God has made many promises, provisions, and benefits for us. Yet, there are many of us who do not know how to get them to work in our life. There are several passages of Scripture that we could look at, but I will only share a few with us today.
Three words come to mind to illustrate my point. They are: Know, Believe, and Declare.
KNOW
Before we can activate anything we need to know about it. Suppose someone puts millions of dollars into your bank account. Those dollars would not be beneficial until you found out about them. So it is with the promises of God. How do we find them? Go to a Bible-believing church where the Word of God is preached. Read the Bible for yourself, specifically, the New Testament. There are at least 168 things in the New Testament that tell us what Jesus has provided and promised to us.
BELIEVE
After you discover what those promises are you must believe them enough to depend upon them and Jesus who made them possible. Romans 10:14 says, “How shall they call on Him to whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” You first hear, then you believe. This belief is more than mental assent, it is being convinced of the truthfulness of what is said enough to trust one’s whole life, for time and eternity, to the One who made the promise. Jesus said in John 5:24, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in Him who sent me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
DECLARE
Now you need to start declaring what you believe. Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Notice, you are confessing with your mouth what you believe in your heart (the deepest part of your being) that the Gospel message presents. You are declaring openly, publicly that Jesus is your Lord. As you are doing these things, the salvation of God (the new birth) occurs in your human spirit (John 3:6). This same principle works in all areas of life!
Mark 11:23-24 says, “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, Be removed and be cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
These three things are used in every area where Jesus has provided something for us. By doing them, we will be appropriating those provisions into daily life.