In episode 23, Pastor Joe continues his message on faith as the means to pleasing God. Whenever there’s a move of God, somebody or some people have gotten desperate enough to believe God when he says that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in every born-again believer. They’ve learned to cooperate with him and be willing to step out in obedience beyond what they’ve known before.

Ephesians 1:3 says that we are already blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. We already have the ultimate power source. Much of our praying can be misguided because the Bible says we already have what we are often asking for. But we can ask the Lord to teach us how to walk in what he’s already given us.

You’ll learn how to:

• Better activate the gifts God’s already given you (whether you feel them or not)
• Believe that your sin is dealt with by God as soon as you repent
• Keep your feelings in proper alignment – good servants, lousy leaders
• Walk in works that proceed from God’s blessing, not works that try to earn God’s blessing.

Listen to part 1 here. This episode is pulled from the Pleasing God MP3 series.

Additional Resources

Pleasing God – Full MP3 series

Who We Are In Christ – Book

The Finished Work of Christ – Book

Kenneth Hagin – The Believer’s Authority

Moravians

Joe erroneously attributed the following quote to John Wesley; it is in fact by Martin Luther – “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.”

Full Transcript

And prayer, I think it was John Wesley that said, prayer is not overcoming a reluctance in God. I have been a part of much intercession, but in some meetings that I’ve been in, the sense was, we’ve got to get enough people to repent so God will move. I agree. But what we need to repent of is not believing what God says, and appropriating it. You see? As long as we find God unwilling, we’re missing the point of the throne of grace. Out of the throne of grace, flows rivers of living water for the healing of the nations. See, I think what happens when we have a move of God, when we have a fresh out pouring, is somebody or some group of people actually get desperate enough to believe God. You see, if the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in every born again believer, where’s God gonna get any more power to send? You and I already have the powerhouse in us. What we need is to cooperate with him. Let him use us and be willing to step out in obedience beyond what we’ve known before.

Faith brings us in touch with unseen realities. Paul says in Second Corinthians (4:17,18), he says, my light affliction, or “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more eternal and exceeding weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are unseen are eternal.” Now, the only way to see unseen things is through the eye of faith. You see, God knew our situation. See what faith does is faith brings you into contact with the unseen realities of the spiritual realm.

Now, the Bible says in Ephesians 1:3, that we’re already blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. So much of our praying can be misguided, because the Bible says we already have it. Now what I’m saying to the Lord is “Lord, I believe already have it, but now I need you to teach me how to walk in it.” I’m not trying to get him to send it. I’m saying, “Lord, teach me and teach us how to better appropriate and walk in what we already have.” See, it’s a finished work. The fivefold ministry are to equip the saints until we grow up into him in all things. So my desire for myself and for you is that we would grow up into him.

Now he was anointed by the Spirit of God, did you know that? The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor deliverance to the captive, open the prison doors, blind eyes, favorable year of the Lord. Spirit of the Lord was upon him to do those things, wasn’t it? Well, you know, in the same book of Isaiah (59:21), it says, My Spirit, talking to Jesus, the father is talking, he says, My Spirit, He says, This is my covenant. As for me, this is my covenant, the spirit that’s upon you, Jesus and the words that I put in your mouth shall not depart from your seed, nor from your seeds seed. It’s a three generational promise of the same anointing and the same words that were on Jesus and in his mouth. Now, I’m claiming. I want that, don’t you? But you see, it’s not like, “Lord, oh, please, I know we’re not Jesus, I know…” Well, just quit it. You’re his joint heir. You see? Joint heir means fellow heir, heir of the same type of inheritance, you see. Now, I don’t know if you thought about this, but he’s already inherited all authority in heaven and on earth. So what’s your part? Well, your part is to appropriate His grace, so that you can exercise Godly character and dominion wherever God has placed you. God wants you and I to be salt and light.

There’s a massive renewal going on in the church. People are waking up to what I consider to be apostolic vision. Instead of thinking, hang on till the end, they’re thinking take the nations, go into all the world. Preach the gospel to every creature. Make disciples of all nations. There’s a move of God that’s fiery. And God wants us to be a part of that. He wants us to be thinking like we’re actually born of God. Yeah, we are. We are, but sometimes we don’t think like it. “Well, oh, Lord, it’s just so tough.” Well, it is sometimes. I can vouch for how tough it can get. You know, I would love to see immediate answers to challenges I face. But I expect to see them because I’m not trusting in what I’m doing. I’m trusting in what he did. I’m putting all my marbles in one basket. You see. He is faithful. He keeps covenant and shows mercy to a thousand generations. But it’s all about relationship, you see.

