Ephesians was written from the perspective of what has already taken place. Paul’s opening comments in this letter were:
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
Ephesians 1:1-3, emphasis mine
Notice the terminology here: “Blessed be God who has—past tense, it’s already been done—blessed us with all spiritual blessings.”
Some people argue, “Well, this means only in spiritual things, in an ethereal realm, not in practical, personal ways. It’s just in heavenly places that we’ve been blessed.” Really, “all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” is just an Old English way of expressing the truth that God has already blessed us with everything— and it’s in the spiritual realm.
Everything that God has done for you has already been deposited into your born-again spirit. Although it’s already there, you must draw it out of the spirit and into the physical realm.
If God has already blessed you, which Ephesians 1:3 clearly reveals, then why do you keep asking Him to bless you? “Come on, Andrew! That’s just semantics.” No, it’s a problem. The reason you keep praying, asking, and seeking God’s blessing is because you don’t truly believe you’re already blessed!
While ministering to an audience, I often walk over and give my Bible to someone on the front row. Then I ask the people, “What do you think I’d do if that person who already has my Bible came up to me and asked, ‘Can I have your Bible, please?’” How would you respond if someone asked you for something you knew you’d already given them? Personally, I wouldn’t know how to answer. I’d probably just look at them and think, You’ve already got it—so what are you asking for? What am I supposed to do that I haven’t already done?
If you asked someone for something they knew you already had, how would they respond to you? There’d probably be an awkward silence. Sounds a lot like how God often responds to us!
You pray, “O God, please heal my body!” but don’t hear a thing, so you wonder, Lord, what’s going on? Why haven’t You answered my prayer? God’s probably in heaven scratching His head and thinking, Now wait a minute. Doesn’t 1 Peter 2:24 say that by My stripes you were (past tense) healed? It’s already done! I’ve already placed the same power that raised Christ from the dead inside you. (Eph. 1:19-21.) If God could be confused, I believe He would be, saying, “I know I already gave this to them, but here they are asking Me for it.” That’s not the way to approach God!
We pray other stupid prayers too, like, “God, we ask You to come and be with us in our church service today. O Lord, meet with us!” The Word plainly says, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5), and “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). God’s always with us, but still we pray, “O Lord, come and be with us” and “Lord, go with us as we leave this place.” How is God going to answer prayers like that? Do you know what we’re doing? We’re letting our senses dominate us. Since we don’t see Him or feel anything, and nobody’s jumped a pew yet, we ask God to come when the Word says He’s already there.
An appropriate way to pray is, “Father, Your Word promises that You’ll never leave us nor forsake us, and when two or three gather together in Your name, there is a special presence of the Holy Spirit. Father, we thank You that You’re here. We believe it and we want it manifest. We don’t want You to just be here in the spirit realm. We desire to yield to You to the point that You can manifest Yourself in healings, deliverance, joy, peace, salvation, and Holy Spirit baptism. We want You to be free to manifest Yourself and do what You want to do.” That’s a proper way to pray because you’re praying in agreement with God’s Word. You’re saying, “We believe Your promises, but we want them manifest. We desire for You to come from the spirit world into physical manifestation!”
Praying, “O God, come and be with us” is incorrect. It means you don’t believe that God is there until you can see or feel Him. Then, when someone starts shouting, “I feel the Holy Ghost,” you say, “God’s here now!” It wasn’t that He just showed up. He was there the whole time. You just began to receive.
Wherever you are right now, there are television signals all around you. It doesn’t matter if you’re at home, in a car, at work, on a bus, or sitting under a tree somewhere, television signals are there. Just because you can’t perceive them with your five natural senses doesn’t mean they’re not present. Even in the physical realm, an unbeliever—someone with zero faith—can prove that there are television signals surrounding you. All they have to do is take a television set, plug it in, turn it on, and tune it in!
When you first see the signal on the screen is not when the station started broadcasting. The signals were there before the television set was turned on. When you turned on and tuned in your set is when you started receiving, but it’s not when the station began broadcasting.
