To hear a living word from God is to become addicted to it. It imparts the Spirit of God to us which satisfies the void of God in our life.
We must learn how to reach into the Lord, to see a fulfillment of His will in our life.
God gives us a promise in John 7:37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
If we can learn how to drink of the Spirit, out of the inflow of the Spirit there will be a deposit made in our heart. And it is out of that deposit of the Spirit in us, that there will come an outflowing of Spirit filled words that become like a river of life, and the Spirit of God will confirm those words with signs and wonders following.
When we find someone who is open to the Spirit of God in us, then we can minister out of that deposit resulting in an anointing that is upon the word of God in our heart and the revelation will become expanded as the Holy Spirit gives us the words to minister the Spirit to another.
Whatever our spiritual level may be, something more can be imparted to us. If we seem to have very little, God can give us more. Even if we seem to have everything, there is always something more that God can give us. The wonderful thing about impartation is that God always starts right where we are, and gives us as much as we can believe him for. Faith is the basis by which we move on with the Lord.
Matthew 9:27 When Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out and saying, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” 28 And when He had come into the house, the blind men came to Him. And Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, saying, “See that no one knows it.”
Wherever we are spiritually, whatever level you have attained, something more can be added to us.
We can compare it to a birthday gift that we receive. In the natural, there is an appropriate gift for each birthday, whether we are young or old, so it is concerning our spiritual age too. Whatever spiritual level we are on, whatever our age spiritually, there is something special that the Lord wants to give us, to impart to us.
A spiritual gift is not some human tendency or perception that is anointed. We must get this truth about divine endowments in our mind, just as the first apostolic ministries did.
We find the book of Romans opening with this same thought about a gift being imparted (Romans 1:11). Even though it comes through a human channel, yet it is divinely originated. It is a gift. It is not earned, and it is not necessarily deserved. Although there must be some preparation in your heart to receive it with faith, yet worthiness is never the basis by which a gift is given.
Romans 1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, 10 making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.13 Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.
The fruit that Paul wanted was for the reality to come forth. He said, “I long to see you. You are the Lord’s vineyard, and I want to see how you are growing. One man planted, another man watered, and God gave the increase (I Corinthians 3:6–9). I want to see how much fruit you are going to bear.” Paul wanted to see their fruitfulness and maturity come forth. Therefore, he said, “I long to see you in order that I may impart some spiritual gift to you” (Romans 1:11). What spiritual gift did he want to impart? He said “some spiritual gift”—whatever they needed. It might be a word of wisdom, or faith, or some other spiritual gift, but it would be a gift from God.
Paul wrote to Timothy, “Stir up the gift that is in you. That gift is important. God did not give you a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a disciplined mind. Do not be intimidated. Hang in there, son. Be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ with me. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (II Timothy 1:6–8; 2:3). Timothy had a choice: he could either be very human, or he could appropriate an impartation of God’s attributes and abilities and walk in them.
God is bringing forth His sons, but there are times when everyone seems to waver a little. By appropriating the attributes of God, we can get rid of the wavering and be one hundred percent for the Lord.
God delights in giving of Himself. He has an excellent quality: Though He fills the heaven of heavens (I Kings 8:27), He is never diminished, no matter how much He imparts to another.
God wants to give us His faith. He wants to impart it more than we want to receive it. We may not have much faith, but that is a good place to start, the problem is with people who say that have all kinds of faith, but we don’t see it working in their lives.
There is only one kind of faith that works. And that is the faith that God has brought forth in our life. Any faith that originates in us is not going to work. What we need is a gift of faith that is imparted by God.
As God begins to open our spiritual ears to hear his voice, the word that we are hearing keeps getting richer and deeper. It is not just a teaching but an impartation to our heart, the Lord meets our heart in it.
God wants to meet our heart in a special way. When we hear a word from God, we do not say – give me six months and I will work it out. That is what religion does, it reverts to the efforts of self to try and work it all out. That is what happened to the Galatian churches, and therefore Paul wrote to them, “Having begun in the Spirit, do you think now that you will be made perfect in the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain?” (Galatians 3:3–4.)
The Lord starts a work in our life, but we end up trying to work it out in the strength of our self. He is the One who starts the thing, and He is going to complete it.
If we haven’t seen much change in our life, we do not want to let our hearts be discouraged. The way we can be changed is through exposure to him. The input must come from Him. You must have a real meeting with God—a meeting with God that is more than an experience; it becomes an impartation to us, and something is left in our heart. To whatever extent He is revealed to us, whatever part of Him is revealed to us or imparted to us, that is what we will walk in from that time on. It will be a gift that God has given us.
Human, personal worthiness is never the issue, because no matter how much we try, we will never be worthy of the gifts of God. We cannot earn them or deserve them.
God has an amazing way of meeting our present need. We are never allowed to get discouraged just because we have reached a dead end in ourselves. That is the time we should reach up to the Lord. We always reach up into God for more.
Psalm 68:18 You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive; You have received gifts among men, Even from the rebellious, That the Lord God might dwell there. 19 Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, The God of our salvation!
