On the news today, Gerald Ford’s Episcopal priest was shown saying, with tears in his eyes, “If anybody deserves to go to heaven, (Ford) does.”

Right away, you know this guy doesn’t get it at all. The simple message of the gospel is that NO ONE deserves heaven no matter how wonderful they are, and if you get there it’s only because you trusted in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, knowing that’s the only means God lets anybody escape hell.

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Here’s a great quote I came upon recently: “To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.”

This explains our new pagan country’s increasing obsession with darkness, ghoulish entertainment, demonic creatures, wizards and witches, black clothing with skull images on it, psychic communication with dead people, etc., etc.

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Wisdom is simply the application of knowledge. Paul’s Epistles give Believers the information to practice new habits of thinking and acting, developing a more real view of themselves by realizing self in Christ.

Transformation occurs through faith in what the Word says about who we really are, and then seeing ourselves in the new role—the new nature in Christ.

“We have an identity in Christ in the spirit world that we can’t touch or feel, but it’s real,” explains my pastor, Richard Jordan. “So how do I bring it into my experience, where I live? It’s the words of the Spirit on the physical page of a Book that’s the connection. It’s my faith resting in those words in a Book that energizes my inner man and that’s the mechanics of it. That’s how it works!”

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Here’s another person who doesn’t get it—Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham. In her 1989 book, Legacy of a Pack Rat, which I found while cleaning out the section of my mom’s basement where she allows me to keep my high school/college stuff, etc., Graham writes, “There are times, I have found, when praying is not enough. God says, as it were, ‘Why are you praying? Do something!’. . . If our hearts are listening as we pray, we will from time to time, hear, ‘Why are you praying? Do something!’ And we will know what it is that we must do. A wrong to put right, a sin to confess, a letter to write, a friend to visit, or perhaps a child to be rocked and read to.”

Prayer, by God’s own standards, is simply constant, unbroken fellowship and communion with God. Everything we think, God knows about it. By faith, we are to live 24/7 in the consciousness of that reality. Paul even advises us to “pray without ceasing.”

Jordan says, “If you talk to God about what’s on your mind, wouldn’t you like to hear what’s on His mind? So, how’s he going to talk to you? He’s not going to talk to you through your circumstances or some inner impressions. He wrote a Book to do that. Now do you see the internal motivation to read His Word and believe it? You see how life-transforming that is?!”

It would seem in Graham’s mind God’s telling her He doesn’t want her spending endless time conversing with Him, but wants her to get off her lazy butt and do something. This is the law! She even talks of confessing sins, which is an instant alarm bell that she’s following Israel’s law program to the Jews and doesn’t have any clear understanding of her walk as a Gentile Believer living in grace.

Look at this great passage from Jordan:

“You ever get disgusted and mad with yourself? You know what I found out? I found out people can beat you up pretty good, but there’s nobody who beats you up as bad as you do? You know that? In your self-talk, you’re tough on yourself. When you live under a performance-based acceptance program you don’t get any help from who you are in Christ. It renders it completely profitless. That’s a terrible thing, and the law will temporarily ruin a Believer’s walk with the Lord. You’ve got victory in Christ, but entanglement with the law—with performance-based acceptance—kills the opportunity to experience grace in the details of your life, and that’s why Paul says, ‘O, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you.’ l”

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Keith Blades, a renowned Bible teacher who’s written several crucial books on dispensational truths, including Satan and His Plan of Evil, writes in an old issue of his newsletter, “As Paul makes clear in (Eph. 3:20), God’s power today ‘worketh in us.’ This is done through the effectual working of His word and the Spirit of God in us. Hence, all the issues in this prayer are inner man issues. This, once again, is the sphere of the operation of God’s power in this dispensation.

“And this stands in marked contrast to Israel’s program in which God covenanted to do marvels among them so that they would ‘see the work of the Lord’ in their midst as He worked in the outward circumstances of their lives.

“In addition to this, however, Paul also makes it clear in this prayer that the power of God’s word at work within us today is the most excellent display of God’s power. The exceeding great power that belongs to God’s word is able to be put on display today in an unprecedented and impressive manner.

“This is because not only is God’s word working within us able to do ‘exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’ regarding the condition of our inner man, it is also able to do exceeding abundantly above all that Satan thinks he can do, as he works to show the capacity he still has to influence us in our inner man.

“That Satan desires to show that he is still able to affect our inner man, is something Paul makes clear throughout our epistles.”