When You Doubt God

I believe doubting God is the highest form of temptation because He is your source of everything as a Christian, and now you are not sure about this good source you relied on many times. When I sin, I can come to the Lord and ask Him to forgive me, deliver me, and heal me. But when I doubt Him, I may struggle to come to Him for help. I have succeeded many times while in doubt to come to the Lord’s presence and commune with Him until He restores my faith in His goodness once again, but often when I doubt, I feel disconnected, unable to approach Him! It depends on the level of spiritual warfare at that moment, I believe. Can you relate to this?

We remember together that doubting God’s goodness and authority severed our relationship with Him and took us out of the garden of life, blessings, and calling. It was when Satan asked Eve: “Did God really say?”

Doubt is a powerful form of warfare, do not underestimate it. Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil with the “If you are” statements and He conquered them by the power of the Holy Spirit, and you can too. Once again, you may do this and that and still come to the Lord for repentance, correction, and prayer, but what if you are now doubting your source? Can you see it with me? Are you going through tough times of questioning the Lord and His promises? Are you coming into a subtle agreement with the enemy’s doubtful statements? God is not angry at you or me, yet He delights when we trust Him fully, but He knows it is a journey and He is with us and for us.

I break the presence of doubt in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, and I curse the root, the landing strip, the foothold, the space, the opening, the question, the experience, the seeds, or whatever it was that made you come under doubting the goodness and the loving-kindness of the Lord for you. Amen!

If you want to doubt the Lord, doubt in His presence, do it with Him, be real, and ask your questions, but don’t cut away the source because at the end of the day, it is only God that you have and you don’t want to lose that. God is not intimidated by your doubts or questions.

Come before Him and conquer this temptation of doubt in His power because everyone may go through it.

Glory to God
Tony Francis

Why has the devil refused to flee?

I woke up with so much in my head to put down but this was laid in my heart. I pray it ministers peace and truth to you in Jesus mighty name. Amen

Reading from the Epistle of James 4:7-10; 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

‘Submit yourselves therefore to God’. One may ask, how do I submit myself to God? I have come across many people who have little or no knowledge of God, and so many who are struggling to balance Jesus and God. The point is, Jesus is God! ‘I and my father are one,’ he said. There’s no distinction.

So we can ‘Submit’ to God’ in so many ways: 

  1.     In prayer: When we pray we submit to God, it shows our total dependence on Him. Knowing that there’s nothing we can do for ourselves brings us to our knees to pray. If we can do all things, there would be no need for God.
  2.     In obedience to His Word and in embracing his love for us.
  3.   In Faith: by exercising our faith in God we submit to His Will, Plan and Purpose for us. In Jeremiah 29:11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 

And so many other ways through which we can submit to God then ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you’.

To most of us it seems the devil is strong headed because we expect him to flee whenever we resist him without first of all submitting ourselves to God; which is why we are still struggling with that addiction and sin. We cannot stop it on our own.

If you want to achieve results, you must follow the instructions or procedures given. The only result to be achieved when you neglect to do what is required of you is failure. The devil does not flee because of your physique or because you have resisted him, he flees because you have submitted to the highest authority Jesus Christ who is the head of all principalities and powers.

In Colossians 2: 13-15 13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

Through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross our sins were forgiven, and he erased the record that stood against us, with its legal demands. In Jesus the law and the prophets were fulfilled. And Jesus made a public show of the devil and his henchmen.

By nailing our sins to the cross; Jesus destroyed the legal right Satan had to hold us captive, rendering him powerless over us because we are no longer slaves to sin.

Now in verse 8 of James 4; 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. This is a call for intimacy; God is calling us back to himself, like he always does. A father that runs after us, who forfeits the 99 and runs after 1 me! Because he wants all of us to be safe.

God’s desire for a relationship with us is just for our own good. It doesn’t add or reduce or change who He is, He is God all by Himself and He doesn’t need us to be the God He is.

God is our source even when we fail to acknowledge it. In the book of Acts 17:28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being;. Outside of God, that wolf in sheep’s clothing, the thief will steal and devour us.

He goes on to say ‘Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Double-minded are people of wavering mind, unstable and insincere. There is a need for us to repent of our sins so that the devil will have no legal right over us. Not only that! Remember our God is a Holy God, and whosoever that must come to him must be Holy. Another hard task Uh! When God established all these things it seems He doesn’t really need us around him because no one is holy. But it’s not about us it’s about Him.

