A Santa Claus God?
We have a concept of God in Christianity which I call a “Santa Claus God.”
We have a Santa Claus God, because we feel that if we pray enough, if we fast enough, if we please God enough, He is going to answer our prayers.
But if we don’t read our Bible, if we are not good, if we don’t do what He says, He is not going to answer our prayers.
So therefore, everything we get from God depends upon our conduct, not upon God’s grace, not upon His working in our life.
We need to think about these things!
A Santa Claus God.
I know a person who used to say, “I prayed for my son for twenty years, and God finally saved him.” What that person was really saying was that God made him pray and pray and fast, and He made him wait twenty years, and then He saved his son.
Think about your own experience with God.
How many times have you said (and I know this is a Bible principle, and I am not against it, but it is a concept we have to fight), “Maybe if we fast over this thing long enough; maybe if we get together and we pray long enough …”
We feel that WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING that will influence God to make Him work on our behalf, or on the behalf of someone we love or are praying for.
Santa Claus God.
God has a will, and that will of God IS FOR EVERY HUMAN BEING on the earth.
He has a will, and a plan, and a design and a purpose for everyone.
What can you do to change that?
Now, if you have the religious concept of God, there is a great deal that you can do to change it.
But if God is God, then we are not God.
If God says, “I have chosen you to present you to my Father holy, unblameable and irreprovable in His sight,” I CANNOT NULLIFY THAT WILL OF GOD.
He is God!
He is going to perfect in me and everyone else what He wants to do.
Walking In All the Counsel of God
Now, we do have choices to make, and those choices we make affect our lives and may prolong God’s working in us, but our will will not stop God from working in us His good pleasure and His good will for our life.
If you could see that, you would not have to struggle anymore.
If you clean up your life, and you quit going to movies, and you quit doing all kinds of things because you think you shouldn’t, YOU ARE JUST BEING RELIGIOUS.
If you enjoy going to movies, you need to go to movies until God, by His Spirit rising up and quickening you, pulls your desires in another direction.
THAT IS SALVATION.
To be saved means that God quickens you by His energizing Spirit and causes you to walk in another direction.
Now you may not choose to do that, and you may fight and struggle against that, but eventually you are going to walk in all the counsel of God.
Why? BECAUSE THAT IS HIS WILL.
That is His good will. The Gospel that was preached in the very beginning by the angels was, “Peace on earth, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN.”
Calvary has a much deeper meaning when you begin to understand the heart of God and the awesome events that took place there.
Every one of us would say, “God died for me.”
Yes He did; we all know that.
But we think that to preserve that which He did, we must be pretty “good.” We have to do certain things. We have to live a certain way, or it will nullify what He did for us at Calvary.
That is the religious concept, and you may not even have that consciously in your mind, but it is hidden in your consciousness that you have to do certain things and live a certain way to please God, so that the effects of Calvary will be yours.
And those very concepts keep the reality that was given to you at Calvary from manifesting in your life.
You may not even be conscious of this, but it is deeply embedded in your consciousness.
We have inherited in this country two thousand years of religious teaching and tradition absolutely contrary to the Word of God, yet when somebody begins to speak truth, what they speak seemingly is contrary to what you have been taught. It is not contrary to the Word; it is contrary to what you “BELIEVE” is the Word.
An All-Powerful God
God is all-powerful.
You show me a church or a group of people anywhere in this country who believes that God is all-powerful, and I’ll show you a glorious, magnificent presence of God in a group of people.
But show me a people who believe in two powers, and I’ll show you a weak, defeated, struggling and striving group of people.
God is not all-powerful in our Christian tradition and in our thinking.
Our father according to the flesh, the devil, seems to get more credit than our Father God.
We have devils that are much more powerful than God’s leadership on the earth today because of wrong concepts, and because of wrong thinking and speaking.
Whatever is in your heart and you believe, you will speak from your mouth; and the words that you speak from your mouth which come from your heart CREATE for you that which you speak.
Whatever is in your heart and you believe, you will speak from your mouth; and the words that you speak from your mouth which come from your heart create for you that which you speak.
So if you are defeated, if you can’t find victory, if you have no joy in your life, it is because you have been taught wrong, which has made you believe wrong, made you receive wrong, and made you speak wrong to create for you that which you are today.
That is the truth.
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
“All powerful.” I hate to use the words “if God,” but for illustration, IF GOD is all powerful, and we believe that, how could the so called devil do what he has done to this country and to God’s people?
How could he take the Church into darkness for two thousand years?
He could do it because of their not heeding Paul’s admonition at the very beginning: “Don’t be like the other gentiles, walking in the vanity of their mind.”
That is a realm of consciousness.
The vanity of the soulish mind—that is where we are.
We have had teachings in the past about body, soul and spirit, and coming out of the flesh, coming out of Egypt, coming out of the world, coming through the wilderness and into the Promised Land.
The Promised Land is a level of consciousness.
Christians hate the word “consciousness,” because it is taught in almost all the religions of the world, but it is not taught in Christianity.
I wonder why?
If you never become “conscious” of God’s quickening power energizing your life, you will always be soul-conscious and body-conscious, but never spirit-conscious.
Turning from Darkness to Light
God has so much for the Church.
In Acts 26:18, Jesus told the Apostle Paul (this was right at his conversion) that He was sending him…
“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”
How we need people today who can turn people from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto the power of God.
But that cannot happen with the concepts of God that we have today.
We haven’t been taught.
2 Corinthians 4:4-7 says, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, …”
(Now listen, when we read something like this, right away we say, “That doesn’t apply to me; I am a believer. believer. Believe me, these words are spoken to us!)
“In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
“God Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.”
I believe that is happening today.
There is so much darkness within us.
When I began to see some of these things, I could not believe the darkness and the blindness of my own eyes as a believer for many years. The blindness that was on my eyes!
And again I have to make this clear, it is grace that is bringing the revealing.
But God has a perfect plan, intent and purpose for my life and for your life, and He will bring you into that plan and purpose.
Stay Tuned…