When you are in a service you can say, “Okay, now we are worshiping; now we are taking Communion; now we are imparting; now we are blessing one another.” But you miss the fact that there has to be one main focus: We must know what God is saying right now. You can be so busy taking steps that you lose sight of the mountain peak that you were going to reach. You see, there has to be a dual focus. You have to be filled with all of the things that God is going to do right now, but you also have to keep in mind a Word that God is speaking: “This is where you are going; this is what you are accomplishing; this is what you are creating one another to be.” That thing of focus is very, very important.
There has never been a time in which this has been so emphasized in my thinking. I have one thing in mind: We know. We know who we are. I know who you are and you know who I am. And we know what the Lord has for us.
It is an amazing thing that I have had a Word from God that has created by faith; I have created you to be what you are to be before the Lord. You are the instrument of my deliverance, and so you are ministering to me. As the faith flowed through me to create you, now you create me. It starts a flow of faith that goes back and forth, but we are not going to stop with that. We are co-creators with God to become everything that God wants us to be. It is a thing of faith.
We do not realize how much this battle is really spiritual. It is a thing of spirit. The other day I wondered, “Lord, I read the Word and You say, ‘By His stripes we were healed’ (I Peter 2:24, KJV). Then we shouldn’t have any sickness. The Lord carried all of our infirmities and diseases. Why do we get sick?” And He said, “These symptoms are thrown on you by Satan; if you will accept them, you will be sick. But if you believe in your healing and deliverance, you will be healed.” Then I realized that we have in our faith a great thing.
We can have faith to believe and receive that the Lord Jesus Christ is to us our Healer, our Savior, our Deliverer—all of this. On the other hand, our faith gives us another privilege. We can accept all of the symptoms and the lies that the enemy brings to us, and that will be the truth that we live with; those will be the facts.
The Lord says one thing, but the lying symptoms of Satan say another. Which are you going to believe? If you accept the enemy’s lies, they become the truth of your life. Isn’t that terrible? You get sick, and you say, “Oh, I’m sick.” Maybe you are not really sick. Maybe in the victory of Jesus Christ you are not sick.
He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness (II Peter 1:3). But you either believe it or you don’t believe it. If you believe that the Lord is real to you—you really do believe that He is real to you—then you are going to reject the lies of the enemy.
The facts, if they are seen without faith, are the lying propaganda of Satan. In an international conflict, propaganda comes from both sides. Where is the truth? Well, even if two countries brought forth all of the facts, there would be that little interpretation that one side gives which makes them a lie. The facts are not the truth, because there is no truth but what is spoken with faith and love and a Word from God.
I believe that we have to keep speaking this. There is a deliverance. I feel that I have a deliverance. I don’t want anybody saying, “Well, ‘if’ this is so,” because the truth is that if you put “if” into it, that opens the door to look at something from a negative, wrong side; and that will be what you live with. You say, “Well, if this is something that I’ve done wrong, then I don’t understand what it is I’ve done wrong that caused me to have this terrible headache.” Thinking those “ifs” can be wrong. If there is anything wrong with you, just repent of it and have faith, and never speak an “if.”
We are going to have to take “ifs” and negative speaking out of our lives. We will have to come to the place where not only do we not speak “ifs,” but we do not even speak of any facts without faith. We are going to speak positive things. I don’t want any of you to come to church and say, “I went through a hard battle today.” I don’t want you to even talk about what appear to be the facts unless you voice them with faith. Say, “I claimed the victory today in the battle.” Don’t say, “Oh, I had such a headache; I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Don’t talk about those symptoms, because they may be a lie from Satan. You don’t even know whether they are true or not. Come and say, “I’m a believer. Today I claim one more victory.”
You could stand up and read the Bible with unbelief; and when you finish, who is going to know anything? There would be no life in it. The life is not there because whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). That is why I dislike the newspapers. I dislike the media because they are always looking at something to try to put a little twist on it, to popularize it, to get the people to listen to it. But nobody has any faith. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to say, “These things happened today, but God’s cause will still prevail in the earth. All of these things that happened only made us feel more and more in our hearts that He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Revelation 17:14).
