DEUTERONOMY 28:3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. You may have heard of people who think that to have better “luck”, they have to move to a new home, work for a certain company or even migrate to another country.
The truth is that it is not the place that gets you the blessings, but whether God’s blessing is on you. And for you, child of God, you are already blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1:3) He has paid for your blessings with His blood. So the blessing is not on the land but on the man! It was in the city of Jerusalem that Jesus was whipped, cursed and spat on. And it was outside the city on Calvary’s hill that He was pierced and crucified. That is why you are blessed in the city as well as outside in the country! In fact, you are blessed regardless of your location. Perhaps you work in a non-Christian company and your boss doesn’t quite like you. In fact, he sometimes mistreats you. But God can still bless you in spite of your boss. You get blessed because you believe God for it. It has nothing to do with your boss or the company. Why then don’t you seem to see the blessings? My friend, if you don’t see the blessings, check what you have been believing and saying. Some people complain and blame everyone and everything around them — their parents, race, gender, environment and government—for their lack of blessings. Beloved, I want you to believe and confess that you are blessed because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross, not because you are of a certain race or work in a certain place. It does not matter where you work or live, what color your skin is or what you do for a living. If God blesses you, you are blessed! And it is all because of Jesus. So say to yourself, “I am blessed wherever I am—blessed in the city, blessed in the country!” Joseph Prince EXODUS 12:13 …And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
For 400 years, the children of Israel were slaves in Egypt. Life for them was one of hard labor, pain, loss and even death. When Moses their deliverer came, what soon followed was one plague after another on the Egyptians. But none of the plagues caused Pharaoh to release the Israelites until they put the blood on their doorposts. What nine plagues could not do, the blood did! The Israelites were finally set free because of the blood. Are you under any kind of bondage? Are your loved ones held captive by the destroyer who is bent on destroying them? Plead the blood of the Lamb of God over all that is yours and your family’s. When nothing else seems to work, His blood always works! When I was a teenager doing a stint as a relief teacher in a primary school, one of the girls in my class was absent from school one day. I didn’t think too much about her absence until I returned home that afternoon. As I was praying, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray for her protection and to cover her with the precious blood of Jesus. It was revealed later on that she had been abducted by a notorious serial killer who had murdered a number of young children. My pupil recounted how she had been tied up and offered to the “deities” the killer had in his flat. Miraculously, he released her when the evil spirits found her to be an unsuitable offering. Why was this pupil released unharmed? I believe that she was presented to the deities on the same afternoon that I pleaded the blood of Jesus over her. Of course, the evil spirits did not want her because the Most High God would not allow them to have her. God was protecting her. She was set free because of the blood of Jesus! You see, when you plead the blood of Jesus, the destroyer cannot come near. When he sees the blood, he must respect the blood. He cannot touch what is covered by the blood. The blood of Jesus truly protects and sets you free! Joseph Prince ROMANS 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes…
If you have been to motivational seminars, you would probably have heard the speakers say, “If you follow these five steps, then you will come to a place of financial increase.” They would probably have told you also that if you don’t succeed, it is because you did not follow the steps correctly or diligently. Thank God that the gospel or good news does not work like that! The minute you hear or read the good news, and you believe and receive it, His Word goes forth to sozo (the Greek word for “save”) you, making you whole in every way, “for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes”. What is the good news? It is that God loves us so much that He gave us His Son to take our beating so that we can have His blessings without having to work for them. Right now, as you are reading this devotional, listening to a preacher or watching a sermon DVD, as you hear God’s Word, His power is released into your situation, working things out for you and turning your situation around for your good. In Acts 14:8–10, we see Paul preaching the good news in Lystra. A man who was crippled from birth was listening to Paul. Paul, seeing that he had faith to be healed, said, “Stand up straight on your feet!” And the man leaped and walked! He heard the good news, believed it and was healed. At a leadership conference in Oslo, Norway, where I was speaking, a pastor there shared how a well-respected businessman in his church was healed while listening to one of my sermon CDs. This man was deaf in one ear. And when he was listening to my teaching on the CD, his deaf ear popped open without anyone laying hands on him or praying for him! He was just listening to the good news when his ear opened. Now, that is what I call the power of God unto his salvation,sozo-ing him, making his hearing whole! My friend, these miracles happen not because we follow some kind of formula faithfully, but because we hear the good news preached and simply believe it! HEBREWS 13:9 …it is good that the heart be established by grace…
