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Sharing In Jesus' Success, Part Three | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus the Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message.
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Turn with me, if you would, this morning. Let's go to the book of Joshua, chapter one and verse eight. We're going to continue along this line. On a previous service, we stated some things that we'll rehearse and touch upon real briefly. Then we'll go further in what God has for us in this service. But we started looking at this passage when we pointed back to an occasion that happened in my life. I had been talking to God about some things and actually repenting to him about just omitting to do some things. You know, you can have the sin of commission where you do things that are wrong, but then you can have the sin of omission where you just omit. You don't. You. You don't do what is right. You omit doing what you should be doing. And so those are things that we have to be aware of that sometimes it's not so much what we're doing where we miss it, we can miss it and what we're not doing. And so I was talking to God about that and repenting to God over some things. You know, I could have done better, should have done better. And we could all say, we could have done some things a little better. Should have done some things a little better, right? And then I got done with that and I was reading a book, and then while I was reading a book, I was prompted, I was led to just get down on my knees. And so when I did, as soon as my knees hit the floor, Jesus was standing in front of me. And he said this to me. He said, you have failed many, many times. And I go, yep, that's what I was talking to you about. And I'm so glad I brought it up first, right? Not that we condemn ourselves, not that we get under that condemnation, because that's not God's plan for any of us. But we do need to be sober and aware what we need to address in our lives. And so he said to me, you have failed many, many times. But I'm so grateful he didn't leave me hanging there. He said, but I never have. And then he said, so I share my success with you. Well, let me ask you this. How does he share his success with us? How about being created in his image? How about amen? How about being given a brand new spirit with the life of God in it? How about his righteousness? He made to be our righteousness we don't succeed in life because we do everything right. We succeed because he did everything right. Amen. And that's what he was pointing me to, that he shares his success with me. He shares his success with all of his children. But how many of you know there are some duties we have toward that success, not working to earn it. The success already belongs to us because we belong to Him. But we have to do some things to experience the success, and he made ours. Amen. And so then I was pointed and directed toward this passage in John. Excuse me, in Joshua, chapter one, when he talks about success, how many of you know he's talking about his definition of success, not just the natural man's definition of success. Because the world is full of what people call success. And when they get to the end of it, what you did for Jesus is the only thing that's going to matter. Amen. But while we're doing for Jesus, he wants us to succeed. Amen. He doesn't just want us to succeed in what we're doing for Him. He wants us to succeed in every single arena of life. So because we are created in his image, because the life of God is on the inside of us, we have been made righteous. Amen. We don't do anything to be made righteous, except receive by faith that he is our righteousness. But because he has made us righteous, now it is our duty and our privilege to walk out that righteousness, and it will manifest itself as success. Amen. So if there's some arena of our life that is not showing success, then we aren't thinking right toward who he made us to be. We're not walking in line with what he made us to be and who he made us to be. So this is why people say, well, if I'm saved, I'll automatically succeed. Let me say this. If you're saved, you have every ability within you to succeed. But we have to add the word in our doing to that ability. Amen. So we have to make that right, that it's not just sitting back and waiting for success to drop on us. Listen. He delivered us from the kingdom of darkness. He translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. How many of you know we are citizens of the kingdom of success, but we have to add our faith, our doing, our speaking to that success so that it can come out, so that it can become evident. And how many of you know that you can have something in you and nobody ever know it? When you were born, every single person was born with some kind of Inborn ability or talent, whatever that is. Just because it's in there doesn't mean people know it. You have to develop it. You have to pay attention to it. You have to. You have to give it instructions. Some. If someone had an inborn ability as a musician or as an athlete or as electrician, a plumber, something like that, working with their hands. Just because you have that ability doesn't mean it's developed on the inside of us is the success of Jesus. Now we have to develop it in every single arena. So it shows up. Amen. It's an inborn divine ability, grace, that God has given us. Amen. How many of you know God's never failed at anything, and we are made in his image. So it is possible that if we will follow the greater one on the inside of us and remember who is in us and what