Inspirational Readings

Mike Connell, Shane Willard

Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5)  

Tue 17 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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2 Sessions:
a) The Gifts of the Spirit: Understand 9 operations of the spirit and how to position yourself to flow in them. We are designed to be a supernatural being, to connect with heaven and earth. You are designed to flow with the Holy Spirit. God wants us to add understanding how to do it. He promises He'll give the gifts to every believer. He desires to work through you, and its not about maturity, its about faith.
b) Hearing the Voice of God: How to recognise the Voice of God. It comes from within, and its possible to exercise or "spirit man" by positioning ourselves to hear, and knowing how it comes. We can be trained to recognise spirit impressions and hear God's voice - for ourselves and others (demonstrations)

Introduction

Welcome to our seminar on Activating the Gifts of the Spirit. I trust that you'll download off the internet the manual you'll need, and you can just follow it through with us. I encourage you, if you're in a group, that you just practice with the people are in the group. Remember, it's just a practice; so as you practice, you'll get feedback from the person, and you'll be able to explore what it is to hear the voice of God, and to flow with the gifts of the spirit.

Main Message

In this first session (Section #2 in your notes) we're going to look at the Gifts of the Spirit; and we're going to read from 1 Corinthians 12:1.

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, or concerning operations of the spirit, brothers, I would not have you to be ignorant”.

Paul is writing to the church... Notice the first thing: God wants you to move in the supernatural. You are designed to be a supernatural being. You are a spirit being living inside a body.

With your body you can communicate with the external world; with your spirit you can communicate with the realm of God, the realm of the spirit.

You are designed to flow and access with the supernatural realm of God; you don't have to become a spiritual person - you already are spiritual. You already have a spirit dimension to you.

Your natural body has five senses: you can see, you can hear, you can taste, touch, smell. Your spirit man also has spiritual senses. With your physical senses you can interact with the physical world. You receive signals, and from that you can begin to identify certain things. It's the same in your spirit; but many people haven't developed their spiritual capacity.

1) The first thing is: you are a spirit being - and God wants you to operate supernaturally. That's His plan; and so Paul writes: “I don't want you to be ignorant of the supernatural realm, or how to work with the Holy Spirit”.

The word ‘ignorant’ means: having no practical experience or understanding of this; so the reason things are hard, is because we don't know how. Over this seminar, we want to take away the mystery of how hard it is, and make it so it's actually really simple. Everything that God does is incredibly simple, and it requires just an open heart to receive.

You don't have to be highly educated to move in the supernatural. You don't have to be highly educated to flow with the Holy Spirit. He will use anyone that will just open their life up and say: God, here I am, I'm available, work through me - so God will work through you.

God wants us to be empowered, and equipped to bring His power to people. The church has long lost the flow of power; but now, in these days, God is restoring power back to the church. We'll see that part of the great commission is that you be anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit, and you are able to lay hands on the sick, you are able to minister to people - you are able to flow with the Holy Spirit.

That makes sense, because the world isn't going to come into a church building; the church has to go to the world, and bring God to the world. We want to show you how to do this; and we want to teach you how to work with the Holy Spirit, in an environment where you're just practising and learning; then your journey is to develop what you learn and grow it. Don't wait for some revival, and don't wait for some big experience; take what we give you and teach you, and begin to apply it and practice it, and you'll get better and better and better. God is more willing to use you than you realise!

2) The second thing is: we're going talk a little bit about the gifts of the spirit themselves.

1 Corinthians 12:7 – “Now the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man, to profit with all”

It uses the word 'manifestation’, it means: something that's visible, tangible, that people can see. He's saying: God wants to operate through you, in a way that's tangible, that people can experience Him.

I prophesied over someone the other day. I brought a word from God to them, and I shared with them things God showed me, things which were so personal, and so connected to that person, that when I asked them: how did this affect you; they said: I felt like my whole life was open before God, and He was here, talking to me personally.

The gifts of the spirit are manifestations of a person - the Holy Spirit; so it's not like you have some kind of gift. You have a person; and you work with Him to bring His life forth. It's all about a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

It says: “the manifestation of the spirit is given to everyone” - so who is left out of the word ‘everyone’? There's no one left out - this is for you! Everyone includes you.

1 Corinthians 12:11 – “Now these work the same self spirit, dividing to every man severally, as He wills”.

God is very clear in the word - He wants every person to be able to flow in the spirit.

He gives the gifts of the spirit to everyone; so if you haven't functioned in them, or flowed in them, or received them yet - it's mostly because you don't know how to. If we show you how to, and you extend your faith, God will work through you. It says: He gives them to everyone.

3) It is a gift. The gifts of the spirit are something God gives you - so you don't have to earn it.

You don't have to stay in church a long time for this to happen. As soon as the Holy Spirit empowers you, or comes on you (and you're baptised in the spirit) - you are able to operate in the gifts of the spirit immediately - if you will learn how to recognise and work with the Holy Spirit. It's very, very simple. It's never hard. It's just we have to grow this dimension in our life.

I remember my wife - we had a whole group of babies in a crèche crying, and she said: oh my one's crying. I said: really? I could just hear babies crying; but she could hear: that's my child crying, because her ear was tuned, in the midst of the noise, to pick up the sound of someone she recognised.

There is a lot of noise that we have going on in our head and in our lives. We need to learn how to calm down and quiet down, and just recognise when God is talking to you - we want to help you with that, and demonstrate that.

“The gifts of the spirit are given to everyone, to profit all” - notice here: it's not an indication you're mature.

God will give the gifts of the spirit to any person. It does not make them spiritual. It means: they're just listening and responding to God, that's all.

So a person can flow in the gifts of the spirit; but have perhaps other areas of their life where they're very immature. It does not make you a very ‘spiritual person’, being able to flow in the gifts of the spirit or the power of God. It just means you've learned how to operate by faith in that dimension - but the rest of your life you may have many issues, and many problems.

We tend to put people that can move in the gifts of the spirit on this pedestal, as though they're something special and unusual, because we've got this idea that only special people will God use.

We also have this wrong idea that: you have to get your life together, and get your act together, before God can use you. I challenge you to find that anywhere in the Bible - it's just a religious concept. If you think: I've got to get my life together before God can use me, then you'll spend all your life focussed on trying to make your life better; rather than focussing on walking with God, enjoying Him, and letting Him work through you.

4) God wants to work through everyone; and the gifts are given to profit others.

When God gives you a gift - it's not for you; it's for someone else - you're just the delivery boy!

It's like I'm connected to God, so I can receive something from Him, and then I pass it on to someone else. That's what the gifts of the spirit are, and I'm just the channel through which this flows. I'm the gate through which God interacts with the person.

You are described in the Bible as: you are a temple, or a house, in which God dwells; and you are a gate for the supernatural to come into the earth.

5) Now let's have a look at the different categories of gifts. It's in your notes under Section 2.3, and it says:

“In the manifestation of spirits, given to each one, for the profit of all; for to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same spirit, to another working in miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues. The one and the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”

There are 9 distinct operations of the spirit there; but it helps if we list them under 3 headings.

First of all, 3 of the gifts are ‘gifts of revelation’. That means: God reveals to you something you didn't know.

If I talk to someone, and they tell me, then I've learned it from them. If I've read it in a book, then I've studied it and learned it; but if someone just tells me a secret, it reveals something to me.

So in 3 of the gifts of the spirit, God just reveals something, which you couldn't have worked it out. You just couldn't have known.

For example, I prophesied over a woman the other night, and said that at the age of between 10 and 14 she'd gone through these particular crises in her life, and this is how it affected her, and God now wanted to set her free from what had happened. We had some ministry for her. Afterwards she told me that there were two crises in her family: one when she was 10; and one when she was 14. There's no way I could have known that. All I'm doing is sharing what God is showing me; but for her, it was like her whole life was opened up to God.

Remember the woman at the well (in John 4) - when Jesus spoke to her, Jesus asked her a little bit, interacted with her, and then He said: why don't you bring your husband? She said: I haven't got a husband; and He said to her: that's true, you've had 5 husbands - and now you're living with a man.

When she went away, she said: I met someone who told me everything about my whole life. Now why did she say ‘everything about her whole life’, when actually He'd only said one thing about her life? The impact of that supernatural revelation was to cause her to experience the sensation that: all of her life was suddenly opened - and God could see everything.

So when you bring a word of knowledge, or move prophetically, it may not seem much to you. It's very little to you - because it's not for you; but when it goes to the person - oh, the person can be deeply impacted! How could you know that? It's like suddenly their whole world is opened up; but for you it was just a little tentative step. For them it's like oh! This is a big deal, because now you've opened up something in their life.

This is so powerful, to flow in the gifts of the spirit. It's wonderful to be able to operate in them.

So there are three gifts.

1) Words of knowledge - word of knowledge, just a little bit of knowledge about a person, some fact about their past or present.

2) A word of wisdom is a supernatural insight about what to do, or how a person needs to act, or what they should do at this time.

3) Discerning of spirits - the ability to see right into the root of what is behind things that are happening. It enables us to see the motivations of people; it enables us to see what the Holy Spirit is doing; it also enables us to discern demonic spirits.

Then there are 3 gifts of utterance - where something is spoken.

1) The word of prophesy, an inspired something, words from God.

2) Diverse tongues

3) Interpretation of tongues - where the person speaks in a tongue; and someone interprets,

Finally, gifts of power - when something supernatural is done, i.e. something is 1) revealed; 2) spoken; 3) done.

By faith, miracles are done; the working of miracles, and gifts of healing, all fall under those power miracles.

6) Believers can operate in all of the gifts (section #4 in the notes). Every one of you is able to operate in all of the gifts.

Mark 16:17-18, notice what Jesus said, and this is associated with the great commission...

“These signs follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they'll speak in new tongues, take up serpents, drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them, and they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.”

Jesus is giving the great commission. He's sending us into the harvest field.

He's sending people into cultures where the supernatural is well established. Now in a western culture, often people are very dull to things of the spirit or supernatural, but in other cultures, the majority of cultures in the world, there's a high level of awareness of the supernatural realm. In Asia, Africa, South America, idolatry is practiced openly. Sorcery and witchcraft are practiced openly, and they have tremendous and very real power.

Jesus was sending His disciples into cultures that experience supernatural power. What they needed was something stronger, more powerful, to deal with and confront the demonic realm.

In a western culture it's not so obvious, but in Asian cultures, and other cultures of the world, these things are practiced very openly. You go to some villages, they all live in fear of the witch doctor, and his power is real. They live in fear of the supernatural realm; and so idolatry is practised. In our culture the supernatural's more hidden. It's not so ‘out there’ - but it is still there.

Jesus was sending them into cultures that are supernatural. He wanted them empowered spiritually, to be able to do this; so notice what He said: “These signs will follow those who believe”.

It doesn't say: these signs will follow pastors. It doesn't say: these signs will follow ‘special people’. It doesn't say: these signs will follow just greatly anointed people. It just says: “these signs will follow those who believe”

For these signs to follow, God wants you to be a believer. You need to believe, for God to work through you.

We believe God will work supernaturally. We believe He'll do it… in another country. We believe He'll do it… through Benny Hinn; but what we struggle with, is to believe: He would do it through me - but that's what He said: the signs follow… believing. We're going to inform you of the how-to. If you grow the ‘believing for it to happen’, and start to stretch out, you'll be quite surprised!

Several things are listed there: casting out of demons, which is: discerning of spirits; and also working of miracles (and faith is involved in that); speaking in new tongues, and maybe interpretations. Taking up serpents has to do with wrestling with the demonic; gifts of revelation and prophesy; drinking any deadly thing (again, supernatural miracles); and laying hands on the sick; gifts of faith and healing.

Paul made some instructions, in 1 Corinthians 12. He said: “it is given to everyone”.

The manifestation of the spirit is given to everyone. His desire was that every believer could flow in the gifts of the spirit - and that's my desire too. God wants you to; and we'll show you how to, and it'll be great for you to step out and try to.

In Acts 9, there's a man called Ananias. Saul had been persecuting the church; and as he was going to Damascus, he had an encounter, a supernatural encounter. He was knocked off his horse, and he was struck blind. He went and fasted and prayed for three days.

Acts 9:10 – “There was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and to him the Lord said in a vision…” - notice that he saw something; and in this seeing, God spoke to him.

The Lord said to him: ‘arise’. First, He called him by name; and he said: “here I am, Lord”.

The Lord said to him: “arise, go into the street called Straight” (He told him exactly which street to go to)

He said: “inquire in the house of Judas…” (he's told which house to go to - find the house that Judas owns).

He said: “and then there's someone in there by the name of Saul” - so there's another word of knowledge; and he is praying.

Notice the revelation that's coming: he's being told things he couldn't know; and Saul has seen in a vision a man called Ananias coming to him - so God is downloading to him words of knowledge and revelation.

Then He said: “I want you to go him and lay your hands on him, and he'll receive his sight”. This is a freaky thing, because he knows that Saul's been murdering all the Christians; and now God's telling him go to this place in this street, inquire; the guy is in there, and he's blind; and he's praying. I've shown him that you're going to come, and you're going to pray over him.

Now that takes courage - remember this guy's life is on the line. Can you understand that all moving in the spirit, there's a point where you have to take a risk? This was a big risk; He has to go to the house of a murderer of Christians - that's a step of faith. He probably said ‘goodbye’ to everyone before he went… just in case!

Notice he says: “Ananias, I've heard a lot about this man, he does much evil to Your saints” - so he started to reason with God about it. The Lord said: “go, he's chosen unto Me, and I will show him great things he must suffer for My name's sake”.

So Ananias went his way, entered the house, and laid his hands on him. He said: “Brother Saul, Jesus that appeared to you in the way as you came, sent me that you might receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately he was healed; and filled with the Holy Ghost, spoke in tongues.

Isn't that a great story! There's an example of: words of knowledge; works of wisdom (knowing what to do); prophetic utterance (speaking over him); gifts of healing; and faith flowing - it's great! That's a great story, of many of the gifts all flowing together, with one man.

We see now that: you are designed to be supernatural. God wants you to operate in the supernatural. He is willing to do this for you.

What is your part? What is the bit you've got to play? There are some responsibilities we have concerning the gifts of the spirit, so let me give you what they are. I'll lay them out for you, and then we'll finish this session, then we'll give you something to do - give you a little activation. This will be quite an easy one as well. Everything will be easy; you've just got to step out and do something - it's really simple.

Gifts of the spirit are given to everyone; so if God gives it to me, what does He expect me to do? What's my part?

There's a number of things that we're called to do, so I'm going to identify them. I'm referring to the Bible all the time, because I want you to get a base from the word of God, for how to operate in the spirit. If you have lots of spiritual experiences without having a word-of-God base, you can go all over the place. You'll find we'll continually draw you back to the written word of God as the judge of your spiritual experiences.

So here are several things that God requires of us:

1) He wants you to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit. He wants you to learn it. Your responsibility is to be a learner; and learning starts tonight, and goes on for the rest of your life.

1 Corinthians 12:1 – “Concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be ignorant”.

God expects you to put in the effort to learn. Nothing comes easily; you have to put in some effort. You have to do something. We'll show you what kinds of things you do.

He wants us to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit… to build others. Here's an interesting thing: God wants you to be a builder of people.

Many people have got the wrong paradigm - they have very much a paradigm where you come to church, and you get blessed and ministered to - and church is all about you having your needs met. That's only a part of the truth; actually the real truth is higher than that.

God wants to meet your needs or bless you - so you can become a blessing to others. Flowing in the spirit is about discovering how to fulfil my destiny with God… in the workplace, in the marketplace, wherever I am. So God expects me to learn; and learning is a lifetime thing.

2) We're expected to passionately desire the gifts of the spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:31 – “earnestly, passionately”, oh! “Love with the gifts of the spirit!”

Why? Because when you flow in them, it answers all arguments. If you have a miracle… no one can argue with the miracle. I remember being in a meeting, and there was a lady there and she was born deaf. I prayed for her, and both her ears opened up, and she could hear for the first time. You could just - like the whole meeting all stopped for this woman; and I watched in a moment as, first of all there was shock, because she could hear, then she started to cry, then she started to laugh. Then she was just bewildered about what was going on. It was quite extraordinary, and no one could deny that God had touched the woman. There was just no answer for it! So in particularly spiritual cultures, people just throng to get a miracle; so when I go into Asia, they'll have meetings, and they'll expect the power of God to flow. People just get saved - all kinds of people get saved, because you can't argue with the power of God. You just can't argue with the power of God. You get deaf ears opened, blind eyes opened, people get healed and things happen. That's God - and people want the God who does that.

In Pakistan, in the meetings there that Dave was at (Pastor David, my son), all kinds of miracles were happening, and people just flock to come in and receive Christ. Muslims come in from all over to receive Christ, because they're seeing the power of God. There's something about the power of God that just stops everyone in their tracks.

I had one guy, we did the seminar here, and he learned how to pray for the sick; went back to his workplace, and he was working on one of the machines there, and one of his friends walked by. He was obviously in pain in his back, so he said: hey, what's happening? He said: I've got a lot of pain in my back. He said: well I've got two answers for you; 1) you come to church on Sunday, and we pray for you there; or 2) I pray for you now. Which will it be? Now that's pretty bold to do that; and so he said: oh, okay, pray for me now. So he just left the machine for the moment, laid hands on him and began to pray. He said: how do you feel? He said: well it's a little bit better - prayed again; the guy was totally healed - and everyone's watching.

So the whole of the workplace was affected, because of one miracle that took place. Now of course they didn't all come to Christ, but that guy came to Christ; and favour came on them to start a prayer meeting in the business, to pray for the business and for the workers. Isn't that great?

God wants you to be passionate for this, to really yearn for it. The Bible instructs us: earnestly desire the gifts.

3) In 2 Timothy 1:6, it tells us: “I remind you to stir up the gifts of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”

The word stir-up means ‘to kindle a fire’ - to get something activated and happening; so we're called to stir up the gifts. This is completely contrary to a passive, ‘waiting around’ and ‘praying for a revival’, or hoping that ‘one day’ God will do something. This says: you - stir yourself up. I'll show you exactly how to stir yourself up - what you do that gets yourself stirred up, and stay stirred up, so you begin to find God working through you. So stir up there.

4) 1 Thessalonians 5:19 – “Don't quench the Holy Ghost”.

Quench means to put out a fire that God started; so it says: don't quench the Holy Spirit.

Control, and fear, in your life - they go together, and they quench God working. Unbelief - oh, I don't think God could do this - that will quench God working in your life.

There are things that facilitate the spirit of God working; and some things quench His working in your life - reasonings in your mind will quench the flow of the Holy Spirit. Negative, critical talk will grieve and quench the Holy Spirit; so we're called not to quench Him but to learn how to co-operate with Him.

5) Finally: don't neglect the gifts of the spirit.

1 Timothy 4:14 – “don't neglect the gift that's in you”.

Don't take it lightly - don't just waste what God has given you; don't despise the little beginnings that you start with. Even if you start with a little, and it doesn't seem much, it can grow. It can grow until it becomes a great flow through your life.

Those are some of the first things that we see, concerning the gifts of the spirit:

1) There are supernatural operations; you're designed to be a supernatural being, to connect with heaven and earth, you're designed to move and flow with the Holy Spirit.

2) God wants us to add understanding how to do it.

3) He promises He'll give the gifts to every believer, every person. He desires to work through you, and it's not about maturity, it's about faith, believing for Him to do it, so you will have to extend your faith.

Faith means something like this: I am convinced in my heart God is willing to do this, and so I will step out, and start to put myself in a place where God can work through me. Always there's this threshold you've got to cross, where no matter what you've been taught, you have to actually step out and just do something. That's the point where you start to grow and develop in the things of the spirit - and you'll find God will always come with you. He won't let you down. He'll always be there.

There are many different realms that we can flow within the spirit. There's different ways we can operate in the spirit. You don't have to copy the way someone does it. God wants to work through you naturally and easily, in a very natural way, and as I demonstrate it you'll see it's very natural. There's not any contriving or striving or anything, it's very natural.

Activation

So we're going to stop now; and I want you to do an activation. So what would that activation be? Well again I want it to be very simple so the first one, who was successful at hugging someone? Okay, great, you all hugged someone or two people so that wasn't that hard was it aye? Had to put your arms out and just hold on. [Laughs] Okay, so here's the next one I want you to do. I want you to find someone you don't know, and find something that you don't know about them, find something about them.

Now how would you go about finding something about someone that you didn't know? You'll have to ask. Now this is quite important when you're going to move in the spirit, you'll need to start asking questions. You ask questions of the Holy Spirit and He shows you things. Okay, so here's a good way to start. Go up and just meet someone that you don't know and find out something you didn't know about them. We'll do that for about five minutes, okay? So you can leave your seat.

Okay, are we ready for this session? Welcome to the next session. Second session we want to talk about hearing the voice of God tonight and I want to show you how you go about hearing the voice of God, how we recognise the voice of God, and I want to first of all give you a context for it. We're going to look in Galatians, Chapter 3 and Verse 2. The reason we want to focus on hearing the voice of God is because this is a major key to the supernatural being released, a major key for the supernatural being released. I want you to read with me if you've got a Bible or the notes - if it's an even page you may not have it, except in the ones you get tomorrow. So this is Paul writing, so just if it's not there that's okay, just focus on listening rather than searching.

In Galatians 3, Verse 2, Paul is writing to the Galatians Church. They started off as a very vibrant Holy Ghost church and now they had lost it altogether, so he's writing and he's bringing adjustment to them. One of the issues he addresses is their loss of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. One of the key reasons they've lost the manifestation of the spirit was legalism. They came back under laws and rules, do this, don't do that, and they lost completely the flow of the spirit, so he begins to challenge them and he asks them two questions. Now what you've got to see is when he asks these two questions he's actually - each one is to bring about an insight of where they're missing the mark, and the problem he's addressing is that they thought you become mature by obeying the laws. What he's saying is no, you need the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. So notice the question he asks. I want to learn this from you, I want you to tell me this; did you receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

He asked them a question, how did you receive the Holy Ghost into your life? How did you get born again? How did you get baptised in the spirit? How did you get a supernatural change in your life? Did you get it by working hard, or did you get it by the hearing of faith? Very simple. What is the answer? The hearing of faith. How do you get saved? You hear the word of God, and you believe and respond, and the power of God is activated by your response, see? That's how a person gets saved, so he appeals to the foundation of their Christian experience. How did you get saved? Did you get saved and supernaturally changed, and the spirit come into your life, because you worked hard and went to church and did good things - or did you get it because you heard the word of God and believed, and when you responded the spirit of God came? The answer's really clear. It was never by the works of the law. They were supernaturally transformed when the spirit of God came into their life.

He wants them to get that answer, because now he's going to ask them the real question. So he asks them the first question to get their head clear - how did you start in this game? Did you start by working hard to be a better person, or did you start by believing God? Well believing God. Great! He's asking now the real question he wants to ask, so then he goes on and he said: are you so foolish? You began in the spirit, and you think you'll become mature by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain? He says now, He that supplies the spirit to you, and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or the hearing of faith?

So you notice he's asking almost the same question, but he's applying it to something else. So the first one was like this: how did you get saved? How did you get your initial experience with God - work hard, or believe God? Which was it? Believe God.

Now he does it a different way, he asks the same thing. This time he says how does God supply the spirit to you? How does God do miracles among you? So in other words he's saying, how do the gifts of the spirit flow? How do miracles happen? Work hard, or hear God and respond? The answer's really clear isn't it? Now he's framed it up that way by appealing to how they started as a believer. They heard God's voice, heard God speaking to them and they chose to believe and respond, and they were into a flow of the spirit. It was supernatural. He said the moving in the spirit's the same way, it's exactly the same way. It's not by working hard. It's not by trying hard. It's by extending your faith to believe and listen to God, so here is why, if we want to move in the supernatural, we must practice hearing and identifying the voice of God. This is the significant key to operating in the spirit. It is the hearing of faith. I extend my faith to believe God will speak to me, I extend my faith to believe God wants to use me.

Now for some of you that may be a challenge, because it's easier to believe He'll use someone else, than use you, and the core challenge is: will you believe in your heart, actually there's no reason at all why God would not use me. There's no reason at all why He would not want to do this. God loves me, He's justified me, I'm accepted. He wants to work through me. He's designed me to work this way. Of course I believe, and I'll extend now to listen and hear His voice, expect to hear His voice - and I'm going to apply this when it comes to working with one another in the exercises. I'll get you starting to stir your faith to believe, and listen, and then stretch out to see what God does. That's how the activations will work, so for example - so always it involves faith, I must extend out and believe that God will work through me.

Secondly, I need to tune in to hear God speaking to me; and three, I need to step out and actually act on what God gives me. Think about how you got saved. You heard the word of God, faith rose to believe it to be true, and then you stepped out and acted by speaking out, or confessing Christ in some way, so the flowing in the spirit actually works the same way. It all works the same way, and so we just need to practice hearing the voice of God. In John 5, 19 to 20, Jesus answered and said: I tell you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but whatever He sees the Father do, that's what He does. So He says the Father tells him, or shows Him, everything He's doing, so Jesus' miracles were done by what He saw the Father doing. He just spoke out and did that. Notice He didn't heal every person. Sometimes He healed everyone, but you know there's a guy by the door of the temple, He walked past him every time He went into the temple and never did anything. Why was that? Because He never saw the Father healing on that day, but when Peter went by, after being baptised in the spirit, Peter looked at him and he worked a miracle and the guy was healed.

So was it the will of God for him to be healed? It certainly was, but there was a flow of the spirit that Jesus listened to. So He went to one place by the well, by the Bethsaida [a place reputed for its healing properties] and the porters there, and there's a whole heap of crippled people and one He heals. So why one? That's not very fair. I don't know. I don't understand all the ways God works. All we know is, He saw what the Father was doing, and did that. He avoided or resisted pressure to try and meet every need. He learned how to listen to the Holy Spirit and work with the Holy Spirit, so we're not called to fix all problems. We're not called to solve everything. We are called to learn how to yield, extend our faith, listen to God, and obey Him, and it's in the little things you get the miracles. Let me give you an example.

Before I was a Christian I was raised a Catholic. When I became a Christian I stopped going to the Catholic Church and started to attend another church, a spiritual church. It was a great offence to my grandmother, and she was deeply offended by it. We had some significant issues over that and anyway her birthday was coming up. I thought I need to get her something and my thinking in those days was you better make it up somehow, thought I'd get her a nice gift, so I went downtown. The day came and went and I got so busy I missed it. I thought oh no, double banger. [Laughter] I missed the birthday, and I didn't go to church and I'm going to hell, you know? This is not good [Laughter] so I thought then what I need to do then - my reasoning, which is not a good reasoning, was I need to buy a nice gift to make it up. Actually that would never make it up. You just couldn't appease the thing like that, but I did want to buy a gift anyway so I went to the shops and I was looking and I couldn't work out what to get.

I went past this shop and I felt the Holy Spirit say go in there. It was a religious shop, books and things, and I went in there and I looked around and there was stuff I didn't really like there. It was full of all kinds of stuff, and I was wrestling with God over it. I saw a little picture there and it was the shepherd with the sheep - you know the picture, I'm the good shepherd and there's a picture of a lovely shepherd, robes and Jesus [laughs] and he probably doesn't look anything like that, but that was the picture. Anyway I felt the Holy Spirit say I want you to buy that and I just resisted. I just really - I thought no, no, no, I don't even like those things. So I walked up the street, came back and I thought no, I can't see anything, I'll go back to the shop. So I went back, I thought I've got nothing to lose. I feel God's telling me, I'll just get it, I'm just going to get the picture.

So I bought the picture, and I bought some dried flower arrangement, and I put it all together, bundled it off with a note, sorry I missed your birthday, here's a little gift and blah blah blah. Anyway I met my grandmother a little later and I said to her did you get the birthday gift? She said yes, thank you very much, I really enjoyed the little dried flower arrangement. It was very, very pretty and smelled nice and so on. Oh good. I said what about the picture? She said oh, she said that did bring back some memories, and she said when I was at school in boarding school at the age of 12, a girlfriend and me got into trouble with one of the teachers. We wanted to try and put it right with the teacher, and so we decided we would buy a gift, and we bought that picture for her. [Laughter]

Now only God could come up with something like that. We're talking something like 60 years prior, and God knew what she did, and when she saw the picture it triggered the memory of trying to put something right in a relationship that was wrong, and she associated with my gift a desire to put right with her something that was wrong. Now only God could come up with stuff like that aye, so this is the blessing of being able to listen to the Holy Spirit on different situations. Okay, getting the idea? So we need to hear what God is saying. Alright then, so another example is found in Acts 14, Verses 8 to 10. Paul is in Lystra and a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, he'd never walked, and the man heard Paul speaking. Paul - now notice what it says - Paul observed him intently, and saw he had faith to be healed. Now that's an interesting statement.

Paul fixed his eyes on the man - in other words he stared at him, and as he stared at him he perceived, that's in his spirit, that the man had faith to be healed. What does it look like if you've got faith to be healed? What would you be looking for? What would you be looking for? He perceived. In other words there was an inner knowing that this man had faith. He went to him and prayed and immediately the man rose up and was healed, so this is he saw something. So in flowing with the Holy Spirit, or hearing the voice of God, we begin to hear that sometimes we see things, sometimes we hear things, sometimes we will just perceive or sense something in our spirit. So let's now have a look, as we've seen how Paul operated, and we see how Jesus operated, and we see that it's by the hearing of faith that we can work in miracles. Now we want to look at how to hear the voice of God.

What does the voice of God sound like? So the first thing I want to do is to point out this, is that when you hear the voice of God, you will hear from within, not from without. God put His Holy Spirit within you. 1 Corinthians 6 and Verse 17 says he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit, so that's like a husband and wife being married. So being born again, your spirit is joined to the Lord, so if you're going to hear the voice of God you will hear Him in your spirit. You won't necessarily hear Him with your audible ears. You won't necessarily see anything with your natural eyes. You will have to develop your spiritual sense. Getting the idea? Okay then, now what I want to do is I'm just going to get three people up, and I want to just do a visual illustration for you to give you an idea of something - I want to put something visual in front of you, to help you understand something spiritual. So I won't refer to all the notes as I do it, but what I've got in the notes I will teach it by doing a visual demonstration for you. That okay?

Okay, so why don't we get three guys to come up. Can we get three guys? There we are, there's one there, Brian, two guys over here. Won't you guys come on up on the stage and just help me out here okay, help me out here. Alright then, so you don't have to do anything, you've just got to stand there, okay, so here we go. See, stand there and face over here, this is perfect. Come over and stand over here, face over here and you face over there. There we are, it's perfect, alright then, you can see everyone. Now God has designed us and we are body, soul and spirit. We're a spirit man; with a soul; living inside a body, so your body has five senses: see, taste, touch, we can interact with the physical world so we have physical senses and they will all feed into the soul.

Okay, I want you to just turn around this way here like this now, put your hand on his shoulders, and you put your hand on his shoulders. That's right - so if I'm interacting with Brian and connecting with Brian I see his physical body, and if I look into eyes I can see there's a person in there, but what is in there is the hidden man of the heart. The hidden man of the heart is found here. It's the soul, the mind, will, emotions, memories, personality and it's the spirit man. Okay. Now his spirit man, and everyone has a spirit dimension - you have a spirit being, a part of you which is spirit - the spirit man also has spiritual senses. So we just all turn around, face this way again. Okay, now the spirit man has spiritual senses. Just stand there, that's right. So his spirit man, dwelling inside him, energises his body. Your spirit is incredibly important.

The Bible says that if the spirit is absent from the body, a person's dead, so this is how important your spirit is. Your spirit energises and gives life to your soul and your body. Your spirit is a vital part of you, but your spirit has many functions, so one function of your spirit is to energise your soul and body. Your spirit quickens your body, because if your spirit is withdrawn from your body, the body dies, so your spirit's very important. If you spirit is wounded or damaged or hurt or injured you tend to get sick much more readily, and the Bible tells that. It says a broken spirit dries the bones, so if your spirit is damaged in some way, then it will affect your body and your body's health. Another aspect of your spirit is that your spirit illuminates your mind. See, it says the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, lighting up all the inner parts, so your spirit will illuminate your soul with ideas and thoughts. How many have ever had a hunch that turned out to be right? Where did the hunch come from? Oh, that's sixth sense. No it isn't, it's your spirit. The sixth sense is actually your spirit.

So when we get a hunch or an intuition, actually there's an idea come from our spirit that's come into our mind, that's what we're picking up and if you act on it then you start to find things happen, for example so we now see that we are designed to operate, we're quite unique. The soul area here is mind, will and emotions, and so your soul retains memories, memories of various experiences, so when you have a new experience you reference the old ones and come up with the conclusion. For example - we'll just turn all around this way again, face all this way. Now I went to Singapore one time and when I went to Singapore there was this dreadful smell, and I couldn't work out what the smell was. I had no reference point for it whatsoever, so I could smell, but there was no experience to attach it to. I couldn't recognise it. It was just an unknown horrible smell, then someone said oh - I said what's that smell? They said oh, that's Durian and they brought out this big fruit, and it's Durian, and it smelt! Some people love it, some people hate it and mostly you can't eat it in a building, it smells everything out.

Now prior to that I had no reference point. Next time I came around [sniffing sound] oh, Durian, you see because I could smell and the sense would then register and the mind and memory would raise up them something and I was aware that's what that means. That means Durian. That means a fruit. I had a picture, a smell and an experience to relate this to and so next time round, no trouble, Durian! Now just turn around and face this way again. Your spirit man will also pick up spiritual sensations, and they will go to the same place that the physical sensations went to. They go into your brain, into your memory, inside you, and your mind processes what you get, so as a unique person you can receive from the physical world and recognise things from a memory bank, but you can also receive from the realm of the spirit, and also build up experience so you quickly recognise different things. You quickly recognise a different kind of spirit. You quickly recognise various sorts of things. Why? Because you have developed your spiritual senses and built experience. Get the idea?

Paul writes in (or the Hebrew writer in) Hebrews 5:14 says: you remain immature, because you haven't exercised your spiritual senses to discern. You've got to practice to discern. Do you get it right every time? No. Why do we not get it right every time? Because our mind argues all the time, you know and I'll talk about that in a moment. Okay then, so if you just put your hand on his shoulder now and your hand on his shoulder over here. Right, that's right. So when you are born again the Holy Spirit comes in and becomes joined one spirit with the Lord, so we see in 1 Corinthians 6:17 very clearly, he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit. That's how close you are to Him all the time, so everywhere you go you carry the presence of God, and God knows all things, so in your spirit you know a lot, and you have access to the source of lots of things all the time, all the time. He's never going to leave you, never going to turn away from you. You have access all the time to the presence of God, all the time.

How do you get in tune with that access? You've got to silence all the noise that goes on in your head and tune in to your spirit. So now how am I going to hear the voice of God? Well the first thing it's helpful to think of is where am I going to hear Him? The first thing to recognise is you're not going to hear Him out here saying 'Hello, this is God." [Laughter] You're not going to get that and - just all turn and face this way - so if you go looking for signs and fleeces and all that kind of stuff, you're acting immaturely. That's not where we're to be looking for God outside us. It's not where He's to be found. He can be found inside you, so if you're going to grow in the things of the spirit, you have to develop what's inside you. Getting the idea? So you find many immature Christians are constantly looking for something outside them, looking for something shaking or moving or this or that or a feeling or anything, but they're looking in the wrong place, because the devil can manipulate circumstances, and manipulate everything around you. He can make storms happen. He can do all kinds of things.

So we don't look outside ourselves. We look to our spirit man, because that spirit man is joined to the Holy Spirit, and therefore has access to heaven. Put your hands all on one another like that. Okay now, here we go. So the physical man accesses the physical world, but through my spirit I can access the realm of heaven all the time, free to access the presence of God. I've just got to learn how that happens. Okay, so turn around now. We're going to show you how it happens. Turn around, put your arms on one another's shoulder like that. Okay, so if God is wanting to communicate to me, how will He do it? Very simply, the Holy Spirit will communicate with my spirit. How does He do it? Usually in one of three ways. Now He can do it many ways but there's usually one of three ways that there's direct spirit-to-spirit communication.

Here it is; number one, you see something. You don't see it with your natural eyes. The Holy Spirit puts a picture into your spirit, and that picture in your spirit rises up into your mind, or the Holy Spirit will speak a word into your spirit, and that word will rise up in your mind, or the Holy Spirit will just put an impression. You don't know how you know, but you just somehow know something. If I say: do you know you're saved? You say yes, of course I know I'm saved. How do you know? I don't know, I just know. Well the Bible tells me, but I know. I know. You know because there's an inward knowing. How do you inward know? Inward knowing is the witness of the Holy Spirit with your spirit, you're a child of God. It's an inner knowing. That's how you know you're saved.

Okay, so the Holy Spirit will do this, so if I'm going to be tuning into the voice of God here's the first thing. The first thing is, I have to quiet the noise. You have got noise all the time in your head. That's why I hate having headphones on, just noise in the head. Some people love it, and I don't mind listening to a certain amount of music, but I don't want my head to be full of noise of something else. So what kind of noise is in your head? All kinds of memories, all kinds of pictures, all kinds of experiences, things that have happened, all kinds of things in there. You have demonic voices talking to you, they fill your mind with accusation, condemnation, not good enough, who do you think you are? All that kind of stuff is noise, and the noise is a block to hearing God, so if I'm going to hear God I need to number one, know I'm going to hear from my spirit so I should activate my spirit by prayer, praying in tongues; secondly, I need to quiet my soul so that my mind is not busy and all over the place. Thirdly, I need to tune in to what will be spontaneous.

Now the language of your heart is different to the language of your head. The language of your head is logical, structured, line upon line, and it's thought through carefully. That's how the language of the mind works. Its logic, so for example if you're working out some mathematics you're logical - one, two, three, four. You're trying to work out where to put something, one, two, three, four. If you're trying to create something, now it's intuitive and you start to flow, so the way we're designed is like this. Amazing design God has given to us. We're designed to be supernatural, it's amazing. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres or two parts. With the left side it's the logic side, so if we got him doing some maths I suppose he can - do you do maths or something? Okay, suppose he can do maths, or he's trying to figure something out, and we put a brain scan on him and try to find out what part of his brain is busy, all the left side will be busy. If he's dreaming and imagining or creating it'll be the right side of his brain, so you're designed so that one part of you is logical and process oriented, one, two, three, four, blah, blah, blah, like that. The other part of you is intuitive. It gets ideas, there's flashes and ideas and things like that and it's creative, so if you're a creative person you'll be very active in this part. If you're a logical person you'll be very active in that part of your brain, but both sides exist for every person.

Now when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us what happens is, He imparts into our spirit, and which side of the brain do you reckon it comes up into? It comes up into the right, so what do you get? You just get spontaneous thought. You get a picture just pops into your mind, or you get a word just suddenly comes into your mind. So what happens immediately after that comes in, the other part of your brain takes over and starts to argue it down and dismiss it. Men are often quite bad at that, and their wives are often quite intuitive, so some of you may recognise - and we won't ask for any show of hands - of a decision making process where the husband felt this was the right thing to do and his wife said I don't know, I don't feel very happy about that. He says well why not? It's logical, it all works out and she says no, no, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. Well I can't work with that, you know, that's just unreasonable. You're right, it is unreasonable - it's intuitive. Then later on you go ahead and do it, and you find actually it was the wrong thing to do, because your wife had this intuitive impression, and it was of greater value in discerning what something was than your (my) mind was.

I'll give you another example. How many have met someone and they look good, sounded good but you just felt something was not right about this person? Something's creepy. That's the kind of language a woman would use - creepy [Laughter] you know, don't like that guy. I don't like him. You know, they say I don't like him, and the man may say what's wrong? There's nothing wrong with him. You know, he can't figure it out, but he's operating out of logic, what he can see, what he can hear and he's working on a reasoning basis. She's picking up intuitively from her spirit there's something not right about this person or situation, I don't feel right about it. Now you think about this in Colossians 3:15 it says let the peace of God be the umpire of your heart, so if you feel troubled and no peace in your spirit, then no matter what it looks like, you know it's going to be a problem. Initially you don't know that but you find out after you've had a number of experiences where you overruled your spirit, did something and then it didn't work out too good. You learn then actually listen to the voice of your heart more carefully.

Now we do need to work things out. We've got a capacity to do that. We should develop our mind and intelligence, but we need to also develop the intuitive side of us, so when God speaks to us it's very simple. I just calm down and quiet my soul to listen. I stir up my spirit through praying and focussing on the Lord, and as He speaks, spontaneous thoughts, pictures or impressions come into my soul, and I pick them up as an impression. Now you don't just do away with your brain and shoot your brain. You actually then enquire, so I'll give you an example of someone. I was talking to one person, and I had a word of knowledge they were extremely lonely and so I said I just feel an impression that actually you're struggling with a lot of loneliness. No, no, no, no, I'm not lonely. It came again, so I said it again. No, no, no, I'm not lonely. Now that's two denials, but it came again, and so I said in the end I actually feel you're quite lonely. I feel God's laying on my heart you're struggling with relationships and friendships, and you're lonely. God added me a little bit more. She broke down and began to weep, so I was right the first time, but the person tried to pretend that wasn't so, and just the impression kept coming and coming and coming.

So remember it was just an impression that came that I couldn't shake off, so when I gave voice to it then God was able to move. So the impressions that you get, your mind will always argue them. Your mind will act like that can't be so, it couldn't be true. Like you see a person smiling and God says they've got grief in their heart, and you look at them and you think no, sorry, got that one wrong. [Laughter] You see your mind tries to reason the flow of the spirit, so we need to learn how to train our mind to ask the right questions, so my spirit can receive information from the Holy Spirit that my mind would never know. The role of your natural mind then is to enquire, Holy Spirit, what does that mean? How do I work with that? What do You want me to do about that? So you enquire of God, rather than reason it all away. So there it is, it's not quite so difficult.

So why is it some people have trouble hearing the voice of God? Now the trouble that people have with hearing the voice of God falls it seems to me into two categories. It falls firstly into the people who are Dr Spock on Star Trek. They are totally head, and they just reason everything, everything's structured. Usually with a person like that, there's strong spirits sit around their mind, and they're disconnected from their heart. Often there's issues been in their life that have disconnected them. They many times need healing or deliverance or setting free, or training in how to engage with their heart, because they've lived out of their head and logic all their life, and they haven't developed their spiritual side. So very often there's spirits of rationalism and unbelief, rejection and all kinds of things sit around that person, but they can be set free, and they can develop the capacity of tuning in to spontaneity, to spontaneous ideas, to thoughts, to feelings, to impressions, and learning to recognise and identify and name them.

The other extreme is where you get someone who's often quite broken relationally, and everything is God, God told me this, God told me that, God told me this. Now it's like there's this flow where everything God told them. When you hear that, you know two or three things; number one, God isn't saying all those things. Number two, they're very broken people, and three, they've got major problems relationally, and so they're putting it all out there of God to portray some spiritual hotline. The reality is we don't hear God talking all the time that clearly. We have impressions and we learn to be led by... God gives you wisdom to run your life without Him having to tell you what to do. He doesn't tell you what to put on your shopping list. It's your job to figure that one out. He doesn't tell you what colour you should paint something. He gives you room to be creative. He doesn't tell us everything to do in our life, or we're like a puppet being told what to do. He actually works with us in a relationship where we work with Him, He's the senior partner and He guides us, but He gives us room to participate in life, so you've got to learn to find the things that you yourself have and own them, rather than say it's all God.

When I hear people saying God told me this, God told me that, I know one, God isn't telling them all those things; two, there's just a big show, and I'm not meeting the real person; three, there's brokenness inside. They really need help. A person like that usually is unstructured in their life, and create havoc in a church where you're trying to flow and develop things in the spirit. You have to actually bring them into discipline where they have to learn to structure their life and stop just listening to every impression that comes, because they've got turmoil in the soul, and haven't learnt to filter out what's God and what isn't. So both extremes happen, but none of you are in that extreme. You're all here in that happy group who will just be opened up to listen to God, aren't we wonderful? Okay then, so again just summarising it again: when God speaks He speaks into our spirit, get the idea? And it'll come up as an impression which comes into your mind, and then you just focus on that, and then begin to speak and act on what God gives you.

As you speak and act on it, then the spirit of God moves, and that's when people get touched. Okay? Well let's give them a clap and thank them for helping out. [Applause] Good stuff, thank you. Okay, so are you getting an idea now about how all of this works, because I want you to understand it clearly and [laughs] there, we'll see. Now I want to just give you two or three examples out of the Bible just to support what I've been saying, then we'll get you to do an activation, how about that? [Silence] Oh, there was a lot of enthusiasm there, that's right! [Laughter] Okay, so again this is not in your notes today but it will be there tomorrow, so let me just give you a few examples. You might want to just jot them down if you wish to, but let me just give them.

The first one is found in Habakkuk, Chapter 2, Verse 1. He said I will stand on my watch, and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what the Lord will say to me. Notice this word, I will watch to see what God will say. So he did a couple of things. Number one, he positioned himself to be quiet. This is important to hearing the voice of God, you've got to quiet yourself down, so when I get to do activations with you we'll get you to do a couple of things. One of the things we'll get you to do is to pray in tongues so your spirit becomes energised, alive with the flow of the Holy Spirit. The second thing we'll get you to do, is just be quiet and focus your attention to just listen for a flow of spontaneous thoughts that come, then the third thing is we'll get you to then identify what you're thinking or feeling or what's happening, and speak it out.

Okay, so Habakkuk positioned himself to hear God, quietened himself, and then he focussed on intuitive flow of seeing, hearing. That's how he got it, and he was able to discern it. God spoke to him by a picture. In 1 Samuel 3:10, you remember the story of Samuel, and Samuel was lying down, and the Lord came and spoke to him and said Samuel! Samuel! And he jumped up and ran to Eli. Why did he jump up and run to Eli? Very simply, he heard something so strongly he thought it was Eli. He didn't recognise that it was God's voice, so it takes time to recognise the voice of God speaking to you. You've got to practice until you get used to oh, that is the voice of God, I'm recognising Him speaking to me. I know that's God speaking - and there are a number of ways we can get that. A third example there is in Mark 2, Verse 8, it says Jesus perceived in His spirit that they were reasoning. He perceived in His spirit they were reasoning, so it was He knew something. Now what was going on, get the picture, Jesus is speaking - now get this - He worked out what they were thinking. How did He figure out what they were thinking? He felt it in His spirit what they were thinking.

Now you've probably had an experience like that, where you were talking with someone, or they were talking, and then suddenly you felt something about that person, a thought rose up. You just perceive it in your spirit. You can't shake it off, you just know you can feel it's there. So the third example is the one we saw at Acts 14:9, where Paul looked at the man intently and saw he had faith to be healed. How did he see it? He perceived it in his spirit. There was a knowing inside, so you'll discover then that all of the moving in the spirit, moving in the supernatural, comes out of intimacy or connection with the Holy Spirit, where we learn to recognise His voice and act on it. The more you act on it, the easier it is to recognise. The more you practice walking with God and listening and responding to His impressions, the more easily it comes to you. It's like Jesus said, if you have ears to hear, more will be given. If you don't have ears to hear, even the little you have you lose, so it's like you have to use it or lose it. You've got to continually develop listening to God in your personal private life, so it flows out of devotion.

Okay then, so the last thing I'll finish this session with, and then we'll get you to do something. There are other ways that people receive revelation of course, but what I want to show is just some things about the revelations God gives. There are a couple of checks that you want to run by anything that you think God has given you, and here's what they are. Number one - so these are tests of revelation. If you think you've got something from God - you'll find this on Page 19 in your notes - number one, does it agree with the Bible? If it doesn't agree with the written word of God, the Holy Spirit wrote the written word of God; will He who wrote that Bible tell you something different to what He wrote? Not going to happen, so if you come up with a revelation, and you say that God has spoken to you this thing, but it's contrary to what the written word of God says, you got it wrong. You've actually just got it wrong, and it's come either just as a random thought, it's come out of your own desires or thoughts and perhaps that's how you got it - but you got it wrong.

If it disagrees with the Bible it didn't come from God. You've got to have the Bible as your standard for testing all revelation, so you know, if you find that you've got something, and you think God's told you to do this and you find it's completely the opposite to what the word of God says, you got it wrong. If you keep getting it wrong, you should go and get some counsel to sort out if something's going on inside you. Getting the idea? So if people come to you and say: God told me to do this and it's very clear, you know, God told me it was okay, we're in love, we can sleep together, you know, hello, give me a break! [Laughter] You're not married, you know? The Bible says those that commit fornication shan't inherit the kingdom of God, so He's not going to tell you that it's going to go good for you, personally, if He's told you in the written word something different. Use the Bible. You've got to become familiar with the Bible, load yourself up, read the Bible, get familiar with the Bible and automatically you'll be filled with thoughts of God that are useful in ministering to people - very helpful.

Okay, the second thing is does it line up with the character of God? Is that something that God would be likely to do, you know, like the devil took Jesus up into a high mountain and said come on, the word of God says cast yourself down, there's angels will take care of you, you want to jump. In other words, I'll put it another way - he was standing on a high place and said go on, jump, it'll be okay, you'll just float to the ground. You see this is contrary - it may have been what the words said, but actually it was a misrepresentation of the nature of God. Interesting thing, God seldom takes someone and suddenly moves them from here up to some big thing. God grows you step by step, so it's not the nature of God to want you to suddenly show yourself off in some big way or public exhibition, or to make a big scene of any kind, or to do something spectacular. He just grows you little by little by little, so if it doesn't seem like it's the nature of God, it probably isn't.

Then finally - or two other things - does it produce good fruit? So one way of testing a revelation is if the fruit of it is good. That's why we'll teach you to ask after you've prayed or ministered to someone hey, how did that go? What did you sense as a result of me sharing with you these things? In other words just get a bit of feedback. The person says well that was great man, it really helped me, touched me - you get feedback. If there's fruit from God it's always good. Fruit from heaven is gentle and reasonable, open to reason. If for example you get someone who says well just God told me, and you can't reason with them, that is definitely not God, because the Bible says in James, the wisdom that comes from heaven is quite easily entreated. You can appeal and talk and interact, so we'll teach you when it comes to ministering a word from God that, just do it gently, don't say well God told me like you're the authority in the earth. Just hey listen, I just sense this or I just felt this or I had an impression, maybe God, about this. In other words just do it much more low key. It's easier for you to interact with the person, easier for them to receive as well, not so dogmatic, okay?

The final one is, if it comes from God it will bear witness with your spirit. When something is right your own spirit bears witness to it. How many have had someone tell you something - I taught Michelle what to do but Michelle had some guy come up to her, said oh God's told me that I'm going to marry you. Now what does she feel straight away? Now this is the dilemma when some guy carries on like that. A good Christian girl wants to please the Lord, now he's saying God's told me this thing and she doesn't feel it in her heart, but she wants to please God. You throw people into turmoil with that kind of stuff. It's very manipulative. I said to her tell him just straight, God didn't tell me that, so goodbye. [Laughter] In other words own your own life. I said he can think what he thinks, and he can say what he says, but actually if it doesn't witness with your spirit, don't go with it.

I've seen many people trapped into relationships, into business deals, if they'd listened to their spirit, they'd have never been happy about it, but they kind of got impressed that someone was very prophetic or very spiritual. How did they get impressed? Because they projected it out that they were, but the wisdom from God is easily entreated. It's gentle and pure, and it produces good fruit. One of the things it'll witness with your spirit, so if something doesn't register as being right, then just say well thank you very much, but no thanks, I'm not going to go with that. You can thank the person, be polite, you don't have to be rude, but we don't need to receive things that aren't right, so let your own spirit bear witness with that, whether this bears witness of good fruit or not. Okay now, why don't we just stop now and I'll get you to stand up and turn around and sit down and we're going to give you an activation.

Okay then, now what I want to do in this session, first of all I want to get you all to do an activation. I'll just show you what it is in just a moment, and then I'll introduce you to activations and how they work. After that we're going to talk about how to activate the gifts of the spirit in your life, so I'll do the teaching session how to activate the gifts, after we've actually got you to step out and have a try, so we'll get started first of all and then we'll talk about the specific things. Then we'll have a chance for some questions and hopefully just finish around about 9.30. So I want to just do a simple activation. Now this is a very, very simple one, and in this one here what we're going to do is we want to just pray an inspired prayer so I could just - Henrietta, just come on up here please. Can I just practice on you? There we go, so Henrietta comes up, there we go and so this is the kind of process.

Now with all of these activations, the thing to remember is now we're just practising. Practising means we're stepping out to have a turn. We're getting on the bike to see if we can ride it, and even if we wobble eventually we'll get going and we'll be riding the bike, so we're just having a practice. The first thing I'd like you to do in any activation is to ask with a smile, hey, can I practice on you? Great, that's right, so you get a very positive response, yeah, great, go, do it! Great job, you know, I want, because hunger and expectancy from a person can draw from you, can help you when you're learning how to flow in the spirit, see? Always remember this, that God wants to speak to them and bless them and help them because He loves them - so it's not about you. It's actually about God being loving and the person needing to be touched by God. It's not about you at all. You're just actually the channel through which it happens, so what we're going to do, I could ask her something like well what would you like me to pray for and ask what her need is and get her to tell me her need. That's one way we can pray. You're used to doing that, well what's your need and so forth.

Or what I could do is just ask the Lord to drop into my heart a simple thought that will be the basis of what I will pray. It could be a picture, could be a word, could be just an impression to pray about a certain area, okay? So I need to do, so the steps that we'll take is number one, we just say hey, can I practice on you? Yeah, a very positive response, that's great. Now I'd like to take the persons hand, just make a connection with them. So the first thing it's helpful to do is just if you begin to exercise or stir up your spirit. The key in this remember is listening, just listening to your heart, so I'm going to break it down very, very slowly because if I do it slowly then you can see what's going on inside me. I'll explain it and then you'll see me doing it, okay, so we'll try and pull it apart for you.

So the first thing I would do is just, at this stage, I'll just begin to pray in tongues, and as I'm praying in tongues my inner man is starting to come alive, so I'm becoming stirred up. I become aware of God see, because when you pray in the spirit your spirit comes alive. Your spirit is praying. Your spirit is being built, so if I was to just - so I need to now close off my mind to busyness. I've got to stop thinking you're all looking at me and what if I get it wrong stuff, you know, all that sort of stuff, the what ifs. You've got to shut down what-if messages in your head. They stop you receiving God. The way to shut them down is to just redirect your focus. If I focus on myself then I'll start to fill with fear and my spirit will close, and now I'm not going to get anything, because I need to get it from my spirit, but if my spirit's closed because of fear I'll get nothing. I need to stay relaxed, and the best way to stay relaxed is not to focus on me, but to focus on how much God loves this person.

I might just begin to meditate on how much God just loves her, how important she is. I'm sure that God who loves her, really does want to talk with her, so I just keep my attention fixed, and I'm expecting God to give me something, see? So ask for permission, calm yourself down, stir up your spirit man with expectation, then begin to reach out for God to give you something, and you're looking for a spontaneous word or thought or impression. Then you're going to turn that into a simple prayer, so you have to start at some point - so right now I'm still trying to get something. [Laughter] But it's okay because I'm very aware and I totally believe God knows all about her, God knows exactly what she needs right now. I'm convinced God wants to do this. I just have to relax and wait on Him. Now I'm slowing the whole process down, so you can see it taking place see, then in a moment I'll just get an impression will just come, and just as I was talking an impression came just then. One word just dropped into my mind; I'm talking to you, suddenly a word just drops into my mind like that.

That word is a seed. When God gives you something, He only gives you the seed. You have to actually step out with what you've got and start the journey, trusting God that as you share what you've got that He will give you more, and a flow of the spirit will take place. That's the risky bit isn't it aye? That's the bit, but if you've got nothing to lose, it's only a practice, so I can focus instead of worrying about whether I pass/fail I can just focus on being kind and praying for her, see? So now because I've got a word God expects me to use a measure of intelligence. He doesn't want me to be a puppet, so therefore He expects me now having given me an insight what to pray for, that I would pray with some sense about that, so I'll have to start praying, well just I'll pray generally, and then I'll start to pray about what God has given me, okay? So I'm just going to start, you know, so you start to say something - you've just got to start a flow, and as you start the flow and remain just fixed on the Lord, you'll get the words will start to come.

