100 Days of Right Believing: Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing (25 page)
Read 100 Days of Right Believing: Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing Online
Authors: Joseph Prince
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
H
EBREWS
10:19–22
F
or decades upon decades, God has been portrayed as an angry God by the devil, and unfortunately, many Bible teachers have unwittingly helped him by painting a picture of a wrathful God. This depiction of God is an error. We are now under the new covenant, and you will not be able to find a single New Testament scripture that says God is angry with believers because of their sins. You would have to go into the Old Testament to look for verses that speak of God’s anger at the sins of His people.
Does God not being angry with you mean that there is no place for God’s correction in our lives? Is there correction and wise guidance that come by the Word of God in the new covenant of grace? Absolutely. But as for His anger toward you and your sins, all that has been settled at the cross. I guarantee you, when you come into Jesus’ sweet presence with all your challenges, failings, and struggles, He is not going to roar at you. He is going to love you into wholeness and set you on a trajectory of freedom from all your fears, guilt, and addictions. Jesus is the end of all your struggles!
Because God’s perfect love is the answer to overcoming the struggles in your life, the devil is doing everything he can to alienate and cut you off from this love. He knows that as long as the debt of sin is on your conscience, you will avoid God because you think that God is mad at you.
The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He not only paid the sin debt of your entire life, He
overpaid
it. Unlike the high priests of the Old Testament, He didn’t offer the blood of bulls and goats to pay for your sins. This High
Priest paid for your sins with His own perfect and sinless blood. God didn’t go soft on sin under grace! No way. He offered His only begotten Son, Jesus, who is an absolute overpayment for your sins.
It’s as if you owed a debt of a million dollars, but Jesus paid a billion dollars to settle that debt. The truth is, if you knew who Jesus is and the value of the Son of God, you would know that His payment at the cross was worth more than a billion dollars. It’s a payment that has wiped out your entire life’s sins—past, present, and future—once and for all! No longer is there a chasm of sin separating you and God. It has been bridged by the bloodstained cross.
Jesus is an overpayment for all my sins.
Father, thank You that because of who Jesus is, His sacrifice at the cross is a grand overpayment for my entire life’s sins. I acknowledge that You did not go soft on sin, but that Jesus, my High Priest, paid for all my sins with His perfect, sinless blood. I believe that there is no longer any chasm separating me from You and that I can be bold to come before You to receive Your grace. Amen.
“… For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,” says the L
ORD
, who has mercy on you.
I
SAIAH
54:9–10
U
nfortunately, many sincere and well-meaning believers fall into the devil’s trap, and they end up with the wrong belief that they have fallen short of God’s expectations and have angered Him. They live in a constant state of trying to appease and please this angry God. Instead of enjoying a sweet, intimate relationship with Jesus, they feel like they are hypocrites or they feel as if they are always treading on eggshells when it comes to their walk with the Lord.
If you have experienced such thoughts about God before, I would like to share this very important principle with you: Fear and love cannot coexist in a healthy relationship. Insecurity and love cannot coexist in the truly intimate relationship that God wants with you and me, His children.
Let me share with you this letter I received from Lorraine who lives in Louisiana. I’ll let it speak for itself as you soak in how you and your relationship with God can be completely changed by believing the right things about your heavenly Father. All I can say is,
Hallelujah!
I have been a born-again Christian for twenty-two years. Today, at forty-four years old, I have a wonderful husband and beautiful daughter. I love my life!
As far back as I can remember, I have always loved Jesus. But I had lived my entire life feeling guilty as I believed that God was always mad at me. I had always felt that I could not do enough “right” or “good” things. After I gave my life to Christ, that feeling of not being good
enough actually got worse because I felt a greater responsibility to live up to a higher standard to be right with God. I was always repenting, always feeling that I’d done wrong and that my best was never enough.
I am in the process of reading
Destined To Reign
and am only at
chapter 9
. I have to read this book very, very slowly so that I can digest its contents. I cannot tell you how my life has changed since I began reading your book. It was not until I began reading it that I felt relieved of the weight of not being good enough. It has shaken the very foundation of my world and dissolved the insecurity I’ve had about Jesus and His love for me.
Forty-four years of my previously painful existence and mind-set are GONE. I am CHANGED forever. I am forgiven. I can’t get through the rest of this book without stopping to thank the Lord for you and for giving you the message of grace to spread worldwide.
That’s what it is all about, my friend. Winning the battle for your mind is all about your freedom and liberty in Christ Jesus, your Lord and Savior. When you start to believe right about His love and grace toward you, permanent, liberating change happens! So be strong in God’s love for you and don’t let wrong believing rob you of a life of great joy and peace. Remember, God is not mad at you; He is mad about you!
God is not mad at me; He is mad about me.
Father, thank You that You have sworn that You would not be angry with me and that Your kindness would never depart from me. Thank You that through Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary, You have freed me from feeling that I have to be good enough or do enough right things to please You. I declare my liberty in Christ Jesus, and I believe that You are mad about me and that I live surrounded by Your love and favor today. Amen.
I have been crucified with Christ; 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 for me.
G
ALATIANS
2:20
A
s we press deeper into the power of right believing, I want to show you practical ways in which you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Right believing is all about renewing your mind and uprooting the wrong beliefs that shape your thinking and behavior. That’s why the Word of God says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think” (Rom. 12:2
NLT
).
God wants to change the way we think by shifting our thoughts from self-occupation to Christ-occupation. Our human tendency is to be focused on ourselves. We are prone to excessive self-introspection and are easily susceptible to becoming preoccupied with ourselves rather than with Jesus. Many of our greatest pains, struggles, failures, and miseries stem from us being “I” centered. Oftentimes, we are engrossed with thoughts such as, “Have
I
done enough?”, “What is wrong with
me
?” and “Why do
I
have so many weaknesses?” Unfortunately, when we become overly occupied with self, we become obsessed, oppressed, and inevitably depressed.
My friend, is your mind filled constantly with thoughts of how you have failed, how you have missed it, and how unworthy you are? That is symptomatic of someone who is clearly self-occupied. Thoughts like that cause a person to develop an inferiority complex. People who suffer from this are ever ready to condemn themselves. Their minds are clouded with negativity and pessimism.
But self-occupation can also manifest at the other end of the pendulum’s swing as a superiority complex. There are people who think they are always
better than everyone else. They are painfully arrogant, and they think their perspectives and opinions are always right. Whether you are feeling superior or inferior, your focus is still on yourself, and in the end that causes you great pain, misery, and heartache.
Only in Christ will you experience true transformation and walk neither in pride nor in false humility. When you are Christ-occupied, the flesh in you becomes inconsequential and you begin manifesting all the lovely, wholesome, and beautiful attributes of Jesus unconsciously. The fruit of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, and kindness, flow through you effortlessly when your mind is renewed and occupied with the person of Jesus. It’s an inevitability! You cannot touch His grace and not become holy any more than you can touch water and not get wet.