The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction (29 page)

Praise the Lord for He is good, for His
hesed
(grace, love, tender mercies, and loving-kindness) in your life endures forever. Worship Him with these words, and as you praise Him, He will ambush all your enemies, troubles, fears, challenges, and addictions. By the time you reach your battlefield, I believe your enemies will all have fallen. Not a single one of your adversaries will escape because the Lord Himself fights your battles.

The Valley of Blessing

Do you know how the story of the battle of Jehoshaphat ends? Jehoshaphat and his men spent three full days gathering the spoils of war that they had found among the dead bodies of their enemies. They recovered “an abundance of valuables… and precious jewelry” (2 Chron. 20:25). On the fourth day, they gathered with
all their spoils in the Valley of Berachah, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord there (2 Chron. 20:26). How apt it is then that they named the valley “Berachah,” which means “blessing.”
³

After this, the Bible tells us that “they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem, with Jehoshaphat in front of them, to go back to Jerusalem with joy, for the L
ORD
had made them rejoice over their enemies” (2 Chron. 20:27). God had turned their fear into rejoicing, their sorrow into joy, and their troubles into blessings.

That is what happens when we hope in the Lord. Praise Him for He is good and His
hesed
(His grace) endures forever. You can have a confident expectation of good because your God is a good God. Like the people of Judah, which means “praise” in Hebrew (see Gen. 29:35), you will not need to fight, for the battle belongs to the Lord. Hallelujah!

I
want to begin this chapter by giving you this challenge: Ask God for big things! What do you desire to see in your life—in your family, health, finances, and career? Ask God for them! Jesus said the enemy comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but He came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly (see John 10:10). Jesus came so that you might live a life that is marked not by lack, but by abundance; not by despair, but by the fullness of His love, joy, and peace.

Do you desire to see yourself living free from fear, guilt, and addictions? Then ask the God of abundant grace and life.

Do you desire to see your body strong and healthy and your youth renewed like the eagle’s (see Ps. 103:5)? Ask the God who is good.

Do you desire to see your marriage, children, and loved ones blessed in every way? Ask the God whose love for you endures forever.

Do you desire a career or business that you can be passionate
about and in which you can exercise all the gifts that God has placed in your life? Ask the God who is more than enough.

Take a moment and don’t rush through this. What would you ask God for if you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is good and that His love for you endures forever?

What Would You Ask For?

I would like you to do something right now. Would you put this book down for a moment and grab your journal?

I would like you to write down what you would ask God for if you knew that He hears your prayers. What are your dreams, hopes, and aspirations? What would you like to see come to pass in your life? What are you battling with today? Which area of your life would you like to see God’s power work in? Write it down. Write it all down. Write what you want to see happen with Bible hope in your heart that He hears you and will supply. Write with a certain, joyful, positive, and confident expectation of good.

Don’t just ask God for small things. Ask Him for big things! For instance, don’t ask Him for just a job. Ask Him for a position of influence. Don’t just ask Him to restore your health. Ask Him for a
long and healthy life filled with many good days. Enlarge your faith to believe in God’s goodness. He is pleased when our faith is big. He is not offended when we ask Him for big things.

Would you do that right now? Just take a few moments and pen down your requests to God—God, who is almighty and more powerful than we can ever imagine. God, who hung the planets in their places and spoke order into the world. God, who led His people in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God, who rained manna from heaven and brought forth water from dry rock. God, who helped Judah to overcome her enemies without even the drawing of a single sword. God, who turned bland water into the finest wine. God, who made the lame walk, the blind see, and the deaf hear. God, who multiplied five loaves of bread and two small fish to feed five thousand men. God, who rebuked the wind and turned a raging storm into a great calm. God, who raised the dead and conquered the grave.

Ask what you need of God, who loves YOU with an everlasting love!

God Loves It When You Ask of Him

There was a man in the Bible by the name of Jabez. His name was rather unfortunate. It means “sorrow”
¹
because his mother
“bore him in pain” (1 Chron. 4:9). What a name to have! But Jabez cried out to God, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” (1 Chron. 4:10).

I have come across some preachers who claimed that believers should not pray “selfish” prayers for themselves to be blessed. Jabez’s prayer would probably fall under their definition of a “selfish prayer” as it was all about him asking God to bless him, enlarge his territory, be with him, and protect him. But did you know that God didn’t reprimand Jabez for asking Him for these blessings? Without any fanfare, the Bible in the very same verse simply records that “God granted him what he requested.” In fact, the Bible also says that “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers” (1 Chron. 4:9) because he asked God for what he needed as opposed to fighting for it.

That was all. No drama, no long list of what Jabez had to do or not do. It’s really that simple. God heard his prayer and granted his request! No rebuke, no instructions, no “Jabez, if you want Me to bless you, you must first do this.” No, God honored the man’s faith and turned his sorrow into
joy
and his pain into
blessings
—all because he had an unshakable confidence in how good God is and asked big!