People must come to the place where when they walk into the church they do not say, “I’m hit.” Even that may not be a true thing. They have to walk in and say, “I’m a believer.”
When you look at me, say, “You are free.” When I look at you, I will say, “You are the Kingdom of God—all of you.” We believe for each other. I am making it. That is a guarantee, because I have such faith that you are going to make it too. You are making it with me. I will not be in it without you, and you will not be in it without me.
We will not accept anything else except victory. I can accept the victory of the Lord. By the same token I can resist the devil and he will flee from me (James 4:7). As important as appropriating is, I think rejecting is just as important: “I refuse it. I won’t have it.” Many of you have done that for me. You believed to take on my battle and fight it through; and you have. Now we are going to reject it. When you reject it, it will be all over with. This thing is so totally a thing of spirit.
I have known this before, but I must say that never have I been so impressed with the truth of it. I am so deeply impressed with our ability to reject the enemy and to not speak or even allow negative thinking. Instead, you can say, “I accept the Lord; I accept this thing that God is doing; I accept what He is making me; I accept what He is going to do through me. I just reject everything else. I am going to be the Lord’s servant.”
Let me give you another illustration. If you look at the facts and the news—wars, rumors of wars, dangers, all of the things that are happening—you could become a very depressed, discouraged person (Matthew 24:6–12). But the Lord said, “When you see all of these things, look up, for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). This means that you look at the facts with a faith in the Word that changes everything. You stop believing in the imminent destruction of the world, and you believe in the imminent redemption of the Body of Christ. Isn’t that different?
This oneness looks like it is going to be a problem, but it turns out to be a way that we absorb and evaporate the battle. You can take the battle off of me and I can take it off of you. In this, the greatest assault that ever comes against us can be as nothing.
When we are under assault we can identify it—at least we know that it is a lie. Then we can throw it on our shepherds. We are shepherding you. We are going to learn this. We are going to learn how to evaporate the assault. We are going to learn how to take it. We just enter into this. We learn how to take the battle off each other because it is nothing when it is evaporated off.
If we do not do this, it seems as though it focuses on us and concentrates and becomes a worrisome thing; but when others are taking it and sharing it, they absorb it. But, if they are wise, they do not absorb it to the point that it is their problem. They absorb it and they start dissipating it, evaporating it, throwing it off on the Lord (I Peter 5:7). In oneness we claim the deliverance that the Lord has made for all of us. We are claiming that. We are claiming a victory that was won. Only in this oneness are we going to be able to really prevail in the great victory that Christ Jesus the Lord won for us.
The Scripture, says, “He must reign until all of His enemies are the footstool of His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (I Corinthians 15:26–27). What does this mean? The last thing we do is take all of this assault and death that comes against us and just throw it off. That is the last enemy to be destroyed. And what does the Scripture say in I Corinthians 15 about that? But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 15:57, KJV.
This level of faith could never have worked without this level of oneness coming first. We can apply faith to one another better than we can to ourselves; we can dissipate battle off of one another. This level of oneness is what is going to make it work.
You see, if we are not one and I am being hit and I say, “I’m going to throw this off on this person,” that becomes transference, which is very much akin to witchcraft. But if the oneness is there, then I say, “We bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), and someone else takes the initiative to take it from me.
That is really the difference, isn’t it? We demand to take it.
Members of the Body have been demanding for days, “I demand to have this. I’m going to take this thing.” I wasn’t initiating it, because I wouldn’t wish that warfare on anybody. I would not have allowed it; but your faith took it. When something is transferred by faith, that is not witchcraft.
No, it is a service. It is the Lord ministering in the Body.
The Scripture says, “Bear one another’s burdens.” It does not mean, “Okay, I’m going to dump my burden on you.” That is not it. Instead, a brother says, “I am going to carry your burden, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). It has to start from the other side with faith, where he is taking it to dissipate it and throw it off.
