Authority - Ours or His?

We should have our doctrines absolutely clear especially with regards to healing. God is the One who heals even when we have people who have the spiritual gift of healings as seen in the New Testament. To think or to speak otherwise is heresy because we do not have healing powers. We have faith in the God who heals. Some have more faith than others and yet, it is the sovereignty of God the Holy Spirit that has to be given importance. 
For example, we find an interesting incident where Peter and John at the temple gate heals a lame man by telling him - 'Silver and gold I do not have but what I do have I give to you' and then goes on to lift him to his feet. Now, what did Peter and John think they had? Surely not the power to heal because later on they take pains to proclaim that Jesus did the healing. What did they have then? They had an understanding about the power and authority behind the Name of Jesus. They also received a confidence to use that Name during that time, which they promptly did. Let's be clear on one thing. Authority to use that Name has to be granted to us. We do not have it in ourselves. In Mathew chapter 28, Jesus says - All authority has been granted to me. Therefore go... We are exhorted to go because Jesus is willing to grant us His authority at any necessary moment. All we need is to have is a confidence in the greatness of that Name. Amen. 

Do we have an open heaven?

Some people query whether everything works according to fixed arbitrary laws or is there room for freedom in the affairs of men. Well, it is helpful to know that we function in an open universe under God. God is not distant but He has set boundaries and nothing can go beyond control. However He permits man to learn from his own mistakes and even allows sin to go unchecked until is becomes 'ripe'. That is the picture we get from the Scriptures. It is very important to know that we do not have a fatalistic world but God rewards faith and answers prayer in a way that is astounding in its scope and essence. He extended the life of King Hezekiah because of prayer after He Himself send word through Isaiah that he was to die. In the New Covenant, the promise is extreme - 'Ask whatever you will...'. And James is very clear when he says - 'You do not receive because you do not ask'..There is a seeming tension between what God does in His sovereignty and what He will not do because we do not ask. The supreme essence of the Christian faith is that a person can be made a child of God and is given the freedom to request things from God that are only possible under an open heaven. He can dare to ask Solomon what he would like to have and would bless him double portion just because he pleased God in his asking. Jesus cursed the fig tree for no reason other than to teach us that all things are possible in prayer. Let's take Him at His Word. 

Grace means work!

It is quite a common mistake to view grace as God doing something for us while we take a step back and just watch how He does it. We find it difficult to associate grace with any kind of effort on our part. Now, it is true that grace is being manifest apart from works as mentioned by apostle Paul, However we need to carefully unpack that statement. When we try to achieve something in our strength, it becomes 'works'. However grace is also associated with work but not the kind mentioned earlier. If we think that God does something while we do nothing, it is a travesty of grace. Grace actually is manifested when we give up trusting in ourselves and put our entire weight on the power of the gospel. We lean on to God with all our might and we give all our energies to seeing how God can be glorified through our lives. Our efforts are intense and we groan in the Spirit to see that victories are achieved in Jesus Name. The only difference is that we do not operate by trusting in our ability or wisdom but in the One who can make the impossible to happen. To pray in the Spirit means that we are praying in the power of the Spirit and crying out for supernatural activity rather than the natural. Grace can mean work, hard work, work that brings forth His fruit. And that is the beauty of grace. 

Who does the saving?

When we talk about what we need to do to be saved, the key to that question is finding out what we need to be saved from. If Jesus is our Saviour and we need to be saved or pulled out, then let's admit that we cannot be pulled out and we pull ourselves out at the same time. If we need to be pulled out from our sin, then repentance should mean that we admit we need to be pulled out from the mess we are in and ask Him to do it. In other words, to be saved, we do not turn from our sin (indeed, we can't) because then we are trying to save ourselves. The power to stop sinning has to come from Him. All that we can do is to confess that we are troubled about our sin and that we want to be rescued from it. We have to let Jesus do the saving act. It is He who should forgives us our sins and give us the power to stop coming back to it. Also faith means that we are believing Jesus to be the One saving us and who will continue to save us. 

Confusion about the marriage covenant!

When we talk of the marriage vows, the usual pitch is that it is not a contract but a covenant. What many people understand by it is that God is the One doing the sealing and therefore it cannot be broken. Needless to say, when we look at believing marriages down the line, many are in tatters and divorces are common. Somehow, we thought that a believing marriage was made in heaven and now we are shocked and confused. I think that the root problem is the way we decipher the word - 'covenant' in marriage. We should understand that covenant is used differently in Scripture. There are covenants that God makes with man and there are also covenants that man makes with each other. In the second type, the onus is upon the persons involved not to break the covenant. God is not the one sealing the covenant in any sense. The couple should realize that they are making a covenant with each other which has to reflect the New Covenant and not the Old Covenant. The understanding should be that the marriage covenant is 'unconditional' and each partner should pray earnestly and work towards fulfilling the unconditional nature of the covenant they promised to each other. If they treat marriage as a conditional one (like the Old Mosaic Covenant) then they are headed for disaster. The real issue is therefore not in the covenant itself but in what kind of covenant the couple think they have made to each other.

The turf for the battle of the ages!

It is grossly incorrect to present the case of God having to fight and overcome the devil. There never was and never will be a battle between heaven and earth in that sense. When we think of a fight, it is actually between Jesus as a Man fighting and defeating the devil who tried all his tricks to cause Jesus to falter in His life here on earth. Jesus was not winning the battle for Himself but for us. He had to win and overcome where we lost and gave up. The victory was meant to pave a way for each one of us to follow in His footsteps. Everything that we see Jesus do on earth was to show what a man can do if he is filled with the Holy Spirit. God was declaring that just because Adam lost does not mean that everything is lost. He was willing to send a second Adam who would fight the same battles that Adam fought and win every time. God became one of us in every way and then decided to take the devil's challenge head on. He was defeating the devil on the devil's own turf using our nature, not His. The difference between Jesus and Adam was that Jesus learned obedience while Adam gave up at the first instance,