Tense Matters

Lately, a lot of the messages I’ve been listening to about faith have been dealing with the importance of being cognizant about what we are saying. Today what really struck out to me is the fact that tense matters, if we are going to speak the language of faith. You see faith is now, it’s present tense. Faith is not past or future, but present tense (See Hebrews 11:1) The language of faith is not speaking what we believe God will do or has done, but what He is doing right now. As believers, we have to remember that everything we need we already have, because of the finished work of the cross. We just need to renew our minds, so that we truly believe even when we don’t see the manifestation with our natural eye. The language of faith is not saying “God is going to bless me”, but it is saying “I am blessed”.

22 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. 24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. Mark 11:22-24 NLT

That leads me to another topic. While we’re talking about the word blessed or blessing, we need to understand that a blessing is not material. A blessing is not a house, or a new job, a spouse, a new car, etc., but a blessing is God’s empowerment to receive what we are believing. Mark 11:24 tells us that if we believe what we are saying/praying, we have what we say we believe. A blessing is us operating in the grace, God’s enabling power, to manifest what it is we are believing. Even when we look at Deuteronomy 28, the blessings that are listed that will overtake us are not material things. They are positions, status and character, but most importantly they are contingent upon our obedience. The blessings of the Lord require us to be obedient to his word. It is only then that His blessings will make rich and add no sorrow (Proverbs 10:22). So again, we see how tense matters even in our obedience. To truly be obedient means we respond at the moment God gives us the instruction. This is present tense obedience. Anything outside of that is disobedience. If our obedience is delayed, meaning didn’t respond immediately, we have ultimately been disobedient. As we study Mark 11:22-24, we see that doubt will cause us not to believe, and doubt leads to disobedience. So, your challenge this week is dual-hatted. Your language of faith must be present tense and your prayers must be filled with belief and not doubt. Until next week….

Be blessed, but first comes obedience!

Rev. Robin