Principles For Successful Sonship

Being A Son, Part 1

03/02/24

Good morning. Today my purpose is to encourage you to find people you can pray for in order to keep gaining experience as a prayer warrior. It is by means of practice that you learn most quickly. So make a point of moving a little out of your comfort zone and finding people you can help. Some may need physical healing, some may need emotional comfort, some may benefit from a guiding word on how they can develop their own spiritual growth. As you help others, you’ll find you’re helping yourself.

The lessons presented by Pastor Nick each week are teaching us our status in the Kingdom of Heaven – we’re sons. Whether male or female doesn’t matter: we’re all sons. As such, we’re learning how to pray effectively for other people. We’ve learned about the healing power that God makes available to us, how to use this power, and some of the techniques which facilitate the results we hope to receive.

We also have been given assignments to practice what we’re learning and to report back our results. This is to help us learn what works and what doesn’t; and to give us more confidence in our prayers. Remember, we’re all students. That means we aren’t perfect at it yet. So we’re not to get discouraged when things don’t happen exactly as we might wish. We just keep at it; it’s trial and error.

Think about Alin in medical school. He doesn’t become a fully trained perfect doctor immediately upon acceptance to college. He must go through years of training before he can start practicing medicine. And even then, he doesn’t know everything about every situation. As he encounters new patients, he will come across diseases he isn’t familiar with; and he’ll have to do research and experimentation.

It’s the same with us. We’re learning a new skill, but this takes time and practice. Also, most of you have been carrying out the assignments you’ve been given and have been putting into practice the lessons learned. As we are hearing each others’ testimonies, we see we’re having successes. And this is good. But I believe it will be helpful for you to keep in mind a few principles regarding what we’re doing and how things work so we don’t get discouraged and quit.

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The first principle is to realize that you are not going to have “perfect results, instantaneously, every time.” This is unrealistic. Sometimes you will see complete results after just one prayer, and sometimes you won’t; sometimes the results will be instantaneous, but sometimes you’ll have to make multiple prayers; and sometimes there won’t be any results at all. Also, there will be times when you get a good result the day of the prayer, but then when you see the person a few days or weeks later, they tell you the problem came back; and your prayer didn’t work after all.

Results like these may make you feel that you don’t know what you’re doing; so you might as well give up trying. But this isn’t the attitude to take from this experience. The lesson you should learn is to look at the circumstances of this particular situation and see what worked and what didn’t. You might pray for two different people who have the same disease, but one gets well while the other doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that you must have done something wrong. It means that every situation is different and every prayer recipient has unique issues.

Allow me to tell a circumstance which happened to another prayer warrior I’m friends with, but who isn’t here to relate the incident for himself. A lady had been told by the doctors that she had a serious illness without much chance for recovery and to prepare herself for the worst. Instead, she called my prayer warrior friend. He prayed for her until he was sure she’d been healed, and when he asked her how she felt, she said, “Great! Better than ever.” Just like before she got sick.

After the prayer warrior left, she called her friend to tell her the good news. But her friend’s response was, “Oh, no, no. Feeling good doesn’t mean you’ve been healed. Actually that’s a bad sign. People with a fatal disease often feel better just before they die. What you’re feeling means the end is just about on you.” The first lady believed her friend, decided she wasn’t feeling good after all, and laid back down in bed. As you can guess, she died a few days later. So, had she been healed by the prayer? And did she lose that healing by thinking bad thoughts? We’ll never know. Personally I believe she had been but that her healing was stolen from her. Evil words have power just like healing words do.

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The second principle is it’s important for prayer recipients to understand what to expect and what they need to do to help themselves receive healing and keep it. This not only ties into the previous point, it is also connected to the principle that many blessings are conditional. There are instances where someone receives healing but then loses it again through carelessness or the influence of others.

Jesus taught His disciples about this risk; it’s recorded in Luke 11:24-26, “When a demon goes out of a person, it goes through bad places and finds no rest. Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to the house I left. When it arrives it finds the place clean and empty. So it calls seven other demons to join him. And the end result for the person is worse than at first.” This is saying that when someone is delivered from a demon, but then fails to invite the Holy Spirit in to reside with them, the demon can come back.

