July 31, 2009
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Authority of the Believer – unworthiness by Pastor Don
First, one of our members shared her testimony and read a poem she wrote about unworthiness. I need to speak with her to see if she is willing to let me share what she wrote, if she does I will share that with you at a later date.
We can get God to act on our behalf taking steps that God provides. We won’t get God’s cooperation if we are walking our own way. God wants the best for us. John 14-17 lets us know God’s heart for us. God wants our joy to be complete and He wants us to be successful, happy, and have a long and fruitful life.
Pastor Don shared that he used to feel very unworthy to be used by God. He had grown up in the Baptist church and then went and lived the life of a musician, including playing an instrument in Harry Belafonte’s band. His lifestyle during his rebellious years was not pleasing to the Lord, so when he came back to the Lord, and God wanted him to be a pastor, Pastor Don felt unworthy. But unworthiness is a trick of the devil to keep us down and to keep us from doing what God has planned for us to do. But for years, satan kept Pastor Don down using unworthiness.
Then Pastor Don heard someone singing, “Just as I am without one plea…” And the power of God hit Pastor Don. He realized the message, but had trouble receiving it. But the truth was that God wanted Pastor Don to be His child, just the way God wants us to be His child. God perfects us when we fail.
When Pastor Don went off to college he felt he didn’t need God. He felt his parents were idiots, and that he could figure things out for himself. He also found out he was wrong in this.
When we act in the authority of the believer we may think that our choices in life are ok and no problem, but if we step back and look at it honestly, we find that it isn’t. That what we thought was ok was really empty, even though we think in our minds it is ok, something in the back of our head keeps saying that something is wrong with this picture. God will put conviction into our minds, satan will put thoughts of unworthiness that keep us from moving forward.
Pastor Don, as a saxophone player for Harry Belafonte got sick, was loosing weight, and couldn’t perform the way he used to. He had sarcoidosis, a disease where his lungs were eating themselves up. His weight dropped from 180 pounds to 139 pounds and he was spitting up chunks of blood and lungs. He couldn’t stop coughing. His doctor told him to go home and get his house in order for he was going to die. The most time he had left was five years. Yet Pastor Don was young and was aware that his wife’s father had died at an early age and he didn’t want to die, didn’t want to leave his wife and children.
He grew up Baptist, and the best that he had to hope for under the Baptist belief system was that God would be with you IN your suffering. Occasionally a miracle would happen, sometimes people get better, others die.
The doctor gave Pastor Don massive doses of cortisone to ease things, but it did not help much. Cortisone is a drug you can’t give up cold turkey. Cynthia, Pastor Don’s wife was in church and she heard the voice of God and that voice told her, “I will heal him.” She told Pastor Don this and that made Pastor Don think about the possibility of healing.
Another memory that Pastor Don had was that his father had a stroke and his mom told his father to face the wall and ask God for 15 years like Hezekiah did. His father’s stroke kept his father from preaching and his father did not want to live if he couldn’t do what he was called to do. His father prayed and received his healing and had those 15 years of life to the day. And his father went back to being pastor, preaching, and serving God for those 15 years.
Pastor Don turned to the wall and prayed something like this. Lord, I haven’t served you, haven’t been good in the church, and I am not going to make any false promises. My wife’s father died at 46 and I don’t want to see her a widow. I want to see my kids grow up. I want to live.
After that prayer, he was watching the 700 Club on TV and Ben Kinchlow was praying. He said that he saw a young man with an incurable lung disease, being healed. Ben told this man to stand, lift his hands and the power of Jesus would touch him and heal him right now.
Pastor Don lifted his hands and received his healing – 30 years ago. The power of God came on him.
The power of God is also called the glory of God. In Hebrew it means a heaviness, kind of like honey poured over you. Your legs get wobbly. Someone described it as velvet nectar.
God touched Pastor Don. He went back to the doctor, went back and felt better. Then some ideas from satan came to him, ideas telling him that he was not worthy to be healed. But that was a lie from satan. The doctor was so surprised at his healing, found out that Pastor Don stopped taking cortisone – an act that could have killed him, and pronounced him healed. Pastor Don says he has the medical records to prove it.
A few days later, after he received the healing he had a night from hell, when all the symptoms came back on him. But they left and he has kept his healing.
It is the Authority of the Believer to be healed. After God heals us, though, we have to do work to maintain our healing. We are not taught how to hold onto our healing, and many lose their healing for the devil comes in to steal the seeds.
There were voices speaking inside of Pastor Don’s head telling him how unworthy he was, that he should give up and die, that healing is not for us, that it is just a psychological episode. But there was also something in his mind telling him to hold onto his healing. He did not know how to do that.
Pastor Don began to study about miracles, books and tapes on healings and miracles started showing up at his house and he read and listened to them.
Usually when you are terminally ill your friends disappear. But there were many Christian friends who stayed and helped him to gain these teachings.
When lying symptoms come you need to stand in faith. Many receive their healing on Sunday but by Monday they have confessed their sickness again and do not hold to the confession of healing.
Matthew 13:11 He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
There are mysteries in the Kingdom of Heaven that are only open to the believer. To the non-believer and those outside of the Kingdom of Heaven they are closed. Out of the mouth of two or more witnesses is confirmation.
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
What is faith?
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Faith is a SUBSTANCE, something physical and tangible. It is EVIDENCE, and it becomes tangible evidence of something. It may not be here in the natural, but we know it will be here in the future. It is as real as if it was tangible. It is a I know that I know that I know. Even before it manifests to us in the physical it is as real as when it arrives in the future.
