GIG263 How Do We Appropriate?

Growing In God Podcast

Title: How Do We Appropriate?

Web Description: It is easy for people to have negative emotions. We can become depressed, fearful, or anxious. And those negative emotions have negative effects on our physical bodies. As Christians why should we accept that when we can experience the joy of Christ’s salvation and the fruit of the Spirit producing life in our physical bodies? God has provided everything for us, and we should be continually appropriating more and more of His provision until His life is manifesting in us and through us.

 

Show Notes: What do you want to have happen through your prayer and intercession? Whether you are praying for Israel, for this nation, for your family, or for yourself, you are looking to bring something into the material realm that did not exist here before. Yet everything we are asking for does exist because God has already created it for us. This is the meaning of the Sabbath. On the seventh day God rested because He finished all His creation. Therefore when we pray, we are not asking God to create something that does not exist. Instead, we appropriate what God has already created, completed, and made available.

 

Appropriation should not be a mystery since everything of God we have in our lives right now was the result of appropriation. There was a moment in your life when you experienced salvation. But God did not create salvation for you at that moment. What happened is that you appropriated the salvation that already existed, and it became real to you in your heart, your mind, and your physical body. Likewise, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit already exist, but they are not real experiences for you until you appropriate them.

 

Knowing this, how much is available to us in God that we have yet to appropriate? In our faith we need to appropriate that which is not yet visible in the physical realm but is a reality in the world of spirit. Again it is not a mystery. When something spiritual comes alive to you as a real emotion, it begins to change you physically. You begin to bear fruit. What was once unseen is now being seen in you. What did not exist in the physical realm is now being physically manifested in you. Let us activate the faith in our hearts and be those who are continually appropriating God’s provision.

 

Key Verses:

 

•       Acts 19:1–6. “We have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”

•       Romans 10:5–10. “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART.”

•       Romans 4:17–19. “In the presence of Him … who ... calls into being that which does not exist.”

•       Romans 12:2. “Do not be conformed to this world.”

•       Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

•       Colossians 3:12–15. “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

•       Romans 8:20–21. “Creation itself also will be set free … into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

 

Quotes:

 

•       “What you're looking for doesn't exist in this world. It doesn't exist yet in the physical plane. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind because our mind renewed into true faith is renewed into the reality that God calls the dead to life, and He calls into being that which does not exist on the physical plane.”

•       “Our faith is the reality. It is reality of what is hoped for. It's the proof of what is not seen.”

•       “I'm not going to be asking for something that I don't think exists. I've got to proclaim that which I know in my heart. How do I know in my heart? I feel it. I feel the emotion of it.”

 

Takeaways:

 

1.    Too often we try to work something up in ourselves. But the Sabbath means that everything we are looking for already exists. What does not exist yet in the physical realm does exist in God’s completed provision. Therefore, the manifestation of the things of God depends on our appropriation of them and not on anything we can work up.

2.    Salvation has always existed in Christ, but it did not exist in you until you believed Him in your heart and confessed Him with your mouth. The salvation experience then is a process of appropriation.

3.    Appropriation begins in your heart. When you know in your heart that something God provided is real, it becomes real in your emotions. Then when you take on these feelings of love, joy, peace, and everything available in the Holy Spirit, it begins to manifest in you physically.

4.    As we read in Romans 8, salvation comes into the physical world through us. Creation’s ultimate release from futility will happen because the freedom of the glory of the children of God is manifested in us first. This is a process that happens through our appropriation.