Page 6 - MyFaith Dec 2016(1)

FAITH LIFE
God’s greatest gift to us this
Christmas!
BY ANDRÉ & JENNY ROEBERT
It’s true that Christmas is the season for giving! And what a glorious time of
year it is, with families and friends joining together to share love and warmth
and goodwill. The truth is, no matter how people perceive or experience
Christmas, as far as God is concerned, there is a gift that matches no other
that is readily available and accessible to everyone who is willing and ready
to receive it!
That gift is living in the centre of God’s BLESSING! One way of viewing the
BLESSING, is seeing it as the grace of being able to hear the heart of our
gracious, Heavenly Father so that we can walk in the light of His wisdom,
while being completely surrounded by the safety of His presence. It’s living
without lack or fear but rather in an overflow of God’s goodness and favour.
And all along, being empowered to be a significant source of life and love
to those around us.
To receive this gift, the BLESSING, is to firstly, receive the giver of the gift Rich and Adds No Sorrow with It.”, he writes, “God’s WORD will take you
Himself. A heart that surrenders to the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
receives the full gift of righteousness. This is a position of being completely
in right standing with God, washed clean by the blood of His Son, rendering
us pure and blameless before Him. It’s also a gift that rightfully positions us
to receive the Blessing God originally gave to Adam at creation (which he
forfeited through sin) and to Abraham who received it by faith. It’s an in-
heritance we have in Christ, readily available for us to enjoy today. (Genesis
12:2,3;13:2 and Galatians 3:7-9;13-14;26;29).
The key to walking in the fullness of this powerful gift, is to tune our hearts
and minds into the frequency where the BLESSING of God continuously
flows. This reminds me of a true story I once read about a family that set out
on their sailing boat to cross the ocean. During their voyage, their boat was
capsized by a pod of whales, leaving them without most of their supplies
and at the mercy of the elements. Their only hope of survival was to hook
a prevailing trade wind that would fill their make-shift sails, and push them
into a main stream shipping channel where another vessel would spot and
rescue them. Being a seasoned sailor, the father of the family had enough
knowledge to understand the flow of the currents and his general wherea-
bouts to somehow steer their broken, lopsided boat in the right direction.
Without a deliberate effort to catch the right current and trade wind, they
would be left stranded, going nowhere for too long, losing all hope ofsurvival.
6 | DECEMBER 2016 - JANUARY 2017
Just like that small boat in a gigantic ocean, unless we deliberately choose to
keep our hearts and minds connected to the source of our new life and free-
dom, we can lose our way and hope in a world where we are surrounded by
trouble. Keeping ourselves in the centre of the current and flow of God’s life
source, will prevent us from wondering around aimlessly, at the mercy of
our circumstances and the storms of life. In other words, being ignorant of
God’s grace and truth will keep us from being in the centre flow of His mercy
and BLESSING, and will prevent us from living in His continuous supernatu-
ral flow of abundant life.
So, to hook up with the current or wind that ensures this vital connection
and appropriates the BLESSING of God in our lives, there is a strategy that is
simple and clear. It begins at the source of all beginnings - the Word of God!
To quote Kenneth Copeland, from his book “The Blessing of the Lord Makes
from living outside that BLESSING—where storms, disasters and hard times
tear up and destroy things, to living inside it, appropriating THE BLESSING in
your own life and replenishing the earth around you with it....”
The trouble is, we don’t spend enough time in God’s Word. And we can
only blame ourselves for that. Somehow we always prioritise everything
else above digging into the truth and mysteries of God’s wonderful truth
and wisdom. So the first part of our strategy is to drop all those things that
would hinder or steal our time from being with the Lord in His Word.
Why is the Word so important to appropriating the BLESSING in our lives?
Because the Word, when received into our hearts, produces faith! And just
as it was for Abraham, the BLESSING is powered by our faith! Unless we
believe and perceive this gift in our spirits first, we will never see it material-
ised in our natural lives. So, when we choose to purposefully and diligently
put aside time to make the Word our priority, and draw ourselves near to the
Lord this way, His response is immediate! James 4:8 says, as we draw near to
Him, He will draw near to us! That’s how the BLESSING works!
Remember, attention always precedes desire. So, as we delight ourselves
in God’s Word, giving it the attention it deserves, our desire for the things of
God begins to increase. Feeding our spirits with the Word, and delighting
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