BY DOUG MAMVURA
Man has developed many strategies, methodologies, techniques and tactics for achieving personal success. There are a lot of self help books on success. However, let me declare to you that there is a higher way than relying on your own efforts to achieve success in life.
Some of us may have lowered our goals and objectives given the current harsh economic climate and challenges stemming from this pandemic the world is battling with. Paul said God will supply all our needs not according to the economic climate of your country but according to His riches in glory. Isaac managed to reap a hundredfold during the time of draught. We should never walk by sight but by faith if we are to enjoy God’s best.
This is the time for you as a believer to bloom where God has planted you regardless of the environment and challenges that may be confronting you. The Bible clearly states that “whatsoever is born of God, overcomes the world.” See yourself as an overcomer, a victor not a victim.
You are called by the Lord to be a success, to enjoy wealth, to enjoy health and to enjoy a life of victory. Whatever your vocation is, you are destined to reign in life because Jesus is the Lord of your life.
The secret of reigning in life lies with receiving everything that Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross. God promised in His Word (Romans 5:17) that “…those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One Jesus Christ. To reign here is to reign in life as a king to have kingly rule and to possess kingly dominion.
Why then are we not receiving God’s best as promised by the scriptures?
I believe the reason we are not receiving His best is because we are willing to settle for less. Very few are committed to God’s best. We have been influenced more by the world than by God’s Word to accept far less than what God has provided. As long as we can live with less than God’s best, we will.
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You have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired before you will aggressively pursue God’s best. You have to have a holy dissatisfaction with mediocrity before you can experience all that God has for you. It doesn’t happen accidentally or automatically. If you don’t pursue it, you will not get it.
Everything in our fallen world naturally goes from good to bad. Things do not get better without effort. We have to seek to find, knock to get the door opened and ask before we receive (Matthew 7:7). We must raise our sights and aim higher.
Jeremiah 29:12-13 says: “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me when you search with all your heart”.
I have had people tell me that they prayed and believed God but that nothing happened. The scriptures promise otherwise. So who is right? I choose to believe God is true. The key is we have to seek with all our hearts. That is the missing element. We have to reach a point where we will not live with anything less than God’s best.
This kind of attitude is missing in the lives of far too many Christians. The bar of expectations even in the church, has been lowered in regards to healing, finances and more. There is such a fear that someone might be disappointed and therefore condemned that many ministers have been teaching people to settle for less and avoid the disappointment.
The fact is that if we are living a life of defeat, of being defeated by sin, by perpetual guilt and condemnation, by sickness, by anxiety attacks, by financial lack, and by broken relationships, we are not living the life that God intended for us. Based on the authority of God’s Word, we are destined to “reign in life” as a king to have kingly dominion over all our challenges and circumstances. We are called to be above them all and not be trampled by them.
God has far more for all of us than we are experiencing. Christians ought to be walking in supernatural healing. We ought to be walking in financial prosperity. Many people however are just as sick and broke as our unsaved neighbours. We will never receive God’s best until we become completely dissatisfied with second best – mediocrity.
One of these days, we are all going to stand before God. And when we do, we will know all things even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). In an instant, we are going to know what we could have had while on this earth. We will understand that the same power that raised Christ from the dead was resident within us all along (Ephesians: 1:18-20).
We will discover that we didn’t have to be sick, that we didn’t have to live broke and that we didn’t have to be depressed and discouraged. We will realise that love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance were living inside us the whole time (Galatians 5:22-23).
We don’t have to limp into heaven, crying, “Praise God, we made it”. We can live a life of victory now. Jesus died to deliver us from this present evil world (Gal. 1:4) not just the one to come. We are victors not victims.
Jesus said John the Baptist was greater than Moses, yet the least New Testament saint is greater than John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11). This means that all of us who profess to be Christians are capable of doing greater things than what Moses, Elijah, David and all the other Old Testament heroes did. It is not just for the “super saints” or those “highly anointed”. We have all been given the same measure of faith. It is up to us to exercise it. We have to take God’s Word seriously. Let God be true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4). We have to believe that we can do what the Word of God says we can do. We are what the Word of God says we are.
Unless we are willing to stand and fight the fight of faith, we will be overcome by this world. If you don’t stir yourself up, you will settle to the bottom. The world isn’t going to encourage you toward God’s best and most Christians aren’t either.
Sadly religion is one of the strongest weapons Satan has to discourage people from believing for something more. Many churches believe that God doesn’t perform miracles today or worse, that God is the one who wills for our lives to be in such a mess to break us. He sovereignly controls everything. This is not true.
We also have to recognise that it is all about receiving what God has already done and not about getting God to do something He has yet to do. We don’t need God to heal us, by His stripes, we were healed (1 Peter 2:24). That miraculous healing power is already in us. We don’t need God to move; we need to believe what He has already done and learn how to receive.
My encouragement to us is to begin to receive God’s best and never to settle for less.
- Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: [email protected] or Twitter @dougmamvura