Alright then, so I have in the moment just one word so I'll just put my attention on that word, and I'm starting to feel things now, so I'm just going to pray for her. I could prophesy this but I'll actually just turn it into prayer, because I want it to be really simple, because every one of us can pray, and mostly if you ask people if you can pray for them they'll say yes. Okay, so here we go. Father, I just thank You for Henrietta. That's a good way to just get started, see, quite easy to start the flow, something simple like that. Then I'll start to move to what I felt God give me, and as I stay focussed on that and relax and let my heart flow to her, there'll be a language just come forth. Don't try and work it out in the head, just let my heart flow to her. Alright then, so just again just focus - I can see the word again. Father, I just thank You for Henrietta, thank You Lord You love her, and that Lord, You will never leave her to be on her own and alone. Lord, I ask that You will just touch her in the depths of her being, and heal the loneliness that she's been experiencing and feeling for some time. Pray Lord she'll feel Your presence loving her, comforting her, and reassuring her, that You are always with her. Lord, let Your presence and love just flow over her right now, in Jesus' name. Oops, have to hold on to you, you'll be going over. Alright then, now did anyone work out what the word was that the Lord gave me? Loneliness, okay, so you see how I just started generally, and as I began to meditate in that word I could just feel all this grief around her, grief of loneliness and that's been something around her life, and God is wanting to heal the loneliness and just have her reassured He's there. [Laughs] What are you feeling? Just tell us what you're experiencing just as a result of doing this.

[Henrietta] [Laughs]

[Pastor Mike] Okay, just take your time, its okay. It's alright to cry, because God is touching her in a real area of her life. What did you feel or sense?

[Henrietta] That God is with me - and that's what I needed.

[Pastor Mike] Right. You needed to know tonight God is with you.

[Henrietta] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Isn't that wonderful. Has there been loneliness or struggle, a sense of being on your own?

[Henrietta] There's been a sense of it and in it though I have - I'm aware that He's there. I just needed more of an awareness of that, a deeper, greater level.

[Pastor Mike] Right, you need a deeper, greater level that...

[Henrietta] Of knowing that He is...

[Pastor Mike] ...He is there, alright then.

[Henrietta] ...right in the middle of it all.

[Pastor Mike] Okay then, well why don't we just help you with that now? Peter, get ready to catch her in a moment, because I could feel the spirit of God coming on you. As you close your eyes, I want you to just use your imagination to see that Jesus is just there, right in front of you. He's there with you right now, and His presence is going to come and just touch you, just in a moment. Thank You Lord, You're just coming on her life right now, Your presence just touching her. Lord, just fill her with love. Let Your peace just come on her now. Receive - there it is, very simple, whoa, wonderful presence of God just over her. Just enjoy the Lord.

So when we move this way, people start to experience God. Nice to feel that isn't it aye? [Laughter] Nice to do. That's why we come along. It doesn't matter about all the teaching, we just want to feel God. [Laughter] Okay then, so I pulled it apart, and kind of broke it down into bit by bit by bit so you can sort of see it, but actually when you work and operate it's altogether like that, and it's just relaxed and natural. So the biggest problem in flowing in the spirit is becoming focussed on yourself, and on yourself failing. If your mind goes there, I can tell you now, your spirit will close, and it's very difficult to function, so part of the discipline is to realise the gifts of the spirit are given to us to profit others, so if your attention is on the giver, and the other, and away from yourself, the flow takes place more easily.

So here's what we will do. We'll get you all to pair up with someone you don't know that well, take their hand and smile, can I practice on you? They will say yes! [Laughter] Yes, do your best! [Laughter] Make it a very positive encouraging experience, okay, then what we'll do is we'll just pray in tongues quietly together, then go quiet and you just focus. You're just waiting to receive something, an idea, a thought, a picture, an impression - no big thing, just something simple. Then when you've got that something, just focus on it, then launch out and start praying for the person around what God has shown you, right? I'll just do it one more time. Come on Brian, come on up. Could I practice on you Brian?

[Brian] Sure can.

[Pastor Mike] Awesome, that's fantastic, great, so let me take your hand then. Again I just begin to reach out, and begin to start to focus on the Lord, let my attention be set on Him. [Prays in tongues] Begin to pray in tongues and become conscious of the presence of God, then I'm looking for something, and immediately a word came to me just like that, just a word just dropped into my mind. So now that I know the word's come, now how do I use that? What does God want me to do with that? So I'll start generally, and as I start talking, just relax and lead into what God gave me expecting it to grow and get more - Father, I thank You for Brian. I thank You love him and Your hand is upon his life. That's the general bit see? It's getting started. [Laughter] Father, I just thank You love him, I thank You Your presence is with him. Father, I just pray for an increase in confidence in his life, confidence in hearing Your voice, confidence in flowing with You. I pray Lord in his walk with You, he will greatly grow in his ability to hear Your voice, grow in the confidence of Your power and presence with him, that Lord, he will become bold in moving and ministering in the things of the spirit. Father, let that boldness and confidence just begin to come over his life right now. In Jesus' Mighty name, touch him Lord.

Notice the presence of God just coming on him now - ooh! [Laughs] Because once you speak, the presence of God comes upon your speaking, in Genesis it says the spirit of God brooded over creation, then when the word came, then the spirit of God began to move, so you've got to learn to speak with confidence. Father, I just thank You for him right now - just lift your hands up to the Lord and [laughs] the power of God is here tonight! POWER of God touch his life right now, and there it is. Alright then, so we can teach you how to do that too [Laughter] tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. All of these things can be learnt. I would not have you be ignorant, or just not know. God's plan is that we know what to do, and we'll help you over these two days, tonight and tomorrow, how to do it, but I need you just to step out and have a practice. Now whether you get it right or wrong is not important at all. There's no right and wrong, or worrying about it.

What I want you to do is have the experience of reaching out to pray and minister to someone, and you're leaning on listening to God to get what to say. He will only give you a bit of it, and you've got to actually take the step and put some language with what you've got - so what was the word that God gave me? Confidence, so what is it about that? Did he lack it? Did he need it? That's what I was asking God. Well he lacked it, and he needed it, and God wanted to grow him in confidence; what area? Around the operations of the spirit. Okay, so how was that for you? Was that okay? It was right on? Isn't that good aye, thank You Jesus. [Laughter] Like I say, we're all practising. [Laughter]

So there's no pass/fail in this, there's just try, try and try again and we'll practice. So remember the first and most important thing is to say: can I practice on you? And we do want a smiley face you know. [Laughter] Yeah, come on, encourage me, I'll do the best - and then we'll pray together, I'll lead you through it step by step, and then you go for it. Okay, are we ready? So let's get someone ready to go, come on, get someone to practice on. [Background chat] Have you got someone to practice on? If you haven't got someone to practice on raise your hand and then look for someone who's got their hand raised. Down there, two people. Okay, we all ready? Okay then.

Alright, now I want you all just to listen and walk with me step by step okay? So the first thing is smile at the person and say this: do you mind if I practice on you? Give a nice smiley response. Okay. Anyone missing someone to pray for them? You could - mm? You can go in threes or you can pray for me. [Laughs] That'll be great. I'll come down. Okay then, so are we ready? Everyone's asked if you can practice? Alright, now take their hand, just make the personal contact, take their hand and then when you've taken their hand then we close our eyes and begin to just pray in the spirit, pray in tongues or pray whatever way you're able to. Set your attention towards the Lord. Keep your eyes open so you can see. Okay, praying in tongues, [Prays in tongues] yeah, you pray for me.

So what you do is you then focus your attention on the Lord. He loves this person so much, He just loves them. They're very precious to Him. He wants to give you something, make you aware of a need or something to pray for, so listen now, expecting Him to give you something, a word, a picture, just a thought, an impression. Don't try and work it out, what does this person need. Just God, You speak to me. As soon as you get something lock on it, just focus on it. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Then when you're ready, just one person starts out first in a short prayer, no big long prayers, just use what God gave you to pray a simple short prayer, then change over. Okay?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] I just thank You for Mikes willingness to serve You and to give his life to help to strengthen us in the Lord. Lord, I just thank You that You have given him this passion in this teaching, and I just pray that You'll bless him mightily, that You'll continue to work through him Lord, and show him new ways and revelations of how he can strengthen the church in the Lord, how he can strengthen all of us in You Lord and that You may empower him and enable him in his ministry Lord, to do even greater works than he's ever done before, that You Lord will be glorified through him. Lord, we just pray that You'll continue to strengthen him in the Lord, Lord and through that he can strengthen us and we thank You in Jesus' name.

[Pastor Mike] Amen, thank you, wonderful. Very good.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] Ok, all I got was 'strengthen us in the Lord'...

[Pastor Mike] That's right.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] ...oh gosh, that's new.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, but it's all you needed to do, is just you take what you feel, and always start to work with that. Did you notice once you started it started to flow?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so just relax. You don't have to be so fast. You can just relax in it all, and feel the flow, okay?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] My mind usually goes quite fast...

[Pastor Mike] I know, yeah.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] ...and I speak fast then...

[Pastor Mike] Okay and then you speak fast, okay. Well if you just keep your mind relaxed and centred on Him, and you'll get the flow quite easily, but that was good. That was good. Thank you very much. Now let me pray for you. Can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, you'll want to watch then.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] I pray with my eyes open, yes.

[Pastor Mike] [Laughs] Good, good, good. Okay. Thank You Lord, thank You Jesus, [Prays in tongues] I'm praying in tongues. [Laughs]

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] I don't know if I recognise the language or not [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] You're brilliant. Thank You Lord. Father, I thank You for my sister. I thank You Lord for her humility, and her desire and hunger to learn, and You see her heart and You know the desire she has to be effective for You. I pray Lord You would unusually gift her with revelation, so she would accurately and precisely get insights and words of knowledge about people, and words of encouragement to pray for them. Father, I release Your presence around her life to do this, in Jesus' name, Holy Ghost, amen.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Thank you. Wonderful aye?

[Pastor Mike] Yes. Okay...

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] We had an odd number...

[Pastor Mike] Yes, sometimes that happens, maybe an extra one tonight or tomorrow. Okay, have you all had a turn now, all practised? Ask the person how did that feel to you? Get some feedback how it went. How did it go? It was good.

[Female participant 1] She did good. She's a very new Christian.

[Pastor Mike] Oh right, excellent.

[Female participant 1] but she did really well.

[Pastor Mike] That's okay, you did well. Well done.

[Female participant 2] Really when you did what you did it really touched me. I found it hard but a word came to me there that I hope was right for her.

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful. Well, it was?

[Female participant 1] Yes, yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Very good. Isn't that good?

[Female participant 2] Can I tell him what the word was?

[Female participant 1] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Yes?

[Female participant 2] It was Love.

[Pastor Mike] Oh good.

[Female participant 2] I don't know what the reason was but...

[Pastor Mike] Very good.

[Female participant 2] I'm just touched by it all, quite emotional.

[Pastor Mike] Yes. Yes, well you're feeling the presence of God touching you, and we feel it's not in the head, it's in your heart. You'll feel His love, and so when you feel that, you begin to start to weep. It's not uncommon for people when they start to feel God to start to weep, and they don't know why they're weeping, it could be many reasons, just because we feel loved. Most people go through life struggling to be loved, to be good enough to be loved, but when it suddenly comes without anything, it's just undeserved, you're just given, it actually can just cause you just to weep and weep and weep and not be able to stop, not know why. So don't try and work it out in your head. Just enjoy that you're feeling God touching you, see?

[Female participant 2] I've prayed the last 18 months - because I'm a new Christian, I've prayed the last 18 months to feel and hear the voice of God and it's been in my heart...

[Pastor Mike] And here you are. How wonderful. Why don't you come over here and let me just pray for you. Okay, just stand behind her, that's right. I want you just to close your eyes and as I pray for you you will start to feel the presence of God come on you. Lord, I just thank You. I thank You for my sister's love for You, and her desire for You. Lord, let heaven open over her tonight, and day after day in this next season ahead, let her begin to feel the presence of Your wonderful love. Touch her Lord right now, in Jesus' name. Fill her with that love, in Jesus' Mighty name. Let it overwhelm her - and I feel the Lord showing me that growing up you had to work so hard to be good enough. It was like it was a constant struggle ever to be good enough, and I see words being spoken over you, and the words seem to be no matter how hard you try, the words were so critical of you. It's like someone's finding fault in every little thing, and it was heartbreaking, because no matter how hard you tried it was just as though, I'm never going to be good enough, and you've struggled and wrestled with this for years. So the way you've worked to deal with that is by serving people and doing things for people, but no matter how much you've done, it feels like it's still never enough. God wants you to know He loves you. He loves you, He embraces you and celebrates you. He cares about you. Amen.

[Female participant 2] Thank you. Gosh, you are so right.

[Pastor Mike] [Laughs]

[Female participant 2] Now I know it's God.

[Pastor Mike] Yes, see?

[Female participant 2] That's incredible.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, this is actually word of knowledge, and then prophetic word flowing together, so God showed me the pictures and I could see you as a younger girl, and someone going like this and speaking words, and how difficult and painful it was. Then as you've grown I can see how you've struggled in this area, and God wants you to have it freely that He loves you. I'm so glad you came. [Laughs] Okay, let's just draw everyone in. Alright then, so if we could just get you all just to be seated again, just gets out of the camera line. Great, okay then.

Now how many experienced that the prayer that was prayed for you, was just so right for you, it was just the right thing? How many had that experience? Whoa! Look at all those hands. Come on, let's give you all a clap. [Applause] That's really wonderful. Okay, how many felt emotions as the person prayed for you, that really touched your heart? How many felt that? Whoa! Look at all those hands! Come on [Applause] that's fantastic, wonderful. Okay then. So how many, when you stepped out to pray, you were thinking, it just seems like it's just me but I'll do it anyway? [Laughs] How many had that happen? Come on, be honest about that, that's right. Okay and there's a part in which it was you, because you've had to give expression to something God was giving you, so it was a thought in your head, so you identified it as your thought, and you had to speak it. That's why you think it's just your thoughts, but we can receive thoughts from our heart, we can receive thoughts from the Holy Spirit, we can receive thoughts which are demonic - but we're in an atmosphere of faith and expectancy, and so even though you may have doubted that it was God, and didn't recognise it was God, I got everyone to put their hands up to say that they were touched by what you shared. So you know that even though it felt like it was just you, for the person receiving, they got a touch from God, through your prayer.

So you come to realise God could be speaking through me and I don't recognise it, because I didn't sort of feel anything big. Remember, it wasn't for you. It was for them, so that's where there's this faith element in it, where we're trusting God because God is good, God loves people, God wants to help and encourage people, God is willing to use any person to do that. We believe that, therefore without us feeling any great emotions, God can work through us, and we don't necessarily feel anything except maybe later on, oh, I wish I hadn't done that [Laughs] But actually God touched someone in spite of that, and after a while you'll learn to work with the Holy Spirit without needing to feel any great feelings or experiences. We operate by faith. Getting the idea? Okay.

How many enjoyed that as good starter exercise? It wasn't to hard was it aye? See, so what we'll do is we'll gradually grow the experiences you have, but it all works off the same thing; activating your spirit, settling your mind, listening for the spontaneous, identifying it, and then sharing what you have, and allowing if there's more comes to let the more come, and then when you feel it stops flowing just stop. We'll get you to do more and more of that. You might be quite surprised how easily you'll receive. Remember, you're made for this. This is not foreign. This is only a little unusual because you haven't done it, but it's actually how you are designed - that's why we laid the Bible foundation, you're designed for this, okay? I had the privilege of praying for a dear lady here tonight, and you got quite touched too didn't you? Yeah, felt the presence of God. Why don't you come up and just share with everyone what happened? Come on, just come on up here where everyone can see you, that's right. You were telling me how you're a new Christian, is that right?

[Female participant 2] Yes, I am, yes. I did an alpha course at the Village Baptist in Havelock North, and I was brought up a Catholic.

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Female participant 2] I had a faith that never really grew. I believed in God from being born...

[Pastor Mike] Right, yes.

[Female participant 2] ...being a little girl, and I was in a strict family, and never quite good enough. I was married and again, in that relationship, I could never quite match up to what I was expected to be. As a new Christian I've now got a faith that's a living faith, and it's within me, rather than fear of hell and damnation and it's alright...

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful.

[Female participant 2] ...if you give to charities and live a good life, but that's not what it's all about. It's a warm contented feeling now...

[Pastor Mike] With God, yeah. So she was sharing with me how she's a Christian for 18 months and had been praying to hear the voice of God and experience Him, for 18 months. She's come tonight wanting to hear the voice of God and experience His love, and she was feeling emotional after I prayed for someone else, so I offered to pray for her, and when I prayed for her God began to give me some words of knowledge.

[Female participant 2] I'm getting very hot. [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] Hot is good. [Laughter and applause] Hot is good, hot is the spirit of God resting on you, yeah. Okay - and the word that the Lord gave me, was that she struggled to be good enough, and that from when she was very young she was criticised and was never found to be good enough and had struggled all her life to be good enough. God wanted her to know He accepted her and loved her. Isn't that wonderful? Now only God could know those sorts of things, and of course as I spoke then she began to be quite touched - and you're still being touched at the moment...

[Female participant 2] I am, yes.

[Pastor Mike] ...yeah.

[Female participant 2] Apart from the fact that I've got the most beautiful and caring and loving husband now that's helped me find the Lord, given me peace and contentment which I've never known, and he has helped the Lord...

[Pastor Mike] Let's give him a clap shall we? That's fantastic. [Applause] Good on you. I'm so glad you came - so undoubtedly over tomorrow there'll be a lot more of this happen, and that's what we came for. We came to hear the voice of God, and to be able to flow with the Holy Spirit, and you see the tremendous blessing you can be, if you can interact with people and get something from God, that only God knows, that can touch their heart. I'll practice with you tomorrow and whatever I ask you to do I'll do it for you first, so you can see it operating, then you practice and have a turn at it, okay?

Well we're getting near the end of the evening, so perhaps rather than do any more, perhaps we'll just give an opportunity if any of you had some questions you wanted to ask. We may cover it tomorrow of course, but some of it we may be able to cover just right now, so if you have any questions you wanted to ask - I think one or two had some. In the break they came up to me, so if you had a question to ask and if you could stand and speak it out, and I'll repeat it so that the camera picks it all up, and do my best to answer it. There's no bad questions, but there can be inadequate answers, so I will do the best I can to answer well, as best I can. So anyone who had some questions they wanted to ask before we finish this session? Yes, okay then, thank you.

[Male participant 1] My question is about the soul.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] When you were talking, you interchange the words soul and mind...

[Pastor Mike] Mm-hm.

[Male participant 1] ...and memory. Now to me mind means brain...

[Pastor Mike] Right, yes.

[Male participant 1] ...which is where memories are stored.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] But when you die and your brain dies and goes into the ground, that means your memory's gone, but according to scripture it persists.

[Pastor Mike] Exactly.

[Male participant 1] So presumably then the memory is somehow bound up in spirit.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] So that means soul is spirit, so that man has to...

[Pastor Mike] No, no. No, the Bible - yeah...

[Male participant 1] ...so could you explain what happens to memories when a person dies? Is it material, or is it spirit? If it's material that's gone forever, if it's spirit and those memories are in your soul, then a spirit is soul and its like two spirits. Can you explain a bit more about that?

[Pastor Mike] Sure. Firstly although it's useful to consider spirit, soul and body as three separate things, they are actually quite integrated together. In other words you separate your spirit and soul from your body, then your body dies. The Bible talks that it requires the word of God to separate your soul and spirit, Hebrews 4, so clearly the soul and the spirit are quite closely bound together. When Jesus talked about the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man died and was buried, and the Bible says he awoke in hell virtually. Now in hell he had memories. He remembered his family, he remembered his brothers, he remembered Lazarus, he remembered the experiences. There's no indication it was a parable, so it's quite likely it was a real person, so the insight that we would get from that, is that when a person dies, their soul which is separate but connected to their spirit, carries with it the memories of their life.

Your spirit and soul use your body to interact with the physical world, so my understanding of memories, is that experiences that we have are imprinted chemically in the brain, and so there's a chemical imprint left from experiences. In fact actually your memories are made up of the chemical imprints that go into the brain, but there must be a retaining of them. There must be a mind of the spirit, there must be some way that all of these things are retained in such a way that when you die, even though your brain now ceases to function and returns to dust, the person still has all their consciousness. So it would appear to me as though, according to scripture, your soul and spirit are separate but strongly connected, requiring the word of God to separate and work out the difference. It seems to me as though the soul, when you enter the spirit life, your spirit man, the soul is the person residing therein there, the body seems to be used by spirit and soul as a way of engaging and living in the physical world - quite interesting that demonic spirits, when they enter a person will enter in and get involved in the body part of the person, or around the soul in some kind of way, seems to affect both areas.

So the Bible isn't clear on all aspects of how it works, but it does seem to indicate that spirit, soul and body are quite distinct, yet they are integrated to work together. They will separate at your death, but be reunited in resurrection. How God does it all I really can't answer, I can only give as much as I have learnt from the Bible, or learnt through some of the stuff we've looked at in the science field. Science has been able to identify that your memories for example, form like physical trees inside your brain, and that actually memories, when they shift the shape and formation of those neuron trees will change. Really interesting research has been done lately on that, but beyond that, there's a lot that God doesn't say and I don't know either. So I think, you know, we need to research and look into those areas a bit further - but that's about where my understanding of it is, so see spirit, soul and body quite separate.

The bible refers to each one - you may be sanctified spirit, soul and body. It seems to refer to each one as a separate thing, but I don't think soul and spirit are easily separated.

So my understanding is when a person dies and goes into eternity, their form as their spirit man is identical to the form of their physical body and the soul somehow is directly connected into that so the person's like a living person, except they're not living in a physical body. They have their existence in the spirit world now. That's the best I can explain it I think - hope it helps. [Laughs] Okay, anyone else like to ask some things just about what we've covered tonight? Okay then, we've got time for one more practice, otherwise if anyone else has got a question we'll go for the question or we'll get another practice? Okay, you're all going to have another practice? [unclear 01.55.27]

The thing is you're going to get good if you practice, and keeping on practising, so basically you want to take this position: every time I get a chance to pray for someone I will, and I'll look for the chances. When I get an opportunity to pray, if I know the need the person has - just because they tell me their need doesn't mean that's their real need, or all that God wants to say. I'll listen to God for something for them. We should make it our practice that we're going to do it. Now the thing that seems to be the trouble for everyone is something like this. [Just come on up here] This is where the crunch point comes for almost every person, and so it helps if you can be aware of it. It helps you to realise it's normal to go through this. If I - come here. Can I practice on you? Wonderful. Can I take your hand? Thank you. Alright then, now at this point now, the dilemma is, am I conscious of God or not? If I'm conscious of my failures, I suddenly feel terribly distant from God right now, and I've got to do something, and so now I feel under pressure to perform.

Now when a person's under pressure to perform, they don't flow from their spirit. They will just try to perform, and there's no life in it, so what I'll do is I'll be religious: oh God, just bless her. Father, you know her needs Lord. You just help her tonight and touch her. Now it sounds nice, but there's no life in it whatsoever. I'm actually not engaging her, and I will talk about that tomorrow in one of the sessions, about engaging with people as you minister to them. So what I need to do is just direct my attention to the Lord. Now if you build a devotional life, and you maintain your intimacy with the Lord, and increase your awareness of Him in day to day life, what happens when you come to minister is, it's only a short thing to just relax, just drop into your inner man, into your spirit - oh, thank You Lord, You're there. Now Lord, You know her needs right now. Well just pour out Your spirit upon her. Holy Spirit, just come on her right now, Jesus' Mighty name - become conscious of God, and the presence of God comes on her, and she's starting to feel the presence of the Lord.

Now I could reach in - just come back a little and let's do it again. So now I'll just become conscious of the Lord. All I've got to do is just to stop and begin to think well Lord, You know where she is, You know her need, just show me how to help her. What do You want to say to her Lord? So I'm enquiring of the Lord. I'm in a place not of struggling, but of listening and enquiring. Holy Spirit, I know You love her and You know all about her. What would it be that You'd want to say to her? How would You want to help her? Oh - then immediately a word came to mind, so now I've sort of got one word, I know that God is - if you've got the seed you've got the tree. It's just growing it that's the thing, okay? So I've got one seed, so I'll turn it into - I'll begin to pray, and as I pray I'm not struggling to make anything happen. I'm just allowing my heart to flow to her, towards her with love, allowing myself to just be aware God loves her very deeply.

Well thank You Lord that You love her, very precious to You, and You know the struggle that she's been having recently, and I'm asking Lord, that You would bring around her life a refreshing awareness of Your presence, that You'd bring Your peace around her life, and that she would rest from the struggles of trying to do so many things. She'll begin to learn the things that You want her to do, and learn how to say no. Lord, today I just release Your peace into her life. Let the peace of God flow like a river to her now, in Jesus' name. [Laughter] Okay. I know what you think the word was that the Lord gave me. [Peace?] Peace was one word, yes. That didn't come first. The first one was? [Struggle?] Struggle, okay. Can we talk about that? Okay, so what impact did that prayer have on you? Was it relevant for you?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, has there been a struggle going on?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] There has been a struggle. I asked the Lord because all I got was one word, struggle, and then I thought I've got to do better than that. What is the struggle about? So I asked the question - as I'm talking I got the word so I'm asking the Lord what is that struggle about? So many things to do and so many pressures, so many things to be done, and of course it leaves you then drained and strained see? So then the flow came out that way, yeah, then with the word from God came the presence of God which you started to feel and get touched. You're still feeling it, is that right?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah. [Laughter] Do you want some more?

[Female participant 3] No. Yeah okay, why not.

[Pastor Mike] See, that was a silly answer wasn't it aye? [Laughs] No, no, it's alright. [Laughter] I want you to lift your hands up to the Lord. There it is - so again in ministering to people we are ministers of the spirit, so what we're doing is we're receiving from God, reaching into God, reaching to inner man and just - power of God just touch your life. So we're receiving from God and releasing to someone. We are a channel. We stand on earth between earth and heaven to bring heaven into earth. How about that? Jesus said pray Your kingdom come, that Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, so what we see in the spirit or hear or feel God doing, we release it to the person. What I've done is I've tried to put it in ways which are visual so you can literally see it happening, but you do need to understand even if you don't see that, the same thing happens. Even she never fell over this is what's going on, so I've asked the Lord to help me have demonstrations which help you see it, so you sort of - almost like you could see something just flow like a river like that, whoa, it's amazing isn't it? But what really is going on is, it's just from being joined to the Holy Spirit, His presence comes out to touch people.

Okay, ready to practice on someone? Come on, you've just got another three minutes, just about time to fit in one more practice. Come on, let's do it. Find a different person - can I practice on you?

Alright, can we just get some feedback from you now? How many people were quite touched by what was prayed, it was just right for you? Just raise your hands if that was you. Well that's fantastic, absolutely wonderful. Let's give you all a big clap then.

Prophesy (2 of 5)  

Tue 17 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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The Bible says all believers can prophecy; and some function in the 'office of a prophet' with a strong revelatory gift. It is a great gift to build in other people, and we should be passionate to stir up this gift. There however definite boundaries, guidelines, do's and don't's that we should be aware of, and definite steps to follow to get us going.

Good morning to those who are watching on the internet or looking at it through a DVD. We're so glad you could be a part of what we're doing, and I encourage you as we do activations that if you're with a group watching this in a room, you practice these same activations and interact with one another to see how it went. So let's get started.

Today we'll look at the gift of prophecy and we're going to pick up in a section in your notes under 12, so first of all what is prophecy, the gifts of the spirit? Remember we saw different gifts of the spirit? Go back to it and look at it in 1 Corinthians 12 and Verse 7. See if we can find it in our Bible, 1 Corinthians 12 and Verse 7. It says this - let's go back to where we were yesterday - the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit others. So God's desire is you build other people, and the gifts are given to help you do it, so it's God's plan we all build up people, and the gifts of the spirit are a help to do that. So we saw a list of the gifts of the spirit, to one by the spirit, the word of wisdom, another word of knowledge by the same spirit, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophesy, discerning spirits, diverse tongues and interpretations. In all these works the one and self same spirit dividing to everyone severally, so God's willing not only to let you operate in one gift. He will let you operate in any of the gifts. It's quite amazing.

Severally means several, it means more than one, so all of us, it's God's plan we operate in more than one gift. We saw the gifts were divided up into or could be grouped as gifts of revelation, God shows you something; gifts of utterance where you speak something, gifts of power where the power of God flows forth. We shared with you the key on how to flow in that. We'll come back to that shortly, so first of all we're going to look at the gift of prophecy and in 2 Peter 1 and Verse 21 it says: now prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men spoke of God, spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Moved means that they were inspired, there was something stirred inside them. So when we speak of prophecy it's not necessarily telling the future. It is an inspired utterance. We read it in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 3, means literally whoever prophesies speaks for edification, exhortation and comfort to men.

So prophetic or the gift of prophecy, God gives you a small inspired thought. He gives you a thought that bubbles up from inside you, and it is inspired. In other words you're not trying to work it out with your mind. It is something God is giving to you, and it flows through and expresses through you, so you receive an inspired thought, picture, impression. You begin to speak, and as you speak there is a flow of God's words through you, and when God flows through you, it sounds just like you. It's not sort of something artificial or weird. It's just like you're talking, and there's a flow of thoughts coming through. It'll also take on something of who you are, and how you would speak, so God works through people. He is happy to work through people. There's no perfect way of prophesying or perfect way of doing it. God just is willing to use you and flow through you.

So notice that it tells us then, that the purpose of the gift of prophecy is three-fold, so number one is edification. That means if you're going to bring a prophetic word it is to build someone, it is to encourage them, to lift them up. The second purpose of the gift of prophecy is the word exhortation, to come alongside them and strengthen them, or stir the person, so the first person is to build them up. So if someone gives a prophetic word, it should build the person up. A second thing is, it could exhort them or comes alongside them, and after the person's had a word of prophecy, they feel like God came alongside them and strengthened them. The thirdly, it is for comfort so when the word of prophecy comes sometimes it will bring such a presence of God to the person that they begin to weep, and they feel God touching them and loving them and comforting them.

I remember last night as I prophesied over one person, that they began to feel touched, and began to feel the love of God, began to feel tears, and unexplainable sensations that can only be interpreted that God has actually touched their life. So when you bring an authentic word of prophecy or flow in a gift of the spirit like this, the impact on the person is to feel like God came really near them and touched them, and God - I knew God loved the world, now I know He loves me. That's the sensation often that people have, and so it can affect people in very many different ways. So when you prophesy, often when there's a release of the Holy Spirit to touch the person, and spiritual atmosphere can shift, so prophetic words are amazing. Just you can speak to people, and God touches them, and they often say how did you know that, or how could you possibly have known that? It's a wonderful, wonderful gift.

I want to show you several things about the gift of prophecy. One of them first of all is all believers are encouraged to prophesy, so 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 1; follow charity (or love), and desire or passionately hunger after spiritual gifts, and rather than you may prophesy. In other words God highlights prophecy, highlights prophecy. All believers are able to prophesy. Verse 39, 1 Corinthians 14, it says this: brethren, covet to prophesy, and don't forbid speaking in tongues. So the Bible says passionate, be passionate to prophesy. Why? Because we're called to build people up and this is one of the best gifts for building people up, so whenever you have been filled with the Holy Spirit you can prophesy, so all believers can prophesy. Now tell someone next to you you can prophesy you know.

The response probably then is well, really? How? [Laughs] Well we'll get to that. I'm glad you asked that. We'll get to that in a moment, so there are some guidelines around prophesying which I want to share with you, because prophecy like all the gifts can be a great blessing, but also it can be misused, and create a lot of problems, so the misuse of the gifts, or immaturity in operating in the gifts, can create a lot of problems for people, so we need to have a few guidelines around it. So the first thing I want to point out is we're going to read in Verse 29 of 1 Corinthians 14, notice what it says there; let the prophet speak, two or three, and let others judge. So here's an interesting thing about prophesying. It says in Verse 33, God is not the author of confusion but of peace, so when there's confusion there is something else at work other than God. If God is ministering to you, I notice this; He doesn't use lots of words, and He's incredibly sharp and clear, so when something is confusing they may have got an idea right, but something is filtered through it, and it's actually not right.

God does not bring confusion to you, so if someone speaks something to you, and it leaves you confused or feeling flat, the chances are highly likely it did not come from God at all, and the person has just got it wrong, or injected in their own thoughts and ideas into what they're saying. So with prophesying it's okay to judge it, and when you say judge it, it's not judging the person. We're just checking to see whether this really - how much or what of this comes from God, so that means what is the content? Does that feel right? What's the spirit of it? If someone prophesies harsh and judgemental, immediately you can pick the spirit of that's not right. That doesn't come in the attitude that Jesus would come, that's one of love and building people up. So we can assess then a prophetic message in a number of ways. Here's some key things, if someone brings a word of prophesy, you could ask. Firstly, does it agree with scripture? If it's not in agreement with scripture it's wrong, just don't even receive it. No, I can't receive that, it violates scripture.

The second thing is what does it do to your spirit? Does it witness in your spirit? Remember if it comes from God, it will energise or lift up your spirit. You'll feel strengthened or aware of the presence of God, so inside your heart, you must ask, what did you really feel about that? Please be honest, and if you're honest you'll have a witness in your heart about that message, all of it or some of it. So does it lift you up, or bring you heavy after the person's ministered? So if someone's spoken something to you, and you feel a lot of heaviness around you something's not right in it, just say well Lord, I just let it go to You and I don't receive anything didn't come from You, just receive what You have for me. So does it agree with the character of God? So those are some kinds of questions. I tend to work off the content; does that sound right? Does it sound like it's line with the word of God? Does it lift my spirit and bring life? Those are the kind of key things I use on it.

Now there are some guidelines around prophesying I want to give to you, and these come from years of experience, where I've seen the gift misused, so please notice these very carefully, and bear them in mind also when you hear someone else prophesying. So here's some cautions about it and then there's a few do's, and some things that don't - so here's some don'ts about prophecy. Number one, don't use it for Christian fortune telling. [Laughter] People all want to know their future, and you can't believe the number of people that come up to me at various times, and what they want is for me to bring a prophecy about what God's telling them to do. You are responsible for listening to God. You are responsible for your life. If you come to me to tell you what to do, you're letting go responsibility for direction in your life, and for choices in your life. God calls all of us to the journey of faith, relating to Him, trusting Him and planning our way.

Trust the Lord with all your heart, don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him. He will direct your paths, so all of us are called to a faith walk. Don't lean on someone to prophesy what you should do. Don't lean on prophesy as fortune telling for you, waiting for God to tell you from someone else what you ought to do with your life. You are failing to be responsible when you do that - a very, very important one that. Better this way, that you make your decisions and then let God confirm, them and the prophetic word will often speak confirmation about what you already knew in your heart God was saying to you. That's a better way of dealing with it. Now can prophecy tell the future? Yes, it can, but not generally the operation of this gift. It's more the person operating in the prophet situation or prophet office, so we're talking here just about the gift of the spirit that all believers can function in.

When a person gets very good flowing in the gift of prophesy, they have a resident mantel over their life, and often they flow effectively prophetically wherever they are. Then God can establish them in an office in the church, which is for the equipping of people for operating in prophecy, and the person operating in an office of a prophet will often be able to bring quite directional words, quite specific words about things that will come and things God is wanting to do, and quite completely unravel what will happen in the future, so that's a strong revelatory gift over the office of a prophet. Now we're not talking about - we're just talking about believers functioning in the gift, so I encourage you to avoid seeking either to tell someone where to go and what to do, or to seek for someone to prophesy then over you. It becomes manipulative.

In the world of the occult people want to have their fortune told. There's a whole realm of the spirit with spirits of divination that operate to try and then impress their thoughts on people, so if you're going to move into that realm, take responsibility for your own personal direction. Let personal prophecy confirm it. That a good idea? That's pretty sound stuff. Here's the second one. Don't use prophecy to scold people. If you're getting a prophetic word that's telling you off, there's something wrong. Don't inject your own disapproval of someone. If we're prophesying, we prophesy love to build them. If it's not going to exhort them and build them, keep quiet. Okay, don't use the gift of prophecy to try to correct leaders, because you've got an issue in your heart about them. Don't use prophecy to bring out your pet ideas. [Laughter] It's not about us, it's actually about listening to God, and building up the other person. That's what the whole flow of the spirit is.

Now here are three other areas which are really important so note these ones. Don't prophesy and give direction over business dealings. There has been immense harm caused when people have wanted someone to prophesy about a business deal. Again this falls in the category of letting go responsibility for decision making, and this time trying to put it into God's hands, when He says you must take responsibility for your life. So in business you don't wait for someone to prophesy what you do. You have to work out a business plan, you have to pray over what you do, you listen to wise counsel, you follow practical wisdom and at times God can confirm things. If there's going to be prophetic words around business let them confirm what you'd already decided to do, or planned to do, or thinking of doing, rather than tell you some new thing you should do. It will inevitably end with loss, financial loss and problems, because it's operating outside the sphere God gave to operate in.

Okay, here's another that's a very important one. Do not prophesy over personal male/female relationships. Well I believe God's going to get you to marry this one, or going to get you to marry that one. [Laughter] This is a no no. Don't do this. Again it violates personal responsibility. If two people feel that God has joined them into relationship, they must take responsibility for their decisions in it, not look to someone to prophesy. Prophecy can confirm it, but don't look to someone to kind of give a direction that way. There's a normal process if a couple - they should find out, or should look out for someone who has similar values, that they feel there's a chemistry between them, they are flowing in harmony with God together, similar kind of direction in their life, and there's a witness from either parents or those around them who love them, that they see the fruit of God on the relationship, but prophesying that you should marry this one, this is well and truly outside the boundaries, and can only end up in harm.

As I shared with you last night, one of my daughters had I guy tell her they were going to get married, and of course that's what people use - God told me. Great, he didn't tell me! So I just told her if anyone tries that on you, just say well He didn't tell me so forget it. [Laughter] The guy was very persistent, God told me you're going to marry me, and she was also quite persistent, and in the end he just wasn't listening, so I rang the Pastor and said would you have a talk to him? He's totally out of order. He's manipulating with the gift of prophecy, trying to bring emotional spiritual pressure on my daughter. This is wrong. Please confront him, so they did that, and that was the end of that. Okay, so [laughs] alright then, so here's another one; don't prophesy that God is going to heal someone. I've seen so many problems over this one, of people prophesying that God is going to heal another person.

Does God heal? Yes, He does. Can God heal? Yes, He can. Will God heal? Well that's always the uncertain bit, and when you prophesy that God is going to heal someone, if you have not heard from God, you have produced a false hope. Now what happens in this situation, is people feel compassion when someone's not well, and they confuse the feeling of compassion, with the direction of the Holy Spirit. So then they prophesy the person's going to get well, and what happens is it brings a tremendous spiritual confusion when the person doesn't get healed. I'll give you an example of it and look, I've had this several times and I believe that people who prophesied this, should be confronted about the misuse of gift, because it produces a false hope. It's like saying what everyone wants to hear. It's not what the gift's about.

The gift is about encouraging people with real hope, so I had a situation where I had a friend in another nation who's a senior business leader, a very important person in the nation, a leading Christian in the nation. His wife also is quite a leading person, and his wife got cancer. I went to visit him, and all these intercessors and prophetic people, everyone without fail, had prophesied that God was going to heal her. Spiritual battle, and all the kind of stuff that goes with it. I felt in my heart she's got six months and she's going to die, so it's very difficult to know how to manage that, when all the popular prophetic thing is all saying she's going to be healed. I feel in my heart that she's going to die, so I put it to him that he had six months, and then there would be a major tsunami, a storm in his life, and he needed to be preparing for it. It was clearly his wife's death, and so the six month - now here's the thing. He himself didn't want to believe she would die - of course you don't, and so he wanted to believe these other words.

Six months went, she died almost to the day, six months later, and so this was a huge problem. Here's why it was a problem. It was a problem because everything had been built around the hope that she would live, and now she died, so you've got tremendous confusion took place, and no one's talking about it. So I went to him and I said that there are two problems you face. I said number one, your wife has died, and this happens in life, that when people come to the end of their life, we've got no power over that. People die, and sometimes they die of cancer, and so you've got about two years to recover from this tragic loss, and it will take a little bit of time. I gave him some practical advice. I said the deeper thing is this; your wife has died but the rest of your future depends on your relationship with God, and right now that's breached seriously because you think God has let you down, so you've lost your trust in God because you listened to all the wrong prophecy.

He was very open to me now because he remembered out of all the people who had prophesied, I was the only one who said she was going to die, so he was very open and I counselled him how to restore his faith, and how to rebuild his life over the next two years. Then we were very, very glad a little later on to be able to see him massively restored, and then ultimately introduced us to a lady and asked what we felt about this lady. Everyone else said she's not the right one. [Laughter] I said she's exactly what you need, and here's why. He was asking for help in making that decision, but you've got to be so very, very careful. Do not take over someone's responsibility that God has given them. Everyone is responsible for the decisions in their own life. Do not let anyone take that over, and make that decision for you by prophesying something around your life. You've got to recognise, it's just immaturity or ignorance of how the prophetic gift functions.

If you've got those safety measures around you you'll be fine. You can just function, stay within the boundaries, comfort, exhortation, edification, building people up. Getting the idea? So when you are prophesying, here's a few practical things to do, and then we'll get to speak on activating your spirit, you'll get an exercise to do together. So here's a few practical things. If you're going to speak on behalf of God and that's what you're doing, speaking to encourage, speak clearly, don't mumble. Speak clearly, speak naturally. Don't put on a spiritual voice. Oh, Oh, OOOHHH! [Laughter]

If you read in the Book of Genesis, when God wanted to connect with Adam, He said Adam, where are you, you know? Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit of the tree? Very simple language. There's no whoo-ho-ho. [Laughter] That's just people's way of just putting stuff together [Laughter] It's an unnecessary distraction from listening to God. It focuses you on the person, rather than on where we should be focussed, on what does God have to say. So just keep a normal tone of voice, and speak in simple language, you don't have to use King James language. [Laughter]

It turns out that God is a 21st century god [Laughter], and people will hear God speak to them in their own language, or their own way, or their own style, so if you're a highly educated person you'll hear God speak to you in a way that you would recognise. A person that's not well educated, they would hear God speak in a different way through them, so every person will hear God speak in a way which is appropriate to them. So when you speak and share, just speak naturally. I just sense this, or I felt this, or I had an impression of this. Don't go in sort of adding 'God told me'! [Laughter] God told me! Because what you're doing is you're positioning yourself out of accountability, and into some kind of thing where you've got this hotline with God, and now you're an authority over what's about to be said, and no one can challenge it, whereas actually we are to judge the gift. So if someone said God told, they're kind of just stopping you even well no, now wait a minute, wait a minute, God told? You know, I don't feel so right about that - so don't go saying God told me this! Just speak naturally; I just felt this as I was praying for you, or I had this impression while I was praying for you.

It leaves you more transparent and open. It leaves it easier for there to be dialogue about what was said, and if it's God, God can stand up for Himself. He doesn't need us to help Him, so if something came from God it will bear witness in the person's spirit, and if it doesn't, it doesn't mean it was wrong. It just means perhaps they weren't listening. If they were wrong they'll register actually that was God speaking to me at that time, so just share. That's all your job is, to just have a heart to love people, listen to God and share what you sense God giving you and showing you, then stop when you feel the flow stop. Don't keep going. If you're in a meeting then please be sensitive to the flow of the meeting, and also be yielded to the leader in the meeting where he gives permission to flow and to operate, so in a meeting like a church meeting, which is mostly in a house group or something like that, small group, cell group, in a thing like that, then just be aware that you're functioning under authority, and don't kind of take over from the leader because you've got this hotline to God.

This violates chain of command. It just violates what God's set in place, and it puts you right out on a limb, and unable to be connected, and it's spiritually completely out of order, so no good fruit comes from that. Even if you've got it right, it produces a problem - so always the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet. It tells us that in 1 Corinthians 14; the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so how you deliver, when you deliver, and what you say is subject to your spirit. You don't have to feel any great thing. You don't have to wait until you're [inhales] you know, wound up. Initially as we move in the gifts we can be a little nervous and get a little wound up. Oh, I'll give you that right now - 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14. I don't think it's in there so let's see if I can find it - 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Sprit of the prophet, Verse 32. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so in other words whatever you can manage yourself, it's under obedience. That word means literally to be properly positioned under your own spirit, so you don't ever have to get out of control prophesying.

Verse 32, the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so if you have something that violently interrupts a meeting and then you try and tell the person, hey, that really disrupted the whole meeting. Oh, well God told me! This is being unaccountable, and it's violating that scripture which actually, the way you deliver, and how you deliver, when you deliver, actually is your responsibility, so it puts it back on the person actually you can learn when and how to flow. You can approach a leader and say actually, I feel I've got something from God for the group, can I share it? That would be a good way of doing it, or they may just open it up and say it's okay for everyone to share something that God has given you, but you always stay subject to order. God always operates with order, and although at times it can look chaotic what God is doing, it is always in a divine order. So again, getting the gift of prophecy, how are we going to get flowing in the gift of prophecy? How can we activate the gifts?

Now remember I shared with you, that you can stir up the gifts of God? I'm going to just go back and just show you how you stir up the gifts of God, then we're going to get you just - I'll give you the practical keys, then we'll get you started doing activation again together. How about that, okay? So just go back in your notes, how to activate the gifts of the spirit. You can literally stir up the flow of God in your life, and so 2 Timothy 1, Verses 6 and 7, I remind you, stir up the gift of God which is in you, by the laying on of hands. So that word stir up [found in Number 10, item Number 10, 10.1] Gifts of the spirit getting activated, stir up the gifts of the spirit, right? So that means rekindle or fire them, so there's something you can do that fires up or energises you, and there's many examples of people activating the gifts of the spirit.

Elijah in 2 Kings 3:15 got a musician, so music can cause your spirit and soul to be stirred, so you can flow in the gifts of the spirit. In Judges 16, Verse 20, Samson would shake himself, and as he shook himself, the Holy Ghost would come on him and he had tremendous strength, so he did it that way but we've got a different way that we can do it. We can pray in tongues, stir the gift up that way. God gave us the Holy Ghost. We can speak in tongues, and activate and stir our spirit man, so there are reasons why gifts can become dormant. Often it's because of fear or because of unbelief, we just don't believe God would work through us, or because we're under control, there's a lot of control, no freedom to flow. Passivity can cause gifts to shut down, or just straight out neglect, where we just don't do it, so gifts can become dormant, but you can activate them again if you begin to re-energise your personal spiritual life, so there's a number of ways we can do that.

I want to give you some practical keys on what I've found is a big help to stirring your spirit man up, so you can begin to flow in the gifts of the spirit. A key part of it of course is your personal devotional life. Building a life where you're in the word of God, reading the word of God, praying the word of God, spending time with the Lord, worshipping Him, sharing with Him, building your spirit man, praying in tongues, all of this is the normal devotional life of a believer, so we need to be feeding our inner life, feeding your spirit man, so you've got something to give. If you don't feed your life spiritually there's not much to give, so we can make it a practice that we feed our spiritual life, hungry for God, hunger - God, use me today God, today I just wait on You. Lord, today give me something for someone or bring someone into my life that I can minister to and share with. That kind of praying, you're stretching out for God to do something.

Now here's some simple things you can do in our environment, and this is a way of breaking it down so it's very easy to do. Number one, free up your spirit. You can't prophesy and flow in the gifts if your spirit is all uptight with tension, so free up your spirit, relax, laugh more and pray in tongues, because praying in tongues actually energises your spirit. When you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is speaking through you. He's speaking language to your spirit, and your spirit is expressing, you are flowing with Him. It's a great way, pray in tongues, stir your spirit man and it starts to energise you, and we'll do some exercises on that a little later. The second thing is expect faith, expect God to speak with you. You've got to reach out expectedly. See if I'm going to pray for someone and I'm full of doubt, not that much happens when there's doubt, but when you come, you say God, I just expect You to give me something for this person. I'm believing that when I get myself in that place, You will give me something I need.

It sounds a little risky, but actually what faith does is it steps out trusting God. What am I trusting, that I'm good enough? No, I'm trusting that God is good, God loves them, and God's willing to help them. I'm just here available, so it's a faith that God is willing to do something. The third thing is, so we stir up our spirit, reach out our faith, then just focus your attention. One of the things that people find very difficult to do, is to just focus their attention to listen. You know if you want to hear someone, you've got to stop and listen. There's too much distraction, you can't hear, so the key thing we saw in flowing with the gifts of the spirit is hearing, being able to pick up the small impressions of the Holy Spirit - and they're very small, so I've got to get the noise out of my head. Now for some people that's a problem, because there's a lot of noise, and the noise comes from unresolved personal conflicts, spiritual, emotional conflicts. The noise comes from the voice of demonic spirits speaking into our mind, condemning, judging, accusing, belittling, pressuring, confusing. That's one aspect.

They also come from your own beliefs in your heart; I'm no good, God wouldn't work through me, or I've just blown it, or I'm not - you know, all of those sorts of beliefs of the heart, which are contrary to the word of God, demonic spirits use to stir up and energise confusion and turmoil inside you. It's normal for us to be at peace and rest. In the kingdom of heaven there's righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, so turmoil inside your emotions have to do with what you believe in your heart, and that in turn is activated on by spirits to keep you in a state of turmoil so you can't be useful to God. Getting the idea? So we need to be committed to the journey of growing, growing inside and in our freedom and peace on the inside. He's promised to give us peace, so one of the things I have found - there's a lot of things can help in that, but one thing I've found I've learned to meditate, to take the scripture and to picture it, and hold it in my mind and begin to pray, and just keep my imagination fixed on that picture, locking in around that. I've learned, I've trained my mind to stay focussed and you can do the same.

When you have your mind all over the place, sometimes it can be hard to pick up the voice of the spirit, so quietness and peace. I don't like lots of noise in my head or around me, I like quietness, because I've found in quietness it's easier to pick up the voice of the spirit of God. It's a very still, quiet voice. If you're hurried or agitated for example - I don't have time for prayer - your mind's going all over all the things to do. You're not at rest and in a place to hear. You have to do something about that; write it all down, get it out of your head, relax and just be in the presence of God. So number one, free up your spirit and start praying in tongues quietly in an even spirit; faith, expect God to give you something; focus, begin to just give your attention to listen to the spontaneous impressions, then feel, identify what God gives you. Just try and identify the thought, word, picture He gives you, and then when you've got that, focus on it, then step out and speak. That's how it all works and all the gifts of flowing in the spirit all work out the same way. They work on your spirit being alive, you are focussed to receive something from God, you identify what it is and you begin to act on what God gives you.We saw that God gives it to you in a little picture, a word or a thought or some kind of thing like that.

Okay, so what we need to do now is we'll just stop the session now and we're going to now look at giving you an activation to do. How about that? Well that was really exciting. [Laughter] Great, I know you want to stretch out. There's only so much - I can teach you all the stuff but at the end you've got to stretch out and do, so if you don't stretch out and do, then nothing's going to happen. So would you like to come up here? Can I pray for you? So what we'll do first of all is we'll look at the activation we did yesterday, and keep going back into that again alright? So the first thing we did - can I pray for some of you? Great! He's so positive. That's really good. Okay, can I take your hand then? Alright then, so what we're going to do is just going to pray an inspired prayer, then from that, we'll move to bringing an inspired thought. I'm not going to call it a prophecy because then you'll freak out and think I've got to do something hard. [Laughter] Just an inspired thought, I think everyone could have an inspired thought couldn't they? Could you have an inspired thought? [Yes] How many had one last night, God used you? Great! There you are. Okay, we can do it again today.

So what we're going to do now, I'm just going to ask the Lord to give me something that I can just use as a basis for praying for her. Remember that as you do this, you just free up your spirit and relax. If I focus on trying to do something, what's going to happen is I'll stress out, and then I'll get uptight. My spirit will shut, and what I feared will happen - [Inhales sharply] nothing! So just relax. Take time, just pray quietly in the spirit, [prays in tongues]. Just allow your spirit to relax and just come to a place where I'm open to now extend my faith and believe that God will give me something. So immediately I did that I got one word just came. I don't know what all that means, but I've just got one word to start with, and I'm expecting though that if I will just stay here focussed on that, God will help me understand what that's about, and then I'll begin to pray. As I pray, I will use that word or what God's showing me in that prayer, and there'll be a flow of the spirit of God to touch you. Alright, so now another word's just dropped into my mind, so how did that happen? Just a word just dropped in spontaneously while I'm in the middle of talking, and I've learned to recognise that's most likely the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so I'll just wait again, pray and stir your spirit, relax, extend your faith, ask the Lord to give you something. Now you're listening to your heart, not your head. If you're listing to your head, you'll look and try to figure out now what possible needs could she have, you know? You'll try and figure it out, so that's the language of the head. The language of the heart is spontaneous, it's a flow, it just is a thought or a picture just comes to mind. Okay, so go back there again to check I got it, and thank You Lord, just thank You Lord, You love her. Thank You Lord that You really care about her. Lord, I just thank you to give something just to help her. Alright, so that same word just is sitting there, so I'll just now begin praying. Father, I just thank You for my sister. Thank You, You love her. Thank You Lord that You are working in her life to stir up passion to reach people for Christ. I thank You there's a fire burning in her heart, to win people to You. There's a fire burning in her heart for the lost and the broken. There's passion, that You are igniting, to bring Your power to people who are broken and damaged.

I thank You Lord, You're going to help her to enlarge in her spiritual capacity to minister to people. I pray Lord that Your Almighty power would come around her life today, filling her to do that work in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord. Holy Spirit, come over her now. Amen.

Alright, now - so the word I got was Passion. Now I had no idea what that referred to. It could refer to lots of things, but what I felt as I said it, it referred to a passion for people, and a great desire to reach out to people, and see people saved. Would that be right?

[Person Pastor Mike prayed for] Bingo. [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] ...and I also felt, so as I was praying I'm also listening to what's coming out, because it's a flow from the spirit, not from my head, so my head can just be quiet and listen to what's being said. As I'm listening I get to know her, and as I was praying I could feel this passion for the lost, a desire to be able to reach them, a desire to be able to bring the power of God to them, to touch them. That's what I could feel was there and God wanting to do that through you. Amen.

[Person Pastor Mike prayed for] Amen.

[Pastor Mike] Awesome. Okay, well there we go, so praise the Lord. Give her a clap. [Applause] Right, now it's your turn, it's your turn, so remember, this is just a practice. It's very important just to ask the person: can I practice on you? The person - give a very positive response - yes, do your best, see? That's it. It's nice to be encouraged. It's good to have an environment which is easier to learn and practice in, but after that we can go into any environment and do it. So then take their hand, quietly pray in the spirit, if you can pray in the spirit. If you can't, just reach out and meditate on the Lord, asking Him to give you something. Now that's the point, if you're going to go through turmoil, you'll be feeling the turmoil. Calm yourself. This is not a win/lose. This is not right/wrong. This is just we try to ride the bike [laughter] okay? I'm behind holding on a little bit to give you a bit of guidance to make sure you don't get too many wobbles and fall off.

So what you would do, if you feel tension rising, you are centring your attention on performing to make something happen. It will only get worse if you keep in that frame of thinking. Just shut that thinking down, and just begin to meditate. Just allow yourself to see, the Lord Jesus, You're there, You're my friend and source. Focus on the source, not the problem or the fear. Focus on the source, see and as you focus on the source, just relax beforehand. Just a firm thank You Lord, You love her. You love her. You're just so glad to work through me, so I just wait on You. Maybe You will speak to me. That's the language you use in your head. It's an affirming faith kind of language. If you allow your mind to drift, and go on and think you're having to get something, immediately you'll disconnect from the Lord and shut down with anxiety and fear and tension. Then the more you focus on that, the harder it gets, then you'll just try and make something up to get the heat off, and think I wonder if I can slip away at morning tea time. [Laughter]

[Female participant 1] [unclear] [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] The doors are locked. [Laughter] So there's no way you can explore flowing with the Holy Spirit unless you do something, so these exercises are to get you doing something to explore what it feels like, and it'll feel great, and there's also some turmoils around it. It's all part of the journey of working with the Holy Spirit. The turmoils are inner and outer conflicts. The joy is when the spirit of God flows through you and you see the person - you open your eyes up to what you thought was just you, and there's tears coming down, and God has touched them - and you thought it was just you. Remember, it will be your thoughts in your head, and it'll be your voice. It'll feel just like you because it's God working through you now. So you wait for a picture, thought, impression, and then just turn it into a prayer. Start generally, and then pray. Let's do it. We can do that, and then we'll graduate, and we'll do something just another level up after you've done that, okay? Last night everyone did it okay, so come on, you can do this. You know you can do it. Find someone, break into a pair, and then stand up wherever you'd like to. Let's do it.

