Word of The Lord From 1 Corinthians 10:13

[Dr. Dorothy E. Hooks, PsyD]

RELEASE ALL Past Desires in Your Heart to God Today: Desire Him Instead!!

 

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:13 (Amplified - AMP)

“¹³ For no temptation (no trial regarded as enticing to sin), [no matter how it comes or where it leads] has overtaken you and laid hold on you that is not common to man [that is, no temptation or trial has come to you that is beyond human resistance and that is not adjusted and adapted and belonging to human experience, and such as man can bear]. But God is faithful [to His Word and to His compassionate nature], and He [can be trusted] not to let you be tempted and tried and assayed beyond your ability and strength of resistance and power to endure, but with the temptation He will [always] also provide the way out (the means of escape to a landing place), that you may be capable and strong and powerful to bear up under it patiently.”

There is nothing you go through that does not have a way of escape!! The Way of escape is Jesus!! He has ALREADY given you freedom over two thousand years ago!! Now, it is up to YOU to accept Him as YOUR personal Lord and Savior so you can begin to walk in total freedom!! There is NO freedom, NO peace, No comfort, No real wealth without Him. John 1:3 says: “All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being” (AMP – biblegateway.com).

Therefore EVERYTHING that the devil meant for evil, God is turning it around for your good! God does not tempt you; you are tempted because of your own evil desires. This is what James 1:13-15 says - (AMP – biblegateway.com): 

¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted from God; for God is incapable of being tempted by [what is] evil and He Himself tempts no one. ¹⁴ But every person is tempted when he is drawn away, enticed and baited by his own evil desire (lust, passions). ¹⁵ Then the evil desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully matured, brings forth death.

If God cannot be tempted by evil, and He is in us in the fullness, we should not be able to be tempted by evil either!!! The devil is not going to be able to tempt us with what is not in our hearts; what we already want to do (the passions and lusts that are not already there). The devil cannot read our minds, but he has familiar spirits that watch our behavior from birth and these spirits report to other spirits, they network, working together to try and cause own down fall.

When we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, those spirits really get to work, trying to convince us, through suggestion-they put thoughts in our head, that we want this or that. But if WE connect our heart to God’s heart, and want what He wants, EVERYTHING else will line up in our lives because our will is in agreement with God’s will; we will not be going against God in our hearts-we wanting one thing when God wants so much more and better for us!!

Get rid of those desires in your heart (lusting after a man, woman, especially if they are someone else’s spouse-that is adultery, etc.) that will kill (sin causes death-you will NEVER be able to satisfy the lust of the flesh-if you get that person you are lusting after, it will not last because lust will never be satisfied- there is ALWAYS someone better looking than the person you thought you had to have-and the cycle will never end until you turn your life totally over to Jesus) and desire God and the things of God; this is what’s going to give you abundant life-the life Jesus has ALREADY provided and given to you!! All you have to do to receive abundant life is to accept Jesus as YOUR personal Lord and Savior!! It is a gift!! You do not have to work for it!! We are saved by grace through faith (in the finished work of Christ)!! This is what Ephesians 2:8 says:

⁸ For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; ⁹ Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law’s demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself.]

Jesus completed the work for you; don’t allow the enemy to tell you anything differently!! Don’t allow him to use what is in you against you-because he will and his purpose is to destroy you!! Let me give you an example using myself of how the enemy works to destroy you; especially after you accept Christ:  I use to be an alcoholic, so when I first accepted Christ, I kept backsliding because the desire to drink was so strong in me. Where did that desire come from? The enemy used what was already in me, what I was used to doing before I accepted Christ, to keep me in bondage to it. The enemy knew my pattern-my weakness; when I would get upset, I would drink. So what would he do? He would cause all kind of chaos in my life knowing it would push me to the bottle-and it worked. Then I would feel guilty and cry before God asking Him to forgive me; not knowing He had already forgiven me over two thousand years ago when Jesus died on the cross for me-God knew I would backslide over and over and over so He made provisions for me to come back to Him after I did through the death of Jesus.

God told me after one of my backsliding moments that the steps of a good man is ordered by Him and though he (the good man) falls, he is not utterly cast down (Psalm 37:23-24). Why would God call ME, a backsliding drunkard (that is how I saw myself then) “a good man?” God called me how He saw me; He saw me as a good man because of the finished work of His dear Son Jesus!! God saw me as the righteousness of Himself through Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21) – Jesus became sin for me and for you and ALL mankind!! He came and fulfilled the law which had condemned us to death (Romans Chapter 8, Hebrews 8:6-13, Romans 6:14-16; Jesus conqueror death, hell (took the keys of death and hell  – [Revelation 1:18]) and the grave when He died and was resurrected 1 Corinthians 15:55).

God is teaching me now more than ever who He is through the messages He is giving my Pastor, Pastor Bob at Realife Ministry!! These messages are causing me to abandon myself and seek more after God; I want to know Him more and I want my will to line up with His will for my life!! The desires in my heart of what I want to do is fading and all I want to do is please Him more, to love Him more; not seek after vain, empty things that only cause me death!! I aim to live the abundant life Jesus died so I could live!! I am not talking about a big house on the hill or fancy car or a lot of money in the bank, etc. (although ALL that and more will be mine but right now, I am not desiring them, I am desiring God!! More of Him! More of His presence!! That is what I am seeking after – Him!! The full manifested glory of God in my life; then ALL those other things will automatically come! My love for God is increasing because I am learning about His grace and who I am in Him in a deeper way through the yielded life of my Pastor to God; this revelation of God’s Word is causing me to abandon my thoughts, ways, actions, behaviors, old passions/desires of my heart and everything that is not of God, and run to Him!!