What would you do if your television set went blank all of a sudden? Would you call the station and ask them to start broadcasting again? No! You’d check your receiver by turning it to another station. If other channels were still coming in, but that one wasn’t, then you might think it’s the station not broadcasting. Maybe they’re having a problem with their transmitter. But if your television went totally blank, and no channels came in, you wouldn’t call the station. You’d know, My receiver’s the problem! Since 99 percent of the time the issue is with your receiver—not the station’s transmitter—the first thing to do is check your receiver.
God’s the One with the transmitter. He’s the Giver of all earthly and spiritual blessings (Eph. 1:3), and He’s already transmitted them to you. Everything comes from God, but He’s already transmitted. If you aren’t seeing them manifest in your life, the problem isn’t with God’s transmitter. You need to fix your receiver!
Yet, when most Christians don’t feel joy, they go to the Lord and ask, “O God, where’s my joy? What’s wrong? Restore unto me the joy of my salvation!” Have you sung that song? It’s a great tune, but the words are actually taken from an Old Testament scripture.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Ps. 51:10-12).
David prayed this in repentance of his sin with Bathsheba.
However, for a New Testament believer to say, “O God, cast me not away from Your presence. Please, don’t leave me!” is an insult against what Jesus came to do. David didn’t have a covenant that promised God would stick with him through anything. The Old Covenant was based upon performance, so God did come and go. Old Testament people weren’t born again. They didn’t have an eternal redemption the way it’s spoken of in the New Covenant. (Heb. 9:12, 14.) However, Jesus promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5), and “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20). If you’ve been born again and don’t feel the presence of God, for you to pray this prayer that David prayed and say, “Cast me not away from Your presence, renew a right spirit within me, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me,” means that you don’t understand what benefits you have in your covenant. You’re in unbelief—not believing the New Covenant!
Instead of praying in unbelief and then wondering why you aren’t seeing better results, you need to pray in faith! It’s the prayer of faith that will save the sick. (James 5:15.) It’s the prayer of faith that will bring you deliverance and joy.
Say, “Father, I don’t feel like You’re here. There’s simply no tangible indication of Your presence in my life right now. Everything’s gone south. But Father, Your Word says that You’ll never leave me nor forsake me, so I know that You’re here. Whatever is causing these problems in my life is not You. I know that You haven’t forsaken me. I ask You now to help me see what I’ve done to turn away from You. As I seek You, please help me make the connection and release this life You’ve placed inside me. I know Your Holy Spirit’s still here. I know Your blessings are still here. I’m believing that they’ll be released. I refuse to have these other things.” That’s praying a prayer of faith!
There’s still a fight. But the fight is to stand in the victory that God has already purchased for you—not to go out and win one. There’s a big difference!
While in the army, I discovered that defending a position that was already held is much easier than trying to take a new one. If you were on top of a hill and had the advantage of a defensive position, you could hold it with five men. But a hundred men would be required to take that same position. Much more effort is needed to go conquer something you don’t yet have than to defend something that’s already yours.
You need to believe that you’re already blessed. (Eph. 1:3.) God has already given you healing, wisdom, revelation, prosperity, joy, peace—everything that you’ll ever need!
My teaching Spirit, Soul & Body goes into much more depth on this very truth. It reveals from God’s Word how your born-again spirit is already as perfect, complete, and full of God’s blessing and power as it ever will be throughout all eternity.
One-third of your salvation is over. Your spirit is completely saved. It’s identical to Jesus. It has His joy, His peace, His knowledge, His love, and His fruit. Everything that’s true of Jesus is true of your born-again spirit. There’s no inadequacy. It’s not in the process of growing up into these things. It’s not that these things are in your spirit in seed form, but they have to mature; no, they are already complete and full-grown in the spirit. All you have to do is renew your mind and let these things manifest themselves through you. If this isn’t a revelation to you, you need it to fully understand what I’m sharing.
God has already done it. This isn’t just “in principle.” It’s not just written on a piece of paper somewhere. There was an actual transformation that took place in your spirit the very moment you were born again. Now you have love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. (Gal. 5:22, 23.) You are—right now in your spirit—identical to Jesus. (1 John 4:17; 1 Cor. 6:17.) The same power that raised Christ from the dead now lives inside of you. (Eph. 1:19, 20.) It’s infinitely easier to release something you know and believe you already have than it is to try and go get something you don’t.
