Tag Archives: Isaiah

Not All gods Are Under God?

Denying the Inference is Denying the Scripture.

I saw a post today calling Vincent Cheung and Gordon Clark “hyper” on God’s sovereignty, as if they had cleared the Reformed fence and run off with the livestock. The picture in that post was already more honest than the accusation. A. W. Pink barely fits inside the fence. He is scraping the rail. Jonathan Edwards is halfway in and halfway out, because occasionalism will not stay seated where the confession wants it. Then Clark, and particularly Vincent, are the ones said to have jumped. Jumped what? Jumped the fence of Reformed tradition and Reformed orthodoxy. That is the whole charge. The word “hyper” is doing the dishonest work. It is not hyper relative to Scripture. It is hyper relative to a confession, a century, a mood in the study. Scripture never got the memo that there was an upper bound short of “all.”

Here is the flip they will not make. They say Vincent jumped the fence of Reformed tradition. What they have done, by denying the inference, is jump and leave the fence of Scripture. You cannot deny the inference without denying the major premise the text affirms. Tradition is the pen they are defending. Scripture is the fence they left. We do not grade doctrine by how nervous Westminster got. We grade it by what the text says, and then we let the inference land where the text already put it.

Rhetoric is an add-on. It comes after the statement is clear. Most of the time you find people holding a handful of rhetoric with no clear statement underneath it. Strip the rhetoric and you are back in grammar school. Start with the category. All, some, or none. The Bible’s category is all.

Ephesians 1:11: God works all things according to the counsel of His will. Not some things, with a polite exemption for the awkward ones. All. Isaiah 45 does not clear its throat and say, “I form the light and then carefully distance myself from the darkness by means of a secondary cause and a mystery box.” It says, “I form light and I create darkness; I make peace and I create evil; I am Yahweh; I do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). And He does not say it once, as a stray line. Isaiah 46 picks it up again: “I am God and there is none besides me, God and there is none like me, who from the beginning declares the end… My plan shall stand, and I will accomplish all my wishes,” and then He calls a bird of prey from the east and the man of His plan from a far country. “I have spoken; I will bring it to being. I have formed it; I will do it” (Isaiah 46:9–11). That is the motif. “None besides me” is not a slogan about monotheism in the abstract. In the context, it is His own definition of what it means that He is God. He created. He is now grasping and pushing the creation. He knows the future because there is no other real cause that can stop the plan. Control over humans, human choices, good, evil, and material things. To say there is no dualism in Christian ontology is only a philosophy way of saying the Scriptural line, “There is none besides me.”

It is not only the prophet and the king. Psalm 104 is not a throne-room vision. It is the night. “You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God” (Psalm 104:20–21). The lion does not forage from a system God wound up and walked away from. He seeks his food from God. That is the cleanest line in the Book for the ordinary meal. The same hand that forms light and creates darkness puts the prey in the mouth of the predator.

The same is true in the realm of knowledge. God first put knowledge in the man, and He continues to put it there. It is not observation climbing up into a blank mind. Isaiah 28 walks through the farmer. He does not plow all day. He levels the surface. He scatters dill, sows cumin, puts wheat in rows, barley in its place, and emmer as the border. “He is rightly instructed; his God teaches him… For he is rightly instructed; his God teaches him. Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge… This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom” (Isaiah 28:26–29). Practical knowledge, the kind a man uses with his hands, is God teaching him. Spiritual knowledge is the same causality with the lights turned up. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The god of this age blinds. God shines. The knowledge is put in. It is not scraped off the surface of things. And God withholds it the same way He gives it. “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? … For God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding” (Job 39:13–17). The ostrich is not uninformed because she skipped class. God did not give her the share.

Whether it is invisible knowledge, or a random eagle that no man sees leaving the cliff, God says He does it. “Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold. From there he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it from far away” (Job 39:26–29). Not by your understanding. At His command. The text’s other picture is the bird of prey He calls, and the man of His plan He summons (Isaiah 46:11). Even rain is not a natural leak from a cloud that God then permits. Jeremiah asks the question and answers it. “Are there any among the idols of the nations who cause rain to pour? Or can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, O Yahweh our God? Therefore we hope in you, for you do all these things” (Jeremiah 14:22). The sky, the wind, the water, and the cloud are put on the same shelf as the wooden idol. They have no inherent power to cause the shower. Yahweh does all these things. And in all these things, the lion’s meal, the farmer’s rows, the light shone in the heart, the wisdom withheld from the ostrich, the eagle leaving a cliff no man is watching, there is none besides God.

