Andrea and her husband Greg, (Nice name by the way. I'm sure he must be a kind, handsome, scholarly man.) who listen to the podcast had a few questions and I thought I would post my shot at the answers here in case anyone else had similar questions.
THE QUESTIONS PLEASE:
Who is this God I serve, what's he like?
What type of life does he want me to have?
What do my words really do, (how true is name it and claim it)?
There is this thing where you sow a seed if you don't have enough. Is that true?
Can God raise a believer who is practically dead (cancer) back to life?
Does god REALLY want me to live an abundant life. I know the thief comes…and i have come…. what does that mean???
Can I have Godly children, a holy marriage, more than enough finances to give unto those in need… can I be like Jesus and lay hands on the sick, set the captive free?
THE ANSWERS:
Who is this God I serve, what's he like?
God is a person, i.e. He has a personality. There are some things He likes and some things He dislikes. Like any person it takes time to get to fully know Him, to know what He is like. So the more you hang out with God, through reading your Bible, praying, worshiping, going to church hanging out with other believers the more you will get to know what He is like. The short answer to this question is that he is like Jesus. Jesus said, he that has seen me has seen the father. What we see Jesus doing in the Bible is what God would do. Sometimes I hear people say things like, "God sent that hurricane" or "God gave me that cancer," or "God stood by and watched that person die." When I hear things like that I like to substitute "Jesus" for "God" and that helps me see if what they're saying is true. "Jesus sent that hurricane." Hmmm doesn't sound right. In the Bible Jesus caused storms to stop. "Jesus gave me that cancer." Wait a second… didn't Jesus heal the sick? "Jesus stood by and watched that person die," just doesn't sound right. What's God like? He's like Jesus.
What type of life does he want me to have?
God wants it to go well with you. He wants you to enjoy days of heaven upon the earth. He wants your life to be full of joy. But, and here's the big BUT, we live in a world that is separated from God. You could say we live in a world that is at war with God. So just because God wants you to have something doesn't mean you'll get it. There is opposition to God's will here on the earth and because we live here it's often easier, even for us who desire to follow God, to "go with the flow" than it is to go with God's will. It's often easier for us to believe what the world system says about our situation than it is to believe what God says about our situation. This struggle to receive God's will for our life is what the Bible calls the "fight of faith." The Bible says that we are to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. God promises us a good life but we have to do something to get it. We have to learn to walk in faith and patience.
What do my words really do, (how true is name it and claim it)?
Well, I would definitely be classified as a "name it and claim it" teacher so obviously I think there is a lot of truth to it. We've actually got quite a bit of stuff about this on our website. Just go to the archives portion of our website and use your browser to search for "words" and you'll find quite a bit of material. Some of it in video/audio, some written. But let me give you the short answer here. There is absolutely no question that the people of Jesus day believed that words were powerful things. That blessings and cursings were real. That death and life were really in the power of the tongue. Today our culture calls that kind of thinking superstitious, but that's what the people who wrote the Bible believed. So when we read the Bible saying that, "death and life are in the power of the tongue" and when we hear Jesus saying that, "Whosoever shall say unto this mountain be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass he shall have whatsoever he saith.", we can be certain that the people of Jesus day took those sayings literally. That modern us Christians don't believe them says more about how we allow our culture to dictate what we believe than it says about whether or not the Bible teaches this. We modern, sophisticated, scientific, Christians don't believe these scriptures about the power of our words because they're embarrassing, not because they're not in the Bible.
There is this thing where you sow a seed if you don't have enough. Is that true?
It is true that the Bible teaches that if we give we will receive. For instance Jesus said, "Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over shall men give into your bosom." There are a lot more scriptures like this. The problem is that when we hear these scriptures we tend to think about winning the lottery. I'll give 100 dollars and God will give me back ten million dollars. But the way we should think of our "sowing" is like farming. You know that you can make millions of dollars farming. I live in a big time California farming community. I went to school with kids who's parents were multimillionaires from farming melons or tomatoes or asparagus. But just because you can become rich by farming doesn't mean that if you start farming tomorrow all your money problems will be solved by next week. It's the same thing with our giving. As we learn to be generous, not just in church either, but to the waitress, to the kids who knock at our door selling stuff to raise funds for their school field trips, to our family and friends our neighbors and coworkers. As we learn to be generous like God is generous we will be blessed in return. We will increase and grow in prosperity over time. Learning to be generous is hard work though. It's not easy. God will sometimes work financial miracles. The Bible speaks of such things. But the normal way that God prospers you is a gradual, continual increase.
Can God raise a believer who is practically dead (cancer) back to life?
Every Christian believes that God can do this. Some people ask, Will God do this? But the question we need to answer is, Is it God's will to do this? Does God want to do this? The Bible teaches that it is always God's will to heal. The Bible says that Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil. But just because it is God's will to always heal doesn't mean that all will be healed. It's not just up to God. Do you know that the Bible teaches it is God's will for everyone to be saved. "For God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." But everyone isn't saved. Why not? Because to be saved you must first believe. It's not just dependent on God 's will. God wants everyone saved. God wants everyone healed, ( In fact the words translated saved and healed in the Bible are the same.) but we have a part to play in getting God's will to come to pass in our life, we call that part faith.
Does god REALLY want me to live an abundant life. I know the thief comes…and I have come…. what does that mean???
Jesus said "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The language their doesn't make much sense to us: 'I came that they might have lots of life?' It doesn't make sense to us because we usually, though not always, tend to think of somebody as either having life or not having life. To our way of thinking you're either alive or dead. There is no in between. You're not more or less alive. But in the Hebrew language, (Jesus was Jewish as were all of the apostles including the apostle John and I believe they spoke Hebrew.) the word "life" has a different meaning. According to the T.W.O.T. (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament)
"To live involves the ability to have life somewhere on the scale between the fullest enjoyment of all the powers of ones being with health and prosperity on the one hand and descent into trouble, sickness and death on the other."
That's what Jesus is talking about here. He came so we could enjoy all the powers of our being with health and prosperity. Jesus really is great. Isn't he?
Can I have Godly children, a holy marriage, more than
enough finances to give unto those in need… can I be like Jesus and
lay hands on the sick, set the captive free?
The short answer is yes. This is what God wants you to have. This is why he sent His son to die for us and to conquer Satan for us. But as one man said these things aren't just going to fall on you like ripe cherries off of a tree. You have to fight for them. You have to learn to fight the good fight of faith.