Shalom to you, dear beloved righteous ones! Shalom, shalom and grace!
I want to share with you some thoughts that the Holy Spirit gave me. These are reflections on prayer, praise and thanksgiving in the light of the finished work of Christ.

WE HAVE EVERYTHING IN CHRIST

This very statement sometimes becomes a stumbling block when a conversation about grace comes up with believers. And although it fully agrees with Scripture, people still argue fiercely and try to prove that it is not so. I once had a conversation with a brother on this subject. He said that my statement that we have already received everything in Christ is a lie. Then we started talking about the tithe, and I told him that this teaching does not agree with the teaching and spirit of the New Testament, to which he replied: but I give the tithe on the basis that we have already received everything! Well, ironclad logic))).
But it is not I who claim that we have already received everything and have everything in Christ. Don’t bring your complaints to me, dear beloved brothers and sisters, those of you who disagree with me. It was said by the apostles Peter and Paul and even by Jesus Himself. Just search the Scriptures, as Jesus said, for in them you think you have eternal life, and they (the Scriptures) testify of Me (Jhn.5:39). Here are the places in Scripture that say that we have already received everything and have it in Christ: Mark 11:24, John 10:10, 2 Peter 1:3, Romans 8:32, Ephesians 1:3. These scriptures say directly that we have received everything. But there are many other places that say it indirectly. I will not go through every place here; I will look at one or two, and the rest I invite you, beloved, to find and read thoughtfully yourselves — consider it a challenge from me))).
The very first place I want to examine in detail is Mark 11:24. In the NKJV it reads like this:
“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
And now… a SURPRISE!!! from the Greek)))
Here is how this place is written in the Greek (I give a word-for-word translation here):
Through this I say to you, ALL things whatever you pray and ask, believe that you RECEIVED, and it will be to you.
I highlighted the word “received” so that you would pay attention to it. No, you are not mistaken. Jesus said that we have already received everything we will pray and ask for — in the past tense! Don’t believe it? I have already given you the link to this New Testament; here it is again: http://superbook.org/UBS/index.htm, check for yourselves. Follow the link, find Mark 11:24, click on the Greek word, and a page will open with the ways this word is used, its dictionary form and the grammatical use of the word you chose in this very place. Right next to this word there are green Latin letters; click on them and another page will open with the full grammatical breakdown, and if you just hover the cursor over the Greek word, you will see how the word is pronounced. So here this word is a verb in the past tense and in the completed form. Does that tell you anything? Personally, I see in it the finished work of Christ! Even when we ask for something, having this revelation we believe that in Christ we have already received everything, and then prayer turns from the category of petition into a prayer of thanksgiving. I also want to clarify something about thanksgiving, and the same applies to praise. I have been a Christian for a long time and have a couple of Christian schools behind me, and we were taught that if our prayers go unanswered for a long time, then if we thank or praise God, we will receive what we asked for. Have you heard this teaching too? But, dear ones, this is outright manipulation, and besides, it doesn’t work. Do you really think that the Creator of the whole universe and of us ourselves will allow His creation to manipulate Him? Then we would have become God, and He would be a wizard granting our wishes! No, dear saints! Long before we came into this world, even before it was created, He had already provided for and foreseen all our needs and desires. Remember the place that says God knows our needs before we ask (Mat.6:8), understands our thoughts afar off, and there is not yet a word on our tongue, but He already knows it altogether (Ps.139:2,4)? For me this place is in harmony with the first chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. Once the Holy Spirit showed me this chapter as a whole, and I saw what I had not noticed before: in the first half, from the first verse to the fifteenth, the apostle of grace tells us who we are in Christ, why, when, by whose will and in what way we became who we are in Christ, and also what privileges we have in Him, and then Paul prays for the believers that they would see all of this!!! Read the whole chapter carefully, and you will see it for yourselves.

