In John 4, we read the account of the woman from Samaria who came to Jacob’s well to draw water. When Jesus asked her for a drink, she said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan?”
At that time, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered by saying, “If you knew who it is who asks of you a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. Then you would never have to draw water again, for you would never thirst again.”
Later the Lord reminded her of what she really was morally and how much she needed Him; but at this point He was dealing with another aspect. He was laying something very positive before her by pointing out the privileges she would have if she would just ask of Him.
That is exactly what God is doing for us. He is drawing us into Him, and as we ask of Him, He is opening up doors and privileges to us that we never dreamed of before. We must have a new concept of our privileges. We must understand who we are. We must not fail to see the things that God is setting before us. Let us consider eight privileges that are ours in this end-time walk with the Lord.
1. We have the privilege of knowing. The keys of knowledge are being restored to the Church. This is revelation knowledge, which is an experiential knowledge that penetrates our spirit, increasing our capacity to hold more of God, causing our spirit to grow in the Lord, as we walk in the revelation of it.
What is coming forth is not man’s wisdom; it is God’s wisdom. It is very practical, yet at the same time very mystical. Although it is spiritual, it leads us down the paths of everyday living. This knowledge will enable us to walk victoriously through days of tribulation, coming upon the earth.
2. We have the privilege of choosing. I do not believe in free will because the enemy has bound the new believers will and many old believers will through deception and addiction, and they need deliverance for their will to be set free.
In the past, people often aspired to things in God without being able to achieve them. But now we can choose something and walk in it, regardless of how strong we are or how much ability we have in ourselves to do it.
God is meeting us and giving us a privilege of choosing, and an ability to follow through. When we choose to walk in victory, He will give us the grace to walk in that victory.
Anything that we rise in faith and choose to do, at a moment of the Spirit’s witness, we can do. We can be anything that God sets before us to be. We can do anything that He sets before us to do. This is a glorious day of choosing.
3. We have the privilege of freedom. Anything that we are free of in our spirits, we will be free of in the physical. We can overcome habits and problems because our spirits are not addicted. That resides in the area of the soul and body.
We are not bound like the people in the world who moan and groan because they cannot get rid of habits and addictions. The only reason problems are presented to us, is for us to overcome them, through appropriation of the provision of Christ, this is a means that God uses to cause us to grow spiritually.
We are called to freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we can choose to walk away from our problems. We can be as free as we want to be. Many people hang on to their chains because they would not know what to do with freedom. We know what we are going to do with our freedom; we will walk through the land and subdue it by speaking a Word from the Lord.
We are not limited. We may feel as weak and insignificant as mice, but God will bless the mice and turn them into lions.
He takes the weak to confound the mighty and the foolish to confound the wise, that no flesh will glory in His presence (1 Corinthians 1:27–29). What a privilege we have!
We can choose to be free and walk away from chains. Some people enjoy being sick. A blind beggar may not want to be healed, because then he will have to throw away his tin cup and go to work like any other man. He may not particularly want that freedom, for then he cannot feel sorry for himself anymore, and he will not have the leverage through pity to get other people to do his will.
God has set before you the privilege of freedom so that you can do something with it. God is loosing the young girls, the wives, and the mothers from their problems, so that they can stand straight and tall and walk through the land as handmaidens of the Lord.
The young men were not made to bow down to oppression in a state of inadequacy, or to be steamrollered by all the pressures of this life.
They were made to stand and hurl the authority of Jesus’ name into the face of the hurricane and bind the storm. They were made to be conquerors. They were born to be free.
How much freedom will you choose? It is your prerogative. According to the Scriptures, you were born from above more than a conqueror, you just have to walk it out, to work out your soul salvation by not depending upon yourself, but the Holy Spirit within to strengthen you .
If you accept anything less, you have been conned into it by Satan. You have accepted something less than what God says is really yours. For freedom did Christ set you free (Galatians 5:1). He set you free so that you could walk in real freedom.
4. We have the privilege of becoming. For the first time, the restrictions upon us are gone. We are not the same people today as we were yesterday, and tomorrow we will not be the same as we are today.
Because we believe on the Lord, we have the right, the authority to become sons of God. As we steadfastly contemplate His holiness day by day, we will be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord, the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). We are changing. We have the privilege of becoming almost anything that our hearts can imagine by the drive of the Holy Spirit.
You must expand. Do not be an old wineskin who cannot bear to hold the new wine of the Kingdom. Be a new wineskin; let the new wine work within you. Who knows what wonders the Word will perform?
Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes; enlarge the place of your dwelling (Isaiah 54:2). It is time to inherit the fields of the Gentiles. Walk away from what you have been. You can be anything that you dare to believe in the Lord. Just keep walking with the Lord and you will change every day.