God does not want your heart full of worries and fears, tossed and turned by every challenge that comes your way. He wants your heart at rest and established by His grace toward you. But when you think that the breakthroughs to your challenges depend on your ability to obey God, then your heart will not be at rest. It will be full of worries and anxieties. Why? Because you can never obey God perfectly. But when you depend on God’s grace, that is, His undeserved, unmerited favor, the opposite happens—your heart becomes established. When you know that the only thing that qualifies you to receive God’s blessings is faith in the finished work of Christ, your heart becomes established. Then, you will walk without the fear of your troubles swallowing you up. You will walk with full assurance that His blessings will be manifested in your life. My friend, God wants your heart established, knowing that His righteousness, healing, protection and provision are yours—all paid for by Jesus’ finished work at the cross. God’s blessings are sure in your life because they are not dependent on your ability to keep His laws, but Jesus’ perfect obedience. You see, under the old covenant, you receive God’s blessings only if you keep all His laws. (Deuteronomy 28:1–2) If you sin and fail to keep even one law, you will be disqualified from receiving His blessings. But today, under the new covenant, your sins no longer disqualify you because God Himself has said, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (Hebrews 8:12) So let your heart be established by God’s grace. Because of His grace, you have full access to His blessings. You no longer have to worry about whether you are good enough. You can stand firm on the promises made in His Word and enjoy His blessings today because Jesus has paid the price. Your part is only to believe and receive! MATTHEW 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Do you know that it was at the cross that Jesus addressed His Father as “God” for the first time? He had always addressed His Father as “Father”. But at Calvary’s tree, He addressed His Father as “God”. Jesus lost that Father-Son relationship when He was representing you and carrying your sins at the cross so that today, you can call God “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15) and have a loving father-son relationship with God forever. Jesus was forsaken by God and His world became very dark on that lonely hill so that in your darkest hour, God will always say to you, “I will never leave you nor forsake you!” (Hebrews 13:5) At the time when Jesus needed God most, God turned His back on Him. God had to turn His back on His Son because His eyes are too holy to behold all the sin that was in His Son’s body. And because God turned His back on Jesus, He will never turn His back on you. Instead, you will see God’s face of favor shining on you all the time! Jesus also took your place of no protection at the cross. For the first time, He gave up divine protection so that you can have it every day of your life! And because He became sin, He took your curse at the cross so that today, as you take His gift of righteousness, you receive only blessings from God. Jesus received the full brunt of God’s wrath in His body once and for all when He carried your sins. All of God’s anger and condemnation fell on Him, consuming all your sins until God’s wrath was exhausted. Today, God is not angry with you. The body of Jesus absorbed everything—your sins, curses, and God’s anger and condemnation. So live life expecting to see not the judgment, but the goodness and blessings of God! HEBREWS 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...
If you are sick, you must know that you are already healed because of the finished work of Christ. Don’t ask, “Do I have enough faith to be healed? Do I have the right kind of faith to be healed? What if I am lacking in faith?” You are focusing on yourself and your faith, instead of Christ and His finished work. You should be asking, “Did Jesus take away this sickness? If He did, then He must have done a perfect work.” In other words, fix your eyes on Jesus and His perfect work. AB Simpson, who lived in the 19th century, wrote an article entitledHimself. In it, he mentioned his exhausted nervous system, and broken-down heart which could have proved fatal any time. So he sought the Lord for healing. God showed him Matthew 8:17, which says that Jesus “Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses”. AB Simpson said that though he believed that Jesus had borne away his sicknesses, he saw many hindrances which stood between him and his healing. And they all boiled down to one thing—his preoccupation with his faith! He had believed that if only he had the “right” kind of faith, he would receive his healing instantly. He eventually came to the realization that he had to remove that last hindrance—his focus on his faith—and just rest in the finished work of Christ. That revelation marked his complete recovery from his sicknesses. When you ask yourself, “Do I have enough faith?” you have already put faith as a hindrance between you and Jesus’ finished work. The more you focus on your faith, the more faith slips away. But if you focus on the finished work of Christ and see God’s grace toward you, God sees that as faith! Without realizing it, faith is there in your heart to believe that you will not die of what Christ Himself has already borne away completely for you, and you will see your miracle manifest! No matter where you are, the Lord is with you. Even in the midst of your fears, while you are alone in your room, He is there with you. The moment you begin to be aware of His presence and cultivate His presence, all your fears, anxieties and worries will melt away like butter on a hot day, or as the psalmist David puts it, “The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord…”
