Live or Die

On February 22, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 118:17

I shall not die, but live, and tell of the works of the Lord.

Stop, pause, breathe and really take this verse in. I want us to get a deep revelation of this one. I feel this is dear to the Lord’s heart. I believe He is saying to us today to really let this verse sink in.

Have we not seen several quotes from God that He will give us a long and full life? And didn’t Jesus say that he came to earth to give us abundant life? If we believe those scriptures, it ought to be easy to buy into this one. Here is the thing, all of the verses that I will be sharing with you have God’s healing power imbedded in them. For that matter, every verse in the Bible brings life since the Word is Jesus. This verse, though, truly has the power of life and death in it. You will see others that we could say the same thing about but this one is incredibly powerful.

Suppose you have received a frightening diagnosis from the doctor? What do you do? You’ve got to rehearse these verses over and over until they are so entrenched in your spirit that you believe them with every fiber of your being. I would recommend repeating this one over and over and over. Walk through the grocery store saying, “I shall not die, but live and tell the works of the Lord!” Say it while you are pumping gas, taking a walk, anytime, all the time.  This is exactly what we learned from Job 22: 28, “You will also decree a thing and it will be established.”

Now here is the new revelation. What do you do with this verse if you are perfectly healthy? You do the same thing. Perhaps you are not as fervent as someone who just received a bad report, but this is a verse of life and praise. You can brag about what God is doing for your health right now. We don’t have to get sick to praise God. He is feeding us life and health right now.

Let’s glorify our Lord and God and rely on Him to give us strong, healthy bodies. Let us thank Him for what works well and for the healing power He has flowing through our bodies right now. Anything that doesn’t feel good or isn’t working quite right should be brought before God. Get in agreement with Him for full restoration and ask Him which verse you should lean on. Today’s verse works for every occasion, but the most important verse is the one that goes off in your spirit when you read it. It isn’t always the same one. Get a firm grasp on today’s, though, because God is showing you that He is the giver of life. And emulate this verse. Declare boldly that you shall live and not die. You are healed and blessed!  Glorify the Lord!

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Prayer

On December 20, 2019   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Job 22: 28

“You will also decree a thing, and it will be established for you; And light will shine on your ways.”

I want to change the way you and I think about prayer. As we charge into year 2020, I believe this is a great time to do so. I hope you have big plans for 2020. We are beginning a new decade and one that has been dreamed about for years. Science Fiction books and movies looked forward to this coming year and now it is upon us. Let’s have a great year and a great decade. If you are 85 years old this year, 95 or 15 set a new goal, a big goal and strap on your rocket boosters. 2019 was for sitting. Now is the time for setting an ambitious goal and going for it with gusto.

To make 2020 different from its predecessors we are going to have to look at things differently and do things differently. We might as well begin with one of our most sacred strongholds: prayer. If we keep praying like we prayed last year, we will get what we got last year. If you got what you wanted, that is great. If you didn’t then we should look at growing our understanding of working with God so that 2020 becomes a year of fabulous results and tremendous memories. I want for you the best of everything so let’s begin today preparing for a super year and decade.

For many of us, prayer amounts to asking God for what we want. We ask Him to do something for us. That is not an incorrect perspective, just an incomplete one. There is a lot more to manifesting our partnership with Yahweh than just asking Him to fulfill our wish list. The Christian experience has sometimes reduced prayer to little more than begging God to do something in our lives. We are active partners with God, so we need to learn our role in His way of doing things and then be fully prepared to step into that role in 2020. Today’s verse is the clue we need to send us on our way.

God did not create us so powerless that all we can do is beg Him to be active in our lives. He has spent eons pouring out His power and teachings so that we can be His partners. That means that He has empowered us to say something and have those decrees established. So, what does that begin to look like? You can pray for God to heal you. Good but let’s not pray a begging prayer, “Oh God, please heal me. Please, please God, touch my body with your healing.” That sounds good but, actually, it is unbiblical. God said he already has healed us (1 Peter 2: 24). So, we need to move to the next step – declaring. That is where today’s verse speaks to us. Decree a thing and God will establish it. We already know God’s will, it is for us to be healed, now declare God’s will, “I am healed. By his stripes, I am healed. Healing, manifest in my body.”

Whatever you need or want works by this same principle. The power to create whatever solution you need is resident in you right now (Romans 8: 11). We’ve got to start saying something. Once we do, the angels and the Holy Spirit can bring it to pass. We already know that all of God’s answers to our prayers are, “Yes” (2 Corinthians 1: 20) so what is stopping us from having all He agrees to? it is our not taking the next step, decreeing. We say, “Father, heal me.” He responds, “Okay, speak it and it shall be done according to your word.” That is the part we are missing.