he has made us to be, we never have to fail again. Amen. It's possible. But we have to renew our minds to think in terms of that success, and we have to renew our minds to think in terms of what the Word directs us to do. Amen. So the Word mixed with him in us will end us up at total success. Now remember, in Hebrews, it was talking about. In the book of Hebrews, I believe, chapter four, it was talking about the Hebrews that God delivered out of Egypt. And he made this statement. He said the Word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. So notice this. The Word joined to the life of God, the new creation that we are in Christ. You join that with your faith, then you become everything the Word offers you. But we have to mix something with it. It's not just this success that's on the inside of us is just not going to come up and dominate. We have to mix something with it. Amen. We have to bring our faith and mix it in there. And faith has a certain way that it talks, has a certain way that it behaves, has a certain way that it responds. Amen. And so we can say, yes, I am made in his image, but we have to add something, something of our obedience to His Word. Amen. Now can I tell you this? Philippians, chapter 2, verse 13. I'll just quote it for you. You need to be. It would benefit you to daily confess this about yourself. It is him that is working in me both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Notice this. It is Him. It is him working in me both to will. How many of you know he's dealing with Your insides there. He's dealing with your heart, your motive, what drives you, what compels you to make the decisions and choices you're making. It is him that's working in me both to will and to do so. It matters what you do, it matters what we do with our insides. And it matters what actions we take on the outside. It is him that is working in us both to will and to do of what? His good pleasure. What's that mean? We want him pleased. When he's pleased, everything flows freely in our lives. Amen. It pleases him to work in us. It pleases him to. To help show us what needs to be adjusted on the inside. How many of you know? It's usually what's going on on the inside that trips you up on the outside, right? And he will show us what we need to do. How many of you know? We are new creations in him, new creatures in Christ. But still we have to join our will to that. And this is where people start experiencing failures when they're will is out of place and when they're doing is out of place. But we want our will in place, in line with what pleases him, in line with his word. Amen. So we looked at a previous service, we looked over in Joshua, chapter one, verse eight, and I'll just quote it to you. You can read along there, if you would. It says, this book of the law shall not depart from out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, so that thou mayest observe to do according to all that's written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Notice this. Then you make your way prosperous. How do we make our way prosperous? I thought he was our success. We make our way prosperous by letting the success of him in us out, by following the success that's in us, by yielding to what's in us instead of what's around us. If you are going to follow circumstances around us, they will rob us of success. But if we will follow who he has made us to be, the righteousness and all that he has made us to be, we'll have success. But we have to do something with with the success he made ours. Amen. So we began talking in a previous service, and we spent more time talking about the first instruction in verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth. So notice this. The word has to be in your mouth. Amen. It has to be in your mouth as a lifestyle not just moments of it, not just on Sunday, and not just at times of crisis. Now don't misunderstand me. Absolutely at times of crisis. But if you only apply the word and put it in your mouth at times of crisis, then forget about it. At times of peace, your peace is going to be short lived. The word in our mouth is a lifestyle. It's not just for only when crisis and emergencies of life show up. It's the way we live. Amen. And so we spent some time talking about that on a previous service. So we don't have time to revisit all of that. But the word in our mouth. If we're going to have success, the word has to be in our mouth. Listen, he's made us righteous. He's made us in his image. We have a new spirit in us, the spirit of life, the spirit of God in us. But it calls for something. Do you have success? You have to have right words joined to that. You can't speak doubt, unbelief, words that are in unforgiveness, words of rebellion, words of hate. And think that the life of God on the inside of you is going to arrive at success. It won't. What we put in our mouth will either let the success in us be expressed or it will keep us in failure. What we do with our mouth, what you say to your spouse, what you say about your boss, what you say about the body of Christ, what you say about leadership in the church, that we are made righteous, but it has to have the right words connected to it for that righteousness to dominate us.
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Amen.
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You can't just say anything you want and think that success is going to meet you. He's telling you the success is in you, to put you over. But for it to come out and dominate, you have to put put the right thing in your mouth.
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Amen.
