BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

This is how faith works! It acts like what it believes is going to come to pass. If it doesn’t have the opportunity to do the kind of thing the woman with the issue of blood did, faith does whatever else it can to prepare for what God has said to become a manifest reality. Again, we see this in Mark 5, in the deliverance of the demon-possessed man in Gadara. If you read the account of that incident carefully, it’s apparent that Jesus knew about that man prior to their encounter. He’d heard about the man’s demonized condition—that he’d been naked among the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones—and He believed that when He ministered to him, the man would be delivered. So He prepared for it to happen. How do we know? Because of what took place when Jesus and His disciples got to the other side of the Sea of Galilee where the man was living. As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, according to the Scriptures: "When [the man] saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, 'What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.' For He said to him, 'Come out of the man, unclean spirit!' Then He asked him, 'What is your name?' And he answered, saying, 'My name is Legion; for we are many.' Also he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. So all the demons begged Him, saying, 'Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.' And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea. So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind" (Mark 5:6–15, "NKJV"). Where Did the Clothes Come From? Look again at that last verse. It describes the man as clothed, which begs the question: Where did the clothes come from? It is obvious that the demon-possessed man had been going naked for a long time (Luke 8:27), so he couldn’t have come up with them. And out there in the middle of nowhere, among the tombs and the pig farms, there weren’t any shops where Jesus and His disciples could buy clothes for him. So…where did the clothes come from? Jesus brought them with Him! He knew before He left for the Gadarenes what He was going to do there, and He was prepared. He planned ahead. Can’t you just imagine Jesus calling the disciples together before they set out on that trip and saying to them, “I want you to go get some nice clothes. I’m going to minister to a man on the other side of the lake and he’s going to need them. Right now, he’s naked and out of his mind, but he’s going to become a new man and I’m going to call him to preach. I’m going to send him back to his hometown to tell all his friends what God has done for him, and I want him to go back looking good.” I’m fully persuaded that’s what happened in this situation. The heavenly Father revealed to Jesus by the Holy Spirit (just as He does us) He was going to deliver that man; Jesus believed it and prepared for it to happen, because that’s what faith does. Faith always prepares for what it believes and praises God that it will come to pass! I remember, for instance, when I was just getting started in ministry and I was believing God for our first airplane. I knew the exact airplane God wanted us to have. It was a small four-seat, single-engine Cessna Skylane. I’d released my faith for it, so I started preparing for it to manifest. Since I didn’t yet have the money to buy the plane, I got ready to do so by purchasing a case for my navigation charts. 6 : BVOV

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