Scripture shows Him directly and absolutely controlling, creating, and causing reality at every basic level. I say basic because there are potentially infinite aspects of reality, and the Bible would be infinitely long if it had to narrate every one. In light of who God is, it only has to show Him controlling the basic aspects to conclude that He controls all. Some verses simply say the all. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “He sustains all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). That includes the inside of the thoughts, the subject and the predicate and the desire. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). If He turns the height of man, He turns the rest. It includes the random act, the card and the dice. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). It includes the destiny before the man is born. “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad… not because of works but because of him who calls” (Romans 9:11). Paul took a few verses from the Old Testament in Romans 3 and said, “all have sinned.” When God, at every basic part of spiritual and material reality, says “I control this,” and then says there is none besides Him who does it, the doctrine is that He controls all things. The clay does not get a vote, and the clay does not get to call the potter hyper for using both hands. Isaiah 45 already asked the question. “Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’ and ‘Your work has no hands’?” (Isaiah 45:9). Romans 9 starts the lump neutral, before they had done good or evil, and the Potter makes one vessel for mercy and one for destruction. Paul’s opponent understood the position perfectly: who has resisted His will? Paul does not walk it back. He tells the object to stop answering back to the One who molded it.

So the category statement is this:

All things are things directly controlled by God.

Sin is a thing. Evil is a thing. Adam’s fall is a thing that happened. David’s census is a thing that happened. The lying spirit in Ahab’s prophets is a thing that happened, and the text does not say the LORD allowed it to wander in. It says the LORD put it there. Job’s friends comforted him for all the evil the LORD had brought on him, and that line is not one of the bad counselors. It is the narrator, under inspiration, closing the book. If all things are things God controls, then these things are things God controls. The “all” already contained them.

And the inference is not a commentary on the Bible. It is what the Bible asserts. A logical deduction adds no new information. It points at what the premise already swallowed. So the Bible asserts that Oshea sinned, through the major premise that all have sinned, and that assertion is just as binding as if the text said, “Oshea has sinned.” They are equally statements given by Scripture. One is not less Scripture than the other. Oshea’s sin is not less Scripture than “all have sinned,” because Oshea is already contained in the major premise. Same grammar, same authority, on the decree. “God caused this sin” is not less Scripture than “God works all things.” Denying the particular is denying the verse. You did not protect the text. You left it.

This is where the classic move shows its hand. They want the major premise. They will print “God is sovereign over all” on the wall. Then they see where the inference goes, and they suddenly discover a zone where logic is asked to clock out and sit in the hallway. If God controls all things, then God controls sin and evil. That is the definition of metaphysical authorship. They like the poster. They hate the homework. So they affirm the universal and deny the particular, and they call the man who refused to do that the one who jumped the fence. He did not. They did. They jumped the fence of Scripture the moment the particular was exempted.

Watch the same trick somewhere they cannot hide. Paul says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Category form: all humans are those who have sinned. Therefore Oshea has sinned, and that “therefore” is Scripture, not an optional garnish. Now suppose I keep the major premise, because it sounds orthodox, and then I announce that John Wesley never sinned, John Calvin never sinned, Billy Graham never sinned, Andrew Wommack never sinned. I have not protected the text. I have denied it. Denying the consequent denies the antecedent. A categorical syllogism and a propositional one are the same coin. Flip one face and the other face is gone. Paul already ran this play in 1 Corinthians 15. Deny the resurrection of the dead and you have already denied that Christ was raised. You do not get a participation trophy for affirming the opening line while strangling every particular that makes the opening line true.

If the inference can be denied, then the Bible can say God is God of gods and Lord of lords, and there can still be some gods He is not God over and some lords He is not Lord over. Deuteronomy 10, Psalm 136, 1 Timothy 6, and Revelation 17 all become posters on a wall. The moment you exempt one lord, “Lord of lords” was a hymn, not a doctrine. If the inference can be denied, then Jesus is the Savior of all who believe, and John Wesley is saved, Billy Graham is saved, Andrew Wommack is saved, and Jesus is not their Savior. You kept the slogan and fired the Person. If the inference can be denied, then all the saints will be with Christ, and Wesley is a saint, and Wesley is in hell. The marriage supper still has a place card with his name on it, and the place card is a lie. If the inference can be denied, then by His stripes you were healed, the “you” of Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 2:24, and the stripes were not for Billy Graham, and the stripes were not for Andrew Wommack, and Matthew 8:17 carried sickness for a category that somehow does not contain the people in the category. If the inference can be denied, then the Ten Commandments address all human beings, the law speaks so that every mouth is stopped, and there is a province in Asia full of human beings the commandments never reached. If the inference can be denied, then there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and Wesley is in Christ, and Wesley is condemned. If the inference can be denied, then whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and Graham called, and Graham is not saved. On and on. There is no exit. Every universal in the Book dies the same death the moment one particular is handed a hall pass.

If inference is not always binding, then it is not always true that every human has sinned, and Wesley gets his exemption, and a village in Asia gets a vacation from the Ten Commandments, and the God of gods has a few lords He does not lord. If that is not allowed, then inference is always binding. You do not get to suspend it when the particular is sin and the universal is God’s control. The Bible uses this grammar on purpose. Jesus appeals to the law of non-contradiction. Grace is not law. Law is not grace. A thing is not its contradictory. If you say the inference does not always matter, you have already said the major premise does not always matter. You just said it with a hymnbook in your hand. If God is not the author of sin, then the laws of identity and contradiction are not always binding and so grace really is works, and works is also grace.

