Dear friends,
We greet you once again in the Wonderful Name of Jesus!
Living in agreement with God...
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Word of God simply says that is the fact. Having been justified by faith, the fact is that you have peace with God. So, if you are trying to get peace with God, you have a problem. Why are you trying to get something that you already have? An old preacher friend of mine said, “John, most Christians have a problem. They are trying to get into a room that they're already in.”
You are justified by faith in Christ NOW. That means you're made right with God. Therefore you have peace with God NOW. If you don't feel that peace, does that mean you don't have it? This is the basic lesson of a Christian, to know how to believe the truth - to separate the truth from the lie. This lesson is learning to base your life not on what you feel, but on what the Word of God says. If you are feeling a lack of peace with God, and you start thinking of all the reasons why, you will immediately get help from the devil, who will give you lots of reasons why you don't have peace with God! He will help you remember all your failure and your sins, and you will feel less and less peace. But you would be listening to the liar.
Instead, as a Christian you are to find a different way to live. You open the Book, and remind yourself of the truth. You speak the truth to yourself: “Here it says it: Having been justified by faith, yes...I believe that...we have, which means I have, peace with God through my Lord Jesus Christ. Devil, shut up! Condemnation, be quiet! Mind, be quiet. I honor the blood over my mind in Jesus' name!”
Frequently your mind doesn't help you very much. The best thing to do is just tell it to be quiet, because your victory does not come from trying to think your way out of a problem.
You have spiritual weapons and they all are rooted in the Word of God. Romans 5:1 is a spiritual weapon. Pull it up out of your Bible, and put your attention on it. You will be using your mind, but you will use the Word in your mind to take authority over your thoughts that are pulling you down.
You also declare the Word with your mouth. This unleashes the power of the Word. You speak it out loud, you sing it, and you shout it. Do it so that you hear that Word more loudly in your head than the voice of the enemy that's trying to discourage you.
Every day, when you open up and look at Romans 5:1, it says the same thing! God never changes His mind about His covenant words. He never will change his mind on this point. You are made right by your faith in Jesus Christ, therefore you have peace with your heavenly Father, not because of your works but because of the work of Christ!
It says your peace is through your Lord Jesus Christ. Through Christ! This is the beginning of the renewal of the mind of a Christian, when you start thinking “through Christ, in Christ, by Christ, with Christ, and for Christ." This Christ-connected thinking loads the power of the New Testament. This is how God thinks about you: you simply agree with how God thinks.
What is faith? It is thinking the same way as God thinks. Sometimes we try to pump up our faith. But faith is simply agreeing with the Word of God. Your mind lines up with His mind. Your words line up with His words. Your actions will follow your mind and your words.
You can have quiet faith and you can have noisy faith. The power is that you and God agree.
The Lord wants to change us on the inside so that we know what He knows. He wants us to see as He sees, so that whether it's about your life or someone else's life, you are not overwhelmed by the circumstance. Instead, you are overwhelmed by the power of God that is available, by the love of God that is available for that person or that circumstance.
That's why we’re not in heaven yet, because God didn't want to just forgive us and then send us to heaven. I’ve sometimes seen people repent and then go back into the world. I thought for a moment when I was baptizing a new believer, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just baptize people and leave them down there in the water? Just send them straight to heaven! There would be no backsliding!
Well, it's against the law to drown people, of course, but God has a better idea. He didn't save us just to kill us. He saved us to bring us into an new abundant life. Jesus said it's the thief that comes to rob and kill and steal and destroy but He has come to do what? To give you life. And what kind of life? Abundant life! Much more life than you need! (John 10:10)
God is so amazing. His Word is so amazing. His Word is so powerful that if you got understanding and revelation about one verse like Romans 5:1 -- if that's all you had -- He would do a miracle in your life. You would have the power of God working if it was the only verse you knew. Just one word from God can defeat the enemy.
I heard a report about a lady born and raised in India. When she was a small girl living on the street, a missionary spoke to her and said something about Jesus and taught her one Christian song well enough so that she could sing it. From that day on she never heard anything more about Jesus. She lived her whole life on the street with only that one song. She didn't have a Bible. You would have found her every day on the street corners singing that one song to Jesus, and that one song kept her faith going all her life. Someone found her out there on the street when she was 60 or 70 years old. They found out that song was all she ever learned about Christ, and she just lived on that one bit of truth that was given to her as a little child.
What if we each would grab a hold of just one truth with all of our heart? There would be great power in our lives.
We sometimes say easily that we believe the whole Bible. But it's not enough to just believe the whole thing. You got to open it up and you got to believe specific things. You need to take one truth at a time and make it yours until you say and know, “This is my truth. This is my life!”
I did that with Romans 5:1: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we (I) have peace with God through our (my) Lord Jesus Christ." It was the first Scripture I took inside as belonging to me after I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, even though I had known the verse since childhood. Somehow the Holy Spirit turned the light on Romans 5:1 for me at that time. I looked at it and I grabbed it and shouted, “Yeah, that's mine!” You can make it yours too.
Recently I was listening to someone preaching, and as they started preaching I thought they were preaching my verses! I thought, “Hey, that's my Scripture!” It was the funniest reaction in me, thinking, “But that's my verse!”
You need to take one Scripture at a time and make it very personal. It must become your inside Bible, the Bible in your heart, so that even if you don't have the Book near you, you will be the walking Word of God. Even if you don't have the whole Word of God in you, but you have some of the truth settled inside, it will be your spiritual backbone. It becomes the anchor of your soul, the anchor of your mind.
Still considering Romans 5:1, when you take that verse inside, you then know you are anchored in the peace of God, not by what you do or how you feel, but because of what Jesus did for you and what the Bible says about it. You simply agree with God.
“Holy Spirit, come and do a supernatural work in any who read this, whose mind is unsettled, or whose heart has no resting place. We ask for this in Jesus’ name."
Jackie and I honor the blood of Jesus over your mind, casting down imaginations that come from the darkness. We rebuke the lies and the liar in the name of Jesus. Satan, you won't have our minds. We belong to God, and we have the mind of Christ! We agree with You, Father, we agree with Your Wonderful Word!
Our vision remains the same: to serve God's harvest in the nations, laying the blood covenant foundations of Christ in the lives of new believers , leaders and churches.
We remain totally dependent on your prayer and financial contributions for our personal support and for our missionary work. We need a miracle!!
Thank you for praying for us and for giving as the Lord enables you.
I have written about 2/3 of the first draft of the book on blood covenant foundations.
Please keep praying for our establishing and expanding of the writing and publishing ministry: for distribution at home and abroad.
Pray also for the establishing of plans for mission travel during 2012.
With love,
John and Jackie
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