Jesus has ascended on high and has given us gifts, even for the rebellious. How many times has God done good things for us when we have known that we didn’t deserve it? We felt far from him.
We need to just open our heart to the Lord and say I need a gift, I need more faith, I need more love, I need more, more, more.
When we begin walking with the Lord, we soon realize that we do not have enough faith, it can be depressing but this is when we need to rejoice. When we tell the lord that we have run out of faith, that is when the lord will say, that’s o.k. you can use mine.
When we have come to the end of our self, that God begins to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. When we begin to learn how to walk with the lord, that is when we can say, no human being could have done what I did. It was a gift. It was an ability that God imparted to me.
The world has yet to see the way we are enabled to love people and have faith for them. When everyone else has given up on them, we stand in the gap and intercede, and God does a miracle in their lives.
And after a while we say, with Paul, “What do we have that we have not received?” (I Corinthians 4:7.) We don’t have anything that God did not give us. It was all a gift. We no longer boast as though it was something inherent in ourselves, as though we had not received it from God, we give him all the glory.
As we begin to grow in the lord, we see how it all makes sense. We begin to sense how very much God loves us. Everything that we have attained and have has been a gift.
We need to learn how to be a good receiver. It is more blessed to give than receive. But first we must learn how to receive. What we give will have no permanent effect unless it has first been imparted to us from God. When we give out of what we have received from God it is never depleted in any way but expanded. Otherwise, we are giving out of self, and then latter we can sense a loss.
We need to learn how to appropriate from God, how to continually draw upon him, so that we are continually filled. Then we will be giving out of an overflow the Spirit.
Until we learn how to walk with God, where we learn to draw from him, and walk in what we have received, we will not have an effective ministry.
When we learn how to maintain the inflow, then we are becoming a mouthpiece for God, where we speak God’s Word, we think God’s thoughts, we move in God’s wisdom, we discern spirits with the understanding that God has. We believe and have His faith. We work miracles, but it is all God; all the credit goes to Him. We know where it all came from; it came from God. And what the Lord does through us becomes a very definite and permanent thing.
I Corinthians 15:57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We do not want to fight our own battles, there is a way that we can appropriate his victory. It is that simple, it is a gift. We need to receive the gift of victory, the gift of faith, everything we receive from God is a gift.
James 1: 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
The word of God is always talking about what He wants to give us. It doesn’t matter how little we start with. What matters is whether it was from God or not, this is what is important
Faith comes by hearing God, and it works by loving God. If we learn how to get in the flow, we will continue to grow and grow and grow.
When we learn how to hear a living word from God, how to practice the spiritual principles we have learned, where we are exercising in the things of God, then our spiritual muscles will grow. Our faith will begin to develop so that nothing will be impossible for us, because it is all in God. We will learn how to breakthrough into more and more.
As we learn how to receive from God, then we will learn how to impart it to others. We learn how to minister through the laying of hands, where God will minister through them; that we know the person we lay hands on will receive something from God.
We learn how to speak in the spirit, so that we know God will give someone a word through us.
As we learn how to give what we have received from God, and every time we do it, we can sense that God has given us even more that what we have given. There is a blessing that comes in being a channel of God through whom He gives.
As we learn how to walk with God, we begin to sense when we are close to him and when we are a far off. If we are walking a far off like peter and doing the wrong then, it will not be too long before we say, I don’t want any more of this stuff. We haven’t begun to live until we live for the Lord. We begin to learn how to put the Lord first. To learn how to walk with the Lord we are going to have to let him direct our thoughts.
Philippians 4: 8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. 9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.
Whatever we have received from the Lord, we must determine to walk in it. All dedication starts with a determination. All our disciplines must have joy in them. We must meet the Lord in them.
We have a human tendency to worry over certain things. This is when we need to find someone to help us with whatever is bothering us. The kingdom is a family, we are never alone. God puts Sheppard’s over us until we come to maturity, then we can help someone else with what every problem they may be going through.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “We are not overlords over you. I haven’t tried to run your lives. But we are helpers of your faith for your joy” (II Corinthians 1:24).
We can’t back off just because we see a few giants or because the way becomes a little difficult. A walk with God is a miracle journey from the very start to the finish. It is when we learn how to walk with God that we begin to experience all the marvelous things that he has for us.
Whatever you need from God He has provided as a Gift of His Grace. He has many wonderful gifts for us, but we receive them through faith. It all comes by grace through faith, and it is a gift from God.
Whatever we need, it is the Holy Spirit’s job to reveal it to us, and to teach us that it is a gift from God. It is freely given to us by God.
When it really comes down to it what we need is the faith to believe God, everything is relational. We go from grace to grace, faith to faith, strength to strength, and glory to glory. And the key is learning how to receive it as a gift from God.
Every battle we face is just an opportunity, for God to meet our need. He wants to become something to us, for us. What does God want to be for us now, in your present situation? This is the gift that he wants us to receive.