FAITH IS NOT QUANTITATIVE. You can’t pray for more faith. Praying, “If I had more faith…” it is not Biblical. We are told that faith the size of a mustard seed (a mustard seed is about the size of a grain of pepper), that is a tiny bit of faith, and with that faith we can move mountains. We don’t have to believe to get more faith – we are given a measure of faith.
The Church has mistaught people, telling them that we need quantity, that we can do more, but all we need is that mustard seed of faith to do stuff.
FAITH IS I KNOW I HAVE IT, not I’m believing for it. But believing FOR is a process towards getting to faith.
When we are sick we have choice – we can believe that we won’t be healed, we can begin the process of believing for our healing, or we can make a decision and say I KNOW I am healed. It is a choice to believe.
Most people who say that they are believing in faith are really wishing and hoping. You need to believe – to know that you know that you know. Therefore those who are wishing and hoping are not in faith.
Faith is the SUBSTANCE, the EVIDENCE. Without that you can’t please God. Faith isn’t something we can figure out in our minds.
All the facts that Pastor Don knew about his life was that the doctor told him that he was going to die.
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
There are two positions we need to have according to Hebrews 11:6. 1. We have to believe that HE IS and 2. that He is a REWARDER, He is going to give me something. God will give you something. God doesn’t have to respond to wishing and hoping.
Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them
When two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ Name, He is in the midst of them.
Wishing and hoping does not have people gathered in one accord.
Children have greater faith than adults – they are not taught to disbelieve. Pastor Don told us about a revivalist in Oklahoma who was called to pray for rain and he told the people that at the end of the next night there would be rain. The next night only one person, a 10 year old girl, brought an umbrella. The rest did not have the faith to believe that it really would rain.
FAITH REQUIRES AN ACTION.
IMPOSSIBLE – you can’t tell nonbelievers God is going to show up for them and not believe that He is.
People pray, “If God wills.” Do we know His will? His will is expressed in the Word of God.
Leave the “if” out.
Pastor Don spoke about a skeptic, Josh McDowell who sought after God. Yes, he sought after God to disprove God, but to do that he began diligently seeking God – to disprove Him. God manifested His Word to Josh McDowell and he became a believer.
The Holy Spirit will help you locate people, showing you how to approach them. There is not a rote way to pray.
We need to know if the person really wants to be well. Jesus asked the man at the Pool of Siloam if he wanted to be made well. Pastor Don was praying for someone and found out that they really did not want to be healed. They wanted a certain healing but not a complete healing for if they got that they would lose their social security disability.
If you have “maybe” thinking prayer does not help, but prayer can help you get to the point where your faith kicks in and you begin to believe.
Who can say that Heaven is a better place than earth? We know that it is, yet many on earth are still afraid to die, afraid to go to that better place. We all have so much stuff we want to do right here on earth, and we are not ready to die. But Pastor Don has visited many people in the hospital where their families are praying for the person to live and not die, but when the family members leave the person in the hospital is telling Pastor Don that they are ready to move to the next place, but their families are holding them back from that.
Romans 10:8-9 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”g]’> brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks
From our mouths we can confess good and evil. We can be positive or negative. If we are feeling unworthy, we will speak unworthy, and believe unworthy. Negative confessions also have power and will manifest. We need to watch what we are saying.
Mark 11:22-25 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.
In Christ we trust.
Pastor Don spoke about his big brother and at times having a big brother made it difficult in the Bronx for Pastor Don to stand on his own, for he was always Jerry’s little brother. So Pastor Don, as a youth, would be ready to fight to “prove himself” and someone would whisper to the potential combatant that this is Jerry’s little brother, and the person would back off. But sometimes being the little brother of Jerry was a good thing, such as when Pastor Don, short and not bulky, wanted to join the football team and the coach let him in because his brother had a fight and a determination about him, and the coach figured that Pastor Don would have that same sort of determination.
The truth of the matter is that we are unworthy, we have messed up. We have made wrong decisions, and the direction we would go in our own strength is the wrong direction. In our witness we are Judas at times.
Romans 3:10 As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;
When we confront the evil one, we want our Big Brother (Jesus) with us. We can have faith in our Big Brother, for He has declared that He is there for us.
Pastor Don’s brother, years and years ago before his brother got saved, was a warlord of a Bronx gang, so Pastor Don was Papa Jumbo’s little brother. As his brother, there was a protection placed around Pastor Don.
When we are in a relationship with God, God is above any powerful situation that can come against us. It is not WE who are all that, but GOD is all that. We come with the package. We are under the covering and protection of HIS name.
If I have the same heart determination, God will use me in spite of my past and the sins I have done. I am not worthy in myself, but I am worthy IN HIM. The devil is scared to death of you for He knows WHO you are hooked up with – the King of Kings, Lord of Lords. That we are the righteousness of God IN CHRIST JESUS.
Ephesians 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
We tend to believe that we needed to live such a holy life for Him to use us, but we were not Holy on our own, it was He who made us Holy. It is not what WE do, but BECAUSE HE DID.
Ephesians 1:6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
God is the one that put me in this place of being accepted in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:7-9 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
We have REDEMPTION IN HIM.
Ephesians 1:10-11 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, bothb]’> is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
We are not here for our glory but for HIS GLORY.
Praying this teaching blessed you.
(Heather’s comment) I am so grateful that I came to Christ although I wish I had not waited so long to make that decision. Trust me, the 40 years I spent in the wilderness not believing in Him were horrific. I have found such peace and joy and happiness in these past 7 years. Sometimes I wish that I could go back and redo those 40 years, but now I see that it is those years that give me a heart to reach those who are still deluded into thinking that they can do things on their own. We really need HIM, for it truly is IN HIM that we have righteousness, peace and joy.
Heather
Comments (1)
Thanks!