Ken and I have a similar testimony. We weren’t literally behind bars when we first heard the Word of Faith, but we were in another kind of prison. We were locked up in a financial prison of debt and lack. Our ways of dealing with money were so different from God’s ways at that time, we really had to renew our minds to get with His system. We had to disconnect from the old ways we’d depended on, and that was a press.
When we saw in Romans 13:8, for instance, that God said to “owe no man any thing,” it came as a total shock! We’d lived our whole married life on borrowed money. We didn’t think you could do anything without it (and as a result we owed more money than we could see any way to repay). But we stayed in the Word until we got in agreement with God, did what He said, and in 11 months we were debt free.
Another area where we had to press was in tithing. Initially, we weren’t too excited about that. We’d tithe for a month or two, and then stop because we thought we needed God’s money more than He did. As we kept going back to what the Bible says about it though, we got stronger on the inside and we made a commitment to make the tithe our first financial priority. We stuck with that commitment…and we’ve been increasing financially ever since.
This is one of the reasons why, if you want to walk in God’s kingdom, you must keep pressing in to His Word. The Word gives you the strength and the faith to do what’s right. It gives you the spiritual fortitude to disconnect from the world’s system and walk in agreement with God.
His system will work! It will work for anyone, anywhere, anytime. It doesn’t matter if you’re so broke you can’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter if you’re so sick the doctors have given up on you. It doesn’t matter how impossible your situation might look. The Scripture says, “With God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27), and “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23, "New King James Version").
Faith in God can turn any situation around! But walking by faith is a press, not because God puts pressure on us, but because to walk with Him we must press ourselves in to His ways.
There’s No Free Ride
If you don’t press in to God, you’ll never change the way you talk; you’ll never get the unbelief out of your mouth and replace it with words of faith. If you don’t press, you’ll never get up early enough in the morning to pray. If you don’t press, you’ll let the natural affairs of life take over your schedule and you won’t take time to read, study, listen to and meditate on what God is saying to you in the Bible or in your spirit.
BVOV : 29
