BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

How? The same way God Himself does. By declaring His Word in faith and calling “those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). By speaking to the circumstances in your life that need changing and believing what you say will “come to pass” (Mark 11:23). That’s God’s plan of dominion. It’s the way He intends for you, as His child, to operate because it’s the way He operates. It’s the way He created the earth! He spoke to it by faith. He used His words to change things here to conform to His perfect will. Before God started talking to this place it was a mess. As Genesis 1:2 says, “The earth was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep” ("Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). But God looked beyond those negative circumstances. He saw the earth through the eye of faith and spoke what He wanted to come to pass. He said, “Let there be light”…and light was (verse 3). He continued using the same method throughout the whole creation process. He kept calling things that be not as though they were until He’d framed the whole world by His Word. Just think! Everything in this natural creation was produced by the spiritual power that was released through God’s words. Everything we see around us is a result of the invisible force of faith. As Hebrews 11 says: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (verses 1, 3, "New King James Version"). “Yes, but Gloria, God did all that before mankind came on the scene. Once people got involved, things changed.” Things did, but God didn’t. He kept operating the same way. The only difference was that, after He gave mankind dominion, instead of speaking to things He began speaking to people. That’s what He did in His relationship with Abram. He made it possible for Abram and his barren 90-year-old wife, Sarah, to have a son by giving them His Word. He overrode the natural impossibilities of their situation by declaring, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5, "NKJV"). Abraham responded by believing God and getting with the program. He put God’s Word in his mouth, called himself by his new name, and went around day after day saying to people, “Hello, I’m the father of many nations.” “And being not weak in faith, [Abraham] considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:19-21). Get a Faith Picture in Your Heart If you’ve read the end of the story, you know how things turned out. God’s Word to Abraham and Sarah came to pass. Not only did they have a baby, their youth was so renewed that Sarah lived long enough to raise that baby. After she died at 127 years old, Abraham, who was 10 years older, remarried and fathered six more children. No wonder Abraham is called the father of our faith! He showed us how it’s done. He used God’s plan of dominion to overcome an impossible situation and bring forth a nation of people through whom God would eventually BLESS all the nations of the world. If Abraham could walk in that kind of victory in Old Testament times, imagine what you and I can do as New Testament believers! We’re born of God. We have a Bible full of His Words and the indwelling Holy Spirit to show us how to put those Words to work in every situation. We don’t ever have to let circumstances get us down! When the darkened conditions of this temporal world try to press in on us, we can go to the Scriptures, get a faith picture in our hearts, and say like the Apostle Paul did in 2 Corinthians 4: “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (verses 13, 18). 28 : BVOV

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