Let’s get ready for a big year in 2020 by preparing ourselves now. Begin speaking the desire of your heart. The power is already in you. The answer to your question is already there. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring it up out of your spirit to your mind. Go inside yourself and understand that the power which created the universe is resident within you right now. It’s only a matter of letting that out now. God has already given you the answer to your prayer, it is the Holy Spirit. Start working with the spirit to get what is inside you right now, to the outside.

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Be Filled

On December 16, 2019   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 81: 10

“I, the Lord, am your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”

This is a declaration of a God who wants to serve. What an amazing epiphany that is. have you thought of Yahweh as one to serve you? Wow! He brought each of us from our own Egypt. It is easy and not insignificant to think of the Israelites held in bondage to Egypt and its Pharaoh but that is not the complete Biblical picture. All of the stories in the Bible of past real events are included in the Bible for each of us. The Bible may well be the best storybook of all time, but that is not its ultimate purpose. Those stories are included for our edification.  Egypt, therefore, represents our own personal bondage. We’ve all been captured by destructive habits and/or relationships. God wants us to know that He is the one who led us into freedom and is available today to bring us out of Egyptian oppression.  That is not the end of the story, though. God doesn’t lead us out of our personal Egypt only to leave us starving in the desert. Just the opposite, He says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” Now that you are free, be blessed, be filled.

I found an interesting twist on this. The first half of verse ten from the Passion Translation reads, “I am your only God, the living God. Wasn’t I the one who broke the strongholds over you and raised you up out of bondage?” First God must free us from bondage. The second half contains the provision but only in the Passion Translation do we see the nuance that is suggested in the other versions but only spelled out in this one. “Open your mouth with a mighty decree; I will fulfill it now, you’ll see! The words that you speak, so shall it be!” Did you see it, the little secret in the verse? When God invites us to open our mouths, He means for us to say something. The Jews would have known this. They knew their blessing is in their God given language. That is why they greet each other with a blessing. Most Christians expect to pray and God will provide but that is not what God is saying. Most of our praying ends up more like begging than decreeing. God wants us to say something declaratory. When Jews greet one another the substance of their greeting is, “Be blessed!” They don’t beg God to bless you, they declare the blessing upon you that God has already given. You see, they know what God did in the Old Testament, so they have a better sense of their rights and authority. A Messianic Jew can decree in the name of Jesus with absolute confidence. That is what the Father would have us do. Decree something and Dad will fill your life with it.

He longs to be a blessing to each one of us. He wants to serve us. The key is in our mouths. What are you saying?

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Decreed

On February 23, 2016   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Job 22: 28

You will also decree a thing and it will be established for you; and light will shine on your ways.

In a previous devotional we unveiled that there are spiritual laws influencing us and the world around us just as there are physical laws. The first of these spiritual laws is the law of sowing and reaping. It says, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Upon this law all the others depend.

Today’s verse is on Spiritual Law number two – you will have what you say. People chaff against this and even though most of us, in our hearts, know it is true we still resist its truth. I am not sure why we do this unless it is just that we do not want to be responsible for our results or do not want to be responsible for our words. None the less, the reality of our lives five years from now is being constructed by the words we speak today. 

This verse from the book of Job is an application verse of Spiritual Law Two. Once we know the second law, we can use it in order to establish that which we need and want. You can proactively speak and proclaim and it will be established for you. Must I say that you must believe this passage in order for it to work for you? Any time you spout any sort of unbelief, or try to get God’s laws to work for you mechanically rather than spiritually, you will fail. Speaking unbelief undermines everything faith attempts to accomplish. Mechanically spitting out some formula for Biblical success is anything but Biblical. We are called believers and everything we do is to be according to faith and belief. If, however, you believe what you say, then it shall be done for you.

So, here is the real crux of today’s selected verse. Every day we should arise and begin declaring. Recently, I wrote to you about proclaiming Jesus as Lord every single day. We have the promises of God. There is a whole book of them which I endeavor to ship to your inbox one by one. We can take those promises and speak them over our lives every day. We should declare by the grace of God and name of Jesus that we are the beloved and the redeemed of God. You are today an heir to the Kingdom of God and all that it encompasses. I proclaim in Jesus’ name that you are forgiven, sanctified, holy, precious, and glorified. Now, you start proclaiming these things over your life. Decree that your children are saved and serving God. You don’t have to declare it in their faces. You can articulate all your decrees in the shower. Whatever you decree in the name of Jesus, believing, will be established for you.

One last note, if you declare that you are getting old and your body is falling apart, get ready to spend your time in the doctor’s office. If you say you are crazy or losing your mind, you are right. Let this revelation penetrate to the very core of your being – WHATEVER YOU SAY, YOU WILL HAVE. Now start making glorious decrees!

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