100 Days of Right Believing: Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing (12 page)

T
ake time to reread today’s scripture. They are precious words, and they reveal how God sees you and me today. They were spoken by a prophet named Balaam, who had been hired by Balak, the king of Moab, to invoke a curse to drive his enemy, the Israelites, from his territory. However, when Balaam opened his mouth to curse, blessings from God flowed out upon the Israelites instead (see Num. 23:21–24)!

Do you know that when God blesses you, no one—no prophet, no sorcerer, and no devil—can reverse it? You are irreversibly blessed! You can never be cursed! No generational curse or any other curse can come upon you because God has already blessed you! That includes being redeemed from the curse of the law as recorded in Galatians 3:13: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’).”

When your enemies say negative things about you out of envy, jealousy, and fear, or if there are people spreading nasty lies about you to assassinate your character, know this: the Lord is your defender. It is God who gives influence to words, and He can cause their words to fall to the ground. He can even, as we have just read, turn their curses into blessings. You don’t have to get all flustered, agitated, and angry. Just know that the Lord is on your side and that when He has blessed you, no one can reverse it. Amen!

I want this right belief to sink deep into your heart:
in Christ Jesus, you are irreversibly blessed
. No matter how dire your circumstances may seem right now, put a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Whom the Lord has blessed, no one can curse! God is going to see you through this difficult patch. Things are going to turn around for your good. You don’t have to live in disappointment, discouragement, and despair. As you can see in the biblical account of Balaam, if God is on your side, who can be against you?

T
oday’s scripture is part of the irreversible blessing we read about yesterday that God placed in Balaam’s mouth. It gives us even more reason to rejoice as we learn to see what God sees. Take a closer look at what God says in the verse above and just pause for a moment. Was there iniquity in Israel? (When God used the word “Jacob” here, He was referring to all the children of Israel.) Was there any sin in Israel? Or was everybody in the encampment perfect?

If you were to zoom in from the top of the mountain into the encampment of Israel, it’s not hard to imagine that a wide variety of imperfections, sins, iniquities, and wickedness was present throughout the camp. But the question is, did God see it?

Look at Numbers 23:21 again. Notice that God did not say there was no sin or iniquity in His people. He simply said He did not see it. Similarly, He is not saying that there is no sin in you. What God says is, “I don’t see it.”

Wait a minute, how can an unbendingly holy God not see sin in me?

My friend, it is because those same holy eyes saw all your sins punished in the body of Jesus Christ. Your sins were punished into nonexistence.

In the Israelite encampment, even though there were iniquities, sins, and wickedness, God did not see any of them because the blood of bulls and goats, which they offered up to the Lord daily, covered the children of Israel. How much more true that is for us today, we who are washed clean forever by the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, our beautiful Savior.

Under the old covenant, the Israelites enjoyed a
temporal
covering through the animal sacrifices, but for us, the atonement and payment for all our sins by Jesus Christ is
eternal
. That is why God does not observe sin and iniquity in you nor has He seen wickedness in you. When God looks at you today, He sees
you as a righteous, forgiven, healed, favored, blessed, accepted, and beloved son or daughter because of the cross of Jesus.

Now, do you see yourself as God sees you?

A
s humans, not only do we have a propensity to zoom in on every little flaw in our physical and emotional makeup, but we also have a tendency to know, remember, and replay in our minds the sins, failings, and mistakes we have made. We condemn ourselves for even our smallest flaws instead of focusing on how God really sees us—perfect in Christ.

This is why it takes faith to believe that God sees you righteous. It takes faith to believe that He does not see you in your sins, that He does not observe sin or iniquity in you. It takes faith to believe that He means what He says when He says, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 8:12). It takes faith to believe that God will not remember your failings and mistakes!

But Pastor Prince, my sins are staring right at me. How can I have faith to believe that God doesn’t see them?

My friend, the key to faith is found in looking to the source of faith—Jesus. As the Bible says, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2
NASB
). Your faith to believe is found in Jesus! The Amplified Bible puts it this way: “Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader
and
the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection].”

In other words, turn your eyes away from your own flaws, imperfections, failings, and mistakes, and just fix your eyes on Jesus. The more you see Jesus and His finished work, the more faith arises in your heart to believe that all your sins are truly forgiven. You can start on a clean slate and have a brand-new beginning in Christ. The old is gone, and the new has come!