When you get up tomorrow and you go to into your prayer time with the Lord, I want you to have these things ringing in your ear, “My father’s waiting to talk with me. He loves me. I’m accepted. I’m completely and totally forgiven. And he wants to download what I need to face today with.” Letting the Spirit of the Lord have liberty in us. I did a series about the time we were transitioning out of the old building called The Indwelling. And the Spirit of the Lord was just talking to me about coming. See I had, you know, you pray to the Father and you, maybe you envision him upon his throne, and the Lord Jesus is your heavenly mediator. And you can come boldly to the throne of grace, because Christ is your high priest, and you can trust him. And you develop that relationship. But there’s a certain point in your walk with God, as Kenyon put it, he said, we need to become God inside minded. Part of the Godhead lives in you.

How many believe that there’s a Father, Son, Holy Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit, who is God, lives in you. See, I know that’s not a new thought. But it might be a renewed thought. See, a lot of times, Paul’s challenge with the thorn in the flesh, I want to give you the take the Lord has given me on that. First of all, it wasn’t a sickness. He said it was an angel of Satan sent to buffet and because of his abundance of Revelation, so unless you can claim the same abundance of revelations don’t claim Paul thorn. Just a thought. But you see, the thing was, he was saying, He pled with the Lord three times to take it away. Angelic being harassing him, stirring up persecution, trying to kill him, trying to silence him, trying to stop the revelation that God had given him. And he says he pled with the Lord three times to take it away. And the Lord didn’t say, No, Paul, I’m not going to take it away. He said, My grace is sufficient for you. My supernatural power is brought to its goal in your weakness. Now, if the supernatural power of Christ is working in Paul, do you think he had authority to deal with that angel? Well, he says, Therefore I will rejoice in my weakness that the power of Christ might rest upon me, pitch a tent over me.

Now, if you’ve got the Messiah’s anointing on you, do you think you might have authority to deal with angelic spirits that are harassing you? Yes. I think the revelation Paul got was what John said in 1 John 4:4, “Greater is he that’s in you, then he that’s in the world.” And in the Old Covenant, a Jewish believer would cry out to God to deliver them. But if you read through Paul, he prays for the Ephesians, that the Father of glory would strengthen them with might through His Spirit in the inward man that the Messiah might dwell in their hearts through faith. In other words, it was Messiah in and Messiah upon Paul, that enabled him to defeat that angelic being that was the assigned against him. Now, let me just say, probably none of us will have the level of spiritual warfare that came against Paul. So whatever you face, you have authority over it. You can break its back, you can stop its assignment.

In my early days, I was ready to resign from being a Christian. I got saved and the enemy just started harassing me and tripping me up and I began to fall back into sin. Got delivered out of drugs, alcohol and promiscuous lifestyle and all these kinds of things. And for about a year I walked really, really victoriously and then I started getting hit with these temptations and all of these things and and I didn’t really know how to deal with it and I finally ended up kind of slipping and falling and got really under total condemnation and shame. When I think about this, I think this is so silly, but I went in my bedroom got down, kneeled down to tell God I was resigning. I wasn’t going to be a Christian anymore. And I got a revelation, well I had the first vision I’ve ever had, I saw the cover of Kenneth Hagen’s book, The Authority of the Believer. My cousin had tried to give it to me, but I was so discouraged I didn’t want another book, if you can imagine that. I mean, you know, bookaholics anonymous, you know, as my 12 Step group.

So I saw this vision, and I went down and I got the book, and I just read through it. And Hagen talked about the Lord appearing to him and telling him about, if he didn’t deal with the devil, he Jesus wasn’t gonna. And the Lord said, “You need to address the spiritual wickedness coming against you. And you need to command it to cease in its maneuvers and to stop in its operations in Jesus name.” And that was like, lights went on in my darkness. And I began to do that. I didn’t have immediate success, but I started to see things turn around, and I began to get victory. And I began to recognize the enemy’s attack, and I began to address it. See what happened before was, once I would start to feel tempted, it’s like one devil, one demon would come on this side and say, “You need to sin.” The other demon would come on this shoulder and say, “You rotten thing, thinking like that.” It was a double whammy. And I fell for it for quite some time, until I learned to stand up against it and command it to go in the name of Jesus. And you can do that. We can all do that.

Many of you have heard these things and know them, but sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know, and we need to take our stand and expect the name of Jesus to do what it’s supposed to do. You know, you probably heard the translation of John 14:12-14, “The works that I do, you shall do also and greater works shall you do, because I go to the Father. And whatever you demand in my name, that will I do that the father might be glorified in the Son.” Whatever you demand in my name, I will do. See, it’s translated ask in so many scriptures, because the translators really didn’t have a vision for our authority. What Jesus was saying was, you do the works of Jesus by using Jesus name, and Jesus backs your use of his name, and the whole process brings glory to the father. There is a place for prayer, and we do pray to the Father in Jesus name. But that passage is talking about doing works. It’s not talking about prayer.