[Background chat] Right, pray quietly. Focus your attention. Reach out expectantly, expecting God to give you something. Receive what you've got, then begin to turn it into a prayer. [Background chat] Alright, let's just stop right where we are now, and let's just get some feedback. How many people, the prayer that was prayed was just right for you? Great, that's wonderful, okay. How many of you felt touched by the Holy Spirit when that person prayed the prayer? Wonderful! Come on, give yourselves a great clap. [Applause] How many of you felt it just seemed like it was just me, I'm kind of thinking maybe it's just me, I'll just do it anyway? How many had that experience? There's a few like that, okay. How many of you, it was really a struggle? How many felt tense and uptight when that magic moment came when you're sort of waiting for God to give you something? How many felt a little bit uptight then? Okay. Was there anyone unable to overcome that? You got stuck at that point and just froze? Anyone freeze? No-one, that's great. Okay, very good. You've done very well.

Right then, what we're going to do now is we're just going to extend that exercise a little more. If you just sit down for a moment, and I'll show you how you can extend that exercise now a little bit more, then we'll just take it a little further. So first thing is, we should just - why don't we just give a clap, everyone did so well. [Applause] A number of you were quite touched by what happened, because when someone speaks an inspired thought from God, there is a flow of anointing, a flow of the person of the Holy Spirit and it just touches your heart. For some people they feel inspired, some people weep because they feel God is near me. That's why it's so powerful.

Now what we did was we made it a prayer, because a lot of people, the majority of people, if you say can I pray for you will say yes, and if you would just stop for a moment, and listen quietly, God will give you what to pray for, and it can deeply touch their heart. I remember I was out and I saw two old ladies by a garden and I stopped and I thought I've got to go over to them. I said I just felt to help them with the garden, and then I said I'm a Pastor. Can I pray with you? They said yeah, that's fine, so I put my arm on both their shoulder and thought God, You've got to show me what to pray, and then I got an idea and I began to pray. When I opened my eyes one of the ladies is just weeping. The other lady moved away. I thought that's fine, you know? Just what is God doing? God's not working on her, He's working on this lady. I said tell me what's the trouble, what's happening? Just asked her to talk about what's happening. She said oh, my husband died only two weeks ago, and so we were able to talk. I got her to talk about her husband, then I was able to lead her to the Lord. So just the prophetic prayer opened the door, when loving care was expressed, for her to come to Christ. She just was at a point and the prayer opened her heart and brought God into her life, then she opened up her life to come to Christ, so there it is. How about that? Just a simple thing, just oh, I should go and help these ladies and that's how the gifts flow, very, very easily, very natural.

Right, then now what we're going to do as we move from prophetic or an inspired prayer, we're going to go to an inspired thought, an inspired thought. We don't call it a prophecy because otherwise you'll think it's too hard. [Laughter] Okay, so we'll just call it an inspired thought, and so what we're going to do is we're going to follow exactly the same kind of format. Ask the person to come up, can I practice on you? Yes, do your best. Just pray in tongues quietly, wait expecting God to give you, and look for something, just a thought from God for that person. We're not going to foretell the future or anything like that. There's nobody prophesying like that, it's just something that God gave to you, just an inspired thought that would do these things: encourage them, exhort them or stir them, or comfort the person okay? So I'll need a volunteer for that again. I'll have to stretch out and do it for you, then you'll see what it looks like okay, so I need someone, so who do I get? Someone over here, one of these ladies over here. [Laughter] You were pointing to someone - why don't you come on up here, come on, that's right. Never point to anyone else. [Laughter] Okay, so first thing, can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah!

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful, that's great. Okay, so we're all ready to go. Can I take your hand? Okay, so it's not necessary to do this, but it can create a sense of connection, so it can be quite a positive thing to do this. It's helpful if you ask the person's permission. It just respects them, and some may not want you to do that, so it's helpful to show respect for a person when you minister to them, by not trying to do something that they don't want you to do. Okay, so I've been at meetings, had a word to someone, and they didn't want to come up. So I said do you mind if I come to you? I went down and then didn't touch them, just shared what I felt God giving me, so it didn't highlight or make it too embarrassing, you've got to respect people's dignity. Alright, so we begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] So I'm just reaching out, I'm just reaching in my spirit, focussing my attention for God to give me a thought. Now it's up to Him what kind of thought He gives. One of the things that we could start - since all of you are Christians, one place that you can start practising in this, is looking for a thought from the Bible, just a story from the Bible, a person from the Bible, some act, a thing that happened in the Bible.

Is it Old Testament or New? Just reach out, and if you've read your Bible, God's able to drop many things into your heart, so what I'll look for is a person or a situation in the Bible. Then I'll say well, in what way does that relate to her? What aspect of that do You want me to bring out? Okay, so we'll just see what happens. So of course there's that initial tense thing; oh God, I haven't got anything, what do I do? So you've got to overcome all of that. [Laughter] Remember, that's normal so just stay relaxed, just breathe gently and relax. Thank You Holy Ghost. Thank You Lord that You love her, You know all about her. I thank You Lord, You have something to inspire and to encourage her with, something Lord that You just want to speak into her life. Thank You Lord.

Now immediately I saw, or it came to mind, a story in the Bible, so I need to now just focus on that story. I just saw a picture, and I saw a picture of two men, and Jesus with them, and they're on the road to Ammaus. I knew exactly it was the story of the two on the road to Ammaus. That's all I got, a path, two people, and Jesus with them, and I knew immediately it's the road to Ammaus. Now what possible way could I share that with her? I could just share it like I've done that. I want to now minister, so this is what I will do now. I will just close my eyes and just go back, just become aware of God again, and aware of that story. Now what aspect of that story, so I just look at the story and then I can see it, so now I'll just begin to share. So while I was praying with you I sensed - I'm not saying 'God told Me'. I just felt while I was praying, this is what I felt. I saw a picture of the disciples on the road to Ammaus, and Jesus was with them, but they were unaware He was with them. They were so caught up in their own issues, and their own disappointments, and their own struggles and problems, and He was right there alongside them, walking with them, and they didn't even realise that their eyes were closed to Him being with them.

This is like you in your journey at this point, that you're so caught up in the things that are happening in your own life, that you're not realising God is with you. He's been walking with you quite a long way. He's with you. He cares about you, and His plan when He talked with those disciples, was to turn them around and get them filled with vision and direction and fresh passion, so He walked with them. He let them share their heart, their struggles and their pains. He fellowshipped them, and then He began to put faith into their heart again, began to put vision into their heart, and they realised it was Him. They were restored and went back to their whole faith journey again. What I see is God's doing this in your life. You've been walking with the Lord, but you haven't felt Him. You're caught up in the things that are going on in your life, and can't see that He's with you and loves you, that He's with you and He's wanting to help you engage your heart, like He got them to engage their heart. He was quite happy for them to share their disappointments, and as they did that, He then put faith in their heart again. That's what God's doing with your life right now, and the journey was an uncomfortable one for them, because all they could see was disappointment, but they ended up seeing Him, and being passionate again, and that's what's happening in your life. You're on that phase of the journey at the moment. But there's a great end in that story. [Laughs] There we are. Now how did that go? Does that sound like you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah. [Laughs]

[Pastor Mike] That's good and I can see the tears in your eyes as well. It just fitted you like a glove.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah, perfect.

[Pastor Mike] So thank you very much for being part of it. [Applause] So it helps if you've read the Bible and know some of the Bible. [Laughter] You've got something to draw from. If you haven't then you have to find another thing, so we'll forgive you there. We'll try it another way a little later in the day, but why don't we just try this to see if God will give me something, just something, a person. If it's a person, what is there about that person? Is it an event? What is there about that event? That's all you've got to ask. I mean we're just here to hear, and then to pass on what we saw, or felt, or sensed. Now it doesn't need to be as substantial as what I had, it can just be quite simple. Okay, you all okay to have a go? All ready to have a go? It could be fun.

Remember, just relax, Lord, where is it, the Old Testament, the New Testament? Usually there's a person - who? What person? And a name comes to mind or what event comes to mind? Let it come to your mind and then focus on it. Well God, what is it about that you want me to bring? This is a great place for Christians to start because you can work with another Christian, they've probably read the Bible, know a little bit about it. But you find the Bible is full of events and people and situations that would be really helpful. It's a good place to start. Okay, let's get someone, break into pairs and then start. Lets start with: can I practice on you? [Background chat

Okay, let's just get your feedback. How many people today were really blessed by what was shared, you felt touched by God? How many were really blessed? That is very good. Give you a clap then. [Applause] How many of you felt as the person shared with you wow, how did they know that? Wow, that's great, look at that. Wonderful! Okay then, so it surprised you that they would know that, or be that relevant to you. That's because it's come from the Holy Spirit, see? Okay then, how many of you were quite touched by the Lord, with what was shared, actually touched you and you felt affected by it? That's wonderful, look, it's the majority of people, wonderful - so that means all of us are picking up the flow of the spirit and speaking in a way that's encouraging or exhorting or comforting. It was just inspired thought by the way, it wasn't prophesy [laughter] and how many of you experienced a block or a struggle at that crucial point where you were reaching out to God? How many felt struggles then? Okay, that's several of you there. Right, was there anyone unable to overcome that struggle, it was just overwhelming? Okay, so you all overcame. That's interesting, so there is a point of faith conflict, where you're stretching out for God to give you something and all kinds of turmoils start to go on around you.

That's quite normal but if you will stay focussed and committed you can break through all of that, so it's just great. I want to commend you there for pushing through. Let's give them a clap the ones who pushed through that. [Applause] So you've had an inspired thought and that's how God works with us. With prophecy we just get an inspired thought or picture. How many got a picture that was a person, a story about a person in the Bible? Okay. How many it was an event, something that happened in the Bible? So some got that. Usually most people get a person. It's quite easy because you've read the Bible, read the person. How many of you, when you started to focus on that person, there was one aspect stood out to you about them? That was the bit you knew you had to talk about? How many had that happen. That's wonderful.

Now you see what happened in the process is you just reached out expecting. God gave you something, and as you enquired, you got more. That's how the prophetic goes. Have you ever seen a newsreader on TV, they only have a couple of lines that they're reading, and as they read the second line it changes, and then there's another line. There's another line drops in and that's how it works prophetically, so the newsreader has only got two lines at a time, but if he will read them then more will come. If you have a tissue box and you don't know how many tissues are in there but if you take one out, you think if I take that one out that's it. But no, low and behold there's another one turns up! [Laughter] And you take that - whoa! There's another one - and so it goes on. So the prophetic flows like that. You will take the first two lines and read them, then God will give you some more if you stay looking. If you pull the tissue out, another tissue is there if you'll stay looking, so if you stay focussed, looking and expecting, it begins to flow like a river from inside you and it's just all these thoughts, one after the other.

Okay, now how many of you found that you were listening to what you were saying, just kind of like, I know I'm talking but I'm actually listening to what I'm saying as well? How many had that happen to you? That's quite interesting. How many of you found that you were quite interested to hear what God had to say to the person? [Laughter] That's awesome. Okay, alright then. Now Sargin, have we got a morning tea break sometime around about now?

[Sargin] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Alright then, I wonder if we could just fit in one more of those in, just before we go for a break aye, if I keep squeezing it in? Alright then, so I'll get one more volunteer, just one more to come up. No one's pointing at any more. Hands coming up [Laughter] After a while you learn it's quite a good move to volunteer. [Laughter] Okay, we'll try it again. This time I won't look for a Bible passage, let's look for something else and just let God speak in any way He wants to. Can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, great opportunity to practice, this is fantastic. Of course every day's a chance to practice. Okay, now let's take your hand. Thank You Lord. Now just again breaking it down into steps, in reality you've just got to flow into that quite quickly but we'll just break it into steps. The first part is just energising the spirit. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord - again just worship the Lord and set your mind and heart on Him, so begin to set your attention on Him. If I focus on myself I shut down. If I focus on Him I shut down. If I focus on the source, I'm connecting what I need - so thank You Lord that You know him, and You care about him. Father, I'm just asking if You would give something that would be encouragement and a blessing. Thank You Lord. Alright then, now I just got something just dropped in like that. Okay, now I've got to focus on it, and then I'll have to at some point begin to start to share it. Thank You Lord. So go back there. If the thoughts come from the Lord, the moment you just drop back into focussing on the Lord, or into the spirit again, what'll happen is you'll start to pick it up again, so you don't have to worry about trying to remember it all.

If God gave you lots, you get to the end of it and say, now how did that start again? So if He only gives you a couple of lines or a little bit of a picture - okay, so here we go, that'll be it. So now this is what I sensed as I was just reaching out the Lord for you. I saw a picture of a man running a race, and the way he's running it's like a sprint, and I could see him run and he would run and then he would lose breath, stop for a little while, then he'd run again, lose breath, stop for a little while because he's running the race like a sprint. I felt the impression I had was that the race you're running is a marathon, not a sprint, and the temptation or the tendency that you seem to have is that you will run at things for a while, and then you lose energy and motivation and have to take a break. Then a new thing will inspire you, you'll run at that for a little while, and then you've run out of steam, and then you'll run at the next thing again. The Lord wants you to know it's a marathon, and you need to learn how to pace yourself, and just keep a steady journey, progressing through this walk with Him. It's more about the marathon, setting the long term in sight, and starting to work your way, and just steadily move towards it, rather than short bursts of energy, followed by sort of quietness and not doing anything. So how does that relate to you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah. There's some personal experience there, with the aspects of running...

[Pastor Mike] Yes - oh, so you've done both? You've done a marathon and you've done sprinting?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Oh wow, so this is a very good picture. [Laughter] I'd never have known you'd done both of those. [Laughs] So you'd understand with a sprint you've got to put in high energy but if you run out of puff...

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah, verifying you've got to plan, you've got to strategise

[Pastor Mike] And that's what God's saying about your life, your walk with Him.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] How about that? Awesome. [Applause] Alright then, so would you all like to have another go? Come on, before you go to break, before morning tea, alright. So find someone, can I practice on you? Let's go.

Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5)  

Tue 17 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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Explanation of how we can be immersed into the spiritual dimension, and be "clothed with power from on high". This is a gift, available to all who desire it.

Receiving the Holy Spirit (Born Again) versus receiving the Total Immersion (Baptism of the Holy Spirit). To express ourselves in this new culture we need a language which bubbles up from within - energising our inner life, speaking out 'mysteries' and more.

Finally, learn how to operate the Word of Knowledge - a powerful revelation gift to open up a person's life.

There are two dimensions that God wants us to understand. One is personal prayer, and the other is the operation of the gifts, so what I'm going to do is first of all talk about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and Speaking in Tongues. I'll be focussing on the personal devotional gift every believer can receive. Then we will move, and we will look at the ministry gift or the manifestation of speaking in tongues with interpretation.

We saw that list in 1 Corinthians 12:7, and one on the list of the Gifts of the Spirit was: Speaking in diverse tongues with interpretation.

But what I want to do, because some people aren't baptised in the spirit, I want to help you in this session. Anyone at the end of this session who is not baptised in the spirit, we want to pray with you so you get filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, and have the devotional tongue. Then we'll do some exercises speaking in tongues, but also I want to help you understand about Tongues and Interpretations which go together.

So this first part we will talk just about being baptised in the Holy Spirit, filled with spirit, speaking in tongues - what it is and how to get it.

Firstly I want to share with you something that Jesus did and taught; I won't teach you all the scriptures on it, just enough for you to get an outline.

Jesus made it very clear, when He was about to depart from this earth, that He would leave another comforter, the Holy Spirit. He made it very clear He was going to give them a person. The Holy Spirit would be released to them.

He said in John 14: “You've seen Him with you. Soon He will be in you”. So Jesus made a promise, before His death on the cross, that the disciples would receive the Holy Spirit. He's the spirit of truth, He's the comforter; He will guide them into truth, He will reveal things to come, He'll reveal Jesus. He said: “I'm not going to leave you alone”.

So in John 14, He tells us: “I will not leave you alone, I will send you another comforter, the Holy Spirit. He's been with you, but now He will be in you” - very, very important. Now following from there, we know Jesus died and rose from the dead, and then He appeared to His disciples. We're going to read and pick it up from there and we're going to look at some things Jesus did and said. So in John 20:21-22. He said, as He appeared to the disciples, “He said: Peace to you! As my Father sent Me, even I send you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said: receive the Holy Ghost”.

He breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Ghost”.

Now I want you to understand that He didn't just blow on them - He actually imparted. Just as God breathed into Adam the breath of life, Jesus imparted into the disciples His Holy Spirit.

He released into them the spirit of God - at that point they were born again. He breathed on them, and said: “Receive (or ‘take into yourself’) the Holy Spirit”.

What He did was, He imparted from His spirit. It's from His spirit - from the depths of His being = He released what He was unauthorised to release.

He released the Holy Spirit to come into people, so He went [releases one long breath] like that, and then something happened - there was impartation; they received an impartation - the Holy Spirit came into them.

That's what impartation is - something is imparted. Something, that someone has - they release it to someone else.

Jesus said in John 7:37, He said: “out of your belly will flow rivers of living water” - and He was speaking about the Holy Spirit. So God wants you to have a flow from your spirit, but first you've got to be born again. So at this point the disciples were born again.

Now I want to share with you two other scriptures. One is found in Luke 24:49, and Jesus again appears to the disciples and He said: “Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you”.

Notice that He's already breathed into them the Holy Spirit. Now He says something else: “the promise of the Father”.

He said: “I send to you the promise of the Father upon you. Wait in Jerusalem until you be clothed with power from on high”.

So He's already breathed into them, and they're born again. Now He's saying: “wait until you be clothed with power from on high”.

Acts 1:4 – “Being assembled together with them, He commanded them they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father”.

Now they're born again, He's saying: there's something else to wait for - for John baptised you with water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Ghost, not many days hence.

When they were come together they asked: “when will this happen”? When will you restore the kingdom to Israel? And in Verse 8 He says this: “You shall receive power, after the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the utmost parts of the earth”.

So notice He has breathed, and imparted into them the Holy Spirit - they're born again; now He's talking about a second experience, where the Holy Spirit comes on them, and He uses words like ‘baptised’. When a ship sinks, it's baptised, it's totally immersed. It's immersed in water.

If you had a garment, and you put it into a tub of water, it's baptised - It's immersed or soaked or saturated.

So He's saying: “you'll be baptised in the spirit”. You will be immersed into another dimension of the spirit. He also uses another word, He said: “you'll be clothed with power”.

He said: there's something will come on you, you'll have the Holy Spirit come on you, and your life will be clothed. Before it's like you were unclothed. You were trying to do the job without the power. He said: when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you'll be clothed with power. You'll be wearing something. You'll be equipped for something, see? So notice He's quite clear what He's talking about.

Now let's have a look when it happens, what actually happened. Acts 2:1 – “When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were in one accord in one place, there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind. It filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared cloven tongues like fire sat on each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Ghost - notice this - and began to speak with other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance”. Isn't that amazing?

Verse 12 - “Everyone was amazed; and some were in doubt, saying to one another: what does this mean? And some mocked, saying: they're full of wine, full of new wine.

He said in Verse 15 – “you're not drunk, as you suppose”. This is that spoken of by the prophet Joel. It will come to pass in the last days, said God, “I will pour out My spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, young men see visions, old men dream dreams”.

So what has happened is, the spirit has come upon them; and the first thing that happened is, they were filled up with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak or express from inside; because what you speak, your words flow from your heart – ‘out of the heart, the mouth speaks’.

So being filled with the Holy Ghost, they gave voice to a language they had not learnt. It was a language given to them by the Holy Spirit, and they were so overwhelmed by it, some of them were staggering around laughing, and they were obviously like they were drunk.

If they look drunk, then they're behaving a certain way. So we see now that He's imparted in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost's now come onto them in power; and the first sign is: they began to speak in tongues.

In Acts 10:44, the Holy Ghost came on the Gentiles. They also began to speak in tongues - quite a common thing to find happening.

In Acts 10, the Holy Ghost came on the house of Cornelius, and we find they began to speak in tongues.

Verse 44 – “While Peter spoke these words, the Holy Ghost fell on them which heard the word; and the Jews which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the Gentiles were - also the Holy Ghost was poured out on them, for they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God”.

So there's at least two instances in the Bible (there are others), where the Holy Ghost came on people, they were filled, they began to speak in tongues, and they began to magnify God with that expression, or experience, they had.

So what is this ‘Speaking in Tongues’ (because this is a gift that they all received)?

It was something that God gave to them, as part of being ‘clothed with power’. If God has a gift to give you, then it must be important, and we need to understand a little bit about it; so what is this ‘speaking in tongues’?

Have a look in 1 Corinthians 14 to get a little bit of understanding about speaking in tongues.

Verse 2 – “He that speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not to men but to God” (no one understands him). In the spirit, he's speaking mysteries, or things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

Verse 4 – “He that speaks in an unknown tongue builds up himself; but the person who prophesies builds up the church”.

Verse 14 – “If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful, so I'll pray with the spirit, and pray with my understanding as well”.

Now let's just look at the Gift of Tongues. The gift of tongues is a language. In order to communicate, you need language. Our ability to communicate depends on the language we have to communicate with; so if you don't know many words - like I went to Taiwan, and apart from 'Ni Hao' I knew very, very little language. I could not express myself in that culture without an interpreter - someone who could give me language.

So in interacting in a new culture, I needed another language, to enter into it - into that dimension. So God gives you a gift, because you are about to be immersed into another culture, into another realm - the realm of the spirit, and you need greater expression. It's hard to just keep telling Jesus you love Him: I love You, I love You - you run out of words; so God gives you a language that never runs out of expression.

So the gift of tongues is the Holy Spirit. They spoke, as the spirit gave them the utterance; so your Holy Spirit imparts into your spirit the language, and then you let go and surrender, and allow that flow to come out.

You are speaking in that language, so notice what it says in Verse 14 – “when you speak in tongues, your spirit is praying” - so your spirit has a voice. Remember we talked about the different aspects of your spirit? Your spirit has a voice. Your spirit has a mind. Your spirit can speak.

When you're speaking in tongues, you're not working it out with your head; you are letting your spirit yield to the Holy Spirit, and speaking out a language - it's a real language.

Notice what happens - there's a whole number of benefits with that real language. Verse 4 – “When you speak in an unknown tongue, you are building up yourself, like a house being constructed”. So praying in tongues strengthens and builds and develops your spirit man.

When you pray in tongues, you are co-operating with the Holy Ghost directly, and your whole spirit man starts to energise with life.

It's a wonderful gift, wonderful gift; it's very neglected - speaking in tongues devotionally.

You can pray anytime in the spirit, because the flow of the language just never stops. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer. He's always willing to pray through you; so you can pray in tongues anywhere, everywhere, any time of day or night, wherever you're going. Keep your eyes open if you're driving - but you can pray in tongues!

When you're doing this, you are ‘building up yourself’, is one thing it tells us. It tells us another thing: you are ‘energising your inner life with the Holy Ghost’.

So when you pray in tongues strongly for a while, you'll feel your whole body start to energise up, because you’re expressing the life of your spirit. Remember that one of the functions of your spirit is to give life to your body? So start to pray in the Holy Ghost, you come alive with spirit life! It's fantastic.

Notice that when you're speaking in ‘unknown tongues’, it says in Verse 2 – “you are speaking mysteries”. It's a mystery because YOU don't know what it is; but when the Bible refers to ‘mysteries’, it's referring to the things of God's kingdom that He's wanting to bring into clarity for us.

So one purpose of praying in tongues, with your devotional tongue, is: to magnify God, to praise Him; another is to build yourself up; another is to speak out what God has for your life. So praying in tongues is a very powerful gift, a wonderful, powerful gift.

In Romans 8:26, it says that “we don't know what to pray; or how to pray as we ought”. How many know that experience?

But the Holy Ghost helps us, and that word help means, He comes in and begins to join in with us as we make the effort. He energises, takes over, and empowers all our praying. We don't know what to pray as we ought, nor how to pray, but the Holy Ghost helps us making intercession on our behalf or for us - so this is a work of the Holy Spirit.

So there's a level of praying in tongues where I can pray quietly. I can pray strongly, and ‘stir my spirit man up’; or as I yield to the Holy Spirit He may take over, and then there's a whole different language of groaning in the spirit, of travailing in prayer.

There are whole dimensions of prayer available, so when you get baptised in the spirit... Baptism in water was meaning: the end of your old life, the beginning of a new life - so you bury the old, because he's died, there's a new person begun.

Baptism in the spirit is immersion into the realm of spiritual things, of spiritual experiences, of prophesying, of having dreams, of flowing in the supernatural - that's why God wants to have people baptised in the Holy Spirit.

The reality is, many people, having had an experience, just peter-out; and don't persevere to get more, to reach into more. There's a contending for these things, because there's no way the devil wants you to operate in the supernatural - so there is the gift of praying in tongues.

So how could I receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit? There are some very simple keys found in Mark 11. Everything you get, you get pretty well the same way.

Mark 11:24 - “Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive them, and you shall have them”. What could be clearer than that? Jesus' own words: “Whatsoever things you desire” - so notice now, the keys in here.

Number one, ‘desire’: I must want. I must want something. When someone is hungry and thirsty, and wanting something, there is a draw - a pull into their life. Even when you're ministering to one another, if the person is hungry for you to help them, it draws out of you. It draws the life of God from you. So first thing is, if I come to God, I must come wanting to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Number two, ‘when you pray’, whatsoever things you desire when you pray. You've got to ask Him. Now you don't ask Him like this: “Oh God, if it be Your will then give me this.” You know what will happen? He'll just say (without you hearing it): you really don't know what My will is, so how can you really expect to get anything?

You actually need to know: it's the will of God for you to be filled with the spirit. So I need to know that, so I don't come to God saying: “well, if You want me to have it, I'll have it” - that is passive; it's religious. It's not how you receive anything from God.

If you're going to receive anything from God, I have to extend my faith, and believe it's for now; it's for me, now. See? Now that's a decision to push aside all the things: ‘I'm not good enough’, whatever.

Listen, that's all your history talking to you. That's the demons talking to you. That's your brokenness talking to you. What is God saying? He's saying: I love you; I've accepted you; I want to fill you with the Holy Ghost. The gift is here. Will you believe?

That's how He works! “Oh, I don't know, Lord, if you want me to have it”. I can see you're double-minded, and a double-minded man doesn't get anything; so when you ask, you've got to ask believing - and our believing is based on what we know God's word says.

So Jesus said: “wait, you'll receive the promise of the Father.” Peter stood up and said: “this promise is for you, for your children, and all who are far off”.

So this Baptism in the Holy Spirit is for every person; and the gift of tongues is for every person. Why? It's to empower us internally, to help us in our spirit dimensions in our life.

So here are the keys then: whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, you've got to ask - desire, ask.

Number three, believe you receive it. Believe that when you reach out, God will respond to you, He WILL give me this gift. Believe you receive it, and then He says: you shall have it.

So don't ask, ask, ask; just say: God, I believe Your word says that I can be filled with the Holy Ghost; I can have the gift of tongues - I choose to believe it. I believe You'll give it, and You'll give it to me because You want me to have it. You want me to be a strong believer.

The gift is to build you up. Now to approach it: “oh well, I just think I'd rather have one of the greater gifts”. Well this is nonsense - it's just nonsense.

God has got a gift to help you. I don't care how little the gift is, I'll have the littlest one, and then I'll have more; but if I ignore the little things He's giving me, it'll probably be very difficult to get more.

So one of the things about praying in tongues is: God gets a hold of your tongue; so instead of your tongue being turned to all kinds of things, it's turned to magnifying God, and turned to speaking a spiritual language - very, very powerful.

So Desire; Ask; Believe; and then Receive. I've got to consciously do it – “Lord I just receive; and now Lord, I just begin to speak in that new language” - and I've got to take a step.

Now when you step out to speak, you don't stop to try and think: now what could I say? I'll make a sound like this... That's your head talking to you.

No, praying in tongues, you've got to tell your head: ‘stop arguing with me’. You've been running my life, all my life. I'm flowing in the spirit now, and the proper balance is to live from your spirit; with your head co-operating with your spirit, but not ruling your spirit.

When your mind talks to you, it argues. It's like a lawyer: who do you think you are? Why do you think that? So when your mind is talking it dominates, it argues, it reasons, it belittles, it judges.

You've got to put your mind in its right place, which is: thank you, I see the word of God says that, so I'll receive that, and I won't try and evaluate it, because it's from my spirit. I'll just let my mind focus on the Lord, and I'll just begin to worship Him.

This would be a great time to get filled with the Holy Spirit. Why wait any longer? Well I need to pray about it... No, you don't need to pray about it - you've read the scriptures. We've read them; you just need to receive, okay? Aah, some reasoning is going on...

See, here's an interesting thing that Jesus said: “Except you be converted, and become like a little child, you don't enter the kingdom of heaven”. Now what He's saying is very simply this: that to enter the kingdom, is to experience the benefits of what God has. To enter those benefits, He said: you need to be converted, or to have a change, so you become more childlike; not childish, but child-like.

A child is trusting; so for a child, if they're up on the bench, and daddy says: jump, I'll catch you, they say: YAY! But when you're an adult, you don't approach it like that. If you're an adult, and someone says ‘jump, I'll catch you’, you say: ooh I doubt it! No, I don't think so.

That’s because we've had a lot of experiences, which flavour what we think, and we've lost simplicity and trust. Everything in the kingdom is about simplicity and trust; so coming into this, is just a simplicity and trust - I'm going to do this.

In a moment, I'm going to lead everyone through a prayer to receive the Holy Ghost, and we’re going to follow through some simple steps. It doesn't matter if you already received or not, you can still all help us. We'll all work together on this, and if you're watching it online, wherever you are, then you can all just do exactly what we do, and the Holy Ghost is going to come to you, you'll get filled with the spirit and speak in tongues - wherever you are. It'll be fantastic, because God's not limited.

This is what we're going to do. In a moment we'll stand, and then we'll close our eyes. Forget about yourself, and forget about the people around you. They're not looking at you; they've got their eyes closed too.

Then you can focus your attention on the Lord, who is the giver of a good gift for you. Just set your attention on the Lord. He's a generous, loving, good giver.

Now remember: how do you receive, or minister things, of the spirit? By the ‘Hearing of Faith’. If you'll just believe what we've read and shared from the word is true, then it can happen to you.

So I'll lead you through a prayer, and it'll go like this. We will ask the Lord for the Holy Ghost, we'll ask Him for the Gift of Tongues; then we will receive by faith, and thank Him. Then we'll all begin to speak in tongues together.

So practically, I'll lead you in the prayer, you follow, we'll get to the end of the prayer, then just take a deep breath like you're receiving. It's kind of like a physical action, like a faith action that you're doing - something physical, but the reality is a spiritual thing - I'm receiving from God now, and I'm going to just speak in tongues. I'm going to just tell Him how much I love Him. I'm going to let that language of love just flow, and flow, and flow.

Now if your mind steps in, it'll argue and shut the flow. You've just got to tell your mind: no, no, be quiet - just be quiet! Shut up! Just don't talk to me. Just, I want to flow with the Holy Spirit and worship God.

So why don't we close our eyes, and let's lift our hands up to the Lord. If you're watching online, you can lift your hands up to the Lord, and all stand together as well.

I want you just to follow me in this prayer, and when we get to the end of the prayer take a deep breath, and then receive the Holy Ghost, receive a fresh anointing, and lets all begin to speak in tongues, okay? Just follow me in this prayer...

“Jesus, I come to you now. I want to receive the Holy Ghost. I want to be baptised in the spirit. I want to receive the gift of tongues, so today by faith, I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues - thank You Lord, for this gift to praise and thank You. Amen.”

Take a deep breath – and receive the Holy Ghost! Let's begin to pray, let the gift rise up inside.

Okay, just stop. Just stop. We're going to start again in a moment. You can turn this gift on and off as you will - this one goes on and off at will. If you decide to pray, you can pray straight away.

Now it requires - the Bible says 'they' pray, 'they' spoke; so it's no use waiting for God to make your mouth go. He won't make your mouth work - you make your mouth work. You yield; you speak.

You say: well I feel a bit funny doing that. Well, no one is listening except God, just be funny in front of God, don't worry about it. Just let go, and just stop being uptight and in control. Just let go, and love on Him.

I remember when I first started to pray in tongues, my mind was arguing saying: you're an educated man, and you're babbling like an idiot - stop! And my spirit was saying: YES! Oh joy! Glory!

I could feel this battle going on inside, so I was walking around a block in Mount Eden. I remember stopping, and saying: mind - be quiet! This is doing me good. I haven't felt so much joy in a long time - not without a glass of wine anyway. It was a different kind of joy. It's a joy that bubbled up from inside, not a joy where you had to tank-up, and then you got a hangover.

This is great stuff - so are we ready? So all again, on the count of three, we're all going to pray in tongues strongly, loudly. You choose - come on, pray, let's pray strongly, loudly. Give yourself a voice. Let yourself be heard. After all these years of put down, and being held down; come on, let's have a voice to speak out in the gift of tongues!

You can sing in the spirit as well; and start to give expression as much as you can to that language, and you'll find it becomes a flow, like a river. When you're in that flow, your spirit comes alive, you come alive.

Don't let heaviness, or any kind of inferiority, shut you down. Whatever you do in God, do it strongly and boldly.

I'll just show you what I mean. Let's just give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Okay, now that's the base level.

Now the Bible says: “Clap your hands all you people, shout unto God with a voice of triumph”. So this time, I want you to put everything into it, not a polite clap, an English clap; let's give a great shout of victory and triumph, and clap the Lord who CONQUERED SIN AND DEATH, and ROSE MIGHTILY FROM THE GRAVE. COME ON, LET'S APPLAUD THIS KING OF KINGS! [Applause and victorious noise] Halleluiah! YES LORD, Halleluiah! Okay, whoa, okay, that's much better.

Now you notice that the whole atmosphere changes, when everyone, united, begins to express the life of God - everything changes.

Anything that's done half-heartedly never has any life on it; it's always got a death on it. You know when people sing Happy Birthday, and they all sing it, but they don't sing it really strongly? You feel almost embarrassed for the person. One, they're singing to them; and two, they're singing so badly, you think: oh God, this is shocking. Anything done half-hearted, no one is pleased by it, not even God, see?

So when you do it with a whole heart, passionate and you're just under Him, there's a life comes in it. You can sing songs for 45 minutes or an hour and have no release. You just do this for 30 seconds, with all your heart, and the whole atmosphere changes, because our body and our soul hold back our spirit flowing; so when you start to clap and shout, and shake, and start to let go and start to GIVE to God, then your spirit just rises and flows.

So most people in New Zealand live under passivity, and apathy, and heaviness; so when they get into any kind of group, you can feel it in the group; but you can break it easily.

Let's keep on doing what we did now, shout! This time: shout, and pray in tongues as well; do all you can, just make a big noise. Stamp your feet, you can stamp your feet as well. Shake your head! Just go wild, for just 30 seconds. Ready? One, two, three - HALLELUIAH! Yes Lord! Yes Lord! Halleluiah!

How many feel the energy level has just shifted in your body, straight away? If you're half asleep, you wake up, just like that see, because it's really quite simple. Just work your body so it yields, let your soul focus on the Lord; just let your spirit flow, speak in tongues.

Fantastic, because what happens is, the power of God starts to flow in you. Your life becomes energised. You practice doing that in your prayer times, instead of just head down and mumbling. Go on! Get alive! Speak strongly, and pray strongly, passionately!

You don't have to do it very long, and you come alive. You can pray in other ways as well, but this will get you alive, and get you going; and not only that, the power of God starts to flow in and through you. Your whole life becomes energised.

The atmosphere begins to change. If the whole church does that, the whole atmosphere's completely different; but if they're all passive and shut down, it's just dreadful. I just scream inside, can't stand it, that heaviness and shut down religiosity - and you know the Bible abounds with noise and celebration.

David ushered in a whole new dimension of expressive praise and worship and dancing and rejoicing and celebrating. In the New Testament, James prophesied that God would do that again; but sometimes we just bring our cultural baggage in, and we think that because that's our culture, that's normal. But heaven is full of shouts and trumpets and noise and rejoicing and celebrating. There's joy unspeakable. It's expressive, full of life; so just practice praying in tongues, and giving more expression to your life with God.

Okay, so we've done: Baptism in the Spirit; and speaking in tongues. Now you can pray in tongues all the time. That's your personal devotional language, and it builds you up.

So we're going to go back into 1 Corinthians 12:7, diverse kind of tongues and interpretation. It talks about these – “the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all: word of wisdom; word of knowledge; faith; healing; working of miracles; prophecy; discerning of spirits; diverse kinds of tongues; and to another, interpretation of tongues”.

Now this is not your devotional language. This is a gift, an operation of the Holy Spirit, like the other gifts, for a specific a person or specific group; so not all may flow in Tongues & Interpretations, as a gift.

Everyone has a devotional language; but not all might flow in it as a gift; and tongues with interpretations comes as a package usually, so if there's one there should be the other - otherwise you haven't got a clue what's going on.

So if someone prophesies, you know God is building the church. But if there are tongues, you can't understand it, unless it's interpreted; and so this is not your prayer language. This is actually a manifestation of the Holy Ghost - diverse tongues, as the Holy Ghost wills.

1 Corinthians 13 – “Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels” - isn't that interesting? So when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you manifest the gift of speaking in tongues with an interpretation - it is a language of men; or it's a language of angels.

So it's a language you're given. For example, Doug had prayed among a group of Chinese. There was someone there who knew Hebrew, and he said: you have spoken in fluent Hebrew. He knew exactly what he was praying; so this is a specific demonstration of the power of God.

In the Book of Acts, they began to pray in tongues, and as they prayed in tongues, for some of them they were manifesting the ‘sign’ gift of tongues - and people could hear and understand them in their own language.

So the gift of tongues - it is a language. It is a real language, and it has expressions; so don't pray in tongues, or any gift operation, in a monotone, boring, way you know? Language needs to be interesting, and be alive and have expression; have you in it, not just (monotone) we're talking like this... and there's no expression. Let life and vibrancy flow - put yourself into it!

So the ‘tongues of men and angels’; so tongues means a different kind of language. It's a distinct language. Sometimes with the gift of Tongues with Interpretation, the tongues may be a language someone can understand.

Sometimes the tongues may be a language understood by angels, so clearly He said: “If I speak with the tongues of men or angels”, so quite possibly He spoke with the tongues of angels at times. I'll give you a couple of examples of this.

In Acts 2, they began to speak in other tongues, and everyone heard them speak in their own language. Now you had people from all over the world, and everyone who came there understood something that someone was praying, then how did that happen? That is supernatural.

They've never learnt the language, yet they're speaking, and they're speaking from their spirit a language they didn't know - and someone understood the language. A most amazing gift really isn't it? We don't see much of that. We need to believe for more of that - just to be able to pray and speak, and if someone from another language is there, they say “whoa, you were speaking something I understood! Do you know my language”? “No, don't have a clue, I just spoke in the Holy Ghost.”

So people in different cultures did understand Him. It's quite an amazing gift, and I've heard of people going into places, overseas particularly, and having prayed in tongues, and actually someone understood what they were saying. It was their language. They recognised it, and were quite astonished they'd never learnt the language.

So the gift of speaking in tongues with interpretation is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, which comes on you at a certain time. It's for a purpose: to build the church.

It could possibly also be a language of angels, and there are a number of things in scripture that talk about angels being activated. In Psalm 103:19, it says: “the Lord has established His throne in the heaven, His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, you angels who excel in strength, who do His word, harkening to the voice of His word”.

So when God's word is spoken on the earth, angels can respond to that voice. I don't think we can command angels. I think that's an area where there's not a lot in the Bible on it, so people have different views; but I do believe that there can be a ministration of speaking in tongues, where angels understand what it is, and can be activated because of it. So speaking in tongues can be a very, very powerful gift of the spirit.

So what is the purpose of speaking in tongues? In 1 Corinthians 14:22 it says: “it's a sign gift to the unbeliever”. So a person who has no understanding of anything spiritual, and you speak in a language, and they understand it, boy, they know that's God! That's definitely a supernatural sign.

I think it can also be for prophetic proclamations - we can begin to speak out in the spirit; and decree and declare things. I think angels are released many times, by the speaking in tongues, and activating that gift. It can cross language barriers; so again, for that gift to come on you, you'd need to desire to operate in that gift, and then practice. I'd practice at home, letting the Holy Ghost come on you, then begin to speak out, and so on.

So we should ask the Holy Spirit to give us the interpretation. In 1 Corinthians 14:27, it says: “if any man speaks in an unknown tongue (they're talking about in a church meeting, or in a group meeting) let it be by two or at the most three, one after the other, and let one interpret. If there's no interpreter, let him keep silence, and let him speak to himself and to God”.

So that's quite an interesting verse; so you notice there He's talking about two different things. He's talking about the gift of tongues, in a group setting, needs to have interpretation for it to build and benefit everyone.

So we can all speak in tongues, and just worship God together; but when there's a sign gift of tongues, like prophecy, there's a gift; when we have that gift, someone needs to interpret it, or it doesn't have any meaning for anyone.

“So if a man speaks in an unknown tongue, let it be by two or three” - so don't have everyone doing this, just one, two or three; and there needs to be an interpretation. If there's no interpreter - then that's the interesting thing - if you've spoke out, you should pray you get the interpretation; and you interpret it - so how about that?

He said: “if there's no interpreter, keep silence, and speak to himself and to God”. So clearly, when you are speaking in your normal language of tongues, you're speaking to yourself, and you're speaking to God - very, very clearly.

So what about the interpretation of tongues? It's a gift that God gives you, it just comes on you. Do you translate what was said? No, you don't translate it. Translating is when you listen, and phrase by phrase, you make sense of it.

This is actually: God gives you the inspiration, you just get the message, and you just share what God has given you - so it's not a translation. It just catches the spirit of what God is saying; and so a person may give a tongues message, but the interpretation's quite short; or the tongues message could be quite short, the interpretation could be a little longer.

It's got nothing to do with translation. It's actually: God is saying something (by the spirit), and here's what it means (by the spirit). Together the two build up the church, and they can activate things in the realm of the spirit.

So it's quite an interesting thing, because when you flow in those gifts, it energises and activates, and creates atmosphere, because God is released through the moving in those gifts. It’s a great gift to desire, and great gift to begin to flow in.

Not so many flow in it, and for a whole number of reasons; so what I want us to do is, were going to just do some activations together. We'll just get you back on your feet for a moment, and I'm going to get you to do two or three activations and praying in tongues. I want you to experiment with what you sense and feel as you do this. I want you to feel the flow inside.

On the count of three we'll pray. We won't pray for more than 30 seconds - just 30 seconds; and when you're praying in tongues, I want you to put your hand on your belly, and then pray strongly in tongues, building up your own spirit man. And as you pray in tongues and speak strongly to yourself, I want you to sense what happens inside you - what you feel in your body, as you do that. Are we ready? Okay, one, two, three.

Okay stop, just stop now. What did you experience? What did you sense as you prayed? What did you feel? Lots of energy? Something rising up inside you? How many did you feel like you were expanding, like you're sort of growing larger on the inside? That's quite a common experience to have that one.

Now this time, I want us to all pray strongly in tongues, and we just focus your thoughts on the Lord; and while we're worshipping Him, we're just honouring Him and thanking Him, I want you to see what happens in the atmosphere in the place; as with one mind, we set our minds on the Lord, just fix on Him, hold Him in your mind.

Okay, stop. What did you sense or notice as we did that? Breaking through? What were we breaking through? The atmosphere that's present; or spiritual atmosphere that sits over our nation, over our areas, over our region.

When you begin to give expression to the life of God, suddenly you feel release, and you've actually broken through an invisible, but real, resistance.

For many people, something sits around them, that just holds them down. It's working on the beliefs of the heart, and it's usually demonically operated around those beliefs of the heart. It just holds you down, and gets you in turmoil. When you decide to pray in tongues, it's like it all breaks off you.

Lasting freedom usually requires: Deliverance; and change in the heart beliefs, and freedom from bondages; but if you will pray in tongues, you can stir your spirit man up and become full of life.

When you become full of life, there's real power. If I was just to begin to pray strongly in tongues, I can feel my spirit rise up; and instead of being conscious of myself, I become conscious that God is within me. So if I just put my hand on her head and touch her; and I believe that I am charged and full with the Holy Ghost, I let go something from inside me, and you can see it visibly. You could see something is coming out of this person. There is a life of God, the hidden life of the spirit, which is designed to flow out of us.

Now it can be strong, it can be gentle. I've done it in a dramatic way, so you get something visual that gets you thinking about we connect with the realm of the spirit; and we bring from within us, from the gateway of our heart, we release the life of God.

Many times when people pray, or we minister to someone, it's like because of inferiority and rejection and the lies of the devil we tend to: oh, we'll just leave it all up to God. God, just You do it all.

Now God wants to work through you; so you have to give yourself, as you are joined one spirit to the Lord. So if you withhold yourself from loving the person, and releasing what you have to the person, nothing will happen, because I'm deliberately choosing to withhold me.

But if I begin to think how wonderful this person is, how God loves her, how God's heart is filling me with that love [blows once deeply] and something happened that time that was different. There was a flow of the spirit.

There was just a flow from within my spirit; or we could do another way. I get her to look to the Lord, not to me, which takes the pressure off me. Then I look to the Lord, who's the source, so we're both looking to the Lord. We'd expect something to happen, so the Bible says: have the faith of God, and if you'll speak to the mountain, be removed and cast into the sea and not doubt what you say will come to pass, then you'll have what you say.

So notice it says: “you speak”, so the power of God can be released by speaking; so if we're going to minister in healing and deliverance, we will have to speak.

So power flows when I am connected to God, and I hear what He's saying or doing, and then I speak.

Now this is exciting. We are ministers of the spirit. You have something to give. Whatever God has given to you, you can give to someone else. Think about that - so the more you can receive from God, the more you have to give. If you experience His love, you can release His love. If you experience His joy, you can release His joy.

We need to engage God regularly so we have something to overflow, to give. We're not trying to make things happen. We're taking what we have, and I've taken a long time to gain these things. It's taken me time and effort to work on my mind, and deal with fears and things - but you have something to give because of that. Isn't that exciting?

When you work with God, He's always willing to work with you. What happens is, you become aware of blocks and barriers and things in you, that you need to address in your journey with Him.

We don't have to have it all now, it's a journey with God, so on the journey we're learning stuff. On the journey you find there are blocks, and so you work to remove the blocks.

Notice I've avoided touching him. We're just calling on the spirit of God to come, just decreeing it. You've got to learn to exercise your faith, not try to make things happen. So I ask him to connect with God, and reach out expecting; and I myself reach out expecting, and make God my focus. It's quite surprising what can happen, what will happen - you might like to try it.

Now remember that, for the anointing of the spirit to flow, the anointing flows from within the person's spirit, through their soul and body, out to touch a person. So if your soul is in turmoil, and blocks and argues, there's no flow from your spirit. Bible says “out of your belly flows...”, so your soul, your mind and thoughts have got to co-operate. I've got to choose to set my heart to believe, and to resist the distractions. If I do that, then the spirit of God can flow quite easy. He wants to do it.

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Word of Knowledge is a Gift of the Spirit. A word of knowledge is a manifesting of God.

This is what a word of knowledge is: it's just a little piece of information. It's not that you know everything. If you have a word of knowledge, you don't know everything, you only know a little bit.

So a word of knowledge, it just comes as an impression, a thought; it comes as a mental picture; a still voice; and you become aware of something about a person, that you had no natural way of working it out.

So it is given to you, it's a revelation. You don't work it out; so you don't look at the person, and try and figure this thing out. You listen, and God just shares the secret with you.

Oh really? I didn't know that! So it's like a thought that comes to you; so it's not accumulated knowledge. It's actually revealed knowledge; God reveals something to you.

So what is the purpose of the gift? There's a whole range of purposes; but when you have a word of knowledge, it helps you see what in a person's life, what God wants to work on.

So for example, in counselling, words of knowledge are just so important, because you'll just get something about a person, and it's related to their past or their current situation. It's like their whole life starts to open up, and you have access to minister into them.

So a word of knowledge can uncover some details about a person's situation, and it enables you to minister and help them very, very clearly. It's just such a huge asset to get words of knowledge, because you know things that you couldn't have known naturally - and the person is so surprised, and it opens the way to minister to them, help them, and so on. Words of knowledge are just wonderful.

There are a few Bible examples... Elijah, the king, the enemy of Israel, kept making these plans to invade Israel; but every time he got there, he would find that the Israeli army was there already.

In the end the king got very angry. He said: who's selling me out? Who's telling our secrets? They said: no one's telling your secrets, but God is telling the prophet. Get this - he said: well let's go get the prophet then. Hello! If God's telling secrets about army battles, then He's going to tell the prophet about what your plans are too - so it didn't work out very well at all.

So in 1 Samuel 9:15-20, Samuel received about 16 pieces of information about Saul - what he was doing; where was going; his father; his donkeys; and what God had planned for him. It's one of the most accurate words of knowledge in the Bible. There are about 16 specific facts that God gave him, he could not possibly have known. It's extraordinary.

John 4:18, the woman with the marriage failure, and she's just there talking to him; and he said: go and get your husband. She said: oh, I haven't got a husband. He said: yes, you've been married five times, and you're living with a man right now. That is a word of knowledge.

Words of knowledge can really - they actually scare people. I remember the first time I was in a meeting where words... I had no idea what words of knowledge were. All I knew was that man there was calling out secrets of people in the congregation - and I was overcome with a horrendous fear.

I remember - now this is how smart I was in those days - I remember hiding behind someone bigger than me, just going down in the seat so that he couldn't look at me; because I thought if he looked at me, he would be able to see what was going on in my life, or where I was at. It didn't occur to me actually God was telling him; and he could say: there's a guy over there hiding behind that guy there... Ha!

I remember one of the most outstanding words of knowledge I heard of, was with Frank Houston; and they'd been having trouble in their church, with someone breaking into their church and stealing sound equipment, and quite a bit of sound equipment had gone.

Frank's a Holy-Ghost-man, and he was overseas, and he rang back the church - he's ringing in the middle of a service, and he's talking to his son Brian. He said: Brian, God's been speaking to me. I've just been to a place of prayer, and he said if you look down the back there, you'll see right down to the back on the right side - you looking right the back side? He said: now go three rows forward, on the right side there. Now he says: a guy, two in, who's got long white hair - is he there? He said: yes. He said: that's the man who's been taking stuff from the church.

The guy leapt and ran - he literally ran away, but he had been the thief. He was the one seen. He'd come into the church meeting to case out what was there, then later on come and steal stuff; and so eventually he was caught, and returned the things. Isn't that extraordinary? Scary, isn't it aye?

So the supernatural realm, when it operates well, is scary. It scares, because everyone has this illusion that you're secret, and you can cover everything from everyone else. When you suddenly realise, from God's perspective - it's all open, so He can see it all - and He can tell someone; that's a little scary isn't it aye?

I remember we were in Nigeria, and I had another one of the most accurate prophetic words of knowledge. There was a whole row of people lined up there, and the prophet had this first lady there, and she was pregnant. He stood in front of her for a little while looking at her, didn't say a word, but he was listening to God.

He said to her: the child you're carrying is not your husbands. She was shocked of course; then he said: actually, when you got married, you didn't realise that your husband had a low sperm count; and so when you couldn't conceive, you went to the witch doctor to get a potion for your husband; but he deceived you, and gave you a potion that would turn your heart from your husband, and bring you to him.

This child is the witch doctor's child - and she just broke down, and wept and wept and wept, because it was true. It was all true; so she repented, she was forgiven, and God touched her. Then she had the baby quite soon afterwards, because the baby was well overdue, there was a problem.

So these are the sorts of things that words of knowledge can do. Words of knowledge are stunning, because they actually open up people's lives, in a way nothing else can. When you know something about someone, and no one but God would have known - they just actually know God is really opening up their life.

It's dramatic - I love it. Words of knowledge are great; so words of knowledge are great in areas of counselling, when you can't sort out the root of a problem, and then you just get a word of knowledge. I had someone come up to me, and they were describing a certain problem, and I just had the word 'occult' come to mind.

I said: have you been involved in the occult? We talked and interacted; yes, there was heavy involvement with the occult, and there was heavy involvement in the background with it as well. I said: well this is the root cause of your problem, why you're having this particular struggle; so that was able to be ministered to.

Ananias received words of knowledge about Paul. Remember, we read that in Acts 9:10-16; and God told Ananias go there, and go to that place, this street, that house, this man; and he's blind, and he's been praying.

I want you to lay hands on him, he'll be filled with the spirit, and he'll be healed, and I've got a message for him. So there it is - the prophetic word, the whole area of words of knowledge, all flowing in together. Isn't it wonderful?

Now this is in the Bible. Start to look for it, where Jesus did words of knowledge; for example: He's going into town, there's a man up a tree. How did He know his name was Zacchaeus? It's a strange town, strange people, there's a guy up a tree. Whoa! Who's that? He said: Zacchaeus, come on down, I'm going to your place for tea.

How did He know his name was Zacchaeus? So words of knowledge can even get: names of people; dates; events; specific things that have happened. God knows everything about your life. Now that means it's a good incentive to get your life right.

I remember when we went to this prophet, I remember thinking: oh, I was in the terror of the Lord. I think: dear Lord, I don't want to have him say all my secrets out in front of everyone - I’ve got to make sure my life is right before God! So the fear of God comes in that kind of situation.

One of the meetings we were in there, I remember there was a whole group of us from the west had gone to this country; and there was one man there, the guy said: you're a businessman, aren't you? He said: that's right. He said: you're a leader in your church aren't you? He said: that's correct.

He said: no one knows that on your last trip, you were involved with a prostitute over in this country, and he specified the country. He was just shocked - but it was true, absolutely true; and so he repented right on the spot, and got his life right.

So we tend to think that no one sees what we do, and no one knows what we do; but God sees it all, and when the words of knowledge start to flow, it brings to the light pieces of information; not to shame or hurt someone, but rather to actually help the person.

So I would probably have done it a little bit differently than that, but in this particular situation, the guy came into a meeting where this was happening, and he came in with a sin hidden in his heart, so it was outed in the meeting.

Scary, so my first introduction to Pentecostal meetings was ‘scary meetings’. They were scary meetings alright - I was scared anyway. So when the supernatural operates, you hear people use the term: it 'freaked me out', you know, because they can't understand how this sort of knowledge would happen; but its words of knowledge, words (or a piece) of information.

So how does a word of knowledge come to you? Well it may come to you just as a picture. You just get a picture just come. You may just sort of see something. It may come just as a spontaneous thought - you just have a thought turn up in your mind; just suddenly you have this thought.

It may come as you feel, or you have an impression inside you, about someone or something; so words of knowledge are wonderful when they come, but they come as: a picture; a thought; they might come just as something very, very little - very, very small.

So when you get a word of knowledge, it helps if you ask for details, just enquire for a little more; so instead of it just being general, it becomes more specific. Then we find that the more specific it is, the more risk you take; but the more specific it is, the greater the release, and the blessing, for the person concerned.

So words of knowledge, mostly it comes as a very little impression. You have to ask God to give you words of knowledge; and when you get the word of knowledge, you'll still actually go through the wrestling: man, I wonder how to say that, and how can I share that?

Now most of the words of knowledge you'll get will be of quite a gentle nature, a simple nature. The ones I've described were people operating in a prophet office, so it was at a different level altogether. For example: Peter, operating in an apostolic office; and a man (Ananias) comes up to give.

He said: did you sell the property? We did. Is all the money from the property? It is. He said: how come you and your wife have conspired in your heart to lie, not to men, but to the Holy Ghost?

While you sold the property, and had the money, it was yours to choose what to do; but you have tried to lie to the Holy Ghost? With that, he fell down dead. Isn't that interesting? His wife came in, the same thing. How did Peter know that? He knew it by word of knowledge.

Peter was not worried about the amount of money; that was not the issue. The issue was hypocrisy.

The issue was: it was his property. If he wanted to sell it, he could sell it. If he wanted to give it, he could give as much or as little as he liked; but he gave, pretending it was ALL that he'd sold.

In other words he, was trying to create an impression, or an illusion, of a generosity that wasn't there. He was trying to lie; and he said: you're lying to the Holy Ghost, and so it had huge consequences for him. So many times in the Bible, there are examples of words of knowledge.

Anyone who flowed prophetically moved in a mixture of: prophecy; and word of knowledge - right through the Bible.