You may also recall the incident related in John 8:11, where Jesus delivered a woman caught in adultery from being stoned. He said to her, “Go and sin no more.” In this He was telling her, she had been given a second chance at life, but she shouldn’t waste it by returning to the behavior that had caused her to be convicted in the first place. Otherwise she could face the death penalty again.

Likewise, if you heal someone from lung cancer and they then return to smoking, they can’t expect that the cancer will never come back. And if it does, they can’t blame you for not healing them properly. They must change their behavior if they want to keep the healing they’ve received. Being delivered once doesn’t guarantee that nothing will ever happen again.

I’d like to tell about my personal experience praying for a friend of mine several years ago. One morning I received a phone call from a friend asking if I’d seen Leonard lately. When I said no, they said, “You better hurry up, then, before it’s too late. He’s in the hospital dying of lung cancer.” This surprised me; I hadn’t heard anything about him being sick prior to this call. Less than an hour later I was at the hospital.

He said he had a very aggressive and fast growing cancer – small cell carcinoma – and by the time he started feeling bad and went to the doctor for tests, it was already at stage four. They had been trying every type of treatment and chemotherapy they had, but nothing was slowing it down. They were now down to trying their last type of chemical. They said this medicine didn’t usually do much; but there was nothing else left to try. If it didn’t work, he’d have less than two weeks.

He was pretty depressed, as you can imagine. Nobody feels ready to die at just 50 years old. So I asked if I could pray with him. I didn’t know whether he’d accept it, because this didn’t fit with his personality. In his younger years he had been a rock musician. He no longer performed, but he still had that type of lifestyle – smoking, drinking, and drugs. To my surprise he said yes, he’d like prayer. In fact, he had been hoping I’d offer, since he knew my interests; and to him I was the only religious person he knew.

I placed my hand on his shoulder and prayed. During the prayer I felt a very strong presence of God. It was so strong, in fact, that I was a bit shaken myself. So once I was done I wanted to leave so I could recover from it. I told him I’d come visit again soon, then I left. Sensing God’s presence and feeling His power surge through me had filled me with awe and even a bit of fear.

I went back a few days later and was surprised by what I saw. He was up and walking around, looking healthy, and very happy about the results of the latest tests. The doctors were saying that he must be one of the very few who actually respond to their “last line medication”.

He, on the other hand, was crediting the prayer rather than the medicine. He said that when I had prayed he felt something happen inside his body, and afterwards he was sure that he’d just been healed. I was overjoyed. I realized I had just been part of a miracle from God. It was thrilling beyond words.

After I’d prayed that day he asked for new tests and they showed the cancer had begun shrinking. The doctors had then continued with their treatment and repeated the tests daily. They told him if he kept responding well, he could be released in a few more days.

As I heard this, I felt overjoyed at his good news and rejoiced with him. But I also received a strong impression from God that I should caution him about his lifestyle. So I told him, “You know, once you get out you can’t go back to doing the things you used to do – smoking and drinking and stuff.”

He agreed, and said he knew that already without being told. But I told him it was very important that he follow this. He said, “Yeah yeah. I know.”

Once he was discharged we didn’t keep in touch, because he and I moved in different circles. But I was hopeful that he was taking advantage of his newfound life. However, just a few months later I received a phone call again from our mutual friend. He said Leonard was asking if I could come pray with him again. When I asked where he was, I was told, “He’s in hospice. And it’s not looking good.”

I went to visit him, and yes, the cancer was back; just as bad as before. I asked him what happened. And he confessed. “I started doing the old things again. I knew I shouldn’t have. I knew it! But I couldn’t help myself. I thought I could smoke just a little pot; for the pain, you know.”

When I asked, “What pain, wasn’t the cancer gone?” He said it was an old back injury from a long time ago. As he talked he then admitted that he’d also been getting oxycodone from a friend of his. Again for the pain, of course. I started to remind him of the warning I’d given, but he said he knew.

“I felt it as soon as I did it, that it was a mistake. But I just told myself it was only for medicinal purposes. Now the cancer is back. And that medicine they used before isn’t doing anything this time. Can you pray again?”

So I did. But this time I didn’t feel the presence of God moving to heal him. I continued trying for quite a while, but still didn’t feel anything. I reasoned with myself that it was just because I was distressed over his situation. I told him I’d be back and pray again soon.

