Prepare Your Heart to Receive: Turn the Oven On

Hello Family!

As you know, we have a guest speaker this Sunday, and I felt led to send out a blog every day this week to help us prepare our hearts for this Sunday’s Service. All throughout God’s word, He tells us that He is our provider. He is our source in every area of our lives. Health, joy, prosperity, peace, etc. are all in His word, but our job is to find the scripture and stand on that word - believing that we receive from Him. So, throughout this week, we are going to prepare our hearts to receive from God as the guest speaker prepares to bring forth the message.

As I was meditating on this thought, I looked at a box of Betty Crocker cake mix sitting on my kitchen counter and heard the Holy Spirit say, “Let’s bake a Cake of Faith.” So, today (Happy Valentine’s Day!) let’s begin baking the cake! 

First, we heat the oven. In other words, we must “turn up the heat” on our bar of expectancy. The definition for expectancy in the Noah Webster Dictionary, is to anticipate and look forward to the coming or occurrence of. Whatever we expect to receive from God is what we will receive, and if we hold tight to that promise without wavering, we will receive it! The word of God tells us in Matthew 7:11 (ESV):

 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how MUCH MORE will your Father who is in heaven give good to those who ask him!

God loves us so much, and He desires to be our provider in all areas of our life! He wants to bestow on us gifts and provision, but we must receive the gift that He wants to give us. We must position ourselves to receive, and the first thing we need to do is to heat the oven. If the directions say, “heat the oven to 350 degrees” but you only heat the oven to 250 degrees, you are not going to have a fully cooked cake. Maybe parts of it will be cooked (the top and bottom), but the inside of that cake will not be finished. Who wants an uncooked cake? No one.  So, we must turn up the heat to get a fully cooked cake. 

We as believers must always have our “heat” turned up on what we are believing God for. The word says, “faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.” Faith and hope are the tools that help us turn up our expectancy, and we use these tools when standing on the Word of God. We have faith and hope in His promises.

Your first assignment this week is to gather scriptures that line up with what you are believing for, and keep them before your eyes. Continually tell yourself, “I fully expect to receive what I am reading and confessing.” Push your expectancy bar higher. Raise your oven temperature from 250 degrees to 350 degrees! Keep your oven turned on! Don’t turn it off in the middle of the heating up process. Keep anticipating and looking forward to your breakthrough. Expect to receive!

Join us tomorrow as we continue preparing our hearts for this Sunday.

Love and Blessings!

-Pastor Candace