Divine Blueprint for Faith

"And from Jesus Christ, Who ... hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." (Revelation 1:5,6)

Please notice in this verse that the Apostle John said Jesus has made every Believer Kings and Priests unto God. Do you realize that you are a King and a Priest?

Every Born Again human being, male or female, is a New Testament Priest. (Galatians 3:28)

Under the Old Covenant only the High Priest was allowed to come directly into the presence of Almighty God. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies where God dwelt.

Before entering in, the High Priest had a prescribed order of actions that he was to follow.

You could call that prescribed order a Divine Blueprint.

If the High Priest refused to follow the Divine Blueprint while in the Holy of Holies, he died while he was in there.

Actually, he had bells attached to the bottom of his garment and a rope tied to his leg. If the bells stopped tinkling it was a sign that he had dropped dead as a result of his disobedience. The other Priests pulled on the rope, dragging him out of there. Then they would call down to the High Priest Union Hall, so to speak, to get another High Priest up there right away. One who would do it right this time, hopefully.

Under the New Covenant, we, as New Testament Priests, also have a prescribed order of action we are to follow if we expect God to answer our prayers.

I call this prescribed order the "Divine Blueprint for Faith."

Everybody knows what a blueprint is. It is a detailed plan or outline used by architects, engineers and contractors to construct a building. It is normally on blue paper with white print. Only by following the blueprint very closely is the builder guaranteed to construct a building that will not collapse under pressure and use.

Every New Testament Priest who desires to build a spiritual structure that will not collapse must follow God's Divine Blueprint. This is the key to seeing God's power flow.

Whether it be sickness, debt, poverty, marriage, family, work, ministry, etc., if the blueprint is followed, it will produce mightily. This is why the Bible says that all things must be done decently and in good order. (1Corinthians 14:40)

The Biblical steps, or Divine Blueprint for Faith, we will be sharing in the next two lessons will work for anyone at anytime regardless of how overwhelming their circumstances may be. This is because the following steps were outlined by the Most High God. When He is drawing the blueprints, you can be sure something big and beautiful is going up and that it will stand eternally.

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Identify What Your Real Problem Is

This might seem like a pretty obvious place to start, but it is amazing how many people are looking for the solution to a problem they have not yet identified.

Isolate the problem area. Is it financial? Is it physical? Is it demonic, etc.? Isolate the problem area and be honest about it with yourself. Do not be ashamed. Everyone has problems. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 6:23)

Admit exactly what your problem is. You can't quit what you won't admit. You know what it is.

Here is how the Lord once said it to me, "Don't be looking for the needle in the haystack. Look for the elephant in the breadbox."

Look for the obvious.

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Make a Decision to Conquer Your Problem

Once you have pinpointed your problem, make up your mind to be victorious over it.

"I call Heaven and Earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Too many people choose the curse by choosing to live with their problems. God said you can choose life and defeat your problems. You can be wishy-washy and wimpy, or you can be a New Testament Priest and move into the place of authority and victory.

You must say within yourself, "I'm coming out of this by the power of God's Word, and God have mercy on anyone who tries to stop me."

Alexander the Great was asked, "Al, how did you manage to conquer the entire world?"

His answer, "By not delaying."

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Find God's Promise to Help You

Once you have made your decision to defeat your problem, you need to get to your Bible and find out what God has agreed to do about it. Your Bible is your Covenant with God. Everything God has agreed to do for you is in there. Find out what He has agreed to do about your problem or you have no grounds for approaching Him concerning it.

"Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou that thou mayest be justified." (Isaiah 43:26)

How are you going to remind God of what He's agreed to do in the Bible if you do not know what He's agreed to do in the Bible? Good question, huh?

There is a promise in the Bible for anything you could possibly encounter. Find the promise that addresses your problem.

Praying without the Bible promise that addresses your problem is not praying in faith. That is praying in presumption. You must ask according to His Word.

"And this is the confidence we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His Will (His Word), He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, whatever we ask, we know we have the petitions that we desired of Him." (1John 5:14-15)

Actually, going to God without His Word-based promise to help you is overstepping your bounds and taking Him for granted. This is not a good move. You will want to correct this immediately. Ask Him to forgive you if you have been doing this. He will do as you ask. (1John 1:9)

Don't know how to find the Bible promises yet? Ask your Pastor for help. If it is something he hasn't studied yet, e-mail us through our JHM Contact Page. We'll do all we can to help you to find God's promise for your present need.

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Meditate on God's Promise to Help You

You cannot just flippantly pull a promise out of the Bible and say, "Okay, I found it, God. Now do it, in Jesus' Name." It does not work that way. That's disrespectful. You have got to spend a little time getting familiar with that promise by reading it, even memorizing it and speaking it softly to yourself over and over. That is how faith comes.

"Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." (Romans 10:17)

I actually like to say it this way, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing the Word of God in the area of my greatest need."

