God’s Ancient Formula for Success
God does not will one thing and say another.
It would be dishonest and unjust for Him to not reveal His will to you and then hold you responsible for walking uprightly before Him.
Paul knew how vital it was for believers to know God’s will. His Spirit-directed prayer for the Church in Colossians 1:9 was that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
God’s WORD is His will. It is supernatural and alive. The Holy Spirit is sent to reveal this supernatural WORD to you. He makes the instructions of the Father a reality. Read the Bible with the knowledge that God had it written for your benefit—not for His. He is already quite successful.
The WORD is God speaking to you, teaching you how to live an abundant and successful life.
Jesus said, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).
God’s WORD in you is the key to answered prayer.
Your Father wants you to be victorious in this life and to enjoy all the rights and privileges Jesus purchased for you. He desires that you keep His WORD because it will keep you whole—spirit, soul and body.
The world should see a Christian as The WORD sees him: a man able to control his circumstances with every physical, mental and spiritual need met.
The Bible tells you who you are and what you can do in Christ. As a born-again believer, you are in Christ. You are a member of the Body of Christ. “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
Every time The WORD says “in Christ,” “in whom,” “in Him,” it means you! You are in Him. As you come to these scriptures, underline each one and receive by faith what the Bible says you are. These scriptures are especially found in Paul’s letters to the churches because Jesus gave Paul the revelation of the authority and redemption of the Church (Galatians 1:11-12).
As you study The WORD, underline key scriptures so you can readily find them. Don’t carry a Bible in which you cannot write.
The Bible is not a book to be admired and given a place of honor on the bookshelf. It is your reference book for living. Your very life depends on what you find in it. It is the “how to” of everyday life. Keep it with you and most importantly, keep it in your heart. (Proverbs 4:20-23 tells you how.)
The Bible is God’s wisdom made available to man and writ- ten in man’s words. Read it positively, not as a set of rules, but as the open door to freedom. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
The truth makes you free! It does not put you in bondage.
God’s Formula For Success
“This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe and do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall deal wisely and have good success” (Joshua 1:8, Amplified Bible, Classic Edition).
God’s success formula begins with keeping His WORD in your mouth. Talk God’s WORD.
God gave Israel these instructions: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
God told Israel to talk His WORD when they sat down, when they walked, when they lay down and when they rose up. That’s all the time!
How could that be possible? Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). The words you put inside yourself are the words that come out. What words do you see and listen to most of the time—television, radio, different websites, social media, novels or God’s WORD?
Listen to yourself talk, and you will know what is in you in abundance. If you are talking doubt, fear and sickness, that’s what is in you in abundance. Your source of information must be changed!
The stream of things in this world is negative. Unless you take action against the world order with The WORD of God, your mouth will speak from experience, circumstance and tradition.
Jesus said, “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).
You receive in this life just what you say with your mouth.
The WORD in your mouth is your faith speaking.
The words you speak are what you believe.
Your words can be for you or against you. They bring you health or sickness, abundance or lack, victory or defeat. Solomon, the wisest and richest man in the Old Testament, said you are snared by the words of your mouth. You are set free or brought into bondage by your words.
Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”? The mouth speaks according to what you put in your heart. Jesus continued in verse 35: “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things.” Put God’s WORD in your heart and you will speak it with your mouth. God’s WORD in your mouth will cause good things to happen in your life.
Meditate on God’s Word
You put God’s WORD in your heart by meditating on it. You don’t change the way you believe in your heart by just wanting to change it. You can only change how you believe by The WORD of God.
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by The WORD of God” (Romans 10:17). The only way faith comes into the heart is by hearing The WORD, and the only way faith can be developed is through The WORD. There is no shortcut.
Meditation in The WORD is a necessity in God’s success formula.
Keep His WORD before you and meditate—dwell on The WORD in your thought life—day and night. Meditation is more than just reading. It is fixing your mind on The WORD so that you do all that is written in it. You will receive revelation and insight that you could never gain by hearing only.
By meditating in The WORD, you are applying it to yourself personally and allowing the Holy Spirit to make it a reality in your heart. You are carefully pondering how it applies to your life and dwelling on how it changes your situation. Or, perhaps you will simply receive the quiet revelation of, That means me! You are placing yourself in agreement with what God says about you and seeing yourself as He sees you!
As long as God’s WORD is just a book to you—even a holy book—you will not act on it. Until it becomes God dealing with you, it will not be active and powerful in your life.
It is through meditation that the integrity of God’s WORD becomes a reality to you. As the truth is revealed in your spirit, you will begin to do all that is written in it. Acting on God’s WORD is the result of keeping His words in your mouth and meditating on them. It is only acting on God’s WORD that guarantees success.
One of the greatest enemies of faith is mental assent. It agrees that God’s WORD is true but does not act on it and therefore enjoys no results. Mental assent says, “I believe the Bible is true from Genesis to Revelation.” But when it is time to apply that Word personally, it says, “I know the Bible says that by His stripes I am healed, but I feel sick, so I must be sick.”
Mental assent does not act by faith in The WORD but on what it sees and feels. People who just agree that The WORD is true, do not walk by faith, but by sight.
Beware of the trap of mental assent. It is subtle because it sounds good. A great deal of the time mental assent can be tagged by the words but and if—two little words that will rob you of your confession of faith. Put them out of your vocabulary, and replace them with The WORD of God.
Acting on the Word
Jesus gives us an example of two men and the way they responded after hearing The WORD. The wise man acted on The WORD, and the foolish man gave mental assent to The WORD. You can be either man:
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it (Matthew 7:24-27).
Knowing what The WORD says is not enough. You must act on that knowledge to get results. Both men heard The WORD, and both houses experienced the storm, but the results were different!
Acting on The WORD put a foundation under the wise man’s house that could not be moved, and his house suffered no loss.
Hearing The WORD but not doing it left the foolish man’s house without a foundation when the floods came. His house may have been easier to build, but it had no power to stand.
Because meditation in God’s WORD makes it a reality to you, it shuts the door to mental assent and opens the door wide to doing God’s WORD. It gets your thoughts and actions in line with God’s will for you.
As truths are revealed to you in The WORD, apply them to your circumstances and do them. Be the wise man who acts on The WORD. When the adversities of life come against your house, it will stand because the foundation of acting on God’s WORD will make it stand.
Learn to act on The WORD of God just as you would the word of your doctor, lawyer or best friend. For example, in the area of healing, meditate on this scripture: “Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains…and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole” (Isaiah 53:4-5, Amplified Bible, Classic Edition). Apply this scripture to yourself by fixing your mind on Jesus carrying your sickness or pain in His own body. Dwell on the fact that He took this for you, and by His stripes you were healed.
Faith will begin to rise within you to grasp hold of the truth that Jesus made you free from sickness and pain just as surely as He made you free from sin.
As you apply these scriptures to your body and meditate on God’s WORD that “…by His stripes you were healed,” healing will become a reality in your heart. (See also 1 Peter 2:24.) Then, as you act on that WORD, healing will take place in your body, and it will prosper and begin to enjoy good success.
Revelation of The WORD in your mind and spirit (heart) opens the door for physical healing. The physical world follows after the spiritual. “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 2). “He sent His WORD, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions” (Psalm 107:20).
Use this example of God’s formula for success to obtain His will for you in every area of life.
God’s answer to every problem common to man is found in His WORD. For every evil Satan can throw at mankind, our Father has provided The WORD to overcome it. Prosperity and good success are yours through God’s WORD. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).