Some try to slip out by saying the major premise only needs a qualification. Nothing wrong with the premise, they say. It just needs clarity. An exception to the rule. Here is the problem. If you say all humans are those who have sinned, and then you say there is a group in East Africa who have never sinned, even though they are humans, you did not qualify the premise. You contradicted it. “All humans are those who have sinned” and “some humans have not sinned” cannot both be true of the same subject in the same respect. Calling the second sentence clarity, a qualification, or a nuance does not change the relation. It still denies what the first affirmed. It still violates identity and non-contradiction.

A real qualification changes the subject or the predicate before the universal is asserted. “All morally accountable humans have sinned” is a different claim from “all humans have sinned.” The class was narrowed first. By saying “All morally accountable humans have sinned,” one leaves room in the major premise for some humans who are not morally accountable, such as a particular village in Asia. With that being the case, it would not be a contradiction to say some humans are not accountable.

However, what the objector does is different. He affirms the universal, then adds a member of the same class that lacks the predicate. The same holds for sovereignty. “God is absolutely sovereign” and “all things are things controlled by God” already fix the predicate. Absolute means without remainder. All means every member of the class. To follow that with “some things are not controlled by God,” or “human choices fall outside His control,” or “evil is an exception,” is not to refine the claim. It is to assert that the same subject both has and lacks the same predicate. Partial control is a coherent idea. It is simply a different idea. It is the claim that God controls some things and not others. Anyone is free to defend that claim. What he is not free to do is defend it under the name of absolute sovereignty, as if the exception were a footnote rather than a replacement of the predicate. The word “absolute” does not survive the exception. Once the exception is admitted, the proposition on the table is no longer the one that was stated.

So here is the tell. If Reformed theology affirms that all things are things controlled by God, and then refuses the inference that sin and evil are included in the all, it never affirmed the major premise. It affirmed a slogan, and then left the fence of Scripture while accusing the consistent reader of leaving the fence of tradition. Pink is already on the rail. Edwards already has a foot out, because occasionalism is just the premise being allowed to mean what it says. Vincent did not jump Scripture. The bounds of Scripture are “all.” The man who stops the syllogism where the confession gets sweaty is the one who left.

And the panic underneath the denial is a category smash. “If God authors sin, then God is a sinner.” Sin is lawlessness, 1 John 3:4. Lawlessness is a man breaking a command addressed to man. No law was ever addressed to God. There is no authority over Him to hold Him to one. Accusing the Author of being the sinner is the same move as calling the novelist a lion because he wrote a lion, or calling God a river because He caused a river. God is not what He authors. God is not what He causes. If that sentence feels hard, it is because pantheism has been sitting in the chair where Scripture should be. How much slower is the color green than the number 7? That is the intellectual level of “God sinned by causing a man to sin.” Ex lex is already too small. The potential of a law over God does not exist. Holy, holy, holy is categorical separation, not a really impressive compliance record.

As Vincent Cheung as talk us, accountability does not rescue the denial either. Romans 9 is asked the question in plain speech. If God causes it, why does He still find fault? Paul’s answer is not freedom. The answer is the Potter. Responsibility assumes a sovereign over you, not a zone He is forbidden to touch. Pharaoh did not resist the causality. He was still judged. The elect do not resist the Spirit who sanctifies them. Same metaphysics, opposite vessel. Freedom was never the foundation. Authority was.

This is not a puzzle for the back of the book. If God causes all things, then He caused the fall, the census, the lying spirit, the hardening, the disaster, and the prosperity. If you will not say that, you do not believe Ephesians 1:11. You believe an edited version that keeps the religious reputation and hands the awkward verses to mystery. Mystery is what you say when you have already denied the premise and you need a religious word for the violation of identity and non-contradiction. You would not let a man do this to “all have sinned.” You would not let him say that “Oshea has sinned” is less Scripture than the verse that contains it. You would not let him do it to the stripes on Jesus’ back. You would not let him do it to the God of gods. Do not let him do it to the decree, or to God’s control of every aspect of reality.

Affirm the inference or stop claiming the premise. There is no third category. All, or you have already slipped into some, and some is dualism with a Reformed accent. The God of Scripture is not embarrassed by His own decrees. He forms the light and creates the darkness, and He does not ask the clay to proofread the work. Believe Him as He has spoken. Then take the pen He put in your hand, the promises already yes in Jesus, and command the mountain. The same sovereignty that authored the story is the sovereignty that backed the stripes, the resurrection, and the authority He gave you. So, open your mouth and command the mountain to get out of your way. Tell sickness to leave and be healed and happy.

