When you are living with Israel’s program in your mind, do you know what you are going to be fixated on? The fix, and you are going to be hoping that someone is praying for you for “the fix.” It is not about the fix, it is about your future hope.
If you get the fix, what are you hoping for? God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling.
But, what is our hope? Is it the fix of these old bodies? Or, is it the new body, the body that will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body. Is our deliverance the repair and the escape of the problems of the old, or is it the hope of the new?
When we get our new bodies, we will be delivered from the suffering circumstances that adversely affect this old body in which we must dwell. Your patient endurance through suffering is a way of demonstrating your hope, and when your hope is put on display in the midst of your suffering, that brings glory to God.
The grace and strength God gives a person to endure that suffering, is the strength of God he wants others to see in that person’s life. That is when God’s strength is perfected in your life. While we seek deliverance FROM suffering, God seeks devotion THROUGH suffering.
Prayer was never given to change God’s perspective of your greater preference. Prayer was given to change your perspective of God’s greater purpose. God’s greater purpose was not to strengthen our faith by altering our circumstances. God’s greater purpose is to allow us to demonstrate our faith as we remain strong in spite of our circumstances.
The beginning of Israel’s last days of her program, they were being equipped for the upcoming time of tribulation right on their horizon. God used the physical senses in every respect, in connection with his sign nation at Israel’s high holy feast day called Pentecost.
So this was not a secret, it was exactly what the Bible had foretold would take place, when it came to the sign nation. God gave his sign nation things to SEE and to HEAR and to SPEAK, the physical senses were used by God, so that Israel might WITNESS their deliverance.
The secret had not been revealed yet, in Act chapter 6? God offers the religious leadership of the sign nation a special sign, a sign designed to PROVE to them that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed who he had been proclaimed to be, Israel’s promised earthly messiah.
The nation Israel was given every visual opportunity to change their thinking about the identity of their messiah and their ability to perform up to the standard of God’s righteousness, when it came to the law contract. God proved how obstinate the hearts of Israel’s political/religious leadership were, in spite of all the visual evidences God placed before them.
We are told by most of religiondom today, that Pentecost was the beginning of the Body of Christ, not so, because in Acts chapter 6, the issue was still Israel’s religious leadership? The Body of Christ did not begin on Israel’s High Holy Feast Day of Pentecost.
We are the saints of a brand new program, we have a new apostle through whom we have been given God’s completed instruction. While Israel walked by sight, we walk NOT by sight, but by faith. The focus today is no longer on the outward, but on the inward.
A visual evidence given and a visual evidence rejected! Well, this is the case with Israel’s religious leadership, people were getting healed, people were coming to belief and many people were added to that earthly kingdom in that day, but God was looking for the leadership, the representatives of that nation to make their confession.
It was a national promise and it is a national rejection as far as God is concerned. Acts 3:2 - Acts 4:18, here was a visual sign they could not refute, a visual manifestation opportunity God was giving Israel’s religious leaders, to solicit from that religious leadership a change of thinking.
Jesus Christ was no military giant in their eyes, much less a military genius, and that is what they were looking for. Israel’s leadership did not want a suffering servant as a messiah, they wanted a conquering hero as their messiah.
The issue with God in his plan and program with Israel and their promised land was an issue concerning their need of, and acknowledgment of the source of their righteousness. Israel would need a righteousness that God could recognize.
They had a righteousness that they could recognize as far as they were seeing things, but they did not have a righteousness that God could recognize. A God recognized righteousness would be an absolute necessity for that nation, if they were to acquire and remain in the land promised to their fathers.
The prayer of faith, leaves no doubt about the power of prayer in Israel’s program, they walked by sight, God allowed their prayer life to work in connection with sight as that earthly kingdom was on their doorstep. When it came to the earthly program, God’s glory was magnified through seeing, and the prayer of faith was the catalyst. Is God utilizing the prayer of faith during this present dispensation of grace, that we might see our deliverance? No.
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