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Hallelujah. That means we have a responsibility toward the righteousness in us. We have a responsibility toward the life of God and the greater one in us. And it begins with our mouth. That's the first thing that God spoke to Joshua about. If you're going to get these people into the promised land, they're going to have to do something with their mouths. What did the first generation that were delivered out of Egypt, what did they do with their mouths? We can't do it. We can't make it. They were turning when they rose up. When they came up against opposition, they would turn against Moses, they would speak against God. Their mouth was in the wrong direction. Why? Because as Slaves, they were practiced at complaining. And so when they came into their. When they came into their freedom, they still carried the old way of talking. If we're going to have the success intended, it has to change in our mouth. Amen. And he said, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. What's that mean? It's in there all the time. It's in there. The word is in your mouth all the time. For the word to be in your mouth all the time, one of the things we must do is at the first sign, at the first sight of any opposition, any test, we have to train ourselves to ask, what does the word say about this? What does the word say about this? Before you answer, what does the word say about this? When my husband went home to be with the Lord, I had. You've heard me talk about the eight different projects that we had to finish, and God enabled us to finish those within a year. But there were other things that showed up in the midst of that. Maybe, I don't know, a week or so after he went home to be with the Lord, I got a big love letter from the irs. Big love letter. And before I even opened it, I held it up and said, God, no matter what's in here, I know this. I have a supply. What am I doing? I'm saying something before I see something. Why? Because I'm not going to let what I see dominate what I say. I decide what I say. Circumstances, if they're ruling what you say, you've got a far way to go. Amen. Because circumstances will never arrive you at God's best. Your words arrive you at God's best. What you say. And when I opened it, I saw many figures. When I opened that letter, there were many figures there to look at. And by the time it was all done, I didn't even end up having to pay a full fraction. I mean, I ended up paying about 18% of what the original was. Why not? Because I contacted them. I didn't contact them. They just kept lowering it and lowering it and lowering it. Why? Because I took off saying something. My supply was not in my money, it was in my mouth. So many think your supply is in your money. Your supply meets your mouth. Your supply is in your mouth. And that's what God is telling Joshua. Your entrance into the promised land is in your mouth. You're going to have to. In your mouth. You're going to have to say the right things, and you're going to have to get the congregation saying the right Thing, because this congregation is second generation. Their parents never arrived. And they were on the same track because they were trained by their parents. And so God was telling them how to get a generation of people that had never arrived in 40 years, how to get them arriving. I don't care how long you've been going the wrong direction. That direction can be changed. It can be changed. It can be changed. And it begins with what we do with our mouths. This book, this book. Not your problem, not your fears, not what the devil's telling you. So many people are talking the problem. They're talking what the devil's throwing, threatening them with. Until you learn. It's the book, it's the book, it's the book, it's the book. Don't be afraid of the circumstances. They all have to bow to the book. If you'll put the book in your mouth. This book, this book. This book. Amen. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. Now notice when God was telling Joshua this, nothing. Other circumstances had changed. They were still in the wilderness. They were still in the exact same problem. Nothing had changed to change their mouth. God just said, you're gonna have to decide that my word goes in your mouth instead of what you see going in your mouth. So nothing was changed. And Joshua started and got the people to start putting the right thing in their mouth. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. But now look at the second one. But you shall meditate therein day and night. So the first instruction deals with your mouth. The second instruction, you shall meditate there in day and night. It deals with your attention and it deals with your thought life. Now, this is where people are gonna. People are gonna have some homework. It's easy to learn what to say. A parrot can do it. Seriously, in the animal kingdom, there are certain birds that can imitate the saying if we're not careful. We don't want to be parrots in the church, just imitating what we're saying. What makes us different from a bird that says it and a human that says it? What we know, a bird, so to speak. All they can do is they imitate syllables. We have to have the thoughts of God, the thoughts of God that back up the words we say. It's not enough to say words if the thoughts aren't backing up the words. If the thought life is different from the words, the words won't matter.
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Amen.