You Feel The Power

You Feel The Power

I was in Luke today and I hit the woman with the flow of blood. Twelve years of that curse, no cure from the physicians, and she comes up behind Jesus in the press of the crowd and touches the fringe of His robe. The bleeding stops on contact. Jesus stops the whole parade and asks who touched Him. Peter, doing what Peter does when he is looking at what his eyes can verify, tells Him the obvious thing. Master, this whole crowd is pressed up against You. Everybody touched You. That is what a crowd is. Jesus does not take the correction. Someone deliberately touched Me, He says, because I felt power leave Me. The Greek is dunamis. The English is power. They are reporting the same event. He is not describing a word of knowledge that the Spirit slipped Him like a note under the door, although a word of knowledge was available to Him, since He was anointed by the Spirit the same way we are anointed by the Spirit after we receive what the Father promised. He said He cast out demons by the Spirit of God, and that this was the kingdom of God arriving on top of people. He operated as a man born under the law, empowered by the Spirit, standing in the same category we stand in. That is why the story is usable and not a stained-glass souvenir. The thing He bothers to say out loud is that He felt it. Power went out of Him, and He knew it by the feeling of it leaving.

Vincent Cheung calls this spiritual physics, and that is the right name. God, by His own sovereign design, created us in such a way that a Spirit-filled man can sometimes feel the power. Think of electricity. You can feel the energy. You can feel the charge. The spiritual side has that too. Both the woman and Jesus felt it on that street. She felt the surge when the curse broke off her body, like spiritual electricity finding a live wire, and He felt the spiritual power of the Spirit leave when her faith drew on what was already in Him. There is such a thing as spiritual force, and the Bible is not embarrassed to say the people involved felt it. For ministry this matters more than the faithless want it to. Feeling the power is normal. It is not proof you have slipped into emotionalism, and it is not proof you are ahead of the brother who felt nothing that morning. Jesus felt it. Luke keeps recording that Paul was filled with the Spirit in ways that were tangible, something moved and something felt, and then a judgment miracle came out of his mouth and a governor got saved. The warning, is that you do not decide whether power is with you by what you feel. Faith is the real issue, and it is only a mental assent and agreement with God. The anointing presence is a real mode of the Spirit, and we seek it on purpose, but if you only move when the goosebumps have already filed their paperwork, you have handed the devil a veto he was never issued. As odd as it sounds, if you rely on the feeling of spiritual power or God’s anointing presence to act, or to feel confident something happened or a prayer was answered, you are being unspiritual and limiting the Spirit of power. We eagerly seek it, but the foundation is faith. Think about this for two seconds. It is by faith you first received the baptism of the Spirit of power. It is by faith you are saved; it is by faith you command a mountain to move. When you use faith to receive the Spirit, you don’t wait on a feeling. If you do get a feeling of spiritual power, it is because you received the Spirit by faith first. You continue to grow in the operation of spiritual power by faith, not by something else. Faith is the foundational issue. Feelings of power are nice, and they can confirm that the circuit opened and connected for a moment. However, feeling does not authorize the mouth. The mouth was already authorized, because you are a royal priesthood in Christ. It is who you are. It is not something you merely do; this authority is you.

Last night a dream woke me. It was vivid, and it was not the kind of dream you shrug off before your eyes are open. A small bear was trying to come through the side door. In the dream I took the .22 I keep by the bed and I was shooting, trying to put it down. I thought that was the end of it. Then a giant bear came through the front door, and I was running for my mom’s bedroom, yelling for her to get the shotgun. I woke up after that. When a dream lands like that I do not pretend I have a perfect method for sorting a bad meal from a real warning. Sometimes it is something you ate. Sometimes it is more than that. I do not need a finished taxonomy before I am allowed to use the authority I already carry. Waiting until you are 100% sure is how your sword gets rusty from underuse.

On the drive home today, a good hour, I had worship on and I was praying in tongues. I was glad to be doing it. I was not running on emotion. I was tired from a long day at work. I was numb. I was not feeling the presence of God in any way I could point at and call a surge, which is the relevant part of the testimony, because of what happened the moment I decided to take authority. I decided, just in case it was more than a dream, to take authority over the thing I had seen. Isaiah 54 was already sitting there, the way it always is. If anyone attacks, it is not from Me; whoever attacks you shall fall because of you. Every weapon formed against you shall not succeed, and you shall declare guilty every tongue that rises against you for judgment. That is the inheritance. That is the legal right. Not God. You. The older rendering that has lived in my mouth says you will condemn, and the doctrine is the same either way. Jesus did not say God will speak to the mountain while you watch from the boat and call the silence humility. He said you will say to the mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea, and it will obey you. If you sit there waiting for God to condemn the weapon He already assigned to your mouth, and the weapon formed against you smacks you in the face, that is on you. He told you whose job it was.

