100 Days of Right Believing: Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing (3 page)

T
he very premise of this book is based on the truth of John 8:32, but what does “the truth shall make you free” really mean?

Examine the context of this verse and you’ll notice that Jesus said this to the Jews of His day. These were people who at an early age grew up studying and learning the law. Yet, these people, in ways very similar to us today, still battled with fears, anxieties, sicknesses, and all kinds of oppression, bondages, and addictions. So this truth that Jesus was talking about clearly cannot be the law, because these people could not find freedom in the law. In fact, the truth of the law only brought them into religious bondage.

My friend, the truth that
shall make you free
, is the truth of His grace. This is the truth that He came to give us. His Word proclaims that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

The good news is that grace came to set you free from the curse of the law. Grace is not a doctrine or a theological subject. When Jesus talks about grace, He is talking about Himself. Grace is a person. Grace is Jesus Himself.

The truth that has the power to fling wide open your prison doors is His grace. His grace is the antidote to counteract every poison in your mind! When you encounter Jesus, taste His love, and savor His loving-kindness and tender mercies, every wrong belief begins to dissolve in the glory of His love. And every dark thought and evil addiction that may have held you captive cannot but scatter when it is exposed to the light of His grace!

Your freedom is found in rightly believing in Jesus—His favor and His love in your life. When you believe right about His grace, you will begin to live right. The more you see in His Word what His grace has done for you, the more fears, condemnation, depression, and destructive habits will lose their grip in your life. And the more you believe and enjoy His grace and love, the
more you’ll find the Lord’s wisdom, stability, and peace guiding your decisions and actions.

Right believing always produces right living and the right results.

K
ate was addicted to alcohol as well as dependent on a cocktail of strong antidepressants, tranquilizers, beta-blockers, and sleeping pills. Over time, trying to cope with the high-octane demands of being a corporate highflier as well as the strain of maintaining her success and image had driven her to look for relief from all these sources. To the rest of the world, Kate appeared to have it all together. But in reality, her despair over her inability to cope without those substances only plunged her into a vicious cycle of defeat.

Kate tried everything to beat the bottle and her depression: She made appointments with psychiatrists and psychologists and even faithfully attended support groups for alcoholics. Through these endless appointments and meetings, she experienced what she calls “a few bouts of recovery” that lasted several days at best.

In the end, Kate found herself on the verge of giving up. But God had other plans for her. He led her to one of the leaders in my church who encouraged her to keep hearing the preached Word and praying in the Spirit. And as she kept listening to my messages on God’s grace, God began uprooting the wrong beliefs that had taken hold in Kate’s mind and replacing them with right beliefs about herself and her future.

The more she heard, the more she was able to keep her eyes on Jesus, instead of trying to overcome the symptoms. The more she heard, the more she was able to be at rest, to see God’s blessings in the little things, and to supernaturally not even experience withdrawal symptoms. And in a short time, four long and treacherous years of addiction to alcohol disappeared for Kate.

The same can happen for you. In a supernatural instant, you too can experience liberation from destructive habits, fears, and bondages. You may not be able to understand how grace can set you free from a long-term addiction, but you
can
experience it in your heart and experience His liberty in your area of challenge!

A
fter reading Kate’s story yesterday, you may be asking, “How can this be? How does four years of alcohol addiction just disappear like that? How could such a powerful craving just lose its hold in such a short time?”

The answer is simple but powerful.

Kate allowed God’s love to invade her mind as she listened to grace-based messages on her iPod that were full of Jesus and His love. My friend, when you allow His love to saturate your mind, it doesn’t matter what wrong beliefs, fears, or addictions are keeping you bound. God’s grace will begin to break them down. This is what happens when you have an encounter with your loving Savior. Everyone who encounters Jesus never leaves the same. He came to set the captives free.

Whatever your condition, however long it has kept you bound—two years, ten years, thirty years—I want you to know and believe that God can set you free in a supernatural instant. Believe that the One who is both willing and able to set you free is the same one who created time, and He who created time isn’t time-bound. He who turned water into the finest aged wine in a matter of seconds can bypass natural processes and accelerate your deliverance from any bondage!

I know of many people who struggled with addictions for decades. But once they had a supernatural encounter with Jesus, they just woke up one morning and found themselves free, with none of that familiar urge or desire
to engage in their negative behavior anymore. Frank, who lives in the state of Maryland, wrote to me and shared how he was set free from drug addiction. He had been told “once an addict, always an addict,” and he had believed it.

But when he came to know the truth about the life-transforming love and grace of Jesus through one of my teaching resources, it just destroyed the chains that bound him. He shared, “Man, I could have jumped through the roof when I discovered that all I had to do was accept the finished work of Jesus and His grace! After thirty years of drug addiction, I thought there was no hope for me. But praise Jesus, I am now drug-free, and I’m in a good grace-preaching church with my wife, who has also been set free of her drug addiction.”

My friend, that is the power of right believing!

Today, believe God loves you and that His grace is available for you. Whatever bad prognosis you may have heard about your situation, no matter how dark and dire your circumstances may be right now, believe and accept God’s grace. You don’t have to accept defeat for the rest of your life!