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So the first instruction deals with the mouth, but the second one deals with what backs up, up the Mouth. And that is your thought life and what your attention is on. And too many times people have learned how to put faith words in their mouth, but they've never disciplined themselves to have faith thoughts. Just as you would no longer say something that is vile with your mouth, you got no business thinking it either. What this means it's going to take a full time job to pay attention to, to your thought life. Why? Because God's. God's level of success awaits those who discipline their thought lives. If we don't discipline our thought lives, we're going to have to settle for something less than God's definition of success. And I'm not willing, are you? Amen. So this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate in it. What? Day and night. That means that you guard your thought life. Not just when you're facing with something, not facing a situation, but when every day, every day, every day we pay attention to our thought life. This is called a spiritual discipline. Amen. And it's part of the success that belongs to us. And the wonderful thing of it is as God gave us His Word, he tells us what to meditate on. We don't even have to find what to meditate on. Can I also tell you this? In this life of meditation, to meditate means to speak it to yourself, mutter it to yourself. And we've said this before, meditation is like people that worry. They're thinking something over and over and over and over. That's meditation. But it's in the negative direction. God is telling us meditate in the direction of His Word. So we take His Word and we meditate on it. We think about it, we mutter it to ourselves over and over and over. Amen. This wonderful thing about meditation is that it's not something what other religions would offer. They're having to find what to meditate on. We know what to meditate on. They're trying to find a happy place. Imagine a seashore, you know, imagine yourself at a happy place. I don't have to imagine myself at a happy place. I am in a happy place. This is not my imagination conjuring up something. Amen. This is me remembering that my God shall supply all my needs. This is me remembering that he has given me power, authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all, the power of the enemy. I don't have to conjure up something with my imagination to meditate on. I meditate on His Word. It makes me sound instead of weird. Praise the Lord. Praise The Lord. The only part of the word that will work for you is the part you get in you. Not just listen. Your mind needs the word, but your spirit needs the word. And we're not just talking about speaking words that came out of your mind. We're talking words that came out of your mind because it was in your spirit. Meditation drives the word beyond the mind and down into the spirit of man. That's how you get it in your heart. And then helping get it in your heart is putting it in your mouth, right? You say it and you say it and you say it, and it becomes something that your spirit man grabs hold of. Amen. Meditation is how you get this word in your spirit. People will say, I know that it says that my God shall supply all my needs according to his riches and glory, but it just doesn't seem real to me. Well, that's because meditation is missing. If part of the word doesn't seem like it's yours, it's missing this action of meditating on the word. In my years of pastoring, you can hear people that have learned what we've taught, and I appreciate that they say it, but sometimes they repeat the word in a time of crisis and it sounds empty, it sounds hollow. It sounds like it just is a mental exercise. What is it? It's meditation that gives the spirit of faith to the thing when you get. When you meditate, it drives that word into your spirit. And the word, the word brings with it faith. Amen. This is the spirit of faith comes not just cause you learned words. It's because you meditated on them and got it in your thought life and got it in your spirit on the inside of you. Amen. How many of you know there are people who say, well, you know, I make faith confessions, but it doesn't ever work. You can't spend what's not yours. You have to take time to make the word yours. And how do you make the word yours? Meditating on the word causes the word to get in you and you to get in that word. Amen. And when it's yours, man, you can spend it. And it works because it came from a living place. It didn't come from just a regurgitated habit to where you're just repeating something because you've been taught to repeat it. You're repeating it because it's on the inside. Amen. This wonderful thing of meditation. And no one can do your meditating for you. Your pastor can teach you, your spouse can encourage you, but nobody can do your meditation for you, because what you're meditating on is what you're thinking on, and you're in total control of your thought life. Amen. Hallelujah. So God is telling us that we have to have our attention on His Word. Now, what did Jesus. Jesus preached a sermon and he said, eat my flesh and drink my blood, because if you don't, you have no part of me. What is he talking about? Well, Jesus was the word made flesh. So to eat his flesh is to eat His Word. One way you eat the word is with your mouth, but it's also with what you meditate on. Meditation is how you eat it. And he said, if you don't eat my flesh, you have no part. So how do you get to get one part of the Word to work for you? You eat it. How do you eat it? You meditate on it. You put it in your mouth. Only the part you eat is the part that your life can cycle through. I mean, just physically speaking, your Word can only. Your body can only draw energy from the food you put in it. Your Word gets. Your body gets no energy from the food that you see on the table. Right. You can see the table laid full with a great fare of food laid out. But your body got no energy from seeing it. You had to get it in you for it to draw the life out of that food and send it onto your body. Amen. It's the same thing with the word. Meditation takes it from the book, from the words being in a page and getting it in you. Amen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord we trust you've enjoyed this message.
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