FIRST THINGS FIRST
by Pam Clark
I have a number of friends who are intercessors and often they will go to a certain area and pray for that area and do spiritual warfare against the wicked spirits in high places (See Ephesians 6:12). Very often these prayers are quite effective.
One time the crime rate in the area where I lived had gone up and I told the Lord that I wanted to move out because of it. He told me, “You don’t have to--go and pray for this neighborhood.” So I did. I walked around the streets and rebuked the devil and every thing that was not of God, and the crime went down! Things were fine for quite some time.
There are some situations where God wants you to leave, but often there are times where He doesn’t take you out but leaves you to face the situation with His Word. You really learn a lot about the Spirit of God at these times. You really learn how His Word works.
You can hear a lot of theories and get a lot of formulas on how to do this and that, but does it work??? Sometimes these theories and formulas are just time wasters. You can stand on your head and do backflips and confess five million words over a situation and find that it is not going to do anything.
It could be that patience is required. We need to remember that in this “microwave” society we live in. (Yes, I am guilty of standing in front of the microwave, saying: “Hurry up, hurry up!”)
God has a will and His will lines up with goodness of His Word. Jesus didn’t die just to pass the time away, but He poured out His Blood and went through agony on earth because we meant something to Him--He loves us. And He didn’t die for just a few, but the Bible says that He died for the sins of the whole world--and that means everyone.
“Who so ever believeth in Him shall not perish [eternally], but have everlasting life,” John 3:16. And the more you read His Word, you find out that He also wants you to be blessed right here, with His abundant life! He took on sin, and defeated it, that we might be blessed, but we have to be the ones to partake of it properly.
Just because I put orange juice instead of gasoline in a car’s gas tank doesn’t mean that the car will run on it. I can tell you all day that I filled the tank but that will not make the car run! Things must be properly applied.
If I put salt instead of sugar in the cake mix, it may look right, but it sure won’t taste right! Things can have an appearance of being right, but that doesn’t make it right. The prophet Samuel just knew that one of Jesse’s seven sons that he saw was to be the next anointed king, but God told him, “No.” God said to him that He doesn’t look at just the outward appearance, but He also looks at the heart.
Out in the shepherd’s field was a little boy who loved God with all of his heart. He sang to Him, he danced for Him, he prayed to Him, he meditated upon Him, he called upon Him in his times of trouble, and God was pleased with all that. He told the prophet Samuel, “This is the one that I have chosen!” And so we know that David was the one who was anointed to be the next king.
David was pure from within, therefore David had great prayer power. There was a time when David was bringing the Ark into Jerusalem and got into trouble because he did not have the full understanding of the Word. A man died because of that. But when He got it right, God blessed him abundantly.
You can have the right formulas and not get it right, because the inner man is not right. You can have a pure heart but miss God, because you don’t know His Word! God will never bless sin. But when you get both the inner man and the Word of God right, you can’t be stopped! Praise the Lord!
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