Internalise, Personalise, Synthesise

UV 3608/10000. Internalise, Personalise, Synthesise And the Lord said, “If you have (confident, abiding) faith in God (even as small) as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree (which has very strong roots), “ Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea; and (if the request was in agreement with the will of God) it would have obeyed you. Luke 17 v 6 There are important principles of victorious faith and living hidden in this uni-verse spoken by the Lord Jesus Himself to His apostles. This was His response to their request to increase their faith or their trust and confidence in God and in His power. Jesus was underlining for them and for all followers for all time to come the principle that with God, a much smaller entity can shake or uproot a much larger power or entity. Faith can bestow amazing power, meaning and purpose to our communication. For this to happen, the faith should not be manifestly very large but it should be a living faith like a seed that has life in it to cause a whole plant to sprout. Much larger things can emerge from a seed of living, holistic faith. Faith of this kind can give God-like power to our own speech. What we speak in faith will happen. God will lend or invest His power or grace in it. The other day in a time of prayer, we saw a vision of a creeper like a money plant flourishing on a large tree and rising over it. The tree like the mulberry tree dried up but the creeper continued to grow and flourish with very large and luxuriantly green leaves. It is a sign that the world systems like the large tree are meant to support living faith but the world systems would dry up like the tree. A mulberry tree once uprooted and cast into the sea cannot take root again. It perishes in the sea as it is lashed by the waves of time and tide. For faith to be effective, powerful, life giving, life enhancing, evil uprooting, world shaking, there are some principles and precepts to follow steadfastly . We need to internalize the teachings or the word of the Lord (Jesus is described by John as the Word). We need to believe and obey His commands, His directions, His instructions, His leading in all matters in our lives. Along with internalizing, we need to personalize the promises of God as if every word of the promise is addressed by the Lord to each of us. We need to trust that it will come to pass in His time and that God is able to do all things, the difficult as well as the impossible in accordance with what He has promised in His word. Speaking in faith is the equivalent of doing for God partners with us when we speak in faith. In addition to internalising and personalising, we need to on occasions as directed by the Holy Spirit speak the word to our situations, circumstances even as Moses spoke to the rock to release water to quench the thirst of the Israelites in the desert. IPS – Internalise, Personalise, Speak can on occasions be Internalise, Personalise, Synthesise which means we can derive holistic principles of living from the Word. We can derive concepts and precepts of life, leadership, management from our study of the Word. Our faith can manifest in distinctive ways in the reality of our lives. Synthesise has the nuance of making whole. Hence, when we internalise the Word ( Jesus or the Word of God),personalise the promises, we synthesise or make whole the areas of our lives that are not victorious, not effective, not purposeful, not powerful, not whole, the areas which are barren.