So you and I have the privilege and the honor of using the name for Kingdom business. We’re commanding the enemy to take his hands off our stuff, our job, our family, our finances, our health. We have authority and the right to use that name. But you see, it only works if you don’t let the devil mar your fellowship. See. You’ve got to stay in the place of knowing you’re forgiven. “Well, what if I sin?” First John 1:9, if you sin, confess it, and God will forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. I used to do that and think I was on probation. It was in Kenyons book In His Presence, he said, when you confess your sin, believe God deals with it. He said don’t glorify the devil by going on wallowing in it. Take a stand. God is faithful. When he says he’ll forgive you, believe him. “But I don’t feel forgiven.” See, there’s that sacred cow called your feelings. I know that thing. I’ve been trying to kill it completely for many years. Feelings aren’t bad unless they lie against the truth. God gives us feelings. Feelings are a good thing in potential. Joy is a good thing. Happiness is a great thing. There’s an appropriate time to grieve, but God wants us to live above the lordship of our feelings. There’s two things that rival the Lordship of Christ in our life. They are our thoughts and our emotions. They’re great servants but lousy masters. Don’t let your thoughts rule you, and don’t let your emotions rule you. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, agree with God’s word, let God’s truth be the final authority in your life.

Faith is believing that God is an honest being. Faith is just accepting what God says about your situation as though that’s the highest authority. “Well, well, well, I asked God to do that.” “And what did he say?” “Well, he said, If I asked anything according to His will, He hears me. And if I know he hears me, I know I have it.” “Okay, so do you have it?” “Well, I don’t, I, I’m not, I don’t.” “But he says you do?” “Well, I don’t see it. I don’t feel it.” See, you have to learn to accept a thing by faith as a reality, and trust God ’til you see it show up in the physical realm. There’s a higher sphere of reality.

Let me read one quote, and I’ll close here. A very respected scholar wrote this little explanation of the Greek word for substance, faith is the substance of things hoped for. He said, “It denotes that which is placed or stands under something else, of the true essence or being of a thing which stands under the appearance or the phenomenon, and secondly, of truth or reality, as opposed to mere fancies, or conceptions, the body as opposed to its shadow.” So if faith is the substance of things hoped for, then when God gives you something in its spiritual form, it’s more real than it will be when it shows up in the natural realm. Everything that was created was created by God speaking. Right? So all physical matter came into existence because God as spirit being spoke spirit words, and those spirit words were freighted with power, and God brought forth a physical creation.

So God wants to bring you up to his level and say, “Son, I want to speak to you. And when I speak into your spirit, it’s reality. And if you’ll trust in that unseen reality, it’ll show up in the natural realm, because that’s how I created the world.” It’s good news. Yes, yes. Now Satan fears this and fights it because he doesn’t want us to become living in that place, where all of our prayers are getting answered, and all of our commands are being heeded, because that means a church he can’t deal with. Well, let’s do it. And let’s also envision the fact that Paul said that when Christ returns, He will present to himself a glorious church without spot, wrinkle or blemish, that’s been washed in the water of the word. So, you know, what if, just give this a thought, but what if the present church in America is walking in 10% reality and 90% tradition? Well, we would probably make a great stride if we were walking in 20% reality and only 80% tradition. Now that might be an underestimate of the reality that we’re walking in, but if it’s going to be a glorious church without spot, wrinkle or blemish, and if he’s given us His glory that we might be one even as he and the Father are one that the world might know that God sent Jesus, then if we’re 30,000 different protestant denominations, it’s not exactly one. “Well, the Lord could come any minute.” Well, I said this years ago by accident, but I think it’s not all that bad. “What for?” We don’t look anything like what he says he’s coming for. I think we got a lot of work to do, but not works.

We’ve got to take the time to listen to heaven and trust in the finished work of Christ and pray and obey. Grace working in you creates faith, and faith working in you creates godly works, works that aren’t trying to earn God’s blessing, but works that proceed from knowing God’s blessing. He’s working in us. See, he’s working in us. And that work, see, faith without works is dead. But you see, it isn’t telling us that we need to add works to our faith. It’s telling us that real faith works. Real faith produces results. Real faith changes your lifestyle. Real faith gets theory to practice. All right, I could go on for forever. And you probably thought I did, so.

Well, Father, we are hungry for reality. And you have invited us to come to you and experience you. Lord, we want to be pleasing to you. We want our faith to grow and we want to enter into all that you have for us. And we pray tonight, Lord, that this would just be a fresh seed to stir us up to trust you and to not let the devil steal from us. Not let condemnation and shame have any place in us. And come with boldness to your throne of grace Lord, find your mercy, find your grace and defeat the enemy wherever he’s trying to steal, kill and destroy. In Jesus name. And everybody said, Amen. Praise God.