Faith does not come by praying for more faith. Faith comes only by hearing, not by praying. That means you have got to hear yourself softly speak God's promise to yourself for awhile in order for faith to rise up within you. It's supernatural.

Look at something Moses passed on to his successor, Joshua, about this.

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night ... Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success." (Joshua 1:8)

When Moses said, "This book ... shall not depart out of thy mouth" he meant, "Joshua, don't stop speaking the promises to yourself."

When Moses said, "...thou shalt meditate therein day and night" he meant, "Joshua, ponder and speak the promises softly to yourself constantly and faith will come for the promises."

When Moses said, "Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success" he meant, "Joshua, keep speaking the promises until faith comes, then prosperity and success will follow. The miracle you need is right in your mouth."

It is very important to hear what others are preaching and teaching about the same promise you are standing on. Browse through our JHM Online Bible Training Centre and see what we're teaching about it.

Learn all you can about that promise. Hearing it over and over is your responsibility and your guarantee to good success. You must put yourself in position to keep hearing about the solution over and over until the solution becomes bigger than the problem in your thinking.

Whatever it is, sickness, divorce, poverty, etc., get the Word of God into your heart concerning it. You will be amazed by what follows.

Once you have taken these initial steps, you are halfway home.

In part two of this study, we will examine the final steps for moving away from the problem and into the solution.

In the meantime, remember, faith is empowered by love. (Galatians 5:6)

Refusing to walk in love towards others while standing in faith is like trying to drive from Boston to Los Angeles by faith and refusing to fill up with gasoline.

You are going to end up on the side of the road all angry with God when God didn’t do it to you. You did it to yourself.

Faith works by love just like car works by gasoline.

You can and you must walk in love towards others. You have been given a supernatural ability to do so.

"...the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." (Romans 5:5)

Make up your mind that you are going to yield to that supernatural ability.

Sometimes it might be necessary for you to separate yourself from the presence of someone in order to walk in love toward them. There is nothing wrong with that.

We must do whatever we can do to avoid strife and to stay in love.

"For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." (James 3:16)

We will continue in Part Two of this enlightening study.

Be blessed ... John and Barbara Hamel

How to Be Born Again (Receive Christ as Your Savior)

How to Receive The Holy Spirit & Power

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Divine Blueprint for Faith, Pt. 2

The Bible Way to Receive Answers from God

by Pastor John Hamel

Divine Order Is a Prerequisite to Divine Intervention

"As the day declined, the Twelve said, "Dismiss the crowd so they can go to the farms or villages around here and get a room for the night and a bite to eat. We're out in the middle of nowhere." "You feed them," Jesus said. They said, "We couldn't scrape up more than five loaves of bread and a couple of fish - unless, of course, you want us to go to town ourselves and buy food for everybody." (There were more than five thousand people in the crowd.)

"But he went ahead and directed his disciples, "Sit them down in groups of about fifty."

"They did what he said, and soon had everyone seated. He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted His face to Heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread and fish to the disciples to hand out to the crowd. After the people had all eaten their fill, twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered up." (Luke 9:12-17 Message Bible)

We are talking about God's Divine Blueprint for Faith and you're probably wondering why you just read the Feeding of the 5,000. I will explain.

Before performing the above miracle, Jesus refused to do anything in the midst of that chaos. That hungry crowd would have turned into a frenzied mob if the Disciples just started randomly handing out food. So Jesus said, "Have them sit down and have them sit down in groups of fifty in order to avoid chaos."

The Bible says that God is not the author of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:40) He has a Divine order, a Divine plan, a Divine Blueprint for absolutely everything He does.

Sometimes people's faith is out of order and they cannot seem to get answers from God. That's why we are taking the time in these two studies to look at the Divine Blueprint for Faith.

In our first lesson we saw the importance of specifically identifying whatever your problem is. We saw the importance of making a decision to get the victory over the problem. We also saw the importance of finding God's promise to help and hearing, meditating on that promise in order to develop faith in that area.

We will now move immediately into the second half of God's Divine Blueprint for Faith. These steps are guaranteed to move you away from the problem and into the solution every time. That is, if you are walking in love, steering clear of sin and repenting every time you happen to blow it.

Keep in mind also that we are not reducing God to a formula in this two part study. That would be a stupid thing to do.

What we are doing, however, is studying what God commands us to do if we are going to receive from Him as proficiently as He desires.

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Release the Tremendous Power of Words

You have identified your problem at this point. You have made a decision to live victoriously above your problem. You have found God's promise of help in the Bible. You have meditated on that promise. You have heard excellent teaching and preaching concerning the promise. Faith has risen in your heart and now you are ready to release the power of confession.

Almost always someone says, "Oh, I know all about that power of confession stuff. I tried it and it doesn't work." People who say that only do so because they DO NOT know all about that power of confession stuff. They simply messed around with the Divine Blueprint, skipping a step here and there, and ended up all goofed up, frustrated, defeated and preaching against God's Word.

