Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:1-2.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
I liken your life to a journey along a path to a goal. “You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” Psalm 16:11. And if you will receive Me into your life, I walk with you and direct you in the way you should go. “He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Psalm 23:3. And “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path and make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:6. And I tell you that I desire that your path be one of health, prosperity, and all good things. 3 John 1:1-3.
We are on a series of life lessons in which I am teaching you how to enforce the victory that you already have in Christ Jesus. In Jesus, I gave you the victory over sin and death, the world, the devil, the curse, and the flesh. You should not take the attitude of defeat and the mindset of failure. You are not to stay in the darkness after Jesus died to bring you into My marvelous light. You must take up the armor of Light and live as children of the Light.
I have told you often in My Word the goal that I have for every person’s life, and that goal is salvation. I sent Jesus (Yeshuah, which means “Salvation”) to undo the works of the devil in your life. I sent Him to free you from your sins—to make it as if you had never sinned by taking all your sins and the punishment due them on His sinless flesh—and thus to reconcile you with Me forever. And included in the forgiveness of sins is the healing of your bodies, for along with all your sins He bore all your diseases, pains, and infirmities. Indeed, “He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed of the devil.” Acts 10:38. And this includes mental, emotional, and physical healing. But it is one thing to know the goal, and it is another thing to know the way to get to that goal. In a race, the runner has to know the designated path in order to reach the finish line with the greatest possible focus, accuracy, and speed.
And that is the topic of today’s Life Lesson on how to enforce the victory you have in Christ Jesus, and the title of today’s message is “Know the Way to Get There.”
At the Passover meal the night before Jesus finished His course on earth, for He reached His goal of saving and redeeming mankind the next day upon the cross when He paid to Me the ransom for all by pouring out His eternal blood as He died the death sentence for sin, which was yours but became His when He took all your sins into His own body, Jesus told His disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them and once it was prepared He would come and receive them to Himself that where He is you can also be. And then He said, “And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:4-6.
Yes, Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and if you open your heart to Him and confess Him as Lord by faith He will receive you and be your good Shepherd to lead you in righteous paths for “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day, but the way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” Proverbs 4:18-19. But just knowing about Jesus is not enough. There is a very important component without which you will never reach the goal and enforce your victory.
To reach a goal, to reach a promised destination, you want to take the most direct path. You do not want to be like the Israelites who, though they knew My Word and had seen My power and My presence, wandered in the desert going around the same mountain for forty years when they could have taken the direct path into the promised land and been enjoying abundant goodness for those years instead. Those who wandered and died in the desert never enforced the victory they had. How come they did not reach the goal? Why did they not take possession of their possessions? In other words, what took them off the direct path to their promised land? I tell you the answer: “We see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. . . the Word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united with faith in those who heard.” Hebrews 3:19; Hebrews 4:2.
Do you see? What is the way to get to your goal of a saved and abundant life that Jesus died to give you? There is only one way you obtain the goal of salvation and connect with Me and all My magnificent promises and that way is summed up in one Word: FAITH. Without faith My power cannot connect with your life. It is impossible to please Me without faith because to come to Me you must believe that I exist (I AM) and that I reward those who seek Me (that I am good and desire all good for you). Even though the power was present in Jesus to heal, provide, and bless, He could work no miracles for the people in Nazareth because of their lack of faith in Him. They rejected Him and thus rejected the goal (salvation) I had set before them. They took another path that was not Mine. There is a path that seems right in a person’s eyes that ends in death. The wicked man, that is, the one who has adopted the lies of the devil, sets himself on a path that is not good. He does not despise evil. Psalm 36:4. And the wicked cut their lives short. Proverbs 10:27.
My apostle Peter, who shared with you the same precious faith, wrote about this: “and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8-9. Salvation is the outcome of faith in Jesus and all that He has done for you. And this point is very important. It is not enough just to believe that Jesus is My Son and true God and true Man, and to confess Him as Lord to enforce the victory, although this is a MAJOR step in doing so because it gives you the victory to enforce, but you must go further to have confidence that whatever I promise you have and can enforce in your life.
What am I talking about? A cleansed conscience so you can go forward to the high calling on your life. You MUST know and believe that there is no longer any condemnation for any sin you have done in your life that will stop you from going forward in My favor to the abundant life of ministry to which I call each of you in your own unique assignment. You will never step up and take hold of all I have prepared for you unless you believe two immutable things that I have sworn by oath to those who believe: “In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 6:17-20. And what are those two unchangeable things? Jesus became a curse to redeem you from the curse in order that in Him the blessing of Abraham might come to all who believe, so that you would receive this promise of the Spirit through FAITH! Galatians 3:13-14.