I'll give you an example of this operating with Peter, when Simon the sorcerer got converted, got baptised; and then he saw that when they laid hands on people, that power came. He wanted that power; and Peter looked at him and said: “I see that you are in the gall of bitterness, and the bondage of inequity”.

He said: underneath, driving that request is bitterness, and there's a whole crookedness in your life around the area; of wanting power, so you look good in front of people. So he was able to, with a word of knowledge, go right to the very root issue that was there, and help the man face and see what his motive was for doing things.

So that's actually like a revelation knowledge; and it could be described as a word of knowledge, or it could be described as discerning of spirits - picking the motivation of the man's heart.

It's a very powerful thing. Words of knowledge are great. One of my daughters served as a responsible adult, RA, in a hostel; and she had responsibility for the whole of the second floor. She had to look after all the students, make sure that there's no one in the rooms, and that kind of deal.

She would lie down, and the Holy Ghost would speak to her. If there was a guy had come onto her floor, and had gone into one of the rooms. He would just speak to her and tell her; and she'd go down, knock on the door, ask to come in; and so you've got a young man in the room - and they would be shocked. How could she possibly know? But God told her, so she just took it, and acted on it, and it opened up, and the whole thing came out in the open. It's exciting isn't it?

You think you could hide from God - it's a bit scary isn't it? But this is normal in the Bible - that the supernatural realm would operate. It's a normal kind of thing, so it could operate around a whole lot of areas; around causes of problems in people's lives, circumstances, family situations, and so on and so forth.

God can open up these things by revelation, can reveal; so when you're working with people, it's a great help if God gives you words of knowledge, and prophetic words for them, because you start to see things you couldn't see before, and it helps bring God to the person.

It's a wonderful gift, a great gift and it comes very gently. It comes very gently. It's just like the slightest, least impression; so in a group like this, there are bound to be many, many needs; and so we could reach out and say: well Lord, is there someone here who has a need? Suppose if we just, for example, we look at the area of healing. We're going to look at how could I move in words of knowledge, around the area of healing?

So I'll just show you a simple way of approaching it. There's many different ways of approaching it, then we'll just step out and see what God does.

So the first thing is we look at: how am I going to get a word of knowledge? A word of knowledge will come as just an impression, a thought, a picture, or some kind of thing; and be very gentle, very light.

So if I was to begin to just picture the outline of a person's body, and I would just ask the question: I wonder is that a man or a woman? Now when you ask God things, ask always: is it this or that, this or that? You'll feel drawn to one or the other - oh, I think it's this, see?

So ask the Lord; Lord, is there someone here that you want to minister to; and is it a man or is it a woman? Man or woman? Which way they were drawn, I sense a woman.

Alright then Lord, well where would she be? Would she be on the right side of this room, or on the left side of this room, where would she be? Is it the right side, or the left side?

Now just listen for the gentlest impression; so is it a man or woman? Is it on the right side, or the left side - it's on the right side. Alright then, so therefore, we know it's probably in this area. So I need to know, what is the area?

So if I just look at a person's body, and start to look just at the head, and is there any part of the body I'm drawn to? So I'll just look at the head, maybe the ears, the eyes, I just begin to just slowly, just mentally, just walk down through her body. Is there any place that I'm drawn to, any place that stands out, any place I feel oh, there could be a problem there?

So what I sense is this: I sense that someone has a lower back problem, a woman on the right side of this room. Is there any woman here, around this area here, that's got a back problem, in the lower back there's pain, and we will just pray for you right now and you're healed. Who's that?

And there's another woman here, and you've got a problem in your hip, in this right hip. There's a pain in the joint. Who's the person who has that problem? Who's the one has the back problem?

Okay, God bless you. So how long have you had the problem? About 8yrs. What happened eight years ago? It just deteriorated? Did the doctor tell you what the problem is? Yeah, I go to the chiropractor every week. Every week you go to the chiro - for nearly eight? On and off, yeah.

The reason I'm asking that is to try and identify: where the problem lies; how long it's been there; and then what it's painful to do - because I was going to get you to do something that would be difficult to do, see?

So look to Jesus. He's the source of healing. He is the healer. Now we know that because of word of knowledge, God does want to heal her. This is a long-standing problem that requires expensive treatments with a chiropractor. It'd be great if God healed her, so now we need to pray.

So we've got a word of knowledge on the healing situation, now we need to get to believe God for a miracle of healing. So you believe for the word of knowledge; then you believe for the miracle of healing - two things, okay.

So I need to believe for healing, so I need to start to pray in the spirit, and look to the source. If I focus on the need for her to be healed, I'll feel stressed I've got to do something; but if I look at Jesus, the healer, then I can become aware, and filled with awareness: there's nothing too difficult for Him; and I can then, at the right time, just release healing.

So I just begin to thank You Lord. I thank You Lord, You are the healer. There's nothing too difficult for You. You're the Lord, our healer. I just love You. Thank You Lord that you desire to heal this young lady right now, right now I thank You for Your power touching her.

“In the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I speak into the spirit of infirmity, I command You release her spine, release her back right now. I break all witchcraft that's come around your life, to hold you back. I speak and break all generational witchcraft. I speak and command that spirit of infirmity, loose her right now, in Jesus' Mighty name. Now Lord, we just pray for Your healing power to just flow into her, and restore her completely, in Jesus' name.”

Now you notice as I began to pray, I started first of all to focus on the fact there could be infirmity, and I started to not just pray for healing, but consider the possibility there could be a spirit.

Then as I began to pray into that area, I began to realise there's occult, and there's witchcraft, there's something has been around her life, got on her spine, and attached to her; so when I rebuked it, you notice the power flow was immediate.

How are you feeling? You feel a bit of a shock, wasn't it aye? Did you get surprised how suddenly... Yeah! What did you feel? What did you experience? You felt release?

Okay, how are you feeling? Just move around; just see how you feel now. Okay, look for a chance to lift someone. You feel different? Okay, come on - let's give the Lord a great clap now. Praise the Lord. Isn't that wonderful isn't it?

Notice we are now moving from the simple - you know, just ask someone about something; to listening for inspired thought. We're coming up to starting to get inspired thoughts, words of knowledge; and starting to look then at being able to minister to needs in people's lives.

It's just a slow journey, but it all works on the same thing: getting something from God. So remember what I did was: well Lord, is it that side or that side? Oh, maybe that side. That's all I got.

Is it a man or a woman? Man or woman? I think maybe it's a woman. That's all I got. Then I began to look at the outline of a body, and suddenly I could see - I saw almost like there's like a glow, or attention was drawn, right to the lower back.

So then I've just got to step out: actually there's a woman here on this side, and you have a problem in your lower spine. Now if there's no response, I'd have to then get more information.

Now who was the other lady that's got problems in her hip joints? Okay, now tell me a little bit about the problem you've had. You've had a fall? She had a fall and injured her shoulder; and she was prayed for, and the shoulder was healed; but since then she's had this pain right across the back, and so - stiffness inside. So it's painful to bend or anything like that. It catches me. You believe Jesus could heal you? Too right! Good on you, that's the spirit.

Well look up to Him, He's the healer, not me. You look to Him, and focus on Him. God, I just thank You that You're a great God. Thank You Jesus, You're the healer - so again I just centre my attention on the Lord, and should I be praying against an infirmity, or just praying for healing?

So I'm reaching out for the healing power of God to flow. If I focus on the source, that God is the great healer.

“I thank You Lord for Your mighty healing power. In Jesus' name, I command this infirmity to loose your spine right now. Father, let Your mighty healing power flow. Let the POWER of God just come right through her body, in Jesus' name. Lord, fill every part of her body, just restore completely this spine, this back, in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord.”

Why don't you just begin to move your back, just see how you are, and see how it feels. Has it improved at all? Is there any shift or change? Not at the moment? Well, we'll pray again - never quit after the first time.

Jesus prayed for a man, and said: “do you see”? He said: “no, I see men like trees”; and so He said: “look up, and He prayed again another time”. So we'll pray again one more time; so just look up to the Lord. We thank You, You're a mighty God, a healing God.

Now it's quite important that you don't get pressured to perform, quite important you just keep your eyes - it's God who heals, so it's His healing power we need.

So as you're reaching out now, you're asking: is there anything that would block, anything that would hinder?

“Lord, I thank You, the mighty God who heals. Let Your anointing just flow right now, just speak into the spine, command every part of your spine to come into divine order. I command this infirmity, to release your spine in Jesus' name. Father, let Your power flow, TOUCH her Holy Ghost right now, in Jesus' Mighty name. Fill her, fill her, LOOSE her now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord.”

Whoa! Feel the power of God now? Okay, now just begin to move around now. Okay, now what I want you to do is, I want you just to begin to move and walk towards me, begin to move like this.

Just do the best you can. In other words, instead of focussing on what hasn't happened, just begin to take steps of faith, okay? Thank You Lord, thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Okay, thank You Lord.

Okay, now just begin to move around more - stretch. Sometimes miracles are immediate, and the change is immediate. Many times they're like a seed - you get a little bit of a shift, and then as the person just stretches and exercises faith, thanks God - then it frees up completely.

So you never know which it's going to be, and you have to consider both are possible. Most of us just want it all to happen at once. I've found many times, nothing happens; but overnight they're healed, or sometimes they get a little improvement; so I ask the question: has there been any change? Did it get worse? If it got worse - I know it's a spirit. If it gets better, a little bit better - I know the healing has started, and we persevere in the praying.

I remember praying for one lady with a severe back problem, and it was in a group of Pastors. I prayed for her, and she got worse - she started to actually physically be in pain; and you could see the gasp of disapproval from all these Pastors.

You have ruined her! You've hurt this poor lady by your praying. Now she hadn't fallen over, or anything like that - but they just thought I'd hurt her. Now it just shows the level of understanding.

I said: better or worse? Oh, a lot worse. I said: okay, that's good - we know what the problem is. It's a demonic spirit, and it's now manifesting, and resisting the healing. I'll pray again, you will be healed - and she walked away completely free. But see, people don't understand that.

Okay now let's just move around a little bit. It's a little bit freer isn't it? We'll just keep thanking God, and just keep moving now - keep moving and enjoying your freedom.

See, most people focus on what didn't happen, rather than what did happen. Focus on what did happen, and thank God, and let it grow in your life; rather than focusing on what didn't happen.

When I was trained, I trained in physics and science and maths, so my whole orientation was what didn't happen, so I couldn't move in these kinds of things at all, until I changed and said: well what has happened?

Has anything happened? If there was a little improvement - something has started. Thank God, and keep moving, and believe God for the full healing to take place.

Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5)  

Wed 18 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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A supernatural gift, a revelation, which enables us to see the source or root of the problem. This is not a natural discernment (working things out), but a spiritual impression that we can name e.g. spirit of infirmity, divination. We can discern the activity of the Holy Spirit, demonic activity, or angelic activity. We don't sit as judge, but look as an observer, and ask God how we should deal with it. Words of Knowledge; Prophecy; and Discerning of Spirits all need to be accompanied with a Word of Wisdom - know what to do with what we receive.

So in this session we're going to start, I'm going to do some teaching in discerning of spirits, and then we're going to do some activations for a little while just to get you busy. So if you open up your notes there in Section 17, you'll see the section on discerning of spirits. I'll just read to you a scripture passage, then we'll go into explaining it. This is out of Book of Acts, Chapter 16, Verse 16 and Luke is writing. He's writing about his adventures with Paul: and it came to pass, when we went to prayer, a certain young woman who was possessed with a spirit of divination met us, and brought her masters much gain by fortune-telling. The same followed Paul and us and cried out, saying these men are servants of the Most High God, they show us the way of salvation. And she did this many days, but Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit: I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her. And he came out that very hour.

So this is an interesting story in the New Testament, of Paul is going to a prayer meeting, and as he goes to a prayer meeting, the place that they were in was the centre of occult activities. It was a centre of spiritism, divination, that kind of thing, and so what happens is there's a young woman there. Notice her message; her message is: these are the servants of the Most High God. Is that correct? Yes, it was. They're showing us the way of salvation. Is that correct? Yes, it was. What she was saying was correct, but the motivating power behind it was a demonic spirit, because she herself was involved in divination. It said: there's a young woman, who was possessed with a spirit of divination, met us. The word possessed is a very bad translation because it actually means literally to have a spirit, not to be totally controlled. You use the word possessed, you think totally controlled. She's not totally controlled. She had a familiar spirit, because she was involved in fortune-telling.

It says she had a spirit of divination. The word divination is the word python, literally she had a python spirit wrapped around her, speaking into her ear, talking into her. It was invisible to the natural eye, but it was very real in the spirit world, so constantly, because of her involvement in divination, in the occult, she had this spirit familiar to her, attached to her, joined to her, would talk to her and give information about people. So people would come, they'd pay money to have their fortune told, and the spirit, because of that access to the spirit realm and spiritual network, spirit internet, it could share facts about people that would stun them. Then as a result of that, they would open up their heart to receive direction, and their lives would come into agreement with the spirit and into bondage.

Now when you look at it, the woman is saying all the right things, but Paul discerns that behind it there's a spirit operating, and he discerned exactly what it was. Luke said it's a spirit of a python, and it brought the masters - so she was a servant girl - a lot of money because of her fortune-telling. So the whole of that area was given over to fortune-telling, was given over to divination, given over to the demonic realm, and this girl came with a spirit. Now Paul, it says an interesting thing. It said Paul - although she followed us and cried out so and so, she did this many days - so Paul didn't address it immediately, but he became irritated by it. It says Paul being grieved, or feeling oppressed. The exact meaning of that word I'll just get for you. Let me just find it here - the exact word there means literally to toil, or to struggle to break through, or to feel worried or pressured, or to feel grief. Isn't that interesting?

So when a spirit is operating against us, then you can feel all kinds of feelings or sensations, like difficulty breaking through, there's no freedom or flow. You can feel turmoil around you, you can feel perhaps stressed trying to achieve what you're trying to achieve, or you may even feel grief. Those are the kinds of meanings associated with that word, and so he was experiencing the sensations, what she said was okay, but what was behind it, at the root of it, was demonic, and eventually when the Holy Ghost led him, he turned around, spoke and directly commanded the spirit: come out of her. Immediately the woman, or over the next hour, she was delivered of that spirit, and of course if you read on, you find then that there was a massive reaction, and Paul was then put into jail and beaten up. But there was again further miracles took place.

So this is a region full of demonic activity, and this is the gift of discerning of spirits operating. He discerned, or looked right through and found what was at the cause, or what was the source of the problem, so discerning of spirits, this is what it is; it is knowledge God gives you, so it's a revelation God gives you. God reveals something to you. What does He reveal? He reveals what spirit is operating right behind some activity or action. It's a supernatural gift of revelation. It means to see right through to what is the root, or what is behind this matter, so the gift of discerning of spirits gives you information, or insight, or revelation about three areas; one, the activity of the Holy Spirit. We need to discern the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus consistently discerned what the Holy Spirit was doing, and did it, so one aspect of discerning of spirits is the realm of being able to see right through what the Holy Spirit is doing.

Another aspect of it is to be able to identify demonic activity. When there are spirits in a place, spirits in a person, or spirit behind someone's actions, we need to be able to discern, or see what is operating there, otherwise we come under the influence of it. Many times, on some of the big moves of God, they lacked experience in discerning of spirits, and a lot of things they said were the Holy Spirit, were actually demonic manifestations. I can remember being in a meeting one time, and they were just saying: this is all just a Holy Spirit working and so on, and I looked at the person who was next to me, or just in front of me. I could see clearly there was a spirit operating, so I just quietly went up and just commanded the spirit to go. The person dropped to the ground, it was all over, and she was set free. I found it impossible to just focus while there's all this demonic stuff just going on around me, so that sort of dealt to that.

So you have to understand one of the things it's not; it's not natural discernment. It's not working things out. You know some people train in body language, so they can work out things from body language, look at the person, figure them out, you know? It's not natural. It's not, you've developed some skill at being able to work out some things going on in people. It's actually, revelation just comes to you, God just speaks and reveals it to you, and so that's how you know. So He can reveal the activity, or nature, or name of spirits that are in a person, so this morning when I was praying, you notice I spoke against a spirit of infirmity. Now you notice that the moment I stood against that spirit of infirmity, there was quite a quick reaction or response, so that tells me that it was exactly what the problem was. There was a spirit was causing the pain in the person's body, for example I had a young man - I was speaking in City Harvest and I had a word of knowledge, it was a young man with a shoulder condition.

He had pain in his shoulders, so the young guy came up, and as he began to speak to me, interact with me, I felt the Lord say he has a major root of bitterness against his father. So I asked him how do you get on with your father? He said I love my dad, so it seemed like his initial response contradicted what God had shown me. I said to him well, isn't it true that your father travels a lot, and is not there for you, and actually you've got quite a lot of feelings about that? He said that's right. I said: the Lord shows me that you've been quite angry, and actually become resentful and bitter that your dad has not been available for you when you needed him, and he said that's true. I said: well the Lord's shown me that the reason you have this pain in your shoulder, it's actually a spirit of infirmity, and it's come because of the unforgiveness in your heart towards your father - now you see, so some of that was word of knowledge, and some of that is discerning of spirits. The cause of the sickness is a demonic spirit - that's discerning of spirit. The nature of the problem, the issue with his father, that's word of knowledge, see?

So I asked him if he's willing to forgive his father, which he was. I led him in a simple prayer, forgave his father, then as soon as I commanded the spirit to come out of him, it manifested quite strongly, he fell on the ground. He got up after that, and he then testified. He said actually, I didn't just have pain in my shoulder, I had pain everywhere, all over my body I've had these pains. The doctor has told me my back is stiffening, and by the age of 40 I would not be able to bend or move or twist at all, but he said I now am completely free. So the spirit of infirmity had created pains in his body, and they were associated with an issue in his life of unforgiveness with someone.

So you see how gifts work together, and we'll get onto the word of wisdom shortly - so the gift of word of knowledge, and discerning of spirits, they work very closely together. One gives you some information you couldn't have known, the other gives you discernment to see right through to the problem. So discerning of spirits is not natural figuring things out by studying a person's body or body language and so on. It's not a natural gift, it's supernatural, where God just reveals to you: that's what the problem is. So again, with all of these gifts, we need to learn how to listen and receive from God. Another thing that it is not, so it's not natural, but there's another thing it's not. It's not judging. I want to show you another scripture in Matthew, Chapter 7 - it's not mentioned in there, I don't think, but in Matthew, Chapter 7 and the first few verses. Discerning of spirits is not the same as judging, in the worst sense of judging. Let's read a few verses.

In Verse 1, judge not, that you be not judged. For with the same judgement you judge, you will be judged; and whatever measure you measure to others, it will be measured back to you again. So why do you look at the small speck that's in your brother's eye, and you do not consider the beam is in your own eye? How will you say to your brother: let me pull out the speck from your eye, and behold, there's a beam in your own? Hypocrite! First cast the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly to cast the speck out of your brother's eye. Don't give that which is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and render you.

Right then, now let me just go into that scripture. Jesus is speaking about a principle that's very important. He's talking about a principle of judging. This word judge means literally, to make a decision against someone, because of what you see, or think you see, or whatever, and virtually to pass a sentence on them. You are guilty according to the way I've judged you, therefore you need to pay the price. So He's talking about having a judgemental attitude, and what He's saying is that if you judge others, you unlock against yourself a spirit of judgement. The very thing you've judged will come back to you. Okay, let me just give you an example of that. I had to pray for a woman one time last year in Taiwan, and they sent her in for ministry. I asked what the problem is, and she said well, I've got this young man interested in marrying me. I said okay, so what's the deal? She said well, we were going out before, and then our relationship broke up, and I got involved with someone else, had a baby to him, and now I've got the baby, now this guy's come back, and he wants to marry me, so what do you think?

Now people only give you the sanitised version. It makes them look really good, you know? So I said is he Christian? No, he's not a Christian. I said well, alarm bells go off for her straight away, and I say, what about this other guy? She said well, he really would like to marry me too, he's the father of the child. I said what do you feel in your heart? No, not for that person. I said well, now tell me then, why did your relationship break up? She said well, while I was going out with him, he was unfaithful to me, he had other girls on the side. So I said well, is there any evidence that that has changed in his life? Is there any reason why he would be different - and he hasn't become a Christian, he hasn't changed in his heart. You're in for more of the same, and so why would you want to marry him? She said, I really feel he's right for me.

I said tell me about your father - so why would I ask about the father, when it's an issue of marriage? Because the Lord dropped in there's an issue with her dad - so she said oh, well I don't talk to my dad. I said why is that? She said well mum and dad broke up. They divorced when I was in early teens. I said really? Do you have any contact with him? No, no, almost no contact whatsoever, and I said is that right? I said tell me what was the reason that the marriage broke up, and she said very simply, he was unfaithful to my mother. I said how many times? Three times he was unfaithful to my mother. I said isn't this extraordinary. You've got a conflict in your heart with your dad, and you have judged him. Now it's replaying in your life again. You actually - the judgement you gave out about him, now it's being replayed back in your life again. Do you not see the connection that what you're struggling with currently, actually is an overflow of what's been going on in your path? She couldn't see it. I said I don't think I can help you then, because you're going to go down that route, and play this thing right out until you've actually experienced all the consequences of what you've got in your heart towards your father.

Now you understand she had judged her father, and found him lacking, and now unlocked against herself a real cycle of issues that would then go through the rest of her life, so that's what judging is about. Discerning has more to do with being an observer than a judge, for example, a judge will stand up, or a judge will usually be seated in an elevated position. You go into a court, the judge is in the high position, so when the Bible talks about judging, it's speaking about elevating yourself up, as though you know everything and why people do things, and then passing a judgement on someone against them. You've found them guilty, see? And now you've condemned them. Right, now this is different to discerning. Discerning, you're not coming from the high ground of pride, and being above everyone else. You're coming down from, you're actually a human being yourself, understanding that people do have issues and make mistakes, and you're looking as an observer, to see what God says about the situation. So God shows you the root of this is a spirit, the root of this is bitterness, the root of this is this. It's informational. It's not judgemental. It's to inform you of the nature of the problem, not step up on the high ground and look down, and find the person guilty and condemn them. That's the difference.

Now many people think that Christians shouldn't judge, but the Bible says the spiritual man judges all things. Notice what Jesus just said in those verses. Notice He said: don't give what's holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn on you. Clearly He's saying you need to know what to share, and who to share it with, because some people, if you share it with them, it's like casting something out before pigs. They'll trample it underfoot and turn on you. He's not being judgemental. He's just saying that you have to look at people, and look at situations, and be understanding of where they're at, and how they receive things. He said: you don't give everything you have to everyone, so the Bible's very clear. A spiritual man judges all things, but that means he looks right through to what the real issue is and identifies it, not as one sitting up high looking down, condemning, but as a fellow traveller, looking and observing and seeing that something is like this. You getting the idea?

Okay then, so for example - and the more you have examples the easier it is to see it, so discerning then is to be able to look through, and see what is behind this matter. I know what they're all saying, or I know what I can see, but what lies behind it - that's the driving factor? We need discernment, because in the world, and in the church, people have all kinds of agendas, and it shouldn't be that way, but that's how people are. People have usually hidden agendas, and the agendas are not so obvious, but if you are discerning of spirits, you can pick what lies behind it, so there are a number of Bible examples of that. We shared with one of you in the last session, and that was found in Acts, Chapter 8, where Peter discerned the motives of Simon the sorcerer, so everyone was coming up and saying: we want the power of God, we want the power of God, we want the power of God. He came up and said listen, I'll give you some money, just give me the power of God. He was able to look in and say no, you have got an issue. He said underneath this desire for the power of God, is a deep rooted bitterness and a crookedness, that makes you seek power so you can promote yourself. You've got a deep rooted issue of insecurity in your life.

Peter discerned it. He saw right to the root of it, and confronted the man about it. Getting the idea? So discernment enables you to see what is really there. As you'll see shortly, we'll need a word of wisdom to know what to do with it, so in Luke, Chapter 13 - I'll just find another example in Luke, Chapter 13, Verse 10. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and behold there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years, was bowed down and could not lift herself up. Jesus saw her, called her to Him, and said to her: woman, be loosed of your infirmity. He laid hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. Now Jesus is in a synagogue, a place of prayer and there's a woman who has an incredibly serious back problem. She's bent and crippled right over. Now to everyone who looked, it's a back problem, and she has a back problem, that's true. But He saw the root source is a demonic spirit. There's a spirit attached to her spine, and when she was delivered, immediately she was set free.

I had a situation in Fiji. I was invited by one of the members of our church to go up with him to his property up in Yasawa, which is beautiful, a most beautiful area of Fiji but it's very remote. It's right at the outer end of the Fiji area, and right up in the outer islands, so in order to get there we had to catch a boat, and then we had to kind of catch a little boat ashore, all of that kind of thing. Then we were invited to a meeting for me to speak, at a meeting in the village, so to get there we waded out into the surf, got into a boat, travelled around through the reefs and landed on another beach. Someone met us with a lamp, and we went in, and we were in a building. I was the first white man to speak there apparently - and there was a gathering of people there. The men had fled the place. They heard I was coming and they fled, and there was a problem with spiritism and witchcraft going on in that area, so I went into the meeting.

At the end of the meeting there was a lady came up, and she - when I say came up, she crawled up. She crawled herself up, and she came up there, and I could see that she was in trouble from her waist down, that she actually could not walk. She had come with two crutches, she was unable to walk, and so I looked at her and I asked some questions, first of all: how long have you been like this? She said 10 years. Then the Lord just dropped into my heart exactly what the problem was. So how did I get it? I got one, discerning of spirits and two, word of knowledge. The first word of knowledge was, it had to do with her husband. The second was discerning it was actually a spirit of infirmity, associated with the occult, so I asked her the question then - and this is how you can bring out revelation, just ask questions - I said: what happened 10 years ago? I said did someone near you, close to you die? She said my husband died. I said: is it not true that he was involved in the occult and witchcraft? She said yes.

Now this was very significant, because this is a religious community, everyone's supposedly Christians, but actually many of them were not, and many of them were practicing witchcraft, and this was why the guy had got me to come over, because the conditions he described, I could tell were witchcraft operating. Everyone was denying it, including the local Minister. This brought it right out into the light, so now the woman's saying yes, my husband was involved in witchcraft, he was involved in spiritism. I said the Lord shows me, because the two of you will become one through marriage, that when he died, that spirit has come into you. You have a spirit of infirmity, associated with your husband and the witchcraft, so now everyone's absolutely stunned. So I broke the curse, I broke the soul ties to her husband, I broke the curses that had been upon her through her husband's activities, commanded the spirit of infirmity to go, helped her to her feet and she stood up, and she walked without crutches, she walked home.

So you see again that the discerning of spirits helps you know what the issue is, and you get a revelation, you get it from God. Getting the idea? So we've seen a number, a number, so the gift of discerning of spirits enables you one, to discern the activity of the Holy Spirit; two, to discern what the motives of people are; three, to discern the activity of demonic spirits and identify what they are. Now it would help if I just shared a little bit about your senses and how they work. We touched on it before. You have natural senses and you have spiritual senses, so your natural senses - after a little while you gain a memory bank of experiences, so you smell food, [sniffs] ooh, curry, Sargin's in the building. [Laughter] So you identify with a physical sensation, you have a memory you attach to it, and you identify it like that. So after a little while you can pick up lots of things. You can recognise voices. If someone rings up and they don't tell you who they are, oh, I know that voice, I recognise that voice.

So we attach associations to the experiences we have naturally. Now spiritually the same thing happens. You are a spirit being, and do have spiritual senses, and you do pick up stuff. People often call it a sixth sense, but it's actually your spirit man, for example, how many of you have had some decision you had to make, but you felt this terrible uneasiness, and lack of peace about that? How many have known that experience like that? Okay, very good, and of course if you went against that and did it, you ended up in trouble. We won't ask about that. [Laughter] You put that down to wisdom, okay, so that's one thing. How many of you have met a person - most of the women have met a person, and that person, a male, was incredibly creepy? There's something about them - don't go near me, I feel defiled just being near you, okay. So how many women would identify that experience? Quite a lot of women, okay.

So probably the second thought that came into your mind was, I shouldn't think like that, but actually you are right. What's happening is, you're discerning an unclean spirit or intention around the person, and you are feeling the impressions of it, and you're identifying it as a yuck, I don't like this, I don't trust that man, I'll stay away. Understand? That's actually discernment. Your spirit is sensing things. You've got to learn how to recognise what it is, and how to work with it, and I'll show you what to do in a moment. Okay, and men have a similar kind of thing. You may find yourself in situations, or have you ever been into a house for example, and you go in there to meet some couple, and as you go in there everyone's being polite and nice, but you can feel like the whole atmosphere is full of tension, as though there's been a big row or something go on there. How many - now let me ask you this then. How on earth did you feel tension? What part of you felt that? Your spirit felt it.

So all of us have a human spirit, and all of us can sense things, but we can develop that so we become sharper at it, and become more used to dealing with it. Getting the idea? Okay then, so you have ability then to sense things spiritually, and when we're born again of course, that whole - it's brought to a different realm altogether. We now have the Holy Spirit with us. He can actually identify for us, what the things are that we're dealing with, so here's a thing. Remember in almost all of the moving in the spirit, what you get seems to be a thought, or impression, or picture comes into your mind. It's not strong necessarily, or very big. You could easily sweep it aside if you didn't stop and focus on it, so the way to deal with it is simply this, is - I think there's a couple of practical things. Number one, I think we need to ask the Lord to help us to deal with having a judgemental attitude. You can never discern properly if you have a judging attitude.

You notice what Jesus said in Matthew 7? He said: if you judge, you'll be judged. The measure you give to others is how it'll come back to you. Then He said an interesting thing. He said: why do you say, I want to get the speck out of your eye, when you've got a big beam in your own? Notice then what He said. In other words He's saying - I'll put it to you a different way; if you had a little speck in your eye, you wouldn't ask someone to help you dig it out, who had this huge log covering most of their vision. You'd say, no way do you get near my eye, you can't see clearly, you'll mess this up. You'll damage me and hurt me, see? Now so what Jesus then said was, take the beam out of your own eye - speaking of judgement - and then you'll see clearly. So putting it another way, He's saying if you have a judgement in your heart against any person, or you hold judgements about certain matters, it will affect how you see and interpret what's in front of you in life. So in the journey of growing in the things of the spirit, we need to deal with bitterness and judgements and unforgivenesses in our heart, because it will colour how we see people, it'll colour how we interpret life, it will affect our ability to discern. We will tend to judge rather than discern, and think we're completely right and justified. That make sense to you? Very, very important.

So if I was to allow the Lord to help me deal with any judging attitude in my heart, against myself or against people, and to begin to meditate on the love of God, and His great love for me, and grow in that love, I will see clearly, because when you love people, you see clearly. When you have judgement in your heart, you can't see clearly, and you mess it up every time, so this is an important thing. I need to cultivate purity of heart in my motives towards people, or I can't see very clearly, so that's a very, very important thing. I'll just stop from that point, and then just move on to, so how can you work in this area? I'll give you an example of it.

A person - I used this illustration recently because I've had this experience. There's two people standing in the entrance of a church, and one of them has got a deep rejection in his life, or a judgement that there's something wrong with me, people don't like me. He learnt that years ago. The other one hasn't got that at all, he's quite free. Suppose the Pastor walks in and he's very, very busy, preoccupied and he walks past and both say hello Pastor, and he just doesn't hear. He didn't hear it, he was preoccupied, so there's no willing rejection of them. He just didn't hear, and carried on. Now each of them has had an experience, an identical experience. Each of them will interpret it. Now the one who's got the rejection and judgement in his heart will pass judgement on what it means. He'll say: this means he doesn't like me, and he'll get angry, won't enjoy the service at all. He'll be angry all through the service - Pastor doesn't like me, and it'll stir up all his anger over this, but the judgement was in his own heart. The other person looks and says: oh, he can't have noticed me, he must have been busy, I'll catch up with him later.

Two people, same experience, but responded completely different. One just observed it, and worked out a different strategy. The other judged it, and ended up in turmoil. Getting the idea? So if you've got judgements in your heart, it'll filter all discernment, so discernment - practice ridding your heart of judgements about people, and learn to be an observer. To be an observer, you ask the question: I wonder what this means, rather than: this means that. See? You ask the question, what does this mean? What am I feeling? What am I sensing? What does this mean? You let God help you see His perspective on it. Jesus said: I don't judge as the world judges. He said I judge righteously. I don't judge what I see, I judge by what my Father says to me, so He judged things on what He heard from God.

So how can I develop the area of discerning of spirits? Very, very simply. One, I need to deal with the issue of judging in my heart that will cloud my ability to sense; two, I can develop my sensitivity through fasting. Fasting and prayer helps me develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, and then what you need to do is, learn how to identify what you feel when you're in different situations, identify impressions you have when you're talking with someone, when you are meeting someone, when you come into a meeting, when you come into a room. When you go to different places, look for chances to identify what your first impression is. The first impression is usually the one that impacts you as you engage something, then you just move out of that, and start to reason everything out, and interact with it differently. But when you're a spiritual person which you are, you tend to be more sensitive, so you can feel things or sense things quite easily, and so try to, when you sense something, ask this question: what do I sense? What impression do I have? What am I feeling? Try to just get a name for it. Don't dismiss it. Just enquire, Holy Spirit, what is that? Then the next question; what do you want me to do with that? What does this mean?

If you judge, it must mean this, you've then lost your discernment. If you just say Lord, what does this mean, and how do you want me to deal with this, you'll start to then develop a lifestyle of being able to discern things, so there's heaps of places that you can pick it up. One of the places to pick it up, is when you meet people. When you meet people, just come with an open heart and shake their hand and look them right in the eyes, and just let them interact with you. As they interact with you, you'll have an impression come. Try to identify what the impression is. Listen for the things the Holy Spirit drops in your heart. You walk into someone's house, what impression do you get? What does the atmosphere feel like? You walk into a church meeting, what does it feel like? What does the atmosphere feel like? When everyone's worshipping, or things are happening, what does it feel like? What does it sense, is there? Develop, practice discerning, or exercising your senses, to listen and identify impressions you have about situations, and then act as an observer, not a judge; oh, that's interesting, I'm feeling this. I wonder how I should respond? I wonder what God wants me to do? So you don't move into judging mode, you stay in discerning/working with the Holy Spirit mode.

Now notice Paul went for several days before he turned around to the woman and rebuked the spirit. In other words, he waited until he had actual wisdom from God what he should do. You notice this, if he had stopped and reacted on the first day, he'd have been in jail straight away, and had no chance to do any ministry at all, so he didn't immediately address what he could see was the problem, until he felt the Holy Spirit show him: this is what you need to do, do it today. A lot of people can't handle that. They pick something up, they want to deal with it straight away. That isn't always how God works, because dealing with it straight away can create more problems than what - you may solve one, but you've actually created something bigger, and different. So if Paul for example, had turned and rebuked the spirit that same day, all those days that he was able to preach and minister would have been cut out and cancelled short like that, so he knew there was a spirit, but waited until the right time, and then turned and dealt with it, and that triggered off a reaction in the whole city towards him. Shortly after he exited the city.

So we need to know and be able to discern what God is saying, or what God is wanting us to learn, and we need to be able to identify those sensations and impressions we have, so all you do is just identify, what did you feel?. You're on a phone to someone - we used to teach this when people were doing phone ministry to people. After you get off the phone, just quieten down, and just worship the Lord, and just sense - what are you feeling in your spirit? I'll give you an example. I had someone that I spoke to, and they were incredibly angry, and they were angry with me. I thought that's interesting, I wonder why they're angry with me, so we checked it out, and this is what had happened. They had been talking with someone else who had an unresolved offence, and was angry at me and after being with them, they came away angry at me as well. So what had happened was, they had not discerned this person has an offence, and the biblical way of dealing with the offence is to put it right with the person. They came under the influence of the spirit of anger and bitterness over the person. It affected them, and they were then operating with that thing around their life - so I always ask people, after you've been in an interaction, how did you feel? What did you sense? What are you sensing in your spirit? Just practice doing it, try to identify the sensations, identify the feelings.

Then we need wisdom from God, what to do, so in the next session we will look at the word of wisdom, and where to go with that, and how to respond to that, but I'll get you now to just do some interaction, we're going to do activations. I think you need to do something now, otherwise you'll fall asleep. [Laughter.] Okay then, so we've got heaps of things that we could do, but I'm going to give you one that's an interesting one, and this one will challenge you a bit, so you'll need a pen and paper to do this one, because you're going to write something. You'll need a bit of space. If you need a bit of space, you can move your chair out, and this is what we're going to do. This activation is called inspired writing, so you've had an inspired picture, an inspired thought, inspired prayer. This is inspired writing, so if you haven't a piece of paper, write it on the cover at the back of the manual will be fine.

I want you to write up this question, and you're going to listen, to let God speak to you about you, okay, so here's the question you write up: Lord, how do You see me? Lord, how do You see me? Write it down exactly as I said it, Lord, how do You see me? This is your prayer or question to the Lord, and what we're going to do is we're just going to pray for a little while. We're going to do this just like you are ministering to someone, except you're just coming into a place where you're listening to let God speak to yourself. If you can get into a flow of this, this will be one of the greatest assets to you over the course of your life, to help you hear from God, and develop hearing from God. It's called journaling, and journaling's got a number of aspects, but this aspect of journaling, one aspect of journaling, is just writing your thoughts and feelings, experiences. This aspect is journaling what God is saying to you, so you ask the question; God, or Lord, how do You see me?

Now, I know how some of you see yourselves, and you may not see yourself too good. You come to all kinds of conclusions about yourself. Wouldn't it be good if you stopped listening to all of that junk and instead, Lord, how do You see me? You might find it a little hard to take how He sees you, because it's very loving, and very kind, and it's not like others who you may have experienced, so He can be incredibly kind and loving. So what I want you to do is we're going to do very simply like we did the others. We would say hey, can I practice on you? Well this is just a practice. You're practising on yourself, okay then and a very positive response, yes, this is going to be great. Then we're just going to pray in tongues for a little bit, and I want you just to pray in tongues, and then begin to focus, just begin to think about the Lord, think about His goodness to you. Then you may start to get Him, just some thought come to mind, start to write.

Now don't try and work out what you're going to write next - aah, ooh, you're a loser. [Laughter] Don't work it out you know? You may get terrible things if you try and work it out, and you certainly won't hear God on that, so what you do is just relax, listening to Him until you sort of start to get a thought or an idea, then start to write. Now just relax as you write, and just let it flow, let it flow out of your writing, flow and flow and flow. If you find the flow stops just rest again; thank You Lord. Lord, just speak to me, give me more Lord. Just stay focussed on Him, and then just continue writing, begin to write again. What will happen is, write from the flow that comes from your spirit, don't try and figure this out with your head. If you try and figure it out with your head you'll be completely limited, you won't have revelation. God actually wants to speak to you.

Now it's like prophesying over yourself virtually, and here's the interesting thing. When you learn how to do this, you can do this any day you like, all the rest of your life. You can ask the Lord questions, and begin to journal what He has to say to you. For some it may be lots of things to say, some it may be just a few lines. Hey, we're just practising. Ready? Okay then - and some may have a blank paper, that's okay too. If you find you have a blank that's interesting - I have a blank. I wonder why I can speak to others about what God sees about them. I'm finding it hard to speak to myself. What's going on here? Why is there that block? Can you see, it's like instead of being a judge, you just be the observer, and the listener, and the one who shares what you're observing and hearing. It's a very, very important positioning in your heart to take, where you don't become a judge anymore in life. You become an observer; oh, that's interesting, I wonder what that means? Lord, how would You have me respond?

So this one, Lord, how do You see me? How do You see me Lord? How do You see me? Lord, I just reach out to you now - so come on, let's just begin to pray in tongues, and then we'll give you just a few minutes to write. If you're looking at this on the Internet you could sit down with a piece of paper, and you could do this too. Write down the question: Lord, how do You see me? Just begin to pray, pray in tongues, just worship God for a little while, and then as a thought comes to you, begin to write. You're writing a letter to yourself, like you're writing from God to you. You're putting words to what God's saying. Let's do it together shall we? Thank You Lord. Lord, release a spirit of revelation right now. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Lord, begin to speak to individuals here, reveal the tremendous, amazing love, the wonderful heart that You have for each of us. Let it just flow out of their hearts onto paper. Thank You Lord. We just bind every distracting influence, everything that would hinder us, stop us and we just release that life and vitality now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord.

As soon as you feel free and start to get an idea, just begin to write. You're not trying to work it, you're just writing out of the flow of what's in your heart like you're listening to someone dictate to you, and you're writing it. You're actually writing it to yourself. It's this flow of the spirit, coming up from within. If you get stuck, just pray in tongues, relax and re-focus on the Lord again. [5mins]

Alright then, how are we doing? I see a lot of people are writing, and all got to different levels. Let me just ask for a little bit of feedback. How many had a flow of writing, you had some thoughts come to you, that came from the Lord? You obviously felt a flow of things start to come? Alright then. Did anyone get stuck, you just went blank? No one got completely stuck. Did some find they just had a little bit, but there wasn't much flow in it? Some had that. There would be always some like that, and sometimes that can reflect we're not good writers, we're better talkers and we talk better than we write. But again, relax and let the flow come. How many of you found that what God spoke to you was very personal, actually was extremely specific for you? How many found that? Wow, that's great! How many were quite encouraged by what God said? Oh, that's really good too. Well this is very, very good.

How many of you, God told you how much He loved you? [Laughs] He often starts with that, and talks with that. How many of you, did God give you some kind of direction, or insight to what you need to be doing at this time in your life? Isn't that good? Wow, that's great isn't it? That's helpful isn't it? So it's quite good for you to come to the Lord, and to learn how to journal daily with Him, and keep a track record of what God is speaking to you, because you can go back and look at it again. If you have a journal, and you're keeping a journal that God is talking to you, it still helps if you've got someone else who you can run your thoughts around, and run your thoughts with before you make any major decisions, just so you've got the wisdom. The Bible says: in the wisdom of many counsellors there's safety, so this is a great way - it also has limits on it, and so it's helpful if we stay having counsel about any major decision.

So there's many questions you could start to ask the Lord now, so if we just asked you, how does He see you, and He would talk about the goodness and the good things He sees in you, the possibilities in you. You could ask about, how He sees your church. You could ask about various aspects, and then wait on the Lord, just let Him talk with you about life, and about things. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? Thank You Lord. How many people were quite surprised by what God shared with them, gave you a bit of a surprise? Oh, that's interesting. What was it surprised you? [What was it that surprised me? I just get that He talked about seeing me as I am now and just how precious I am to Him, about how He has a greater plan and...] Wow. [...and just yeah, He actually showed me I'm like a precious stone, you know, like inside the rock...] Right. [...rocks on the outside, but He sees the raw, unfinished product but that He's got such greater plans that will take me out of that...] Wow. [...clarity will increase.] Wow, so it's very specific and it's... [...precious as I am.] ...even as you are you're precious. That's... [And He's got the plan] ...wonderful, so God assured He had a plan. She's precious as she is, but that plan will bring enlargement and greatness. It's wonderful, don't you love that? Such a wonderful thing. So you're in a good space now to be able to minister to someone else.

So what we'll do now is get you to break into pairs, and what I'd like you to do is to bring a word of encouragement. Now we're not going to prophesy, that would be too spiritual for us. [Laughter] What we'll just do is, we'll bring an inspired word for someone, so again we'll get with someone that - preferably someone you have not prayed with before, someone that's different and remember, ask permission; can I practice on you? Get a good, positive response, then we pray in tongues, pray in the spirit for a little bit, then listen and then share something that you feel God shows them that would encourage them. You've just done it for yourself, now do it for the other person. So you're looking for a thought, and an idea. Remember, pray, relax and focus on the source, listening, just waiting and just let thoughts just come. Something drops into your mind, focus on it until it comes a little clearer, then start to share; well I just sensed this as I was praying for you. Keep it simple and easy and light. Okay? Let's see how we do. Find someone and let's have a practice. If you're watching this on the Internet, why don't you find someone to practice on, especially someone you don't know so well?

Okay, let's just come back, close up what you're doing. Let's get some feedback on how it's going. How many of you were really touched by what the person shared with you, it was very appropriate for you? Wow, that's wonderful, great. How many sort of felt God as they shared with you - oh my, that's God speaking to me? How many felt that? Very good, wonderful. Okay then, anyone got blocks in this? How many struggled to get something? Okay, we've all moved quite a long way now, that's fantastic. How many of you, it still just feels like it's you doing it? You kind of think this so much, seems like me, I don't sort of feel much of God in it? How many found that? Actually that's quite normal. To tell the truth, some of the best ministries I've had for people, I didn't feel a thing, but I have learnt to just relax, and understand I am a spirit being, God is in me, and if I will yield, He will speak through me. Whether I feel anything much, or experience anything, is irrelevant. It's not about me, it's for the other person. I'm just the servant, to bring about the work.

Once you get that idea we're just here to serve people, it's not about your feelings or experiences at all. It's actually what God does in their life. It's about them, and God, and of course as you do it, you just grow so immensely. Amen, okay, so you've found that's been a good challenge for you? Okay then. Would you like to stretch out a little further, and try a little something harder? Little bit harder? NO! Please don't make it any harder. [Laughter] Okay, alright then, well this is - I just need someone to help me, just need a volunteer really, someone that can help me? Okay, you're going to help me? Alright then, so just come on up here. Now this is what I want us to do this time. We're going to get you to do two things. The first thing I want you to do is, see if you can get a word of knowledge about the person, in other words a little piece of information, that we wouldn't have known naturally.

Now I do know Caroline, so I've got to then dismiss from my mind everything I know about her. I have to just literally push aside, and listen to my heart, not listen to my mind. If I go anywhere towards what I know, then I won't hear my spirit at all. I've got to just push aside anything I may know about her, and then actually just identify what I'm feeling in my spirit. Alright then, and I want to show you just simply how you can. Remember, we shared with you for getting words of knowledge about the body? Just begin to think about a person's body, and you may just find is the right side, the left side? Is it, you know and just go through the parts of the body, and you may feel drawn to a part, just only the slightest draw - that can be what a word of knowledge is, just a slightest little impression. So what we're going to do is, we're going to look for an area where the person is facing a struggle, asking this question; Lord, is there any area of this person's life where they're facing a struggle? Okay, and we'll show you just how to do that in just a moment.

Then the second part will be now Lord, how do You want to speak to them, to encourage them? Okay, so first is the word of knowledge, the second's the prophetic. The word of knowledge: is there an area where there is a struggle going on? Second part, is there something God wants to say, to help the person in that part of their life? So if God identifies the struggle, He certainly will want to do something to help them, and there could be many ways they could be helped, but at this point, the level of help we'll give is, we'll look for a word of comfort and inspiration, encouragement for them, okay? That keeps it quite an even level. We're not trying to prophesy. We're actually just - see if we can find out a little piece of information. Now remember, when we asked you in the second activation of this series, go to someone and ask them a question, find out something about them? So now we're going to ask the Lord the questions, so you've already done it for yourself: Lord, how do You see me? You know you can ask God a question and He will answer, so now we've got to, in love, say Lord, is there any area this person's struggling? There may well be there's none, and if there's none, then there's none. Don't make one up. [Laughter] Don't put on them, your struggle. [Laughter]

Is there a struggle? And if there is a struggle, see if you can frame what it might be, and then lay out then,, just we need to look to God for a word for the person, okay? Alright then, so just come and stand in front of me there. So if I have to pray and minister to a person, there's a number of ways - you can just say well God, just show me, and just wait for something to happen. That's one way, or you can use your imagination a little bit, and just reach in to different areas. Now for most people in their life, there's not a lot of areas that they would have a struggle. If you think about it, if I was to just say, look back through Caroline to her family background; she could have a struggle with her father or mother or in the family, so if I was just to mentally just look, has there been a struggle there? Yes or no? No, I don't feel anything. Okay, alright then, well that's alright then.

So if she's a married person, then I might look is there someone on the right, the person standing next to them, is there a struggle there? No. Alright, that's okay. Alright, are there children? I look down because there's offspring, so is there some issue there that there's a trouble? No. Alright then, so what other areas are left? Well is there trouble in her body? Look at her - is there an area of sickness or struggle going on? No. Alright then, so then we look then what other areas are there? Well, is it work related, or is it finance related, relationship related, or ministry? It's not so many areas, we've covered most areas of the person's life now. So if I just mentally just stop and look, and while I'm listening, I'm just mentally going around is there any one of those I'm drawn to? Then I may just find a draw to one of them, so I'll just stop for a moment and if I feel a draw there, then there's something going on there, that I need to be able to get a word from God for, okay?

So it's not such a hard thing, so if I just - can I practice on you? Great stuff, and so bearing in mind I've got to dismiss anything I might know, and now just begin to look into the Lord. So Holy Spirit, You just know everything about Caroline. You know Lord where her life is at this point and Lord, You can just reveal things that You want to help her, and encourage her. So Lord, I'm just asking You, well just show me where there's any area of struggle, so I'll just start to mentally now do what I'm going to do, just go looking in each area, mentally reaching in to see if God will show me something, so I reach in the background. I don't feel God quickening. There could be an issue or something, but God's not wanting to do that today, so I don't have to worry. I'm not trying to make something happen. I'm just looking and enquiring, I'm just an observer, listening for God, see? So I could reach in there, is there anything there? No, reaching in then, marriage, no, there's nothing there. Reaching then to any children? No, there's nothing there, so then what other areas?

Oh, and I just become conscious of her hand, and I'm thinking finance. Now I could look around all the other areas, but I might just stop there. So I'll just stop, thank You Lord. I sense that's a struggle area, so I could say Lord, what is the struggle, and what do You want to say, to help her in this area? There could be other areas of struggle, so we can pray for two or three people, and you may pick up - people pick up all kinds of different things, but this is not about knowing a problem. It's about loving a person. It's not about being nosey. It's about finding a way to bring God to them in their struggle, because when you have a struggle, you get preoccupied with it, it overwhelms you, it gets out of perspective, and you feel alone. So if you identify a struggle a person has, even if you don't go into all the details of it, and you bring something from God, it can bring tremendous comfort. Alright then, so Father, I just thank You.

What I sensed was, there's a struggle around finance, as though there's not enough. It seems like there's never been enough, and it's been quite a difficult situation for you to manage, because in your heart you don't feel there's enough for you. God wants you to know that He is your source and supply, that you can trust in Him. Have you ever gone without? Have you ever gone in lack or need? Have you ever suffered? The Lord says, I've always been there to provide for you, and I know the pressure and difficulty you're feeling right now, but the Lord says, I will help you. I will give you victory in this area that's been a struggle for you. I will help you come from the place of struggle into the place of rest, and the place of abundance. The Lord says: in Me, there is always more than enough. Right, now I'm going to go a little further, because I feel God wants to help her, wants to minister to her.

So you notice we've just touched an area. I didn't go and expose all kinds of details or anything, but there's enough has come for me to be aware, God wants to comfort and help her in the midst of the struggle. Now you notice what I said, with struggles there's also a lot of emotion and pain in it, but with this particular struggle, I feel a spirit has come against her to continually tell her there's not enough. There's something has rested on her, so even in good times, and when there was enough, there's never been enough. See, it doesn't matter how wealthy you are, if there's a spirit sits on you, and your heart believes there's not enough, there's not enough, because you can't see there's enough. You just can't see it. You're in torment all the time, and there's a wrestling goes on, so what God's given you, you can't enjoy, because of the torment. So I've found that people enter into peace, not because of how much they have, but because they find contentment in their heart, and learn to live within the framework God has given them. Godliness and contentment's tremendous gain.

Let me just pray. Thank You Lord, so this has come over you a long time ago. This came over you when you were a young girl. It came over you in the midst of turmoil. It's come around your life through your mother. God wants to help you today, wants to break the belief there's not enough for me. He wants you to see that He's a God of abundance, and will help you in every situation. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break the ungodly belief that there's not enough for me. I break the ungodly belief of financial failure and poverty. I come against fear, and the spirit of poverty, loose right now, in Jesus' name. Let your presence and peace just come over her life. Thank You Lord. There it is, God just touching you now, just bringing rest around your life, in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord. [Laughs] Holy Ghost. Just stay there and just enjoy Him.

Now, did you notice, all I did was just start to just look, waiting, listening on God to give me something. If He doesn't give anything, that's okay. I'm not going to nose. It's just I have a heart to love the person and help them, and so because of that, we're willing to just look, and reach into God for something for the person. Now sometimes God can just drop it in, and you didn't even do any of that, but I'm trying to provide for you an approach that you can grow in this gift area. You understand that actively pursuing is always a vital part of it, and so I just look, the background, the parents, spouse, children, finance, work, relationships, ministry, is there any of those areas? And that pretty well covers everything, so in the midst of looking like that, God can just cause you to be drawn to something, feel a struggle around a relationship. I wonder what the struggle is, or what the relationship is? You don't have to get all the details, but if you can get a little bit of detail, then now you've opened up the person, and what does God want to do to help them? Amen.

Bless you. How was that for you? [Can I just share something?] Sure. [I don't know whether it's connected, but when you said about finance, but I felt all the time I've been a Christian, I don't know whether it's connected with what you've said...] Yes. [...that [unclear 01.07.54] other people that it's like you feel sometimes your need is so deep and so great and the whole thing is so big in your life...] Yes. [...that there's not enough of God.] [Laughter] [I don't know whether that's connected...] Yeah, they are connected, yes. [...with that too?] Yeah. [Because He's sort of brought me to a place recently of being - well I thought I'd been okay with what I've got and...] Right. [...that probably there's areas of need for discipline...] Right, yes. [...in my finances too.] Yes, of course. [So that's - I don't know whether that's relevant.] Mm, I didn't say anything about that area. [Laughter] [No, well actually I haven't been - like He's sort of told me to stay away from shops...] Yeah. [...and actually I feel I've been - the spirit of materialism has almost sort of been broken...] Yeah. [...in my life because of that...] Yeah, right, that's great. [...because I've been obedient, but - so yeah.] Right, so this is obviously what's shared is in line with what God is speaking to you about this area in your life right now. [Oh definitely.] Yeah, that is why... [Not to be impulsive and...] No, great. [But I failed yesterday.] [Laughter] And hence today! [Laughter] Well thank you for your honesty. Let's give her a clap and just appreciate her. [Applause]

Remember, the ministry of the spirit is always gentle and loving, so when Paul is writing about the gifts of the spirit in Romans 12 and Romans 14, in the middle of it he stops and he said: you have to be loving. Of all things be loving, or this is very empty, and doesn't represent what Christ is like. So the power of ministry is wonderful, but we have to be loving of people, honouring of people, valuing of people in the flow of the ministry, so we don't do things that would embarrass them. You can word things in ways that are not embarrassing. I could just say well, you know, do you have a struggle, or is there a difficulty in your life in this area? Is there something going on, and just put it in the form of a question, or if God spoke to you more clearly, you may just put it, I feel this. So God has got to show you, and we'll talk about that when we get to words of wisdom - so why don't you all have a try, and have a practice aye, how about that? Oh, that's a very excited response isn't it aye?

So what we'll do for this one here, what we're going to do is this. We'd like you just in this time, instead of all of you just going at your own pace and let it free run, I'd like us just to do it as a step by step, so what I'll do is, I'll encourage you where to look, otherwise you just get then you can't remember everything, and where to go. So what I'll do is, we're just going to do it step by step, and I'll guide you, and all I want you to do is just be open to the Lord, and if you feel a draw around something, just identify it, and that's it. That's all you need, that's my one. There may be others, but you won't worry about those. The one you feel that, that's the draw on, or that's the, you know, I feel something draws me other that one, that's the one, you just hold in your mind, and then we'll ask the Lord for what to say, okay? Alright then, so get in pairs, especially with someone you don't know.

Okay, let's get in pairs. You can come out the front here, over the sides. Okay, alright, now I want you just to do this. If you're watching this on the internet, you can just follow it through step by step, just leave the volume on, and the picture on, and you can walk through it step by step, then later on, turn it all off, and just try it without me guiding you in it. For this session, we're going to just guide you step by step, okay, so the first thing is of course, what we've done, smile and look at the person, can I practice on you? Give a very positive response. Okay, alright then. Now you may know a little bit about the person. Please just push aside all you know, because if you look in that area of what you know, you'll just have turmoil. You've got to be listening for God. You're listening for the impression of the Holy Spirit, so let's just begin to pray quietly and just worship God just for a little moment there, just begin to worship the Lord. [Prays in tongues]

Thank You Lord. We thank You Lord. We love You Lord. We thank You, You know everything about this person. You love them deeply, and You're so willing to help them, right where they are right now. Okay, now just go quiet. I want you to look with me, there's the person standing in front of you. Look like you were looking behind them, and in the background behind them are their parents, the father, the mother. Is there a problem there between the parents, or with a father, with a mother? Do you sense something there? Alright then, now just look to the left of that person. Maybe there's a spouse. Maybe there's an issue in a relationship. Is there a difficulty or a challenge there? Yes or no? Do you feel a draw there? What is that problem? Then look like you're looking down at their children. Is there a problem in family, a challenge, something that's creating difficulty? Now look over to the right of the person, their workplace, what they do. Is there a challenge they're experiencing?