It was a week before I got back to the hospice. When I went into his room he was unconscious and on a ventilator. A nurse was sitting beside his bed reading a novel. I asked her about his condition, and she said he was down to the final hours. The hospice had a policy that when someone was about to pass, a “death nurse” would stay with them until the end; this way they wouldn’t have to die all alone. She said she’d step out so I could have time to say goodbye; besides, she was needing a break.

I placed my hand on him and prayed. He didn’t move, didn’t wake up. As I prayed I talked with God, asking to heal Leonard once more. But God said no. He said He wasn’t going to give physical healing to Leonard a second time; but that He was going to give emotional comfort to me to get me through it. I left shortly after that. The next day I got a phone call that Leonard had passed soon after I left.

I found that experience to be very discouraging and I didn’t want to pray for other people for quite a while afterwards. Not only was I sad at the loss of my friend, I was extremely disappointed at the loss of the miracle I had been a part of bringing. It felt like something which had provided me a new closeness with God had been snatched away. This was devastating.

Eventually, though, I came to realize that the fault wasn’t my own. And it wasn’t God’s fault either. Since then I’ve become more careful to explain to prayer recipients the importance of holding on to their healing until it’s fully established.

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The third important principle to remember is that in each situation there are other factors at work over which you have no control. We are physical beings in a physical environment becoming aware that we are also surrounded by a spiritual existence populated with spiritual beings. As a result of our study we are slowly becoming aware that we can connect with and influence things in the spiritual realm.

With our acceptance of the Holy Spirit, we develop a spiritual existence in conjunction with our physical existence. This new expansion of our identity into the spiritual realm allows us to begin affecting the things in that realm.

We understand that God is a spiritual being. In fact, John 4:24 tells us, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” We also know that the other beings around Him are spiritual in nature as well; and we refer to them as angels and demons. Further, we know that beings in the spiritual realm can influence the physical realm. There are many accounts in Scripture and in our daily existence of angels and demons working in our world to bring about their respective ends.

Therefore, it should not be hard to accept that if the spiritual realm can influence the physical realm, then the physical realm can have influence in the spiritual realm. This means we can push away demons that are attacking us and our loved ones. It also means we can counteract the evil effects that demons have brought about, and bring healing to situations where they’ve brought disease.

Our study and our practice is our effort to learn the principles of working with the spiritual world, and to become better at it. As we learn what to do, we become more powerful and more effective. Thus the importance of continuing to practice regularly.

But we must also keep all this in mind when we pray for someone and don’t get the result we were hoping for. Because at the same time that we’re trying to heal someone, there are evil spirits trying to prevent us from succeeding. And at times the demons are able to work with the prayer recipient’s thoughts and feelings to do things that are counterproductive to our efforts. When this happens it doesn’t mean that we’re not good at our prayers; it means that there is something else happening which is working against us. In other words, blame satan; not yourself. Then figure out what you can do to push him away and correct the prayer recipient’s wrong thought.

I don’t want to give you the idea that bad things will always happen. There are a lot of success stories as well. But I want you to remain aware that our enemy is always trying to work against us, and trying to steal away our victories. We’re in a war, and our enemy has no mercy. He has already lost, on account of what Jesus did at the Cross. But he still won’t stop trying to do as much damage as possible on the way out.

The good news, however, is that the presence of the Holy Spirit within us and His sharing of power with us enables us to resist the devil. We are able to counteract the Evil One’s vengefulness against our loved ones and his destruction of all we value.

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The fourth main principle to remember is that God is different than we think. We’re familiar with the verse in Is 55:8-9, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

But, though we understand this as a conceptual idea, we minimize its importance because we think it’s just saying human minds can’t comprehend an infinite God. Although that is a true idea, God doesn’t expect us to know more than we’re capable of. But He does expect us to consider His ways to the fullest of our abilities.

For instance, many of our concepts of Him are wrong. And much of what we consider “normal” is actually displeasing to Him. One of our common thoughts that He doesn’t like is the Fear of Dying.

Although we hope that there is an afterlife and that we’ll make it there, we still do everything we can to avoid death by any means possible. This is because we can’t get rid of that little doubt that we’ll really get to Heaven.

