Satisfied

On February 17, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 91:16

With a long life I will satisfy him.

Earlier in this series we saw Exodus 23: 26 which in the NLT reads, “I will give you long, full lives.” That is some pretty simple stuff; good promises from God to you. What’s not to understand? Still, there is a place in these two verses where people get hung up. It’s this question, “What is a long life?” Today’s verse holds the answer. You get to determine what long life means. You can hang out here on earth until you get satisfied.

The best story I have ever heard on this was from Reverend Kenneth Hagin. He said, “If you ever hear I died, you will know I got satisfied.” Well, one morning he was eating some strawberries, I think. He ate the bowl of berries he had been served but then thought he would like a few more. So, he ate a few more, laid his head down on the table and went to heaven. He got satisfied. How cool is that? He punched out when he was good and ready. Not a minute before.

That story, and it’s a true story, creates a comfort within me. We don’t have to get sick and die. Just comfortably satisfied. We have gotten fooled that moving to heaven is a result of sickness. That’s not gospel. That’s a lie. It doesn’t even make sense. It’s like someone had the idea that God invented disease so that he could get people off the earth into heaven. Really? Nuts, right? No, God wants you to translate yourself to His Kingdom in heaven when you are ready. Doesn’t that sound more rational?

Hey, forget this sickness business. Let’s just leave that to the Egyptians. Let’s live in the promise of God, intertwine our lives around Jesus and get full and satisfied. Yeah, I like that!

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Long and Full

On February 11, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Exodus 23: 26     NLT

I will give you long, full lives.

I want to go back to Exodus today to tie this point in with the blessing and our choices. Let’s think, again, about what is going on here.

God has liberated the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The people had a slave mentality, so the Father is having to teach them how to live with His presence and how to flourish. He is having to completely rebuild His nation, and this, really is, from the ground up. He has just taught them about the blessing of Abraham which is theirs by birth. He also warned them about the curse. Then He concluded by telling them that He has given them the choice between life and death but that, ultimately, it is their right to choose. This is of critical importance!

God very clearly articulates His will here. He wants to give us long, full lives. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” (John 10: 10 NIV). In this we see the continuity between the Father and the Son. God sent Jesus to earth so that we might have abundant, full lives. Now, why is this so important? For health to continue to bloom in our lives we must begin with the understanding that God wants us to have long full lives. We must settle in our hearts that God isn’t trying to kill us. Remember the story of Job and how He struggled. Once He came to understand the truth, he was able to receive full restoration. As long as He thought God was tormenting Him, He was defeated. The same will be true for us. One cannot pray in faith for healing if he has the misconception that God created his sickness. You cannot believe in your heart that God has made you sick and that he is going to heal you. The two beliefs are inconsistent and will destroy your faith.

Go one step further, if we believe that God has caused us to be sick, then that is to say we believe God’s will is for us to be ill. Why, then, would we pray for healing? That would be to pray against God’s will. This is why it is so important that we begin by accepting God’s desire for us to live long and fruitful lives.

Understanding God’s will also impacts how we think about life and death. Many people think God holds the threads of our lives like the fates, toying with us like stringed puppets. That just is not Biblical as you will continue to see as we move forward. Yesterday’s Word of the Day was the beginning of that revelation. God said, “I have set before you life and death, . . . choose life in order that you many live,” (Deuteronomy 30: 19). God gave us the choice. His will is that we live long, abundant lives. So, this means that we have to get out of our minds and hearts two things; First, that God is pulling our life springs and two that He is responsible for taking our lives from us. We are so accustomed to saying, “Well, if it’s God’s timing . . .” but now we know it is not God’s timing. Say this aloud, “God isn’t killing me!” We’ve got to get that down in our hearts. He isn’t “taking people.” He is trying to save people. It’s what He does! We, however, don’t have to follow His leading. We make our own choices. That is point number one. Beyond that is the curse. In God’s perfect will there was no sickness to be had, but the earth fell into corruption and decay and now we must live with those consequences.

Here is the promise of God, “I will give you long, full lives.”  Meditate on that night and day until your spirit accepts it as truth. God isn’t taking life; He is the giver or life. Long, full and abundant life is His desire for you. Pray towards that reality.

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Living Long

On July 22, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Genesis 6: 3

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

How long should we live? In this passage from Genesis God says a hundred and twenty years. Personally, I think that should be a minimum because this was after the fall. In other words, man in his fallen state should live to be one hundred and twenty years old. How long, then, should redeemed, restored people live? Before the fall and before the curse presumably people would live longer. Or before people learned how to die young, they lived longer.

Even in the depths of our disobedience people had an expectation of long life. In Psalm 90: 10 Moses wrote, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away.” In this Psalm Moses wrote about the Israelites’ fallen state and how they had invoked the anger of the Lord. It is a lament, not a declaration. He is almost weeping as he writes this dirge. The Israelites were not living in the grace of the Lord. They had spurned the loving grace of God and chosen instead to worship idols. Still you couldn’t kill these guys. The life of God within them continued to bear witness in their flesh despite their gross disobedience. And to further undermine this life span limitation, Moses lived to the age of one hundred and twenty. Furthermore, “Although Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died, his eye was not dim, nor his vigor abated” (Deuteronomy 34: 7). Moses was still climbing mountains when he reached the end of his life. He wasn’t feeble and broken and you are not meant to be either. We are children of the King, endowed with the life giving power of God Almighty living in our bones. He that called forth life from the very beginning is alive and well in every cell of our bodies right now. Only, we have the switch. We can be in life and health or we can increase in sickness. God said, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants” (Deuteronomy 30: 19). Why, then, do we keep choosing death? For goodness sakes, Moses was 80 years old when he went into ministry. “Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7: 7). His ministry was just beginning. The job that he is still known for didn’t even begin until he was what some may consider advanced in years and then he stayed in that job for forty years. Let’s get a revelation folks. We have been lied to.

Now let us quickly look at Psalm 91: 16, “With a long life I will satisfy him and let him see My salvation.” While the 90th Psalm was written in the context of disobedience and God’s anger with the rebellious Israelites, the 91st Psalm is written about they who trust in the Lord. If you have section headers you may want to look in your Bible at this Psalm. My chapter heading reads “Security of the one who trusts in the Lord.” This is a direct promise to you if you live your life in Christ as we have been taught. If you trust God with you daily life then you should move out of the 90th Psalm into the 91st and expect to be satisfied with a long life. The late Kenneth Hagin said, “If you hear I have passed on you will know that I got satisfied.” And he did. He was satisfied with a long life and just laid his body down and moved to heaven.

Live as long as you want to and remain in good health the whole time. Be active and fruitful. Our Father has said “And I shall fulfill the number of your days” (Exodus 23: 26). So don’t go early unless you are satisfied. If you want to see your great-grandchildren then hang around and rely on the life giving power of our Heavenly Father.

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