Raising the DEAD in your life

What do you do when death has raised its head again in your life? Maybe it’s not a physical death, but it‘s a death that is no less real.

Whether it’s death in your circumstances, death in your relationships, death in your finances, or death in your dreams and vision – death is still death – no matter what part of life it has affected. And death stinks.

Death is not just the absence of physical life or merely the ending of something. Death is the spirit of lifelessness. In the same way that Life is an ongoing force (or energy), so is death – only in the opposite direction. Death is the opposite of life – it never denotes nonexistence. It is separation from Life. We were not created to be separated from Life in any area of our life.

Psalm 16.10-11 says – “For You will not leave my soul in hell, nor will You allow Your holy one to see corruption. You will show me the path of LIFE; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

We were not created to live in hell – nor were we created to live in hell on earth.

The word for “hell” in this verse is the Hebrew word Sheol. Sheol is the abode of the dead. It refers to the netherworld to which all buried dead go. Sheol was a place to be dreaded. It is not described as much as a place of raging flames and pitchforks – but as a place completely void of Life, a place of nothingness. Everything about Sheol was negative.

I know of nothing that could be more tormenting than to be completely separated from Life. To live an existence of nothingness – that is utter torment. Well thank God, once we have made Jesus the Lord of our life – hell is no longer our destination, and neither is hell on earth.

Hosea 13.14 says that the Lord has ransomed us from the power of the grave and redeemed us from death.

We do not have to tolerate death in any area of our life! God does not leave our soul in hell on earth – He shows us the path of Life!

In His presence is fullness of joy – Why? Because that’s where the Life is. The only way that you and I will be able to experience life again where we have seen death is through living in His presence. His Presence is what changes us and changes our circumstances.

Romans 4 tells us that Abraham dared to trust God to do what only God could do – RAISE THE DEAD TO LIFE, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway – deciding not to live on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said He would do. [Romans 4.17-18 MSG]

How did Abraham develop that kind of assurance to believe that God even could do what looked impossible?

He did it by sticking with God and with what God said.

Verse 16 (MSG) says that the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and His way, and then simply embracing Him and what He does. Embracing and believing His promise has everything to do with raising the dead in our life.

Can you and I raise the dead by our self? Of course not. Neither could Abraham. The Word said that Abraham decided not to live on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do – instead, he decided to live on what God said He would do – that is BELIEVING – that is FAITH.

In the face of death, have you ever asked the question – God, what do You want me to do???

When I asked that question not too long ago, He answered with a resounding – I want you to BELIEVE!

Believe. Believe what? BELIEVE that His promise is still alive even though everything around you might not be.

As long as you refuse to stop BELIEVING, His promise will be fulfilled – even though for the moment it may look utterly impossible.

There came a time after Abraham had finally received his son of promise, Isaac, that God asked him to offer him as a burnt sacrifice on an altar. [Genesis 22] Can you imagine God fulfilling a promise to you and then asking you to kill it? This was the son through which Abraham’s descendants, numbering more than the stars, was to be born – and now this son was about to die. Yet, we find no evidence that Abraham hesitated for even a moment from obeying what God was requiring of him.

How could Abraham exemplify such unswerving obedience when the beginning of a life-long dream was about to be extinguished? It was because of Faith in the PROMISE. Faith doesn’t look at what is seen. Faith only looks at one thing – God’s Word. If God said it – then that settles it. Because God cannot lie.

If what God said and your circumstances don’t match, then it’s the circumstances that will have to change – because God’s Word won’t change. The thing that will change them is your Faith in His Word. Your Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. [I Jn. 5.4]

Abraham’s faith was so strong in God’s promise to him that not even death could make him stop believing that it would be fulfilled exactly as God had said.

Hebrews 11.17-19 (NLT) says “It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, though God had promised him ‘Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.’ Abraham assumed that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead.”

Abraham was so convinced by the faithfulness of God’s Word, he figured that if God wanted to, He could Raise the Dead in order to make what He had said come to pass. And as the Scriptures say, in a sense that is what happened.

Are you and I that convinced of God’s promise to us? Is our faith in His Word mature enough to believe that what He has said, He is able to do – no matter how bleak the situation may seem?

II Corinthians 4.13-14 states – “Since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written , ‘I BELIEVED and therefore I spoke’, We also believe and therefore speak, knowing that He who raised up our Lord Jesus WILL ALSO RAISE US UP with Him.”

The very same resurrection power that raised up Jesus from the dead will also bring you to Life by His Spirit that dwells in you, as you believe and speak His Word of Life. (Rom. 8.11) We have the same spirit of faith to see the dead raised in our life as Abraham did – both the raising of those who have physically died, as well as any area of our life where death has occurred.

To become fully persuaded in the promise of God being brought to full completion in our life – we must stay immersed in His Word. We must saturate our consciousness with the promise – what God has said about us and about His purpose for our life. In order for the dead to be raised in our life, we have to allow God’s Words to become bigger to us than the circumstances that we see. His words must become our most dominant thought.

There is nothing that can stand between you and God’s promise when your heart is fixed on His absolute faithfulness to His Word.

“I AM PERSUADED that neither Death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, SHALL BE ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD.” Rom. 8.38-39

Nothing can separate you from the Love of Christ! – Nothing can separate you from what He, in that Love, has given you.

Romans 4.13-14 (MSG) tells us that the “promise God gave Abraham… was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal… But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise – and God’s promise at that – you can’t break it.”

God’s promise to you cannot be broken. The only way you can break it is to stop BELIEVING it. Dare to still believe in His promise to you even if it becomes destroyed. Remember that He is able to raise the dead.

Death has no hold on you unless you permit it to.

Jesus took on flesh and blood in order to rescue us by His death. By Him embracing death, taking it into Himself, He destroyed the devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life under its power. (Heb. 2.14-15 MSG)

Wherever you have been faced with death and whenever all looks hopeless – remember Abraham and the promise he saw fulfilled in his life. But more than that, remember God and His promise for your life. He is still in the dead-raising business.

If you’ll BELIEVE HIM and believe His Promise – He will Raise the DEAD in your life!

Sharah LaGail Wyatt / First Love Ministries International

P O Box 163974 Ft Worth, TX 76161 / www.ps27fr.org

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