I have already shared here my testimony about my encounter with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and there I wrote that at the moment they knocked at our door I was writing down, as if dictated by the Holy Spirit, the answer to my reflections on how we please God in the new covenant. It is this revelation (slightly edited) that I want to share with you, dear beloved saints, righteous in Christ!

Once I had a question: how can I please God? Different people have different ideas about how and why to do it. Let me say right away that we do not need to please God in order to gain His love and acceptance. He deeply and passionately loves each of us, and always has, even before we believed in Jesus. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Rom.5:8] What is more, it is Jesus living in us who has pleased God, and now we are pleasing to Him unconditionally, in Christ. This is the most important thing. But I, like probably anyone who has come to know God’s love, very much want to be pleasing to God as a sign of gratitude. It is a good desire, and I think it is the Holy Spirit who produces this desire in us as new creations. But how do we please God rightly, in a way that is acceptable to Him — what does He like, what works please Him? I studied passages of Scripture in Greek with an interlinear translation into Russian, and that way you can see a great deal in a completely different light. I will pay special attention to some passages, those where the difference from other translations is fundamental. So:

But without faith it is impossible to please Him
—Hebrews 11:6

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
—John 6:28-29

So we become pleasing to God by faith, and the work that pleases God is FAITH. Let’s look now at what Scripture tells us about faith. A number of questions arise here:
1. What is faith?
2. What do we believe in?
3. Where does it come from?

Here is what the Lord revealed to me. It went on for several months. The Lord showed it to me from time to time in small fragments, and by now I have gathered so many pieces that I can see a small but beautiful picture! I believe it is not yet complete, because full understanding will come to us only in heaven, when we see everything face to face, but even what has begun to be revealed to me now is so beautiful that it simply takes my breath away when I look at this picture! And do you know what I see there? Christ! In His beauty, love and glory! I also want to point out that any revelation from God, if it really is from God, will always point you to Christ, because He is the image of God and the brightness of His glory, and it is at His name that every knee will finally bow, of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth! But I have got carried away — and it is impossible not to get carried away by Him, He is so beautiful!

1) So what is faith? The Holy Spirit led me from verse to verse, and I will share it with you. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” [Heb.11:1] And then: “For we walk by faith, not by sight (by what we see with our physical eyes).” [2 Cor.5:7] Here I remembered how I once asked myself: if God is full of love and grace, why doesn’t He make it so that people in the world do not suffer from sickness and poverty, from sin? And after a while God showed me that He has already done it all! Chapter 9 of Hebrews describes Jesus as our High Priest, who (verse 26) “…now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away (set aside, remove, annul) sin by the sacrifice of Himself“, and John’s epistle says: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” [1 Jhn.3:8] So God has destroyed sin and all the works of the devil. Then why is all this still on the earth? Because the devil still rules this world, but we believers no longer live in this world. God has seated us in Christ in heaven, and we are ambassadors of His Kingdom, which is within us [Eph.2:6; 2 Cor.5:20; Luk.17:21] And in His kingdom there is no sickness or death, no poverty in any form. So, being in His Kingdom and carrying it within us, we can live by the blessings of this kingdom. I also understood that since sin and its consequences have been destroyed and we live by faith, we have what we believe.

2) What do we believe in? Jesus said more than once that faith had saved someone, healed someone and so on. But the devil deceives people. He knows that, having physical eyes, we are more inclined to believe what we see. And so, when we see problems, symptoms, shortcomings, behaviour, which are changeable facts, they hide from us the unseen — the unchanging truth of God’s word. It is written that Christ on the cross has already done everything for our salvation and brought us into His rest; He has also made us a new creation: we are holy, we are righteous, we are sanctified, perfect, without spot or blemish; we are as Christ is in this world [2 Cor.5:17; 1 Pet.2:9-10; Heb.10:10,14; Eph.5:26-27; 1 Jhn.4:17]. This is the unchanging truth of God’s word, invisible to our physical eyes but visible to the eyes of our hearts. But the devil tricks us into focusing on the visible facts of visible reality — on behaviour, on our condition, on circumstances and so on — and then we do not see the unchanging truth of God behind it all. This is where we need faith! The Gospel of Mark says: “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” [Mar.11:24], and here is the Greek version of this verse: “Therefore I say to you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you received them, and you will have them.” Did anyone notice the difference? The difference is that the word “receive” is in the past tense in the original!! And what have we as believers received? We have received Christ! He is the only thing — or rather the only One — we need to believe in!! And with Christ God gives us everything! “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” [Rom.8:32] That is, having Christ inside us, we as new creations have everything we need inside us.

And what do we need? Health? It is there, inside you. Provision for material needs, spiritual needs, restoration of the soul? It is all there! Inside me, everything is hidden in the new creation, which is the union of Christ with you! We are righteous, and the righteous are heirs of all God’s promises! This is what we must believe! Don’t spend your faith on believing for this or that thing you need; concentrate it on believing in what Jesus has done for you on the cross and in who you are in Him. Believe that you have already received it, and you will have it. When I say that with Jesus we have received everything, I don’t mean only healing and material blessings. In Him we have also received victory over every sin and addiction in our life. Having become a new creation, we have become like Him, and it is hard to imagine Christ fighting, yelling, being irritated with someone or offending His wife, disobeying a husband or parents, drinking, smoking or calling someone rude or foul names. But listen! In us, as new creations, none of this exists! In Christ, by grace, we are free from it! For grace has been given to us not only so that we have the forgiveness of sins, but it also trains us, “teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” [Tit.2:12] And it is also written: “For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” [Rom.5:17]

All we need is to receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, which multiply in us through knowing Christ, and then through Christ we will reign in our lives! Not sin, not sickness, not failure, not poverty, foolishness, alcohol, drugs or smoking, pornography, fornication and the rest: YOU are a new creation, righteous and holy, like Jesus, your Saviour, who lives inside you!! But the devil does not want to allow this. If he cannot take eternal life away from you, then by tricking you into believing in the old you and, by giving you symptoms, into believing in sickness, he can influence you and steal from you a successful and victorious life in Christ on earth, and rob you of the reward for taking part in God’s work. This is how he does it: he brings you thoughts in the first person, for example: “I’m a sinner”, “I’m a failure”, “he drives me crazy”, “this sister is such-and-such, and that brother is such-and-such” — and you accept them as your own and say them. Once Jesus turned to people and said: “Why do you think in your hearts, SAYING…” — that is, a thought remains just a thought until you accept it and say it.