Perhaps you feel as if you are not changing fast enough, and you become disgusted with yourself. There should be some way to take a before and after picture of your spirit, so that you could see how much you have changed, how beautiful you are becoming.
Without being egotistical, you can look up to God and say, “I am a miracle. I am a son of God. I know that I am not what I’m going to be; but thank God, I am changing.
It is in the plan of God to make you in all points conformed to the image of His Son. This is your primary destiny, the reason you were born into this world. Lord, I look to You, and I know that I am going to be just like You.” What a privilege!
5. We have the privilege of giving and loving. After a period of about eighteen hundred years in which the Church labored with the concept of clergy and laity, the Body of Christ is returning to the vision of every member having a ministry.
We are all ministers and priests of our God. The universal priesthood of believers is becoming a greater reality every time we stand as a body of people and worship the Lord. We are a Kingdom of priests, and everyone has a ministry. Everyone can draw from God and have something to give and a love they can share in the Lord. But always remember that until you start walking with God, you have no ministry. A ministry is a walk with God. It is faith working by love, it is the New Creation.
In a bank, it makes quite a difference on which side of the counter one stands. On the inside are those who handle the money, and on the other side are the people who come to receive money.
The Lord has put us all on the inside of the counter, we are in Christ. And the Lord has made us administrators of His estate.
He tells us, “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8). We have the privilege of loving and giving. We can take the fullness of the Lord and minister it out to everyone. God has put us on the inside of the counter and said, “Here is My fullness; give it out.” We are learning to reach into the provision and then to give it out, to be faithful to the privilege of loving and giving.
6. We have the privilege of constantly enjoying a flow of teaching from the Lord. In most churches, you are not hearing the kind of word that you can walk in. You are not learning the ways of God, the principles of His Kingdom. That does not happen in this move of God, because we do not teach dead doctrines; we teach something alive from God, the wisdom of the Lord.
One of the greatest privileges we have is to be able to decide and choose to be taught of the Lord. We are in tune with the greatest teaching flow from the Lord that has ever been loosed upon any people in any generation. Let us take advantage of it, for it will transform us into channels of God’s wisdom.
7. We have the privilege of evaluating. No one points a finger at you and says, “You can’t do this and you can’t do that. This is the way you have to act.” You are not placed in a straitjacket of legalism.
Instead, God gives you the privilege of evaluating, and the wisdom to evaluate properly. Do you realize how many things you are choosing that you would not have chosen before? You have changed. You evaluate things differently. Now you see that the world is biting on an empty hook, but you can choose to walk with the Lord with all of your heart.
8. The greatest privilege and prerogative of all is that of living in the Word. We can learn how to abide in the life flow of the Vine. I have always heard the word, but I did not seal that Word to my heart by walking in it. I was a forgetful hearer. But I can now appreciate the privilege that is mine to think God’s thoughts, to hear His Word and to will His will, to love what He loves and hate what He hates.
I have the privilege of searching the Word and becoming what He is. My respect for the Word is indescribable. How precious the Scriptures are to me.
Prophecy and the flow of psalms have prevented us from turning away from the Bible, saying that we do not need it because we are hearing directly from the Lord.
That fresh voice of the Spirit comes and makes us love the Scriptures all the more. It opens to us the last and greatest of all the privileges, that of hearing God’s words and responding to His will. We can think His thoughts after Him and communicate with Him. We can see God limit Himself needlessly on our behalf, so that we can participate with Him, becoming a co-worker with him in reaching the lost.
The Word opens to us an unlimited life, and we appreciate it all the more because an omnipotent God has limited Himself with every word that He spoke.
Let me explain this.
God owns all things and He can do all things. If He had never uttered a word, no one could claim anything from Him. No one could make a simple petition which He was bound by His integrity to fulfill.
However, the moment that God made a promise to a man or woman, that promise became a commitment on His part. It limited Him to do certain things for that person. It limited Him in His reactions and responses to that person.
The omnipotence of God is being limited and channeled with every word He speaks. He is limiting Himself to take certain actions.
He says, “Call upon Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3). All we have to do is call upon God and He has to answer us and show us great things; He has to do some mighty things which we have not known, because He has committed Himself.
He says, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?” Jeremiah 32:27. Because He says that to us, we can come to Him and know that we will receive an answer. We have the privilege of believing God’s Word and all that it can mean in our lives.
Those who neglect reading the Scriptures had better overcome it. Your greatest privilege is to walk along, with God talking to you, revealing Himself to you, showing you what He is going to do, and communicating His promises to you.
Every time you read the Word you can say, “Lord, you did it again. You set a course of action by committing Yourself. You always give Yourself away in Your Word. Lord, I’ll pin You down on that promise. I will stand on that provision.”
In all of your weaknesses and frailties, God has made it possible through His Word to link your weakness with His omnipotence, to link your unworthiness with His righteousness.