So I opened my mouth. No bear. No jaws of a bear formed against me, against this house, against my mom. The moment the first words left, every hair on my body stood up. The whole car charged. I am talking about that skin-tight goosebump surge, except it was not a mood and it was not the worship track doing emotional work on a tired man. I felt power released, and I felt resistance on the other side of it, the way you feel a fence wire you did not know was hot the second your hand closes. I had been numb five seconds earlier. I kept the confession going. I condemned that situation in the name of Jesus Christ and said it will not succeed. Then I prayed in tongues some more, and I had the sense from the Spirit that what I had said was good and that I was not done. So I spoke again. Not only will the jaws not enter this house. They will not touch this house. They will not come near this house. I will see the defeat of my enemy from afar. The power came over me a second time, on me and around me, hair up again, resistance again, and I had to press through it. The .22 in the dream had been cute. The Name was the shotgun. After the second pass I felt a release, the particular kind where you know the words that needed to be said have been said, and then peace. I was still the same tired man in the same car driving home. The difference was that the weapon forming against me had been answered by a mouth that carried more power.

That is the usefulness of the feeling, once you have refused to make the feeling your priest. I was not sure the dream was spiritual. I was numb, not sensitive, not worked up, not “led” by an anointing presence of the Spirit. I only decided to act on faith, just in case, and open my mouth. Then the words left and the power reported in. Suddenly the question answered itself. There was something to it, and it was a good thing I did not wait to first see the jaws before I realized I needed to do something. Jesus felt the power leave because the woman had already touched with faith. Faith released the power. Spiritual physics does not ask your emotional permission. It waits on faith to be released. Spiritual power moved by faith, while the crowd was still arguing about who had done it.

Jesus told them to pray that their flight would not happen in winter or on a Sabbath. People hear that and turn it into a horror trailer, as if God were the weatherman of doom. He told them the hard thing so they could pray and have the hard thing altered. Information was ammunition. The same pattern sits on the spies. God named the fortified cities and the sons of Anak, and some of those names carry fear in them, and the faithless heard a scare. Joshua and Caleb heard a menu. When God warns you about something, it is not to make you afraid; it is to make the thing He warned you about afraid, as the inhabitants of Jericho were afraid of the Israelites. They are our bread. Their protection is gone. Do not fear them. God was not introducing Israel to a new species of anxiety. He was plating their food and handing them the sword. When you have no faith, a fortified city becomes a reason to die in the wilderness. When you have faith, the same report is lunch, and the spoils come home with you.

A dream like the one I had is the same kitchen. It is not there to scare you, and it is not there so you can clutch the pillow and call the clutching discernment. God is setting a plate down. Here is some food. Take the sword of the Spirit, condemn the weapon, kill the thing, and be blessed on the other side of it. You do not only divert the hidden danger. You overcome it, you watch the defeat from the porch, and you eat the spoils of the war, because a conquered enemy nourishes the man who refused to let it land. Numb is not an empty battery. Numb is a charged car sitting there with the radio on. Worship and tongues had the alternator spinning. The faith confession was the key. You do not wait to feel the engine before you turn it. The key is what makes the engine announce itself.

Open your mouth. The power is already designed to move when faith touches the promise, and sometimes, like it did for Jesus and like it did in that car, you will feel it leave and you will feel it land. Condemn the weapon. Take the bread.

Breaking All Confinement

The initial blast of the Spirit’s anointing power shatters the heavy yoke of Satan’s confinement—sickness, lack, oppression, bent-over vision—and lets you feel the weights fly off your shoulders. That relative freedom is real and glorious. But the hundredfold absolute freedom—the kind where every remaining strap snaps and you run unhindered into the full good dream God has written over your life—only comes when you get so fat on the daily, visible fulfillment of His promises that the old hindrances can’t hold you anymore. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. You are already seated with the enthroned King. Speak it, receive it, grow fat on it. Watch every scheme of the enemy shatter—then run like Elijah outpacing the horses.

Isaiah 10:27 is the classic line: the burden lifts from the shoulder, the yoke from the neck, and the yoke is destroyed because of the anointing—or, as the Hebrew also carries it, “the yoke will be broken because of fatness.” (LSB). The popular charismatic reading of the “anointing oil” as the Holy Spirit’s power is not wrong; it simply needs the rest of the picture.

So let’s talk about the anointing of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit comes in power to break bondages and give freedom. Jesus Himself launched His ministry by reading Isaiah 61 and declaring the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18-19). Acts 10:38 says God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil. That same Spirit is poured out on you. The baptism of power is not optional decoration. It is the explosive force that breaks yokes and bondages.

When that power hits, something breaks. It is unstoppable. A healing lands. A financial door flies open. A demonic oppression lifts. A relationship that felt dead suddenly has oxygen. Relative to the crushing weight you were under, it feels like total liberty. You start moving. You start breathing. You start smiling like a man who just had the wagon unhitched from his neck. That emotional and spiritual high from a miracle that just saved you is legitimate. Do not despise it. It feels good and it should. However, here’s the trap. Do not stop there and call it the finish line. The miracle is real and powerful, but it was the starting gun, not the trophy. The ox is free enough to walk, yet some straps and gear still cling. Thirtyfold. Sixtyfold. Not yet the hundredfold where the animal is so fat, so healthy, so bulked up with the very goodness of God that the remaining wood and leather simply explode off its neck and it is free to run.

