CHAPTER 2
REALIZE REALITY!
Its time that we Realize Reality.
To realize is to gain and obtain.
Reality is something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
If you will believe, then you will call on Him and if you will call on Him, He will listen to you.
If you will believe, then you will be seeking and searching after Him and if you will seek and search after Him, with all your heart, then you will FIND HIM!
This find is a discovering, a possessing, a reaping more of God in your mind and your soul and your heart.
Understand?
You call, God listens.
You seek, God reveals.
If you will, God will.
Its time that we Realize Reality.
To realize is to gain and obtain.
Reality is something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says the LORD, "When seventy years have been completed for Babylon
Do you realize that God has a plan for your life and right now He is pulling out the weeds and the hard rocks that litter the soil of your heart?
Do you realize that God has an appointed time when He is going to show up and you will see Him face to face when He has fulfilled His good work in you?
Its time that we Realize Reality.
To realize is to gain and obtain.
Reality is something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
11 "For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
Do you realize that Gods plan for you is better than a check from Publishers Clearing House on earth?
Do you realize that Gods plans for you includes your soul being complete, your mind being sound and your heart being filled with love and peace, I mean real peace while you are here on earth?
Do you realize that Gods plan for you does NOT include misery, distress or injury on earth?
Do you realize that God has a future for you on earth?
Do you realize that this means that whatever you are going through right now is NOT how you will end up? AH HA!
Its time that we Realize Reality.
To realize is to gain and obtain.
Reality is something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
12 "Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
Do you realize that what you are going through right now is to cause you to draw closer to God? to pray more to God? to seek harder after God? to search deeper after God?
Do you realize that what you do reveals what is already in your heart towards God?
14 "I will be found by you,' declares the LORD, "and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,' declares the LORD, "and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.'
Do you realize that God can be found?
Do you realize that God is telling YOU that He can be discovered and possessed by you?
Do you realize that God is in the restoration business?
Just like an old rusted out piece of metal that was once a car, your old rusted out heart is in a process of being refreshed, renewed, revived and restored!
Notice the last line of verse 14.
"and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.'
The place where you are headed is the same place where you came from…
Where is that place?
The Heart of God.
You came from God and for trusting in Jesus, you will return to God.
David, an adulterer and murderer, David, a man who overlooked incest in his own home, David, a man who’s own son sought to kill him and take his kingdom from him, David a man who spent a lot of his life fighting or running, and a man who knew what it was like to be in the presence of God.
David knew that sometimes the presence of God brought great joy and sometimes it brought great pain, but even so, though joyful or painful, David could not escape his great need for Gods love and presence in his life.
Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,
12 Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Did David write this in a state of joy and relief or did David write this in a fit of exhaustion and surrender because he finally realized that no matter how hard or how far he ran, he could never escape a God who simply loves him?
We need to be convinced in our heart that the only way out of a tough situation is to believe God wants to accomplish the impossible in your life.
Like every great man or woman of faith, we are not alone in wanting the easy way out of trials and tribulations.
Take a good look at Jesus because Jesus wanted an easy way out too.
Let’s accept the fact that when the bible says that Jesus was tempted, He was tempted!
Jesus was not ignorant of what it meant to be crucified.
No one, not even Jesus enjoyed physical pain.
Yes, even more painful was Jesus knowing that He would be separated from His Father and experience sin for the first time in His life, but we can’t really relate to that. We were born into sin. What we relate to is avoiding pain, loneliness, suffering and separation.
Remember, the cure for a troubled heart is to believe in God. And believe is for the umpteenth time to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.
Belief in God is a spiritual function that takes place in the heart.
The heart mentioned here is not just the physical organ; the heart is the center of your emotions, desires and passions.
It’s the center of the physical and the spiritual.
It’s who you were, are and will be.
It’s where belief starts and where faith exists.
It’s where God comes to live in you.
Your heart is where God’s action is!
Let’s go back to the apostles not being able to cast out this particular demon.
Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 And Jesus said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
Did you read that? What Jesus said to His apostles?
Because of the littleness of your faith
Just a little question, what did that verse make you think of?
Being able to move mountains or having faith to move mountains?
If you thought of moving mountains then may I suggest that you are missing the forest for the trees?
The mountain that is in your life, is just a mountain.
But the faith that you have can be mountain moving.
What I mean is, mountains can be moved, and faith is the mountain mover. So which has more power, influence and impact in your life?
Which is more threatening?
That which is before you, or that which is within you?
Can I suggest something that I can’t prove?
I suggest that the “littleness of faith” that Jesus is talking about is not an overall, this is all you got to work with littleness, this littleness is pure unbelief.
