Are You Receiving When You’re Believing?
This article was written and published by Joel Osteen
When you not only pray, but you take it one step further and receive your healing, things begin to happen in the unseen realm. But if the healing, the freedom, the promotion, or the breakthrough is always in your future, you haven’t received it in your spirit. What God is going to bring to pass is not what you ask for, but what you believe you receive when you pray. Are you receiving when you’re believing? It’s not just, “God, I’m asking You to help me break this addiction.” That’s good, but by itself it’s not enough. Follow it up with, “Lord, I receive your freedom. I receive your wholeness. Thank You that I am free from this addiction now–not that I’m going to be free one day. No, it’s already happened.” When you prayed, you not only believed it, but you received it. Now change your report from “I’m hoping to” to “It’s already done.” It’s just a matter of time before what happened in the unseen realm shows up in the natural realm.
You have to be healed in your spirit before you’re healed in your body. You have to be prosperous in your spirit before you’re prosperous in the natural. You have to be free in your spirit before you’re free in the physical. You have to receive it when you believe, when you pray. Even though nothing may have changed, even though every circumstance looks just the same, your faith says, “It happened. Things have changed in my favor.”