Guard Against Faith Failure!

In this last teaching in our faith series I want to show you how to keep your faith alive and working always. One day Jesus said to Peter, "...Behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not..." (Luke 22:31-32). Faith can fail and faith failure is all round failure. Until faith fails nothing fails. It is faith that keeps you on the winning line. So, you are not a loser until you lose faith. In every warfare, the first thing your enemy goes for is your weapon. Satan knows that faith is your most viable weapon in spiritual warfare so he wants to get it out of your hand. That is why the Bible says, "...Satan has desired..." He passionately wants to sift you and the way he wants to do it is by attacking your faith. And once he gets your faith off the line he's got you out of the race. You know why satan targets your faith? He knows that it is only with faith that you can please God. If you can't please God then you can't move Him to act on your behalf. Secondly, satan knows that through faith you can subdue his kingdom. And also, all things are possible to him that believes (Mark 9:23). This is why you must protect your faith, and the only way to do that is to fight. "Fight the good fight of faith" (1 Tim. 6:12). There are many faith confessors but few faith fighters. Ephesians 6:16 says, "Taking the shield of faith..." You don't just talk the talk of faith, you take faith in order to quench the fiery darts of the devil! You must keep your faith active by doing something with it. What is faith? Faith is standing firm, insistently and persistently on God's Word! If God says it I stand by it, my circumstances not withstanding. That is faith! Faith is refusing to shift your ground on God's word, declaring it, acting it and obeying the instructions that commit God to perform what He has said. But satan's device is to make you shift your ground and stop believing God's word. Jesus said to Peter, "...I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not..." The scriptural device against faith failure is prayer. That is the way to neutralize satan's attack against your faith. Prayer is the back up for faith. Satan will attempt to push down your faith, to make it fail but through prayer you can strengthen, energize and refuel it. Jude 20 says, "Building up yourself on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost." So, any time you sense an attack on your faith; you sense that satan is mounting pressure on you, bombarding your mind with all manner of questions and suggestions to make you doubt God's word, at such you times you get into prayers, especially praying in the Holy Ghost. Pray with scriptures and reaffirm your confidence in God because He cannot fail. Put your faith on the line! No matter what you have lost, if you refuse to lose your faith, you will regain double. Meditate on these: Matt 17:20, Matt. 14:28-32

You Can Be Free From Captivity!

One major benefit of prayer is captivity turning. The righteous is always Satan's target and he has just one objective for doing that; he wants to frustrate the believer and wear him out. He wants him to stop believing God, and to curse God so that he can be drawn out of the safety of divine covering to the open where he will be made an easy prey for satanic forces to deal with. But Psalm 34:19 says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous but God delivereth him out of them all." Not out of 'some', but out of them all. That means, all afflictions are resistible and destructible. There is an answer to every kind of oppression and a way out of all captivities. God said in Jeremiah 29:12,14, "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you... and I will turn away your captivity..." God is ever ready to turn away our captivities, but only on one condition - when we call upon Him and pray unto Him. In Acts chapter 12, we are told that Herod had killed James the brother of John and because there was no reaction from the Church, he proceeded further to take Peter. He put Peter in prison, intending to bring him out to be killed after the Easter celebrations. But the Bible says, "...Prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him..."