We also doubt that our loved ones can get by without us. If we could just be absolutely certain that God would take care of them for us, we might feel a little better about it; but we don’t have that confidence. We hold a bit of distrust of God, and have doubts about His care for them. After all, look at how many times He’s disappointed us during our life; so why would it be different after we’re gone?

This distrust is displeasing to God, of course. Not only because is shows our lack of understanding of Him, but also because this distrust puts us under the influence of Satan. Hebrews 2:15 tells us that because of our fear of death, the devil is able to hold people in bondage their entire lifetime. Distrust of God and fear of death takes us out of a position of power and puts us into a place of subjection to Satan. So these are things we must actively recognize and work against.

We need to trust that we aren’t going to lose our lives prematurely. He wants us to have good health and long life, and have it abundantly! So to fear that He’ll let us die at any moment and for the smallest of reasons is insulting. And it represents a lack of understanding of the immensity of His love.

What is more, even if He were to decide that something good could come of our dying, don’t you think He’d speak to us about it and gain our consent? Remember the sacrifice of Jesus. This was something they discussed long in advance, and only put into motion after Jesus agreed to it. And God gives us just as much consideration as He gave Jesus.

To this you may respond that He doesn’t ask permission from everyone who dies. And I agree. But I’m talking about “sons of God”; those who have been “adopted” as His “special people”: those filled with the Holy Spirit. As sons we are given as much consideration as was given to Jesus.

He also wants us to realize that the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, and the elevated position to which He’s assigned us, enables us to do more than we’ve been doing. Many of us are waiting for a large measure of power to be given; and yes, more power is yet to come. But we shouldn’t be waiting to work until that comes. We need to do now as much as we’re able to do. We already have enough power to do great things, but doubt and ignorance hold us back. Hence the importance of regular practice to become more familiar with what we have.

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The fifth main principle to learn is that God accepts our decisions regarding earthly matters, then He adjusts His plans to fit ours. As we decide someone should be healed, or that a hurricane should change course, or any other matter that falls under our domain, God respects our choices and cooperates with us to bring them about.

Allow me to give a few examples from Scripture where the decision of a son of God caused God to alter His initial plan.

You recall that God told Abraham that He would make 12 nations out of his first-born son. God meant that promise for Isaac, but because Abraham’s actions caused Ishmael to be his first-born son, God kept his word and applied that promise to Ishmael as well as Isaac. (I hope you’re aware that Ishmael had twelve sons just like Isaac did; and they too grew into as many tribes and peoples.) So no matter which son we consider the true first-born, God kept His word according to the choice Abraham made.

And again, God told the enslaved Israelites that He would give them the Promised Land. But once they arrived, they rejected God’s plan. So God accepted their choice and didn’t make them enter.

Then later, when that generation openly turned against God, He told Moses that He could transfer the promise, taking it away from the Israelites and giving the land to Moses’ offspring; and thus fulfill the promise through them.

However, when God suggested this, Moses declared, “No!” He told God he didn’t want that to happen; and if these rebellious Israelites were to be kept out of the Promised Land, then he wanted to share their fate. So God accepted Moses’ decision and adjusted His plans.

Over the next 40 years of wandering in the wilderness that entire generation of Israelites died; it was only their children who got to enter in fulfillment of the promise. And what about Moses? He was not allowed to enter either; he had to die just outside the borders.

But we fail to recognize that this was God’s way of honoring the choice made by Moses all those years earlier – if that group of people couldn’t enter the Promised Land, then Moses wouldn’t either. Yes, there is also some additional blame placed on Moses, because of his mistake at the incident of the second drawing of water from a rock. But in terms of Moses’ earlier decision, that was fulfilled.

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The sixth main principle is we must learn more about our spiritual nature. Even those of us who have begun thinking in these terms don’t have much understanding of what this really means. We may have vague ideas and know a few concepts, but it hasn’t been internalized to such a degree that it’s an integral part of our identity and nature.

When God created mankind He made us to be both physical and spiritual creatures. His plan for us was to exist in and operate in both realms. This was to be a greater form of creation than He had done in making the angels. Angels are spiritual only. With permission and when they are on special assignments, they can take on a physical presence; but this is only temporary. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, were naturally present in both realms all the time. And so, because of this superior position, angels were designated to be our assistants, and subject to our orders.

