Every time we come together for worship; we should strive to break through into a higher level in God than we reached in the previous service. There should never be a service without a purpose. Progressively we must come into a greater awareness, of the Lord Jesus Himself, of what the Lord has promised us, and of what He has already given us.
It is important to be aware of God’s promises, and it is equally important to realize what He has already provided. You are probably not aware of how much you really can receive from the Lord. You do not know that what you can have is unlimited in God. It is in our unawareness of His scriptural provision for us that we have our greatest problem.
With faith we focus on what God has said and made available, for all of us should believe in the availability of the promises of God. The whole message of the gospel is that Christ died to open a door and to give us His perfect provision. We cannot earn it, nor is faith a matter of twisting the Father’s arm to obtain something. A true believer sees that God gave him a promise; because he sees that, he determines to appropriate it.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said, “By His stripes, you are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). However, when Peter quoted that prophecy he said, “By His stripes you were healed” (I Peter 2:24). Peter spoke of a finished work. In the Old Testament, there are references to the sacrifice which was to come—how the Messiah would be like a lamb led to the slaughter. Yet, in Hebrews 10:14 we read, “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” Again the Word points to a finished provision. Even our perfection is a provision in Christ, although we have not yet appropriated it.
By one sacrifice the Lord set you apart—sanctified you—and provided for your perfection, and yet you may not have appropriated that perfect provision. By His stripes you were healed, and yet you may not have appropriated your healing. He ever lives to make intercession for you, so that He can save you to the uttermost, and yet you may not have appropriated that full salvation. Understand that you must appropriate each aspect of the Lord’s full, complete, perfect provision. Consequently, there should never be a service in which you are not reaching in to obtain a little more of what God has provided for you to have. It is His intention that you have it.
Do you see how this teaching could lead us to repent? It makes us realize that we do not yet have what we should have. Why don’t we have it? Is God at fault? Is there something wrong with His provision? Does He have to send His Son to die all over again for us? If God is not at fault, then whose fault is it? What is the problem? The greatest problem is your lack of awareness. Ask the Lord to make you aware of what He has for you. We are not even aware of who we are, let alone of what we have, or what we can walk in, or what we can become.
Oh, pray that appropriating faith might operate in our lives! But first, His wisdom and knowledge must come to us, so that we understand the hope of His calling in us. Paul prayed, May (God) give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. Ephesians 1:17b–18. God wants to be glorified in His saints. He wants us to know what He has in His mind for us. If you grasp this revelation, it will do one very important thing for you: It will take your focus off yourself and your own unworthiness.
Don’t you think that we are more aware of what we are in the flesh than of what we are in the spirit? Paul summed up this conflict when he talked about how God had made him an able minister of the new covenant. He went on to say, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” (II Corinthians 4:7). You may be nothing more than a clay pot, but think of what treasures can fill that pot, what wonderful things God has said you can have.
Invariably we seem to allow our sense of unworthiness to challenge our faith. We always seem to impose our fleshly limitations upon God. We fail to see that there is no valid reason for limited thinking. If you say, “Because I am unworthy, God’s promises will never happen,” then you are imposing upon God a limitation that does not even exist, according to the Word. It does not exist at all!
God has not said, “I will take a perfect vessel, someone who has a great deal of confidence, and I will work through him.” Instead, He decides to take the foolish things, the weak things, the base things of the world, to shame the self-sufficient. When you read the first chapter of I Corinthians, you should feel as if you have been slain by the Lord; you should realize that you have no excuse to say, “My unworthiness limits God. My foolishness limits His wisdom. My weakness limits His strength.” You do not have any right to say that!
God chooses to work through inadequate vessels, so that no flesh will glory in His presence. He does not want anyone to say to Him: “Lord, I’m the specialty of the year. You can work through me.” When the Lord mystified the wise scribes and Pharisees, He did it through humble disciples who were called “ignorant and unlearned men” (Acts 4:13). Perhaps in the sight of the Pharisees they were ignorant and unlearned men, but remember that the Pharisees were always presumptuous. They thought they knew everything, and yet they knew nothing, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
This should be our confession: “I know I am foolish. I know I am weak. I know I am a base thing. I am most unworthy. But I will not let my awareness of that interfere with my awareness of the Lord’s promises, His plan, and His commission. I will not waver or draw back, even for one moment, from His promises or His provision for me. Instead, I will believe that what He has promised He is able to perform. He will do it! He will become all things in me. Christ will be glorified in me.”
Your faith must be determined to receive fulfillment.
You cannot think that things will automatically happen. Determine that there will be no limitation in what God can do for you. If there is any limitation in your appropriation of what He has given, it is your own fault.