Peter was in captivity and would have been killed. He was put in prison, bound with two chains, kept between two soldiers and there were keepers outside the prison doors. Maybe you are in a similar situation, it looks as if you have been chained on every side. But we also see in that chapter that as the saints kept praying for Peter, the night before he was to be killed, the following happened: (1) The angel of the Lord came down, (2) a light shined in the prison, (3) the angel smote Peter on the side and raised him up, (4) Peter's chains fell off from his hands (5) the iron gate that led into the city opened to them of it's own accord (Acts 12:4-12). Until the oppressed prays he cannot be free from oppression. But when you pray God will send His angel for your deliverance, the light of heaven will shatter every darkness around you, your chains will fall off and new doors of opportunity will begin to open to you on their own accord so that you can enjoy total restoration of all that you may have lost. In the model prayer that Jesus taught His disciples, one of the recommended prayer points is, "...Deliver us from evil" (Luke 11:2,4). Prayer is the gateway to freedom from oppressions and turning of captivities. That is biblical prescription. "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray"(James 5:13) Understanding God's Mercy! O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever" - Ps 136:1 The understanding of God's mercy is one of the greatest revelations of life. Until you understand His mercy you don't truly know the person of God. When Moses said, "Show me your glory", God took him up to a mountain and passed by him proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Ex 34:6). The perspective of merit is what disqualifies many believers from God's blessings. We must understand that we are not kept by merit, we do not succeed by merit, we are not outstanding by merit, we are simply blessed by His mercy. "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning..." (Lam 3:22-23). Until you drop your perspective of merit, you cannot enjoy the mystery of His mercy. Stop boasting of your merit, start celebrating His mercy. Those who celebrate His mercy don't miss His acts, they don't miss His miracles because His mercy is revealed in His acts. You know why we must keep celebrating God's mercy? If we were to be judged according to our works, many of us would score minus one million, because often times our errors far outweigh our good, but His mercy covers us. Even when we make mistakes, He still marks us right. We have failed several times but His mercy has prevailed. When we are caught in our weaknesses, His mercy keeps strengthening us. For His name's sake He keeps blessing us. Imagine a student who wrote an exam and it was obvious that he scored ten percent, but the teacher had mercy and gave him ninety. And then the student went out and started boasting to the hearing of the teacher. Without notice, the teacher will quietly change the mark to ten again and give it to him according to his boasting. We can't boast because if God judges us according to our merit, we would be nowhere. We are simply beneficiaries of His mercy, so let's keep celebrating it. I noticed in scriptures that one cry Jesus never turned down was the cry for mercy. Everyone that called for His mercy secured His attention. So, when we celebrate His mercy we are simply registering for His attention. Let your soul be filled today with the thoughts of His mercy. You are where you are today by His mercy, not because you are a prayer warrior. As you keep celebrating His mercy, you will never lack His acts. It Is Your Turn To Be Favoured! "And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." This was the salutation of angel Gabriel to Mary when he came to inform her of the birth of Jesus. It was a strange salutation, it took Mary unawares because the Bible says, "She was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be." She was a virgin, she was not used to such salutation. She must have wondered in her heart, "Are you sure this message is for me?" Mary was not the only virgin in Nazareth but favour located her. My message to you in this Christmas season is that it is your turn to be favoured! By