Just look at the person again. Is there a problem in their body? Is there some struggle that they're having internally? Is there a difficulty in a relationship? Then look upward; are they having a struggle in their walk with God? Perhaps you've felt something there - I'll just go back through them again, and as I go through them, if you feel a draw on one of these, just stop and enquire what is the struggle Lord? What do You want to say to them, to share with them? Is it a problem in their background with their father or their mother, their family? Is there a problem with a spouse? Is there a problem in the family? Is there a struggle in some relationship? Is there a struggle at work, financially? Is there a struggle in their ministry? Is there a struggle inside themselves? What is the struggle?

Now Lord, give me something to encourage them, so just begin very simply, well I just felt an impression that there's a struggle going on in this part of your life. Maybe it's this. Just be quite gentle and easily entreated over it and then share what God has given you, share what God is saying to encourage the person. Let's just do it and see what God does. Okay, first one begin to share. [Background conversation] Okay, change over so the other one's shared. [Background conversation] Okay, let's close our sharing, and let's get some feedback how it went. [Background conversation]

Alright then, okay, just sit down for a moment, let's just see how people got on. How many people had this experience, they identified exactly an area of struggle that you had. How many had that experience, the person identified very clearly? That was very good. How many of you found it was a struggle to get that one? [Laughs] Because it's a bit more specific, you're reaching into an area. That's okay. Okay, how many of you were deeply touched by what was shared with you, it really helped you? Well that's wonderful. Come on, give yourselves a clap then, very, very good. [Applause] [Laughs] Well done, well done. Okay, so you can see that you approach it where focus is on Jesus, and we are listening and observing and seeking to find something. That's the spirit that you work in. It's one of enquiry, and observing, and then sharing what God is giving you. It's not over the top, or way out there, it's quite a gentle flow of the spirit. Everyone can practice these things.

I'm going to share with you - we'll have a coffee break shortly. I want to share with you a little bit on the word of wisdom, and then we'll have a break for afternoon tea, so you've done very, very well. So the word of wisdom, that's Section 15 in your notes. Wisdom is a great gift. Wisdom is knowing what to do. Wisdom is knowing what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it. [Laughs] Wisdom is knowing what to do, when to do it, how to do it, so we face many challenges in life, and in ministry, when you're working to minister to someone, if God gives you a word of knowledge, you need wisdom to know what to do with it. If God gives you prophecy, you need wisdom to know what to do with it; God gives you discernment, you need wisdom to know what to do with it, so wisdom is a very important gift to get, and to get a word of wisdom does not make you a wise person. You are wise for five minutes, that's it. [Laughter] I'm sorry - and it doesn't stick, because five minutes later you can be very foolish [laughter] so the word of wisdom does not make you a wise person.

It does not make you a spiritual person. It means someone smarter than you, shared with you, something very smart. [Laughter] That's really what it is, that's all it is. Someone who is very wise, shared with you, something that was surprisingly wise and appropriate, so the word of wisdom is just a revelation from the Lord, what to do in a certain situation, when to do it, and how to do it. Remember I shared with you a story about buying a gift for my grandmother? Only God could have known what to get, and what would do the trick. Only He knew, so listening to Him, I was able to get wisdom, and get an outcome that far surpassed anything I could naturally do, so we need words of wisdom.

So one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit. It's the first one mentioned in the list of the gifts of the spirit, is the word of wisdom. It is a great gift to pursue. God, give me wisdom to know what to do. In James 1 it says: if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives freely to all men, but let him ask in faith, not doubting, for he that doubts is like the waves, just tossed this way and that way. So if you're going to ask God for wisdom, expect Him to give it to you. Then you've got to step out, that what He's given to you, is the right thing to do, and the right way to do it, and the right time to do it. Okay then, so that's the word of wisdom. So wisdom works on how to do - it shows you what God wants you to do, how He wants you to go about doing, how to resolve a situation. Sometimes problems you know, are really messy. Sometimes you try, and you can't seem to fix it. You've got to ask God for a word of wisdom; God, what do You want me to do? Then be happy to trust that that's actually the right thing to do, and leave it at that.

Sometimes we can be in so much turmoil ourselves, we just want to get everything right so we feel better, and God will just say no, I want you just to leave it be for the moment. I'll work on it myself, and then I'll show you when you need to step and do something. So I've found some situations I haven't known what to do, and haven't been able to do it, and actually attempts to do it have made it worse. I've just left it to the Lord, and said God, show me what to do, and when to do it, then He'll suddenly just now, move now, act now, speak now, this is the time to say something. When that happens don't miss it. Don't miss that moment. That's the important moment - so how to pray for a person. Someone tells there are problems, you think oh my goodness, what do I do? Lord, I need wisdom what to do. Show me how to pray, because what they ask for, may not be what you really need to be praying about. That's the dilemma. People come, and if you tell them what's your need, or what is your problem, they'll spill you with so much stuff. They already have lost their way, and they're trying to get you to also lose your way, by telling you all the problems. [Laughter]

What you really need is - I've learnt now when people come for prayer, say: don't tell me all your problems, just what is it you're believing God for? What do you need from God? That forces people out of, I'm full of problems, to looking for solutions, so for example, if you go to McDonalds and line up at McDonalds and they say what do you want, you just stand there saying oh, I don't know, you know, whatever you feel to give me. It's sort of nonsense isn't it really, so - and suppose you go to McDonalds and stand in line up there, and they say what do you want, and you begin to talk about how hungry you are, and how long it is since you've had your last meal, and you start to - you know, they're going to get bored with all that, so just tell me what you need, you know? So when you come to an altar call, or someone's come up for prayer, and you ask: what do you want, and they say oh, whatever God wants for me.

I say, well He wants lots of things for you, but if you don't know them specifically, you probably won't get any of them. People don't like that answer, but it's actually very true. It sounds very spiritual, oh whatever God wants. Actually, if we know what God wants for us, we can ask specifically, and believe to receive it. If we have that kind of attitude, whatever He wants to give, it's passivity and full of unbelief. It'll produce nothing. You've got to realise that, so that's why Jesus many times in the Gospels asked people, what do you want? The blind man comes up. Now hello, what's up with Jesus? You know, there's a blind man, and He said: what do you want? Hello! [Laughter] I know, I can't see. [Laughter] But can you get the idea? But Jesus was wanting him to verbalise what He was looking for, so many times Jesus asked the person: what do you want, so He made them express their need, or their faith. He made them give voice to what they were wanting from Him, so when you're ministering to people, it's helpful if they tell you what they want, what they're believing God for, or looking to God to do.

You may not have all the answers, but at least you're focussed on the solution, not on all the problems. Having said that, there are some counselling issues that people need help to pull their problem apart, and find out what it's rooted in, and sort that out. Without knowing that, you can't deal with it, but it just helps if you can keep people in a faith mode. So the word of wisdom is, what do we do? In 2 Samuel 5:22 to 25 David was anointed king, and immediately he was anointed king, the Philistines rose up to go out to battle, and they wanted to kill him. His immediate response was this; he put on his armour, put on his sword, got the army together, went out to fight. Then when he slowed down a bit, he said Lord, do You want me to fight? [Laughter] Should I go into this battle - two questions: Lord - now notice they're simple, and they both actually have a yes/no answer. Lord, should I fight this battle? Yes or no? God says yes. The second question, will I win the battle? Yes.

So he said: then how do You want me to do it, and He showed him how to do it. That is a word of wisdom - what to do, when to do it. Next time he comes back, they come back again, he defeats them, routes them out, gets rid of their idols, they come back a little while later, back into a new battle. So now the tendency is to think like this: oh, the Philistines, I know how to deal with them. I've already one victory. I'll do it this way, leaning on your experience, rather than leaning on the Holy Spirit. He was not like that. He went God, what do you want me to do? God said don't do it the same way, this is how you do it this way. You wait, go around behind the trees and ambush them from behind, when I set it up for you - so that is a word of wisdom, what to do, when to do it, how to do it. You'll find many situations in marriage, family, ministry, work, you don't know what to do, you need a word of wisdom - what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

Noah got a word of wisdom. God showed him to build an ark. God revealed what's about to come, gave him a prophetic word: there's going to be rain. What's rain, Lord? They hadn't any rain. He said okay, let me put it to you this way, there'll be no ground to stand on. [Laughs] The whole place is going to be covered in water. He said well, what do I do? Build an ark, so He showed him what to do, gave him the pattern and how to do it. That's wisdom, wisdom from God. Think about this. Jesus was out with a group of the religious leaders. They brought a woman caught in adultery, she's caught in the very act. Now she's caught in the act - where's the man? They caught them in the act, I mean if they're caught in the act, there's got to be two of them. Where's the guy? So there's a hypocrisy here, where they're judging the woman, and they're trying to set Jesus up, so they bring in the woman to Jesus, and say Jesus, Moses Law said she's been caught in adultery, we caught her in the act, there's no doubt about the crime. Moses Law said she should be stoned to death, what do you say?

Now it was a set up from the beginning because if He said - or Moses Law said, stone her to death, then they say whoa, what kind of loving creature's this? Man, He's hard. We don't even do that. You know, we let them off from time to time too, so they'd do that. If He said oh, let them off, they'd say oh well, He's against Moses' Law. Moses' Law is very clear this is what needs to happen, hear Jesus against the law, He's eroding the law. We need to put Him away and kill Him. You see the trap? Religious spirits will always try to set up this or that, right or wrong, yes or no. God has got 100 ways through it, and so when you're trapped in a right and wrong, yes or no, Jesus never, never went either way. He found a different way through it - word of wisdom. So Jesus, in this case, didn't even answer them. He just carried on writing in the sand, and while He's writing in the sand He's thinking Father, what do You want Me to say? What do I say? A word of wisdom drops in. He said okay guys, yeah, you're right. That's what the law says. Whoever's got no sin, cast the first stone, and He just carried on writing. Now He stunned them, because now they're trapped.

Sure, that's what the law says - stone her, okay. If you've got no sin, you go and throw the stone. Really, no sin? [Laughter] They walk away. Their own conscience convicted them. They knew what they were up to, and there's no way - if they came out and did that, someone would expose them. There's no way they're going to go - so they set up the trap, and He snapped them, then He turned to the woman. He said: where are your accusers? I don't see anyone. He said I don't accuse you either, go your way, don't sin any more - so He didn't minimise the issue of sin. It's just He didn't judge it. Son of man's not come to judge, come to save, so He didn't judge her. He just said: this is destructive in your life, don't do this, you know? You need to change your lifestyle, change what you do, don't sin anymore.

So that's a word of wisdom, so there are many situations we need a word of wisdom, and so let me give a few practical things just on the word of wisdom. The first one is, don't be impulsive in making decisions. Don't be impulsive in making decisions. Impulsiveness inevitably ends up with a disaster or some kind of problem. The second thing is don't act under pressure of people or circumstances. Don't react because people are pressuring you, or circumstances are pressuring you. Saul did that in 1 Samuel 13, it cost him his whole leadership, because he so blew it by responding to pressure. So ask the Lord for wisdom. Lord, what should I do? Or we talked to you about experiencing things of the kingdom, how you need to have the attitude of a child; Father, what do I do? I don't know what to do. Help me to know what to do. Give me an insight how I should respond, and what should I do, and when should I do it - so we just have a simple thing.

You may just suddenly see a picture of what you need to do. It can drop in like a picture, drop in as a thought, drop in as an idea, and you suddenly - you don't know how you know, you just know exactly what you need to do. When you know what to do peace comes. The problem isn't solved, but you are at peace because now you have wisdom, you know what to do. So a word of wisdom is an important gift to seek after, because in every situation where you're ministering, you have needs or whatever, it gives you direction from the Holy Spirit what to do. It comes as a picture, an impression, a thought, inspired idea, and you might just be reading and suddenly something leaps out and you've got it - a word of wisdom from God, just exactly what to do. You might even be listening to someone speak ,and they're speaking on one thing, and in the middle of it you just hear, I know exactly what to do.

You might even be having a shower, and in the middle of the shower, [whoop] I know exactly what to do. You might just be lying down resting, as you're going to sleep. More often it happens when you wake up. You go to bed asking the Lord what to do, wake up, oh, I know what to do, because your spirit stayed working through the night. So that's all it is, it's just what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and it comes as a picture, an impression, and it makes a huge difference. The biggest issue is, we tend to react to circumstances and people rather than waiting and leaning on God for wisdom what to do. Here's a simple, typical example. Jesus had a very close friend called Lazarus - John, Chapter 11 - and Lazarus was sick. They said your friend is dying. He did nothing. They said excuse me Jesus, your friend is dying. Did you hear the word DYING? And nothing. Then a third time, you know, Jesus, he is nearly dead - so there's pressure. In other words, the implication is, you're his friend, some kind of friend you are. You could heal him, and you won't. So you see the pressure that brings?

But Jesus refused to respond, and then He got a freedom - He saw what the Father was doing. This is not going to end with death, it's going to end with glory. There's a resurrection coming, so when He got there, already the family were offended, because they expected Him to come straight away. This is their friend Jesus, and He didn't help. What is that about! But He had a word of wisdom, and He was able to bring a much greater miracle into that situation, a resurrection. So pressures of people and circumstances can lean you into having to operate in the flesh, rather than just lean into God and say, I can wait until God speaks to me what to do. It's so important to really desire of all things seek wisdom, wisdom, knowing the right thing to do, the right time. This is one of the biggest and best gifts to have. Solomon, when he was given an opportunity for everything, riches and whatever, he said I have one thing. Give me a heart that hears, and wisdom to know what to do. God said boy, you asked an important - that was a great request. I'll give you that and I'm going to give you everything else that you didn't ask for as well, because if you have a hearing heart and wisdom you can handle all the other things.

Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5)  

Thu 19 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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To pursue growth in this area takes courage, effort; and a willingness to deal with blocks in our own heart!

The gifts of Faith; Healing; and Working of Miracles are defined, with examples.

The Gift of Healing is distinguished from praying by faith for healing.

Find out how to prepare yourself to grow in these gifts. Your community needs it.

We've talked about: the gifts of the spirit being for everyone, the flow of the spirit, hearing the voice of God; how God speaks to you; and how the gifts all work out of hearing God. It's not religious or outrageous, it's just actually quite simple and very natural.

Then we saw then how to get: words of knowledge, prophetic words; how to actually pick up a thought, pick up an idea, and begin to move.

Then you have to then learn how to minister to people as well, so we'll give you practical things on that; then we'll look at the area of healing; then faith and miracles; then the practical aspects of ministering to people (and pray with you).

Now whatever you get, you've got just the seeds of it. Everything that you grow into your future, you have to grow by diligently working with God in this area. So you can just have a one-off seminar - get some experience, see God work, have Him work through you - and then go no further; or you can make a decision that: I want to grow in these things.

All of us have to make growth in this area, a pursuit. It just does not happen. It's a pursuit to stay alive in the spirit; and to deal with issues in your life. It's a pursuit to keep stretching out looking for opportunities, and letting God work with you. It takes courage and effort to ‘put yourself out’ into the risk zone. It's easier to just be comfortable and not do it - but it's so exciting when you do. It's so exciting when you do!

It's God's plan in this hour that the church be filled with power, and it go out in the community, and that most of your ministry's done outside the church walls; so we've provided an easy and safe setting, and I've tried to break the teaching down so you could see it easily; and then begin to just have a chance to practice.

All of you have really broken through beyond where you started, and some have discovered you've got some internal blocks. That just is where you are, in your stage of your journey.

Most of those internal blocks have to do with yourself. They have to do with fear, they have to do with what you believe about yourself, about God, and about circumstances of life. So when there's a block, it means you're not connecting with your heart - because your heart has been trained to shut off, when it's in certain conditions or situations.

Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of your heart flows the issues of your life”.

So your life, what you live out, actually comes out of not all that you think - it comes out of the issues that are in your heart; and those issues, you learn over the course of your life.

Some of the things, that are blocks in the heart, are what I'd call ‘generational curses’ and ‘generational spirits’. They're generational in origin. You were born into life with them, and you can be delivered of those blocks.

Unless you're delivered of those blocks, of the inequity, and the spirits around it, you tend to repeat the patterns of your parents; although you fight against it all the way, and don't want to be that way.

A second area that is a cause of problems, are where we actually have ‘bondages in the heart’ - where there's been painful situations, trauma or abusive or hurtful situations, betrayal in relationships; and as a consequence of that, you have defended yourself by building walls and barriers in the heart.

It could be inner vows, death wishes, it could be control, it could be statements that you've spoken into yourself, that now build a wall around your heart to keep you safe - and that's what now you're dealing with, because you're trying to access your heart.

So when you were young you defended yourself, because you had no other way of coping. Now you're older, you've got Jesus to defend you and to help you; but now you find you can't break out, because you've got these things inside you, so this is the journey of walking with the Lord, and we run various things in the church to help with that. It helps open these areas up, so whenever you see something advertised - enrol and get into it, so that you can address opening up your heart, and growing in freedom of heart.

Another thing that happens in life is: we come to believe certain things. Whether they're right or wrong is not the point, at this moment. If you believe it, then it's true for you; so if you believe that: ‘no one likes you’; ‘everyone is against you’; ‘I'm not good enough’, ‘I'll always fail’ - then that's actually what you'll begin to experience in life. It's like a negative expectancy pulls things into your life

For example, if you had in your heart these firmly rooted beliefs, that have been there for years: ‘I'm not good enough’; ‘I'm a failure’, or ‘I fail’; ‘I never get anything right’; or ‘people will laugh at me if I make a mistake’ - if you've got those beliefs in your heart, then the moment you're put in a situation like this, where you're in front of someone, and vulnerable, and you're wanting to reach into your heart to get something - all of that stuff bubbles up; it comes up and creates turmoil around you.

If you've had turmoil, those are like flows of energy, destructive energy - that frustrate you moving to do what you really want to do. Now the first thing is, just face that that's what it is, and explore it - that's where I'm at right now. Don't condemn yourself - that's just where I happen to be.

If a person's got a broken leg and they're hobbling along, you don't mock them, ridicule them, or push them, because they're hobbling along. They're just hobbling along, they're doing the best they can you know - it's hard to walk along if you’ve got a broken leg. If you have got a broken leg in your soul, your emotions or somewhere, and you're hobbling along - that's just where you happen to be right now - but it doesn't mean you have to stay there. You could engage the journey with God, of resolving those conflicts and shifting your belief systems. This would then change and bring freedom - and you're no longer hobbling along, you're a lot freer on the inside.

The ministry of Jesus, Luke 4:18:

1) I've come to preach the gospel to the poor. I come to reconcile people, and build relationship with the Father;

2) To heal the broken-hearted. He came to restore intimacy, and the capacity to be intimate, which is damaged in life's relationships, when we have trauma.

3) He's come to proclaim deliverance to the captives; or, deliverance to set you free of the things that restrict you from intimacy, connection, relationship, and connection specifically with God.

4) To open the eyes of the blind; or literally: to ‘put vision in your life’ - so that you can see what you're called to do, and escape from the prison of having no dreams, visions or future. To lift off us, the crushing loads of: guilt and blame and burdens - all this stuff that we've carried like junk, that stop us going forward. That's the ministry of Jesus - to bring us into the destiny He has for us.

So wherever you are right now, it's okay - but don't stay there. Determine to grow, so if there are blocks that come to the surface during these times, of these opportunities to do activations - take note of what they were; and what you think they've originated in.

Start to pray into them, that God would bring them to the surface, help you see them; and then explore getting some help - whether it be counselling, or a course, or something that will help shift the blocks. They're only there if you let them stay there. It just happened that that's where you are.

There were some choices you've made; but you know when someone's hurt, and they've got no one to turn to, they just do what they can to save themselves. Now that you're an adult, you don't need to save yourself - you can let Jesus save you, by opening that part of your life, surrendering control, and letting Him help you in the inner journey.

Unfortunately, many people won't do it, because there's pain in it - it's uncomfortable. But you've got to see: the other side of it is: the victory; a changed life; flowing with the Holy Ghost. It is worth it to get your future back again.

If you're operating at this level - you could operate at that level. What would it take to shift you up there? What would you have to grow in? What would need to shift in your life? That's what you're going to work on.

Now for me, I was challenged by a message someone spoke one day, Pastor Clark Taylor; and he said: “if you knew that there was one issue in your life that was hindering your life, wouldn't it be worthwhile investing, even if it was six months, in dealing with that issue, knowing that all the rest of your life, you would live life at a different level?”

I thought: that's me! So I went home, and I recognised that what I was wrestling with was: rejection, and fear of rejection, self pity and unbelief. These things were sitting around my life - and they were spirits pushing on me, working in the brokenness in my heart.

I made a decision that I'm going to fight this thing. I got into prayer and fasting, and every day decreed victory over these spirits, every day declared to the spirit world that I was broken out of this thing - it had no power any more, I'm free of it. Then I would spend the rest of the time releasing forgiveness where I felt I needed to, blessing people that had hurt me; then most of the rest of the time in: meditating that ‘God is with me’.

I meditated Psalm 23 – in the presence of God being with me. I took time to picture it, imagine it - to imagine what it would feel like to have Jesus, my friend. I would picture it - it felt ridiculous; it felt unreal - because my heart was saying: you haven’t got any friends; you're alone; nobody likes you.

My heart was lying all the time, and I had to reject the lie and meditate in the truth; until it began, eventually, one day, the truth become real in my heart. The day it became real, I suddenly felt the spirit world around me change. No longer were those things pressing on me; and I was just overwhelmed with the reality of the love of God.

I then practised daily for a while after that - just remaining and coming into His presence to enjoy Him; because what I got by revelation, I can give to you. What I got then, I've carried all over the world. It was worth the couple of months - it was worth it, to carry something that could change lives.

It may take you longer. It doesn't really matter how long, but it is your life, and your journey. Why not just decide whatever blocks your heart, you'll address it - meditation; and fixing, learning how to train your mind, to fix on the presence of God - so you become conscious of Him.

Now I can just stop at a moment’s notice - even just driving the car - just stopping at the lights for a moment, I just go down into my spirit, become aware that God is with me - and His presence starts to come. I didn't used to be able to do that.

I used to feel, in the middle of a party with alcohol and drink, I'd suddenly have this overwhelming “I'm alone”. It's an unreal thing, like you're there in the middle of it - but you're not there, not connected at all; but now I can feel the presence of God, and that means you've got something to bring to people.

You are a minister of the spirit. It is worthwhile doing that, not just being filled with information, but letting the heart be transformed, so we have reality of God. Wouldn't that be great? Just think if you could do that.

So I've given you keys, and tried to make the teaching simple, but the real journey is outside here, what you do. The real journey is the journey of resolving things in your heart, so you begin to become more conscious of God, and then able to bring what you have to other people. It's well worth it, well worth it. I mean wouldn't it be worth it just to be able to pray and things happen? Isn't that great? Ooh yes, it's well worth it alright, see so I can have a confidence that if I just go - look, for example I'll just show you. I wonder if I could just pray with you? That's right, just come, that's right, this one here come, yeah, just come, yeah, that's fine. I'll pray with you later if you like? I saw you - why don't you come too? Come too, come on, come too. No, both of you come. Alright, just come and stand up here, that's right, okay then, wonderful, thank you. Can I practice on you? See, good, I'm still practising see, and great to have people, happy people, ready to let me practice on them, isn't that good. Now what I want to do is, I want to just talk to you, just for a moment, about just this power of meditation to change the spiritual realm that you live, and flow in.

So all I want you to do is, very, very simple, you don't have to do anything at all. You just have to relax, and close your eyes, and I want you just to become aware what you feel of the presence of God, okay? So just close your eyes now, and I'm holding your hand so we're connected to one another, and what I'm going to do now is, I'm just going to begin to meditate in the 23rd Psalm, so how do you do that? Well first of all I memorised it, so it's no strain trying to remember, because if your head's trying to remember, your heart just can't engage at all. Your head's too busy, so I've learnt the 23rd Psalm, so I then make it very personal. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You all know that bit, but what perhaps you don't know is, this is the greatest king of Israel, is saying how he's made God Almighty his personal friend, so if you were to pray it slightly differently, and to pray it and let your whole imagination enter into the experience, so let me show you how you'd do it.

So the Lord, Almighty God, who made all heaven and earth, is my personal friend and companion, and so if He's my friend and companion, how would He look? Well, He would be smiling at me, because He's my friend. If I meditate as much as I can, and try to see the smile that Jesus would have, the joy that's on His countenance, the wonderful happiness He has at seeing me. He's so glad to see me, His eyes absolutely no condemnation, no judgement whatsoever, full of love and fire, absolutely wonderful. His countenance, full of life, and His hands reaching out, He's so glad to see me. This is my friend that I love, and He loves me - so I reach out and I just imagine, thank You Lord, You're my friend, You're with me. I have everything I need. I receive your love into my life right now. There it is, it's the presence of God just starting to touch me right now, see? Now she's getting the overflow. I'm not actually ministering, but as soon as I started to connect with Him through meditation, now she's starting to feel the overflow of it right now, see?

So meditation, when coupled with faith, links you into the spirit world, and the reality of God. It's one of the great things in the Bible, it's a great truth. If you're too busy, you can't do this. If you hurry, you can't do this, and if you've got lots of clutter in your head, it's not easy to do it either. You've got to de-clutter, slow down and reflect, so television and internet get you busy. You've got to find a way to find space to just slow down, and just for a few moments allow yourself to dwell in the presence of God, and become conscious of Him. Like to come - now, so she will have felt the presence of God. That's good, praise the Lord, okay. It'd be good for you too, wouldn't it aye? [Laughs] So just close your eyes, and so I'm not trying to make too much happen. At the moment all I'm trying to do is just encounter the presence of God, so I just again thank You Lord, You're my shepherd.

I went through every line of that verse. Sometimes I prayed the whole thing, then I'd go back and pray one verse, two verse, three verse, meditate on one verse, then another verse, try to meditate on any of the verses, until I could feel the reality of it see? So thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. I love that. Often I'd never get past that, just that first oh, He's my friend, and He's there with me! I begin to see Him, and feel His presence, and then thank You Lord, my cup runs over. Oh the joy, of just full of the presence of God. Thank You Lord for Your wonderful presence just flooding me right now. I just begin to enjoy it, so I learnt to just stand by the bed, and just fall on the bed and yield and see, just - no bed here now, so I'll just stand on my feet. I just learnt to receive from God, and so what would happen is, you start to feel His presence. Thank You Lord, just touch her now Lord. [Releases one long breath] Let your presence flow all over her life right now. There we are, and you're starting to sense something there, the presence of God is on you just like that.

So learn to yield rather than wrestle, so I practised just yielding to God, yielding to His presence. I'd just put the bed behind me and just stand there and just yield, and I'd be childlike, and just let myself fall [like whoa!] at the presence of God. Then I'd lie there and enjoy Him, and get up again and do it again, and again, and again, until it was easy to just open up and oh, thank You Lord. There's His presence and POWER of God just come over her life right now. Don't you feel the touch of God? You start to experience like a peace comes around you see? What else did you feel? Calm, isn't that great. It's good isn't it aye? Praise the Lord. What did you sense and experience? Yeah. Yeah, huge love, so as I was meditating, meditation opens up the spirit world, or your connectedness to God, and there's an overflow of life through you, and around you. It's great to understand that, isn't it aye? Otherwise you're going to be a performer, trying to perform, rather than a relater, have a relationship, and abiding, and receiving, and being able to give things to people. Isn't that good?

Okay then, well I'll just show you how I did something here. We'll just take a look on this gift of faith, and let me share on that, then I'll get back. I'm going to minister to some, and just pray for a few people shortly, because I want to just put together these areas of moving in the spirit, words of knowledge, prophecy, discerning, and I'll just put it altogether for you, and start to pray for a few people, and explain which gifts are operating as they're operating, okay? So we'll do that shortly. So we'll just have a quick look here, and I won't take too long on this one. I want to look at faith, gift of faith, the gift of faith. Okay, there it is, 18, alright then. So a gift of faith - now a gift of faith is not the same as walking by faith. It's not the same as your daily faith life. It is not the same as getting saved, although when you are saved, you receive a gift at that point to believe, so in a sense, getting saved is a gift of faith at that point. You got faith, and you believed immediately that you're saved, okay.

So what the gift of faith is; it's not a fruit of the spirit, and it's not just daily walking trusting God. A gift of faith is an ability to believe at a moment in time, you know something is going to happen, you absolutely know it. You say: how do you know it? I don't know how you know it, you just know inside what God is going to do, and that it will happen. You have an assurance it's going to take place, absolute assurance it'll take place, and so when you have that deep assurance, then you absolutely know something's going to happen. I want to tell you one, this is a classic one for me, and then we'll give you a few examples about it, but the best thing is if I just share a personal story, and you'll see how it can operate. I go to Taiwan and minister up there reasonably regularly, and they set up various meetings, and the Chinese have got their own way of doing stuff you see, so anyway I went up there into this particular meeting, and as I came out, I stepped straight into the meeting out of the lift, into this room where there's meeting, and then right in front of me there's a wheelchair, and a guy sitting in the wheelchair like this. I think oh no, a wheelchair! I know we'll have a great meeting - this is all what went through my mind - have a great meeting, and then at the end nothing's going to happen over this wheelchair.

I was just a bit put out, and so anyway I went over to my seat, and as soon as I got to my seat and began to worship the Lord, He said you've got a bad attitude. [Laughter] I rebuke the devil! [Laughter] No, that was you! He said you've got a bad attitude, and I just went quiet and listened, so while everyone's worshipping, I'm listening. He said your attitude is wrong to this man. It's filled with disappointments, where you've prayed and nothing happened. He said: I want you to meditate on this man being healed, really. So while everyone else is worshipping, I was just in my mind seeing the wheelchair, and seeing the man stand up, seeing the wheelchair, seeing the man stand up, seeing the wheelchair, seeing the man stand up. I was looking, just imagine, just praying, just an attitude of worship, not struggling or striving, meditating, watching, and suddenly oh! It's going to happen, I know it!

So before I was imaging it, and then suddenly there was a point where faith came. I thought oh, he's going to get healed. I was so excited - a bit nervous too, because I didn't know what to do you see, whether to go over and pray for him straight away, or whether - I just think I better warm up first you see, so [laughter] pray for the easy ones. [Laughs] So anyway, we sort of shared, and then I began to move in the spirit, began to pray for various people, and some different people got healed. The Pastor came up to me, he said: well what are you going to do now? I said: see that guy in the wheelchair, I'm going to grab his hands, and pull him out of the wheelchair! He said [inhales sharply] you're freaking me out, you can't do that. I said: you watch! [Laughter] So anyway we prayed for a few more people, and then we got there, and by the time we got there to this guy in the wheelchair, there was a second wheelchair there. I don't know where that one came from. [Laughter]

There was a lady in a wheelchair, so she's sitting in the wheelchair. I thought no, he's going last. I felt in my heart this is where I'm going to go, finish the meeting on that, so anyway I prayed for the lady in the wheelchair. She'd been in the wheelchair for three years, she'd had tremendous pain, a whole number of things happening in her life, and she hadn't walked for three years. Normally the muscles all shrivel and everything goes. Even if you get them on their feet, they don't easily walk, so I prayed for her, helped her out of the wheelchair, and she stood up and blow me down, she began to walk a few steps. I thought whoa, look at that! This is great. I'm feeling very encouraged now, ready to get this guy. So I went over to the guy, and I asked him the question: how long have you been here? Ten years, and he'd been having operations on his back, and he's just sick of the operations, he's had enough, and he's just - there's no more operations, there's no more hope.

So I said to him: wow, so I just knelt down and just prayed, said thank You Lord for healing this man. There was no big prayer, no great issue, no nothing. I said: now can I help you to your feet? I took his hand, helped him. He stood up just next to the wheelchair, and then I'm thinking I'll just help him walk, you know, don't want him to fall over [laughs] so I'll help him walk. He made me let go of his hand, and then he began to just walk like this [laughter] right across the room. I'm terrified he's going to fall over and hurt himself [laughter] and he walked across the room and back again, and he's totally healed! Now what amazed me was this - the caregivers immediately wanted him back into the wheelchair. Now notice this. He hadn't walked for 10 years, but they want him back in the wheelchair, because that's where their paradigm is, still locked in, that he's crippled. They could not quickly catch up he's now walking, and I didn't feel a thing. I absolutely didn't feel a thing when that happened, not one little feel, not an ounce of God, not an ounce of emotion, nothing. It's just, it just happened, so that was a gift of faith.

You just know. Now does that mean everyone I pray for? No, I knew that guy, that day, that time, would come out, and I could act boldly in that situation. Later, he came up in the altar call, gave his heart to the Lord. They were still trying to get him into the wheelchair, so now I've learnt that if they get out of the wheelchair, fold up the wheelchair as quickly as you can, get them walking - same with walking sticks. So again, that's how faith just came. It says faith comes by hearing the word of God, so as I meditated, I heard from God in that sense. Faith rose. Now I'm not saying that I can turn that on or off for any situation. All I'm saying is, that it is a gift, comes in a moment of time, and some people operate in it so much, and so frequently, it's like around their life, the gift of faith, and many miracles happen around their life, and around their ministry.

I know one particular person who's a friend of mine up in Malaysia, tremendous miracles he has happen everywhere he goes, just stunning gift of faith. There's a resident gift lives in his life, and he just operates in a whole faith dimension. It's very inspiring. There's a gift of faith comes just in a moment, and then you can grow in that whole dimension, until you actually seem to have a residing gift, or mantel of faith over your life. It is astounding when that happens, to see these things, so I've seen that happen a couple of times. I had one, a lady that was totally deaf, and born deaf. I prayed for her, nothing happened, and then I felt something in me rise up. I cannot describe it, it had to be faith. I just refused to give up. I prayed not once, I prayed four times. On the fourth time, her ears popped, and she could hear. Imagine if I just quit, and had given up after the first time, she'd still be deaf.

What about the other guy in the wheelchair? Imagine if I'd allowed myself to stay in that cranky, unbelieving attitude. He would still be in the wheelchair. People need someone to break through on their behalf. Why not you? Now you don't necessarily quickly get to that. You grow your faith level by level, so don't matter how many times you pray and nothing seems to happen. Just keep meditating in the word of God, expecting God to work in your life, and believing that you'll break through, and come into different dimensions. Amen. Praise the Lord. Why don't we get you to step out in faith for something in a moment aye? Would that be good? Step out in faith and pray for someone, that'd be really, really good. Then we'll just look at the gift of healings and working in miracles, then just some practical keys, so why don't we just get you to do something with one another, how about that?

So I tell you what, this'll be quite a good thing to do, and this is, we'll get you now into groups of about four or five, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to put one person in the middle, and the others all get some word of encouragement for them, so instead of it being one to one, you maybe have at least three people ministering to one person, no more than three, so no bigger groups than four, or it just takes too long to do it. So you get one person in the middle, and then you all pray, then one by one, you share a word of encouragement for them, to bless them, encourage them, and help them. How about that, can we do that? Okay, let's do that.

Okay, let's be seated, I want to get on with the next session, and then we want to just minister and pray for you. Let's be seated, and this time look at Section 19, Gifts of Healings. In 1 Corinthians 12, Verse 7, the Bible talks about: to another is given gifts of Healings, by the same spirit. Notice He used the word 'gifts' of Healings, and so a gift of healing is a gift given to you, at a time where you just have faith for someone to be healed. Now what I have noticed happens, is that when a person has a gift of healing, there is always a result take place, so we can pray by faith, or if we get a gift, God gives a gift at a moment of time - you can call it faith, call it a gift of healing - the person gets a breakthrough straight away at that time. So notice it says: gifts of healing, not gift, so what I have observed is, some people get very good in praying for backs. They'll just get freedom every time they pray for a back. They've got faith for backs, they've got like a gift of healing around their life. Some have got it for ears; some will have it for other areas, so people can develop and focus in a particular area of healing.

Some are very good in getting deaf ears opened, some are very good at getting backs and joints healed and freed, and you get them to pray, they get 90 to 100 per cent success rate. They've got a gift around their life of healing, that's faith for that area. I was reading just concerning Todd Bentley and some of his ministry, and he teaches on how you grow from level to level in this area, and he had a point where I think one of his family members, his mother was deaf. He began to contend in prayer for breakthroughs with deaf people, and he prayed for hundreds and hundreds of people, nothing happened. He just began to contend, and eventually got a breakthrough. Once he got one, it just kept growing, until now wherever he goes, he will pray for the deaf, and get something like 80, 90 per cent of people with deaf ears will open up, so that's a gift of faith, or a gift of healing in that area. So we're all on a journey, so don't compare with someone else, just settle in your heart how God wants to work with you, and start to believe to grow in that area. So let's just give a couple of examples of it.

In Mark, Chapter 16, and we read here at the Great Commission. We're commissioned to go into the world, which is full of sickness and demonic oppression, and it says we're to preach the Gospel about how people can come to Christ, come to God, come to know the Lord, and walk in His kingdom, but it says - notice this - it says in Verse 17, these signs shall follow them that believe. In My name, they'll cast out devils, so if you can believe for it, when you pray, demons will come out of people. You have to believe it'll happen, not doubt, or wonder whether it'll happen. It says in the last one, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. They will lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover, and that means gradually, or progressively, come to a state of wholeness. So when we think of praying for healing, we tend to think of it all being instantaneous. That was kind of like a mentality I had, probably seen it in one of the movies or something, I had this idea you pray, there's this immediate miracle, everything's just exactly back to normal. I realised actually in real life, God does not seem to operate that way. He operates in different ways around the healing area.

So for a gift of healing, at a moment of time, you just know in your heart when I pray something's going to happen. That's a gift of healing. The rest of the time, we just pray by faith. In other words, we follow the scripture: you lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, so sometimes you get a miracle, the healing is immediate. The transformation takes place immediately, like if deaf ears open it is immediate, they hear or they don't hear, but it can come in a couple of stages, where they hear a little, then it comes complete, and they hear the whole. Same with the eyes; the eyes are either not seeing, or seeing, and if they're not seeing, you pray and they start to see a little, then pray again, and believe for it to be progressive. So I have noticed that sometimes, the majority of times I've prayed, I've had to persevere in prayer, and believe that this would work, and then they break through, and they get the miracle. Sometimes I've seen cataracts healed, just gone. People couldn't see, and then suddenly they see, but it took praying a couple of times to push through the barrier and resistance that was there, same with hearing of ears.

I began to grow faith for walking sticks, for people on walking sticks to be healed. Initially I just hated praying for people with walking sticks. I'd want to run the other way, because I never got any results. [Laughs] I just didn't like that, but I made a decision I'd persevere, and believe God I could get breakthroughs, and so I started. So now most of the time when I'm in Asia, if I've got any evangelism meetings, I will look for people with walking sticks when they come in. I'll look for them, and I'll ask for them to come up, and give it a go. I had one meeting, I had about 45 people get off their walking sticks and walk, but that - faith is grown for that area. I found sometimes I'm getting better results in some areas than I've done before, but you can grow in this area, so notice what it says: They'll lay hands on the sick, so God called 'laying hands' is to identify with a person, so we lay hands on the sick person and pray for them. They may get a miracle immediately. It may be progressive, and they recover over a day, two days, three days, four days, so you need to take into account you may not see anything immediately happen. It doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

I found when I first started to pray, it used to so put me off, because I'd pray and nothing would happen, I'd feel discouraged, and not even enquire later on whether anything happened. I've found since then, you can't believe the number of people I've prayed for them on Sunday and Monday they were well, that when they walked away they weren't well. It didn't seem like it anyway, but actually something had been imparted to them, and it began to manifest. The healing gift manifested, so instead of thinking of it cut and dry, yes it happened or not, learn to just persist in prayer, and sow in prayer, and believe in prayer. A gift of healing, you just know it, and when it comes the person's going to be healed straight away - but the rest of the time, we pray by faith. So here's a few simple things. The first one is, it's helpful to lay hands on the person, lay hands, identify, connect with the person, and let the Holy Spirit show you where to lay hands.

He may show you to lay hands on the head, may get you to put your hand on the part that's - if it's appropriate - on the part that's sick or not well, or He'll put your hand on top of a person's hand, whatever seems appropriate. The second thing you need to consider is, maybe you need to cast out a spirit of infirmity. If you have a look in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 13 and Verse 10, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there's was a woman had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years, and was bowed down and could not lift herself up. She had a back condition that was caused by a spirit. It was a demonic spirit that caused the problem. Medicines could not fix it. It required deliverance, so if there's a spirit of infirmity, praying for the sick person won't set them free. You have to cast the evil spirit out. You've got to speak to the spirit, and command it to go, so you notice when the girl was standing there, I spoke to the spirit, commanded it to go, and as soon as it left her, she just fell over straight away, and then there's a change in her condition in her back.

So when you're praying in this area for people who are sick, think in two dimensions; think one, it could be a spirit that needs to be cast out; two, it could be just a weakness in the system, a virus in the system, a degeneration in the system, or it could be some kind of thing that needs healing to take place. If it's degenerative, it needs a creative miracle for God to restore. If it's just something damaged or broken or whatever, it needs God to heal, so keep thinking in terms of: one, I may need to cast a spirit out; two, I may need to pray and release God's healing power into their life. A third thing you need to learn to do, is to command, to speak to things, like they are living. In our western culture, we're not used to doing that, but if you look in Acts, Chapter 3, Peter and John went up to the temple - Verse 1 - about the ninth hour, and a certain man, lame from his mother's womb, was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple called Beautiful, to ask alms. He saw Peter and John going into the temple, and asked for alms. Peter fixed his eyes on him. He must have got a gift of faith for the healing, must have got a gift of healing then, because he knew something was going to happen, so notice what he did.

Silver and gold have I none, but what I have - so what did he have? The gift of healing - such as I have I give you. Now notice how he did it. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. That's not namby-pamby stuff. You've got to learn to speak with authority. These things resist. They resist wellness, they resist health, so learn to speak firmly - not loudly. Shouting doesn't do it - with authority from your spirit, fully believing what you say would happen. Notice how he's prayed: In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. See? So he didn't even go talking about the curse, or the spirit, or whatever it was, just said rise and walk. Now notice what else he did. He took him by his right hand, and he helped him up. Now notice this, when the miracle happened, immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. When did they receive strength? When he got on his feet, see?

So if he had stayed on the ground, he would not have walked. He had to be helped up onto his feet, and when he got him onto his feet, that's when the miracle happened, so it doesn't always happen immediately when you pray. Sometimes you've got to take an action of faith, that precipitates the miracle happening. If you study Jesus' miracles, many times miracles happen when the person did something, or when He did something, so for example, remember he told the guy - the blind guy to put a mud pack on his eyes, and said walk through the town and go to this pool, and wash and you'll come back seeing. So the guy walked from when Jesus spoke to him to the pool, and he was blind all the way, until he washed his eyes. When he washed his eyes, he could see, so Jesus required a faith action of him. The lepers, He said: go show yourself to the priest. Now they were still lepers when they walked away from Him, but as they walked, they were healed, so when they did what was physically impossible, when they did what they could do, God did the rest.

There's another guy standing there, and he's got a crippled hand, and Jesus is getting him to stand up in the synagogue - not very nice to make a handicapped man stand up in front of everyone, but he gets him to stand up. He says: now stretch out your hand. Now that's physically impossible, but when he began to stretch, suddenly the power of God came. Now it's helpful for you to understand, sometimes you've got to get people to do things, so I had one person for example, a lady had a shoulder, and her shoulder was a lot of pain, so I prayed for her. I said any improvement? She said just a little. I said: well then, why don't you move your hand. She said: oh, it's a pain, it's hurting, it's hurting, it's - oh, it's gone! [Laughter] So it was as she ignored the pain, and took the faith action, that's when the healing power began to flow, and she got free, and got the miracle. If she hadn't taken a faith action, nothing would happen, so many times when you pray, don't just think God will do it all. Often you need to get the person to give some feedback to you, what's happened, and then get them to take a faith action. So if I pray for someone and there's no immediate result, I will pray again, and try to get them to do something they haven't done before, and it's often in that that you get the breakthrough.

Now one caution, one word of caution: do not encourage a person, or tell them to stop taking medication. You're not a doctor, you're not a prescriber of medication, therefore, you're not authorised to tell them not to take it. Not taking medication has legal consequences, and physical consequences potentially, so what is important is we understand, if a doctor has prescribed medicine, let the person go show themself to the doctor, and let the doctor release them from the medicine, or let them take responsibility. Don't you go diagnosing someone doesn't need medicine anymore, okay then? So don't encourage them to no longer see a doctor, if they're going to a doctor, just pray for them. Don't be something you're not - you're not a doctor, so our role is to pray for people. We just pray for them, and see how they are, and check them out afterwards, and just encourage them then to continue to thank God for what's happened to them - so that is the gift of healing.

So the 'gift of healing' is different to 'praying by faith for healing'. We pray by faith for healing, we just believe, according to the word of God, that if we pray for the person, they can be healed. Are some people not healed? Yes, sometimes unforgiveness will block their healing, sometimes unbelief will block their healing, sometimes there can be control or occult powers will block their healing. You've got to ask the Lord to show you, what blocks the healing. When you get a gift of healing, you just know the person's going to be healed, and when you pray, it does happen, and it happens pretty well straight away. The rest of time, pray, check the person out, break the power of a spirit over their life, and encourage them to take an action that they haven't taken before - so there's ministry of the healing gift again.

Now gifts of healing are wonderful. Pray for gifts of healing - there are so many sick people. They go to chiropractors and doctors, and it costs them thousands of dollars, and here one prayer could set that person free. What a great thing, if you could begin to flow in gifts of healing - in your workplace, wherever you are. People can be stunned in the community, they just get a healing in the workplace, get a healing wherever you happen to see them. They get so shifted, it's quite astonishing the effect it has on their life. Wouldn't that be great? Now related to gifts of healing are the working of miracles. We won't spend a lot of time related to that area, but a miracle involves the breaking of a natural, or it means that the natural laws are overridden by the realm of the spirit. God brings a superior power into play, so there are heaps of miracles in the Bible where God has invaded the natural realm, and a miracle took place.

I'll give you some examples of Peter walking on the water. You can't walk on water. You all know you can't walk on water, so what kept him up? The power of God. Now I guess, how did he know? I guess he never knew he could walk on the water, until he stepped out of the boat, and got his foot in the water, and who knows how far down it went before it was solid? You don't know. There's been examples of people doing this in Indonesia during revival, crossing rivers that you couldn't cross, and the people came after them, went in the river and they were swept away it was that deep. So there are many examples; the feeding of the 5000. You notice that what Jesus did was He took the bread, He blessed it, He spoke over the bread. He spoke words over the bread, He looked up to heaven to the source, spoke words over the bread, then broke it, and gave it to the disciples. Now at that point, it still hasn't multiplied. It was when they distributed it, it began to multiply, so they give out a piece, and there's another piece taken its place, and so on, and so forth.

We heard from Heidi Baker in Mozambique, and they had a huge number of people to feed, a large number of people to feed, and they looked at the food they had, and it wasn't enough, so they just began to pray over it. Well, they fed everyone, and had food left over. No one knows how they did it. So I've heard a whole number of stories like that, in modern times, of the food just being multiplied. How did it happen? They asked God what to do, just prayed over it and distributed it out, and God did the rest. It was a miracle, a working miracle, so some aspects of miracles are overriding natural laws. Another aspect of miracles is deliverance. Deliverance is the working of miracles, because in deliverance, God displaces a demonic power by the working of miracles, so deliverance is also a working of miracles. There are many examples of these in the Bible. How do we move in it? I think you've got to desire miracles, you've got to hunger for them, and pray for them, reach out to God for them, and I've noticed that most of the miracles take place where there are needs that are being met, by people serving people. I've noticed that's where most miracles take place.

Most common miracles are not necessarily in a church meeting, they're actually out where people are doing something, to help someone. It's in those environments that God works the greatest miracles. It's where the unsaved are. I've looked at the meetings I've taken overseas in Asia, because I've seen heaps of miracles, heaps of healing, heaps of deliverance, and I noticed that the best miracles, the best miracles, were with people who were unsaved. Time and time again, I'd have a word of knowledge on people that were unsaved - I didn't know whether they were saved or unsaved, they're just Chinese people to me. But they'd come up and we'd pray for them to get healed, and then later on they're in the altar call to get saved. The miracle power opened their hearts to get saved. They saw the reality of the power of God, so it's fantastic.

How many enjoyed that, liked that? Is it good fun? We should pray for a few people shouldn't we aye, should reach out and pray for a few people? Alright then, so what I'll do now, is just start to pray and minister to some. Then what I want to do is to lay hands and pray, and just release an empowerment in your lives, and I want you to go out, and just give it a go. Never give up, just practice. Ask God to give you words. Ask God to bring people into your heart life that are ready to receive something, and then give it a go. What have you got to lose? Learn on the way. Don't wait until you've got your head full of theory, just learn on the way. If someone's sick, offer to pray for them, and there's a few practical things in offering to pray for them. We've given you some of those, we'll get to that in just a moment.

So what I'll do then is, I'll just show you what I mean. I'll just put some of the gifts together, and just begin to flow with the Holy Spirit, and I'll identify the different gifts as we're flowing, then you'll see how they just operate. Now most of us, are not going to be in a meeting, doing something in a meeting, so for most people, it's as you interact with people, and they identify a need; you step up and say: I'd just love to pray for you, or you may just sense something about a person. Go over and relationally interact with them, and then share with them what you feel God showing you, and do it in a non-religious way, so it's very, very simple, and someone can easily receive it. So for most people, it's quite a simple sort of process - and expect that as you're doing, God will give you things. Now clearly, no one wants to step into that unless you've had time with the Lord, and are building a personal relationship with Him, but if you are, then let's go for it.

So what you could do simply in your personal preparation, is go through the Gospels reading the stories of Jesus, and healing, and meditate on those stories of people healing, meditate, see it, thank You Lord, when I lay hands on the sick, they shall recover. I thank You Lord, when I lay hands on blind eyes, they open. Begin to picture it, and see it, and hold it, that this is what's true in your life, even before it happens. Don't wait to see it, then I'll believe it. Believe for it to be seen in your life in ministry, see? So thank You Lord, that when I pray, that deaf ears will open. I thank You Lord, that as I minister to people, Your presence touches them powerfully. Today Lord I surrender my hands, I yield all the works of my hands today Lord. My hands are blessed. All I put my hands to Lord, are blessed. Lord, when I lay hands on people, the power of God will touch them.

Start to decree and declare over your life, the things you're believing God to do. We talked about removing some of the blocks in your heart, but arise expectantly day by day. Today Lord, bring someone into my life who is in need of prayer or help, and show him to me in a way I can see it. Then enjoy looking out for people. Give it a go, you know, and if nothing works, or nothing happens, well you've got nothing to lose, just - well, you were giving it a go, and it's in the giving it a go, you grow. I've never seen anyone, get anywhere, by just filling up on books, information and meetings. It's actually, at the end, you've just got to get down and pray for someone, and see what will happen. You might be surprised what happens, and there's an element where, you don't know until you're engaging with them, what God will do, so for example if I was just to pick this girl out here - would you like to come up? Yes, that's right, why not, come up here, that's it.

Now you see what you've got to do is - I've got no idea. I'm just going to just take an opportunity to just, reach out, and just see what God will do - so can you tell me your name? [Wooty] Wooty, that's a great name, great. I'm so glad you came. Have you been enjoying yourself? That's awesome, that's great. Okay now, the moment I started to interact with her like that, then immediately I got a word from the Lord. I'm expecting it you see? I don't want it to be something that's very hard, and very difficult. I want it to be something that's very, very easy, so I just interact with her like that, and just try to make it as relaxed as possible, and I really am glad that you've come, and you've been enjoying it, but this is what I felt. I just felt the Lord show me, that you struggle with fear, that you've got real desire in your life to actually do a whole number of things, but often fear will lock you back, as though I'm afraid to step out, or afraid - and so now I'm going to reach out to see, I wonder where that fear's come from, see?

So what I'll do is - what I feel the fear has come, it's from people around - it's from around family, it's like, it's tried to push you down into a box, that that's where you belong, and would you be younger in the family? Yeah [laughs], you're pushed down, like the young one in the family, and so it's like there's an order, and you're at the bottom, or way down here. That be right? See, words of knowledge. Now can you see it's sort of natural? It just flows naturally, I'm just talking with her, see, and so what I'm seeing is this, is that God's wanting you to - you're not in a box any longer, and you're not subject to that any longer. You can actually rise up. You have got a wonderful gift in your life, and so I wonder what the gift is. See? Well, I see - what I feel is, I feel you're a very creative person, you've got a very soft spirit, you love to worship God, and you're very creative on the inside. In fact actually, you have been restricted so long, but you long to break out, you've got lots inside you to come out, and the thing that's been holding you back, is just the words that were spoken, that have put you down, and the fear of doing anything to break out of where you feel you're assigned to be - and God will help you with that today.

He wants you to know, you're not what they say you are, you're who He says you are. He says you're a mighty woman of faith. He says you've got a ministry to touch many, many people, you've got a heart for young people, you've got a heart to reach out and help them, and God says that you have got greatness inside you. You are not the youngest in His eyes, you're not the least in His eyes. He sees you as great, because you've got a real desire to love people, a capacity to work with people, and you're in training for this, aye? [Laughs] Can you see it's quite natural? I can see you're already being touched, because you know I could not have known any of these things. I don't think I've met you before today. [No.] So how could I read her mail like that? So what you're experiencing then, it's something like, first of all you're a bit frightened - is that right? That's because the spirit knows I'm onto it, because I'm about to pray for that spirit in a moment. [Laughter] So that fear you were feeling, actually was the spirit being afraid. That's why you suddenly felt the fear, see? And like it gripped you suddenly. That's because the demon knew I'm onto it, he knew what's going to happen, and so you suddenly feel his fear. It's not your fear, it's his fear. He's the one afraid. You've got nothing to be afraid of.

God loves you. I love you. The people here love you. There's nothing to be afraid of, see? But the fear you're feeling, is actually not your fear, it's the demonic fear, but it's gripped your life for years. It's been like a part of your life, see, and you don't have to live that way anymore, okay? You don't have to. Today's change day for you. You're not going to go back into that box, go back into that way, alright then, so we want to pray for you now. Alright then? Okay.

So your heart's been touched, that's right. That's great. We need tissues. [Laughter] Okay then, can I take your hand? Just come forward a little bit now. Alright, I want you to close your eyes. Just close your eyes. Now this is - I'm not going to do this in front of everyone, but there's some specific people who've deeply hurt you. I want you just in your heart, to picture them, and then release forgiveness. Lord, I just forgive them. I forgive them for what they said, I forgive them for what they did, I forgive them for how they've treated me. I forgive them for boxing me in, like they did. Just let it go. God sees your heart. He knows why that's there, and not forgiving will block the deliverance you see? [Mm.] So now I thank You Lord, You love her. Thank You Lord that Your presence is coming on her life right now, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break abusive words spoken over your life. I take authority over word curses spoken over you. I break them in Jesus' name. I come against words of death, I come against words of hatred, I come against words of despising, I break their power over your life today, in Jesus' name. You spirit of fear, you tormenting spirit, loose her in Jesus' name. Right now, let her go, let her go, let her go, NOW in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord, thank You.

Father, I just pray peace into her now. Father, I thank You for the anointing of the Holy Spirit flowing right now. I break the generational curses of hatred, and abusive women, I break them in Jesus' name. I release you from the grip of those things. I break the negative words spoken over you. Spirit of death, I command you: loose her, in Jesus' name. I break all agreements wanting to die, loose her in Jesus' name. Now Lord, let Your peace just come around her now. I just call forth creativity, life, freedom, in Jesus' Mighty name. Father, bring her complete peace.

Now you notice then, the gifts of words of knowledge, then prophetic flow mingled in, and then discerning of spirits, what actual spirits were there, that need to be broken off her life, and then ministry. See how it all just flows together, just like that? I got her to interact with us, so you can see one, how natural the flow is. It's not a forced or difficult or hard thing, it's just remaining relaxed, and just interacting, and listening to the flow from your heart. You can see as she talked and interacted back, you could see how deeply she's been touched by, suddenly, God knows me, He knows my difficult journey and my struggles, and He cares about me, He wants to help me. This is a most wonderful experience, absolutely blessed experience. Praise the Lord. How are you doing now? How are you feeling now? [I feel really good.] You feel really good, isn't that fantastic?

