Happy Hanukkah!

Hanukkah started at sundown this evening. This holiday is so much more than latkes and giving gifts. Click here to find a wealth of wonderful information about Hanukkah and other Biblical holidays.

Did you know Jesus celebrated Hanukkah? In John 10:22-23 we see that Jesus was in Jerusalem observing the Feast of Dedication, otherwise known as Hanukkah.

Christmas

I really enjoyed this blog post by Robin Sampson on Christmas -

12 Things I Like and Don't Like About Christmas

If you want to dig deeper into the origins of Christmas, I recommend The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop.

Wisdom

Job 28

Job’s Discourse on Wisdom

¹ “Surely there is a mine for silver,
And a place where gold is refined.

² Iron is taken from the earth,
And copper is smelted from ore.

³ Man puts an end to darkness,
And searches every recess
For ore in the darkness and the shadow of death.

⁴ He breaks open a shaft away from people;
In places forgotten by feet
They hang far away from men;
They swing to and fro.

⁵ As for the earth, from it comes bread,
But underneath it is turned up as by fire;

⁶ Its stones are the source of sapphires,
And it contains gold dust.

⁷ That path no bird knows,
Nor has the falcon’s eye seen it.

⁸ The proud lions have not trodden it,
Nor has the fierce lion passed over it.

⁹ He puts his hand on the flint;
He overturns the mountains at the roots.

¹⁰ He cuts out channels in the rocks,
And his eye sees every precious thing.

¹¹ He dams up the streams from trickling;
What is hidden he brings forth to light.

¹² “But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?

¹³ Man does not know its value,
Nor is it found in the land of the living.

¹⁴ The deep says, ‘It is not in me’;
And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’

¹⁵ It cannot be purchased for gold,
Nor can silver be weighed for its price.

¹⁶ It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
In precious onyx or sapphire.

¹⁷ Neither gold nor crystal can equal it,
Nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold.

¹⁸ No mention shall be made of coral or quartz,
For the price of wisdom is above rubies.

¹⁹ The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it,
Nor can it be valued in pure gold.

²⁰ “From where then does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?

²¹ It is hidden from the eyes of all living,
And concealed from the birds of the air.

²² Destruction and Death say,

‘We have heard a report about it with our ears.’

²³ God understands its way,
And He knows its place.

²⁴ For He looks to the ends of the earth,
And sees under the whole heavens,

²⁵ To establish a weight for the wind,
And apportion the waters by measure.

²⁶ When He made a law for the rain,
And a path for the thunderbolt,

²⁷ Then He saw wisdom and declared it;
He prepared it, indeed, He searched it out.

²⁸ And to man He said,

‘ Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
And to depart from evil is understanding.’”

What Is Revelation?

I was asked this question the other day, so I thought I would post the answer here.

What is revelation?

I mentioned here that you must have revelation in order to have breakthrough or victory.

But what is revelation?

Revelation in English comes from the root word reveal. When something is revealed to you, you have a greater understanding. If a covered plate is in front of you and then becomes uncovered, the contents are revealed and so you have understanding of what is on the plate. We could also say that understanding is to comprehend something.

So let's look up a scripture that uses the word comprehend.

Ephesians 3:14-19

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The English word comprehend here is katalambano in the original Greek. Strong's gives this definition -

1) to lay hold of

a) to lay hold of so as to make one's own, to obtain, attain to, to make one's own, to take into one's self, appropriate

b) to seize upon, take possession of

1) of evils overtaking one, of the last day overtaking the wicked with destruction, of a demon about to torment one

2) in a good sense, of Christ by his holy power and influence laying hold of the human mind and will, in order to prompt and govern it

c) to detect, catch

d) to lay hold of with the mind

1) to understand, perceive, learn, comprehend

I especially like "to make one's own" and "to lay hold of with the mind." This same Greek word is also translated elsewhere as apprehend. I think this is the best word yet. To apprehend is to grasp the meaning of. We can listen, we can understand, but to fully grasp the meaning of something, to make it your own--that is revelation.

Try This

Take a familiar verse and write it on a note card. Tack it on your bathroom mirror or anywhere you will come across it many times a day. Each time you come across it read it out loud to yourself. Look that verse up in other translations at Biblegateway.com. I especially like the Amplified version if I want deeper understanding. Check out Blueletterbible.org and see what the individual words in their original language mean.

Watch and see if you don't get a revelation of greater meaning from this familiar verse. There are too many times that we take certain verses for granted. We've known them so long, we can recite them, but we don't stop to think about what they really mean.

It could be that you will be in church or listening to teaching and a light bulb goes off in your brain and you "get" that verse that you have studied. It is yours, you have taken hold of it, you "get" it on a much deeper level than you previously had.

Less is More

It is my experience that this works best with one or two verses, not five or ten or twenty. It is when you choose just the one or two that you can focus better. When you have lots and lots of verses (and I'm sure they are all good ones), you can't really focus on any of them enough to get a revelation about any of them.

God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him

It is also my experience that revelation does not come by sitting in church. I sat in church for about 26 years, but did not read my Bible on my own. I did no study whatsoever. I also did not get any revelation. I had a few "Aha!" moments in church receiving "hand-me-down" revelation, but none of my own. I didn't know the difference until I started studying the Bible for myself and starting getting my own revelations. The difference is huge!

