October 23, 2015 WWJWMTD by Steve the son of John

Miracles, Healings and Justice (part 3)

We all want justice at some level in our lives each week. Without justice there is no freedom or liberty. God is the author of justice that is pure, honorable, and appropriate. Justice demands mercy but evil has to be rewarded also—Proverbs is very clear about this.

Justice is a two edged sword because is brings goodness and judgment at the same time. For justice to work in one’s life requires wisdom. So let’s define some issues/terms before we discover how to exercise justice in our day-to-day activities.

1. Faith is a precursor for justice. Faith has been over simplified and misinterpreted often within the Body of Christ. Most of us think that faith has to do with believing, trust, hope or positive confession—there are connections to these attributes, but faith is not what these qualities produce. Faith is—“Your response to the will of God, His purposes and action plans, for His Glory alone” Every time you respond positively to something God is doing or wants you to do, He calls you a person of faith. We see this in every Bible verse about faith and countless Biblical stories or illustrations. (See notes below on ‘response’)

2. When we respond to what God wants or is doing—we make a conscious decision to ‘sign-on’ to God’s plan and do what He is asking of us—He then calls us people of faith. Without you exercising faith, that is to say, without responding to God, you cannot please Him. You must decide to act when He speaks to you.

3. Wisdom, either the gift or the attribute, identifies what the will of God is for us in a particular situation (or the confrontation of evil) and defines the steps you must take. Some people think wisdom is the creative aspect of God—this is not the case, but wisdom does bring us to God at various strategic moments and creative things can and then do happen. Proverbs and many other books of the Bible define wisdom as the means to identify evil. When we know what evil is, then we know how to issue a ‘Jesus response’ to the evil that is confronting us. Wisdom helps us in finding, knowing, and responding to the will (requests) of God in a positive and concrete way.

4. Justice is your personal commitment to fixing things gone wrong. That is why wisdom, and therefore justice, must be pure, honorable, kind, gentle, patient and against all evil. Things or situations that are outside of God’s will and require you to take a stance, you must respond with justice. These are the times when God wants to you be like Him when confronting evil, i.e. how to exercise His justice.

Let me tell you a story about justice and how is works in creating healing. When dispelling sickness (which is contrary to God’s perfect will), God wants us to deal with illness by responding by faith, using wisdom and exercising justice.

Remember the story of the unjust judge. Jesus said this is an example of ‘justice gone bad’ and how it is corrected. The woman comes to the judge and wants justice, but the judge does not care. Nevertheless, the judge does not want to be bothered by the woman so he grants her request. Well, this is exactly what God wants from us.

I heard about a friend that was becoming more and more sick. I began to ask God for justice/mercy. I told God it is not right for a person who is a Christian and in the ministry, though he had made poor decisions early in his life, to end up dying a tragic death. (My friend was AIDS/HIV positive and had this condition for years.) God asked me to pray for him. I told God I did not have faith for such a miracle nor have I ever seen anyone healed of AIDS. God would not let me ‘off the hook’, and God impressed upon me to fast and pray for him. After 3 weeks the burden to fast and pray was lifted, so I stopped. I saw that person a few weeks later and God had done an unusual selective healing in his body.

The only attribute that I used was perseverance (this is one of the Fruits of the Spirit). I did not give up till God said it was over. What I did was respond to a request from God—I exercised faith, demanded justice and operated in wisdom knowing that God wanted to remedy this situation/illness.

God was waiting for me to respond to Him (faith), to realize what God’s will was in this situation (this process what God was asking me to use is wisdom), and then to demand justice through exercising a Fruit of the Spirit. (Any one of the nine Fruits of the Spirit would have brought the same result.) This is the wisdom of God and my part was responding with justice through faith.

I reacted to God’s request for my friend, caring for him by seeing God’s will for him, and using determination to see it through—by faith, having wisdom, & initiated justice.

Notes on ‘response’: God is interested in your response—is it honest, pure; what are your reasons and motives; and to what depth are you going to respond to Him? There are people who respond to God out of selfish desires or trying to manipulate God. They are neither honest nor sincere—God knows this from the beginning. The extent of your response (are you all in or holding anything back) and the sincerity of your response (why are you responding and for what motive) are critical. Throughout Scriptures there are stories and illustrations of different people’s character and to what extent they responded to the will of God. God is always asking, “How far will you go?” Self-doubt, confusion, fear, love of sin, desire to put on a show of self-righteousness, not wanting to make a commitment, afraid of what others will say, inability to love, and there are so many other factors that inhibit us from responding to God’s requests, purposes and action plans. The better you respond to what God is asking of you the greater your faith is according to Scripture—are you in or are you holding anything back from God—this is the measure of your faith in action.

WWJWMTD

Dr. Steven J. Wentland www.wwjwmtd.com

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