BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The hour of prayer truly is the hour of power! Here are some points to get you there. 1) Spiritually you’re a new creature but you’re still living in a natural body that left to itself will pull toward sin. Romans 7:22-23 2) As a born-again child of God you’re no longer in bondage to sin. Romans 8:2 3) You can enjoy victory over sin by walking in the spirit. Galatians 5:16 4) Prayer puts your spirit in ascendency and empowers you to overcome the pull of the flesh. Matthew 26:41 5) When you pray in the spirit the Holy Spirit takes what’s in your heart, puts it together with His wisdom, and prays it into your life. Romans 8:26-27 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *** article continues below *** Peter, James and John were there in the Garden with Him but they didn’t come out in the same kind of victory. They missed out on it because instead of praying they fell asleep. It was a major mistake, and Jesus let them know it. “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” He said. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:40-41). For Peter especially, that warning quickly hit home. Just hours after he heard it, in a moment of fleshly weakness he denied Jesus. In his heart that wasn’t what Peter wanted to do. He wanted to be faithful. His heart was right. But his flesh brought him down. As believers, we all know what it’s like to be in that situation. In our hearts we want to do the right thing. We want to please God. Yet, all too often our flesh has tripped us up and caused us to stumble. Every time we’ve ever failed God and fallen into sin it’s been because of the weakness of our flesh! But we can rise above that weakness. If we do what Jesus said, we can get our spirit in ascendency over our flesh so that when temptation comes we won’t enter into it. If we spend time in prayer we’ll be able to say yes to God and no to sin! Opening the Door to the Devil Is Dangerous Business “Why is it important to be able to say no to sin?” you might ask. Because walking in sin will keep you from walking in God’s best. It will hinder the operation of God’s BLESSING in your life. It will open the door to the devil who is out to steal from you, kill you and destroy you. (See John 10:10.) Sin is dangerous business! It won’t stop you, as a believer, from going to heaven when you die, but it will certainly make you vulnerable to a lot of hellish stuff while you’re here on earth. Sin can cause your body to be sick. It can rob you of the prosperity that’s yours in Christ Jesus and leave you broke and in debt. Sin can bring destruction into the lives of your children and deprive you of the long and satisfying life God has prepared for you. Sin never, ever, produces anything good. That’s why God commands us to get it out of our lives. He tells us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us” (Hebrew 12:1) because He loves us and He wants us surrounded by His goodness. When you look at it in that light, it’s easy to make the decision to lay aside sin. Carrying out that decision, though, isn’t usually quite as easy. The reason is simple. On one hand, spiritually you’re a new creature, re-created in the image of Jesus and made the righteousness of God; but at the same time you’re living in a natural, unregenerate body. The nature of that body didn’t change when you got born again. It remained as spiritually dead as it’s ever been, and left to itself will keep trying to do the same old sinful things. Talk about a challenging situation! You have to learn by the revelation of God and His Spirit how to make this deal work. Otherwise you’ll find yourself stuck in a place of defeat like the one Paul described in Romans 7:22-24. You’ll wind up saying like he did: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” *** article continues on p. 30 *** 28 : BVOV

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