virtue of your experiences in the year 2004 you may be wondering like Mary, "What kind of message is this?" But in that passage, the angel said to her, "...Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God" (Luke 1:28-30). I say to you today, you have found favour with God! To be favoured means to be graciously accepted; to enjoy what you do not qualify for. That is what God is delivering to you today. It is your turn to enjoy unique favour, unmerited blessings from heaven. When you find favour with God, strange and unique blessings follow. After the salutation of favour, the angel told Mary, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS" (Luke 1:31). That is not a common blessing, especially for a virgin. Through the word of God that is coming your way right now, I see you getting conceived of great ideas and expectations for the coming year. I want to advice you to do as Mary did. Even though she did not understand the message of the angel, she opened up to receive it. She did not look like it, her circumstances were completely contrary to what the angel was saying, but she opened up her heart to receive what God had for her. Your mind is too small to comprehend all that God has in store for you. You know, the Bible says His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts, that is why God will always speak big things into our small minds. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:34-35). When favour comes, the power of the Holy Ghost is released upon you to bring to pass the things that God has spoken concerning you. And the reason is because what God wants to do in your life cannot be manufactured in the factory of men, it can only be established by the power of the Highest. So, stop looking at your natural resources. When you are favoured, things begin to happen for you supernaturally. Ezekiel 2:2 says, "And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me..." As you receive the word of God right now, it is conveying to you, the Spirit and life of God, to cause the impossible to come to pass for you. Change Your Perspective! It is God's will for you to have daily victories because according to 2 Corinthians 2:14, He makes us to triumph always and in every place. However, victory is faith determined. "...This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4). And how do you express faith? It begins with your perspective or view about life. It is the picture you see that attracts you to the future you desire. Some people, in a bid to obtain victory in certain areas of their lives, fast and pray till they become like skeletons, yet victory is not in view. Look, no matter how much you are praying, if you can't see a picture, you will never arrive your future. So, stop struggling in prayer and fasting, if you want to enjoy victory, eat very well so that you can see very well from God's word. It is only what you see that you are permitted to possess. Faith begins with perspective, but what is faith perspective? Faith perspective simply means, "God has determined my end irrespective of the circumstances I am going through." It says, "I am a finished product, I am just in the process of emergence. God finished me before He started me, I am already a concluded entity with a predetermined destination of glory. No matter what is happening around me now, my ultimate end is glory." You can't have such perspective to life and still burry your head in sorrow or despondency. When you see conflicts and oppositions around you, that is the time to lift up your head and look from where you are to the place you want to be; according to the discoveries you have made in God's word. Jesus said, "And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh" (Luke 21:28). It is when you lift up your eyes that all the goods and blessings that are due to you begin to come your way. Can a man whose head is bowed down see good when it is passing? This is the reason many people are permanently in defeat. They are too bowed down. And you know, those who keep looking at the floor will soon end in the pit. So, look up! Never be moved by all the negative things that satan is showing you. In fact, the devil is too small to show you your end, because he was not there when God was creating you and programming your destiny. God created you to have dominion. So every thing that comes your way in the negative, came late because they came after God had finished His

work. That sickness in your life came late! That is why the Bible says, "...But from the beginning it was not so" (Matt 19:8). Whatever you are experiencing negatively now, was not so from the beginning. So, change your perspective. When you have a clear picture of your future from God's word, you don't need to pray much again, you simply make declarations till it begins to manifest.

Fight Spiritual Dryness!

Spiritual dryness is satan's open door into the believers life. Jesus said in Matthew 12:43-45, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places..." Satan does not go to hot places he goes only to dry places. The Bible says, "...He walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none." May he never find vacancy in your life. "Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty..." So, spiritual dryness comprises of emptiness and idleness but it doesn't stop there. "...when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished." The word 'garnished' means to put in order; to be poised, looking religious, but empty. That is the way many believers are, they clean the outside but pay no attention to the inside. Jesus said, they are like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside while the inside is full of dead men's bones and all manner of uncleanness (Matt. 23:27). They don't offend anybody but they are dry. When satan finds such a believer, "Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first..." Spiritual dryness is satan's environment. Until he finds a dry place he cannot survive. This is why we must fight and avoid spiritual dryness. When you see a man fighting his wife, it may not be because the wife is bad but because the man is spiritually dry. A man tells lies not because he is hungry but because of spiritual dryness. You are living in hatred and bitterness not because somebody offended you but because you are spiritually dry. Murmuring, bitterness and all kinds of evil thoughts are all result of spiritual dryness. Samson's problem was not Delilah but spiritual dryness. Gahazi was a man with great potentials, he could have perhaps received four times the anointed upon Elijah but he lost it to covetousness. His problem was not money nor clothes per se, he was so spiritually dry that he couldn't say, "no." The trouble of Judas Iscariot was not 30 pieces of silver. He was the treasurer of Jesus' ministry, he kept the bag which meant he had access to an account that was inexhaustible. So his problem was not money but spiritual dryness. You know why Jesus was not moved when Peter said to Him, "You are crazy"? He was spiritually alive, He saw beyond Peter and dealt with the source. He said, "...Get thee behind me, Satan..." (Matt 16:23). The Bible says, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Rom. 8:6). That is what you need to stay spiritually alert and keep satan away. Stop playing religion! Settle down and build up yourself; let spiritual things interest you more than other things, let the study of God's Word be your daily delight. Fight bitterness, hatred and anger! You will get to your ultimate goal in life.