One cannot conceive of anything that will cripple faith and put the believer in bondage more quickly and surely than underestimating what He is, and what we are in Him. Along with that will come an underestimation of the Word.
We will say right out, “Oh, I believe the Bible is the Word of God.” And yet we turn to the arm of flesh for help.
And when we pray, we do not come with that quiet assurance that we would if some banker had given us his word in regard to our financial standing at the bank.
This is an unconscious underestimation of the Word, and it is an unconscious underestimation of the integrity of the Master Himself, who is the Author of this Word.
This leads to weakness, to doubt and fear. It makes a vacillating type of faith.
We become what James calls “a double-minded man that is unstable in all his ways.”
What will change it?
When we realize what He has done for us in His great Substitution and in the New Creation.
We should meditate on the fact that we are partakers of the divine nature. “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have Eternal Life, even to you that believe on His name.” (I John 5:13).
If we say over and over again to our hearts: “I am a partaker of God’s very nature. I have in me His faith nature. This makes me a child of faith. I have been begotten of the Living Word through the Holy Spirit. The real me was recreated in Christ. I have the very nature of the Father and the Father is love, so I have in me the love nature of the Father,” if we meditate on this, we will no longer be “double-minded men.”
Repeat it over and over again.
Hold it as a constant affirmation before your mind that you are what He says you are; that you are a partaker of His very nature as He has declared.
And you remember that “greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” That Greater One is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one that in creation gave the color, the beauty and fragrance to the flowers, to vegetation, to the trees. He is the one that takes of the nature of the Father, and through the Word, builds it into us.
He builds the beauty of Christ into our conduct.
He touches our reasoning faculties until the things that He has made in the floral world assume a new interest. and their beauty is enhanced and their fragrance enjoyed as never before.
I can remember the night that I received Eternal Life. It seemed as though I hardly touched the sidewalk on my way home. It was a cold winter night in January, but, oh, how beautiful the snow and the frost. Yes, the trees stripped of their foliage assumed a beauty I had never noted before.
The Holy Spirit had taken possession and was unveiling the wonders of His grace to me.
An underestimation of the Holy Spirit, of the Word, of Jesus, will keep us in a state of flux, in a realm of uncertainty.
Fear will dominate us; doubt will bind us, and hold us in the realm of weakness.
But when we come to know Jesus as our Lord, as the Mighty One at the right hand of the Father who ever lives to make intercession for us, our great lawyer that looks after every legal need of ours in Christ, we will no longer be dominated by fear and doubt.
We should come to know the reality of the Holy Spirit’s reality, which is all unveiled to us in the Pauline Revelation.
I urge you to go back and read Romans, and First and Second Corinthians again. Then abide a while in Ephesians, in those first three chapters especially, until you are lifted out of the realm of the senses into the realm of the new man in Christ Jesus.
The fear of seeing what we are in Christ, and of acting as though we knew what we were, has kept us in bondage and robbed us of the reality of His finished work. How slow we have been to act what we are in Him. The Spirit, through the Word, has declared what we are in Christ. Ephesians 1:7 “in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the remission of our trespasses”-and it is according to the riches of His Grace.
That is not a theological redemption. This is not Paul’s philosophy. This is the Father’s description of what we are in His Son, and He says “in whom we have our redemption.”
From Whom and What are we redeemed?
What He Made Us
Satan is the God of Darkness. We have been delivered out of Satan’s Dominion, out of the realm and authority of Darkness. We have been delivered out of the dominion of Sin, for “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” We are delivered out of the authority of Disease, for Romans 8:11 says: “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
Not only have we a redemption that is literal and absolute, but we are a new creation, and Satan has no dominion over us. Jesus is the Head and Lord of this new creation.
We have been taught so long and so persistently about our weaknesses and our lack of ability and our unworthiness that we hardly dare say that we are what He says we are. We are afraid that people will misunderstand us and think that we have become fanatical.
But He says: “Wherefore if any man is in Christ (and we are in Christ) he is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new, and all these things are of God,” and we are reconciled to Him.
We are a part of His very dream.
Satan has no dominion over this new creation.
Ephesians 2:10 says we are created in Christ Jesus, that when Jesus arose from the dead the work of the new creation was consumated in Christ. It became a reality in us when we took Him as our Savior and confessed Him as our Lord.
The Father in His Word has declared what we are in His Son. That declaration is the truth.
I may not have grown up to it, may not have- appreciated it, but it stands there with an open door inviting me to enjoy all the fulness that is mine in Him.
He declares what we may do in the name of His Son. We haven’t appreciated it perhaps, but He gave to us the power of attorney to use His Son’s name.
Jesus said, “Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name; ask and receive that your joy may be made full.”
Seven times Jesus repeats this, giving us the legal right to the use of His name.
Philippians 2:9-10 tells us that this name is above every name, and at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, beings in Heaven, beings on earth, and beings under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God my Father.
Not only that, but Jesus said after He arose from the dead, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” Disciple means a student, a learner. He never said, “Go and make converts;” he never said, “Go and make churches,” but “Go and make disciples.”
There will be schools of Christ. Every believer will be a student of this living Word. What Masters they will be!
Not only do we have that power to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons, or to heal the sick, but that Name gives us access to the Father, and is the absolute guarantee of answered prayer.
You see, this prayer life is based upon absolute knowledge. It is not based upon emotion nor feelings nor the theories of men, but upon the Living Word of God, this Word that “Liveth and Abideth.”
When you know in your heart that you are what He says you are, then you act it in the face of all, confessing what He has done in you, confessing what He has made you. This glorifies Him and His Work.
To deny what we are, to tell what Satan is doing in our bodies and minds, is denying what we are in Christ.
When Jesus said, “All things are possible to him that believeth,” He meant that all things are possible to the Believer. All that Believer needs to do is to get to know what he is in Christ, then rise up and take his place.
What Masters He has made us to be! How invincible we are! Can’t you see what it would mean for one in the face of all this to be talking about his weakness, his lack, making his confession of his inability.
“Of His fulness have we all received,” and it is grace and the ability of God for us to enjoy to the very limit all that we are in Him.
This page Copyright © 2000 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://peterwade.com/. Check out our Bookstore.
Leave A Comment