Look at the woman Jesus healed in Luke 13. This story gives us a clean picture of what happens when the initial miracle hits—when the Spirit lands His first blow against the demonic oppression in your life. A common result of that first spiritual salvo is that your head is free to lift up and see a good future. In the story, the woman—bound by Satan for eighteen years, bent over—could only see her own feet. That is the posture of demonic confinement: eyes locked on the dirt, the symptoms, the lack, the failed reports, the small horizon. Stress, worry, and negative images rule your thoughts and vision. When Jesus called her free and laid hands on her, she straightened up by divine healing. Now she could finally lift her head. Suddenly the world opened. She could see distance. She could see possibility. That is what the initial anointing miracle does—it lifts the head. Now you can see the dream. You begin to visualize a good future. God wants to grant you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). Not some truncated, “spiritualized only” version. The real desires. The ones that, when fulfilled, enlarge His kingdom by enlarging you. A mansion to spit in the face of the faithless, then a hundred houses for a hundred missionaries. Preaching with power that heals the sick on the spot. Family so whole the next generation inherits blessing instead of bondage. Old besetting sins loosen and fall off. A body so thoroughly healed that even the little things—bad eyesight, lingering fatigue, that one joint that always complained—are gone. Financial surplus that is not just debt-free but overflowing, so you can give and build your big dreams without the old god of lack whispering that you don’t have enough. And in your fatness, you realize you now have the strength to grab your family and friends and help them the way God helped you.

That full freedom is the fatness. You become fat with the promises of God already fulfilled in your experience. You are not waiting for some future day when you finally “arrive.” You are the promises of God. The gospel defines you that way. Jesus became sin so that you might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). He became poor so that by His poverty you might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). By His stripes you were healed (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24). The blessing of Abraham—Spirit, miracles, fame, military victories, favor, increase—is already yours by faith (Galatians 3:13-14). These are not distant hopes. They are your present ontology because you are fused to the enthroned Christ. You are seated with Him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). Seated means the work is finished, so you sit—and you sit in a place of authority. Scripture does not say only Jesus was seated in the heavenly places; it says God made us sit there with Him. That’s right: you are already seated. Your work is already done, because He already did it, and the Father already transferred His righteousness, grace, and blessings to your account. They are yours. You are a royal priesthood in a seated place of authority—not later. Now. Sickness, lack, and demonic schemes are under His feet, therefore under yours. They are under the throne of Jesus, and because you are already seated with Him there, they are under your authority.

So how do you get fat? You stop speaking the evil report of observations and start speaking the promise. Daily. Relentlessly. You cultivate a mind of righteousness. Get rid of the old sin-consciousness that only makes you more sinful. You are the righteousness of God now, and your inner thoughts should be non-stop righteous consciousness. You look at the doctor’s chart and say, “By His stripes I was healed—therefore I am healed.” You look at the bank account and say, “Jesus became poor so I am rich—therefore supply is mine.” You look at the mountain of impossibility and speak to it the way a man speaks who already owns the title deed: “Be removed and cast into the sea” (Mark 11:23). Faith is not a feeling you wait for. Faith is mental assent to what God has already declared. When you consistently agree with God’s definition of you, your vision and the imaginations of your heart clarify into a big, bright future. The promises start landing in the open. Healing multiplies. Answers to prayer become more regular. Relationships heal. The surplus appears. Every little lingering strap that the enemy still hoped to use snaps under the sheer bulk of fulfilled goodness.

Picture it. The ox that once strained under the yoke now stands thick-necked and powerful, muscle packed on from the rich pasture of faith in God’s promise. The old wood and leather creak, then crack, then explode off in pieces. No more tug. No more residual weight. Nothing left clinging. That is the hundredfold. You run. You fulfill the desires of your heart. And in the running, His kingdom expands through every desire of your heart that materializes. Best deal in the universe: He gets the glory of a son who actually lives free, and you get the life of God granting the dreams of your heart. You get to live with God as your exceedingly great reward, the way He was with Abraham His friend.

Do not settle for the initial high and call it enough. That is limiting God. The Spirit’s power is not a one-time blast followed by a lifetime of managing leftover chains. That’s the lie the faithless will try to sell you. They are the voice of Satan, and they populate many churches and pews. The true fatness of God’s power and blessing is designed for the hundredfold. It is the power that keeps making you fat with every promise you dare to believe and speak. Storm the throne. Confess who you are. Command the mountain. Grow so fat with the goodness of God that every remaining piece of the old yoke explodes off your neck.

