Beautiful trees at autumn
Blue Ridge Parkway, Bedford, Virginia
October 21, 2013
"No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
And their righteousness is from Me,"
says the Lord.
- Isaiah 54:17
gift
/gift/
noun a thing given willingly to someone without payment, a present
A gift is not really a gift unless it is given from a genuine, generous heart, without strings attached, without conditions.
A gift is such a blessing if it is given with pure motives.
So wise was the Lord when He said,
So when you give to the needy, no not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. - Matthew 6:2
But there are times when the gift turns out not to be a blessing... but a curse.
when a heavy burden is imposed...
and attached to the gift is a price tag...
a sense of obligation...
a debt of gratitude that can never seem to be repaid.
I want to quote these words from Eugene's blog:
"Boaz recognized the favor that Ruth has extended to Naomi (Ruth 2:16, Ruth 1:16), his response was "May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge" (Ruth 2:12).
"This means that:
1. God will be the one to repay us when we are compelled to give. Boaz extended favor toward Ruth out of a heart of generosity.
2. It is God whom we must depend on for trust, security, hope, and for our future and refuge. Boaz gave to Ruth without expecting anything in return."
How beautiful and how refreshing the gift when it comes with no heavy sense of being indebted to the giver.
It is a gift that can be freely received and accepted. It is a gift with so much joy and blessing.
A true gift is never, ever taken back. Never.
A "gift" that comes with a heavy expectation of having to pay the giver back removes the true value of a gift.
Then it comes not with a sense of blessing, but with a deep sense of sorrow to the heart of the receiver.
I take comfort in these words this morning:
The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it. - Proverbs 10:22
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
This is a timely teaching from Graham Cooke, and has reminded me that instead of being oppressed by the words of cursing and dishonor that someone speaks to us, we can stand on our authority and fight the battle against the enemy. For the victory has been won... we just need to view my circumstances from the standpoint of victory, not defeat.
Excerpts:
"... In your favor, there is a place of authority for you.
"You have to go to the limit of your favor to discover what the promise is, what your inheritance is, and therefore what you have permission for against the enemy.
"You step over that line, you're into presumption, but if you stay within the line of your favor, you have authority to speak and say things [into existence].
"The more you press out your favor, the more you press out yourself to the limit of your current prophetic word, the more territory God is going to give you,the more authority He opens up for you.
"That is why you simply must work with prophecy.
"Implications to change is that you get power over situations that come against you, you get power over the enemy.
"In Christ you are condemned to victory. You have to be an idiot not to win. God always commits us to a good fight, and a good fight is one where you win...
"You have to sit down in the word. You have to relax before God in it. You have to make your prophetic word part of your devotional routine.
"The you get to walk in the word before God and before people.
"The word gives you power to expect and to anticipate. Use it!
"You walk into situations carrying your favor.
"And you can donate your favor to somebody else. Whether they're saved, or a Christian, or a pre-Christian is irrelevant. You get to donate the favor that you have into somebody else's life...
"And you have to learn how to stand on the word before the enemy.
"Declare your favor.
"This guy starts cursing me, but you have to understand this is how it works for me:
"'No weapon fashioned against me can prosper, because I know the limit of my current authority right now, and I can declare to you within the rhema of my current authority that God can take this curse and turn it into a blessing...'
"And I'm going to see what the opposite of those things are, and that's what I'm going to take on board. That's why I wrote down the opposite [of all the cursing words that were spoken to me] straightaway... I wrote out the opposite of all of that, and I asked the Lord, 'Lord is that enough?'
"And He said, 'No, write something else,' so I started again. And when I had something that the Lord was satisfied with, I could bind the curse and loose what God had told me was gonna be mine.
"Then I could burn that piece of paper, and that's over, it has no power anymore.
"And now I'm expecting this: I have a whole new level of expectation in God, and what I am about to come into.
"It's like a reverse prophetic word. What the enemy meant to kill you, God uses for you.
"David used Goliath's sword to take off his head. The very thing the enemy was going to use against him he used on the enemy. This is our authority in the spirit.
"You stand on the word against the enemy everyday... I told that piece of paper where I'd written all the blessings, and I began to declare everyday, "This is the word of the Lord to me."
"I start to press out, what would that look like in my life... If I come into this today what's it gonna look like... what's it gonna change for me...
"If I meditated a few days on the implications of me believing...[these things] then I start stepping into it... and to press it through, and to declare it against the enemy... I start to declare my protection... my favor... and I ended up with a double portion."
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