When Lucifer caused Adam and Eve to sin, two things happened as a result. First, Lucifer and his followers gained a new domain. They now had the ability to exist in the physical realm and escape the spiritual prison they’d been put in. This is why they’re fighting so hard to keep their control of this place – the alternative is to go back to prison.

The second thing that happened involved Adam and Eve – they lost access to their spiritual nature. As a result of their sin their spiritual side “died”, and they then were physical beings only. From this point, they and their descendants only had influence in the physical world. And this limited state is what we have grown to accept as “normal”.

Jesus’ life and death as a perfect human, as a Second Adam, gave to mankind the possibility to be restored to a dual nature. We find many verses in Scripture which mention this.

– Co 3:10, “Put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of He that created him.

– 2 Cr 5:17, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.”

– Ep 4:24, “Put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and holiness.”

– Ez 36:26, “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put in you.”

– Ga 3:27, “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

– Ac 11:15, “The Holy Spirit fell on them, as on us at the beginning.”

– Ez 11:19, “I will put a new spirit within you.”

– 1 Cr 6:14, “God that raised up the Lord will also raise up us.”

These verses not only refer to rising to a new life in the New Earth, they also speak of the resurrection of the spiritual half of our nature for our existence in the present. This new spirit and new man which is raised to life again is our spiritual nature which died in Eden.

Jesus restores us to the position and power and authority mankind had before The Fall. But we must learn this, and work to grow into it. We must unite our physical self with our new spiritual self, so that “the two may become one.” To do this doesn’t mean leaving your physical body or leaving the physical realm. It means to let your awareness expand into your spiritual being in the spiritual realm.

Perhaps a physical metaphor will help you understand. You recall that the Israelites’ wilderness tabernacle, and then later the Temple in Jerusalem, consisted of two rooms. This was two separate areas in one structure – the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. The first room the priest had regular access to; but the second room was forbidden. However, upon the death of Jesus, the heavy curtain separating the two areas was torn apart. This caused the two smaller areas to suddenly be combined into one large room. The veil separating the priests from the second area was removed, and now they had access to the total: it was now one.

It’s the same with our two natures. The veil which after the Fall separated our physical nature from our spiritual nature has, because of the work of Jesus, been torn apart so we can once again unite the two. We can finally return to the complete being which God created us to be.

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Now, I realize I’ve just given you a lot to think about, and it’s going to take a bit of time to digest it. But hopefully, I’ve motivated you to begin studying these principles for yourselves. To give a review:

1. As we pray for others, we’re not going to have perfect results, instantaneously, every time. But after you’ve prayed, review the results and learn from them.

2. We must help the prayer recipient understand what to expect from the healing prayer, and what they should do to be able to keep what they’ve received.

3. There are other factors at work in these situations, besides just us praying. Demons are working against us; and the prayer recipients don’t always control their thoughts and actions.

4. God is different than we think, and we have many misconceptions of Him. He’s displeased by our fear of death and distrust of Him. Also, He has already given us power, but our doubts hold us back.

5. God accepts our decisions, then adjusts His plans in response. So as sons of God we need to accept our authority and act accordingly.

6. We must learn more about our spiritual nature – what it’s like, what we can do, and what uniting with it means for us.

Each of these principles is an expansive topic, and each one could be its own study. So don’t sit back relaxed and waiting for something to happen. Take an initiative and do anything you can to learn more.

The presence of God within us allows us to become aware of our spiritual nature and our ability to exist and work in that realm as well as this one. We begin learning how each realm influences the other; and begin seeing the previously hidden causes of events which we didn’t understand before.

As we unite with God and feel His power working through us, we daily transform into the rulers of this world that we were created to be. As we become ever more familiar with God and His desires for us, we better realize how truly loved we are and how special He holds us.

God’s goal for us is far greater than we can imagine. He sees in us a potential that we leave untapped. We must put aside the fears and weaknesses which limit our belief in ourselves and our faith in God. We must let the Holy Spirit within empower us to achieve our true position in God’s Kingdom.

I bless you, each one, to become a fully realized “son of God”.

May it be so. Amen.