BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

********** ADVERTISEMENT ********** Watch Rick Renner on bvovn® BELIEVER’S VOICE OF VICTORY NETWORK REAL. LIFE. FAITH.® NEW LINEUP THIS FALL Send us your testimonies about how BVOVN has blessed you. KCM.ORG/TESTIFY WATCH ON: dish® CHANNEL 265 apple tv® 4th Generation Roku® bvovn.com YouTube® amazon fire TV ********************************************* * * * * article from p. 9 continues * * * * * When the Jewish believers said they were “tempted of God,” they weren’t suggesting that God was crushing and destroying them directly…but rather they had allowed themselves to believe God was simply allowing it remotely—literally in the Greek, from a distance. In other words, they believed, “God is God, and if He wanted to stop this, He could. So, in some mysterious way, God must be remotely allowing these tragic events to pass into our lives.” Sound familiar? Have you ever thought that, or known someone who has? When James heard that, his answer was blunt: “Shut up! Let no man say this! How dare you allege that God would even remotely permit these things to happen to you. That isn’t God at all.” Questioning Beliefs It was easy for Jewish believers to think God had allowed such tragedy because in Old Testament times, there was really no clear-cut revelation of the devil. In those days, people generally thought everything came from God. If a flood came, they thought it was from God. If a disease came, it was attributed to God. If war came, “it must be from God.” That was basically the attitude of those in the Old Testament…that everything ultimately came from God…that everything was the will of God, who does everything sovereignly. But Jesus’ own brother said that theology was emphatically wrong. You can understand where those Jewish believers were coming from. They’d been standing in faith for 20 years, but they weren’t seeing results—and as believers often do when they don’t see results, they began to wonder… Am I believing the wrong thing? Could my doctrine be incorrect? Could it be that God, from a distance, has somehow allowed these things to come to pass? And then, instead of resisting the work of the enemy, they threw open their arms to embrace those things as though they were God’s will. I grew up in a denomination that taught me many wonderful things, and I’m very grateful. But I will never forget their Wednesday night prayer meetings. In those meetings, for example, someone might raise their hand and say, “Would you please pray for my uncle who has cancer?” The pastor would reply, “Let’s pray that he has the grace to receive that cancer. Let’s pray that he can glorify God in his affliction.” That’s a very Old Testament way of thinking, but it’s still alive in the Church today. Even as a teenager, I remember thinking, If I ever get sick, I’m going to look for someone else who knows how to pray for me! Getting to Know the Devil It was Jesus who brought a revelation of the devil to the Church. When His ministry began, He shined a light on those who sat in darkness (Matthew 4:16). Jesus revealed that there was a good God in heaven, and a bad devil on the earth. He revealed that a good God did good things, and a bad devil did bad things. That’s why when James heard the Jews wondering if the evil in their lives was God’s way of helping them conform to the image of Christ, he counted it as an insult. As far as he was concerned, God would never do that! In fact, James said God could not do that: “For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13). Is there anything God cannot do? Yes. Absolutely, yes! The Greek text here states that God is incapable of responding with evil. He knows nothing of evil and has no evil in Him. The only time evil ever tried to get into the presence of God, God quickly removed it from heaven. He has no evil to give. That’s why the end of the verse says, “…neither tempteth he any man.” God doesn’t have any evil in Him and therefore He cannot use evil to change someone. It’s simply an impossibility. Besides, Isaiah 53 clearly says Jesus took our infirmities on the cross. That’s a fact. For Jesus to take our infirmities and then for God to give them back to us would be walking around the work of the cross, and God is not going to do that. 10 : BVOV

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