My friend, you cannot psych yourself out of fear nor can you psych yourself out of worry. You can’t just tell yourself, “Come on, stop worrying. There is nothing to worry about.” It just doesn’t work. It takes the presence of the Lord to keep you free from worry and fears. When you know that He is with you and for you, and you give Him your cares, the once-monumental problems become microscopic against the largeness of His love and goodness toward you! Today, as you consider all that you need to do and the expectations placed on you, see Jesus there with you. He is your supply, your wisdom, your peace and your strength! Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Have you heard the voice of your conscience saying things like, “You deserve hell for the sins you committed against your wife three years ago” or “Why are you surprised that your child is not talking to you? You were never around when he needed you”? You know, there are people who feel depressed all the time because of a sense of guilt, and they “pay” for their sins in terms of illnesses. In fact, doctors are discovering that many psychosomatic sicknesses are caused by guilt and condemnation because the conscience is saying, “You have done wrong. You must be punished. How can your sin not be punished?” That is why you must have an answer that will satisfy your conscience. When your conscience says, “You have sinned. You must be punished for this sin or else God is not a just God,” you say, “Yes, I have sinned. But this sin and every other sin that I have committed were punished to the maximum in the body of Jesus Christ! So there remains no more punishment for me today, for how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse my conscience!” My friend, the only way to bring peace to your conscience is to look to the cross. The cross of Jesus is the only answer that will satisfy your conscience. So the next time your conscience condemns you because of sin, don’t try to silence it with your good works. Look to the cross and say, “Father, thank You for Jesus and the cross. Jesus was totally condemned on my behalf for this sin, so there is now absolutely no condemnation left for me.” Then, your conscience will look at the cross and say, “Ahhhh...peace.” My friend, Jesus’ finished work at the cross truly sets you free! 2 Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord, If you would like to walk in a greater measure of God’s favor, 2 Peter 1:2 says that grace, which is the undeserved favor of God, and peace, can be multiplied to you. Peace is the word “shalom” in Hebrew. Its definition includes wholeness, health, safety and provision. So when you walk in divine favor and peace, you will walk in blessings in every area of your life! But how do the undeserved favor and shalom of God increase in your life? It is not by your laboring or toiling to earn it. The Bible says that it comes as your knowledge of Jesus and His finished work increases. It comes as you learn more about and believe that through Jesus’ one sacrifice at the cross, God removed all your sins, gave you His righteousness as a gift and put you in Christ to enjoy everything Jesus has. God’s favor is multiplied in your life when you simply believe that the favor of God that is on Christ is also on you because of what Jesus’ work at the cross has accomplished. Today, you don’t have to struggle for favor. Just release it by speaking forth God’s Word in faith. On your way to work, say, “God’s favor surrounds me as with a shield.” (Psalm 5:12) As you continue to speak God’s favor over your life out of a revelation of Jesus’ finished work, you will see more of it being released. When I first entered the workforce, I began to declare the favor of God in my job. Every time I was given a new assignment, I proclaimed that the divine favor of God was on me. The company began to prosper and I was blessed financially. By the time I left the company to serve God full-time, my income had increased so that I was in the top 15 per cent of earners in my age group in Singapore. Today, in your workplace or at home, begin to declare the favor of God by faith. Expect to receive preferential treatment wherever you are. Say, “I am surrounded with the favor of God because of Jesus’ finished work. I have favour before God and man!” And see God’s favor work for you! Romans 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Are you faced with challenges in your life right now? Are you having marital problems and financial woes? Maybe your child is going astray or an old illness has returned. What then will you say to all these things? Do you know what God wants you to say? He wants you to say, “If God is for me, who can be against me?” If you knew that the President or the Prime Minister was for you, you might believe that everything will be okay. But you have an even better backing! The Bible tells us that God, the Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, is for you! What problem can fasten its grip on you when the Almighty God is for you? Can the devil come successfully against you with God on your side? If God is for you today, if God is for you right now, you don’t have to moan, “If only I had this…If only I didn’t say that…” And you don’t have to worry about the future: “What if this happens…What if we don’t have enough…” My friend, regretting the past and worrying about the future won’t change anything. Look to your heavenly Father, instead. Because He is for you at this present moment, you can be confident that He will help you and provide for you. Beloved, God sent His Son to die for you. And Jesus gave you a blood-bought right to an abundant life full of meaning and purpose! He gave you a blood-bought right to walk in divine health all the days of your life! He gave you a blood-bought right to His supply even when the economy goes down! You have all these things not because you deserve them, but because Jesus shed His blood and gave you the right to have them. All these blessings are yours today because God is for you! And if God is for you, who can be against you! |
Ana & Andre Schoonbee God uses us to motivate and encourage the body. Authors
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