Dear One,
The Lord bless you!
You DON’T need to read this article if you get prayers answered all the time. There are people like that! NOPE! You don’t need to read the article! No, no, no…BUT, if however, you don’t fall into that category, well then, maybe…
Love you! KRP
TWO FOUNDATIONS
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: Matt 7:10 NKJV
Jesus continually taught using examples in the natural to teach spiritual realities. Talking about moving mountains gave a concrete example of the gift of faith and the working of miracles. The good seed, the camel through the eye of a needle, and the grass of the field gave convincing natural examples to amorphous spiritual truths. I learned a lot about spiritual foundations with the first house that we bought. We were two young, real sharp cookies who bought a prefabricated house thinking it was a stick-built fortress of a home. Young and dumb, I know! When the cracks appeared in the living room walls and hallways, and our house started slowly breaking apart, I knew we had a problem, and it turned out to be our foundation. We had to backfill, to reinforce our foundation with more concrete. Jesus taught that if you didn’t have a good foundation, your house was going to fall down!
Whenever you start seeing ‘cracks in the walls,’ whether it’s in a relationship like a marriage, a family, a business, a ministry or church, you always must go back and look at the foundations. What is your marriage built on? Your family? Your church or ministry, or business? What are the bedrock realities, or the lack thereof, that make up your foundation? If your foundation is strong, you won’t have cracks and you can survive any storm. If you have cracks, you must repair the foundation.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ…2 Cor 10:4-6 NKJV
The foundation for the Church, and thus for our individual lives, is Romans. When Romans truth is at the foundation of our prayer lives, our prayers get answered magnificently. Strongholds are what keep us from answered prayer, and Romans crushes strongholds. A stronghold is a mindset, a pattern of thinking, impregnated with hopelessness that causes believers to accept as unchangeable something they know is contrary to the will of God. You must honestly confront your strongholds with Romans truth to get your prayers answered. Unanswered prayer is NEVER God’s problem; the problem comes from our end of the conversation. Romans holds the solution, the backfill to your foundation.
We have learned in healing ministry that a great key is in Romans 5:17 and therein lies the key to virtually all strongholds.
For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Rom 5:17 NKJV
Three great realities – abundance of grace, the gift of righteousness, and reigning in life. I’m teaching this again because it came up this week and is threatening to derail an important outreach that we are assigned to accomplish. If you don’t confront and overcome the strongholds in your life, then you won’t be able to accomplish the great purposes the Spirit has sown in your heart. In some cases, it’s a matter of life and death…
You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 Tim 2:1-2 NKJV
When it comes to truths like grace, there are sometimes that you just must sit down and think on it, almost like marinating a steak before you cook it. To get the rich full flavor of the meat you must marinade it in sauces that bring out that flavor. If you will marinade your heart with grace, you will enjoy the sweet aroma and delightful tastiness of answered prayer. Grace is the antidote to religion. All religion is based on works. Grace is rooted in God’s work through Christ on our behalf and not of works at all. Ask the Lord to teach you about grace. Settle in and let class begin!
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor 5:21 NKJV
The logical extension of grace is the gift of righteousness. As children, our fundamental understanding of a gift was destroyed by Santa Claus with his ‘naughty and nice’ list. A gift is an expression of love, but we made a gift to be an expression of merit. We were all ‘naughty’ so we were exempted from any ‘gifts.’ Believe it or not, that childhood trauma has colored the way you perceive gifts since you were young. Gifts have become an obligation or a bribe, not an expression of the love you feel in your heart. When it comes to the promise of healing or breaking any of the other strongholds we may have, we must begin to perceive the true understanding of a gift, and then the understanding of a gift OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
With the gift of righteousness, you must understand we are applying truth to strongholds. You may be dealing with a generational stronghold, something that was passed down through your family and community. So again, you must marinade your heart in righteousness. You don’t dwell on the stronghold; you dwell on God’s solution to the stronghold. This is so fundamental to faith for answered prayer.
Righteousness is your perfect standing by grace, through the work of Jesus before the Father. It is your standing of perfect justification, being made just-as-if-I never-sinned, before God almighty. It is the standing without any shame, without any unworthiness, without any sense of condemnation, because all that has been washed away by Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ has made you new in your spirit forever!
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. 2 Cor 6:14-16 NKJV
You may say, I’m a pretty good believer, do I really need to seek the gift of righteousness? You tell me! One of the pernicious realities of strongholds is how they are reinforced by friends, family, religion and culture. No one wants you to succeed because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Have no fellowship with those people! When I got filled with the Spirit (I had been born again as a seven-year-old), HS just separated me from family and friends for a year. They just weren’t around! But during that time, He immediately began to change me, to transform my heart and life from the inside out, and make me a new man, so that when I began to interact especially old friends I could give them something that I had made my own – my new life in Jesus.
To reign in life is to have the perfected, mature understanding of who you are in Christ so that you walk as a co-regent with Him having authority over everything out there. Authority is what comes out of you when you know who you are, the real you.
So, Romans sets the first great foundation of our lives. The second is prayer and worship. Heisner pointed out that the great crux of our lives and our walk with ABBA focuses on loyalty – who owns your heart. I’m a math guy. If I wasn’t a minister, I would probably be an engineer or a military officer. One of my sons is both. This is just my way of thinking – you apply your own – but when I began to pray much in tongues, and saw the miracles, I realized what was required from a sacrifice point of view and an effort point of view to break through my strongholds and manifest the fullness of who I am and what I have been given. Jesus spent whole seasons in prayer. At times He prayed all night, because that was what was required for Him to fulfill the will of the Father. How about you and I? Ask the Lord what He requires of you for you to break through your strongholds and get the answers to prayer! He will tell you…
George Mueller built orphanages entirely without advertising for support, but just by prayer. Even if he was in dire need, he didn’t ask for help, but went to his knees before the Father, and ABBA supplied magnificently. Rees Howell changed the course of a war, and the course of history, with his prayer team at the Swansea Bible College in Wales. I had the privilege to visit there last year. On just five acres, it seemed small and insignificant, but what a mighty power of God went forth from that place. Maybe you think you are small and insignificant, but your faith can change the world!
The two great foundations of faith for us – NT truth and prayer and worship, builds the foundations of our lives so that we can reign in life, and accomplish what ABBA would have us to do to advance His kingdom. It’s time to rise up and be all that He has called us to be. Let’s confront our strongholds and watch God crush them under our feet, so that in faith and prayer we can bless the whole world. Amen? Love you!
Remember dear ones, we must be about our Father’s business…