Let me give an example from my own life. Once I went through this: my husband and I had a fight, and I went into another room, sat down on the sofa and began angrily thinking and saying: “How could he! I hate him! I hate him. I hate him, I hate him!” I worked myself up so much that, honest to God, I was ready to go and kill him. I’m not being dramatic, that’s how it was! I am so emotional that the devil easily used my weakness against me. And suddenly I heard a quiet voice inside me: “Don’t say ‘I hate’, say ‘I love’. You really do love him, you are a new creation!” And I began to say it out loud: “I love him, I love him, I love him!” And you know, the anger and hatred burst like a soap bubble! The devil is a liar, and when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, but we have the true and unchanging word of God, which tells the truth about us, and that is what our faith is based on! Have you received Jesus? Then believe that you are a new creation, righteous, holy and perfect, and that the same mind must be in you as in Christ! And hatred and malice are foreign to Christ. Resist the devil’s thoughts with firm faith in what Christ has done for you on the cross: He has not only forgiven your sins but destroyed the very essence of sin, destroyed every reason for condemnation, because God condemned sin in the body of Christ; He has given you His completely new, divine nature and a new, abundant life; you are now hidden in Christ! Believe this, and if you believe it, don’t keep silent! And the devil will flee from you.

If the thought comes that a brother or sister irritates you, say that you love him or her, because you are a new creation in Christ and God has poured out His love in your heart by the Holy Spirit; you can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens you. Even when you have fallen, I pray that the Holy Spirit will remind you that you are righteous in Christ, holy and blameless, perfect, and that sin is not yours! And I also want to say something to those who are going through trials or problems right now! They flicker before your eyes and keep you from seeing the truth of the word, that God loves you and that all things work together for good to you who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We often think God is playing tag with the devil: you have a problem in your marriage, you pray, and God rushes to help solve the problem; you get sick, and here God is, running to bring you healing, financial blessing and so on. But that is not the truth of the Gospel. The truth is that God has already completed your salvation; through Christ’s sacrifice and in Christ He has given you everything you need for life and godliness, He has blessed you with every blessing, and now He is enjoying Shabbat shalom! He has done everything for us in Christ, but unfortunately the devil sometimes knows better than some of us what and how much God has done through Christ’s sacrifice, and, seeing a great blessing in your marriage in the future, he starts, figuratively speaking, throwing dust in your eyes, and you see problems instead of blessings! That’s when it is time to practise faith!

Believe that the loving God has everything under control and that the devil has already been defeated. God will turn this whole situation to your good, strengthen you and make you grow. And the devil will once again grind his teeth in anger. This applies to everything that happens in your life. This is faith in action! But don’t confess something in order to get something; then it is manipulation, not faith. It is written that you have already received — so believe that you already have it, ask God to give you this revelation, and then you will confess what you already have but do not yet see with your physical eyes. And you will have it. The famous faith movement once failed in exactly this. People misunderstood the teaching of Brother Hagin and began confessing in order to receive, trying to produce faith that way, but it doesn’t work. Because we cannot manipulate God! This led to many disappointments. That is what happens when the good news is not preached as good news, which is that Jesus has done everything for us on the cross and we simply need to accept this truth and rest in it! Of course, the devil is interested in distorting it, because the uncorrupted gospel is the great power of God (dunamis) to salvation for everyone who believes.

3) The good news is also that we draw even our faith from Christ! There is the answer to the question of where faith comes from! For it is He who is the author and finisher of our faith. Listen to how Galatians 2:20 sounds in the original — the King James Version keeps it: “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live BY THE FAITH of THE SON of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” That is, in the flesh, in this world, while we do not yet see God face to face, we live by the faith of the Son of God, which leads and guides us through life. Dear beloved children of God! Saints, righteous, perfect and blameless! I stir up our pure minds by way of reminder, the pure minds placed in us together with the divine nature of Jesus! Everything, everything, everything is placed inside us: a victorious life, peace, salvation, righteousness! Believe this; don’t look for great signs, prophets or anything else from outside; everything we need we already have! Believe this, confess it, and have the abundant life promised by Christ, in Christ and only in Christ! For it is all about Him! Behold Him, admire Him, enjoy what you see, and be transformed into His image from glory to glory. Remember that He has loved you with a strong love, and delight yourselves in it and in the abundance of peace!

“For the LORD has called you Like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, Like a youthful wife when you were refused, Says your God. For a mere moment I have forsaken you, But with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you, Says the LORD, your Redeemer. For this is like the waters of Noah to Me; For as I have sworn That the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, So have I sworn That I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart And the hills be removed, But My kindness shall not depart from you, Nor shall My covenant of peace be removed, Says the LORD, who has mercy on you.” [Isa.54:6-10] Dear ones! Remember who we are, how greatly we are blessed and how deeply we are loved, and experience in your life the victory given to you by Christ!