An Archer of God
To
get the Word of God to work effective in your life, you need a clear
and concise understanding of how the Word works. In particular, how
hope, faith, and love work together. These three, working through you,
can bring God's Word into physical manifestation in your life:
I Cor 13:13
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.
Gal 5:5-6
For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor
uncircumcision;
but faith which worketh by love.
Let
me share an illustration, which the Lord gave me, concerning how these
three work together to bring results into your life. In the sport
of archery, you have three main items you are working with:
A TARGET
AN ARROW
A BOW
The
target is your goal. It is what you desire to hit or have.
This represents your hope. The arrow is your faith. It must
be active to be of any benefit to you, not just sitting idle in your
quiver.
The bow is the love of God shed abroad in your heart. It is God's
love for you, and your confidence in Him, in His love, which gives
strength to the arrow of faith to continue on until the hope is
attained.
Several important points:
(1) You must be strong in your confidence that God loves you, and that
He will never leave you nor forsake you. He seeks to bless you
and deliver you from trouble, fear, and defeat in every area of your
life. This allows you to take a complete pull on the bow of love,
ensuring your arrow of faith does not fall short, and ensuring your
arrow of faith is not shaken by the winds of doubt blowing against it.
(2) You must have developed your arrows of faith. You cannot run
out and buy them. Nor can you pray them up. You are going
to have to go out to the treasure fields of God1, and collect into your
quiver, to be able to use them towards your targets of hope and against
your enemy.
(3) You are going to have to go hunting for your targets
yourself. Just like going hunting for game, it is not going to
come and lie down in your lap and say, "Here I am"! You are going
to have to decide what it is you want. You are going to have to
have the right kind of faith arrows for that game. And you are
going to have to have a full assurance that God loves you and wants you
to have that provision.
(4) You are going to have to be single-eyed toward your target, before,
during, and after you fire your faith arrow, or it will not land on the
mark. If your sight is drawn off from the target, as Peter was as
he walked on the water, taking his eyes off Jesus, and onto the wind
and waves of doubt, you will miss your target.
Matthew 6:22
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
BY LEARNING GOD'S LOVE FOR YOU, THROUGH THE HOPE OF HIS WORD, AND THEN
WALKING IN FAITH, YOU A BE AN "ARCHER OF GOD".
What is it:
Romans 8:24-25
For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope:
for what a
man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
Hope is something not seen. That is, hope
is something that I do not now have manifested in the nature realm, and
therefore cannot see it, touch it, nor smell it. This is not to
say that you don't possess it in the spiritual realm. For if it
is according to God's will, which He has already stated and made
provisions for, and you have asked for it by prayer and received it in
faith, then you possess it spiritually. But you must have
patience and steadfastness until it is physically manifested.
Once you possess it physically, you don't hope for it anymore.
You have it!
How do I get it:
Romans 15:4
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our
learning,
that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
The only way to get hope is to get into the Word of God and find the
promises of God for that desire of yours. Then start meditating
on the promises.
The meditation will cause the following things to happen:
(1) it will solidify your hope/vision/eyesight on the target
(2) it will build up your faith by hearing the word
(3) it will strengthen your confidence that God loves you
and that it is His will for you to have your desired target.
How do I use it:
Romans 4:16-21
Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed;
not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,
(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed,
even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations,
according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old,
neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;
but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;
And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
You use your hope by holding onto it. You
hold that target, that vision, that desire, up to God, in your heart,
and continue holding it there until it is manifested. You use
your hope as an anchor. You use that Word of God that you have
fastened onto as anchor to prevent the waves and storms of doubt and
unbelief from carrying you away from God's will in your life. His
will is for perfect and total victory in every area of your life.
You use your hope by maintaining a singleness of heart, not
double-minded, never receiving negative thoughts. I did not say
that the negative thoughts would not come! I said do not receive
them, nor meditate on them. When you meditate on them, instead of
the Word of God, fear and doubt come in! When fear comes in,
faith goes out. But praise God, when faith comes in, fear goes
out! You choose which one! You choose life or death!
Isaiah 26:3
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind
is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Continue in your hope:
Hebrews 10:35-36
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God,
ye might receive the promise.
If you do not under gird your hope or confidence
with patience, it will eventually come falling to the ground.
Without patience, you will grow weary in your mind and faint:
Hebrews 12:3
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself,
lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
That is why you need to renew your minds daily
(Rom 12:1-2). Unless you faint, thereby releasing your hope, and
never attaining it:
Proverbs 29:18
Where there is no vision, the people perish:
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Eph 2:12
That at that time ye were without Christ,
being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world:
The result of lost hope:
Proverbs 13:12
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:
but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Ezekiel 37:11
Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones
are the whole house of Israel:
behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost:
we are cut off from our parts.