Believe FIRST, Then You Will Receive

What do you do when a leader rubs you the wrong way? Do you get offended? Do you start venting to everyone around you because of the wrong done to you? The reality is, Jesus set up this exact dilemma for the Canaanite mother...Jesus insulted her....BUT because she didn't get offended, her answer won Jesus' compliment, and she received her miracle. If our hearts are right, the rub should draw faith out of us and bring us deeper into God's will. 

Can someone in witchcraft transfer something to you just by touching you? I never thought this to be a reality until we were in a country full of witchcraft and a woman broke ranks, ran at me, and tapped my shoulder. “The blood of Jesus is on me!” I said. She laughed and took off running. Nothing happened until later that night...when a spirit came after me. It took hours of commanding to break the power of witchcraft.Touch works both ways. Jesus and the Holy Spirit partner with believers as they lay hands on people as a point of contact to bring healing and deliverance. But the devil works to twist the things God created for good and tries to use the same spiritual principle to bring about destruction.It’s not solely the touch of a minister that brings healing. Neither is it the touch of a witch that brings destruction. It is our agreement with the spirit and words behind the touch. When we come into agreement with the Holy Spirit and God's Word, God's will will manifest in our lives, but the same reality can bring a curse if we have open doors to the enemy, like fear and passivity. We can let witchcraft in out of ignorance.Hear the Lord's voice, remember to armor up, don't let your words agree with what the enemy is trying to speak over you, and fight until you win!

Can a Christian have a demon? As kids, every summer we swam in the neighbor’s stock tank. The water was cool, calm, and even sweet. Then one year a drought hit. The pond was left empty, and to our surprise, there was something lurking at the bottom. Broken glass, rusty fishing lures… and a dead cow. We never knew we’d been sharing a swimming hole all summer! The reality is God wants to bring to light what is hidden in the darkness of the water. As a believer, your spirit belongs to God, and nothing evil can live there. But your mind, emotions, and body can still be demonized. What God gives you by promise isn’t always yours by possession. God gave Israel the land, and they still had to drive out the giants! The same is true in deliverance. God has promised us freedom, but we have to deal with the demons that are keeping us from walking in freedom.Our family learned this the hard way. My mom was a born-again believer who suffered eight years of torment because of our ignorance in the area of demons. But thankfully, now the Lord has shown us how to walk in victory over what used to torment us. 

What are the signs you've bumped into witchcraft? Brain fuzz. Anxiety. Numbness and sleepless nights. A lack of joy. Frog ears. Forgotten and misheard words, and a love of anything but the truth. Witchcraft isn’t always from people in the occult. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft -1 Samuel 15:23. It starts when one human will tries to control another. If you make contact with it without your armor on, it jumps right back on you. And people many times want relief more than they want God. They want to fix, not cure, and that is the heart of witchcraft. Not caring which power source you use, as long as you get what you want. It's spiritual adultery. It is cheating on God. Why settle for a counterfeit, for only relief, when God will give you the real thing?The cure? Repent and renounce. God truly wants to see you free, but freedom only comes from Him. God won't control us, but He also won't allow us to control Him. We have to come to God on His terms. If you truly seek the Lord with all your heart, He will truly answer you and set you free. 

Here’s a puzzle that will rattle your theology. Picture a man so close to God that miracles followed him around like stray puppies, but he couldn’t spot a wolf in the pulpit if it wore a name tag. He had a good heart, but he either had no discernment or left it unused. His wife was controlling, cruel, with no sign of knowing the Lord. She discerned the collapse of two major ministries years before the headlines did. He had the power. She had the discernment. Explain that one.Sometimes the best way to understand a gift is by contrast. Let's go searching for truth among some of the oddest characters in Scripture. Firstly, every mature believer needs: God, character, and skill. Put God and skill together without character, and you get what this teaching affectionately calls “freaks,” people who get an astonishing amount done for the Kingdom and leave a trail of question marks behind them: Balaam, the hired curser who delivered one of the most beautiful Messianic prophecies in the Bible (Numbers 24:17). Gehazi, the servant who saw what the prophet missed in the Shunammite woman, then chased Naaman’s silver and came home a leper (2 Kings 4, 5, 8). And Joab, the General who told David the truth when no one else dared, and also stabbed the wrong man (2 Samuel 3,19,24).From there, you’ll learn to separate the true gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12:8–10) from its look-alikes: worldly wisdom (James 3:15), plain shrewdness about human nature (Luke 16), being “familiar with the spirit” from years in the trenches, and the double-mindedness that makes a person impossible to read (James 1:8). Then comes the question: is it that you can’t discern, or that you just don’t want to know?The truth is, spirits must be tested not trusted. (1 John 4:1). Come, let's go deeper. God wants to show you more than you know. 

What is going on between your ears? Are you thinking about the thoughts running through your head? The enemy's primary weapon is thoughts. A thought from the enemy can become the root of your problems and ruin any area of your life. But a truth received from God's Word can dismantle the assignment of the enemy and restore your life. Take every thought captive and exchange the lies of the enemy for the truth from God's Word.

"I HAVE A COVENANT!" Do you enter into fights with your covenant? Our covenant with God is built on the blood of Jesus, the names of God, and the promises in the covenant. God wants to establish His covenant promise with us on earth, but there are demonic things that try to keep the covenant from being established. You don't have to beg and plead with God as if it's not His will to do what He has already promised, but you do have to drive away the vultures and partner with God to see His covenant truly established. 

It's important to understand that much of your Bible is set up like a courtroom. So you need a defense attorney. Jesus is most definitely our defense, but there may come a time when you need to defend yourself with your own mouth. You need to plead your case between you and God. I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Put Me in remembrance, let us argue our case together. State your cause, that you may be proved right. Isaiah 43:25-26. Can we argue our case with God and be proved right? God is our Promiser, and our Guarannteer. Don't argue based on your own merit. Argue your case based on the promise and character of who God is.

People say, "I'll believe it when I see it," but in God's Kingdom, you don't see until you believe. Receiving comes from believing and speaking. Believing is what you are doing now, in the present, to receive from God later, in the future. Jesus isn't asking you to learn to live with the problems in your life. He said to speak to the mountain to be removed. Miracles start in the unseen realm. They start in a heart that is believing God. Believing always precedes receiving.

If we hear God's voice and then let reasoning talk us out of it, what good is it? We must remember the enemy tempts us with reasoning. When reasoning speaks, there is a motive and a thought against the character of God intertwined with his words. When your mind demands control, it is difficult to hear God's voice. We have to be sure we want God's voice more than our own opinions. Christianity is not a mental religion. It is a deep connection to God with your heart. Hungering for God means you are searching for what He has to say more than what the world and the experts have to say. Even facts can lead you astray. God considered facts evil when the children of Israel refused to confront the giants in the Promised Land. They believed in the reality of the giants more than the reality of their God. Facts without faith are dead works. God is not impressed with the facts of our current reality. He is wanting His Voice to create a new reality in our lives.