To be purified and holy is to embrace the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 ‘For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’.  Now when God looks at us he sees His righteousness in us, and can have fellowship with us through His Spirit. In this, is the total submission to God and He will exalt you.

When your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that is the fulfillment of this scripture: 1 John 4:4  ‘Little children, you are from God and have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. That is the deal!!! Only when you submit yourself to God, will you resist the devil and he flees from you.

I pray that this message will bless your life and ignite the desire to draw near to God in you. From henceforth may you begin to desire only that which will bring glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Book of Revelation

In the past I used to approach the book of Revelation with fear, with that feeling of uneasiness, anguish and gloom; trying to find the exact word to convey my exact state. I approached the book of Revelation in lowness of the spirit.

The book of Revelation I must say is one of the books that always send fear to the spines of many; believers and unbelievers alike due to the widely misconception of the book by people who lacked the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God or for the sole purpose of misleading the ones who have little or no knowledge of the Scripture.

Going through memory lane, the year 2000 was a very scary year and a lot of people thought the world was going to end in the year 2000 (New Millennium). Many sold their properties and gave the proceedings to the poor while many lost their possessions in fear yet we are here 23 years on. But in the positive shade, it helped many to return to Christ but we must not return to Christ for fear of the end time but for his love for us.

Having for the first time in my life read the book of Revelation with an open mind and with the help of the Holy Spirit, I was able to understand in detail the Revelations of the mysteries in every lines, verses and chapters of the book and I thank the Lord that at last the world will be judged for her wickedness.

Oh! How lovely to be at the marriage supper of the lamb! This is all I long for, to behold the beauty and the splendor of his majesty.

To know that there’s a set time for the enemy to be judged and destroyed is consoling. And to join all the prophets and the saints who were long asleep and those slain for the sake of the same testimony which I bear today is glorious and it’s a blessing to my soul.

No wonder the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1:21 ‘for to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. And in Revelation 14:13 “And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this.; Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord, ‘Yes says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.’

The book of Revelation has blessed my life like every other book of the Bible. Although it’s the last book of the Bible, it’s the beginning of the new life in Christ. It brings an end to this fallen world and ushers hope for the new heaven and the new earth, it is soul refreshing.

It reveals the mysteries of the kingdom of God in its splendor and majesty and exalts God as the righteous judge He is.  And that which was revealed to the Apostle John but instructed not to be written, I am sure is our little surprise package when we see Him face to face.

In the beginning chapters, our Lord Jesus forewarned the Seven Churches in Asia and also encouraged them. He applauded their good works and exposed their sins and urged them to repent, reminding them of the glory that awaits those that conquered.

It’s a wonderful feeling of safety to know that you have been saved from damnation by the blood of the lamb; your name is boldly written in the book of life and there’s nothing in this world that can pluck you from his hand… In John 17: 12 Jesus prayed ‘While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

If our hope is of this world we are of all men most miserable’ Apostle Paul wrote. We have hope that transcends beyond time and season; our hope is in the Son. I encourage believers to have a clearer view of our inheritance in Christ. It’s awesome to know that there’s nothing on earth to be compared to the glory that awaits us in heaven and this alone encourages us to stand trials and temptations, it ushers the boldness to gladly lay down our necks for the sword; this was the strength of the Prophets and the Apostles those who were slain for the sake of the gospel.

At the face of death you see Christ standing before you to welcome you home into the joy, the peace, the fulfillment that life denied you of: that you’ll long to die.

The book of Revelation is reassuring, soul refreshing, consoling and comforting. No true believer would be scared or afraid of the end time, when God will pour out the cup of His wrath to the nations of the world because we have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

Having this understanding, I earnestly pray for God’s judgment to be nearer because the blood of the slain saints are eagerly waiting for the holy vengeance of God and God in His mercy and grace have set an appointed time, waiting for more of His children to return home. If you have not, please make that decision now.

Lastly, the book of Revelation ignites the zeal for evangelism, to bring many to the saving knowledge of Christ like never before so that we all will be saved in the perilous time and to draw God’s judgment on the devil and death very near.

The expression of God’s throne and the kingdom of heaven is more than minds can imagine and I can’t wait to behold it. I pray for the grace to hold on and to continue in His love till my last breath to sing Hallelujah with the hosts of heaven.

No true believer ought to be terrified by the words of the visions except they are not on the right standing and now is the time to make things right, tomorrow maybe too late.

Jesus said to the Seven Churches, I see and know your works, and I am coming with my reward. In chapter 22:14 ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by gates.

I pray that the light of righteousness will shine upon you now and forever. Amen.