Now when we prayed to command that fear to go what happened, what did you sense? [unclear] Something came out of you? [Yeah.] You felt something leave you, and go out of you. You won't feel the same again. You'll feel quite different. [Not heavy.] No, not heavy, no. It's gone, it's gone, [Thank you.] [Applause.]

So now, so you see we taught you just foundations of this. All you've got to do is grow in it, and who knows what you could do. There's no limits. There's no limits really, with what you could do, because God has got an area of people for you, to be with, and interact with, that I'll never meet, so He wants to work through you to touch them, and not in a church meeting, but outside, wherever you are. Isn't that exciting possibility that God would use you in such ways? Isn't that great? So praise the Lord. There's someone here who has trouble at night times, and its a woman and you wake up with severe nightmares, you have these tormenting nightmares, you wake up and they're quite a trouble for you. They occur quite regularly, they disturb you at night, and you wake up and you're quite frightened. Who's the woman that has that problem, if you could just come right now we'll pray for you? Woman, young woman, you've had this problem for quite some time and God wants to set you free. Who's the woman that has these nightmares, you wake up and these tormenting thoughts and dreams - I'd love to pray for you right now. Who's that person? If you think that's you, just come quickly, come quickly. God bless you, there you are there [Thank you.] Come on up, that's okay. It doesn't matter if you're the only one comes up, I'm still happy to pray for you, praise the lord. [Laughs]

Okay. You're special today, God bless. God loves you. You're special to me, we've been able to practice... [laughter] And you're special to God, He loves you, and today's your day. You know, He's been wanting so much just to have some change, why would it not be you? Why not you? [unclear] Exactly, why not you and you begin thinking that way, instead of why me, rather why not me, aye? Praise the Lord, okay, and you've had this for quite some time. Now, okay, so since you were a child? [A child.] Since you were a child, okay then, and about age six, somewhere around about that? [Oh, probably four.] Four? Quite young, okay, and you'd wake up at night quite afraid? [Yeah.] Okay... [Definitely.] ...you'd feel the presence of something around you? [Absolutely.] Okay, when's the last time that happened? [Probably last night.] Last night, okay. [It's constant.] It's constant torment? [Yeah.] Okay, alright then, so what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to help you - tonight isn't all the ministry you need, but we can just help you with this part of it, okay? Alright then, so now there's clearly occult background in your family? [Yes.] Whereabouts is it located, parents or grandparents? [Great grandfather.] Great grandfather, what was he? [I think he was a warlock.] Oh, he was a warlock, oh that's... [Or something like...] ...a big deal. [Yeah.] That's a big deal, yeah. [He was seriously into...] He was seriously into it... [...satanic...] ...satanic stuff, okay then.

Because he was seriously into those kinds of things, he would have committed his family, for generations, to occult powers, and the spirit world would recognise that, and it would lay claim to everyone of the descendants, and particularly the girls. So unusual things would happen to all the girls in the family, they're unexplainable it seems, and you'd end up thinking why me, why has it always been, why is this stuff happening? [Mm-hm.] That be right? Okay and that's because of a curse running down through the family. Now Jesus died for our curses, and so what we need to do, is reach out to Him. We become accursed, so that the blessing of Abraham would come on us, so here's two things that we need to get you to do. We need to get you to follow me in a prayer, just to confess Christ and what He's done, okay and secondly, to release forgiveness to your ancestors that have opened the door for this problem. You need to forgive. Hello, we've got a problem. [Laughter]

[I've tried before...] Okay, you've tried before? [Yeah.] It's hard, it's hard, okay. Why not believe today, that you can let it go? I'll just help you with that in a moment, then we need to renounce, or speak off your life, speak words, to break that curse, in other words get hold of your life again. We're going to put the cross of Christ between you and your background, you've got a new start in life, okay? [Okay.] So forgiving, is not a favour you do someone else. Forgiving is for you, to move forward. It's releasing the debt that they owe, so when you look back - you did this, you hurt me, you've messed my life up. You know you've got to let it go, and say hey, that's not my business, that's God's business. I'm just releasing it, so I can walk on. [Yeah.] So unforgiveness will lock you to your past. It just keeps you frozen in time, and you can't move on, so that's why it's so important. [Yeah.] Not only that, God forgives us so much. Has God forgiven you much? [Big time.] Big time! [Laughter] Well that's called grace. We don't deserve it, but He gives it, and so to stay in grace, we release forgiveness to others, not because they deserve it, by the way... [Yeah.] ...but just because that's what we do. If we want to stay in grace, we let grace go to others.

So letting go, is letting go... [Yeah.] ...okay? We're alright, now I needed to do this, because it's no use me ministering, without your understanding a little bit about the part she has to play. See I can't just fix all her problems. What I need to do, is lead her to the One who does, and there may sometimes be a part she has to play. Notice I talked about letting forgiveness go in the heart. It was quite important to do that, so from a heart level, she let go, then she's free to get out of that stuff, and the spirit left straight away, so something will happen this time. So I may get the names of certain spirits and things to break, it'll be discerning of spirits, and operating in revelation knowledge to do that, okay? So we're on the way now.

How are you feeling? You look like you're getting agitated? [Yeah.] Okay, tell me what you're feeling. [Pretty exposed.] You're pretty exposed? [Yeah.] Close your eyes and turn everyone off, and focus, just let your heart reach out with love to give. This is a very vulnerable position to be in, especially in front of everyone like that. I just appreciate your honesty, but anyway it's over in a few minutes aye, and that's the great thing. I just thank you for just being willing to just respond, and being so open. It really is of God do that, and we can all learn, and we all witness, so you may be watching - what I'd like you to do is to be praying, praying quietly in tongues, and lets all join together. She's part of our family, the family of God, and when one suffers, all suffer, so let your heart flow with compassion. We don't know all she's faced, and gone through, but what we're looking for, is God to bring release, is that right? Okay, so just close your eyes, just make everyone vanish for a moment, there's just you and me and the Lord here.

Thank You Lord. I want you to just follow me in this prayer. Father, I come to You in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse. I belong to You Jesus. I renounce now every generational curse, every generational agreement with evil spirits, for all my family members, I renounce it. I put the cross of Christ between me and that curse, and I break it. I release forgiveness for family members who opened the door to spirits by their actions. I forgive them. I let them go, and I turn to You Lord Jesus, and I ask You to set me free. Thank You Lord. It's going to be real easy now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break all agreements formed by your great grandfather with evil spirits. I break the curses that came through his life, and his actions. I break the agreements he made with evil spirits. I break the power of agreements made through blood on altars. I break all blood covenants that he formed with evil spirits. I break written agreements he made in blood, that enabled family members, generation after generation, to be afflicted by evil spirits. I cancel the right of all evil spirits from your grandfather, to enter, or to remain in your life, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I just speak now, in the name of the Lord Jesus I command this tormenting spirit, that's tormented you since a young age, of four, with nightmares and dreams, I speak to you now and all related spirits, spirits of torment, I command you now GO in Jesus' name right now, release her now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Just rest there, that's right. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we just pray for your healing anointing and flow of your blessing upon her now, in Jesus' name. I just take authority and break every ungodly belief that you had, there's something wrong with me. I break your agreement with that lie right now in Jesus' name. I break every desire, every death wish you've spoken over your life, just wanting to die, I break it in Jesus' name. Now Lord, I just ask for Your loving presence to come around her life. Thank You Lord, You love her. Fill her, in Jesus' name. There you go, how about that? [Applause.]

You feel awesome aye? [Yeah.] Isn't that great? You'll enjoy some happy nights now aye? [Yeah.] Peaceful nights, instead of being tormented, isn't that fantastic? Thank you for coming back - we had someone else who was tormented, but he didn't come back. [Laughter] So I want to thank you for your courage in coming tonight. Let's just give her a great clap. [Applause.]

Someone else here, you've twisted your right shoulder, and you're in pain in your right shoulder. Who's that person? This one, yeah, here we go, come on, come now. Okay, so how long ago did you do this? [...in January.] Right, so all since January you've had problems with that shoulder? [Yeah, I've been trying to cast it out myself] [Laughter] Okay, well that's - today God knows about that, so what is it, it looks like it's stiff, you can't move it or raise it? [Very sharp pain.] Very sharp pain in your shoulder. It just came on you suddenly? [Yeah, suddenly.] No reason at all? [Yeah I feel like it's just not going away, so I was praying that you would call me today.] [Laughter] Well there you go. See what happens? When there's hunger and desire that's when these kinds of things happen, okay, right. [The pain is terrible.] The pain is so terrible, so since January she's been in tremendous pain in her shoulder, she's been asking the Lord to help and came in pain today, believing God to do something.

When did you come back from Malaysia? [In January.] Isn't that interesting? [Yeah.] Okay, so what I'm... [I have this in February]. So I'm just looking to how to pray, so here's the options. One is we just pray for healing, one is we pray into the realm of the spirit, that there may be a spirit causing the affliction, and I've noticed that she has been trying to cast it out herself, so it's almost like, in her heart, she's aware there's a spirit there. [Yes.] See? Okay, now so then the question is, if she's been doing that, and hasn't had any result, I wonder why that is so. I kind of ask questions. I don't just quickly, just jump in. You just start to ask questions, and how long were you over in Malaysia for? [Four months.] And you were sharing about Jesus for lost people? [Yes.] Were they all happy about you sharing Jesus? [Yes, really.] Yeah? That's good. okay. [A lot of restoration.] A lot of restoration? That's good, okay. Was there anyone that was unhappy with you doing that? [Not really, although when I went back, there was a spiritual warfare, but then that - I mean my sister, she really know Christ, came to Christ...] Oh good. [Yeah.] Listen, just give me your hand then. Thank You Lord. Father, I just thank You that you're a God that reveals, and that there's nothing too difficult for You. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority over witchcraft. I come against every word curse spoken against you. I come against every spirit of witchcraft assigned against you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that spirit of witchcraft off your life. Infirmity, I command you to let her go now, loose her now in Jesus' name, loose her now, loose that shoulder in Jesus' name. We just break your power, and command healing to flow in the joint, and the nerves, we command this shoulder to be released now, in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Whoa! [unclear] Okay, so it's leaving your shoulder? [Yeah.] Do you feel better now? Okay then, just begin to move around, just see how it feels. [It feels better.] It feels better? I can see you doing things you couldn't do before. Isn't that wonderful? [So stiff!] See it was very stiff, it was visibly stiff, and the pain - how's the pain? [Yeah, it's better.] It's better now? [Yeah.] Isn't that wonderful? Lets pray for her one more time. Thank You Lord. Just look up to the Lord. Holy Ghost, just come upon her, fill her Holy Spirit right now, in Jesus' name, wow! User her in healing.

Now - so what, how do we pray? So I listened. Don't jump into conclusions, just stay long enough to listen. Listening is the big deal, then act boldly on what you see. So I listened, and I felt that feeling, and that's why I was asking the questions, I just felt someone actually was very upset with her, and had cursed her, so that's why I broke that witchcraft curse, and spoke against the spirit of infirmity, then immediately she just freed up, just like that. Isn't that wonderful aye? Oh, how glorious is our God.

Well, we're just running out of time now. How many other people here are sick today, anyone here sick? Why don't you just stand where you are, if you're sick in your body, got a sickness that needs healing? Why don't you just stand right where you are, because the table's going to gather around you, and pray for you. That'll be great, won't it? You'll have a chance to do something, to pray for a sick person. Okay, we've got a very sick table down there have we, three people? [Laughter] Okay, move around, and go to one of the other tables, and let some people there pray. Gather around the ones who have got a sickness. When they come to you, tell what the problem is, what you're believing God for, and the team will pray for you, and lets just see what God does. Afterwards try doing something you...

Alright then, okay, let's just be seated. We'll just finish up, tidy up now. Wonderful. Well, I wonder if we had some healings here? I'd like to just identify if anyone got healed through prayer? One, two, three, four - great, what happened to you? You can bend right down? Awesome, wonderful! [Applause.] Okay, someone else have a healing they'd like to just testify to? Yes, what happened? Right shoulder, it loosened up? Boy, she got up quick, didn't she, ahead of you aye? [Laughter] You could have said it was right shoulder as well. What happened to you? Your shoulder got healed, and freed up. Show us what you can do. [unclear] Yeah. [unclear] Yeah. [unclear] Yeah, great. Alright, okay, wow. [unclear] Wow, so praise the Lord, God's touched you today. Wonderful. Come on, let's give Him a clap. [Applause.] Amen. Alright then, praise the Lord.

Why don't we just pray? I'd love to just pray for people, just to get an impartation, just so you can go away fired up, so why don't you come up, just make rows here, we'll quickly pray for you. Front row stand here; second row, eyes open, catching. [Laughter] Okay, and where's - Pastor Lyn, would you like to come up and help us with praying for people? Joy, like to come up, and help with praying? If you can get away from there, you can come up and help pray. That'll leave Horowai with the cameras. Okay, just lift your hands up. You know what it is you've come for, you're wanting God to touch you. Just close your eyes, lift your hands up. Now, we won't pray for you if there's no one behind you to catch you, I don't want you to fall over. There's no one there, that's right. Okay, are we ready? Okay, let's begin to pray in tongues, just pray in the spirit now.

Thank You Lord for Your goodness, thank You for Your presence, thank You for Your power. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, thank You Lord, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Father, we just pray release, increase, of the flowing of the gifts of the spirit. We pray an impartation of faith, that from this day forward, each one would be empowered in a new way, to bring Your presence to others. Holy Spirit, come mightily, come powerfully in Jesus' name. Power of God, just touch her right now, in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. We'll just speak to these ears, we'll just command them right now, OPEN in Jesus' name, release her right now. Thank You Lord.

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5)  

Fri 6 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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The apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending, empowerment to impact lives for the kingdom of God. Jesus first sent 12, then 70, and finally all believers. We're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence, and god wants us to be used in this ministry - not only of sharing the gospel, but of healing the sick, and delivering people from evil spirits.

So I want to just honour you and appreciate you've come back continuing on the training. It'll be like what we've done before. There'll be teaching, then there'll be an opportunity to just practice ministering to one another. Now I don't want to scare you all out to cast out demons. I want to just [laughter] - the biggest thing in this area is to just be able to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit, so we'll outline for you some foundational teaching related to deliverance and healing, and then particularly focus on activations, on learning to flow with the Holy Spirit, because this is the key. So no matter what you learn, listening to the Holy Spirit, working with Him, is foundationally the most important part of this area of ministry.

So in the first session what I want to do is look at apostolic anointing and ministry. The other two seminars we didn't do the session on that. I just left you with the notes on it, but I do want to touch on the area of apostolic anointing and ministry. We're going to go through some brief, just some foundational concepts on this and I want you to just open your heart to let God shift you in your own thinking about ministry and your role in ministry.

So Father in heaven, we just honour You. We thank You You're with us tonight. We thank You it's in Your heart that we be equipped and prepared. We thank You for all that Jesus did for us on the cross, and we are convinced that we can honour You most if we take what was done on the cross for us individually, and we apply it to our lives, then learn how to minister to others and bring them into the freedom that Jesus earned for us. We just thank you for each one that's here tonight, the sacrifice, the commitment, the time that they've set aside for this training, and we ask Lord that You would come, Your anointing would be here, all the teaching would be very clear, and there would be a flow of Your presence to help us in this time that we're here. Lord, we give You all the honour and glory - and everyone said... [Amen.] Amen.

Okay, this first session we're going to look at the area of Apostolic Anointing and Ministry. The first thing I want to look at, is that God is raising up apostolic people. Now let me just describe what we mean by that. Let's have a look at a verse here in Mark, Chapter 3, Verses 14 and 15. It says - read it at Verse 13 - Jesus went up the mountain, and called to Him those He Himself wanted to come, and they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve. Notice what it says - He appointed, He positioned them, or set them in place, for a purpose, so from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He had a purpose in mind that involved multiplying His ministry, raising up other people. Sometimes we can get the idea that some of this work in ministry is just for a few selected people. This is not true, and I'll show you progressively how Jesus started with the 12, and then expanded His ministry to include you and me.

So it says in Mark 3, He appointed the twelve, one, that they would be with Him. The first and foundation for all ministry is learning how to be in the presence of Jesus, learning how to build intimacy with Him. All ministry flows out of your relationship with Him; secondly, that He might send them out to preach, so the word send is the word Apostallar. It's the word which is hard to translate into English, so they translate it: apostolic. It's almost like they've taken the word, oh it's too hard to do anything with, let's just Anglicise it, and make it apostolic, so when you here the word apostolic you may think of the church down the road as the Apostolic Church, or you may think of apostolic movement, or you look and you think, that must mean the 12 apostles. Often there's a lot of confusion around apostolic. Now the Bible is clear that God has set in the church a number of ministries, and it says: He has set - in 1 Corinthians 12, He's set first apostles, then prophets, then teachers, then working of miracles, and then a range of other gifts.

Every part of the body has a function, and one of the functions that each ministry has, they're anointed for what they're called to do, so when we look at say for example someone who's called to be an evangelist, they're called to connect with God's people, with unsaved people, and draw or bring them to Christ, and then raise up others with an evangelistic gifting. A person who's a teacher is called to teach and establish people, and they have an anointing, a way of thinking, a flow of God's presence to enable them to do that. It involves establishing people. Then the prophetic ministry is to do with connecting people into the realm of the spirit, so a prophet will bring revelation and insight into the spirit world, and will activate people to get closer to the Lord. So in a prophetic ministry, you become very aware of the spirit world, the spiritual realm, but also you become challenged to get your life nearer to God, and to deal with sin issues and so on. So a prophet will then bring people near to God, and address issues which have got spiritual dimensions around them, and raise up other people to flow that way.

An apostle catches what God has got in His heart for the church, so while say an evangelist or a Pastor will be concerned about people and their needs, an apostle will be concerned about what God wants the church to accomplish, so an apostle it says: is first in rank. Why is that? Not because they're more important, but because their thinking is addressing what God wants the church to be. Now everyone has got their own idea what they want the church to be; well I'd like it to be a place where I can come and be loved, and people can be nice to me. That's very nice. That's wonderful. That's pastoral thinking, and it's got a fair bit of self-centredness in it, but God's plan for the church, from the apostolic point of view, has to do with governance, of actually bringing things into kingdom order and alignment, the governance of God over our finances.

So the apostolic ministry is very concerned about the kingdom of God advancing in the world, and so when a church has got apostolic leadership, it will increasingly have spiritual power dimensions, and a movement of the church to engage community, and to advance the gospel into the world. So it says He appointed the twelve that He might send them out, so the apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending empowerment. In other words God doesn't want us just to sit around, He wants to send us into the community, so for you to have an apostolic anointing over you, is to have the empowerment to go into wherever you are in the community and start to impact it, and impact lives for the kingdom of God - that He might send them out to preach, and have power over sicknesses, and to heal sicknesses, and to cast out demons.

So you notice that the apostolic ministry has with it the gospel of the kingdom, and the power dimension. What we're wanting you to do, is to actually understand you yourself may never be an apostle, but you can be apostolic. You can embrace I have a mission from God. You know I love that movie the Blues Brothers, we're on a mission from God, and they're on a mission from God! [Laughs] It's a very funny movie. Well, you're on a mission from God. The question is whether you know your mission, and whether you embrace the assignment God gave you, and learn how to bring His spirit where you're going. So it says here, notice that word - in the original language an apostle, that name or Apostolos, was used in the Roman empire, so for example, when the Romans sent an ambassador out or a general out, to go out to a new territory and conquer it and bring it under Rome, that was apostolic. We would never think of the Roman army being apostolic, but that's what the use and understanding of the word was.

So in the day in which that word was used, an apostle, or someone who was apostolic, or was sent, was commissioned to go and advance the kingdom of Rome in a new territory, and establish it's government in that area. So the people who were listening to this, when it says send you out, it has in mind they would immediately think of the Roman general going out conquering new territory, establishing the kingdom of Rome, or the laws of Rome and the governance of Rome, so when the Bible talks about you being apostolic or sent, it has in mind this; that in your own life, and in the community where you are, you would see yourself as advancing the kingdom of God, and bringing lives into order. Now obviously, that requires confrontation of the demonic realm, so if a Roman army went out to conquer territory, there was always someone occupied it, and were willing to fight to stop them getting in there.

When they sent out an army, they sent an army because it required power to displace the other armies and to conquer the territory, and then to establish governance in it, and the Romans were remarkable at it. They governed the whole world at the time of Jesus, the whole known world, and had built roads so that they can actually quickly move their troops everywhere. So in the day that Jesus first came, or when He came into this world, the whole area had be apostolic-ally shifted by the Roman army and the Roman governments, so now you've got Roman governance right through from the Middle East right through up into England. So that's the environment within which this happened, and that's what the thinking is; when they hear the word apostolic, they're not thinking of some highly anointed minister. They're thinking of: conquering territory, gaining ground for the kingdom of God.

So if someone's got demons, Jesus said: if I cast out demons, the kingdom is advanced. If someone's got sickness, and you heal the sick, the kingdom has advanced. If someone doesn't know Jesus, and you share with them the gospe,l and they come to Christ, the kingdom is advancing. If someone's got their finances in bondage, and they need to be healed and restored and realigned to get their finances right, the kingdom is advancing - so we need to understand when we're thinking about apostolic anointing in ministry, we're thinking about advancing the kingdom, bringing people, not just to receive Jesus as a saviour, but to move their lives, so they're now living out of kingdom principles. So that's the bigger picture. We're going to get right down to the deliverance or the practical side of it as we go through the next couple of days.

So apostolic people are sent by God on a mission, a unique assignment. It's helpful for you to understand this, is that every believer has an assignment from God, and that assignment is your own life. It also includes the place you live, where you work, your neighbourhood. That's your territory. That's the place God calls You to go. Now I may never go there and win people to Christ or pray for them or get them healed, but you can. The thing is to believe you can, and know what to do. That's what this is about, is helping you to know what to do. So you notice here He took twelve disciples with Him. Now if we have a look in Luke, Chapter 10: and so after these things, after He'd sent out the twelve - Verse 1 - after these things the Lord appointed another 70 also, and He sent them two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to come. So the gospel never advances without someone going, and wherever you go, Jesus wants to come with you into that place, His presence touching lives by your life, and your ministry, and your witness for Him.

So you notice here He's expanded it from twelve being sent or commissioned. Now He's got 70 extra, so now He's got 82 people sent out there, and they have the same commission. They're also anointed, and we know they cast out demons, because they came back very excited about that in Verse 17. They returned with joy, saying: even demons are subject to us in Your name. So first you have the 12, then you have the 70, and then if we look at the end of the gospel of Mark it says, Verse 15, the commission to the church, the great commission, go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature - Verse 17 - these signs will follow all who believe - in My name they will cast out demons, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So you notice Jesus progressed. He started with 12, expanded it to 70, and then expanded it to everyone who believes, so you are commissioned to advance the gospel, and God wants you to understand how to work in deliverance and in healing, even if it's at a simple level.

There's so many people need help, and many of them just don't realise the problems are demonic. They don't want to talk about it, in case you think they're crazy, and we find over and over and over, people who are troubled with demonic spirits, demonic visitations, nightmares, dreams, troubling things in their life, but they don't want to talk about it, in case you laugh at them, or in case you think boy, you're nutty, you're crazy. The reality is, they just need to know this is normal, and to be listened to, and to receive help - and you can give them that help at a level you feel able to, and are led by the spirit to. So the first thing then we see is that apostles are sent out, we're all called to be apostolic.

The Holy Spirit also is apostolic. You notice the Holy Spirit is a sending spirit, so in Luke 24:49, Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you. Wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. So the Holy Spirit comes on you, to send you. Have a think about that. A lot of people think, the Holy Spirit's main purpose in coming in power in my life is so I can speak in tongues and have a happy life, but this is not true. In Acts 1:8 it's very clear; you shall receive power from on high, and shall be witnesses unto Me. In other words, the power of the Holy Ghost is to empower us to live a life, and to witness, so other people are able to experience God. So what you'll find of course is, whenever you seek to advance the kingdom of God, that there is always opposition, so we're going to have a look at just some of the opposition that was encountered in the New Testament.

When we start to talk about opposition, people get a bit wavery and they say ooh, ooh I didn't know about that, and I just want an easy life. I want to be blessed, and just don't bug me, and just leave me alone. Of course as we'll see a little bit later, that's the demon's prayer, leave us alone! You know, leave me alone. Don't bother me - and that is definitely the demon's prayer, apparently in the Bible. So I want us to have a look in a New Testament scripture. The first one we're going to have a look at, is in Luke, Chapter 10. Then we're going to look at where the apostles face some confrontation. Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 17 again, the 70 returned with joy saying: even the demons are subject to us in Your name. Now you notice they weren't heavy, they weren't serious, they weren't ooh, ooh demons, ooh. They weren't like that. They were WOW! God, what a wicked day, we see people set free! There's great joy. They came back joyful, they were laughing, they were celebrating, see? So joy is always associated with the work of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of God.

Now this is what Jesus said. He said: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing, nothing, nothing shall by any means, harm you. I give you authority. That word authority is the word to delegate the legal right to represent Jesus, and speak and act on His behalf. I give you authority - and that authority is to trample on serpents and scorpions. Those are pictures of the devil with his nasty bites and poison, and over all the dunamis, the power, the supernatural dimension of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you. If you've got a Bible underline nothing shall in any way harm you. You may get harassed, you may have some difficulties, you may have a few setbacks, but nothing shall harm you. There it is, Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 19.

Now let's have a look at the apostles, and what happened to them. There's several examples, I'll just pick up one, in Acts, Chapter 13. We're looking at the apostles, and having a look at some of the difficulties they faced, so apostles always face spiritual opposition of some kind. When we seek to advance the kingdom, there's always challenges. That's part of the deal, so - Verse 4 - they were sent out by the Holy Ghost. There's the word Apostolos. They were commissioned and sent forth by the Holy Spirit and they went to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. Then they went down to Salamis, and they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and had John as their assistant. That place there that they were, that's the place that they had visited in Salamis, there was the site of a temple to the god Estarta, which is a New Testament version of Jezebel. It's a controlling, witchcraft spirit, so it was the centre of a temple.

When they'd gone through the island of to Paphos, this is where the site of the temple was, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus. Of course Jesus was a popular name in those days - and he was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer, for that was his name, withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. So let's have an understanding. We have a Roman proconsul. That means he's the ruler over the island, and wherever you get governance of any kind, witchcraft spirits will always seek to attach to them, to try and control that person, so whether it's in the home or the family, whether it's in governance in the community, there'll always be people who have controlling spirits seek to get around that area, to try and gain control.

So the sorcerer was working alongside the Roman proconsul, and trying to influence him so he could get control over the whole island, and notice here it sought to turn him away from the faith, and Saul, who is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looked intently on him. He's full of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost's inspiring him, and he rebukes him, and the man immediately gets struck blind. So you notice now, this is a power confrontation. Paul is advancing the gospel, and the consequence of that are demons surface, and he has to confront them - and he was not afraid to do so. Whenever we seek to advance the kingdom, whether it's in our own life, or in the lives of others, there is always some forms of resistance. You have to understand that, and learn to recognise it, and learn to stand up and assert the authority God gave you. You have authority over all the power of the enemy, so whatever lies in front of you, in your mission for the Lord, you have authority, God gives you power to deal with it. It's your choice whether you believe that, or whether you're intimidated, it's too big and too hard.

Of course, when we face demonic opposition, or demonic spirits, or demonic resistance in advancing the kingdom, we find it usually comes in the form of accusations, of pressures and difficulties, or of overwhelming accusing spirits, that tell you you're not good enough, and who do you think you are anyway. So if you have those voices going through you're head it'd be lovely, we'd love to pray for you later - time to break your agreement with the voices from hell, and learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He says: you can do it, I'm with you, you've got what it takes, we're on a great journey together. God is a great encourager. The Holy Spirit is a great encouraging spirit, and when you are sent on a journey, remember, the one who sent you is with you always. So if God has sent you to do something, He said I'm with you, we're going to do this together. I didn't send you there to do it on your own. You can't do it without me, and I'm not going to do it without you, we're on a journey together, so don't be agitated or surprised or frightened if any difficulties come.

So what about Philippi? Well there also was opposition came at Philippi. Let's have a look at it in Acts, Chapter 16. So the point we're trying to make, is that if you seek to advance the kingdom of God, you will experience, at times, seasons of pressure. Now you think oh, well it's alright for you, you're the Pastor. Let me tell you - and if you go and ask Pastor Lyn afterwards, ask my wife Joy, have you faced struggles and difficulties with demons, and pressure from the spirit world, and the answer is: regularly! And does it affect you? Yes! But we always rise above it and win. It's just you've got to watch that you don't come under anything and allow it to dominate your life. Okay, let's move on a little further, so let's have a look what happened in Philippi.

Now they went out and they went to prayer, and a certain young woman who was possessed or controlled with the spirit of divination, a python spirit, met us, and she brought her masters much profit by fortune telling. The girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying: these men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. But she's got a demon, and this is false flattery. What she's saying is true, but the spirit motivating it was a demonic spirit, trying to gain attention, and gain the credit, for the work of ministry of Paul and Silas. So she did this many days and Paul, greatly annoyed or greatly irritated, or feeling under pressure from the spirit, finally turned around, spoke to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ: come out, and it came out that very hour. So here we have another example of the apostles encountering spiritual resistance as they seek to advance the kingdom.

If you're in the business world, you will face spiritual resistance. If you're in education you'll face spirit resistance. Wherever you seek to advance the kingdom, there will be spiritual resistance. It will come in the form of reactions of people to you, of frustrations, of misunderstandings, communication breakdowns. It will come in the form of accusations, false accusations. There are many ways it comes, and it all has this in common; it's designed to intimidate you, and get you to draw back, and be contained, or overcome. You just have to be able to stand up, and this is why in our last one, we talked about building a strong spirit man, so when pressure comes on you, you've got what it takes to stand up. You're drawing on the Holy Ghost.

So you notice Paul encountered the woman, the woman was hanging around. Now, you couldn't see the spirit, but he could feel the influence. It was making it very hard going. Do you ever notice some church services, how hard it can be? Ever ask the question I wonder why it's hard? This is the house of God, we come to worship God, God's here - why is it so hard? Because there is spiritual pressure and resistance, and you have to overcome it. Where does that come from? It comes because people come under demonic influence through the week, and they come to church, and they're still living under it, and they haven't broken out of it, so we have to stand up. You have to stand up, and believe what God says, and learn how to walk in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We'll share with you things a bit more about that. So this man, Paul confronted the demon, and overcame it.

Okay then, so the last thing we want to share on this, is that the apostolic anointing is a breakthrough anointing, so that's a wonderful thing to know, it's a breakthrough anointing. Let's have a look in Micah, Chapter 2, Verse 13. Here's what the verse reads. It says: the one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, they will pass through the gate, they'll go out by it, and their king will pass before them, with the Lord at their head. Wow, isn't that a fantastic scripture? That word breaker, the word that refers to breaker means literally, the one who bursts out, who breaks through limitations, breaks through obstacles, and the one who is the greatest breaker of all is Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter where He went, He always broke through, always got a freedom, always got release in people's lives.

He said: the one who breaks open will come before them, or the breaker will come before them, and then they will break out. So you notice Jesus Himself, there's nothing the devil sent against Him that He didn't overcome - overcame it all. Pressure, misunderstandings, confusion, opposition, resistance, betrayal, people lying, people trying to catch Him and accuse Him, all that. He overcame everything, and it says: if we align and follow Him, we also will overcome, we'll also break out, and we just need to learn how to do that. So it says: they will pass out through the gate, and go out by it. In other words we will carry authority and dominion in our life, provided our lives are under the headship of Jesus Christ. To be under His headship means, I intentionally align my life to be in agreement with God and His word, so in the whole area of deliverance you'll find, probably the foundational aspect of it is, we have to get people back into alignment with Jesus Christ and His word, and break their agreements with other things that have given legal rights to demons to enter them. Then they can break through, and we'll show you a little bit about what's required to do that.

So the breaker anointing, is an anointing that enables people to break out of spiritual resistance, spiritual limitations, and to get breakthroughs, not only our own life, but in the lives of others. Now of course the first place, if you're going to minister to anyone, is to get a breakthrough in your own life. How many could identify there's things in your life, you feel man, I need to break through? I need to get a breakthrough in that area of my life. It could be an area in the way you think, could be a reaction you have in life, it could be some habit you have in your life. There could be something that is containing you, or restricting you. How many can identify there's something I need to break through? How man? There's a whole heap of people here. That's fantastic.

Why don't we just now, why don't we just stand up and why don't we just lift our hands and our voice and pray in tongues, and let's begin to ask the Lord for a breakthrough, that a breakthrough will start this weekend, and we'll carry on. Shall we do that? Then we'll just take a little break together and come back for second session. Are we ready? Okay, let's just start to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah Lord, we lift our voice, we pray for breakthrough, break out, release from limitations, release from hidden bondages, hidden fears. Lord, we ask for Your spirit to move powerfully and mightily upon us over this weekend as we come to worship You and honour You. Come mighty spirit of the Lord, come and flow in us and through us, in Jesus' Mighty name. [Amen.] Amen, amen.

Why don't we do this on the count of three, just give a clap offering to thank the Lord in anticipation of that breakthrough? Amen. One, two, three [applause] thank You Lord, halleluiah. Wonderful Jesus.

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5)  

Fri 6 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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Examples of Jesus' ministry of deliverance, how He worked, how He operated, and then some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are and how they operate. How spirits get into people's lives and the ways they operate, leading into a closer examination of the scriptures around deliverance, and what they reveal about demons, and the spirit world. Some basics of the deliverance ministry, leading into a practice exercise (activation).

What we want to start to look at now is, we want to look at how demons enter people, how do spirits get into people's lives and if a spirit got into someone's life, what ways would it operate? What would it do? How would you know that a demon was in a person's life? We'll find there are a number of ways you can establish that there's an evil spirit present, so we want to look first of all at how evil spirits enter, and before we get into how they enter, it's a help to understand what they are. So if you're going to be doing deliverance, you will engaging or commanding an evil spirit to come out, it helps if you understand firstly what Jesus taught about it, and what happened in His ministry related to it, and secondly, how actually they gain entry into a person's life. Then we'll look at the foundations for a person being set free.

So the first thing we'll do is, we're just going to look at the way demons enter in and oppress people. The first verse we'll look at is in Acts, Chapter 10 and Verse 38. It tells us in this verse: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. So Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit. That's the same anointing you carry. He had a different level of it, a different portion of it, the anointing flowing on His life, but it's not a different anointing. It's the work of the Holy Spirit, flowing in your life - and it said: He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. Now the word oppressed means literally to exercise dominion or spiritual force and hold someone down, to exercise spiritual force and to hold a person down, so it tells us very clearly in this verse, that evil spirits, whatever they are, exercise a spiritual force on people, so that they feel held back, held down, held imprisoned, like I can't break out, even though I want to. I can't seem to change, even though I want to change.

But behind it is a spiritual force. That's why people struggle to get free of things. They want to get free, they know what's right and what they should do, but there's often anchored to the problem in their life, a spirit being which literally holds them down. In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 2 it says that spirit that works or energises within the children of disobedience, so when we our life is out of alignment with God, when we disobey or break His laws, and a spirit gains entrance, it'll do one of two things. It'll either hold you down so you're held imprisoned and can't break free, or/and it will energise problems in your life so they stay alive, and keep working, and you can't ever seem to get over them. Say for example a spirit of unforgiveness, or a spirit of bitterness, they often work together these spirits, then what the person would do, they would find that they're constantly feeling offended and hurt by things that people are doing to them. They can't ever seem to get out of thinking about the injuries that have been done to them by other people. It's like it just goes on and on and on. A new hurt comes, suddenly they're preoccupied, and they can't get out of their mind the injustice they've got and what's happened.

Now they may not be thinking that consciously but they get reactionary, so you'll find a person who's got a demonic spirit say working in that area, they get very reactionary over something quite small. The response, or reaction, is out of proportion to the injury that was done. A little misunderstanding and someone can flare up, and they didn't do the most obvious thing which was just, calm down, think about it, ask what's happened, enquire for information, try to establish and work out what's going on. It doesn't happen. It's just this fire suddenly comes alive inside, of anger or resentment or whatever, or reaction or a wall of offence comes, and it feels like there's little control or management. Even though the person knows I ought to, they just can't, and so the demonic spirit will either bring a cap and a pressure and a binding, or it'll energise problems, so they just flare up, and they're hard to manage, like a fire that's suddenly gone out of control. The word the Bible uses is the word energise, to energise or flame something in, so it becomes quite big.

So you notice that many people you know, have you noticed how little is much for them, and how it doesn't take much to get them really upset, a little wee thing? What are you - off they go. They've got an area of their life out of control, they're in bondage, and demonic spirits are energising a root problem. Now it's not just a matter of getting the demon out. You need to address the root problem that gives it a right to be there. We'll come to that later. So the second thing we notice is - we going to have a look at an example of Jesus doing deliverance, so it says: He was anointed with the Holy Ghost. That's a crucial thing. You cannot do deliverance without the Holy Ghost, and usually He doesn't do it without you, so you'll see a little later, it's a working together with the Holy Spirit.

So we'll have a look in Luke, Chapter 4, and we'll go down, read it there in Verse 32. They were astonished at His teaching, for His word was with authority. Now in the synagogue, there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. So the environment they're in, is in church. The guy's a believer, and he's sitting in church, and as he's sitting in church, Jesus gets up and begins to minister, and He's preaching, sharing the word of God. The spirit of God starts to fill the place, and as the spirit of God fills the place, there's a man in there, now he's come to church to worship, to give, and to listen to the word of God. Instead he's becoming agitated, and he's firing up inside, and suddenly he just bursts out in the middle of the meeting, and starts yelling out. What does he yell out? Leave us alone! Ever prayed that prayer? Leave me alone. [Laughs] It's a male prayer I think. [Laughter] Leave us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come here to destroy us? I know who You are - the Holy One of God!

Now let's just have a look at what the demon said, and see if we can gain a bit of insight. The man is now no longer in control. A spirit is speaking through him. The spirit has now got a hold of his voice, and it's now the spirit that's talking, so what happens to the guy? Here's what would happen to the guy. He would be aware that someone is talking through him, but he'd have no control over it whatsoever. The spirit being is now speaking, and expressing itself, and talking directly at Jesus, and reacting to Jesus very, very strongly. He would be aware of what is happening, but he has no power to deal with it. The hidden spirit that tormented him is now in a full manifestation - so that's what it means, the spirit is manifesting through him. It's expressing its life in a way which it can't be hid. Now one of the things about evil spirits is, they seek to conceal that there's a spirit there.

They want you to think you've just got a problem, so if we look at this man - the Bible says it was - notice another thing we notice, it was an unclean spirit, so it's almost certain that the man had problems of a sexual nature, meaning his mind was tormented with lust, or tormented with unclean pictures. There's an unclean spirit is operating in his life, so he would be pressured into sexual sin. He would find himself falling and failing regularly, he'd be troubled in his mind with pictures, he would be under pressure, or there's like a fire burning inside him, that he can't seem to get the power over. He's forever saying sorry, and asking God to forgive him, but can't break free into wholeness. Why? It's empowered by an evil spirit, and not only that, we notice here it says, the demon said: leave us alone, what have WE to do with you? So it's almost certain there's more than one spirit there.

So we gain insight, that not only can a demon come into a person's life and torment them, but it will try to bring others in, so they get a cluster of them, and that makes the problem worse. So for example, if this say was a sexual demon, how would it have come into his life? It could have come in a number of ways. It could have come in generationally. It maybe was in the family, it's a family spirit. I remember praying for one girl, age of four, tormented with unclean pictures. It was a demon that came in, because of the conduct of the father and the mother, which we established when we talked with them, so it could have come in and been in his life all his life. It could have come in if he'd been molested at some point in his life, and from that point on, there's got this defilement, and this burning lust thing going on in his life - never wanted it, but can't stop it because it's a spirit that's empowering it. The third thing it could have been, he may have been involved in idolatry, or some form of spiritism.

When people are involved in idolatry, much of the idolatry in those days was connected with temple prostitutes and sexual sin, because the part of our mind that's engaged when we love God or worship, or when are loving or expressing love, is the same part that's involved in the sexual area, so worship and the sexual area of your mind are very similar areas. They touch the same part of your brain, so we don't know then whether he was involved in idolatry and that's how the spirit entered into him. My experience has been, that when people have been involved in idolatry or spiritism, they usually have spirits of lust go with it - or he may have been involved in sexual sin, had a relationship or engaged a prostitute, or been involved in sexual sin of various kinds. We just don't know. The Bible leaves that part out, but those are some possible ways.

What we do know, is he had more than one spirit, and the main one was an unclean spirit. In the presence of a strong anointing, it began to flush up and manifest in a way which was visible. I was in Singapore a couple of years ago and we were just speaking in one of the meetings [laughs], and I just got up and started to talk; well the Holy Spirit's going to come and start to touch people. I'd talked less than five minutes and this cleaner lady suddenly appears up the top there and she's holding a broom, and she must have been just outside the room cleaning. She just burst in, held up this broom and began to shake it, and she's shaking it at me, and yelling at me: why you come here? Why you do this to me? And it's obviously a demon, so I began to walk down towards her, but as I did I saw other people start to manifest and I thought if I do that, we're going to have it all go off right now, and I want to preach the gospel and get some people saved, so I'm not going to let demons take over. I just re-managed the meeting a bit, and then we had all the full scale deliverance at the end of the meeting.

So you see here, the evil spirit cries out: leave us alone, what have we to do with You? We know who You are, so evil spirits recognise the person of Jesus. A lot of people don't know who Jesus is, but the spirit world does know. The spirit world sees things as they are. We see things as they appear to be, so people can appear to have their life together, but in the spirit world you're seen for who you are, and what you are. Everything is seen, so if we were to look at one another now, we'd just see the temple, the body, the external, but the real man is the hidden man of the heart, the spirit and the soul. Now we look, and the body looks as though it's got substance, the soul and spirit looks a bit, sort of way out there. I can't kind of see that or understand that, but from the spirit world if you looked, they would look at the spirit man and soul, and say that's the substance, the other is temporary. It's like a cloud of water vapour that conceals the person.

So in the spirit world, it's your spirit man and soul that are eternal, and therefore substantial. So the spirit world, demons, can look at people and see their condition. We'll come across that a little bit later. Now that's a bit scary isn't it? God can see your condition too. It's just we've lived so long thinking no one knows what's going on, that we can hide, and we do try and hide like Adam and Eve like hiding from God, rather than actually being and living a full life and an open life before Him. So the demon said: what have we got to do with You? We know who You are. Now see how Jesus handled it; Jesus rebuked him, or rebuked the spirit - Be quiet. Come out! So you notice how Jesus dealt with in the area of deliverance. He asserted His authority, He spoke a verbal command, and He had faith that the demon would come out. That's how it operates, just straight verbal commands, to deal with the demonic spirit - and the demon came out.

It says when the demon had thrown him on the ground, it came out of him, and didn't hurt him, so you notice that the demon manifested as it came out. It threw the guy on the ground, and I have see some extraordinary things of demons throwing people on the ground, or doing different things, and it looks spectacular, but at the end what really counts, is actually that the spirit came out. So the key thing is not that he manifested, not that he fell on the ground, it's that the spirit came out, and so the man got mightily delivered, and the demon - notice it didn't hurt him at all. It just looked like it was going to, but it couldn't. Jesus was in firm control. The demon didn't hurt Jesus. The demon didn't hurt the man. The demon just left the scene. I've spoken to one or two who have had spiritual visions or pictures of demons leaving. I said tell me what did it look like? Both of them said to me a similar thing. They said: they went so fast, we could hardly even see them. They said they're just like [whoosh] They just were out of that place as quick as they could. They just left the place, couldn't wait to get away.

Also, you can see that implied in the story; the demon is now reacting very strongly, leave us alone, what have You to do with us, I know who You are, the Holy One of God. And Jesus shut him down, because He didn't want a demon announcing that He's the Son of God. Stop, and then out, and the guy's set free - so that's an example of a person being set free, and they said, notice this, what kind of word is this! With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they go out of him. So you notice they ascribed to Jesus two things; He had authority, and He had power. Now let me just explain what the two are, so you understand the difference. The word authority, authority is a legal right to speak and act on behalf of someone else, so Jesus had a legal right to speak and act on behalf of His Father. That makes sense, because remember He says: whatever I see the Father doing, that's what I do; what I hear Him say, that's what I say. So you notice that He had authority. He had authority, a legal right. The demons had to yield.

Now you also have authority over demons. God has given you that authority. That's part of being joined to the conqueror of demons. It's part of being joined to Jesus Christ. Where is He? In heavenly places. Where are you? Joined, one spirit, with Him. You also have a right to represent Him, and of course the right to represent Him is also conditional on you listening to His instructions what to do, so if we're going to move in deliverance, you have to understand this; I am delegated the right to represent Jesus. So when you are doing deliverance, it's not about you. Sometimes in deliverance a demon might challenge you, and say: who are you? Who are you? You know... Don't tell him your name, you know? No, no, no, no. No, what the demon is doing is challenging your authority to actually confront him and push him out, and the response is always the same; I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I represent Him, who defeated you at Calvary. You will yield. You understand, we're representing the government of God.

Okay, the second thing He had, was power. Power is the word dunamis, it's a different word. It has to do with the level of anointing, or activity of the Holy Spirit on your life. So authority means I'm delegated the right to represent Jesus. Power means, I actually am connected to the Holy Spirit, and am empowered by Him to do the job, so that comes out of your personal life, and your walking with God and so on. Let's have a look then what Jesus taught about that. I love that story, it's a great story, and I've seen that, and I've heard demons talk. It's quite interesting how they talk at times. I've had one of my daughters was in Indonesia, and she was praying for this woman, and a man's voice spoke out of the woman: I will kill you. She got a bit of a surprise when that happened, just kept praying and the demon came out. She asked the lady later, do you know any English, and she didn't understand her at all. She knew NO English, but the demon understood the words. It doesn't matter what culture I go to, if I address the demon in my own language, it understands it.

Okay, now let's have a look what Jesus spoke on deliverance. In Matthew Chapter 12, He's just done a deliverance - Verse 22 - and He's cast a demon out of a man who had problems with his vision and his speaking. Then of course there's a huge reaction. Now notice what He says in Verse 28, and here's the first thing about Jesus' teaching that's important to grasp. Deliverance is the kingdom of God manifesting. It is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. It said, Verse 28: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. So let's go through that scripture and have a little look at it. The word cast out, means literally to violently displace something, so He said: if I violently displace evil spirits, by the Spirit of God, it is the kingdom of God manifesting. So whenever you do a deliverance, or command spirits and they leave, the kingdom of God has become established. You've represented Jesus, and now the devil is displaced.

Probably a way of picturing it is like this; if you wanted to become a policeman, police officer, you'd have to do training. Then you have an oath of allegiance to the government, that you will represent the government. Then they give you a uniform, and if you're in another country they give you a gun. Now the uniform, you represent the government. That's why you're driving down the road, and you're going a bit fast, and you see a police car or a policeman standing there, the immediate thing is you become conscious of your sin and failure, and conscious of the authority. Now it's not the authority of the man. It is the government that is actually confronting you, and you become immediately aware of it. In other words when you see the uniform, you become aware of authority, and aware of your condition straight away, so this is one of the things. So the policeman's just an ordinary person. He gets up and goes to work like everyone else goes to work. Now he's wearing the uniform, has the gun, now he's got the power to stop someone - stop, or I shoot you! So he has authority, a legal right, so long as - notice this - he has to stay within his jurisdiction.

If I'm a policeman here, it doesn't mean I'm recognised in Australia, or anywhere else. I'm a policeman here, I'm representative of the government, I've got to stay within the law, and I've got to operate out of my own instructions that have been given to me. So I have the law book, and I have direct instructions, and I have to heed both of them. You have the word of God, and the instruction of the Holy Spirit, and you've got to listen to both of them - and you have the power to carry it out. Now what did Jesus say? He said: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come among you. Now who does the casting out? A person must cast out the demon. Someone has to make the demon leave. It will not leave unless it's made to, so that word is to hurl it out, so in deliverance, a person has to represent God and confront the demon. You've actually got to hurl it out. That means you engage it.

You can't just pray some little prayer; oh God, just set this person free. It's not like that at all. It's like with word commands, you are violently displacing a spirit. It requires asserting your spirit. It requires being aggressive. It requires - you know, like it says, the kingdom of heaven, violent men enter and possess it, so it requires you be strong and forceful. You can't be passive in this matter. Now that doesn't mean loud or shouty or losing your voice. It's you must speak strongly, with conviction and authority from your voice. Okay, so I cast them out by the Spirit of God, so the work of deliverance requires the Holy Spirit to engage with me, so therefore I need to believe that something will happen when I pray. I need to believe God is in me, God is with me, that when I pray, something's going to happen. Now if you go and you think, well I wonder what will happen, then maybe something, maybe not, but most times nothing much happens. But if you go there, I know that when I speak, that spirit is going to go, when there's a confidence in your heart that faith gives, something will happen.

Demons, often in deliverance, will just deliberately resist you, to see if you'll persist and give up. They check out whether you really do believe you have the right to deal with them, and sometimes they just play up and just resist you, or just pretend there's nothing happening, and just make you - oh, maybe nothing going on, I knew I couldn't pray very well anyway, it's not my thing, you know? Your mind starts to fill with thoughts that would take you out of casting the demon out. So if I, by the Spirit of God, cast them out - so in order to cast out demons, you need the Spirit of God working with you. Now one of the exercises we're going to get you to do is we're going to get you to pray in tongues, and activate the flow of God inside you, then learn to minister and release the power of God to another person by voice command. Now you've all got excited about that. We'll do that, I'll show you how to do it shortly, and I'm going to get each of you to start to practice, believing, that if I speak, then something will happen. Isn't that a good thing?

If you have no confidence that God is in you, or God is with you, then nothing much will happen. If you are absolutely confident that God is in me, God is with me, I'm a minister of God, when I speak, something is going to happen; then you'll find things will start to happen. So how do I move from where I am, to that kind of place? Well you develop confidence, the more you are willing to step out, and learn to work with the Holy Spirit in this area. So what we will do shortly, I want to just do a little bit more of this, and then we'll have a break before we go onto gateways, I'm going to get you ministering to one another in just a moment. But before we do that, let's have a look a little further down, we'll finish in Verse 43 through to 45, and we'll look a little more on Jesus' teaching on demons.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man - Verse 43 - what happens? Where do they go? Well, he goes through a dry place seeking rest, but finds none. Then he says: I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and all in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Alright then, so notice now, Jesus is giving a tremendous insight in this passage to the spirit world. He's talking about what happens when someone gets delivered, what actually goes on. Now He says: when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, so He's talking about deliverance. The whole context is deliverance, so when you speak and command the spirit it goes out of the man, what happens and where does it go? It says here it goes through dry places seeking rest, so let's just talk a little bit about this.

Firstly, it's referring to the demon as a spirit being. It is a spirit being. You're a human being. You're a spirit living in a body, you're in one place at one time. A demon is a spirit being, so it can only be in one place at one time. It's either in the person, or it's gone from the person - it's a spirit being. Now just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not real, like for example, I can look and I can see the outline of a body, I can't see your spirit, I can't see your soul, but it doesn't mean they're not there. If they weren't there, you would be quite different. You'd be gone. There'd just be the shell see, so just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. It is there, and it's a spirit being. Now notice it says a number of things; spirit beings have a name, just like you've got a name. You have a name - if I say Brian, so you notice Brian just turned around straight away, the moment I called him by name, and then everyone else looked. Now in deliverance, if you name the spirit and challenge it by name, it'll immediately respond, and all the other demons will wake up and get concerned. I've had that many times. I start to challenge demons, other demons start to stir up, and very soon you can actually trigger off lots of things happening in the room - then it's a big problem then. [Laughter] You've just got a lot of things to do then.

So demons have a name. Now generally the name of a demon, really it describes the work it does, for example, a spirit of lust, what does it do? It stirs up passion, lust, unlawful hunger for something inside a person. A spirit of fear torments their mind with fear, causes them to believe evil is going to come upon them, fill them with dread and sick feelings in the stomach, so that's what a spirit of fear does. A spirit of bitterness will cause a person continually to resist forgiving, and to become sour and angry, and to speak critically and negatively. You notice the spirit of bitterness, the name describes the kind of work it does. A spirit of death, what would a spirit of death do? It will come around a person, and will cause them to become feeling separate, or unable to bond and connect in relationships, and quite numbed in the emotions, so when people have had trauma or abuse, generally they have a spirit of death around them, and they're numbed in their emotions. They can connect properly. There's that spirit keeps them isolated.

So we could think of lots of various kinds of spirits, so the Holy Ghost will guide you what the spirit is. In almost every situation He'll show you what it is, so it could be a spirit of idolatry, which is a spirit that bonds a person in, and connects them in, so they continually are drawn back to worship something, or to stay connected to something in place of God, so there are various - spirit of hatred. A spirit of hatred will eventually erupt with violent anger in a person, and so you find if you go visit the prisons, you find people in there who were involved in violent crime or in murder, and they say something like: I don't know what came over me. They don't know what came over them. I'll tell you what came over them, a spirit of hatred, and hatred's the root of murder, so a spirit of hate and murder came over the person, and what happened is, it caused rage and hate to become destructive against the other person.

So mostly you can just describe a demon, or the name of a demon describes what kind of work it does. In the case of occult spirits they do have names, and it requires revelation to get those names. God would have to tell you what it was. In almost all of these things, if we'll listen the spirit of God will help us identify what the particular spirit is, so spirits are real. They're a spirit being. They have a name and a nature. They're only one place at one time. They can enter and leave people, and notice there that demons have a personality. You notice the demon says: I will, it's got a will of its own. Notice it remembers where it came from, so it's got a memory, it can remember where it was, so demons have a personality. They have emotions. They can get fearful. They have desires and plans, so they actually have a personality, evil personality. So it says: when it goes out, it seeks to find rest; now when it says find rest, that does not mean the demon is wanting to have a lie down, it's exhausted. What it means is that the demon is wanting to find a place where it can live, and be in harmony with the environment, so a spirit of bitterness will want to enter a person who's got bitterness sins in their life. A spirit of hatred will want to enter into a person who's got hate in their life, and then dwell there and inflame it, so it becomes an out of control issue.

A spirit of anger will want to come in where a person's got unresolved sin or anger issues, or unresolved grief in their life, and inhabit that person, and stir it up so it becomes out of control. Getting the idea? So it says then: the demon's seeking rest, so where would a demon go? Well demons could inhabit a number of things. Spirits can go in and live in a building, so you could find perhaps in a house - one of the most obvious things is a temple. If you've ever been to a temple, there is a feel of oppression, because of the presence of multitudes of demonic spirits, or spiritual power, sitting over the building. I don't encourage you to go into those places, because sometimes the spirits transfer. It's just not a smart thing to do. Sometimes in a house, if there's been a trauma, like a murder - have you ever noticed the thing like maybe a multiple murder or something horrendous happened in a house, often they burn the house down? Someone gets there and burns it down. You ask yourself - why do they do that? Really simple, it just comes out of superstition and fear, there must be something bad or evil in the place. The only answer for it is to burn it.

Now people may not know what they're doing, but they're actually thinking demons need to be consigned to hell, but people don't understand. They just try and destroy it. What's really needed, is for the house to be cleansed of the demons, and to be sanctified and set apart for the Lord, and the presence of God to come back again. So demons can live inside a house or a building. If you've ever ministered to cleanse, or to do house cleaning, sometimes you'll find one room can be unusually cold. It doesn't matter what you do, you can't warm it up. I've been to some places where you go into one room and whoa, some weird or oppressive - so demons can enter a house. Demons can live inside objects, particularly things used with idolatry, carvings and things like that. Many times with carvings of idols, they lay hands and invoke the spirit into it, or dedicate it to the spirit that it represents, and that allows the demon to come in, so when the person's worshipping an idol, they're actually engaging the evil spirit that lives in the idol.

