Experience the Impossible: Simple Ways to Unleash Heaven's Power on Earth (6 page)

In grace, the ability to obey comes in the command. In law, you are left to perform.

O
ne of the greatest bits of good news we could ever hear is that we are free from the Law. It is probably an oversimplification, but it basically means we no longer have to try to earn our righteousness through things we do or do not do, which, by the way, is impossible. For that reason we need a savior. The Law makes demands on behavior that no one has ever been able to keep—except for Jesus, that is, who actually fulfilled the requirements of the Law on our behalf, and once and for all satisfied its appetite.

One of the largest mistakes made in the discussion of law vs. grace is the notion that grace makes no demands on the believer—that law requires action and grace wants us just to “be.” This simply is not true. While “abiding in Christ” is an amazing position of
rest
for the disciple who loves Jesus, it does not remove us from the need for action and obedience. The Law, for example, forbids murder. But the teaching of Jesus, the basis for the message of grace, says that it is just as wrong to be angry with a brother and call him names.

Wow! Let’s be honest. It is much easier not to murder than it is not to get mad and call people names. Yet God sees the hostility of a name-caller as the seed of murder itself. If it grows and develops in an atmosphere of dishonor and rejection toward another until it is fully formed, it will conclude with murder. While it seldom does, from God’s perspective the seed is as defiling as the fruit. And it is grace that gives the warning.

So how is it that grace can be more demanding than law? The profound nature of grace is not that it makes no requirements of us; it is that every command comes with the ability to perform it. Another way to state this, and perhaps a simpler one at that, is,
Law requires, grace enables
. That is the stunning difference between the two. When God speaks, He empowers. It is one of the most glorious examples of the Father’s heart. His delight in us inspired the concept of co-laboring with us.

This beautiful partnership between the Infinite One and His finite creation is illustrated well in Ezekiel 2:1–2: “Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!’ As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me.” God told Ezekiel to stand up. The next thing he knew the Holy Spirit stood him up. The message is not that God does things for us that we are capable of doing ourselves. Previous to this work of the Spirit in him, the prophet Ezekiel was lying prostrate before the Lord of glory, incapable of moving. So the Lord gave him a command and then enabled him to do it. The same concept is repeated over and over again through this Gospel of the Kingdom. He commands us to heal the sick, when we have no ability to do so. Yielding to the command to do the impossible is what connects us to the enabling grace of God. Abiding in His love enables us to love.

James highlights this concept with this statement: “In humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21). Where is salvation’s ability? It is in the Word. This is the best picture of the process of grace. Humility is the
condition of the tender heart. It receives seed, the Word of God. It is the word of grace that brings the capacity to perform what is commanded.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I love Your voice and am alive because You speak to me. Thank You so much for Your generous word of promise and hope. Help me to recognize the times You have spoken to me things that I know I cannot do but am being “graced” to do. I do not want my small thinking to cripple my potential when You see things differently from me. I receive your Word with humility, confessing that all breakthroughs are for Your glory!

Confession

I confess with Mary, when she faced the most impossible assignment ever, “Be it unto me according to Your word.” The impossible is now possible, because my Father commands me to do it. I embrace His Word with a humble heart that I might present to Him the fruit of the impossible. And I abide in His love for me, which in turn enables me to love, for the glory of God.

The way you think either expresses faith or undermines faith.

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aith affects our thoughts. Our thoughts also affect our faith. Winning the battle over the mind is central to developing the Christlike lifestyle. It would be a grave mistake, however, to think that faith comes from the mind. It does not. It comes from the heart.

Faith is not intellectual in nature. The Scriptures say, “By faith we understand. . . .” It is not the other way around. Faith helps the mind grasp things that would normally be out of reach and sets the mind up for development in a healthy way. True faith is superior to reason. Yet the renewed mind is also important—it enhances the life of faith in the way that banks of a river affect the water rushing past. It provides a course defined by divine purpose.

