Scripture For Today: 1 Kings 9:3

“The Lord said to him: “I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.”

Keeping What You Receive by FaithAs a whole, we’ve gotten pretty lazy as Christians. We’ve gotten pretty good at having someone else do our studying for us. Getting someone else to do our praying for us. Getting someone else to do our believing for us. Then – we claim WE got some great victory when our prayers are answered. Amen! Don’t shout me down when I’m preaching good. Glory to God!

The bottom line though, is what you keep after you receive it. Just like in the military, if you fight a huge battle and push the enemy off of the hilltop, you can’t kick back and start to clean up and grab a bite to eat. No way. You need to prepare for the counter-attack. Because the enemy is just a little more than upset that you gained the victory. He wants to come back and take back what you just took from him. Amen!

The same thing works in the world of Faith. Amen! When you receive the answer to your prayers, that is only half the battle. Now you have to keep it. Amen!

And if you are not the one that has been doing the studying…if you’re not the one who has been doing the praying – or at least MOST of the praying…if you’re not the one who has been doing most of the believing – you are NOT going to hold onto any victory you have received for very long.

You may have received your miraculous healing from cancer. Praise God. But just because your pastor has prayed and laid hands on you and now the doctor says it is unexpectedly in remission or is gone does not mean it will never come back. It will stay GONE – IF you have the Faith to believe. Praise God!

When you do not have the foundation of personal Faith to back up your Faith Claims – you are operating on wishful faith, at best. Oh, you may see some low level demons respond to you and flee – just like pushing the enemy off of a hilltop in war.

But what does the enemy commander do once he’s had a unit pushed off of a hilltop. He pulls his forces back, reorganizes, rearms them and sends in an even larger force to try and take that hill back, doesn’t he?

The devil works the same way. He does not use any new weapons of warfare under the sun. He operates the same exact way he always has.

What did Jesus say about this situation? Look in Luke 11:24-26 and see…

"When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ On its return, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there. And the final plight of that man is worse than the first.”

You see, if you keep asking a preacher to pray for you, to believe with you to receive whatever it is you are praying for, you will end up losing it. Guaranteed.

I’ve seen it in my own ministry. I’ve prayed for some folks that were on their death bed with cancer. One woman I was thinking of, they were going to send her home. Nothing the doctors could do. They figured 10 days to two weeks, tops. “Go get your affairs in order.” My wife and went to visit her in the hospital. She and her husband was there. After we ministered faith to them for a few minutes we prayed.

Three days later, the doctor said she was in remission. Sent her home. But two months after being sent home, she started slipping back into sickness again. We prayed with her over the phone and she got better. Two months later, she started slipping again. This time, the prayers didn’t work. She did live almost six months longer than the doctors told her. She was feeling better part of the time.

But why didn’t she get healed and stay healed? She didn’t have the Faith for it. She was relying on the preacher. Just like Jesus said in...