What that means is, if you pick up items that have been used for idolatry, or used in various places, and hands have been laid on to impart a spirit, and you bring it into your home, you've welcomed a demon to come into your home, and generally you have some consequences of that. Now one of the consequences is oppression enters the place, so you can have a heavy or a dark atmosphere come. I had one man ask me to come to his place and pray because he said - here's what he said; we have constant sickness, and constant conflicts in the home. This is a Christian, and I prayed before I went, and the Lord showed me that he had some carvings that came from Fiji. I said do you have these faces, face masks at all in your house on the wall, that come from Fiji? He said yes, we do. I said well hands have been laid on those, to impart a demon into them, and I said: when did this start? Did it start following your trip to Fiji? He said yeah - but he hadn't connected, just what he thought was a work of art, actually it was representing a demonic deity, and he'd opened the way for the spirit to come in, and create the turmoil in the home that he was now experiencing.

There's a chapter in the back of the notes on house cleansing, how to go about doing it. This would apply to objects specifically which are involved with the occult or idolatry. Most objects are quite neutral. Sometimes if you're uncertain, just pray and ask the Holy Ghost what to do. So this man, I said: why don't you get rid of those masks, why keep them? So he took them outside, and I said why don't you just take them out and burn them? So now they're wooden masks, so he took them outside, and I said: how did you get on? He said: I couldn't burn them. I said why is that? He said they would not burn. I said they're wood aren't they? He said yeah. He said I lit a fire and the fire went out, so I poured petrol on them and the fire still went out. They did not burn! I said really? I said that's a new one, I haven't heard of that one. I said why don't you stand and next time just pour some more petrol on them, light the fire, before you light the fire, bind the spirits, and forbid them operating in Jesus' name. He did it, and he said I'm glad I stepped back, because the thing nearly exploded, they just burnt, and there was nothing but ashes left, just burnt completely, so he'd encountered a real demonic power around these objects.

So when the demons seek rest, they look for a building, they look for an object, or preferably they look for a person. Demons want a person, to get into a person. Why are they so obsessed with getting into people? Very, very simple, because God made man for dominion in the earth, and what demons want to go, is they want to go in, number one, they want to hurt God's heart by injuring His children, and number two, they want to defy God, by expressing their own life, through His representative on the earth. That's why they do it, so they can't hurt God in any way. God's in control totally. The devil has very limited spheres of power. God is totally in control. It's not a touch and go battle whether God wins or not, not at all. God is totally in control, and the demons have a specific realm they can operate in, outside the laws of God. However, we can find we have our challenges in dealing with them - so there it is.

Let's read on a little bit further. It says he goes and finds... and then he says: I'll return to my house from which he came out. So notice the person - this is a bit disturbing - that after a demon's gone out, it can come back and find you. That's a bit disturbing isn't it? So the demon's cast out, it can relocate to you. In other words you can't hide. The demon comes back, and notice this, the demon calls you - it says: you're my house. Now that's a legal term. If I say: this is MY house, I'm claiming ownership, I'm claiming a legal right. So if you were to say, concerning a building: this is my house, you're saying that because it's your house, you know? If it's a flat, well this is a rental place, it's not my house. I live here, but it's a rental place, I don't own it. So demons look for legal rights, for a legal ground to occupy a person's life. What do we mean by that? Well for example, outside here we've got I think a 50 kilometre/hour zone, and so there's a sign up there somewhere saying 50 kilometres per hour. That is a legal requirement, that if you're going to drive down the road outside this building, 50 kilometres per hour, so that's a law. It's written in red, got the number, it's all legally gazetted. It is the law, outside there, 50kph.

So if you break the law, if you go in excess of the law, you go 70k, now you may not see the sign. You may just be out there, and you've come from the country, you're zooming along, and you didn't even see the sign that says the speed has changed. Now you zoom down there, and you're doing 70 not 50, and the policeman sees you, he can then pull you over and say: you broke the law. You say: I didn't know. He says: there was a sign, you were responsible to know, so not knowing is never counted as an excuse. You broke the law, you pay the fine. You notice now there is a consequence for the broken law. In other words, he has the legal right to impose a fine, because you broke the law. Now there are also spiritual laws, the laws of God. People break the laws - whether they knew or not, it still creates a legal ground for evil spirits to enter people's life. That's what the cross was about. The cross was about removing the legal rights.

Notice this scripture, you may remember it but not really thought too much about it, because often you read scriptures, don't really understand what it means. In Colossians 2:14 it says that Jesus took away the list of ordinances, the writing that was contrary to us, and against us, took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross, and disarmed spiritual powers, principalities and powers, and triumphed over them. What is that scripture all about? Very simple. The list of every possible transgression, broken law that you and I have committed, Jesus took it all in Himself on the cross, and by taking it to the cross He broke the legal rights of the demons to gain access to our life. He disarmed them. He took away their weapon. The weapon demons use is sin, so when sin happens, they have a right of access, so a demon will tempt a person to sin. Once they've sinned the legal ground, or the broken law, is now established. They have the right to enter. Getting the idea?

So if we're going to set people free, we have to understand what the cross has done, and bring sin issues to the light, and to the cross. There's no deliverance without dealing with sin. We have to be willing to address sin issues. If we don't address sin issues, the way the Bible tells us to, confess them to Him, if we confess our transgression, we confess to Him our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So what Jesus has done, by the power of our confession, He can wipe away the legal rights the demon has, and also make us clean on the inside - but I've got to do my part, bring my sin to the light. Now many people just want to get free of demons, but they don't want to address the root cause the demons are in there. Generally the root cause is legal rights, or issues of trauma and brokenness in the person's life. Got the idea?

So notice the demon will say: my house. Now to just illustrate this, I have had many deliverances where the demon suddenly erupted and began to argue and said something like this: she belongs to me, he belongs to me. I will not leave. In other words, the demon claimed legal ownership, so we'll see when it comes to preparing people for deliverance, it is quite important to get them to confess that they belong to Jesus Christ, their faith in Christ, that Jesus, I belong to Jesus, spirit, soul and body. Why? It's a profession of faith. Why? Because we want to counteract what the demon's about to say: no, I won't go, they belong to me. So we get the person into a confession, or profession of their faith, to remove the legal grounds that the demon has, so when they profess their faith in Christ, they're in the kingdom of God, they belong to Jesus. When they repent of their sin, the legal rights for the demon to enter are now dismissed. Now we are able to command the demon, it cannot stay, it must go. Getting the idea?

So the work of Jesus on the cross is extraordinary. There's so much you can continue to learn about what our loving saviour has done for us. Okay then, let's keep going then. So demons, what else can they do? They can come back, they find the person, and find it's empty, swept and put in order, so notice that demons can recognise your condition, so if you've just tidied up your place, and you're empty - that word empty means on holiday, not active and not business, not going and you're just looking good, but you've never established your life with God, the demons can come back and enter again. So it's important that people are discipled, not just delivered. We have to help them establish their life with God again, so he goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself. So obviously there are levels of wickedness among evil demons, and some are more wicked than others, and create more harm than others. It's also obvious from this, that demons talk to one another, and strategise how to work together to get into a person's life.

So we see that we need, not just to cast the demons out, but to help the person rebuild their life with God, so now there's no doorway, no gateway. There's a resistance, and the person is now on the alert. Amen. That's fantastic isn't it aye? Alright then, why don't we just stop now, and I'm going to - the next session we're going to look on spiritual gateways, how demons enter people's lives. We're going to go into that shortly, and then we'll look finally at what demons do when they get inside people. But what I want to do, is to just give you a bit of a break, and we're going to get you to do something, so we'll just have a break and we'll have the next 10 minutes we're going to do some exercise. It's going to be fantastic. You'll all have a chance to do something. That be good? Okay then, so what will we do? Now don't get nervous. It's just going to be a lot of fun. It's always a lot of fun.

Okay, here's what we're going to do. How many are filled with the Holy Ghost, can speak in tongues? Okay, alright, great, so we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we can speak in tongues and build our spirit man, so in a moment we're going to get up, and begin to start to pray, and exercise the gift. When you speak in tongues, your spirit is speaking, the Holy Ghost is arising in you, giving you the language, you're building your spirit man. Let's just do that for a little bit, and just energise ourselves and come alive. I encourage you, when you're praying in tongues like that, begin to move your body, allow your whole body to yield and get excited, God is in me! God is in me!

A lot of people think God's so far away, isn't he? He's just right inside me, but you don't always believe that. Your mind often thinks that God seems like He's a long way off from me, so begin as you pray in tongues strongly, and move your body and physically shift your body, begin to think as you're praying God is in me, God is filling me! Let your mind and heart grasp, God is filling me. Amen. Let's just do that together first of all, and see what you experience as you do that strong praying, strong building up your spirit man. Are we ready? So make yourself a little bit of room where you can do that, there we go, are we ready? We're going to all pray in tongues, going to bless God. Amen, so here's the first thing we'll do. On the count of three, we're all going to give the loudest clap, and the biggest shout we can give, then we'll pray in tongues. Ready? One, two, three. [Applause, shouts of praise] Halleluiah Lord, we love You Lord! Wonderful Jesus! We love You Lord! Halleluiah! That's good, alright, now let's begin to just pray in tongues. We'll go about 30 seconds. Are we ready? One, two, three. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord, Holy Ghost, how we love You.

Right, how many of you felt the energy just start to come up, just speaking in tongues like that, start to lift you up? Alright, how many you consciously were thinking God is in me, how many were doing that, just starting to think God in me? How many of you sort of felt you became aware of the spirit of God filling you? How many kind of had that awareness? We don't necessarily feel a lot, but usually what happens is your mind clears and your energy rises, you just are more alive on the inside. Amen.

Okay, now I want to just demonstrate for you what I want you to do, and why I want you to do this, okay? Now what I'm wanting you to do, is I'm wanting to lead you to a point - you can just sit down, that'll be easier for you to see then. I want to lead you to a point where, you start to have confidence that if I speak, God is with me. Remember, if I cast out demons BY the spirit of God - notice it's BY the spirit of God. I need the Holy Spirit to move. If He doesn't move, nothing's going to happen, but I've got to do something, so I work, believing that as I minister, the spirit of God will work with me. Now the problem of course is, that the moment your mind starts, I wonder if God is with me? Then immediately you've got a gap between you and the Holy Ghost. See, He loves us to just love Him, and honour Him, and thank Him that He's with us, He loves us to delight in Him. It doesn't take much to grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's like a dove. He rests where there's peace. The moment there's turmoil, His presence lifts, so you know that's why it tells us in Colossians 3: let the peace of God be the ruler of your heart, because the moment you lose peace, and get in agitation or fear or anxiety, the spirit lifts, until you come and set your mind right again, then He comes back and rests again. It feels like that. Does that make sense?

He's a dove. Doves get frightened off easily. They get frightened away, so doves lift off, and it's very easy for us to grieve the Holy Spirit with a heart attitude that's wrong, with holding things in our life that aren't right, but it's easy to welcome Him if I just begin to just talk how much I love You Holy Spirit, I thank You, I'm just dependent on You. Now Lord work with me as I begin to minister - and as I begin to become conscious of Him, see the spirit of God is living in you all the time, but often we forget that, and we say and do things. We just forget He's there, and we dishonour Him, and He's grieved and He draws back, and there's no power around our life. So what I want to do is, I'm just going to show you an exercise, a very simple exercise to do, and the purpose of the exercise - it's not to see whether you can do it, or whether you can't do it. The purpose of the exercise is to get you to start to expect that if I begin to speak, God will work through me, and touch people. That's the purpose of it, okay? That actually God will work though me, alright?

So you're here nearest Brian. We'll start with you, then I'll pick two or three others and go around the room and just pick some different people, so Brian, like to come up? Can I practice on you? I need someone to stand behind him, someone stand behind him just to catch him. Okay then, we'll just move this back here so - alright then. So Brian, I want you just to close your eyes and look up to the Lord, expecting for God to touch you. So notice I've directed his attention towards the Lord, not to me, because it's the Lord who must minister, not me - but I've got a vital part. So now what I'll do, is just take his hand. Now I'll speak out loud what's going on. Now what I could do is begin to pray in tongues. Now just praying in tongues itself isn't all the picture. Praying in tongues stirs your spirit, [prays in tongues] but what I'll do with my mind and heart, is just begin to reach out; Holy Spirit, You're with me. You are with me, and so I'm just expecting Lord, for You to flow through me and to touch Brian right now. So as I release POWER, I expect the Holy Ghost to touch him.

Now - that's good, he's had a whole touch of God on him, that's great. We'll get someone else up too. We'll get a few more people, and we'll just do the same thing. Like to come up? Can I pray with you dear? Okay, just come on over. We just need someone to be there to catch her. Come on up on the top there, alright then. Can I practice on you? [Yeah.] Great, just close your eyes, and just reach up to the Lord, expecting God to do something good in your life. Now I'm not trying to do any deliverance. This is not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise is to become aware of the Holy Spirit, become of God in you, so pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] As you're praying in tongues, your spirit is becoming alive with the Holy Spirit. Now I need to centre my attention and focus - what do I focus on? I just think well, Holy Spirit, You're there. I so need You Lord. Just come and touch her. I know she wants the touch of God. Holy Spirit, as I speak now, just flow through me and touch her. POWER - now, you feel the power of God just touch her. Yeah, could you feel it while I was talking? Could you feel Him starting to come on you, and touch you? Yeah, I could feel that too, sense Him coming.

Now the point of this is to help you become confident - you are a minister of God, God is with you. Now I've just done it in a very slow and very low key way, so you can see it's nothing about striving or struggling. It's all about a relationship with a person who loves you, He's committed to you, He lives inside you, and there it is - so just close your eyes and look up again. Let me take your hand. Taking a person's hand's quite an easy thing to do. Holy Ghost, come. Holy Ghost, come. Now I'm going to speak the word power - POWER! - and she gets touched by the power of God. Alright then, great, we're all getting ready. I'll do one more, and you can feel the atmosphere already starting to change, because the spirit of God is here.

Josie, can I just pray with you? Okay then, now I'll just do it again. I'll explain what we're going to do, okay, we right? Need someone to catch - okay, you right? Can I practice on you? [Yes.] Great stuff. Okay, close your eyes. Look up to the Lord in your heart. So remember again, we're going to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now already, I can feel the spirit of God just coming on her right now, just straight away, presence of God. Now you notice, it's like God was wanting to do it, and got ahead of me. I'm sort of trying to get through my thing [laughter] and He's just already going ahead of me. [vroom] Holy Ghost! [Laughs] Just stay there and enjoy the presence of God, see?

Now can you see that God is more willing to use us than we realise? He just needs someone to co-operate with Him, so a lot of this, it's not about trying to make God do something. It's actually about you just resting in your heart, that I am a minister of the spirit, God is with me, and that He will work through me. The key issue is one of just believing that God can work through me. Can I pray for you too? Come on - I can see you looking, wanting something to happen. [Laughter] Why not? Exactly, that's the spirit, why not me? Amen. Alright then. Now you notice that there's an anointing flows from within, but there's also the spirit of God will come on people as well, and so I always yield to Him moving, coming on people, but I can always stir what's within me - there it is, He's already starting to happen... [Yes.] ...right now, so you could feel it straight away couldn't you? See, so I'll just again pray. [Prays in tongues]

Now what I'm wanting you to do is to get used to doing this, stirring up your spirit through praying in tongues, expecting God to do something, and being willing to just speak. POWER! Release the power of God into the person's life. Believe that as you say - thank you Brian, well done, catching all the ladies tonight. It's a grand thing to do. [Laughs] So I'm wanting you to get used to, that as you will just arise in your spirit, and speak, that God will work through your words, to touch the other person. Amen. Okay then, so we're going to get you all into threes, one catches, one receives, one prays and ministers. Follow the same process, because it'll just make it easier. Ask the person, can I practice on you? Why? Because it is just a practice, to just do what we can. Secondly, ask them to close their eyes, and lift their heart, or look up to the Lord, not to you so the pressure's not on you to perform - unless it's inside you to perform.

Then you close your eyes and take their hand, and just begin to ponder and meditate that God is in me, and begin to pray in tongues. Allow your heart to become conscious of God, then POWER! Okay? [mumble mumble] Come on, you can do it! [Laughter] Let's do it! Let's do it!

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5)  

Sat 7 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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Demons need a 'legal doorway' to enter a persons life. In this session, a check-list of 9 common doorways are explained; and what kinds of things would happen inside a person, as a result of demonic bondage.

I want to welcome you this morning again, we're looking at the ministry of deliverance, and there are many approaches that people have to this whole area of deliverance, so this is one approach. There are other ways that people approach it, and other ways they look at it and resolve some of the issues, but what we want to do is to give you understanding of the ministry of Jesus and deliverance, and we want to give you understanding of what demons are, how they operate and how they access people's lives, and some of the foundational keys to getting people free, and ministering to people. We also want to give you an opportunity to just practice praying for, and ministering to one another, and I expect that God will do some great things today.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus' ministry. We looked first of all at the apostolic ministry, that we're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence and God wants us to be used in this ministry, not only of sharing the gospel but of healing the sick and delivering people from evil spirits. We looked at Jesus' ministry of deliverance. We saw an example of His ministry, we saw how He worked and how He operated, and then we looked at some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are, and how they operate.

So today, we're looking now in your notes on Page 4, Section 2.4, we're looking at how demons enter people, and when they get into people, what kinds of things would happen inside the person as a result of that. There are a number of ways of approaching this particular aspect, and I've used a way which has been quite helpful for people to get an overview, and so you know what to look for, you know the places to look. Then there are a number of ways that we can approach the actual ministry.

So first thing we need to realise is that demons cannot access a person's life unless they have a ground or a reason to be able to do so. We saw that demons will occupy buildings, they'll occupy objects, they can occupy animals, and they definitely seek to occupy people, but they need in a way in. They can't automatically just get access into you, so they need a way in, and if we read in Ephesians 4, Verse 18, Paul is writing. He's writing to believers, and he's talking about being angry but don't sin, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Then in Verse 27: give no place to the devil. Give no place to the devil. He's writing to believers, and he's telling them do not give a place to the devil. The word place is a - many times these words if you don't understand the original, they lose their meaning in translation, so the original word, it's the word topos. It means something like this; it means a foothold, don't let the devil get a foothold. A foothold is where you put your foot in the door, and you stop the door shutting, so you can get your way in.

Another translation of that word is a beachhead. In the Second World War, the allies sought to establish a beachhead, that's a small area that they occupy, from which they can launch a greater assault, a beachhead. But one of the most important meanings of the word means, a legal right, a legal right, a lawful right to do something, a legal right. We talked a little bit about that last night, how legal rights are very, very crucial in the operation of demonic spirits getting into people's lives. If they can find a place where the law of God is broken, they have a room to operate against people, and so when we bring our life under the kingdom of God, under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and begin to flow in His principles, then legal grounds and rights are diminished. But when we violate the laws of God, we come outside the kingdom of God, then the grounds have been established for demonic spirits to enter.

So they can enter when you break the laws of God. Now you say well, what if I didn't know? Well ignorance does not matter. You know, the fact you didn't know doesn't mean the demon can't use it. They will use every ground possible, and the nature of the demonic kingdom is one of darkness and deception, so you may be sitting here today, and already there are areas of your life which are in bondage to evil spirits, and you're not even aware of it; accept that's just me, I've got this struggle I have, and it's just me, I've always been like that. So we can have areas of bondage and we're not even aware of it, and we're going to just identify some of the doorways now that evil spirits use.

In Nehemiah 9, Verse 37, Nehemiah is praying, and what he does is he says: You have set kings over us, because of our sins. So from a spiritual perspective he's saying that we are under bondage because of sin, and so let's have a look then, at some of these doorways or gateways that demons use. Let me do one more verse before we go to look and identify the gateways, and it's found - it's not in your notes - in 2 Timothy, Chapter 2, so if you've got a Bible you could look at it. It's talking about ministering to people, and it says in Verse 24: the servant of the Lord must not quarrel or argue or strive, but must be gentle to all men, able to teach and patient. So it's saying if you're going to minister to people, then don't argue with people, it's not going to work, get any results - but be gentle, able to teach and patient, in humility instructing those who oppose themselves, and perhaps God will give them repentance, that they may acknowledge the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, who have been taken captive by him to do his will.

So in those three verses there it says there are some people, and the devil takes them captive. Any time he wants to he can manipulate their life so that they end up doing what he wants, rather than doing what God wants. They are taken captive. That word captive means a prisoner, taken in a battle, so it says the devil takes people captive. He captures people, holds them in prison, and then manipulates them so they do things they don't necessarily want to do, or they do things which are destructive. It says that he captures them by getting them in a snare, and that word snare is like a trap, like a baited trap, like a bird trap. You have the bait, and the person goes in, takes the bait, and then they're in the trap, and then they're manipulated because they're now imprisoned. So it says that if we are to get people free, we as the servants of God, need to not quarrel with people or argue, but just have a gentle, humble attitude. It says we need to instruct people on some of the foundation reasons why they've got their life into bondage, and it says perhaps God will give them repentance to acknowledge the truth, then they come to their senses, and get out of this area of the devil.

So there's a part we play. We must instruct people, work with people, and help people see why they're in trouble. Secondly, they have to make a response. They need to actually acknowledge where they have opened their life to the demonic powers, and come to a place of repentance and acknowledging the truth. Then they come to their senses, or they stop being drunk and under the influence of a spirit, and we can set them free from the demonic bondages. So there's a process of instructing the person, helping them understand how their life got into bondage, working with the Holy Ghost to identify some of the areas of bondage and the roots of it. Then they must come to a place of co-operation, so sometimes you'll have people come and they want help and want ministry, but they want it their way. They want you to pray and fix them up. You can't fix anyone up. What you can do is work with the Holy Spirit to get them realigned with Jesus, and then you can minister on His behalf, and freedom comes.

So the process of deliverance is not all about casting out demons. That's actually the easy part. The bigger part is actually discovering how they got established in the person's life, and bringing the person to place of co-operation with the Holy Spirit, so that you can then minister and get them free. So it really helps to understand it, because many people will come, and they just want to be free, or to feel better, or to get over the problem, whereas our role is to help them realign with God, and take responsibility for their life. So if someone's blaming the demons for their problem, help them understand the demon is not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something. The demon's not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something else that happened; deal with the root issue, and the demons are quite easy to deal with. That make sense? It's quite important you get that, because otherwise you'll be looking to blame demons for all the problems that people have, and of course demons do create huge problems. We'll identify what some of them are shortly.

A demon can be at the root of the problem, and creating all kinds of issues in a person's life, but underneath that, there's some legal ground, some foothold it has. Remove the foothold, and the demon's got nothing to hold onto to let go, so you can imagine a person coming to you, and what you can't see, but there's all these handles on them, and demons have got a hold of the handles. Unless you get the handles broken and off their life, then the demons will just keep coming back and latch onto the person again. That's perhaps a way of looking at it. Okay, so what are some of the doorways or gateways that evil spirits enter? Remember, we are called to be a gateway for the spirit of God to flow through. Demons want to come in, and they come in because they've got a ground. Now here's the first one. I'm going to give you a list of a number of them, they're not necessarily in order of importance, but they're common ones that I have come across in working with people.

Number one, generational inequity, the sins of family members of previous generations. In the Bible, as in practically - let's look at it first of all from a practical level. When you go to the doctor they will ask your family medical history. They know there's connection in your medical history and your family background. You go to the insurance company, they'll also ask your medical history, because they know there's a connection between medical history, and the current problems, or the problems you may have in the future. So from a spiritual perspective, the generations are connected by genetics. We're also connected spiritually. God sees generations as being a continual line, interconnected with one another, so God's plan is that if you walk with God, that all the generations after you will be blessed, they're all connected. But if you walk against God, then you open a gateway for evil spirits to come in, and everyone connected after you, is subject to what you have done. They come under. They're not responsible for what you did, but they are subject to the consequences of what you've done, so if a person is involved for example - well let's just have a look at it, in Exodus, Chapter 20. You'll see it very clearly laid out.

Exodus, Chapter 20 - there are many other verses like this; You shall have no other Gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or the likeness of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath, that's in the water or in the earth; you'll not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord you God am a jealous God, and I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but show mercy to thousands who love Me and keep My commandments. Notice it says: visiting the iniquity. The iniquity is the root of sin, it's the tendency to go crooked. It's the twistedness in a person's life, so when idolatry gets into a family, or spiritism, or sexual perversions, or things like that, a legal right is established for spirits to come in, and the consequences go generationally, from one generation to another. So the sins of your parents and grandparents will create a legal ground for evil spirits to come into your own life. When did the spirits transfer? Well they may transfer while the child is in the womb, they may transfer at birth, they may transfer sometime during their early stage of their life, or they may not even manifest until teenage years, or a little later - but they will always show up. They always show up.

Once a legal ground is established, they then start to occupy generation after generation, so we are not at all responsible for what our parents did. We're responsible for our own actions, but it may well be that already, without us doing anything, we are subject to demonic oppression and pressure. Remember we said demons hold people down, and energise sin? You could be born into this world already having demonic spirits, that make you subject - that you become subject to the pressure they bring. I've had a whole heap of them. I had one couple I prayed for, their child would wake up very early in the morning - the child was two - and would become very destructive. We couldn't work out why, and they couldn't do anything. If they didn't wake up early, the child would destroy things in the house, so we checked their background, and he had a background of anger and violence and drugs, and she had a background of the occult. We prayed over the child, stood with the parents and prayed over the child. The child just sighed, spirits left, and then there was no behaviour problem. It just changed as dramatically as that, because the origins were demonic.

I had another lady I prayed for, and she said I'm a Christian, I've been a Christian almost all of my life. I've served the Lord faithfully, but I am tormented with unclean images in my mind. They just are there all the time. I come to worship, they're there. I don't understand why I have such a problem, so I asked the obvious; have you been involved in sexual sin? No, I haven't, I've kept my life. Right, I asked the next obvious one; did anyone ever sexually abuse you? No, I've never been sexually abused. Oh, okay, I'll ask another one. Have you ever had any bad sexual experience of any kind? No, I have not, I've kept myself in God - so that left it back, it could only have a generational origin. Can you tell me about your family background? When she told me about the family background I was quite amazed, because what happened was this. Her grandparents were missionaries in China, and they had two children, a boy and a girl, and they had put the boy and the girl in a boarding school, and the missionaries were in another area.

The Japanese invaded China - this was in the '30s. They invaded China, and they took over the province that the boarding school was in. They took the young boy and the girl, and they sexually abused the girl - this is another generation back see? Okay, so then eventually the children were rescued, the place was set free, the children restored to their parents, but damage had been done, and through the sexual abuse, a demonic spirit had been imparted. So the young girl grew up and eventually married, but the marriage didn't last. Because of the trauma she'd gone through she was unable to stay intimate in any relationship; the marriage broke up, but she had this daughter, and this was the daughter that we were speaking with and talking with. So we realised then, that even though she had done nothing herself, the consequence of an abuse two generations ago had opened the doorway for the demonic spirit to come in, and she was now all her life under this demonic pressure in her mind and emotions, that brought torment and guilt to her, because as a Christian she wants to please the Lord.

She can't understand why she's got this stuff in her head, and we prayed for her, and I got her to acknowledge this generational iniquity, to forgive the Japanese soldiers who'd abused the grandmother, and the moment we did that, the demonic spirits manifested, and she was completely set free. So it's a very, very powerful story of this generational issue. Now, there are a whole number of areas from the generational background. One of the common ones in the west is freemasonry. Freemasonry will always open the door for demonic spirits. They're spirits of infirmity, they usually produce coldness in the emotions of men, lack of love and intimacy in the relationship, in the family, and they produce all kinds of spiritual blocks for people coming into the things of the spirit and going on with God - so generational iniquity and the curses that this brings.

The Bible's very clear, in the days of Nehemiah, he confessed not only his own sins, but the sins of the parents which had brought them into this place of bondage. So generational iniquity can open the doorway for spirits, particularly around the area of the occult, so you find sometimes children struggle from when they're very young with occult experiences. There is a generational factor involved there. The parents or grandparents or someone in the family line has made an agreement, they've worshipped an idol, or made offerings to an idol and come into agreement with it, or perhaps they have opened their life to divination, fortune-telling and spiritism, or perhaps they've engaged in some form of occult practice, or some sexual perversion. They've broken laws of God, and it's opened a door through which the demons now have legal access, so it's like leaving the door open, and there's wild wolves outside. They just keep coming in while the door stays open. The door has to be shut.

So when you're checking out, or working with someone, one of the questions I always ask, is when did this problem first begin? Many times you'll find, well it's been there all my life, it's been there since I was very, very young. So you have good indication then, that the likely cause or origin, is a generational iniquity or sin of some kind. When people pray, often God will uncover things in the family, and you become aware of issues that no one had talked about. In our generation no one talked about anything, but the stuff went on, and so it was all secret. The Holy Ghost was able to bring it out by word of knowledge and by revelation. That's why you can't do deliverance ministry without the Holy Ghost. He's the only one who can help unlock the generational iniquities and the bondages, and He'll do that by a picture, a vision or something will come to the person. He'll just bring it to mind what is the problem, when we ask Him to help. So for generational iniquity it is important that they be acknowledged, and repented of, and confessed, and the curses renounced, so the person can be set free.

The second thing there is patterns of sin or habits of sin. Sin always opens the doorways for spirits, so sin - what we do, not what someone else did, they are what we do - and so a range of areas to look for, that open doorways for spirits, are: hatred; a spirit of hatred. In 1 John 2:11, the person who hates his brother is a murderer. Unforgiveness; Matthew 18:35, Jesus said if you harbour unforgiveness in your heart you will be delivered to the tormenters, so unforgiveness is a crucial one. You would be amazed how many people do not feel hate for someone, and do not feel unforgiveness, but it's there, sitting in their life, and the Holy Spirit can bring it to the surface. Unforgiveness is a huge issue, it's a demand that someone pays me back. It's a demand for justice, and we need to let that go, and release it to the cross, and forgive and release others, as we have been forgiven.

Bitterness is another major root of sin, where people harbour resentment, and anger, and hostility against someone. It eventually becomes a deep root of bitterness. Hebrews 12:15, a root of bitterness will defile. Bitterness is a big problem that opens the door for demons. Anger is another one. Now remember, behind all of these sins there's usually events, there's something that's happened, that caused the person to feel hurt and grief and pain, then they've chosen to react by holding unforgiveness, rather than forgiving and so on. Rebellion is another one. In Proverbs 17:11, the person who rebels, a cruel messenger will be sent against him, so rebellion - often people rebel when they're rejected, so a young person who's rejected, one may become compliant, and another one may rebel, and be the black sheep of the family, because they just feel so rejected, and they're saying I'm not going to tolerate that, so they react in many kinds of different ways. Rebellion is a major one. Rebellion is seeking to impose your will over another, so it says it's like witchcraft.

Many times when there's roots of rebellion in a person's life, you'll have spirits of witchcraft operating as well, so rebellion is wilful resistance, and in New Zealand one of the most common forms of rebellion is what you call passive rebellion. Passive rebellion is not so easy to spot. Passive rebellion is the person resists, but they're not showing it outwardly, they show it in different other ways. They show it by, I'll do it my way, I'll do it on my time, I'll do it when I feel like it, and so they may comply, but actually there's no heart in it. There is a rebelling and imposing their own will around it, and so you'll find you can't get things done, you can't get them done on time. There's actually a wilful resisting of you, and you can feel the lack of flow, the pressure that it seems to bring around. So rebellion, they'll just nod and smile and say yes, but then not do it. You see the pattern, you know there's rebellion underneath, in the heart - but the person doesn't feel rebellious. That's their behaviour they've gotten used to.

Another area is the area of lying. Lying brings people directly into agreement with an evil spirit. In Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we lie, we come into agreement with demonic spirits, the spirit of death. We've made a covenant with death, with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge. Isn't that amazing? We're in a covenant with death, and with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge, so lying opens the door immediately then, for demonic spirits to come in and torment a person's life. So those are some of the patterns of sin that you'll find. There are others which I've mentioned here, because I want to identify them specifically, so remember patterns of sin, usually there's a trigger cause. It helps to find out when this thing started, what lies behind it, because often there's grief and pain, or an injustice. When you talk that out, then the person comes to a place of resting, and releasing forgiveness, and repenting of their sin.

A third area, which is a significant area, is the area of occult involvement. Deuteronomy 18, God wants us to be connected to Him. God is a spirit, and we are made for spiritual experience, we're made and designed to live and operate and move in the realm of the spirit. It's not to be a complicated thing, it's actually a natural part of our life that we would engage with God who is a spirit, and learn how to activate, walk and operate in the flow of the spirit. But people who do not know God, get drawn into the demonic realm, so when we talk about occult - the word occult means to be concealed, or covered, or hidden, or to be covered over - so when we refer the occult, it's any practice where the source of the power is concealed. So when you get involved in the kingdom of God, it's a kingdom of light. Everything is in the open. What we see, is what we get. There's no big surprises in that. Jesus is the king of that kingdom, the kingdom has His nature, the power behind anything that happens is the Holy Spirit, and when we open our life to Jesus the king, we open our life up to the Holy Spirit. The source of power is always identifiable.

When you get in the kingdom of darkness, you have no idea who the king is, but the king is Satan himself. He's a king over a kingdom, and it takes on his nature, cruel, deceptive, treacherous, murderous and dark. The second thing is, the source of power in the occult practices, is concealed. You don't know where the power comes from, so you'll find in the occult realm, when people get involved and drawn into these things, they have no idea what the power is. They just know that there's power there, and many times people are drawn to the occult because of deep rejection or rebellion in their heart, and they look for power to try and compensate, and they find they're drawn. It's quite addictive, it's like a drug, that once people start down that track they get drawn further and further and further into it. So when we talk about the occult of course, we're aware that recently there's been just a huge interest in these things, like all the Harry Potter movies. They're all about the occult. They're about two kinds of occult; about divination, which is telling the future, various ways of finding the future, or trying to find out what will happen ahead of us; and the second is sorcery, which is the dimension of power, gaining power from hidden spirits, and of course Hollywood dresses it all up, so it all looks wonderful, and they say it's good against evil. But really in all of it, the power is never identified, and so occult areas will always open the realm of the spirit. People come into direct agreement with evil spirits.

Common ones are pendulum swinging, Ouija boards, just putting the Ouija board out. When a person puts the board out, and puts the letters down there, and starts to move the glass, they actually connect with a spirit, and it's the spirit gives the thing power. Now they're communicating with an evil spirit. God says this is detestable to Him, because He's made us for intimacy with Himself. It's like someone that you love going off and having another lover, and God grieves in His heart over this, and there are very serious consequences for occult involvement. So let's read in Deuteronomy 18, Verse 9; When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn the abominations of the nations. Then He lists them: there'll be not found among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire. The modern equivalent of that, passing a child through the fire was offering your children up to Molech, God of brass that was - they filled it up with fire and they put their children, living children, into this idol to kill them. The modern equivalent of that would be abortion.

There will not be found any among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone who practices witchcraft, a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, one who conjures spells, a medium, a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead, holds a séance, calls up the spirits of the dead, acts as a medium or a channel for the dead. We would call them today psychics, and you find again very commonly psychic hotlines and so on, so all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. Nothing could be clearer. This is evil to do these things, and when you do it, you end up engaging evil spirits. Now when you get into different nations you'll find the further you get away from civilisation, the more occultism becomes very powerful. So in the areas of Indonesia we've come across major stuff with people who practice this demonic realm, and their power is very real, for example in the Bible the sorcerers in Egypt could change a stick into a snake, just like Moses did. Now that's scary. Have a think about that - someone throws a stick down, it turns into a snake. That's a major power dimension.

One of the challenges the church is facing, is the ability to arise without fear in the face of all of this, and learn how to move in the spirit, and bring heaven to earth, and confront the demonic realm. See, people are drawn there, because they see the church has no power. No matter how you dress it up, no matter how well it looks, or how well it's managed, people need the substance of God. They need to experience God's power in their life, and in the absence of that, they turn and turn into all these kinds of things, so there are whole ranges of aspects to this of course. All forms of fortune-telling bring people into connection with demons. Divination is seeking for hidden knowledge, hidden information, secret information. All forms of sorcery - sorcery's trying to gain power over people, cursing them, doing spells, magic, those kinds of things.

Idolatry is a significant part of this. Idolatry is the bowing down, and coming into, yielding into, spirits that lie behind the idol. In 1 Corinthians it tells us, the idol is nothing, but when you bow down and make offerings to it, you are coming into agreement to an evil spirit occupying the idol, and so wherever there is idolatry openly practised, you'll notice one, they bow down, a sign of reverence and yielding to the demon that's in that place, in that idol; secondly, they make an offering, which is a form of trading, I give you this offering in return for protection, or power, or provision of some kind. So always there's a form of trading goes on; I give you this, you give me something back, but when you deal with the devil, you always end up the loser. You always end up the loser. I remember a person that we ministered to up in Malaysia, and she'd got involved with demonic spirits to bless her business, and for a season her business prospered and she became immensely wealthy.

Then one day the demon manifested to her, and said it's time to pay. She said what do you want? He said I want your eldest son, and she could not believe - I mean she was just grief stricken. She tried every way that she could bargain, but she'd already received - she'd traded. She'd received the benefits, financially, of trading with the demon, and now she had to pay the price, so there was a tragic car accident. Her son was lost, and this happened to both her sons, so she was devastated and you can imagine that all the financial gain, through trading with the demon, was overtaken completely by the shock and the grief that she had lost her children, because she'd given her life into trading with a spirit. So there's always a price to pay, always a price to pay, and it's more than you think, always more than you think. Yeah, okay? So idolatry opens the doorway for demons. In the west of course, freemasonry's a big problem in that area, so when you look in the New Testament, you'll find there were encounters with people with sorcery and divination recorded in the Bible.

So in the area of occult involvement, the person has an agreement with an evil spirit. When you talk with anyone who has an agreement with an evil spirit, they must actually recognise what they've done, and renounce the agreement. To renounce means to speak words to cancel something, so wherever there's been an agreement with an idol, with a spirit of divination, any kind of demonic spirit, the person must renounce what they have done; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce every agreement I have made, every word that I have entered into agreement, I cancel it, every covenant I've made through sacrifice, I renounce and cancel it. The person needs to cancel, speak words to break what they have done, and renounce and speak off their life what they've done. Sometimes children when they're young, are dedicated to idols and so the child had no choice in it, they were dedicated to an idol, or dedicated to a temple. We would bring children in and dedicate them to the Lord. People dedicate them to the idol.

Now when a parent dedicates their child to an idol, or a temple, it gives a legal ground for the spirit to enter the child's life, because the parent is the legal guardian, so we have prayed for many people, and they were demonised from childhood because they were dedicated to an idol, a temple, or some false god. In the same way then, we should realise that infant dedication or child dedication in the church is a powerful spiritual transaction. It's not just a nice little thing you do in church. The reality is, you are invoking someone to come upon your child, you're calling for God to move, as you dedicate your child to Him. In the same way, the demonic realm recognises and seeks to gain the children, so there's always a battle for the minds and hearts of the children. Now just before we get off the occult involvement one, there are some other areas that you need to be aware of.

One area that's becoming an increasing problem now, is the area of role play fantasy games, and the internet, and this is becoming a huge issue. I was up in Singapore, and God spoke to me about this, and I had a young man come up for prayer. He was addicted to playing a role playing game called the World of Warcraft, and he played in that game a sorcerer. The deal was, he would get on the internet and he would go and begin to compete, and he would take on and use his powers that he had on the internet to destroy his enemies and grow in power until he become bigger and more powerful. So this is the nature of that thing, they all compete with one another. Now what happened was, because of imagination, he opened his life up to the demonic spirit, and it now entered his life and he'd become addicted to the game, and his whole identity started to change as he started to get more and more addicted to the game.

So when we recognised that, I said you will need to renounce the game, and to renounce the identity that you took on in that game, so he told me what the game was and the identity of the sorcerer, and I led him in a prayer to acknowledge Christ as his Lord, acknowledge ownership by Christ and then to renounce in Jesus' name, I renounce all playing of this game. I renounce all escaping from real life into this fantasy world, because that's what the root of the problem was. I renounce this identity, which is a false identity, which I took on, and he named it. The moment he did the demon manifested on his face, he fell on the ground, and there was a full manifestation of that spirit. Now this shocked the students. This is a student in a Bible College, so while he's given his life, and sacrificed to come and learn how to serve God, in his private life, he's engaging the occult realm, but didn't know it.

Now what happened then was we had more than 200 students come up, and there was a massive flow of deliverance, young Asian students addicted to these online games, becoming a growing problem in the next generation. It's deceptive. People don't understand what lies behind it. They think it's just harmless game playing. Now don't go in a big reaction, and then forbid all game playing. There's a discernment needed as to what kinds of things would actually become a problem, and I think that any game which is of a role playing nature, that also includes the occult, will eventually lead to the person opening their life, and being in agreement with, a demonic power. So rather than legalism, some wisdom and some management and boundaries are needed around that area, and if you've - because what you find is, often the behaviour of the children starts to change because of the occult and the violence in the games, it starts to affect them. What's happened is they've opened their life to a demon.

One of the scriptures the Lord spoke to me about was this, as I was thinking about it and sharing it with the students, I was just sharing what God was showing me about it. He said there's a scripture there, it says: if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery with her. Now just think about that. He said if you look, or if you start to look, or use your imagination, and you look and begin to long after someone that's not your wife, then you've already committed adultery. So the sin of adultery is conceived in the heart, when the imagination and the heart are activated together, so He said in these games, people enter in with their imagination into the fantasy world, and then begin to long after the power. What happens is they conceive in their heart the whole thing of sorcery, and the demon then can get in, so these are areas to become very aware of.

There are other games that people get addicted to, and I don't even want to go there at all, but there's a whole range of games, and people who are in pain emotionally, substitute real relationships for a vast imaginary role playing game world, and often they can become addicted to that realm. They can't do without it, and so you know spirits are involved as well as soulish and addictive processes, so I needed to spend a bit on that because that is quite an issue. Other areas of the occult involve martial arts, and yoga, and some, some alternative medicine things. We just need to be aware that you can open your life to the demonic realm through these things.

Okay, next one, number four is sexual sin. We just look in - there's a whole number of scriptures on this of course. Remember in Luke, Chapter 4, we saw the man who had an unclean spirit - Verses 43, 44 - we found that there was a man there who had an unclean spirit. In Chapter 4 of Luke, Verses 33 to 36, he had an unclean demon, which is almost certainly a sexual demon that had come into his life. We discussed that last night. So God has set a law in place; when two people become intimate sexually, the two become one flesh. Remember, it's established in Genesis. They join together in sexual intimacy, the two become one. Now get this: if you become one with another person, one flesh, then whatever demons they've got, they belong to you as well. Think about that. Like if a person has got a sexual disease, and you have a sexual relationship with them, you are likely to receive what they have, and the consequences will go on and possibly affect children. The child maybe innocent, no guilt, yet affected.

So in the realm of sexual sin, God has created a law that two become one, so when people are sexually involved with one another, heavy petting right through to penetration and sexual relationship, then there is a soul tie formed between them. The two become one. That's the law that God set in place, and the way the law works is there is a bonding forms between them. Now that soul tie, or that bonding between the two people formed through sexual intimacy, it can either be Godly, or ungodly. A Godly one is where it's within the boundaries of a healthy relationship, and God's principles; an ungodly one is a sexual intimacy outside marriage, where we break God's laws, violate God's laws, are involved sexually outside marriage, then there is an ungodly soul tie or bonding. Now there are two impacts of that ungodly soul tie that I'm aware of. One impact is this, is that because it's an ungodly tie, demonic spirits can use it as a gateway into your life, spirits of lust, and all kinds of other spirits can enter your life through a legal gateway, a joining to another person.

It's like no matter how far you go through your life you're still joined to them, so if you have a number of sexual partners, now you've got all this baggage, these cords of sin, that go back to these relationships - it's like an invisible spiritual cord linking you to the person. The demonic realm can see it, and use it to gain access so that's one area, demonic spirits can enter. The second is this. I've observed in praying for people that - particularly with men but also with women - that the mental and emotional impact of the sexual relationship remains with them. The memories remain alive and it's like they cannot, even years later, get the memories to diminish. They are energised and alive, and so a couple can be having sexual intimacy as husband and wife, and then these powerful images are there of previous encounters, or the memories of previous encounters arise up when a person tries to worship.

In other words, there's some defilement is taking place, which seems to keep - there's an energising. Remember we talked how demons either hold people down, or energise sin inside them? Then this is what happens around this area; the person's got this energy around this that keeps tormenting, and won't ever seem to go away. They can't come to peace, and I've prayed for multitudes of people, and when we broke the soul tie, like it was an invisible cord, when we just cut the soul tie in the spirit, pictured taking the sword of the spirit, and just cutting that soul tie joining the person to someone else, then almost immediately there was a diminishing of the energy and power of these things in the person's soul, and they just started to find it quite manageable after that. So sexual intimacy was established by God as a way of two people being bonded together, and getting to know one another, becoming intimate with one another. God's purpose in forming the covenant of marriage is to protect your capacity to be intimate, so when people are intimate without a commitment for life, and then they break up, there are all kinds of hurts take place.

There's a rending apart of that soul tie, both men and women are affected. No matter what people say it's like, it isn't like that. It always ends up with pain, and grief, and sorrow, and so you find then there are reactions that people form; I'll never let any man near me like that again, or I wish I was dead, death wishes and inner vows start to - so sexual sin and sexual abuse create these huge problems inside people's lives, of soul ties, of inward reactions, of inner vows, that create an energy centre for demonic spirits to torment the person's life. So if a person has had a number of sexual relationships through their life, what they need is to actually become cleansed by Jesus Christ. We need to come to Him - He's willing to cleanse us, but we need to just front up, this is what it's been like, this is what I've done, this is what I've been involved in, this is what I've been exposed to, and then to just renounce all the agreements, renounce all the relationships, cut the soul ties, renounce the soul ties, and release forgiveness. Let go, where there's grief and pain and hurt.

Many young men that we're aware of have attempted suicide, or committed suicide, because of a break up in a relationship with a girl; many young women have been devastated because a relationship turned sexual, and they never really wanted it to be. They were looking for love and intimacy, so this is a whole area of challenge today, where people have lost God's boundaries and values. God's principle, related to marriage, is to protect intimacy, so you can become a whole person. It's not to stop you enjoying life, it's to protect you from destructive things. So people need to be delivered, and you'll find that many of people that you will work with, you'll find if you will check out where the problem is, often it's in this area; there's been sexual sin, it could go back many, many years, could have been a teenage thing, or even a younger thing that that, and the impact of it's so great, that it just leaves this energy going on inside them. So you're dealing then with soul ties, you're dealing with reactions, inner vows and bitter judgements against men or women, and often you're dealing with quite emotional trauma of what they've gone through.

We'll talk a little bit more about just ministering to that area. It is a major one. God wants people to be free, and we saw Jesus set the man free who'd been bound in that kind of sin. So I've put a list in your notes of various things that the Bible speaks explicitly about; fornication, homosexuality, pornography is not referred to directly, but it comes under the issue of lusting in your heart; habitual masturbation is not mentioned specifically in the Bible, so we should not place weight on it as a problem beyond what the Bible does say, and the Bible doesn't say much about it all. So one of the things I have noticed in praying and ministering to people, is that when people are involved in habitual masturbation, usually there are deep roots of rejection, and what they're doing is trying to comfort themselves, but it becomes addictive and connected with fantasy, and that's where the problems lie. So I never try to bring anyone under the law in this area, but we talk to them about the impact it has on them, and how to then get free. Sometimes you just need to break the soul tie the person's got to them self, and they often need to be set free of roots of rejection inside them, that are feeding and driving this area, then be taught how to actually stay clean, stay pure.

Another particular one that is referred to specifically, is the area of anal sex or sodomy. That is specifically referred to as an abomination to the Lord, and yet you'll find that there'll be some couples will practice sodomy in their marriage. You need to understand that God forbids this practice. It's unclean, it's a shameful practice associated with homosexuals, and it's not part - it's got no place in a Christian marriage, none whatsoever. If any of you are aware, if it's happening in your life, or happening in your situation, or you come across it, a woman needs to be free from any sense she needs to submit to her husband over this specific issue. The area of oral sex is not stated specifically in the Bible, so therefore we have to be careful what we say about something the Bible doesn't say anything about. The two general principles you use are one, that it's natural and doesn't violate natural law and two, that it doesn't violate the conscience of the person.

The area of prostitution isn't referred to in the Bible as being evil. Sexual molesting or rape, fantasy, incest, bestiality and adultery, all of these are referred to as creating major problems. Now here's an interesting thing, that all of those sins carried a death penalty. Get that - capital punishment. Capital punishment. Now we wrestle with capital punishment, even multiple murders, but capital punishment. Now I've looked at that, and thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that since the law of God doesn't pass away, that wherever people are involved with that, they open the way for spirits of death to come around them. That means they become isolated, and disconnected, and shut down or numbed out emotionally, through these kinds of experiences in various degrees.

So lets just carry on and then we'll finish the list, then we'll take a break. Rejection is another area. If you're looking and dealing with a person's life, you'll find very often they have suffered deep rejection. In 2 Samuel 6, Verse 16, Michal, Saul's daughter, was deeply rejected by her father, and she becomes very bitter. In the day that should have been a day of celebration for her, she in fact was in great grief, and really reactionary against her husband, because there was bitterness against men in her heart, so bitterness comes out of being deeply rejected. You notice also that rejection - let me just make this clear - rejection is an experience people have, where they're not wanted, or they perceive they're not wanted. Rejection is an emotional trauma or pain that people experience, so it's an emotional trauma. Rejection is also a spirit that torments people, and rejection is also a belief, or a judgement formed in the heart, that no one's going to want me.

So when you're dealing with rejection you have to be aware of each of those aspects; is there a demonic spirit involved? Is there a judgement, and a bitter expectancy, that I'll be rejected? Is there some painful experience I need to face, and forgive the people involved? Of course there's a whole number of ways the spirit of rejection will come around people. When people have got rejection in their life, usually there's a deep mind set that they're unacceptable, they fear rejection, and they tend to reject themselves. So where does it come? Very simply, rejection in the womb, child's unwanted, unwanted pregnancy, or perhaps there was an attempt at abortion. I've noticed this, when there's been attempted abortion and the child survives, they will not bond with their mother. They actually won't breastfeed, they won't bond with their mother, they're called 'problem' children because, in their heart, they know already this woman tried to murder me. That's why you get the lack of bonding.

The contemporary culture tends to pass off a lie, this is not a person in the womb. Now if a woman believes this is not a person, the next step is to be able to get rid of it quite easily. The reality is, it is a person, and what we have found is that, in ministering to people who've had an abortion, we have found one of the things that's very crucial, is first to acknowledge that this is actually I've tried to, or attempted to, or have successfully destroyed a life, an eternal spirit being. That's the first thing to acknowledge. The second thing is to forgive the people that have been involved, including forgiving yourself, usually the man involved and the people who were involved as well. The third thing is, we've found it really helpful to ask the person to listen to their heart, and let God show them whether their child was a boy or a girl. Now at that point, it's like I've watched a person move from being almost unemotional, then suddenly when God showed them, this was a boy, it's now no longer a thing. The revelation is there, this is a real person, and often they break and weep quite deeply. You can cast out spirits of murder and abortion and death and so on, so it's a very, very powerful area.

Many times we've found that people have been deeply healed as they've seen the child in the Lord's hands, and they've realised that God has forgiven them, and they're free now to move on. It's a very, very powerful thing - so attempted abortion. A child is an unwanted female; in many places fathers expected the child to be a boy, and it's a girl, and the child feels rejected, and often strives to be - they become male-like and competitive. Early childhood experiences can lead to rejection, a child who's got some learning difficulties, a child who's got some physical co-ordination difficulties, can be very, very simple experiences they have. A family breaks up, that is a huge trauma for a child, and often that trauma leaves a child feeling deeply rejected and to blame. Family relational conflict or breakdown, emotional coldness or hardness or blocks in the family, the child interprets it as being rejected; unfavourable comparisons where one parent's continually why aren't you like your brother, why aren't you like your sister, why can't you do this? The child feels rejected. They are not like their brother and sister, they are them, so many times parents can create huge problems of rejection in a child by comparison.

Divorce or broken relationships; this creates a problem. A child interprets it through a child's eyes, and thinks they're to blame, and feels rejected. School experiences can create huge rejection, as well as - another thing that creates deep rejection in people is the experiences of broken relationship, where there was quite a deep intimacy, and then it breaks up. This is a huge issue that the person feels rejected, and often struggles with spirits of rejection. Another one, related to that which we'll touch on next, are when there's controlling relationships. When there's controlling relationships, the one who's under control always carries a spirit of rejection, always. Why? Because their needs, their longings, their desires, their person-hood was rejected by the controller, who just wanted to impose their will on them.

Okay, so there's a whole range of things there. Number six, controlling relationships, we just referred to those. Whenever there are controlling relationships, one person is imposing their will on another. Now we're not talking about Godly control, or management of a child, where you need to restrain them for their own safety. We're talking now ungodly control where one imposes their will, their wishes, their desires, and there's no hearing, or there's no connection to the heart, or who the person is, and what they want to do. The person is dominated. They can be dominated by verbal violence, by physical violence, by sexual violence, by emotional violence, whatever it is, the person's dominated or controlled by the other person. There's a deep root of rejection takes place, so control brings rejection and trauma, and usually deep fear into the person's life. When you are working with people, do look at the issue of trauma, particularly those associated with a controlling relationship, so when a person is under a controlling relationship, they lose all confidence, they have no sense of identity established, and demonic spirits come around and continually work against them: spirits of hate, spirits of witchcraft, spirits of rejection.

A seventh area or gateway of demons is this, it's trauma and accidents, or sustained stress. When a person goes through a trauma, if it's a physical trauma and you hit a person or they can be cut and bleed, but if it's an emotional trauma there's a bleeding within, in the sense the soul is impacted and shattered. We'll talk a bit more about dealing with that a little later - then what happens is, evil spirits use trauma as a gateway in. I was praying for a woman just a little while ago, and she had pains right through her hand and her wrist, and she couldn't move her hand properly. I said what's happened? She said I was involved in a motor vehicle accident. I said what happened? She said well they did the best they could, but I'm left numbed out, and I can't move my hand properly, so what I did was pray, and in Jesus' name, I break the soul tie, or bonding in connection to the trauma, and command the spirit of trauma and infirmity to go. The moment I did that, her hand freed up, and she started to feel again, and she started to have full use of it.

So she was soul tied to the traumatic experience, we broke that, and then commanded the spirit that was in her through that effect to go out, and immediately she was set free, immediately she's set free. So just be aware that if a person has a traumatic experience, one, that they are soul tied to it; two, that they have often extremely painful memories and pictures around it, and three, that there are spirits often have entered in to create a problem. Spirits of infirmity are the ones I've found most commonly associated with a traumatic experience. Another woman had had a car accident, she had pains right through her body, and we broke the spirit of trauma off her life, cut the soul tie to the experience, and she began to actually shake, as she started to remember it. Then the whole thing left her, and her back was healed and she was completely free straight away.

Another area of demonic oppression or doorways or gateways is ungodly beliefs. Satan is the father of lies. When you believe a lie, whether you have good reason to or not, you'll find that it'll open up and bring demonic spirits in. Now ungodly beliefs are always, or almost inevitably associated with, some painful experience, so a child growing up, well we've never got enough money. Perhaps the parents were going through financial difficulty, and the child learns we're poor, and there's never enough for me. So a child who gets a belief in their heart, there's not enough for me, it doesn't matter how much they have, you know what they'll believe? There's still not enough for me. They're often then driven to work hard, they can't find rest in their soul. Why? Because no matter how much they have, there's not enough for me, is the message that's played in the heart.

So an ungodly belief, is a belief of the heart that's not true. It's actually a lie, but it operates and drives the person's life. Ungodly beliefs, when we can identify them, usually are attached to some painful experience. We need to let Jesus come, and bring healing to that experience, and we need to break or renounce the agreement with the lie, and start to meditate and build the truth in our life.

Curses are another source of demonic spirits coming in. These are a consequence of breaking the laws of God. They can be word curses, or curses by authority figures. They could be self cursing where people speak words, negative words over themselves. Sometimes even there's witchcraft cursing, where particularly we've found people go into foreign lands, if they're not aware of the demonic realm, they can become subject to witchcraft cursing, and demonic spirits there. So again, if there is a curse, there's always a reason for it, and we need to track the reason, renounce it, cancel it, and release forgiveness, and believe God for freedom.