Head up. Eyes on the horizon. Growing fat with the promises. That is the hundredfold. That is breaking all confinement. Let nothing stand in your way—not Satan, not your family and not even the church. Break all confinement.

Aim for the Stars

Aim for the Stars and Faith Will Make You Hit Them

It is sad—borderline tragic—that even Christians have bought the lie to aim low. Most take the vision and desires God planted in their hearts, yank out a shotgun loaded with birdshot, and blast away at a target just beyond their own feet. And guess what? Without surprising anyone, they hit it. Then, to our astonishment, they start patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves like they just won the Olympics. Most of the time they shoot so low that some of the pellets bounce off the ground and smack them right in the face. They call this “humble” and “suffering under the sovereign hand of God,” as if they accomplished something worth God’s time—or mine—to even notice.

Yet this is exactly the opposite picture Scripture paints. The Bible never spotlights a person who aimed for the dirt with birdshot and then high-fived themselves for a job well done. The Heroes of Faith in Hebrews 11 are the polar opposite. It puts a blinding spotlight on people who pointed their vision at the stars and watched faith rocket their arrow straight to Orion’s Belt. These weren’t cautious calculators; they were bold archers who refused to waste God’s ammunition on pebbles. And God loved it. He still does.

Take the Roman centurion for the masterclass. He was a Gentile outsider, not even under the contracts yet. In his context the ground was all he was supposed to aim for. Remember the Gentile woman? Jesus told her He was sent first to the lost sheep of Israel—it wasn’t her turn. But this centurion marched straight up to Jesus, looked Him dead in the eyes, and pulled his bow back to the moon. “My servant is sick and needs healing.” Jesus’ immediate reply? “You got it, bro—I’ll head to your house right now.” The man aimed for the sky, and faith slammed the arrow into the moon. Boom.

But wait—there’s more. The centurion could have stopped there like any normal person. Jesus had already said yes. Most would have grabbed the miracle and run hoping God wouldn’t change His mind. Not this guy. He looked Jesus in the face a second time, yanked the bowstring all the way to Centauri, and fired again: “Actually, Lord, don’t even bother walking—just speak the word right here, right now.” Imagine the nerve! In today’s church some faith-fumbler would have whispered, “Dude, you already got your miracle—don’t push it. Jesus might get annoyed.” Yeah, right. Jesus’ actual response? Astonishment. Public praise. “I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!” He didn’t scold the upgrade request—He celebrated it. The man aimed outside our solar system, and faith delivered. Jesus was all happiness and surprise, like a proud Father watching His kid dunk on the rim and then immediately ask for the NBA.

Put yourself in Jesus’ sandals for a second. Most people are drowning in unbelief. When someone finally scrapes together a thimble of faith, they still aim so low the arrow barely leaves the front yard. But this outsider Roman sized up Jesus, concluded He had absolute authority over reality itself, and instead of wasting time with self-debasing groveling, he asked for a miracle—and then upgraded the request on the spot. Jesus didn’t sigh and say, “Be satisfied.” He marveled. Publicly. Before the whole crowd. That is the God we serve.

The doctrine is as simple as it is explosive: the higher you aim, the more God likes it. Aim for Orion’s Belt and faith will get you there. The moment you land, God beams with delight if you immediately say, “Wait, wait—add Andromeda Galaxy in my other pocket too!” He doesn’t roll His eyes. He boasts about you the same way He boasted about the centurion. You can never aim too high or too often with faith. The only error is aiming too low and too infrequently.

This isn’t some prosperity gimmick; it’s the self-authenticating revelation of Scripture itself—our only starting point for knowledge. God’s Word is His will (Maxim 19). And His will, stated over and over, is that “all things are possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23). Not some things. Not safe things. All things. Jesus didn’t stutter when He said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22). He didn’t add footnotes about aiming low to stay humble. The footnotes are the inventions of men who have never tasted what real faith feels like when it leaves the bowstring.

How about David? Kid with a slingshot stares down a nine-foot giant who had the entire army wetting themselves. David didn’t aim for “maybe I won’t die today.” He aimed for the giant’s forehead and declared, “I come against you in the name of the Lord of Armies!” One stone, one shot, one dead Philistine, and the rest of the army routed. Faith took a shepherd boy’s pebble and turned it into a guided missile that hit the Keyhole Nebula.

Even the woman with the issue of blood aimed high. Twelve years of doctors, twelve years of worse. As a child of Abraham she tried to pay for healing that was freely promised in the contract; and the result was poverty.  Society said stay home and bleed quietly. She said, “If I can just touch the hem of His garment…” She crawled through a crowd that could have stoned her for uncleanness, stretched out her hand, and grabbed healing that wasn’t even on the menu that day. Jesus stopped the whole parade: “Daughter, your faith has healed you.” He called her out publicly so everyone would know—high aim plus relentless faith equals miracles on demand.