Several factors could interfere in your effective appropriation. First, you could be overwhelmed by a sense of unworthiness. Second, you could become so arrogant that you thought you deserved a blessing, and that would backfire also. Third, you could become distracted so that you would not focus on what He wanted; you could be so busy with trivia that you never get to the real task of becoming a son.
What a liar the devil is! Sometimes he even tells people that they are doing well, when actually they are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). In our thinking, we must be able to look realistically at a revelation of God’s Word. Then we will say, “This is the provision which the Lord has made for me. It is without limitation. There is nothing that God has not already provided for me.”
Peter tells us, “His divine power has provided us with all things that pertain to life and godliness” (II Peter 1:3). He has also given us … exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. II Peter 1:4. Let us suppose for example that you have a problem with lust, or some other weakness of the flesh. Does this mean that you will be unable to receive anything from the Lord? Of course not, for you cannot impose your limitations upon God. Jesus said, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call righteous men but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:31b–32.
The righteous are never quite righteous enough to get into the things of God. They keep repeating, “I’m getting a little more righteous every day. I’m getting a little more righteous every day.” They keep reaching to attain it, yet in reality they are still standing on the bottom rung of the ladder. But the sinner says, “I don’t think I can ever attain that righteousness. I’ll just step over here to the side, in this little cubicle.” When he steps into the cubicle, somebody pushes a button, and the elevator takes him right up into the righteousness of God!
We are facing tremendous things in God—greater than anything we have experienced so far. It would be a disaster for us to limit ourselves as to what we can have or what we can be. When you focus on your problems, they always tend to limit your thinking about yourself. You cannot think honestly about yourself until you can think realistically about the Lord.
When you realize that the Lord has provided so much for you, then you will not approach your problems like someone who has to earn or deserve anything. Instead, when you hear God say, “Whom can I send?” you will humbly say, “Here I am.” When God wants someone who is weak, you will say, “God must mean me.” You will reach into the Spirit and draw from the Lord.
Will it take you a long time to become something? That is irrelevant; God never intended for you to be anything in the flesh. The only thing that you will ever become is what you appropriate from Him. Reach up to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh (Romans 13:14). Gird yourself with truth and put on the breastplate of righteousness (Ephesians 6:14). Now is the time to appropriate His promises.
We can draw upon His grace, upon the gifts of the Spirit. The Lord never did intend for you to earn anything in the Kingdom; He intended to give it to you. If it is not a gift, then Christ died in vain. If you could ever earn it, if you could ever deserve it, if you could ever work it out, then He would not have had to die. But Christ died, so that by His eternal power He could give us all things that pertain to life and godliness (II Peter 1:3–4). We ought to sing more about His grace and about the gifts of God.
Our lives are filled with a great deal of intensity and striving; however, we should not misinterpret that intensity. What are we really trying to do when we strive, when we work and intercede with a zeal in our spirit? Are we trying to deserve something better? No, instead we are trying to break through our unawareness, to penetrate the satanic walls of resistance, to bring ourselves to stand in His presence, to claim what He has provided—total, complete, absolute victory!
It seems that we must go through various stages of growth before we walk in His full provision. In our immaturity, we can be unaware that the provision even exists for us. Those are like the times of ignorance that God winks at (Acts 17:30) and says, “Well, you deserve what you’re getting because you haven’t looked in the Word to see what is yours.” Then comes a time when we see the provision and mistakenly assume that we must work for it as though it were something we had to attain. Finally, the time comes when we walk in His provision because we see that He has freely given it to us.
Comment: “Whenever you behold a quality in God’s Spirit, you instantly take it on. Appropriation can be very simple. Satan endeavors to take away the simplicity and purity of our devotion to Christ. He seeks to twist it, make it complicated, and make it a religious, difficult thing. Appropriation is not work. Appropriation is standing in the presence of the Lord. When we stand in the presence of the Lord, we become what He is. Everything He is flows into us. That is how we change.
“We do not necessarily change because we go to church; we change because we stand in the presence of the Lord! We do not necessarily change because we read all the books of the Bible; we change because we see the Lord in one verse from the Bible, or half of a verse. It is the awareness of the Lord’s presence that is important. That is why worship can be so phenomenal, because it trains our spirits to see Him. This is a walk with God. It is seeing the Lord. We can change. We can change in a moment, when we see Him. He is coming to us through His Word.”
The whole concept of this message is that we not be only sustained by a blessing; go further. Become His servant, created in His image and likeness. The issue is becoming His son, rather than just being sustained. The foundation of intercession is based on this formula. As you worship, you become aware of the Lord. Then you start to become the expression of His Word and your faith then begins to operate. With that foundation, intercession is effective.
Shake off your self-condemnation! It is time to reach in with faith. In Christ, God has made the full provision for total sonship. We refuse to let the awareness of our unworthiness cloud our awareness of the Lord. We appropriate with faith.