The Word let me know that if we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteous (the righteousness that Jesus ALREADY provided-there is NO OTHER RIGHTEOUSNESS BUT HIS-we are not righteous without being IN Him and He IN us-we are members of His body, of His flesh and His bones [Ephesians 5:30]; we have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless, we live but it really is not us living but Christ living in us [Galatians 2:20]. As the first Adam said about his bride Eve, Jesus is saying the same thing about us, His bride, “this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” [Genesis 2:23]), all those other things (the ones which are tied to our hearts that cause us to worry sometimes) will be added to us; if they do not go against God’s will for us [1 John 5:14-15] (Matthew 6:25-34). I am writing out 1 John 5:14-15:

¹⁴ And this is the confidence (the assurance, the privilege of boldness) which we have in Him: [we are sure] that if we ask anything (make any request) according to His will (in agreement with His own plan), He listens to and hears us.

¹⁵ And if (since) we [positively] know that He listens to us in whatever we ask, we also know [with settled and absolute knowledge] that we have [granted us as our present possessions] the requests made of Him.

Through me not knowing what God was saying then, I kept going through that cycle until one day I begin to cry out to God for deliverance from a sincere heart. Yes, I had been praying before but THAT time, I meant what I was saying; the other times I prayed, I really did not want to stop-I only prayed because I knew I should not be a Christian and drinking. But when my heart and my mouth lined up together in prayer, God instantly delivered me from drinking. I did not say a long prayer, and cry and carry on like I had in the past; I just said something like, "God if you up there, deliver me from drinking"-I had made a conscious decision to choose God over alcohol!! I did not realize unto days later that I was delivered! It was something different-it hit me that I had not had a drink in about a week (I was use to drinking EVERY day-night and day).

But God!!!! Now, the devil cannot tempt me with alcohol, it is not one of my desires so he knows he would be wasting his time to try because that is not a desire of my heart anymore; I cannot stand to smell alcohol or be around it-unless God has me ministering to an alcoholic, then it does not bother me-that is a soul God loves and wants to deliver as He did me.

God has made many ways in my life because of the One Way in my life; who is Jesus Christ!!! NOTHING is impossible with God!! He can and will do the impossible in YOUR life if you release your heart’s desires to Him and agree with His will for your life!!!

If you are having a lot of temptations, search your heart and see what you desire!! What are the passions and lust of YOUR heart? The devil CANNOT bring out of you what is not already in you!!! He will only tempt you with what is your heart’s desire! He just talk (with thoughts, wrong people speaking into your life, suggestions, etc.) you into acting out what is in you-he uses your past against you. Whatever you had a problem with in the past and have not been fully delivered from (you will know if you are fully delivered-you no longer have a desire for that thing), the devil will keep bringing that thing or those things to you, telling you to do them until you either act on them or rebuke him by pulling down those strongholds in your mind and bring EVERY thought captive under the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)!!!

I beech you today to keep crying out to God until your mouth and heart are in agreement and God will deliver you from every evil desire of your heart!!!! But YOU got to release them to Him; He is not going to take it from you!!! YOU must show God that you want Him and love Him enough to let those evil desires GO!!!! You must show Him that He means more to you than anything or anybody on this planet!!!!! And you do this by searching your heart for things that are not of God and releasing them to God putting them on His altar and leaving them there!! Be honest with yourself; God already know what is in you!! Then you go after God like you never have before!!! You seek God until you find Him; until He fills you with desires for Him and Him alone!!!! He said He would give us the desires of our heart so let us make a deeper relationship with God the desire of our heart instead of a new house, car, clothes, money, man, woman, and all other material thing!!!! YOU have to put forth effort to be delivered; take responsibility for YOUR OWN DELIVERANCE!! STOP EXPECTING GOD TO DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU!!

Throughout the Bible you will see statements that let us know if we do this then God will do that. God is not going to do EVERYTHING for us! We must do what we can and leave what we cannot do to God; but we must actively participate in our deliverance. I mean we cannot continue in sin and say, like I have heard people say, “I am waiting for God to stop me from drinking and smoking.” No, YOU must decide to release those things to God!! God is not going to go against YOUR will; you are choosing to drink and smoke or whatever-you enjoy it because it gives you pleasure-it satisfies that desire, that passion in your heart to do it.

You must get tired of what you are doing or what you are going through before you can get delivered from it; otherwise, you will be like I was, on a roller coastal ride, up and down, one day you want to live for God and the next you want those desires in your heart, until you decide, enough is enough-I do not want THIS anymore!!! You must get sick and tired of being sick and tired; then your change will come!!

Therefore, decide today, right now as you read this post, that you will release ALL your evil desires to God and choose Him as your heart desire!!! Then you can say what Jesus said, Who is our example, in John 14:30: ³⁰ ...And he (the evil prince of this world) has no claim on Me. [He has nothing in common with Me; there is nothing in Me that belongs to him, and he has no power over Me]” (AMP – biblegateway.com).

The prince of this world (accuser) will not be able to bring out those evil desires; you will have nothing in common with him!! Those old desires will be gone. Your desire for God will take the place of those evil desires. Choose this day, do you want evil desires to lead you or do you want God to lead you? The choice is YOURS!!! However, choose wisely!! You will have to live with that choice throughout eternality!!

In closing, this is my prayer for you: “I pray that the God will shine the light of His truth of God shine light upon the dark places in your hearts; that God will give you wisdom, knowledge and understanding of what’s in you-the desires, the passions the lust of your hear that are in you-that you must decide today to release to Him. And I pray that God will heal you everywhere you need to be healed, in the Name of Jesus. I declare and decree freedom over your life today; over your families, over you ministries, this day, in the Name of Jesus, Amen!!!!

 

May God bless you all!!!

Dr. Dorothy E. Hooks