This is why Jesus commands us to ask in His name and expect greater works (John 14:12-14). Greater. Not equal, not smaller—greater. The resurrected, enthroned Christ has identified us with Himself so completely that when we speak in faith, reality hears the voice of the Son. That’s not arrogance; that’s agreement with God’s definition of us. We are co-heirs. We are seated with Him. We are the righteousness of God in Christ. Why would we aim at our feet when the throne room is wide open and the King is saying, “What do you want? Ask big—I already paid for it”?

The faithless love to slap a “God’s timing” or “humility” label on their low aim. They call it wisdom. Scripture calls it unbelief, dressed up stupid. The Israelites limited the Holy One of Israel (Exodus 13-14) by their evil report. They could have aimed for the Promised Land in one generation, in one day. Instead they wandered forty years because they aimed at the dirt, and God hated them for it. Don’t repeat their mistake. God is still the same yesterday, today, and forever. His promises are still “yes” in Christ. The only variable is faith and aiming high.

So what will you aim for today? Cancer, diabetes? Aim higher—total eradication, and the healing of your whole family, and a testimony that shakes your city. Debt? Aim higher—supernatural debt cancellation that funds you with 5 houses, and the gospel with 500 houses. Loneliness? Aim higher—a spouse of your dreams and a household that multiplies the kingdom on steroids. Here is the big secret the faithless keeps from you. The dirt is not a starting line, it is the opening to the pits of hell. The stars are not the limit; they’re the true starting line for faith. Yes, Faith will make you hit them, then immediately reload for the next galaxy.

You were born from above, and so you were born for this. You carry the same Spirit that raised Jesus. You have the mind of Christ and the name that makes demons scream and mountains move. Stop aiming for your front yard. Load the bow with the promises of God, pull it back to the stars, and let faith fly. God is not rolling His eyes—He’s already leaning forward with a grin, ready to boast about you the same way He boasted about that Roman outsider.

Aim high. Fire often. Jesus already said all things are possible for the one who believes. The stars are waiting—and God is cheering louder than you can imagine.

The stars never looked so good, nor so close.

Empowered by the Spirit to Shine God’s Salvation to THE END OF THE EARTH

“And he says,
“It is trivial for you to be a servant for me,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel.
I will give you as a light to the nations,
to be my salvation to the end of the earth.””
(Isaiah 49:6 LEB)

Notice the last phrase, “THE END OF THE EARTH.”

This passage is directly about Jesus, God’s servant who would redeem and save His people. However, take special notice how both the apostle Paul and Jesus Christ use this passage of Scripture. They both quote it in the book of Acts, and both use it to refer to the church and not merely about Jesus. That is, Jesus through His redeemed church, will shine the Father’s salvation to the end of the earth.

First Paul.

“For so the Lord has commanded us,

‘I have placed You as a light for the Gentiles,
That You may bring salvation to THE END OF THE EARTH.’”
(Acts 13: 47 LSB)

Paul says that God commanded him and his ministry team, on the basis of Isaiah 49:6 to preach the gospel to all who will listen. How can this be, if the passage was about Jesus. The church is one body with Jesus. Jesus prays in John 17, in more than one way, that as the Father and Jesus is one, that the church be made one in Jesus. Jesus working through the Church, is Jesus working.

Next, we will see how Jesus command this passage for all disciples, and then ‘how’ this will happen.

“But [Jesus] said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set by His own authority;
but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to THE END OF THE EARTH.”
(Acts 1:7-8 LSB)

Jesus say it is by the baptism of the Holy Spirit that his followers will fulfill His command to expand His light to the end of the earth. In the next chapter, when the Baptism of the Spirit arrived, the Apostles only made up a small percentage. Thus, we are shown His baptism and command extends to all Jesus followers.

Three things. One, this gives proof that baptism of the Spirit is for all, for Jesus connects TO THE END OF THE EARTH kingdom expansion to the baptism of the Spirit.

Second, as long as this command stands, to obey God by expanding His salvation to the ends of the earth, the baptism of the Spirit still stands.

Third, without the baptism of the Spirit, one cannot obey this command to shine God’s salvation to THE END OF THE EARTH.

Matthew 4 shows something similar. Isaiah 9 is quoted about a light shining in Capernaum. Well, what happened in Matthew 4 and in Capernaum? Jesus is led by the Spirit to be tempted and filled by the Spirit for ministry. Jesus started His ministry only after He was empowered by the Spirit. Jesus said that He cast out demons by the “power of the Spirit” and not merely by His Son of God authority.  After this anointing of the Spirit for ministry, Jesus goes to Capernaum to (1) preach repentance and to (2) heal the sick. It is in this context that Isaiah is quoted by saying a “Great Light has Dawned.”

Thus, Jesus Christ “great light shining” is summed up with being empowered by the Spirit, preaching and healing the sick. Jesus’ command for His redeemed followers is the exact same thing. They are commanded to be baptized in the power of the Spirit, to preach and heal the sick.

The same thing He did, and the same way He did it.