Faith Is Essential for Receiving the Benefits of Partnership
David W Palmer
We have been looking at the benefits of partnership with Jesus and his ministers, etc. We have recently seen that part of the condition for remaining in partnership with Christ is to persist in our confident, bold confession of him and his word.
(Hebrews 3:14 NET) For we have become partners with Christ, if in fact we hold our initial confidence firm until the end. (See also: Eph. 3:12, Heb. 3:6, 4:16, 10:19, 35, etc.)
The Holy Spirit again uses the same Greek word, translated as confession, confidence, or boldness, when explaining faith and answered prayer:
(1 John 5:14–15 NKJV) Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. {15} And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
You may be wondering, “What does prayer have to do with partnership?” Our wonderful Lord has made all the benefits and blessing of partnership available for us; in Christ, he has provided “every spiritual blessing”:
(Ephesians 1:3 NKJV) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Let’s look at that again in a different translation of the Bible:
(Ephesians 1:3 NET) Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ.
The blessings and rewards of partnering with Jesus are reserved for us in “heavenly realms.” In other words, they exist concretely, but they are just in a different “realm” to the physical realm in which we interact with the world around us; our blessings are in the spirit realm. God put them there to keep them safe for us; they are ours now; they are simply waiting in God’s “heavenly realms”—his spiritual treasury vault—for us to come there and claim them. This is what prayer and faith have to do with partnership.
What are the benefits of partnership and blessings that are stored there for us? In short, everything we need for living a godly life. This would include holiness and sanctification, daily supply, health and healing, dream fulfillment, vision provision, resources, and the means to obtain them.
This is one of the reasons why confident, bold, assured faith is essential in our partnership with Jesus. Not only does it please God, but we need it to access the blessings and resources he has provided and laid up for us. And this explains why our wonderful Lord and Savior gave us his revelationary teachings on faith, along with all of his precious promises:
(2 Peter 1:3–5 NLT) “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. {4} And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. {5} In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith …”
Summary
Beginning tomorrow, we will next look at Jesus’s teaching on faith and how to access the benefits of partnership. But for now, let’s summarize what we have learned recently.