This is perfect, for it means that there is no limit to our initiative. In other words, we come to the place where our faith becomes your faith. We are going for everything. There is no limit to the initiative of our faith to break you into resurrection life and fulfillment.
Through the years I always felt a reluctance every time someone said, “We are going to take the battle off of you.” I felt a reluctance because it was not in my heart to dump anything on anybody. I would rather die under it myself than to see somebody else take it and die under it. You see, it is of God that you do not want to dump on your brother, but it is also of the Lord that you initiate taking his burden. That becomes an act of faith. The transference where you dump something is like witchcraft; it is not an act of faith, and it is evil. I am establishing a principle here.
Transference comes when someone refuses to take something on, but he very willingly keeps dissipating and throwing off what the Lord has been dealing with him about.
The Scripture says, “As He laid His life down for us”—that is positive transference; He took our sins upon Him—“we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (I John 3:16). We say, “Well, that means the end of position, the end of ambition, the end of our personal striving and our selfishness,” and so forth. Yes, but it means something more. It comes into that perfect love and faith whereby I lay down my life inasmuch as I become the creator of your life. Of course, behind that are the ways of God—that you lay your life down and you say by faith, “I will create your life; I will bless you; I will take all your burden and dissipate it.” And in that amazing thing, God also creates the instrument of your own release, and you are created into the image of God.
I hope you see that it becomes something so amazingly wonderful. If you lose your life, you have the promise that you are going to find it (Matthew 10:39). You say, “I just give my whole life for you.” Then you will find it. It will come back. You are not going to be a loser, because in our giving of ourselves for each other, we never lose. We just open up the flow of faith that keeps coming back, circulating, circling back. Isn’t it wonderful the way that we can love each other and live? But if we seek to save our own life, we will lose it (Matthew 16:25). Be selfish and die if you want to. Do the will of God and live if you want to.
This is the greatest truth voiced in action. Action! We are living it now.
We are not just talking about some theory and philosophy; we are really doing this.
That is true. Thus fulfilling the law. Thus recreating and recirculating.
In the Kingdom, you are given a privilege: You can lose your life; you can love; you can give. You say, “But I would be a loser.” No, that is the only way that you are going to win! You will be something special then, because coming back to you will be the creativity of God. It will make you something special. I know this is true. This is the way it really works.
I hope you understand that we are going to declare one thing: no more “ifs.” If you come into a service with “ifs,” you are going to be sorry. Come in with faith. Proclaim the Word of the Lord. Speak it. We have gained something that we do not dare lose. Let me rephrase that: We are not going to lose it. We are going to bless one another and love one another so much. We are not going to see the facts of somebody’s life, and then sit and judge him. If we see the facts of a person’s life, we are going to say, “First of all, I want a revelation of that person, what God can be to him; I am going to see him in a way that I can bless him.”
Suppose I look at you and I see the facts of your life, your problems, and so forth. If I do not see them with revelation and faith, with a Word from God, then I have to make a decision about you. But my faith says, “I am not going to make a decision about the facts; I am going to have faith for what God wants to do in his life.” I create you because I believe. We have to do this.
We still do not understand the marvelous, wonderful grace of God—how He loves us so much. Don’t judge each other. You cannot look at another person and judge anything that you see wrong, because that person may be in motion. He may be changing. Aren’t we all? We are on the path of God bringing us forth into what He wants us to be.
Don’t look at anyone and say, “Is he perfect?” You don’t look at anyone and say, “Do I criticize him?” You look at him and say, “I believe for him. I believe God will perfect that which concerns him” (Psalm 138:8). In the meantime, there may be something wrong with everybody. But there is something right that God is doing.
I would like to see us shift from prayer to the positive, prophetic proclamation of what we are believing for. Don’t pray for it; we’ve got it. Just proclaim it and establish it.
We are going to take another major amount of ground. We are in it, and we are going to see it manifested. I don’t know how quickly, but it might as well manifest now. I am so insistent. This is the perfect atmosphere for God to move on things that we have waited for years to see. It is going to happen.
This is not just a Word; it is an address.
Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Psalm 90:1. “What is your address?” God is my address. He is our dwelling place.