MARCH 12, 2024
Topic: AVOID UNDERESTIMATING JESUS – CONDITION FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S PRESENCE
Text: Mark 16: 17-20, 2 Cor 5:17
Memory Verse: Mark 16: 17 “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in My Name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages”
One cannot conceive of anything that will cripple faith and put the believer in bondage more quickly and surely than underestimating who God is and what He is, and who we are in Him.
Along with that will come an underestimation of the Word, an underestimation of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus and this will keep us in a state of flux, in a realm of uncertainty. Fear will dominate us; doubt will bind us, and hold us in the realm of weakness.
However, when we come to know Jesus as our Lord, as the Mighty One at the right hand of the Father who ever lives to make intercession for us, our Great Lawyer that looks after every legal need of ours in Christ, we will no longer be dominated by fear and doubt.
Our background and our environment are persistently teaching us about our weaknesses and our lack of ability and our unworthiness that we hardly dare say that we are what God says we are.
We are afraid that people will misunderstand us and think we have become fanatical. However, He says, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ (we are already in Christ), he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new, and all these things are of God,” and we are reconciled to Him. Satan has no dominion over this new creature.
We underestimate His Word by not acting on the knowledge of who we are in Christ, not acting of what He has done for us, Knowledge that is not acted upon is of no value.
If you know what Jesus did for you in His Substitution, then you must dare to act on that knowledge. That is the highest order of faith. Simply to admire, to say that you believe it, but to refuse to act upon it, robs you of faith in time of need.
When I know that Eph. 1:3 is real that “He has blessed me with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus “and I know how to assimilate that, how to enjoy it, how to enter the riches of it, then I appreciate my Maker.
He declared what we can do in the name of Jesus in John 16: 24- 33, Mark 16: 17-20 , not only do we have the power to use the Name of Jesus to cast out demons, to heal the sick, but that Name gives us access to God the Father, and is the absolute guarantee for answered prayer.
When you know in your heart that you are what He says you are, then you act it in the face of all, confessing what He has done in you, confessing what He has made you. This glorifies Him and His work.
Meditate and Apply: “Of His fullness have we all received” and it is grace and the ability of God focus to enjoy to the very limit all that we are in Him.