I also want to share with you — and remind some of you who were at the meetings when we went through the first 3 chapters of Ephesians in detail — what we saw in the Greek text. It is so closely intertwined with the words of Christ in Mark that I was simply amazed.
Here is the place; the words I want to draw your attention to are written in capital letters:
… do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers:
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the KNOWLEDGE (επιγνώσει) of Him,
the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may KNOW (ειδέναι) what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power
which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places…
(Eph.1:16-20)
Did you notice that the Greek words translated as “knowledge” and “know” are completely different? It is obvious even to those who don’t know Greek at all. The meanings of these words are completely different. The first, επιγνώσει (epignosei), means close, intimate knowing; it is also used to describe the intimate relationship between a man and a woman (Strong’s dictionary). And the second, ειδέναι (eidenai), means to see physically, to experience firsthand, to feel.
Do you see the truth here? It answers the second question that people often ask who have not yet received the revelation of the finished work of Christ:
ALL RIGHT, IF GOD HAS ALREADY BLESSED US WITH EVERYTHING, WHY DON’T I SEE THESE BLESSINGS IN MY PERSONAL LIFE?
Here is the answer: get to know Christ, closely and intimately, His love, what He has already done for you; believe that He has ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED EVERYTHING, FORESEEN EVERYTHING, PROVIDED EVERYTHING, ANSWERED ALL PRAYERS AND POURED OUT THE ABUNDANT BLESSINGS OF GRACE, and then, as you come to know this, you will begin to experience it firsthand and see it being fulfilled in your life.
The question is also how you look at your life and at the Word of God. Do you look at your life with the eyes of faith through the truth of the Word of God, which testifies of Christ (of His finished work), or the other way round — do you look at it through your circumstances and your subjective human experience and feelings, and fit verses of Scripture to them? I have noticed that we often, going through something in our life, search Scripture for places that seem to confirm our life experience. Listen, if you use Scripture this way, pulling verses out of context, you can even get to the point where Scripture says there is no God. (There is Psalm 14, and it says: “The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”” If you pull only the last words out of this verse, you can prove to an uninformed person what I wrote above.) All heresies and errors are born from this. It is not our experience that we should explain by Scripture; rather, looking into Scripture, we should believe the truth regardless of our experience and feelings. And then the truth of Scripture will be embodied in your life and become the experience of Scripture in it. I liked the words of one preacher; he said: there are facts, they really exist, and we see them with our own eyes and experience them — they are real, but changeable. But there is also the TRUTH of the Word of God, which, being the only true reality, never changes. And when we trust not the facts and our experience but the TRUTH of His word, which is Jesus Christ crucified, who accomplished everything on the cross for us, then the circumstances and facts will change and come into line with the Word!
Of course, not everything happens immediately, instantly — it is a journey. But if you trust the Lord, it will be an exciting journey together with the Lord, who will lead you along it, support you if you fall and direct you if you turn aside. For He is faithful, and He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (the day of His coming) (Phl.1:6).
And here is one more question that also has an answer in Scripture:
SO HOW SHOULD WE PRAY NOW? IF GOD HAS ALREADY GIVEN US EVERYTHING, SHOULD WE NOT PRAY AT ALL?
The problem is that, somehow traditionally, by default, we understand prayer as petition, although the Greek word translated as prayer means not only asking but also an exchange of desires. It is we, who do not trust God and have not come to know His great love and grace, who have turned prayer into begging. I am not condemning anyone now; I used to be like that myself, but don’t we ask, don’t we beg God for years to answer this or that prayer? Is God hard of hearing, that we beg Him to do something for us — save our children and parents, send us a house, a car and so on — asking and begging for days, months and even years without seeing an answer to these prayers? And when what we asked for does happen, we usually take the glory for ourselves: it was I (she, he) who prayed the salvation of the children, the parents, the house, the car and so on out of God. As if God were not a loving Father who wants to give us good things, but some despot from whom blessings must be begged or earned. But He is not like that!!! Let’s admit it to ourselves: we simply don’t trust Him, and so we think that with our prayers or works we keep everything under control.
That is why it is so hard to let go of this illusion of control (in fact God never allows anyone to control Him and never will) and to trust completely the One who really controls EVERYTHING, including your blessings. Don’t be afraid, let go, you won’t fall — His loving, caring and strong arms are already holding you in an embrace at His chest, and if you calm down, you will hear not only what He is saying, but also the beating of His heart, full of great love for you! And if you believe what I wrote above, God’s peace and rest will reign in your heart. And prayer will become grateful, mutual fellowship with your loving Daddy! And thanksgiving and praise will then be not manipulation, but a natural response to what you have already received.
Look through Paul’s letters: what does he write about prayer, and how did he pray himself? Nowhere will you find a prayer for the salvation of relatives, a prayer for forgiveness of sins, a prayer for blessings. He begins his prayers by thanking God, and when he instructs believers to pray, in every case he mentions thanksgiving. Why? Because he understood and accepted a very important truth: by GRACE we have been saved (kept from danger, preserved safe and sound, saved from a sinful life) through FAITH (trust), and that NOT OF OURSELVES; it is THE GIFT OF GOD, NOT OF WORKS, lest ANYONE SHOULD BOAST (Eph.2:8-9), and also that all the promises of God in Him (Christ Jesus) are YES, and in Him (in Christ) AMEN (2 Cor.1:20).
Well, that is all I wanted to share with you this time. May everyone who reads this hear it with their heart, hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and see what our loving Lord Jesus Christ has done for all of us. And don’t be shy to come to Him and take from Him. That is healthy selfishness. Shalom to you, dear and beloved children of God.
Next time I promise to share with you what the Lord showed me about our salvation.
With love in Christ, your sister Nina.