If you’re not absolutely convinced that you’ve already got it, you’ll either submit to or have to battle thoughts that you won’t get it. However, once you know it’s yours, how could you doubt you’d get it? This is simple, but so profound!
When my wife and I first started out in ministry, we were so poor we couldn’t even pay attention! The Lord had already blessed us with financial prosperity, but I wasn’t cooperating with His laws for releasing it. In fact, I was violating a number of instructions in God’s Word. Therefore, we really struggled until I learned some things and adjusted accordingly. God loved us, and we didn’t starve to death, but we didn’t prosper until we understood how His kingdom works and began to cooperate.
During that period of time, I didn’t even have a complete Bible. Mine had gone through Vietnam with me. It was so beat up and marked up that most passages could hardly be read. Also, entire books had fallen out and been lost. Here I was pastoring this little church in Segoville, Texas, without a full Bible!
Right or wrong, I made a decision. “Father, I have to start seeing Your power manifest somewhere. If I can’t believe You for enough money to buy a new Bible, how am I going to believe You for enough money to lead people into salvation and see them healed, delivered, and baptized in the Holy Spirit?” I just made an issue out of it, saying, “God, this faith either works, or I’m going to die right here. The outcome of this battle determines whether or not I’m going on.” To me, this was non-negotiable.
So I started believing God for a new Bible. All told, it took me six months to get enough money to buy it! It’s not that this wasn’t my priority. It’s just that finances for us were tight. My wife and would go two or three weeks without food—even when she was eight months pregnant—because we just didn’t have it. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it took me six months to believe for the extra twenty-five dollars to go buy a Bible.
To some people, financial “trouble” is having $1,000 in the bank and $1,100 worth of bills. We didn’t even have a bank account—much less any money to put in it! There were days when we’d go without a penny in our pockets. I’d even pick up Coke bottles just to get gas money.
Satan plagued me that entire time. I fought doubt constantly. There probably wasn’t a ten-minute period of time during my waking hours for six months that I didn’t have some thought like, It’s not going to work. You’ll never get it. You don’t even have a Bible. Some man of God you are! I’d have to throw down those thoughts and say, “No! In the name of Jesus, I do have my Bible!” I fought these constant, unrelenting thoughts for six whole months.
Finally, I had enough money. So I went to a bookstore, bought a Bible, and had my name engraved on it. It was mine! After I walked out the door with that new Bible under my arm, I never again doubted that I’d get it.
“Well, of course! Why would you doubt that you’d get something you’ve already got?” My point exactly!
Do you know why you have to counter this thought, I’m going to die, immediately after praying, “O Lord, please heal me”? It’s because you don’t believe you’ve already been healed. You believe God can heal you, but you’re waiting on Him to do so. That’s wrong! God has already released His healing power. You aren’t waiting on God to heal you; God is waiting on you to appropriate what He’s already done.
It’s like that television signal. The signal is already being broadcast. If you aren’t seeing the picture, it’s not God who isn’t transmitting; it’s your receiver that isn’t working right. You need to get into the owner’s manual—God’s Word—and start studying. Find out how to turn that thing on, tune it in, eliminate the static, and deal with things to get the best reception.
Don’t say, “I’m waiting on God!” That’s not how it works. “By whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24, emphasis mine). God is waiting on you to believe and receive!
Since I’ve begun teaching this, I’ve seen a tremendous increase in the amount of people receiving their healing. They are no longer just asking and waiting on God to do it. Instead, they’re believing what the Lord has already done. They’re taking their authority and commanding what’s already been provided to come into manifestation. The results have been awesome!
My oldest son, Joshua, became sick and looked like he was going to die. Jamie and I fought it, stood against it, and finally he got better. This happened several years in a row. Finally, I saw this coming back on him again and sought the Lord about it. I prayed, “Lord, what’s wrong?” He answered, “The problem is that you are fighting to get healed instead of fighting because you’ve been healed. You’re trying to obtain healing instead of defending the healing you already have.” Once I understood this, things turned around.
Don’t fight to get healed; fight because you’ve been healed! Don’t fight in an attempt to obtain healing; fight to defend the healing that’s already been provided for you in Christ!
Allow this revelation to sink in and change your attitude toward everything you receive from the Lord!
