Sunday, October 26, 2014

Good morning, this is the day that the Lord has made; we are rejoicing in this awesome beautiful Fall day. We give thanks to God for divine health, for peace for our minds, hope for the future, aid for all weak areas of our lives and most of all for deliverance from the authority from the kingdom of darkness.

Today our scriptural text is taken from Proverbs 6:31; our support scriptures are John 10:10a, and Joel 2:25. Beginning with Proverbs, we read: “If the thief be found, he must restore sevenfold all he has stolen; he may have to give up all the substance of his house.” John 10:10a: The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy…”

The thief is fear! The arch opposite of faith. Faith builds up, fear tears down; faith restores, fear rends apart. Fear and the sin nature are inextricably united. It is the fruit of the sin nature that produces the desire to covet what does not belong to an individual. Fear of insufficiency fuels that desire. But let us take a closer look at our scriptural text, Proverbs 6:31, the thief who steals, takes what does not belong to him or her. This scripture is based upon Exodus 22:1-4, the Levitical laws concerning restitution. Now just as thefts occur in the natural world, they also occur in the spiritual realm. In the gospel of John, Jesus is addressing this unlawful taking what does not belong to the thief whose sole function is to kill, steal and destroy. He works to steal our confidence in God’s Word; if we don’t believe, we will not act on the promises. He works to kill our expectation of receiving anything from God; we settle for the wilderness when God’s plan is for us to continue moving toward the promise land.

Fear produces the lack of initiative to step out front, to settle in mediocrity flats when there is a fully furnished town house set aside for us.

All of us have been victimized by the thief at one time or another. Perhaps we did not understand the freedom package we inherited as born-again children who have received the nature of God Almighty. Deception steals what is rightly ours. Compromise keeps us in bondage. Fear creates a prison and we are content to live out our days in that prison created by fear. Some of the fear language that ensnares us: “You are too old; you don’t have the right education; you don’t know the right people; you are too poor. All fear talk is used to steal a blessing from you. Philippians 4:13 says: “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.”

Am I going to acquiesce to the voice of fear and be stolen from? Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of man, fear of insufficiency, and the root stock of fear, fear of death, Heb. 2:14-15.

Jesus said in John 10:10b, “I am come that you may have life, and that life more abundantly.” That abundant life comes with restitution of what has been stolen from us. Joel 2:25 says: “I will restore the years that the swarming locust has eaten, ate the leaves–; the crawling locust, ate the stems–; the consuming locust, burrowed beneath the bark and attacked the trunk and branches, spreading fungus and sapping the life from…; the chewing locust, attacked the root system.

God restores all those years, and all those losses to those who repent and come to Him prostate. We are in the season of restoration, we need to begin to cry out to God who quickeneth the dead, and calls those things that be not as though they were… That is full restoration. Do not be deceived by natural circumstances, if the enemy cannot steal your joy, he cannot keep the goods he has taken away captive. Believe God for the impossible. Romans 4:19.

Be blessed in God, our Abba, today and every day that he grants us abundant life on this planet.

Pastor Dowdy

Copyright © 2014 E. C. Dowdy. Written and audio material may not be reproduced without written permission.