One of Satan’s main objectives is to get us to turn inward and to live with guilt and shame thinking they are spiritual qualities of reverence before God, fear of God and hating sin. There’s this counterfeit thing going on where the enemy tries to draw us into that self-hatred, self-rejection, all in the name of hating sin. When the devil succeeds at turning us inward, actually adopting a way of thinking where we become the primary focus, then he has succeeded in undermining our confidence in what Jesus accomplished at Calvary. They are connected.

A born again believer is a new creation. That’s not philosophical – it’s not in the sweet by and by – it is a present reality. But deception in the mind keeps people from accessing what Jesus has already accomplished. Let me put it this way: everything we will ever experience in this life, every breakthrough, every victory everything we will experience throughout all eternity, has already been purchased and placed in an account for us.

So think about this. Throughout the ages, everything you experience in God throughout all of eternity in His glorious presence, everything that we experienced in ruling and the reigning with Christ, everything that is experienced throughout eternity was all purchased at Calvary. So it is already a present possession. So when we submit to God as He renews our mind we begin to see and embrace what God knows already happened.

When we believe in the inferior; when we put faith in inferior things – we obviously get inferior results. Faith is what gives us access to the reality of Christ’s victory at Calvary. Faith sees. Faith discovers. There are realms that are available in Christ, realities that are accessible now, that most believers think are reserved for eternity.

Part of the struggle we have in our walk with Christ is ignorance over what He’s already done and ignorance over what we already possess. When we don’t realize what we already have, we end up spending our prayer life praying for what God has already secured for us. When you pray for what you already have, you can’t you can’t recognize the answer. Let me say that again. When you pray for what you already possess, you’re already incapable of recognizing the answer to that prayer.

Now think about this. If I can’t recognize the answer, then I’m not going to have the thankful heart I’m supposed to live with. That’s number one. But number two, He said, “… in that day, you’ll ask the Father in My name and He will give you whatever you ask that your joy may be full.” So the Lord has connected heavens atmosphere of joy, to be your present possession as you see answers to prayer. Joy is such a priceless commodity in heaven, that it was used as the tool to help Jesus endure the cross. It would be the reward at the end of the endurance of the cross, “For the joy set before him He endured the cross.”

No wonder the spirit of religion hates joy so much. It’s a priceless commodity. It is the evidence of liberty and true freedom. Therefore here the Lord has created a pathway for us to access eternal joy now and we are to access that realm of continuous fullness of joy through answers to prayer. Whatever you ask, he will give you that your joy may be full.

So if I pray for what I already have, and I don’t recognize it, then I don’t have access to that joy from answered prayers. I now have to get my joy from the discipline of prayer. And when you get your joy from the discipline of prayer, you begin to exalt form, above power and presence. Form above breakthrough. This is the birthplace of religion and God hates religion.

The Lord desires that through the activation of faith we might embrace what He has already secured for us before we were even born in the flesh. Now faith does not come because of choice  – you don’t choose to believe  – you surrender to believe. Faith is the result of surrender. It’s the result of yielding, it is not the result of determination. Faith is the natural expression of a believer, it’s why we are called believers. We discover through faith.

There are two absolutes in the Christian life. Love is the first absolute for God is love. The other absolute is Faith. Without faith it is impossible to believe God. The apostle Paul in Galatians says that faith works through love, he was able to emerge and to marry these two expressions, they different sides of the same coin. So faith then must discover is what has already happened. For example, in Christ when somebody is healed, if you’re sick in your body, you seek the Lord, you get breakthrough in your body and there’s healing. What really happened? All you did is access something that was put into an account with your name on it over 2,000 years ago.

In fact, in the strictest theological sense, God didn’t heal you just now – God healed you over 2,000 years ago through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The current healing you experience in your body today, is the physical manifestation of the healing God gave you in Christ, through Christ and for Christ.

So our greatest challenge is to embrace what we already possess. This is what “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” really means. All healing; all salvation; all comfort; all righteousness, joy and peace have been secured for us already in Christ and that is our experience in the Kingdom of God. Our task is to progressively live in God’s kingdom and by so doing we literally bring that kingdom here for all to see. So let’s stop asking God for what we already possess. Let’s instead embrace what we already have!