20th September 2011
The Lord is saying. It
is I, you have not lost me. I am still with you. Yet you need
to hear my still small voice and obey it. When you have done
this my voice will be easier to understand. Listen closely.
Staying Full Of God
By Andrew Wommack
http://www.awmi.net/extra/article/4_keys
Do you ever feel like you and God have drifted apart and that
the love and joy you once experienced with Him has faded? If
you do, you’re not alone. Most Christians feel like the
experiences they have with God diminish over time and that they
need another touch. But is that the way it should be?
The Bible says God will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb.
13:5). If that is true, and it is, who moved? As born-again
believers, we are all capable of living in the fullness of God
every day of our lives. God is continually pouring out His love,
joy, peace, revelation knowledge, and every other blessing.
But, we can get to a point where we’re not receiving and
“feel” like He has drifted away.
Romans 1:21 says,
“When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither
were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart was darkened.”
This scripture contains four separate elements, or keys, that
can lead us into and keep us operating in the fullness of God.
Expressed positively, they are: glorify God, be thankful, recognize
the power of your imagination, and have a good heart. You have
the power to control each of these in your life.
Glorify God
In many places throughout the Bible, the word “magnify”
is the same word translated “glorify.” Therefore,
“magnify” and “glorify” can be used interchangeably.
And “magnify” means “to make bigger.”
Did you know that you can make God bigger? Technically speaking,
God is who He is, regardless of what you think, but in terms
of your perception, He can be big or small. You have the power
to make Him one or the other in your life.
Most of us have become masters at enlarging our problems and
minimizing God and His Word. I remember a lady who thought she
was pregnant but found out she had cancer instead. The doctors
said she needed a hysterectomy immediately. They said she only
had a fifty percent chance of living, and she wouldn’t
live more than two weeks without surgery.
She came to me crying, “Andrew, have you heard what they
said?” Now, I don’t always respond this way, but I
believe God led me to say what I did. I started laughing and
declared, “Cancer’s no problem with God. The lights
in heaven won’t dim from the power drain if the Lord heals
you! It’s not any harder to be healed of cancer than it
is to be healed of a cold.”
I started magnifying and glorifying God. I made the Lord bigger
and the cancer smaller. The only thing that made the cancer
insurmountable was the value she was placing on what the doctors
said. They even called her a fool for refusing treatment and
made her sign paperwork to absolve them of liability “when”
she died. But she decided to stand her ground and believe God.
It’s now been almost twenty years since she refused that
operation—and she has a whole slew of children.
What do you value? What’s big to you? You can magnify
the Lord and make Him and His Word bigger than any problem.
Do it by glorifying, praising, and thanking Him. Find someone
in the Word who overcame a situation similar to yours. Meditate
on the Word, and make it more real to you than the problem.
You need to get to a place where God’s Word is true and
where He is greater than any situation.
“All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark
9:23).
Thankfulness
Paul listed un-thankfulness as one of the signs of the end
times and put it in the same verse as covetousness, pride, blasphemy,
and unholiness (2 Tim. 3:1-2). Not many would argue that we
live in a society full of unthankful people, even in spite of
the fact that we have more prosperity and opportunity than any
people who have ever lived.
The second key to staying full of God is a thankful heart.
Glorifying, magnifying, and thanking Him are all interrelated,
but to glorify God, you must be thankful. As you are thanking
Him, you’re reminding yourself of what He has said and
done, which magnifies Him.
“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits”
(Ps. 103:2).
Being thankful involves both humility and memory. Humility
is the understanding that you didn’t accomplish these things
“on your own.” Then, humbly remembering the good things
He has done for you always brings thankfulness. So it’s
important to look back and rehearse your victories and remember
whose power brought them to pass.
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his
courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth
endureth to all generations” (Ps. 100:4-5).
Every time you are tempted to gripe and complain about a problem,
don’t. Instead, enter into God’s presence and spend
ten minutes thanking Him for His goodness. If you will, you’ll
find that the natural desire to complain will cease, and the
problem will shrink as you begin to see it in the proper perspective.
Imagination
Imagination is much more important than most people realize.
The Hebrew word that was translated “imagination”
in the Old Testament literally means “conception.”
Imagination is how we conceive new ideas. Without it, we become
spiritually and creatively sterile.
A few years ago I took a trip to Israel. I remember stopping
in the valley of Elah. I got out of the bus and walked down
to that little stream. I picked up five smooth stones just the
way David once did. I began to imagine what it must have been
like for David when he faced Goliath. The story came alive.
The Word of God comes alive when you can picture what it’s
talking about. Let the Word of God control your imagination
as you think about scriptures, and you will see things in Scripture
that you can’t see with your physical eyes. You see it
on the inside…in your imagination.
When the Bible says you’re healed, you’ve got to
meditate on that truth until you see yourself healed. Most people
allow their imaginations to become vain and agree with the image
the doctors have painted rather than the Word of God. They’re
told what is going to happen, and they imagine it as truth.
When we fail to be thankful and glorify God, our imagination
automatically becomes vain. That doesn’t mean it isn’t
working; it just means it begins to work against us. A person
with a vain imagination is a pessimist, imagining failure instead
of success. We need to use our imagination to agree with God’s
Word and see ourselves the way God sees us: happy, healthy,
and prosperous.
A Good Heart
The Scripture makes it very clear that the attitude of your
heart is far more important than your actions.
Jesus said it this way in Matthew 23:25-26,
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for
ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but
within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee,
cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that
the outside of them may be clean also.”
The Lord is more concerned about your heart than He is your
actions.
Matthew 12:35, Mark 7:21-23, and Proverbs 23:7 make it even
clearer:
“A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth
forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure
bringeth forth evil things” (Matt. 12:35).
“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy,
pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within,
and defile the man” (Mark 7:21-23).
“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov.
23:7).
Your heart controls what you say, and it also controls what
you do. All of the above are products of your heart. The opposite
of those can be true also. Love, joy, peace, patience, and the
rest of the fruit of the spirit are also products of what your
heart believes. The reason the heart responds in a negative
way is because you allow it to be dominated by external, or
physical, things instead of by the Word of God.
Our understanding is then darkened, and we become insensitive
to God. We actually cause our hearts to become hardened. The
word “harden,” according to the dictionary, means
cold, insensitive, unfeeling, and unyielding. When our hearts
become hardened or insensitive to God, they automatically become
sensitive, dominated by, and controlled by our physical senses.
So what do most people do when they realize their actions,
which are being controlled by their hearts and are causing problems
for themselves and others? They resort to behavior modification.
They try to change their actions without changing their hearts,
and that never works long-term. If you want your behavior to
change, you must change your heart. Make sure that the Word
of God is the dominant influence.
If you will put these four keys into practice in your life,
you will never be the same. It will change the way you think
about everyone and everything around you. It will give you a
God perspective.
What I have written here is only an excerpt from the teaching
on this subject. My new book, Discover the Keys to Staying Full
of God, has just been released. In addition, I have released
the companion Study Guide, a great tool for individual or group
study. In them, I teach on this subject in depth. You can also
order this teaching in CD or DVD album format.