Faith affects my thoughts because my thinking is consistent with and shaped by God’s promises over my life. In that case, fear no longer defines me, as I live with the conviction that God has an answer for every situation. But it does not stop with the conviction that there are answers to difficult or impossible situations. I must also think differently about myself and others, according to His heart. Faith corrects perceptions and aligns us
with the heart of God for others. This allows us to do as Jesus did when He called the zealous, but unstable, Peter a rock. Jesus saw correctly. Others did not.

A renewed mind sees from divine perspective. In our lives, it is the result of repentance, as repentance basically means to change the way we think. It considers realms of possibility that are not natural, or perhaps more accurately are
beyond nature
. Those without Christ at the center of their thinking live within a prison of restraints that God never intended. Fear often dictates how people think, but fear never bears the fruit of the impossible. Wisdom should address more than survival; wisdom should lead to Kingdom-orientated breakthroughs.

How would your thinking change if nothing were impossible, if there were no regrets haunting you from your past, if you had unlimited resources to accomplish all your purpose on the earth? Faith affects human reasoning by removing the boundaries and obstacles we have become accustomed to. It is time to let faith have its full effect on our minds. Let’s just see what might be possible in our lifetimes.

Prayer

Father, I never want my repentance to be on the surface only. I want to be moved deeply unto repentance, as I must think Your thoughts and see from Your perspective. May all the attitudes and thoughts of my heart please You at all times. I want the mind of Christ to become my daily possession—my daily expression. Be glorified in how I think.

Confession

The mind of Christ is my inheritance. I will not strive for what has been given to me freely. By grace I will think in a way that both glorifies God and establishes me in a faith that changes things.

Thankfulness and hunger create the atmosphere for increase.

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o come into the answers that we hope for, we must steward well the moments that we have in God. I do not believe we earn answers, but I do believe we can hinder them from coming by not responding to the ways of His Kingdom. To steward these moments well, we must pay attention to what God values. While the list is long, the two most necessary traits are thankfulness and hunger. Those two aspects of hope, held in tension, help us to press onward, but they also help us maintain a proper heart toward Him “until the answer comes.” This abiding hope is our assurance . . . until.

We pray out of hunger. Desire takes on supernatural characteristics as it drives us into the presence of the Lord to bring a request. But sometimes the Lord answers a prayer differently than we expected. I have seen Him answer prayer in seed form instead of the full breakthrough we were looking for. Thankfulness is critical at that point.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when Jesus multiplied the food. John 6:11 says that they were able to feed the multitudes with the small portion of food
after He had given
thanks
for what He had. That is a pretty remarkable statement. The little was made large in the atmosphere of thanksgiving.

I have watched so many times through the years as people abort their own miracles. Let me give you an example. Let’s say a person has no movement in her left arm because of a frozen shoulder, and she comes for prayer. As I pray, she begins to move her arm, but not yet with full movement. So she can now move it about eighteen inches from her side, but then it is as though she hits a wall. Almost every time that person will say, “No, it’s not healed yet.”

One thing I hate is hype. I never want anyone to pretend a miracle has happened when it has not. But what actually happened in this case? In one moment, she had no movement. In the next, she has eighteen inches of movement. It is obviously not where we want it to be, but why is thankfulness so rare at this point? If I were saving my money with a goal of having $10,000 to buy something very important for my family, and someone gave me a check for $3,000, would I be thankful? Of course I would! I am heading in the right direction. So it is with healing or other kinds of miracles. Sometimes the Lord gives us a seed. And it is the atmosphere of thanksgiving that releases that seed into its potential.

The food multiplied for Jesus after He gave thanks. When He was thankful for a boy’s lunch, it became enough to feed thousands. Thankfulness has that kind of power, both over us and over our circumstances.

If there were one characteristic that I could
wish
upon the people of God, it would be thankfulness. There is nothing so life-transforming in its impact on attitude and conduct as that simple trait. And it is that trait that releases the supernatural potential of God’s promises over all that concerns us.

