect forgiveness in Jesus. There is a redeeming quality to being forgiveness-conscious, as opposed to being conscious of your failings, sins, and mistakes. When you are forgiveness-conscious and see your failings on the cross of Jesus, you receive power to break out of your irritability, impatience, and short-temperedness with others. You receive power to break out of your eating disorders, addictions, and anxieties! When you realize that we don’t deserve God’s forgiveness and grace yet He gives it to us anyway, this revelation of His unmerited favor changes us from within. It dissolves the knots of anger and impatience in us that have built up over the years and frees us to enjoy God’s love and to show it to others!
Walk in Wisdom to Stay Safe June 5, 2021 bizadmin Get wisdom! Get understanding!. . Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Proverbs 4:5, 7 WALK-IN WISDOM TO STAY SAFE It gives me such assurance to know that the Lord can deliver us from trouble. But do you know what’s better than being delivered from trouble? Not getting into trouble in the first place. My friend, don’t just seek miracles and protection from God without seeking the wisdom from Him to stay protected and out of trouble. There are times when the challenges we face are beyond our control. But I’ve found that often, we experience His protection when we follow the Holy Spirit and lean on His wisdom when making decisions. Every day, we need His wisdom, just as we need His protection. After all, Proverbs 4:7 tells us that “wisdom is the principal thing,” and in all our getting, we need to get wisdom. The Bible tells us that Christ has become for us wisdom from God (1 Cor. 1:30). So what we really need is the Lord Jesus. We need to lean on Him and draw close to Him daily. He is our wisdom, and only He can cause us to always be at the right place at the right time. I believe that many troubles and dangerous situations can be completely avoided when we don’t depend on our own wisdom and planning but involve the Lord in all that we do (Prov. 3:6). Oftentimes, wisdom and divine protection work hand in hand. Knowing that we can trust God for His protection certainly does not mean that we willfully put ourselves in precarious situations. We need to apply wisdom and heed the Lord’s leading through the wise counsel of the people around us, such as our leaders in the local church and our spouses. Proverbs 11:14 tells us, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” For instance, if your spouse has been telling you that you have a problem with speeding, please take heed. While there can be divine protection, do not be foolish and think that you can do whatever you want and nothing untoward will ever happen to you. I pray that as you involve the Lord and learn to walk in wisdom, you’ll begin to walk in a greater measure of peace, protection, and success.
Blessed to be a Blessing May 16, 2021 bizadmin I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. Genesis 12:2 BLESSED TO BE A BLESSING What does it mean to be an heir of the world? Let’s take a look at Abraham’s life to see what the Lord did for him. God’s Word tells us that Abraham did not just become rich. He became very rich. “Well, Pastor Prince, being an heir of the world refers to spiritual riches.” Hang on, that is not what my Bible says. According to Genesis 13:2, Abraham was “very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.” Now, if financial blessings are not part of the blessings of the Lord, then are you telling me that the Lord cursed Abraham with wealth? I am so glad that God defined Abraham’s riches very specifically. God must have foreseen a generation of people who would argue that He is against His people experiencing financial success, so He said clearly in His Word that Abraham was very rich in livestock, silver, and gold. Abraham wasn’t just rich spiritually. Beloved, God is not against you having wealth, but He is definitely against wealth having you. The Lord blessed Abraham so that he could be a blessing to others. He told Abraham, “I will bless you . . . and you shall be a blessing.” Similarly, He will bless you financially, so that you can be a blessing to others. You cannot be a blessing to those around you—your loved ones, local church, community, and the poor—if you are not blessed by the Lord first. Now, you already know that finances alone don’t make you a success. There are a lot of “poor” people in the world today who have a lot of money. They can have fat bank accounts, but their hearts are empty without the revelation of Jesus’ love for them. You and I have something from Jesus that is far more superior. The success that we, as new covenant believers, can believe God for is good, the holistic success that permeates every aspect of our lives! What keeps you safe for financial success is when you know that your blessings come from Jesus’ unmerited favor. When you have that revelation, you will no longer be preoccupied with having money because you will be preoccupied with the Lord. Amazingly, you will realize that the more occupied you are with Jesus, the more money follows after you! Now, why is that? It is simply because when you seek first the kingdom of God and put Jesus, His righteousness (not your own righteousness), His joy, and His peace as your first priority, God’s Word promise you that ALL the material things that you need will be added to you (Matt. 6:33). The Lord always gives you money with a mission and prosperity with a purpose. He blesses you and when you are blessed, you can be a vessel to bless others. The gospel of grace can be preached, churches can be built, precious lives can be touched, sinners can be born again, marriages can be restored, and physical bodies can be healed when you send out the Word of Jesus with your financial support. Don’t love money and use people. Use the money to love people. May it be settled in your heart once and for all that it is God’s desire for you to be a financial success and to have more than enough to bless others! This devotional is taken from the book 100 Days of Favor—Daily Readings from Unmerited Favor.