My friend, have a good opinion of God. He is not out to get you. He loves you and desires to unleash His favor into every area of your life. He loves it when you call upon Him. And He promised that He would answer when you do. Just see Him declaring to you
Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”

Could it be that we are not seeing many breakthroughs because we have made asking God for big things a taboo with our religious and legalistic rhetoric? Could it be that we are just not seeing many blessings because we have not been asking God and seeking Him with a confident expectation of good?

Let me show you what Jesus had to say about asking from God:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

—Matthew 7:7–11

My friend, it gives your heavenly Father great joy when you ask Him. It’s His good pleasure to bless you as well as your family (see Luke 12:32). Stop being held back by erroneous beliefs
about God, and start asking Him for whatever is on your heart today!

God Honors Our Faith

Joshua, Moses’ successor who led the children of Israel into the promised land, was someone who dared to ask big. When Joshua was caught in the thick of battle with his enemies and the sun was about to set, he cried out, “Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon” (Josh. 10:12). The Bible goes on to record, “So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies… For the L
ORD
fought for Israel” (Josh. 10:13–14).

I love this story. When my leaders and I were in the plains where this battle took place, we could see the sun over Gibeon on one side and the moon over the Valley of Aijalon on the other side. Both the sun and moon could be seen at the same time from that location. Standing there, I could just imagine Joshua in the midst of the battle, raising his voice and pointing to the sun on one side to stand still and then turning to the moon to issue the same command. Joshua was asking God for more daylight because the momentum of the battle was to their advantage. He wanted to completely rout his enemies and not give them time to regroup.

When you think about what Joshua asked, it was both an audacious and inaccurate request! If you had been attentive during your science classes in school, you would know that the earth orbits around the sun, not the sun around the earth! So technically, when Joshua called for the sun and moon to stand still, God made the
earth
stand still instead. Joshua’s request was scientifically inaccurate, but nevertheless, God honored Joshua’s chutzpah faith! He understood that what Joshua needed was more daylight, and He made it happen.

Isn’t it encouraging to know that God didn’t correct Joshua and give him CliffsNotes on how the solar system that He built actually functions? It gives me great encouragement to know that even when our faith confessions may not always be perfect, God still honors our hope and faith in Him. He loves it when we ask Him for big things. My friend, you can ask of Him, knowing that the battle truly belongs to the Lord, and that He will fight for you the way He fought for Israel because you are His covenant child.

A Story of God’s Goodness

We have looked at God’s Word and seen how He honored those who had a positive and confident expectation of good and who dared to ask Him for big things in their lives. Jabez cried out to the Lord to bless him, and God did. In the heat of battle, Joshua asked for the sun to stand still, and even though he got it scientifically wrong, God answered his prayer. Are you ready to hope in
the Lord, to have a good opinion of Him, and to have a confident expectation of good for your life and future?

Let me encourage you further with the extraordinary story of a lady who is recognized today as one of the most outstanding entrepreneurs in the world. This lady had a rough start in life. Unlike most babies, who are greeted by the smiles and embraces of their loving parents as they welcome their bundle of joy into the world, her biological parents abandoned her at birth.

Fortunately, an illiterate widow whom she affectionately refers to as her “grandmother” adopted her. Together with four other orphans, she was raised in a tiny makeshift hut with a leaky zinc roof with neither running water nor electricity in a little village in Perak, Malaysia.

At only nine years of age, she started working to help make ends meet. While other children were laughing and playing after school, she was squatting in a dusty factory, pulling rigid strips of rattan to weave them into bags. Her tender fingers were often left raw and bleeding from this arduous work, but she had no choice, as she would only be paid for bags that were tightly and properly woven.

The fifteen Malaysian cents (a little less than an American nickel) that she was paid for each bag may have been a paltry sum, but it meant that her family did not have to go without food. And that was just one of many odd jobs that she took on in order to eke out a living. She still remembers the joy that she felt when she held a five-dollar note for the first time. Before handing that hard-earned note over to her grandmother for household expenses, she had ironed it till it was perfectly crisp and kept it in her textbook so that she could look at it all day while she was in school.

When Things Seem Hopeless

Having been abandoned at birth and given the meager means of her adoptive grandmother, it seemed by all human reasoning that she was destined to be trapped in a cycle of poverty. So how did God turn her situation around in the face of such hopeless circumstances?

By sharing her testimony, I want to encourage you to see that it’s not how or what you begin with. You may have been born under severely challenging circumstances, or perhaps your parents are separated, or you may even have suffered abuse as you were growing up. My friend, I am here to tell you that with God in your life, it’s
not
the end of the road! You can have hope and expect good even when things in your life seem hopeless.