Prayer

Father, I need to see things as You do. Then I know I would be thankful all the time. You have been so good to me, and You deserve
the honoring response of thankfulness from me in all situations. Help me to take advantage of the opportunities that lie before me that seem so intimidating and invade them with a thankful heart. And please help me not just to use this as a tool for breakthrough, but, instead, let it be the honest expression of my hopeful heart for Your faithfulness to me. Thank You.

Confession

God is good and God is faithful; this is my reason for hope. He has given Himself to the things that concern me. Because of this, I will honor Him with thanksgiving before the answer comes. I will honor Him while the answer is developing before my eyes. And once the breakthrough is in full form, I will continue to declare His greatness. For He is worthy of all honor.

Bible study without Bible experience is pointless.

I
t is not possible to overemphasize the value of the Word of God for our lives. It is our life, our food, our daily bread. And while it is not possible to overemphasize, it is possible to distort. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day did that very well. Jesus confronted one of those distortions when He said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). Life is the goal of reading the Bible. Life is measured in its freedoms, its newness. The transformation of a person is the end product of the study of Scriptures. We live by every word that comes from His mouth.

Tragically, people who have no encounter with the One the Scriptures point to are often the most critical judges of others. They end up working against the very thing they think they are working for.

Granted, as I mentioned earlier, great error has come into the Church when experience is valued over Scripture. Legitimate horror stories exist in which great deception entered a person’s life
or even a group of people, a movement, when they interpreted the Bible through their experiences. Generally, in these cases, the people came up with their own interpretations of Scripture that, in their minds, were new and fresh. Or perhaps they saw an angel or had a vision or something unusual happened that led them off the cliff of reasoning. The end for these individuals is deception and bondage.

I have seen this firsthand, actually. And it should be a concern for anyone who is hungry for what the Bible speaks of. But it is no less dangerous to interpret Scripture apart from experience. Again, would you receive the insights and instruction on what it means to be born again from someone who was not? I doubt it.

Many people criticize those who long to experience more in God, but I don’t trust the ones who don’t. We are not going to be kept free from deception by abandoning experience. In fact, the ones who do not hunger more for God are already deceived.

Oftentimes religious circles are known for extreme control of the people, situations and environment around them. Control then becomes the issue of the hour. Studying the Scriptures without letting the Holy Spirit teach us puts us in control. He always takes us to Jesus. Going to the One the Scriptures point to puts Him in control. In other words, when the Bible is an end unto itself, it gives us a measure of learning, but no personal transformation.

One of the primary issues that Jesus had with the scribes and Pharisees was their approach to the Scriptures. They were very learned by the educational standards around them. They could quote, recite and teach others the commands of God, along with the commands they created from what they thought God wanted. But they could not do what they taught others to do. There was no impartation of grace that actually enabled them to obey the Word they studied.

The bottom line was that they had no relationship with the Person they studied about; therefore, there was no enablement to obey. They missed the most important part of the life they thought they had said yes to—to live in, enjoy and give away God’s love. They were not even close.

I love God’s Word so much. It is alive. It speaks. The more I read, the more I want to read. Hunger for wisdom and understanding has to be the most natural hunger there is for the disciple of Jesus. Reading the Bible with my heart wide open moves me to greater surrender in pursuit of the One all the Scriptures point to—Jesus. It is good for me to remember that if for some reason hunger wanes, there is a practical solution. In this Kingdom, you get hungry by eating.

Prayer

Father, I love the gift of hunger You have given me. I trust You never to give me a stone instead of bread. All my trust is in You. You are the perfect Father, the God of perfect love, delighting in us beyond our ability to delight in ourselves. Thank You for that. And as I daily read Your Word, please help me to see what I need to see and be changed into everything You planned for my life from the beginning.

Confession

I love the Bible. I love that God makes it the living testimony of my wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ. I embrace the privilege of encountering the One the Scriptures point to. I delight in all it says about me and purpose to change my thoughts accordingly. By God’s grace, I will succeed in these things that God may be glorified!