If that's you, just go back to the steps you skipped and re-establish them. God will forgive you and restore you immediately. He's good that way.

You cannot jump right to the confession part of the blueprint, ignoring the other steps, saying, "I have a new automobile!" four hundred times a day and expect it to work. You've got to meditate on the promises of God. Meditating on the promises is loading the cannon. Meditate. Meditate. Meditate. That's packing the powder and ball down inside the cannon's throat. Once the cannon is properly loaded, you point it in the direction of your problem and light the fuse by speaking the promise.

There is a supernatural explosion that occurs and your problem is blown to smithereens.

Make sure you have loaded your heart with faith before you light the fuse. Otherwise, you are firing blanks. You are indeed making a lot of noise and putting up a lot of smoke. But the enemy, your problem, is standing there untouched, mocking you. You may as well have showed up at the gunfight at the OK Corral with a wooden toy gun. You're going to get hurt.

"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things..." (Matthew 12:35)

The good treasure that you put in your heart is God's Word. The good things that come forth as a result are the solutions to your problems.

"For by thy words shalt thou be justified and by thy words shalt thou be condemned." (Matthew 12:37)

Here Jesus tells us how to see miracles. Put the good treasure of His Word in your heart by speaking it softly to yourself continually.

Then use your words to speak His promise over your problem, over and over, and good things will come forth.

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Here's Another Verse to Examine

"For verily I say unto you, 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." (Mark 11:23)

Lots of good Christian folks have the "believing" part of faith locked down pretty good.

However, far too many need instruction concerning the "saying" part of faith. In the above verse Jesus only said "believe" one time. But He said "say" or "saith" three times.

This means that once you have meditated on God's promise, you've got to do three times more saying than just believing for it to come to pass.

"Praying" for God to help you is vitally important to gaining victory over your problem, but so is "saying." You cannot pray one way for help only to turn around and talk another way. You have got to say what the Bible says about your problem, over and over and over.

Saying will make or break your praying. This is why the Bible says that life and death are in the power of the tongue. (Proverbs 18:21)

I realize many Christians are opposed to this "saying" principle. They are down on the Divine Blueprint for Faith because they are simply not up on the Bible. But their heads are no place for your happiness. Are you going to do what Bible-illiterate, misinformed, immature Christians say or are you going to do what the written Word of God says?

As a moral free agent, God leaves this decision up to you alone.

God will not violate your free will and force you to do it His way. You are going to have to make up your own mind to do three times more saying than praying and believing.

As a matter of fact, if you aren't saying what the Bible says, you really aren't believing at all.

The number one way to tell if you are in faith in your area of need, is to listen to the way you are presently talking about it.

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Let Patience Be Developed

The Bible never said that raw faith alone would inherit the promises of God. Here's what the Bible really says.

"That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith & patience inherit the promises." (Hebrews 6:12)

Faith is guaranteed to GET your miracle moving toward you. However, only patience is guaranteed to KEEP your miracle moving toward you.

"Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience that after ye hath done the will of God, ye might [shall] receive the promise." (Hebrews 10:35-36)

Patience is not lying down and letting people walk all over you because they think Christians are supposed to be wimpy. It takes tremendous strength to be a Jesus person. It takes tremendous strength to walk in the patience of Jesus.

Patience, in the New Testament, means, "To be consistent. To be the same way all the time."

In spite of negative, contradictory circumstances and criticism, patience always says, "I'm not changing. God said the promise is mine. I'm not going to be talked out of it. If He said it's so, then I say it's so, and that's all there is to it."

Now, that's real Bible patience. That's how Jesus walked.

Honey, that ain't wimpy!

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God's Pre-Appointed Moment for Everything

It is so important when waiting for God to answer your prayer to never set times or dates. Leave the timing to God. God's timing is more important than our timing.

With God there is a pre-appointed moment for everything, absolutely everything.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven." (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Sometimes the things we ask God for will directly or indirectly impact other individuals. Our individual lives are complexly connected to the lives of others in many ways that we cannot even see. The All Knowing God is overseeing the whole operation. Often times it is His will to answer you in such a way that others will be blessed by it as well. We must allow Him to be the Blesser.

You might be crying out, "God, where's the mate I've asked You for?" "God, when will I ever prosper as You promised?" "God, when will I have that baby? I'm not getting any younger." "God, how about that Anointing I've been fasting and praying for?"

God is saying to you today, "Hold steady, loved one. Faith and patience inherit the promises. Don't cast away your confidence. There's great promise of reward in it. Keep developing patience, the promise is on the way. There is a time to every purpose under Heaven. There are things that you don't completely understand right now. You can't see the big picture like I can. Just don't grow weary on Me now. In due season you will reap if you refuse to faint. I gave you My Word. My Word is My bond. You're doing good. Don't bail out on Me now."

Knowing that there is an appointed season to receive your answer will help you to develop patience and to keep you from quitting. It could happen today. It could happen tomorrow. Either way, the Most High God promises to help you.