You are still asking Me, what are those two unchangeable things that are the Blessing of Abraham? “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” Hebrews 6:13-14. The original language in which it was written is Greek and the word translated “multiply” is pléthunó, which literally means to make full to maximum capacity, to increase, and to be increased. It is from the word “plḗthō, which means to furnish, accomplish, fill, supply, fill, fulfill, complete, and to fill to the maximum. My plans for you are shalom (wholeness in every area of your life) and not evil, to give you a future (salvation) and a hope (life eternal, starting now in days of Heaven on earth, and hope does not disappoint). I desire above all things that you are in good health and that you prosper even as your soul prospers by walking in the truth. And My Word is truth and you can only appropriate My Word into your life by believing it in your heart and speaking it with your mouth, which is the spirit of faith. And the word in Greek translated “bless” is eulogeó, which is formed from the words “eu” (good) and logos (word), so it is to speak good words that confer benefits on the hearer and the speaker, it is words that I speak over you that confer benefits, hence bless you. It is used of Me blessing people (Lk 1:28; Eph 1:3; Heb 6:14, etc.) – and My people blessing Me (Lk 1:64, 2:28, 24:53; 1 Cor 14:16; Js 3:9).
And by these two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for Me to lie, you who have taken refuge in Me through Jesus have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before you. This hope you have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews 6:17-20. And that is why I tell you to come to Me in the Holy of Holies WITH GREAT CONFIDENCE to receive mercy and grace for help in time of need. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16.
Many of you, however, are still blocking the victory that I have given you and failing to go into all I have prepared for you in Christ Jesus because your heart is still condemning you of past and present failings that you commit through the weakness of the flesh. My apostle John wrote of this and so did Peter and Paul. In whatever your heart is condemning you of that is not letting you have confidence in My blessing on you and My increasing to your full capacity, for if you are under condemnation from your heart for sins you have done then you cannot have confidence to open your heart to Me or believe that My plans for your life are still there for you. But I am greater than your heart and I know all things. I know the desires of your heart, that the will is there to be all I made you to be but that the flesh is weak. But now there is NO condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, for I took ALL your sins off you and put them on Him and on Him I took care of all the punishment justly due you. I cleansed you with His Blood and that was enough, in fact, more than enough, to take down every wall that divided us. Under the Old Covenant the blood of unblemished lambs and goats covered the sins of the people so they could stand before Me, how MUCH MORE will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to Me for you, cleanse your conscience from dead works to go forward in your high calling to serve Me, the living God? Hebrews 9:14. Now do you see why John wrote, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” 1 John 3:20-24.
You receive My grace through faith. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2. Faith saves you for it connects you to My grace which I give you in Jesus. But faith in what? Faith is the victory that overcomes the world, and those born again are in Jesus and as such are overcomers, for greater is He who lives in you than he who is in the world. But again I say to you, faith in what? In My great love for you by which I forgive, bless, protect and keep you in Christ Jesus, My gift to you so that you might live your life through Him. For those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness by faith will reign in life through Christ Jesus your Lord and My Son. Have you come to know and believe in the love I have for you? I manifest that love to you in Jesus, who went about doing good and healing ALL those oppressed by the devil. I sent Him to give His life that you might live forever in My presence, holy, blameless and beyond reproach. Believe that and you will come to Me for everything and believe for Me to finish the good work I have begun in you. Faith works by love. I am love and perfect love casts out all fear, love is not perfected in one who is living in fear of punishment. Just agree with Me for all the benefits of Psalm 103 and so much more. For ALL of My magnificent promises are YES to you in Christ Jesus.
The devil made Adam and Eve believe I was withholding good things from them that would give them power and authority, but I had already given them dominion over the earth and all in it and on it, and all the goodness of the works of My hands in the earth was theirs. Instead of enforcing the victory they surrendered all to the devil based on lies. He is still prowling around trying to persuade you of the same. Submit to My Words (agree with them), resist him, and he will flee from you. But you have to take a stand in FAITH. Faith in My love, faith in My promises, faith in My goodness, and, above all, faith in SALVATION, who is Jesus. Jesus is the blessing. It comes through Him alone.
Just consider My apostles Peter and Paul. Peter was so pierced with guilt for what he had done when he denied My Son that he wept bitterly. This shame and remorse could have ruined the rest of his life and kept him from his high calling to lead the church. But when I raised Jesus, He appeared to Peter and gave him shalom. And the day by the lake when Jesus appeared to them and gave them breakfast, He commissioned Peter again to feed His lambs and tend His sheep. Peter was restored and forgiven. It was then Peter put on the breastplate of righteousness and at Pentecost he delivered My message as one who had never sinned. It was all gone.
And Paul the same. He killed those who believed in Jesus and persecuted the early church until I revealed Jesus to him, right in his path, and his path turned to pursuing his high calling in Christ, and he forgot what lay behind and pressed forward to know My righteousness. And he wrote later that his conscience was clear. It had been washed in the blood of the lamb. And he told you to imitate him as he imitated Christ. He was overwhelmed that I entrusted a ministry to him to share the unfathomable riches of Christ. And he is the one that told you about the breastplate of righteousness. And he wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20.
I love you. Know and believe in the love I have for you and that faith will make you confident and bold to enforce the victory. The goal is salvation and now you know the way to get to the goal: FAITH in My love for you.