Now it could be that you have studied a topic and meditated on a verse and then while sitting in church the lightbulb goes off, but if you are not putting in the effort to diligently seek God and study His Word, He won't reward you with revelation and wisdom.

Prayer

If you are diligently seeking God, you can pray and ask Him to reveal His wisdom to you and He will. Pray the above passage from Ephesians for yourself. Pray and ask God to help you comprehend what is the width, length, depth, and height—that you would know the love of Christ that passes knowledge and that you would be filled with all the fullness of God.

God Is Faithful

A statement heard yesterday--"I know our church teaches us to speak God's Word, but tragic things happen to Christians all the time. I don't understand." The context was the news that a pastor had contracted cancer. (Not my pastor.)

Just because some people don't receive healing does not mean that God does not heal. Just because some die before their time, does not mean that the Word of God has no effect.

Romans 3:3-4

For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar.

This verse here is talking about people that don't believe Jesus died for them. Not everyone in the world is saved. Does that mean that God is not faithful? This verse says, "Certainly not!"

We must realize there is a devil in this world, he has dominion of this world right now. He wants nothing better than to stop the plans of God and hinder Christian's effectiveness. We also must realize that people have a part to play. None of us can look into a person's heart and see whether they are exercising faith or living in fear and doubt.

If you have doubts about whether it is God's will to heal, I encourage you to study that. Your life may depend on it.

I leave you with one of my favorite verses -

John 17:17b

Your Word is truth.

That says it all.

Battles

I experienced a victory recently with healing (as mentioned here and here). My first inclination was to start telling others that they needed to do X, Y, and Z, just like I did. I do think that would help a few, but I now realize the answer is not the same for everyone. There isn't a formula. What matters is that we obey whatever it is the Lord is directing us to do. Obedience is the key.

First comes revelation, then obedience, then breakthrough/victory.

I finished the Bible in 90 Days reading program and then started up on a different schedule of reading through the Bible. I'm reading one chapter from eight different sections each day (I'll detail that in a later post). One of the sections I read are the historical books, Joshua through Esther.

It was when I got up to Joshua chapter 12 I noticed something very interesting. I think sometimes it's important to step back and look at things from a wider angle. At about chapter 12, we are given a summary of the battles and kings conquered by Israel. The previous chapters were giving the details. I noticed that a lot of kings were listed, but there were only three stories of battles that I had read. So I looked back through the book. I realized that detail is given for three battles and the rest are breezed through.

Why are we given details on three battles, but not the rest? Why are these three significant?

I wanted to know. So, I went back and read through them again. Joshua 6-10.

I really think they are there to give us examples. Each example is different, each of our battles will be different and require different action. There won't be a formula, obedience is what matters.

God fights the battles for us anyway, so He gets all the glory. We have an extremely minor part to play.

God could be asking you to do something that sounds very strange, as weird as marching around a city wall (Jericho). He may want you to march around that wall for six days and then on the seventh, blow trumpets. (Remember He uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. I Corinthians 1:27) He will bring the wall down.

He could be asking you to seek out sin in your life that has left the door wide open for the enemy (Ai--Achan).

He could be asking you to command the sun to stand still (or command that mountain to be removed and be cast into the sea--Mark 11:23-24) (Gibeon).

Whatever it is, obedience is your part to play. He will fight the battle for you and bring the victory!

God Wants ALL The Glory

Do you remember the story of Gideon and his army? I loved that story as a child. We read that story with a hindsight perspective, but imagine being Gideon and God tells you to cut your army twice, and not by just a few, but significantly! Gideon went from 30,000 men to 300 men. We see that he obeyed, but imagine what he was feeling! (You can read the story in Judges 6 and 7.)

You see God didn’t intend for Gideon’s army to fight hand-to-hand with the Midianites. God wanted all the glory. He caused confusion to come over the enemy and they fought themselves.

Has there ever been a time where you knew you were obeying the voice of the Lord, yet not seeing breakthrough? Perhaps He is leading you down a path where you can’t possibly take any of the glory for yourself, it will be clear to all that the victory was the Lord’s.

If Gideon had gone into battle with his 30,000 men, he could have claimed victory for himself. He could have forgotten that God chose him, called him, instructed him. But with an army of only 300, there was no possible way he could claim any glory for the victory.

I have detailed how my first thought was to solve my health issues myself. After I gave up on that and started following God’s leading, I saw minor improvements, but not full victory. It was frustrating. There were times I knew that I heard from God, but was frustrated that I wasn’t seeing immediate results. Just like Gideon, God led me through steps; it didn’t come all at once. And now looking in hindsight I can see that His purpose was to get all the glory. I changed my diet, I took supplements, I cut back on things that were stressing me out, but those things were only steps. I cannot look at any one single thing that I did and say that was the key. It was only until I received a full (and I say full, because I have had a partial knowledge of this my whole life) revelation of the authority that is mine as a child of God. Only after exercising that authority, did breakthrough and healing come. And that is the beauty, when I exercised my authority, God did the work, He fought the battle, He got the victory, it was so very clear that my part was miniscule in comparison, He gets all the glory! Just as Moses lifted his rod over the Red Sea, I had to do my part, but there is no way I can take any credit. God parted the Red Sea and God healed me.

So, if you are feeling discouragement right now, know that God isn’t done. Keep on trusting, keep on obeying, the breakthrough will come. God knows you better than you know yourself. He wants all the glory and He will lead you down the path that will bring glory to Himself.