Living Word Family Church Sermon Podcast

Description: God has given us so many great and precious promises throughout His Word, but our receiving of them is not automatic. Many times, there is something that is required of us. A journey through the beginning of the book of Joshua yields some principles that we can apply in our walk of faith as we look to possess His promises and live the gospel to those around us.

When we study the life of faith, we often focus on what we can receive by faith, often with regard to healing and provision. And indeed, these are among the precious promises God has made to His children. But when we look at the heroes of the Bible, those who appear in the "hall of faith" in Hebrews, for example, we see something else. They aren't afforded that status for what they received, but for what they DID. We find, as we continue to explore the life of faith, that faith is a necessary component of obedience.

We know by now (we'd better!) that we can place our faith in everything God says. If God said it, we can believe it, and if we can believe it, we can experience it. So when it comes to praying and believing and receiving, we MUST know what God has indeed said! To stand on the promises of God, we must actually know what He has promised. Today, we take a look at some of those promises.

When someone makes a claim, a promise, or even a threat, our response -that is, how seriously we take those things- is determined by two things primarily: the nature of the statement itself, and our knowledge of the person who says it. This is why the more we understand the character of God, the easier it is to believe Him, and this is the essence of faith. To know Him is to believe Him!

We have an unfortunate tendency to "believe" for things that are actually more of a "wish list". God can certainly speak things to us personally and we can believe Him to fulfill those things. But He has already promised so much in the Bible, and we would absolutely profit from simply identifying those promises and laying hold of them by faith! See a promise, and speak it, but don't limit it to material or physical needs. Look at what God has promised in terms of your character!

There is a right way to pray; an effective way to pray. When we pray as we are instructed to in the word of God, those prayers are answered. But we are to do more than ask God for something when we pray. We are to make declarations in agreement with God's word.