Receiving Only From God

Receiving Only From God
Sometimes we think it’s all about us. It has to be all about God in order for us to fulfill what is in His heart and mind for His overall plan for His Kingdom. God doesn’t need us, but He has chosen to use us.

God has an agenda for planet earth. He has chosen you and me as the primary instrument for accomplishing His plan. Are you willing to be his faithful priest and king to do what is in His heart and mind? Why not say “yes” to His agenda.

Regardless of circumstances or appearances, God is in control. John the Baptist explains that whatever someone has they have it because it is given to them from heaven. If we all understood and accepted this, life would be more peaceful.

If we stop and ponder on each area of our life, we will see far more blessings than challenges.
* So,what do you dwell on?
*What do you think and talk about? *What has God given you?
*Do you believe that all that you have – God has given?

To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.” – John 3:27″

When John’s disciples came to him and asked if he was the Messiah, he responded that he was not and that one could only be what God had given him to be. He was a forerunner to the Messiah, and he was fulfilling a call God had given him.
*We cannot acquire and become anything that God has Not given us.
* God gave John that anointing.

We must ask whether we are trying to be or trying to acquire anything God has NOT given us.
When we seek to acquire anything that God has NOT given us, we can expect God to respond to us like any good father would to a child.
*He will remove that which the child is not supposed to have.

David understood this principle. When he was preparing to furnish the temple, he told God in his prayer, “Everything comes from You, and we have given You only what comes from Your hand”.
(1 Chron. 29:14b)

Yet when He(Jesus) heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days. (John 11:6).
*Delays in our life are not always easy to handle or to reconcile in our minds. *Often, when God does not answer our prayers in the time that we feel He should, we appoint all sorts of characteristics to God’s nature that imply He does not care.
Such was the case with Lazarus’ sisters when Lazarus became ill and died. Jesus was a close friend to Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. (Mary, you may recall, was the woman who came and poured perfume on Jesus’ feet.)
When Jesus arrived two days later, Martha shamed Him by saying, “If You had come he would not have died.”
*She implied that He didn’t care enough to come when sent for. It was a matter of priorities for Jesus, not lack of love.

God often has to delay His work in us in order to accomplish something for His Purposes that can be achieved only in the delay.

Jesus had to let Lazarus die in order for the miracle that was about to take place to have its full effect. If Jesus had simply healed a sick man, the impact of the miracle would not have been as newsworthy as resurrecting a man who had been dead for four days.
This is Jesus’ greatest “public relations act” of His whole ministry. What many do not realize is that the KEY to the whole story is in the next chapter.

Many people, because they had heard that He had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet Him. So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after Him!” (John 12:18-19)

If Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead, there would have been no crowds to cheer the Lord when He came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey.

God often sets the stage so that His glory is revealed through the events that HE orchestrates.
*God did this with Moses and Pharaoh, allowing delay after delay for release of the Israelites from Egypt.
*God did this with Abraham and Sarah for the promised child, Isaac. God granted Sarah a baby past the age of childbearing in order to demonstrate His power.

God did this in my own life. He delayed the fulfillment of what I believed He called me to do for several years. But the delays provided the necessary preparation and greater glory that God was to receive.
Friends in Christ, don’t take the delays lightly. Do not faint as God places you in what seems to be a holding pattern. ***God is at work. God knows the purposes for His delays. Don’t give up, for they are for His greater glory; so we need to remain faithful.

Jesus said that we can speak to Our mountains and tell them to “be removed and cast into the sea”, and if we have faith in God, it will be done. *Entering and remaining in God’s promises for my life requires that I place my faith and trust in God, recognizing and remembering His power in my past and embracing His grace for my future.

By worshiping Him, my heart will be established in faith and His power will be unleashed to confuse the powers of darkness, opening the way for me to inherit, or gain, new ground in and for the Lord.

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 1 Cor 3:7
*We are to study the Word of God with diligence, meditating on the Word both day and night. This is how we become successful in God’s sight. (Joshua 1:8). The Bible says that my people perish from lack of knowledge. ( Hosea 4:6 ). So, we need to eat this word and let it be fruitful. And that fruit should result in application and service(ACTION).
This is how we can rightly divide the Word of truth because it will show in our Actions, in our Growth, in our Sanctification process.

*Jesus was not just a giver–Jesus was THE GIFT! May the “gift nature” of Jesus overwhelm us all today!
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her,  If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.
*Jesus calls Himself “the gift of God.” The spiritual world has given the natural world a gift. Jesus has already been called the Son of man, Son of God, King of Israel, Teacher sent from God, Lamb of God, Light, Christ, Messiah, Logos and Truth.
*God showed us His love by giving us His one and only son that we might live through Him.

LORD – help us count our blessings, especially during the hardest of times. Please let us see what you Jesus, have given us -” Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning”. James 1:17.  Amen