The last one I'll just mention to you here, is transference. Spirits can transfer. There are a whole number of ways they can transfer. They can transfer through soul ties. I've even known one person to get demonised watching a movie - had a woman ring me up one night. I said: what's the problem because it was quite late, said what's the problem? She said: something has happened to me. I said what's happened? She said: my husband made me look at a pornographic movie. I said what happened? She said: I suddenly felt someone, something come into my eyes. I said: how did it affect you? She said I feel numbed out, and I feel like I'm a piece of meat. I said: watching this thing, you've opened yourself to a demonic spirit. I said: I think it's a spirit of death, and so we broke the soul tie attaching her to this experience, we commanded the spirit of death to come out, and immediately she felt something leave her, just over the phone.

So certain movies, or things full of lust and violence, can open the door for spirits. Alcohol and drugs can do the same thing, touching dead bodies. I've known people to actually get demonised by touching a dead body, hoarding occult objects, and sometimes there are some things associated with culture as well. So these are some of the doorways that demons use. It helps if you are aware of them. I've known some people group them into two groups, some people group them into four groups. There's a whole lot of ways of looking at it, so some people deal with it as being either - if you deal it with four - there's a couple called - his name is Chester Kylstra I think it is, and they categorise all of these doorways in four groups; one, generational; two, sin patterns; three, trauma; and four, ungodly beliefs. They've found that's a helpful way of just thinking about the whole area of grouping these demonic doorways. Demonic doorways are opened through generational, through sin, through trauma, and through ungodly beliefs, so they deal with it like that.

Virkler runs a course called "Prayers That Heal the Heart", and they look at it - he handles it a little bit differently. He just looks at it straight from the heart condition, starting off with the generational curses, then the soul ties, the bitter expectancies or judgements that form in the heart, inner vows that form, sin patterns, and then the demonic spirits. Sargin and Jessie run a brilliant course on this, and it's extremely helpful. If you were thinking about going through a course I'd recommend that course for you to do, so that's another way of doing it. Other people deal with it just straight as legal rights, and trauma, and deal with it in two things, what are all the legal rights, and what are the trauma or painful experiences. So the general agreement around almost everyone who's operating around the deliverance area, is that the area of legal rights, and painful experiences, and the impacts they have in your heart, with reactions in the heart, these seem to be the things that create the doorways for demons to come in.

Different deliverance ministers have different ways of doing it. There's no one right way, there's lots of ways. But if you can understand the basics, and the principles, and have a plan of how you would approach it, then you can start to minister reasonably successfully to people. I do not think that we can set people free without dealing with the heart. My experience over years now, is whatever's in the heart will show up in the life. You can cast out the demons, but if you don't shift the heart, what people believe and how they function in their heart, then they don't have lasting change. So of all the materials that I have seen around, probably the course by Mark Virkler, Prayers That Heal the Heart, would be the one that I would recommend, as containing good insight and good process for the deliverance ministry.

Perhaps I'll just finish with one last thing and then we'll get on and have a break. How would you know what demons do, or how do demons oppress people? Let's just finish with that for this session. How do demons oppress people? In Luke 13, Verse 11, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and could not raise herself up, so here's a woman, has a spirit, and it's affecting her body. A spirit of infirmity for example, the word infirmity means weakness or without strength - a spirit of infirmity, when it comes into a body, you have aches and pains. They just move around, or they're located in the back, the neck, the shoulders and whatever. You can't seem to get of them. Spirits of infirmity can create problems with deafness, spirits of infirmity can be the cause of many sicknesses, spirits of infirmity can also create learning difficulties as well.

When demons come into people's lives - I've listed some of the things they do. Number one, they hinder the person coming to Christ. They just create blocks around the thinking, so the person doesn't understand. Two, they afflict and torment people, they remind them, and bring them into torment and pain; three, they bring people into bondage, particularly addictions; four, they bring drive into people's lives, and compel them to do things, so they feel like they can't stop; six, they deceive, or create a deception around a person's mind. They don't realise what's really happening; seven, they accuse and speak condemning words, and number eight, they obstruct us. They create difficulties, for example when we try to do these seminars we often have trouble with mechanical gear, issues and difficulties and problems. It's always the week we do the seminar, so we've just got used to it all.

So when spirits come in they'll affect a person's body with sicknesses, pains, unexpected pains. When I went to Taiwan for example, every day I had to have a new interpreter, because they would get sick. They just got sick day after day after day after day. The first three visits I made to Taiwan, I got sick every time, then afterwards I broke through it, and I've never been sick since. It was just witchcraft spirits trying to impart this thing onto me, and I had to learn how to step up, and make sure I didn't come under it. So demonic spirits can affect your body, they can affect the soul by tormenting thoughts, emotions and desires. They can afflict a person's will, so they become very passive, and they can create experiences in people's life that torment them.

So how are we going to find out? Well let's go look at the next session. We're going to talk about curses, and what they are, and how to deal with them, then we're going to look at some aspects of how to minister to people. Let's have a break.

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5)  

Sat 7 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and cursing are a great reality. Blessing means there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually. This session will help you identify when a curse is operating, and how to go about addressing it. This includes a range of heart issues that give legal rights to demons. Jesus came to set us free!

Welcome Back. So how many in the last session, you had a list of a few things that you realised oh,that's me there, that's me there? How many found some things came to mind, thought that's quite good. Good to just ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you; Lord, show me where I'm needing to be set free, where do I first need to break out, and what's there. So as things come up, jot them down, things the Holy Spirit speaks to you about. As things come up, or you have a question, jot that down so you can remember later on, say well I need to get some information about that.

Okay, we want to just look in the next session, I just want to look at the area of curses, and what they are and how to deal with them, recognising curses. For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and curses are a great reality. Blessing means, there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means, there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually, and so we want to identify what curses are, and just look at how we would recognise them, what we would look for, and then how you would actually go about addressing it.

So in Deuteronomy 28 the Bible talks about blessings and cursings. Now there's a huge difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how God has dealt with us. Now we are blessed. We are a blessed people. However, there may be evidences of old things still operating, which have legal rights that need to be cancelled and addressed, so in Deuteronomy 28 it lists out the blessings of obedience, it lists out cursings that come from disobedience, so moreover all these curses shall come upon you, pursue you, and overtake you, until you're destroyed. Now notice about curses, they're spoken of as though they're something living. Notice it uses the words: they will come on you, and so we you don't expect it but there it is, they'll pursue you. It's like you can't run away from it, and they'll overtake you. So when God is describing the nature of a curse, there is clearly a spiritual force, a demonic power operating behind, that comes on you and pursues you, overtakes you, and has negative or destructive forces.

So 'curses come on people' means they just turn up. You've got no idea where they came from, there's no apparent reason, but there is always a reason. Curses tend to pursue people, so wherever you go, you are, you're there, so therefore, that's where the curse will be, where you are. It's attached to you, so that's why it runs after you. Curses overtake people, and tend to overcome them, so key aspects of a curse is that the curse can impact not only an individual, but also a family itself generationally, and also a larger group like a whole tribe can have a particular cursing operating around them. Groups, organisations can have a curse running around them. I recently had the opportunity to speak into a movement of churches in New Zealand, and the Lord gave me insight that enabled us to establish a pattern, that was destructive within the movement, that had gone on and pursued it all these years.

When I shared with them what I could see and what I knew, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they began to break down and weep. Since that time they've worked systematically to address all those issues, and now God's just suddenly brought a blessing, an increase, and what they've tried to do for years has now started to come about, started to come into existence - to the extent where I'm astonished really. I don't want to identify what movement it is, but it's a movement of churches in our own nation, and within the roots of it, there was a pattern that had continued and persisted. They said after I'd shared with them, they looked into it even further, and they found it pervaded every aspect of their churches. Isn't that extraordinary? Once they brought it to the Lord, as a leadership, and dealt with it and then addressed it and put everything right, it's immediately everything has started to come into place for them. Quite extraordinary - I'm still stunned and trying to get a hold of the significance of all of that.

So curses can affect whole groups of people, and a curse, when it's operating, allows demons to operate. The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit, so we tend to think of cursing as someone swearing, but those who have a spiritual world view, what they're looking at is the demonic realm having a legal access, a legal right to come, and create havoc and destruction. So how would you know if some kind of curse, or some demonic power was operating? What would you look for? You'd be looking for something that shows up in lifestyles, it shows up in behaviours, you're looking at something that would show up in repeated patterns, so the keys to finding these are found in Deuteronomy 28. It starts off there of course, in Verse 45; all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes.

Now if you go through there in Deuteronomy 28, and the verses in Deuteronomy 28 from Verse 15 through almost to Verse 45, it lists in detail what curses look like when they're operating, and so I've broken them down into a number of headings so you could identify them, and I've put the scripture reference there. They're pretty well all found in Deuteronomy 28. So firstly there's mental and emotional breakdown, so if there's a pattern in your family of mental or emotional breakdowns, there's almost certainly some spiritual power at work. If there's just one person, well there'd be something in that one person, but if there's several in the same family line, then there's obviously something has got an inroad in, so repeated patterns of mental or emotional breakdown. A second one is chronic disease or sickness. By chronic I mean it keeps repeating, it keeps repeating. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until He's consumed you. He'll bring back to you all the sicknesses of Egypt, which you're afraid of, and they shall cling to you - so repeated cycles of sickness or disease, family sickness that can't be healed.

So we found in our family that, for example, one of my daughters had a particular skin condition that wouldn't go away, and it just persisted. We prayed and prayed and prayed, couldn't get rid of it, then she was just listening to the Lord, and He showed her how that one, it was rooted in anxiety, which is a family generational spirit, and also how she'd taken on responsibility for the rest of the family, when they were quite young. When she let all of that go, overnight the eczema all vanished. It was quite sudden, so there was clearly a spirit that was behind the sickness and infirmity.

Another one is history of women with problems with their womb, barrenness, they can't conceive at all; or miscarriages, they continually miscarry, have several miscarriages; or fertility problems or bleeding problems. These are often indication that there's some form of cursing is operating, and so it says cursed is the fruit of your body. Hosea talks in Hosea 9:14, that idolatry results in miscarriages, you've just cast off the fruit of your womb, so if you have a family, and you know that there's some form of regular and repeated problems that women have, there's almost certainly some form of cursing operating, and there can be many causes of the curse. We've got to find the root cause.

A fourth one is marriage and family breakdowns. If there's repeated patterns of marriage or family breakdowns, so they can never build marriage, it's like something is destroying marriage, something is destroying families, that often indicates that there's a curse operating - constant quarrelling and fighting, breakdowns - but it's the pattern of it. It's not just confined to one, it's actually in a family line. That's how we can see that it's generational, and it's a cursing of some kind. Another one is financial setbacks, where constantly there are setbacks, so the person's managing money the best they can, but no matter what they do, they keep getting these setbacks just when they should prosper. It could be constant lay-offs at work, harassment in the workplace, constant problems with housing, foreclosure on housing, problems with landlords. It's almost like everything around the provisional area of their life just keeps going wrong and toxic. Often there's a cursing around there.

Accident proneness - have you ever noticed some people are accident prone? If there's a history of it in your family then it's generational, and also there's an element or an area of it which is related to some curse, some demonic power. Freak accidents, regular car accidents, lots of broken limbs; these can indicate there's some hidden kind of curse operating, some spirit is operating. Remember the power of a curse is a spirit, the power of blessing is the Holy Spirit. A history of suicides or premature violent death, so if you look into your family background ,and you start to notice then that there are premature deaths or suicides, if there's more than one there's some kind of curses operating in the family, there's some kind of demonic power. Patterns of mistreatment and abuse, they also indicate that physical abuse, abusive relationships, those patterns are in the family, it would indicate: one, there's a cursing operating that needs to be broken; two, there are family patterns and habits that need to be changed.

Another one which I noticed in Genesis 4:11 was the inability to settle down, like being a gypsy. The person can never form roots, they're there for just a little while and then they just up, and for some reason when they've just been there long enough to start to prosper, suddenly they're up and we're shifting. There's no apparent reason, there's no work reason, it's just the person has got restless and feel like I need to move on, I need to move on.

That can be - remember that Cain was cursed that he would be a fugitive and a vagabond. He would never settle. He would just continually move and travel around, so that's evidence of a cursing too. I have come across people, and it's like they could never settle anywhere. They'd just be there for a while and then, I've got to go. Now it could be it's in the family pattern, that their own pattern in their background was one of shifting from one place to another, and everyone learned not to make friends - but always look for some spiritual roots before trying to just solve problems. Look for some spiritual roots behind it. So there's always a cause for a curse. If there's a curse operating in a family, or in a personal life, there's always a reason for it. Think that, there's always a reason. That's what it says in Proverbs 26, Verse 2; Like a flying sparrow or a flying swallow, so a curse without a cause shall not fall. What he's saying is: if there's a curse, there's a cause. If something bad is there, there's a reason it's there. Find out the reason, and then you can deal with the curse.

So let's have a look what some of the possible causes of a curse. Now first, before we go there, how many of you can recognise maybe even in your own family that you've got one of those patterns operating? Whoa, look at that. Wow, we may have to have a ministry time, could be exciting. [Laughter] Could be very exciting. We'll save it up for after lunch. You've had the demons a long time now, so a little bit longer won't matter. [Laughter] We'll deal with them soon, so that'll be fun won't it. So how many recognise more than one pattern that's running through your family line? Wow, that's a whole number of you, okay, great. Well it'll be great for us to get into it after lunch then aye? It'll be good to do that.

So what are some of the causes for it? Well I've tried to find, and actually there seems like there's a variety of causes, and the Holy Spirit's got to bring them to the surface, so one of the most obvious ones is Idolatry. Everywhere there's practising idolatry, curses are inevitable, so what you'll often find when you're in a culture of idolatry, sickness abounds. Sickness abounds, idolatry, sickness abounds everywhere there's idolatry. The second thing is a cause, or root cause, is occult practices. You get involved with the occult, you're involved with demons, sickness and cursing is inevitable. Now here's one I found is people don't recognise; dishonouring your parents. Dishonouring your parents opens the door for cursing, for example in Ephesians, Chapter 6; honour your father and mother, that you may live long, it may go well with you. Now notice the consequence of honour is health, and prospering in your life, so that implies that the consequence of dishonour is sickness, and problems with health, short life, premature death, and problems throughout your life.

I have discovered of one of the biggest keys, for things working right in your life, is to ensure that you come to a place of resolving issues with your parents, and you come to a place of peace in your hearth with their weaknesses, and their failures, and their lacks. You come to freedom to honour them, and be appreciative of who they are. Now all parents make mistakes, all parents have their flaws and their issues, but God doesn't worry too much about that. He says: how you respond is really important - so honour, that it may go well with you. Throughout the Bible, I can show you many scriptures, it's very, very clear that when the dishonour of parents, there are demonic problems comes up. It says the one that dishonours his father and despises his mother, it says: the ravens of the valley shall pick his eyes out. The ravens of the valley speak of demonic spirits, and to pick the eyes out means to cause you to become blind or in darkness so you can't see.

So a key cause of cursing is this impact of dishonouring your parents. If you want to prosper in life, bring resolution to the home conflicts, the home issues, the home things. That will require forgiveness and repentance, and a decision to bless instead of remaining bitter, so have a think about that one. If you find that you're avoiding parents, or your attention isn't around when you're with them, the chances are you've got something going on inside you that needs to be resolved. Another one, in Deuteronomy 27, is mistreating the people who are weak, or oppressing or treating people who are weak or sick in some kind of way, or handicapped in some kind of way. We don't like to use that word. We use the word disabled, but if a person's disabled and you mistreat them, the Bible says a curse comes on you. God is very concerned about justice, and the treatment of people who are poor, or who are afflicted in some kind of way. The Bible is full of that. It says he that disregards the cry of the poor, shall himself cry and not be heard, so God is very concerned about how our attitude towards justice, towards people who are handicapped, disabled, or in any kind of way impaired. We should watch that we don't dishonour, disrespect them, but treat them properly.

Unlawful sexual relationships we've already looked at. Violence and abuse brings a curse. You notice that families where there's violence, it is a generational thing, it just keeps on going. The pattern of violence just continues, one generation of cursing. It's alarmed me how abusive, verbally abusive, many of our native culture, the Maori people are to one another. The way I've heard some speaking to one another, they're actually literally cursing each other. No white person could say that without getting a huge severe reaction, but many seem to feel it's okay to speak that way to one another, and cursing one another is always going to end up with problems. So violence and abuse always brings cycles of cursing and demonic powers. Another one, which is very clearly outlined in Genesis 12 Verse 3, is anti-Semitism, or being anti the Jews, or acting in a way hostile or contrary to the Jewish people. The Bible says: those that bless Abraham and his family, those who bless him, will be blessed, those who curse him, will be cursed. So that's still in application that still is there. That's why we have to guard that we don't have an attitude or a negative thing towards the Jews in any kind of way.

Stealing and lying opens the way for a curse. Lying and stealing always go together; if you steal you'll cover, and you'll have to lie. In Zachariah 5, Verses 3 to 4, it tells that a curse will enter the house of the person who steals. It actually says a curse will enter in, it will fly into the house, so when there's stealing and lying going on, there's nothing you do prospers. Now it appears as though you prosper, but what you don't see, is what really goes on in the true riches, which are the relationships and the family building. Where there's stealing and lying going on, there's massive destruction and erosion, and sure, there may be some short term material advantage, but somehow it all turns to dust. There is a curse where there is stealing. That's why we want to operate in integrity in all our finances. We don't need cursing coming into our life. We don't want to break the laws that will involve demonic powers coming in, and plundering what God wants to bless us with.

Word curses are an evident one of course. Word curses are words spoken by authority figures, spoken by yourself, over yourself: well I'll never get anywhere, I'm a failure, I'll never get anywhere. Curses spoken by parents over their children can create huge problems because they activate demonic spirits. Sometimes, in some cultures, you'll have people arise to curse you, if you're working in missionary areas particularly. Sometimes people who operate in the occult will endeavour to curse you. The curse always has to have a reason to rest. I remember I was in a meeting in Indonesia, a fantastic meeting, and there were about 2000 people there, and three witch doctors came to have a confrontation. They wanted to stand up and strip the power off me, whatever power it was, and so they came in there all wound up to do it. I never even saw them, I just had a great meeting and people got delivered.

Then it turns out later that three of them had stood up to do their stuff, and the moment they stood to their feet, boom! The power of God hit them, they were just thrown on the ground and could not get up. They actually had to crawl out of the meeting [laughter], so the cursing did not rest, because there's flowing in the power of the spirit. Dave was able to whip round and catch one of them and confront them, and cast the demons out, one of them got saved. So cursed objects can create problems in your home, and we talked about that before. Deuteronomy 7, 34 to 35, says don't even bring them into your home, so we need to guard our home from having idols and focal points for demonic spirits, otherwise it can introduce sickness, turmoil, conflicts into the home. Of course the last one we have is generational iniquities.

So I've given a list that I've found. It's probably not an exhaustive list, there are probably others, but these are ones commonly that I have seen, or have come up when I've ministered to people, those various kinds of areas. So if you know that something is going wrong, and it keeps going wrong, there's got to be a reason, so what is the reason? When did it first start? Was it very young, was it in the family line? Has there been a pattern in the family line? Is it generational? Where has this thing come from? Let's track it down to its root; what is the potential cause? Was it idolatry, spiritism, whatever? The Holy Spirit, if we ask Him, can bring it to the surface, bring a memory, a picture, bring something up to the surface that brings to mind, this is what we think it might be. So how can people be set free from curses? It's not as difficult as it looks. Remember many of the curses are generational, but not all.

I remember talking to one young man, and he was in conflict with one of our leaders in our church, so I went to sit and talk with him to try and work it all out, and try to find out. Of course he had his whole reason for why he was in conflict with this leader and oh, it's okay. I said well, tell me about how you're getting on at the workplace? He said I've just shifted job. I said why did you shift job? He said I had a conflict with the boss. Oh really, what about your last work? Oh no, same thing happened there, and I said oh really? I said did you ever have a good job you liked? He said oh yeah and he told me the job he liked, so that was great. I said how did you get on with the boss there? Oh, well not too good actually, I fell out with him. Oh really, I said. Tell me, how did you get on at school? Oh, didn't do so good at school. I said what about the teachers, how did you get on with the teachers? No, I didn't get on with the teachers at all. Oh really? Now he's starting to see a pattern starting to develop now.

I said okay then, how about your dad, how did you get on with your dad and your mum? Oh, I didn't like my dad, kicked me out of home. I said really? He said well, it wasn't my real dad, he was my step-dad, I was adopted. I said oh really, how interesting, and I could see straight away that there is a common pattern in it all. There is a pattern of conflict and reaction to authority figures all the way through his life, and the root goes right back to him being rejected, and having bitterness and resentment against his father and mother for rejecting him. It projected against the adoptive parents, and then every authority figure in life, so whatever he put his hand to was cursed, it just would not prosper and go ahead. I've watched him make plan after plan after plan, and it would not prosper. It's like it was a great plan, yes, it should succeed, couldn't quite pull it off, something went wrong at the last minute. It was like there's no reason for it, but it happened, and in this case, the cursing went right back to the whole thing of being adopted, and the bitterness in the heart, the judgements against the father, and the spirits that had access to work while he didn't deal with the heart issue. Getting the idea?

Okay then, so how are we going to deal with freedom from cursing? We have to first identify - we have to find out what the curse is, and try to identify where it came from. Then I've found a very simple process is to take it step by step, it's very, very simple. You are dealing, when you're dealing with a curse, with a legal right. The demon as a right to be there. Remove the right, and the demon will go quite quickly. Remove the legal right. Now that's a crucial part of dealing with all of this stuff, is removing legal rights, removing the grounds the spirit claims it has, to be in the person's life. Now in Galatians 3, Verses 13 and 14, Christ has redeemed us from the curse. That means He's paid the full price for us to be free of cursings, He become a curse for us, for what? So we could be blessed. The blessing of Abraham come on us and on the gentiles through faith in Christ. There it is, Galatians 3, 13 and 14. Now God's intention is this, is that when you come to Christ, you are repositioned in a place of blessing.

In Ephesians 1, it tells us Verse 3, He has blessed us with every blessing in spiritual places, in heavenly places, so already you are blessed. You are in a place of blessing. You don't have to do something in order to get blessed, you are already, in identifying with Christ, blessed. What we do need to do though, many times, is to break legal rights that evil spirits have, which they still cling onto to afflict us, so how do we do that? I think number one, the person needs to recognise what the issue is. They need to recognise, this is what my problem is. They need to repent of any sin that they have done, that's opened the door to that, so repentance is a crucial part. If there's a cursing, we should speak it off our life; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce that curse, I cancel that curse, I cancel all agreements made with evil spirits. I renounce it in Jesus' name. It's not a hard thing to do, speak, and break this off your life. Make a stand, I belong to Christ, I cancel this thing over my life.

So our keys to freedom are: recognising there's a problem, standing up and identifying with Christ, repenting of the sin, renouncing the bondage, forgiving those who've hurt us, and claiming freedom in Christ. It's always the same pretty well for all areas of deliverance; recognise the problem, repent of any sin, renounce any cursings, release forgiveness, and receive forgiveness for what we've done, and then make a stand to resist. Later on we'll lead you through a prayer to make a stand around that area, and let's see what God will do. Remember what it is again; I need to recognise the problem and own responsibility, it's my problem. It won't go until I own it. Secondly, I need to come to the Lord, and acknowledge who He is and what He's done, and repent of any sin that gives this thing right to be there. Third, I need to release forgiveness to any who have hurt me, or opened the way for this cursing to come; four, to renounce the spirit, to renounce the bondage, in Jesus' name I renounce and cancel any bondage caused by this, any legal right, any legal ground established by this sin, and then resist the spirits; in Jesus' name, go from my life, I resist you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'll lead you in a prayer a little later to do that. It's quite simple.

So that's the foundation. It's always the same foundations for freedom. You can move them around, change them a little, but it always seems to me to come down to the same thing; I need to identify with Christ, recognise the problem, identify with Christ, I need to come to a place of repentance, releasing forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, renouncing sin, renouncing the curses, and then resisting. It's always the same, and I've put it down in some words which are quite easy to remember: recognise, repent, renounce, release, receive and resist, quite simple things. Recognise the problem and take responsibility, repent of the sin that opened the door, renounce any cursing, release forgiveness and receive forgiveness, then resist all spirits that were involved - so that's how we do it. It's not very hard and in dealing with a person, or helping a person, you would just do a simple thing like that, lead them through a prayer to acknowledge Christ, confess the sin, renounce the sin, renounce the curse, release forgiveness and then claim freedom.

Our part is break the curse. It's not hard - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. It's not very hard that part of it, that's the easy part. The harder part is finding out what the root cause, what the root bondage is. Okay then, so sometimes there's a little bit of - we'll talk about how to do the process of deliverance this afternoon, the session after lunch, but it's helpful if you just understand, that for setting people free, I always see that there are several things are needed for it, so I'll just go through them again - to set a person free. Number one, they must recognise and take responsibility for their problem. They have to own it. If a person's blaming someone else, trying to find a reason someone else is to blame, they're never going to be free. You only have the power over what you own, and what you're responsible for, so the first place is recognition. If you recognise that you have a problem operating in your life now, don't be blaming anyone else. Say God, what is my part in this? What do I need to do to get free?

Sometimes people want to blame a parent. Well maybe a parent was a terrible parent - that doesn't mean we shouldn't honour them. God will hold them responsible for what they do. Your part is to create honour, and to have a right attitude, so number one, I get them to face and own responsibility for what they have done; number two, I get the person - almost always I've found it helpful if they acknowledge their relationship with Christ and what He's done, a very, very simple thing like: I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, and all the power of sin. It's helpful to acknowledge that. Just even doing that, you position yourself for a battle. It's just saying: I'm on the Lord's side. It's putting words to: I'm on the Lord's side, and I belong to Him, and it's quite helpful always to do that. I come to You Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus Christ. It's really helpful to make that kind of profession of faith. Now Lord, I confess this cursing, or I confess this sin that's upon my life right now, I ask you to forgive me. It's really good to just be quite honest and straight forward about that.

The next part I will vary a little bit, depending on how the Holy Ghost leads, but it's always both are there. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who have hurt me, and I receive Your forgiveness for my sins. I release forgiveness, I release forgiveness. I give forgiveness. Lord, You've forgiven me, I forgive them. It is important from the heart to let go forgiveness. If we don't, bondages stay there. Then the next thing is: now I renounce this curse, I renounce that curse of poverty, I renounce that curse that's come, that occultism, that spirit that's come down our family line. I renounce it in Jesus' name. I cancel its power. All agreements my family have made with evil spirits, or all actions they've done that open the way for the curse, I just renounce them now. I speak them off my life. Now Lord, I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name.

I've found that a very simple process to work through. You don't have to remember lots. I find it hard, if I have lots of written prayers, to be able to feel the flow of the spirit in it. I like to be able to flow out of a revelation in the spirit, rather than trying to have it a routine. Some like a routine, have it all written down. I've found it helpful if you can just remember the key parts, and stay in the flow of listening to God as you speak and pray. So the first part - we'll just go back over it again - the person has to own responsibility, it is my problem. I'm not blaming anyone, I've just come to own my part, and get set free. This is a crucial one, and most of your preparation is around that. The second thing is then, I lead them to profess their faith in Christ; Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come to You in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, from every curse, every evil spirit, every sin. It's all broken, in Jesus' name. I belong to Jesus Christ wholly.

Now that's like making a profession of faith. Now I repent of the sin, I turn to You and confess Lord, I'm asking for Your forgiveness, and I choose to release forgiveness. I hold nothing in my heart, no judgement, no bitterness. I renounce all bitter judgements and all inner vows that I have made, anything that's locked my life up to this thing. Lord, I renounce the cursings that are over my life. I speak them off, I cancel their power, any agreements - and think back that there may be someone's made agreements with the demons, someone has actually entered into covenant with the demon. We don't know what people have done, as the Holy Spirit leaves. Some people cut themselves, and have blood lettings to demons. That's very powerful, and so we need to just renounce them all, because the blood of Jesus is more powerful than that. Then finally resist, I take a stand to resist.

So in ministering to people that part, if you can get the heart prepared then the ministry of deliverance is quite easy. It's just breaking the curses: in Jesus' name I just break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. Okay, so how are we doing? Why don't we just stand up and move around, have a break for five minutes.

Great, okay. One of the things you'll realise as we look at the work of deliverance, we need the Holy Ghost. There is just too much that's covered that you wouldn't know. You can't do it without the presence of the Holy Spirit. That's why I got you in your first exercise, it was just getting used to flowing with the Holy Spirit. We'll do another one of those before we finish this morning, and then this afternoon we want to look at the whole area of just actually deliverance, what it would involve. Okay, how many have already become aware, I've got some issues that I would like to have sorted out? Okay, that's great, so we'll have some time to minister and pray today, but some of these things, there's a journey on them, and there are two approaches; one is we just believe God together, we lead you through prayer, and have a time of ministry. That will bring a certain measure of release. There's another way of dealing with it, which is by process, taking one problem in your life and step by step dealing with everything that contributes to it, then removing the demonic spirits out of it.

This is where the course Prayers the Heal the Heart help with that. They take one issue and you walk your way down all the possible contributing factors, then deal with the demons around it. So there's no one way of doing things, and we're wanting to teach you about how to flow and to work with the Holy Spirit, how to work in deliverance, so I won't go into every aspect. We'll just keep you in just what I consider the basics. I want to have a look just at the issue of breaking bondages, bondages. Bondage, you think of someone tied up, as in bondage. In Luke 13, Verse 16, Jesus said ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bondage on the Sabbath? You've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but received the spirit that places you into sonship, by which we call out Abba, Father. So people can have bondages. Now there are a whole range of different bondages, but almost always they end up with issues in your heart, and what I want to do is I want to identify a number of issues of the heart.

The Bible says in Proverbs 4 and Verse 23, it says: guard your heart, because out of your heart flow all the issues of your life. Keep your heart, for out of your heart will flow the issues of your life. So in my work with deliverance over a number of years, I've found that the majority of problems were caused by legal rights, but the legal rights were formed not just by sin, but also by, in many instances, reactions people made to being hurt, so I've listed some that I have worked with. I want to just identify them for you so you become aware that these things are a bondage. It's not hard to break them, but you've got to recognise that it exists. When you recognise it exists, and exercise authority over it, it will break, and then if there's any demon attached to it, you can get it out. So it's only the anointing of the Holy Spirit can break the yokes of bondage, only God can do it, but He requires that we engage with Him in that journey. Let's go through and have a little look at some of the different kinds of bondages.

I've already referred to some of these. Let's just explain what each one is. Number one, an ungodly soul tie or soul attachment, see? A soul tie or a soul attachment, now a soul tie is a bonding between two people. God has designed us to be joined. We can join to the Lord, and be spiritually bonded to Him. We can join with people, and be bonded to people. It says this guy in the Old Testament, Genesis 34, Verse 3, he abused Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and his soul cleaved, or joined to her. So soul ties can be good, they can be Godly, a husband and wife are bonded together, parents and children there's a bonding together. Those are good bondings. Bonding is very, very important. When we become part of a church, there's a bonding. We get connected, we feel bonded, so a bonding is a crucial part of human development, the attachment. You find a baby that does not attach or bond properly to a parent, never forms good intimate relationships, so God has designed us for bonding and the first process or task any person has in life is to bond, so a child that doesn't bond will have huge issues later in life.

Then we need to separate and have our own identity, so if you can't separate and be your own person, you've also got problems. But soul ties have to do with bonding, a Godly bonding or joining together, husband and wife, parent and child, members of a church, good friends. For example, Jonathan and David were great friends. The heart of Jonathan knit, or was bonded, to David. They were great friends. We sometimes use the world soul mates, there's a feeling of connectedness, and to be separated would create distress - but soul ties can also be ungodly, and they can be demonic in origin, out of God's order, and when they're out of God's order, then stress, demonic activity, and pain and troubles start to take place. If a soul tie is ungodly, it's not in God's order, it's out of order, so for example, sexual relationships outside marriage, the two are bound or bonded together. That's an ungodly joining, and demon spirits can use it to harass people. A person can even be bound, or soul tied, to images. That's one of the deep problems with pornography, is the person gets bonded to sexual images, and there's a tie to an image that they see, a fantasy realm, or fantasising, and that whole realm, there's like a chord that's between them needs to be broken.

A person can be soul tied to a controlling person, so you get perhaps a father who's very abusive, controlling. There's a love/hate relationship goes on with that person. They're bonded, and the child often can't break away; or it could be a controlling mother, an insecure mother who just fusses over, and fills the child so much with anxiety, they can't seem to do anything for themselves. The result is the child is soul tied in an unhealthy way to the mother, and unable to break free. We call a person like that co-dependent, they're dependent on the approval of someone and they can't live their life out. They're soul tied to the one they're dependent on. Another one is if someone is abusive, sexually abusive, physically abusive or verbally abusive, the most extraordinary thing is to find how many women cannot break free of an abusive man. There has to be a reason apart from logical - I mean logic, you think why would you stay there? They just say I don't know. They just can't seem to break free, because there is a soul tie and a demonic power operating, and often a person who's in an abusive relationship needs quite some support to break free. Without the support of friends they just keep feeling obliged, or guilty, or duty-bound to go back.

People can even be soul tied to a dead person. What do I mean by that? Suppose someone has not bonded well to their parents, got a strong attachment with a grandmother or grandfather, and they die, and they never let go or grieve properly. Now one of the first phases of grief is shock and denial, so many times when a person comes into a grieving process, instead of journeying through grief, they actually stop and lock up at the first phase, denial, or the second phase, anger. They're just stuck in being angry, and denying the whole thing, so they don't journey through grief, through it's stages, to get to release, and they remain locked to the person they've lost. I have known of people who were soul tied to a dead child that they lost, to a dead spouse, to a dead parent or grandparent, even to a dead animal. They got so attached, and then the grief was immense, and then somehow their life just fell apart afterwards. So soul ties are very, very powerful, and if they're ungodly or out of order or distorted in some way, then demonic spirits can harass the person.

People can also be soul tied to an idol, so if someone's been involved in idolatry often a huge fear is of letting go of that idol, what will happen to me if I let go? People can be soul tied to a trauma, a traumatic experience, like an accident or an abuse. They can be soul tied to pornographic images. People can be soul tied through blood covenants they've made, they're soul tied to a demonic spirit or someone else, another person they've made a blood covenant with. Sometimes people can be soul tied through tattoos to the person who shed blood in the making of the tattoo. Tattoos can open the door for evil spirits. I'm not saying every person who's got a tattoo has got demons, but I have prayed for people, and when we broke the soul tie to the tattooist, and came against the spirits entering in through the tattoo, there was massive deliverance. Often it's because underneath it, there was a deep rejection or rebellion that was mobilising the person to get the tattoo in the first place.

Some of you here may have tattoos, or you've got them cleverly hidden. We're not condemning you, you have what you have. It's just helpful to be aware that all of these things can be doorways through which spirits can afflict people. So whenever there's a soul tie, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we just break that soul tie now, we hold the cross of Christ between those two people, and release you from it. It's quite a simple thing to do, just as simple as that. Imagine a cord between the two people - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just cut that soul tie right now. I break it in Jesus' name, and as you're breaking it, begin to look in the spirit, look and allow God to show you what's happening. Often you'll find there'll be just a sudden release, command the spirit using that soul tie, to go.

Another one which is a very common one which I've found is a death wish. When people are in a lot of pain or trauma, they make a death wish, they wish I just wish I was dead. So when a person does that, and there's examples in the Bible; Moses did it, Elijah did it, in various times of stress. When a person makes a death wish, they can open the door to agreement with a spirit of death. I just wish I was dead, spirit comes around them and then they get numbed out, and disconnected, so often death wishes are made when a person's experienced sexual abuse, painful failure, I just wish I could die. A long period of extended stress and pressure, a controlling relationship and the emotional turmoil, they can't see a way out. They just I just wish I was dead, so when a person has a death wish, that thing opens the door to a spirit of death, and often subsequently in times of stress, they suddenly feel they want to die.

Then spirits of suicide will come around and say: oh well, it's the best thing, do yourself a favour, do everyone else a favour, just kill yourself. The person is tormented by demonic spirits of suicide, and despair, and deep self-rejection, so when a person makes a death wish, they've given up hope that God has a great future, and they could walk their way through, and they've rejected their own selves and they're saying: I just wish I was dead. A lot of teenagers get locked in this kind of thing, and that becomes a major problem for them, so when a person does this they become in agreement with a spiritual power, the spirit of death that numbs and isolates them. Maybe some of you have been through a time of stress like that, and in that time of stress and pain have started to say those things. You would have found that subsequently in life, when you're in stress, you'll easily tend towards become full of despair and hopelessness, and rejecting yourself, and then wanting to die.

If that's been the case, should just open it out, bring it out to the Lord, and let God help you with it. In dealing with a death wish, usually there's a pain that goes with it. It's helpful to talk about the pain and what happened, release forgiveness into the situation, and then renounce the death wish; in Jesus' name, I just renounce that death wish. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I cancel its power right now. I choose life. God is with me, life is good, God has a great plan for my life. So God is a God of hope, so when people lose hope, that's when they start to make these death wishes, and they're far more common that you realise. When people make them, they don't realise the agreement they've made with a spirit of death, and what it can open up in their life, so just be aware of that one. I just wish I was dead, I just want to die - so inevitably it has on-going impact in relational closeness, and the ability to form close bonds. The person will isolate, withdraw, and shut down, and just want to die.

Okay, we've gone all quiet on that one. I assume there's one or two have made those death wishes, so it may well be that that's something you just need to put a tick beside, or a cross beside, or a circle around, and say I need to, before the day is out, resolve that issue. Amen? Okay then, and you resolve it by acknowledging it, and repenting of that desire to die, and choosing life. I renounce that death wish. Okay, here's another one, a third one. The third one, which is a very common one too, is an inner vow, an inner vow. A vow, is a word you speak, which binds you to a commitment, like if people make a wedding vow, they speak the words out, and they make commitments to one another. An inner vow is words spoken into yourself, and an inner vow usually goes something like this. It usually starts with I'll never do this, I'll never do that, I'll never trust a man, I'll never trust a woman, I'll never go out, I'll never do this and do that. For example, one of the things I did as an inner vow, when I was a teenager about 14, I can remember it clearly, absolutely clearly, and we had to do this performing at school and stuff like that. I made an inner vow, I'll never sing anywhere in front of people. [Laughter]

So of course I had these problems inside me all the time, I couldn't worship, couldn't let go, I wasn't free until I dealt with the inner vow. You would never think now of course that, but on the other hand, that was what was there. There was just a deep shame and a struggle I was facing in early teenage years, and singing just exemplified for me, just being on display and exposed. I just did not want to have that kind of exposure. I made an inner vow not to do it. I remember praying with another woman, and she'd had a number of miscarriages, and she'd asked me to come and pray for her. I remember going there thinking God, this is so distressing, what do we do? I don't know what to do. The Lord said, the child she's losing is a boy, all of them have been boys. Tell her to ask her father to pray for her. That's all He told me, so I got there to the place, and we tried to comfort the couple. They were losing a child again, and there's a number of miscarriages. I said, what do you think the child is? She said I think it's a boy. Oh really, that's interesting. I said what about the other one? Actually I think they were all boys. I said well I tell you what, your father's a Christian. I said how do you get on with your father? She said oh fine, I love my dad and he loves me, actually I'm his favourite, and so I'm thinking, and I said: why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No, I wouldn't do that! I said really, there's a lot of reaction there, what's going on in there?

So we began to talk, and then it turns out the family was incredibly dysfunctional, and the marriage was in problem, and the father had connected in an unhealthy way to one daughter, and the mother to the other daughter, and both daughters were messed up in different ways; one, because of the parents had transferred what should have been the intimacy of marriage, and put it on the child, and shared things they should never have shared, so the child felt controlled. I said did you ever, at any time, make an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child? She stopped and looked, she said yes, I did, I remember it clearly. She had made an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child, and so each child that she had, she just miscarried. Her body literally outworked the vow, and I believe behind it was a demonic spirit - so of course there are many other examples of things like that. But inner vows, vows spoken and made within, they're usually made in a time of pressure, stress, emotional pain, and/or loss, or tragedy in a relationship, and they often begin I'll never do that, I'll never do that.

Can anyone think of doing that, can anyone think that? Isn't it amazing. Can you remember what you said? Now just stop for a moment, and think back to when you made that inner vow. Were you in pain and stress at that time? See, well if you haven't actually come and addressed that, it's still operative, and so you'll have a block in your life to flowing into that area, because a demonic spirit will lock onto it, and hold you in bondage in that area. You'll try, later on you'll put it aside. It's like something you remember from way back. Now let me ask you this question: when you think about that area you made the inner vow, how many of you really have broken through to freedom in that area now? See, you may find not so many are free. It's like, I've got a struggle - how many would struggle still in that area? It's like I've got to really work at that. The fact you've got to work at it, and it doesn't flow naturally indicates a block. Things that we're free in, should flow in our life. When they're blocked, and the flow is blocked you know, or there's a resistance, there's something causing the resistance. What is it? If it's the inner vow why don't you just deal with it and address it, come and open your heart and acknowledge God, these things have happened to me. Lord, I was in such pain and grief, I just renounce that inner vow right now. I choose life. Amen.

So when we come back after lunch we'll start to go through some areas, and have a time of just some ministry, and see what God does. It'll be an interesting time to see what the Lord does. Amen - nothing like learning it through experience yourself and then you think ooh wow! [Laughs] Okay then, so there's another bondage of the heart which is a very common one too, and that is a bitter judgement, bitter-root judgements, or bitter expectations. It's like a negative belief that things are going to happen, and so in Hebrews 12, Verses 14 and 15, it says don't let bitterness get in your heart. It says something like this: let no man fall from the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up. Now whenever you're in conflict you can either act in judgement, or grace. You can either bless people, and let it go, or you can judge people, and become bitter. That's really the options, so if you are in a conflict situation and you begin to judge, you often open the way then for things to happen, or a cycle to take place in your life.

In Matthew 7, Verses 1 and 2, it says do not judge, lest you will be judged. The judgement you judge, that's how it'll come back to you. The measure you give it out, it'll be measured back. So when you judge someone, you set in cycle, or you set in place, a cycle of sowing and reaping. Remember what it says: if you judge, it comes back to you, the same way. In other words, the very thing you judged, now you find you're experiencing the very same thing, it's the law of sowing and reaping. So when a person makes a bitter judgement it's like they expect that this is what's going to happen. It's like a negative faith. It will attract into your life the very thing that you actually have judged, so for example, you can never trust men, men will always let you down. So you notice most bitter judgements have the word 'never' or 'always' in it, never or always. When you hear the word always - well you 'alway's do that - that then tells you there's a judgement there. Well you 'never' do that - that tells you there's a judgement there, because you're not dealing any more with a single issue, you're dealing with a judgement.

If someone says you never do that, that's a judgement. If someone says you always do that, that's a judgement. How could it be true I never do that? How could it be true I always do that? It's just not true - so you know, you can never trust men, they will always let you down. You can see the two words of judgement in there, never and always. Now do you know what a person who comes to that - now usually a person who comes to that judgement, has had a bad experience, or some bad experiences, with a person, a man - so a woman would make a statement like that. She may have had some bad deals with her father, or with some person she's in a relationship with, and she gets very hurt, and out of all her hurt and resentment, she comes to the place, well never trust men, they'll always let you down. Now what happens is now is, now there's a judgement in the heart, and the Bible says if there's a judgement in the heart, you can't see clearly any more. You can't see the good, you can only see that, so for a person who makes a judgement, for a person who for example, who's got a spirit of rejection over their life, and they believe something like this: I'll never be good enough, nothing I ever do is good enough. Now you know what'll happen? No matter what they do, every time they look at it, they themselves will see the fault. They can't see the good, they just see the fault. Why? Because their heart resonates, it's not good enough.

It already is decided what the outcome is, it's not going to be good enough. A person who's, I'll never be accepted, or no one could ever love me, you know what'll happen? They'll enter relationship expecting to be rejected, and then whatever happens, they'll interpret it immediately through the judgement. I'll give you another example, it's quite an easy one to pick, and this is it. Suppose we have a person who's got a deep rejection in their heart, they have a spirit of rejection, but they've also got a bitter judgement in the heart. The bitter judgement is, no one accepts me or wants me. Then suppose two men are standing there talking, and I happen to walk in, I'm very busy, preoccupied, I walk by, go past them both. I'm on my way, and both of them say: morning Pastor, how are you this morning? And I just didn't hear, I just got preoccupied as I sometimes do and away I go and didn't hear. I didn't say anything to either of them, I just missed it, because I was focussing on something else. Alright then, now one of them will look and say: oh he's obviously preoccupied and busy, I'll catch him later. The other one will look at it and say: he doesn't like me.

Now one of them is seeing out of a pure heart that just sees, oh, he must be busy, he didn't hear what I said. Just there's no judgement whatsoever, it's just an observation - oh, he's missed me, I'll catch him later. The other one has re-read it through the eyes of a judgement, and has interpreted it completely different. You would be amazed how many conflicts in relationships come about because we judge, rather than observe. When you judge, you cannot see clearly. When I judge, I'm ascribing some motivation to you, which I have really no way of telling whether it's there. It's my judgement I'm putting on you, and I'll be tormented, so the two men saw the same event; one read it one way, one read it the other way, but it was the same event. How could it be both? It can't be. It was just something happened. It's how they judged it, is what made the pain and the torment for one, and the freedom for another. One said: it doesn't mean anything; the other said: it means this, it means he doesn't like me.

The one who says, it means he doesn't like me, is now tormented and demons keep tormenting him, and it just racks around in his day and day and day. I've had people come to me after two years and say you know, two years ago you did this. I'm thinking two years ago? I don't remember two minutes ago! [Laughter] You know, two years ago! How can you remember two years ago? They'd been in torment for two years. [Laughter] I'm thinking whoa! I remember a person who'd been in our church for many years and came and did that, and I was stunned you know, to think you've been tormented and sitting there angry at me for two years! I didn't have a clue, but the problem was they misinterpreted something. They actually put a judgement on it. Now the dilemma with judgements is, when you have judgements in your life, they are a conclusion you yourself formed, and you will live out of your judgements.

Here's one of the things about bitter judgements is they're like the opposite to faith. Faith brings in the good things of God, bitter judgements bring in the very bad things you expected, now are drawn like a magnet into your life. So even if the person is a good person, so suppose you get a young woman marries a man, and her belief is: you can never trust a man, they'll always let you down, then you know what'll happen? That man's going to let her down, and before he lets her down in reality, she'll accuse him of letting her down many times, when he didn't let her down at all. In other words, she will defile it. I'll give you an example. I was asked to counsel one person in Taiwan and I don't know why they asked me. They asked me to counsel them, so I asked what's the problem? She said well I've got this guy wants to marry me. I said well that's interesting. She said well, I've got a child. I said oh, that's interesting, how old's your child? She told me how old the child is. I said who's the father of the child? Oh, it's another guy. Okay, so tell me more.

Anyway she told the story and here's the story. She'd had a relationship with this guy that's now wanting to marry her, and the relationship broke up, she had a fling with someone else as a reaction, got pregnant, had the child, and now she's got the baby, and the other guy, the first guy is now interested in her, and now she's weighing up whether she should marry him. I said is he Christian? No. Oh okay then, why would you go ahead and want to do that? I said really, tell me why did the relationship break up? She said well, while we were going out together, he was unfaithful to me three times. I said really? Well is he Christian yet? No, no. I said well he's not changed then has he? He's the same person he was, he was unfaithful then, he's unfaithful again, so you're just asking for trouble. Do not do this. Then I said, tell me about your father, how's your father doing? How do you get on with your father? I don't see my father much. I said why is that? Well the parents broke up when I was a teenager. I said oh, isn't that interesting, you don't see him anymore? She said no, we don't get on too well. I said really, that's interesting - so tell me why did the marriage break up? She said he was unfaithful to my mother. I said how many times? Three times.

I said, can you not see, that you are having a re-run of the bitter judgement of your father? It's literally replaying in your life again, just like it originally happened. Your father was unfaithful with your mother, he betrayed your mother, betrayed you, the marriage broke up, and he has caused huge grief and pain to your life - and you have judged him. Now, you're drawing into someone who'd done exactly the same to you, and having broken free once, now you're drawing back in again to the same thing. You've got the conflict with your father, and this is defiling how you see this relationship. You know what she said? I don't see that. I said I'm sorry, I can't help you, because this is actually how it is. You have a bitter judgement against your father, and it's going to defile your relationships with men the rest of your life, until you actually address it. This is what the problem is. I said my counsel is very simple: do not marry the man. You've got a problem in your heart with all men, and you need to resolve that first. But she didn't see it, so I've no doubt she's carried on - quite a shame really, but you know, people - I was reminded again afterwards - I don't judge her for that. That's how life works, you know?

We make our choices - but how Jesus said: judge not lest you be judged, the same measure you judge, it'll come back to you. Then He said - notice this - He said hypocrite, first remove the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly, to get the speck out of the other. So what He's saying is, when you've got judgement, it's like a big beam in your eye and you can't see clearly, so if you want to see clearly in relationship, you have to remove judgement. Judgements are demonic doorways for spirits to come in, because Satan's the great accuser, so if you have a bitter judgement in your heart, it's a huge open doorway for an evil spirit to come in, so any time - so if it's a woman's got an issue with men, she's going to have trouble with men all her life, because every time they do something, the accusing spirits will accuse and wind it up, and next thing you know, it's in high drive and high emotions, emotions beyond what the incident called for. So if you ever see someone who's in a high overdrive in their emotions, well above what the situation called for, they have got bitter judgements in their heart, there's unresolved conflict in their heart, and demons have got a hold of their life.

The problem is not the demons. They're just energising what's already there, and making it worse. The problems are the bitter judgements, and the person needs to repent, release forgiveness, let go, and start to have grace, and extend grace to people. I'd really ask the Lord to help me to be a gracious person, to extend grace, and to walk in grace. It's not always the easiest thing to do.

Here's another bondage in the heart, that's the area of word curses, word curses. Word curses are words which are spoken with strength or feeling behind it, and if the person agrees with the words, then they agree with the demon that's behind it. In Proverbs 18:21 it says death and life are in the power of the tongue, so when you speak words, you have power to release things. Get this: the first use of words in the Bible was to bring something from the spirit world into the earth, into reality, so words, their first use, is to bring something from heaven into the earth, or from hell into the earth. So cursing, cursing words will always have an impact on people. One of the things that is a common form of cursing are words, names, calling people by names, abusive words, you know, you're a dummy, you're stupid. You'd be amazed how many people have got this thing going on in their mind, I'm stupid, I'm stupid - and here they are, capable, intelligent people - but I'm stupid, I can't do that. For example, one of the most common places we find it is this, when we run the Bible School. When we run the Bible School, do you know what probably half if not more of the people have a struggle with? I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I can't do study.

Where did they learn that? Who told you you can't do that? You're a Holy Ghost person now, you can do all kinds of things you couldn't do before - but no, there's a lock of words spoken over them, or words they've spoken in, or agreed with in their heart, I can't do this, I'm a dummy or I'm stupid or whatever and they've come into agreement with it. So word curses, particularly words spoken by a father, by a mother, by a teacher, by a Pastor, can have great power in behind them, and can carry on devastation in a person's life. I remember laying hands on one lady, and I put my hands on her head. The moment I put my hands on her head, I heard the words that were spoken over her, and I spoke them out. She broke down and wept and wept and wept, and we broke the power of those words, and she got delivered straight away of the curse that come on her life, so word curses, or judgements, or accusations that are made by people - especially in a family, sometimes one person gets scapegoated; it's your fault, your fault, and you know what? They get this thing in their mind, it's my fault, and so they've come into agreement with it, it's my fault, it's my fault. You know what happens every time a problem comes up? It must be my fault, it's always my fault. Then a despair, and a hopelessness, they're unable to resolve problems, demons are working around their life.

Okay then, then the last one I want to just bring out, is the area of burdens or expectations placed by others upon people. A burden is like a cargo, it's like a weight you carry, and it brings stress and pressure around your life. They can be a real thing that's on you, or it can be just something you perceive. For example Jesus accused the religious leaders, you put all these expectations or burdens on people, and it just weighs them down. Now some people have burdens placed on them by their family, and they can be around a simple thing like, you have to be here on a Sunday for lunch. Now having family times together are wonderful, but when it actually becomes something that's on you so hard, you dare not even break that, you've got a problem there. Of course the burdens can be quite intense and unrealistic, for example a person can have such - like the eldest child, there can be huge expectation on the eldest child, to carry the other kids. They can shudder under that, and become burdened under that, and it creates problems for them, then they feel responsible for everyone in life, and have no proper boundaries in their life.

Another kind of burden that's put on is, it's your fault. I mentioned that before, where someone's scapegoated or blamed all the time: it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. Sometimes a mother who's got trouble with her husband, and she sees in one of the children the boy that looks like the husband, or carries on like the husband, often he'll be the butt of her resentment and bitterness, and the grief and frustration will be poured out there. The child grows up with an unreasonable burden, I'm responsible, when anything goes wrong, it's my fault. I struggled with that for many years, and had to wrestle, try and break that one off. Particularly if you're from a Catholic background, you can carry this immense sense of guilt and expectation, you're not good enough somehow, and it can be a very, very strong thing.

Another cause of burdens on people, is where a parent fails, and becomes the child, and puts the weight or transfers the parenting to the child. It's called parental inversion, so for example a mother's an alcoholic, or a father's an alcoholic, and one of the children has to arise, and in every kind of respect they carry the parent's duties, except in the bed. Then there's what's called parental inversion.

Now what happens then is, the child loses their joy of childhood, and there's this burden placed on them, so I have found it helpful just to break that burden of responsibility, and lead them in a confession to release the burden, and then we just break that weight of expectation off them. The last one under that list there, is a code of silence or secrecy, which often happens in a family where there's been abuse of some kind, or there's dysfunction, and we don't talk, we don't tell anyone about our issues, or we don't talk outside family. What happens is, the person becomes burdened. It can happen in church, where someone makes someone be secret about the counsel, or secret about things. This is all a burden, so for example - and if you're a leader you can be trapped in it - someone comes to you and says I've got something terrible I've got to share with you, and I just want to know I can trust you, that you won't share it. Will you promise you won't tell anyone?

Now my alarm bells go off when someone says will you promise you won't tell anyone, because it's likely what they're going to tell me is going to be a problem for me, so I have to usually try and say - it's not the same since I'm a senior leader, but when I was working in church in a leadership level, I'd have to say listen, I will respect your confidentiality. However if it's a serious matter, and I felt it necessary to refer it to someone above me, I will do that, and you have to trust that I'll use good judgement over that. If you can't accept that, don't share it with me. Now sometimes the desire to be in the know, can cause you to lack discretion and protect yourself, so if that person had said to me: well promise me you won't tell the Pastor what I've done - okay, I promise. Now they tell me, and I think oh my God, they're the worship leader, or this or that, or the youth leader, and they're sleeping with this person, and they've just told me. What on earth am I going to do? So next time I see the Pastor I'm in trouble, because I've got this burden inside me, and I'm tormented by spirits, because now my relationship is fractured, I can't be open and transparent.

Now I'm not talking about good sensible confidentiality in counsel. We're talking about being put a burden of secrecy you can't keep. It just burdens you and I have some people come to me, said I've been sitting on this for six months, and it's just weighed me down. They tell me what happened, and they were caught in a situation like that, and we break the power of that agreement they made, release them from the bondage, command the spirit of death - because there's always a spirit of death around it - to leave it. Sometimes if someone's been abused, the abuser will tell them: you mustn't tell anyone, if you tell someone you'll be responsible for the family breaking up. [Inhales sharply] and so they're caught. I want to tell someone, I don't want the family to break up, ooh - and they're burdened, tormented by spirits, and it's a huge relief to be able to get that veil of silence. It's a very simple thing, in setting people free we need to recognise what the bondage is, let the person renounce the bondage, speak it off their life, and then we pray and break the power of the bondage; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break this bondage.

Okay, I've got a list of some details on that for you in the notes, on the How to Break Bondages. This afternoon we'll get into it and do some of it. How many of you, having gone through that teaching, would recognise that there are some areas of bondage that are sitting on your life? A soul tie? Just hand up and down - soul tie, ungodly soul tie, alright. A death wish, how many have got that sitting there around their life? Okay, some have got that. An inner vow of some kind? Okay, some have got that. Some bitter judgements against someone, against men, women, church, Government, authorities... let's go through it. It can go through against Maori, it can go through Pakeha, it can be racial in orientation, it's a judgement. It will always reproduce something. How many realise there's a judgement in their life around that area? