Under Satan’s Plan A his motive is to separate mankind from God and populate Hell. He plans to accomplish this by causing as many Christians as he possibly can to be on the losing end of "the good fight of faith". He would really like to see Christians fall completely away from God, even to the extent that God would blot their names out of the Lamb's Book Of Life (Rev. 2:26 & 3:5). Of course, he's not able to win that fight with every believer, so he has an alternate plan --- Plan B for those who "keep" the faith.

Satan’s motive for Plan B is to render believers fruitless and ineffective in their work for the Lord - - - especially in the area of prayer because that’s where most of the real work and progress for the Lord is accomplished! So we must be certain that we always remain submitted to God and that we continually resist (not fight) the devil. His method for Plan B primarily concerns God’s righteousness, which is the subject of this teaching.

TRUTH NO. 3:

We need to focus now on two particular areas of these verses - - - "ASK" and "BEAR MUCH FRUIT". Now I don’t mean to minimize the ministry of leading the lost to Christ, but that's not primarily what these scriptures are referring to. What throws us here is the word "fruit". When we hear the word "fruit", we automatically think about "converts". But there are other kinds of fruit besides converts. These verses are talking about some kind of fruit, and so we need to know what kind of fruit it’s referring to. The answer is, PRAYER FRUIT. In other words, being effective in prayer - - - having a "fruitful" (or successful) prayer life! Notice In verse seven it says, "ye shall ASK . . . ."

When it comes to our prayer life, we know that there are two particular areas which are vital to being effective - - - forgiveness and righteousness (i.e. having a good relationship with God). Since righteousness, and our understanding of it, has much to do with the effectiveness and success of our prayers, that’s the area we will focus on during the remainder of this lesson.

The condition of our relationship with the Lord and how we perceive He feels about us is vital to the effectiveness of our prayers. Well, guess who else is aware of that! Even though he's not all knowing like God is, the devil knows that too. That's why he tries so hard to weaken and undermine our faith in the area of prayer and our relationship with the Lord.

Whether we realize it or not, our faith is continually under attack. But the attack on our faith --- the testing and trying of our faith is not initiated by God, nor is it commissioned by God. Brothers and sisters, God gets blamed for a lot of things He never does!

God is not the one who brings adversity to us, and He's also not the one who's testing our faith, either. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is "the author and finisher of our faith"! If that's true, and it is, shouldn’t Jesus know all there is to know about our faith? Certainly! He has absolutely no need to test our faith for any reason. Besides, God is all-knowing. Therefore He knows all there is to know about everything, including our faith.

It’s so important for the Body of Christ to understand that (although he’s already been defeated) the devil is the one who's attacking our faith because he’s still on the loose! He's the enemy when it comes to the "good fight of faith". And he's the one who keeps bringing all the pressures and tribulations to believers through various people and methods. So why is he doing that? What’s his motive here? He wants our faith to falter and fail. He's very persistent, and it would seem that he's been fairly successful up to now.

But now what about Satan’s method for his Plan B, in rendering the believer to be ineffective in God’s work? What does this have to do with righteousness? What's that all about? How is he able to render a believer unfruitful? Ans.: His primary method for rendering the believer ineffective in the Lord’s work is by continually reminding the believer about his or her shortcomings and past failures. He wants to make us feel unrighteous and keep us under condemnation - - - to make us feel unworthy to receive from God. How is he able to do this? Ans.: It’s fairly easy if we don’t have a good understanding of "righteousness". That’s the reason for this lesson - - - to help believers have more confidence in their prayer life through a good understanding of righteousness!

Now think with me for a just a moment: The devil has known Jesus for a long, long time. Amen? He knew Jesus a long time before any of us ever knew Him. And this might come as a shock to some of you, but the devil even knows and understands that Jesus is the Christ. But - - - he has not, does not, and never will accept Jesus as his Lord. Why? Because there has never been any TRUTH in him and there will never be any TRUTH in him (John 8:44).

But guess what! That doesn't keep him from knowing the Truth. He knows the Word of God. He can even quote it. But he'll never accept it and embrace it because to do so he would also have to embrace Jesus and accept Him as his Lord! That’s what bothers me about some "so-called Christians". They say that Jesus is their Lord, but at the same time they refuse to accept all of His Word as Truth.

This is talking about the condition of our heart --- about whether or not our heart condemns us. If our heart does condemn us, then we feel unworthy. And when we feel unworthy, our faith becomes weakened which makes our prayers fruitless and ineffective. Notice the word, "Ask" in verse twenty-two. You see, the devil wants to deceive us into believing that we're not worthy to receive anything from God, especially through prayer - - - that we’re not worthy to be heard of Him.

If Satan can get our heart to condemn us, --- in other words if he can keep our heart in a guilty mode, then once again he's gotten the upper hand and created havoc in our prayer life even though he has absolutely no legal right or authority to do so. In other words, the condition of our heart determines how we feel about ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves has everything to do with the effectiveness of our prayer life. But that’s not the end of it. The worst part it is this. The devil knows all about it, but few believers understand anything about it!

So what's the answer or solution to this devilish situation? How is Satan getting by with this within the Church, and what can we, as individuals, do about it? Well, as I said, the problem has been the Church’s lack of training and understanding in this area of righteousness. And this lack of understanding has affected practically everything Jesus accomplished for us at Calvary. It has affected our prayers, our healing, our prosperity, and many Christian ministries of one type or another as well. To my knowledge, there has been very little teaching on this subject. The solution, however, is really pretty simple.

First of all, we're going to need to have a much better understanding of righteousness. Secondly, if we truly want to be effective and fruitful for the Lord, then we must also know how to receive from God. We need to realize something. We need to realize that absolutely NOTHING can stop the dynamic working of believers when we have a good understanding of RIGHTEOUSNESS !

On the flip side, if we have a poor or shallow understanding about what the Bible teaches concerning "righteousness" and the role it plays in the success of the Church, then we'll never be able to fully partake of God’s best. Simply put, if we want our prayer life to be successful (and who among us doesn't?) then we must learn what the Bible teaches about "RIGHTEOUSNESS ". So let’s see what the Word says about it.

Most of us already know what the word "righteous" means. But just in case someone doesn't, the word "righteous" means, "one who is just, upright, and in right standing with God."

When we study the meanings of the Greek words for "effectual" and "fervent" as used here in the 16th verse, we find that the Holy Spirit is teaching us that an active, earnest, and heartfelt prayer of a RIGHTEOUS person has the potential to be tremendously powerful and very effective in its ability to produce results.

In other words, it has everything to do with being heartfelt and righteous and absolutely nothing what so ever to do with repetitive praying or long prayers! These scriptures are emphasizing the QUALITY of prayer --- not the QUANTITY of prayer!

Then the next two verses continue on and give Elijah as an example of praying a "righteous" person's active, earnest, and heartfelt prayer. Take particular notice that these scriptures are talking about a righteous person being very effective in prayer. In other words, one of the key requirements for any prayer to be effective, is that the prayer must come from a "righteous" person. Why is that? It’s because God hears only the prayers of those who are "righteous" --- those who are in "right standing" with Him. So, really, the major ingredient which enables faith to be released in a prayer in order to bring about successful results has to do with the word "righteous."

Many believers wonder why their prayers seldom seem to get answered. The thinking of many of God's children has been very fuzzy and unclear about this subject of "righteousness". The result has been that much of the Church has missed out on receiving the promises and blessings of God. Many think, "Oh, wait just a minute! James 5:16 couldn't be talking about me --- not with all of my shortcomings, faults, and failures. Surely that can't be talking about me because I'm certainly not very righteous." Now where do you think that kind of attitude and wrong thinking comes from?

I believe it comes from a lack of Bible knowledge. You see, many Christians have associated "righteousness" as an individual’s status which is to be obtained sometime in the future - - - after salvation - - - as something that only comes to those who have somehow learned to consistently live their life in a manner pleasing to God - - - as someone who knows how to live according to all of God’s commandments and Christian standards.

Well, Godly living and Godly conduct are involved all right. But the Bible says that our righteousness is as filthy rags. Amen? But, you see, a believer has a different kind of righteousness. All believers have "the righteousness of God in Christ" and this righteousness is based totally upon Jesus and what He accomplished at Calvary! It’s my prayer that more believers would somehow fully comprehend this Truth! And I would hope that no one would believe this just because I say it. I would hope you will check it out with the Word.

Whether we realize it or not, when we became a believer we made a trade with Jesus. When we became a believer we gave Jesus our sins and He gave us His righteousness! And yet many in the Body of Christ today have never understood that. Many falsely see "righteousness" as a state of super development that they’re going to "grow into" some day in the future. And if and when they ever obtain that state of being, THEN MAYBE their faith will finally become effective and THEN MAYBE God will finally begin to pay attention to their prayers.

But please understand that we believers don't have righteousness because of anything we’ve accomplished on our own. We only have the "righteousness of God in Christ" because we chose to believe what Christ accomplished at Calvary some 2000 years ago! Look closely at Romans, Chapter ten, Verse ten.

Romans 10:10 - "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

This tells us that salvation is a two step process and that righteousness comes first. Notice here that man first believes unto righteousness - - - not salvation. You see, when a sinner (an enemy of God) chooses to believe and accept the Gospel as Truth, he or she immediately becomes "righteous". In other words, for the first time in his or her life the new believer is removed from God’s enemy list and placed onto His righteous list. - - - on the right-standing with God list. But it’s not until the new believer confesses Jesus as Lord that Salvation is initiated.

Righteousness is somewhat like marriage. You're either married or you're not. It's not a "sometimes I'm married and sometimes I'm not married" situation. So it is with righteousness. Righteousness, like salvation, is also a free gift from God and we receive it when we become believers. And righteousness doesn't come and go any more than salvation comes and goes. In other words, we're either righteous or we're not. We're either saved or we're not. It's just that simple. OK? Now let's turn in our Bibles to the 5th Chapter of Romans and lets prove that righteousness is a gift like I said.

The Gift Of Righteousness:

Notice in this verse the words, "GIFT of righteousness". To be effective in the life which we now live, we must understand that" righteousness" is something we freely receive when we become believers. Righteousness is not something we eventually develop or grow into after the salvation process begins. It's very important that we get a hold of this Bible truth, because a lack of knowledge in this area is one of the major hindrances to prayer. It defeats a lot of believers when it comes to prayer.

If we don't know and understand that we became in right- standing with God at the time we became believers, and that righteousness doesn't come and go, it will keep our faith level low and our prayers from being fruitful. And as I've tried to convey in this message, WE WILL NEVER BE ANY MORE NOR ANY LESS RIGHTEOUS THAN WE WERE THE MOMENT WHEN WE BECAME A BELIEVER! "But Brother Benbow, isn’t it possible for a believer to sin and lose their righteousness"? Well, let's see. Lets go to First John, Chapter one:

Note John mentions the word "unrighteousness" in connection with sin. You see, something happens when we Christians sin. When we sin, we don't lose our "relationship" with God. No! We're still a child of God. Amen? That should tell us that we don’t lose our righteousness just because we occasionally sin. However, there is something we do lose. We lose our "sense of fellowship" with God. When we sin our heart condemns us and what we lose is our sense of being in right standing with Him. In other words, we lose our sense of righteousness. Amen?

When our heart condemns us, we feel like we're alienated from God. We fell that we're no longer worthy to be in fellowship with the Lord. We feel that we've betrayed Him and let Him down by being disobedient. So, being human, we tend to act just like Adam and Eve acted in the Garden after they disobeyed God. We tend to take ourselves out of fellowship and run and hide somewhere.

There's a saying which goes like this: "If God seems distant, guess who moved!" Well, you can bet it wasn't God Who moved!. Amen? God changes not. He’s he same yesterday, today, and forever. We're the changeable ones. We're the ones who turn and run from Him --- He doesn't run away from us! In fact He even told us, I'll never leave you (temporarily) nor will I forsake you (permanently)." So then what are we supposed to do when we sin? --- when we slip andl miss the mark?

This scripture here in First John, Chapter one says that If we repent and confess our sins and ask the Lord for forgiveness then our advocate, Jesus Christ, is faithful and just to forgive us and that He will cleanse us from all "unrighteousness". He will cleanse us from those acts of sin which we’ve committed - - - from those sins which cause our heart to condemn us and make us feel as though we're no longer in fellowship with Him.

So it looks like if we'll do our part (i.e. repent and confess) then He'll do His part and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. At this point our sense of fellowship is restored and once again we feel we're back in right standing with the Father. Once that takes place, our prayers become effective once again. But in reality, as long as we remain "in Christ" we never lose our righteousness, we simply lose our sense of it.

So, when we sin (and we all do from time to time) our heart condemns us. It’s at this point, when our heart condemns us, that the adversary engages his Plan B. He really likes to beat us over the head with a "sense of unrighteousness". He'll try to hold us in a state of condemnation and unworthiness as long as he can. You see, the devil knows that when a believer's heart condemns him --- when the believer is in that state of mind, then his or her faith becomes ineffective and unfruitful.

On the other hand, if we understand what we're supposed to do and that we have an advocate, the righteous Jesus Christ, then we put ourselves in a good position to return to being fruitful once again. This is one way to resist the devil. His tactics won't work on us any more because now we know the Truth! Knowing the Truth and doing the Truth will set us free!

But let’s be sure we get it right. We cannot be right with God if we continually and habitually live in sin and practice sin. A person who does that is not saved! But these scriptures are not talking about that type of situation. Neither are they talking about a believer who commits the unforgivable sin. 1 John 1:7 says, "But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin". Verses seven through ten are referring to the saved. They're talking about when a Christian occasionally falls short and misses the mark.

The first part of this verse which says, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin" means, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin AS A USUAL PRACTICE." In other words, it's talking about a person who doesn't continually practice sin because of his or her being a new creature in Christ through the new birth - - - one who is no longer in BONDAGE to sin.

Since John addresses this epistle to "My little children", it should be very plain to us that he's writing this to fellow believers so that they wouldn't habitually practice sin. He certainly didn't want them to think that he was encouraging them to sin. Then he went on to say, (my paraphrase) "However, if you should happen to stumble and sin, you have an advocate with the Father." Most of you already know this, but that word "advocate" means "lawyer" or "one who pleads our case for us".

Now notice who John says this advocate is. Does he say our advocate is Jesus Christ, the Savior? No! Does he say our advocate is Jesus Christ, the Lord? No! He says our advocate is Jesus Christ, the RIGHTEOUS! In other words, someone who is RIGHTEOUS with the Father --- someone who's CONTINUALLY in fellowship with the Father and ALWAYS in a position to plead our case when we stumble and miss the mark! He’s not a part-time advocate!

Now as I said a few minutes ago, the reason we feel so unworthy to come into the presence of God is because when we sin our heart condemns us and we lose our sense of righteousness. But we also need to understand that when we repent and confess our sins, we're not only forgiven of those sins, we’re also cleansed from our sense of unrighteousness! We're cleansed from our sense of unrighteousness and delivered from all feelings of condemnation!

The revelation of this should set us free from condemnation and restore our confidence when it comes to God answering our prayers. Amen? But as long as we remain under condemnation, we cannot and we will not be able to operate in faith. Can you see that? The latter part of Romans 14:23 says, "whatsoever is not of faith is sin."

The devil likes to try to keep us under condemnation through wrong thinking. Even other Christians will sometimes try to keep us under condemnation. Some folks have all kinds of negative rules and regulations. They say, "If you want to be right with God then don't do this", or "don't do that." But the Bible says that all the promises in Christ are "yes and amen" (2 Cor. 1:20)! So unless we understand what the Bible has to say about righteousness, all those don'ts can keep us in condemnation --- in spiritual bondage. So in light of this, put this next statement into your heart: Man's rules and regulations don't have one thing to do with the believer’s righteousness.

I'm not talking about those areas where the Word of God clearly teaches what's right and what's wrong. Most of us know that we're supposed to live holy and to be a doer of the Word. And even though we're not righteous because of our works, we know that God wants us to produce good works and live according to His Word - - - to be doers of His Word. What I'm trying to say here is this: Some people have personal convictions that they'll sometimes try to tack onto and add to the Word as requirements for being "righteous."

Now focus for a minute on those two words, WEIGHT and SIN. These are two different words with two different meanings. We all know what sin is but what about weights? What are weights?

Weights are those things that only hinder us in our race. In our race to Heaven, we'll always run across some people who'll try to unload their hindering weights on us. I realize this is a secular saying that we’ve all heard at one time or another, but there seems to be an element of truth to it. It says, "Misery loves company". We should never accept these weights. However, we should always try to live by our convictions and preach and teach the Word of Truth and then trust the Lord to take care of the rest!

Once again, when it comes to RIGHTEOUSNESS, WE WILL NEVER BE ANY MORE NOR ANY LESS RIGHTEOUS THAN WE WERE WHEN WE FIRST BELIEVED." If you're a believer, then you are "the righteousness of God in Christ". So "study the Word to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth"(2 Tim. 2:15). Diligently seek the TRUTH. Keep the devil and others from putting you under condemnation. If you don't, your faith level will be low and your prayers will remain (for the most part) relatively ineffective.

Only when we understand the basis of God’s free gift of "righteousness" that belongs to every believer --- only then will our prayers become effective and fruitful. I hope we now have a better understanding of God’s "righteousness". If so, then we should be able to go boldly unto the throne of grace to find help in time of need. Now that we know the enemy’s tactics, we should be much more effective in our prayer life when we pray for others and ourselves. AMEN