Unbelief means weakness and unfaithfulness, unbelief is a faith that is weak and unfaithful.
Were the Apostles failures because of their unbelief?
Did they give up in frustration and say to one another, why are we even trying this? Let’s face it we will never be like Jesus. We will never do the things that Jesus does. We will never get it right. God hasn’t called us to cast out demons. We have the sin of unbelief!
Jesus didn’t condemn them, Jesus told them that their problem with faith is not that they lacked faith, but that their faith was weak and not able to perform up to its true potential.
Jesus did not say that their faith was bad or sinful He just said that it was “small”.
I mean come on, look at what they were attempting to do!
Think about this for a minute, is casting out demons a miracle?
It all depends on your faith.
A miracle is an event that is considered “supernatural”.
Super-natural.
The super mixed with the natural.
God is super and you are natural.
Casting out demons may be super for you, but it’s natural for God.
Faith may be super for you, but it’s natural for God.
Faith is super-natural isn’t it?
Doesn’t that make faith a type of miracle?
The mixing of a super God with the natural you?
Is your God small?
How do you know?
Ask yourself, is your faith small?
Remember, smallness of faith implies unbelief and unbelief is a faith that is weak and unfaithful.
If our faith is in God, then what or who is weak and unfaithful?
Seriously.
The answer is life changing.
If our faith is in God, then what or who is weak and unfaithful?
Lets examine faith.
Faith is assurance, faith is hope, and faith is conviction.
Hebrews 11:1 NOW faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Think of faith this way.
When you came to faith in Christ and you accepted Him into your heart and life, did you accept all of Jesus or just certain parts of Him?
Namely, did you accept Jesus the Savior and not Jesus the Lord?
Did you accept the loving forgiving Jesus and not the suffering, self denying, learned obedience through the things that He suffered Jesus?
Did you accept the make me feel good inside but don’t deal with my character Jesus?
Do you think that it is possible to be part Christian and part pagan?
Can you be part saved and part not saved?
Can you live your life with one foot in heaven and the other firmly planted on the earth?
Come on, if you start running in a race and you don’t intend to cross the finish line, how much effort are you going to put into it?
Do you actually think that you can live the Christian life that way?
To commit your life to Jesus means to bind and obligate, to consign to the custody of, to pledge oneself to a position.
There are 2 main verses in the bible that refer to commitment.
Psalm 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
Proverbs 16:3 Commit your works to the LORD And your plans will be established.
The word commit used in both of these verses actually means “to roll together”. Seriously, that’s what it actually means.
Is that the way YOU roll?
It has countless rooms and each one makes you feel like you are at home. My Fathers house is not a place where the furniture is covered with plastic and the floors are cold and the walls are colorless! There are pictures of you guys up on the walls already! Matter of fact, My Father planned it so that my earthly father would be a carpenter, so that I would learn the trade because when I go home to Him, He wants me to remodel the place so you will feel even more at home!
I am getting to know you right now so I can get a real feel for you and what you like, what makes you feel comfortable and relaxed, and when I am finished preparing a place for you that is when I will come back for you, that where I am, there you may be also.
According to what Jesus was saying, what is on Gods mind?
It’s you and just like we would clean our house before company comes, Jesus is preparing a place for you…
Even so, on earth our hearts become troubled and agitated and according to Jesus, what is the cure for a troubled agitated heart?
Believing that God can and God will and God wants to.
Just like the Jews in captivity in Egypt
Can God lead you, Will God lead you, does God Want to lead you out of captivity to your future home in heaven with Him?
Which is easier for you to believe? That God is preparing a place for you in heaven, or that God is preparing you for a place in heaven?
If we could only begin to understand that we already possess a future and a hope. Just like the Jewish people when they were brought into captivity for 70 years and it was never God’s intention that they would lose hope…
Jeremiah 29:10 says, For thus says the LORD, "When seventy years have been completed for Babylon
11 "For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
Has you life been riddled with fears and failures?
Have the seeds of regret not only been planted in your heart, but have they taken root?
Read Jeremiah 29 with me again, and then permit me to point out a simple truth…
Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says the LORD, "When seventy years have been completed for Babylon
11 "For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
Think something through for a minute or two.
Has God made a promise to you that He has not yet kept?
Has God dropped you off in a strange land and have you lost your way?
Do you believe, even when your brain tells you that it’s foolish to do so, that God will fulfill His promises to you?
You need to really trust Him on this.
God works on faith, and not God’s faith in you, but your faith in God.
God knows the plans that He has for you…
No comments:
Post a Comment