Step 3-The Cause of this Discrepancy Between God’s Gifts and Our Low Eexperience

Tip! An effective prayer life can have a huge impact on not only our own individual life, but on the lives of those around us. Through prayer we can have an impact on our local community, our country and the world.

"And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." —Luke 15:31

Read the whole chapter 15 of Luke and you will see that the believer is complaining that God has never given them even a young goat. Or, God has given them some blessing, but has never given the full blessing. God has never filled them with His Spirit. "I never," we says, "had my heart, as a fountain, giving forth the rivers of living water promised in John 7:38." What is the cause?

The elder son thought he was serving his father faithfully "these many years" in his father's house, but it was in the spirit of bondage and not in the spirit of a child, so that his unbelief blinded him to the idea of a father's love and kindness, and he was unable all the time to see that his father was ready, not only to give him a young goat, but a hundred, or a thousand young goats, if he would have asked for them. He was simply living in unbelief, in ignorance, in blindness, robbing himself of the privileges that the father had for him. So, if there be a discrepancy between our life and the fulfillment and enjoyment of all of God's promises, the fault is ours. If our experience is not what God wants it to be, it is because of our unbelief in the love of God, in the power of God, and in the reality of God's promises.

God's word teaches us, in the story of the Israelites, that it was unbelief on their part that was the cause of their troubles, and not any limitation or restriction on God's part. As Psalm 78th says:—"He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers." Yet they sinned by doubting His power to provide meat for them—"They spoke against God; they said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" (vs. 15-19). Later on, we read in v. 41, "They turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel." They kept distrusting Him from time to time. When they got to Kadesh-Barnea , and God told them to enter the land flowing with milk and honey where there would be rest, abundance, and victory, only two men said, "Yes;" we can take possession, for God can make us conquer." But the ten spies and the six hundred thousand men answered, "No; we can never take the land; the enemies are too strong for us." It was simply unbelief that kept them out of the land of promise.

Tip! It opens the door for salvations. (Act 2:42) “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers”.

Prayer:

Our Father, if there is to be any deepening of the spiritual life in us, we must come to the discovery, and the acknowledgment of the unbelief there is in our hearts. God grant that we may get this spiritual awaking, and that we may come to see that it is by our unbelief that we have prevented God from doing His work in us. In Jesus' name we pray; Amen.

Unbelief is the mother of disobedience, and of all my sins and short comings—my temper, my pride, my unlovingness, my worldliness, my sins of every kind. Though these may differ in nature and form, yet they all come from the one root; we do not believe in the freedom and fullness of the Divine gift of the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and strengthen us, and fill us with the life and grace of God all the day long.

Tip! If we, God’s people expect to carry out the works of Christ that will glorify our Father, then we must believe in Him for the very work’s sake, and pray fervently in His Name.

Look, please, at that elder son, and ask this question; what was the cause of that terrible difference between the heart of the father and the experience of the son. There can be no answer but that it was this sinful unbelief that utterly blinded the son to a sense of his father's love.

Dear fellow believer, I want to say to you, that, if you are not living in the joy of God's salvation, the entire cause is your unbelief. You do not believe in the mighty power of God, and that He is willing by His Holy Spirit to work a painstaking change in your life, and enable you to live in fullness of consecration to Him.

God is willing that you should live this way; but you do not believe it. If people really believed in the infinite love of God, what a change it would bring about in this world! What is love? It is a desire to communicate oneself for the good of the object loved—the opposite to selfishness; as we read in 1 Corinthians 8. "Love seeks not her own." Therefore the mother is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of her child. So God in His love is ever willing to impart blessing; and He is omnipotent in His love.

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

This is true, my friends; God is omnipotent in love, and He is doing His utmost to fill every heart in this house. "But if God is really anxious to do that, and if He is Almighty, why does He not do it now?" You must remember, that God has given you a will, and by the exercise of that will, you can hinder God, and remain content, like the elder son, with the low life of unbelief.

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Come, now, and let us see the cause of the difference between God's high blessed provision for His children, and the low, sad experience of many of us in the unbelief that distrusts and grieves Him.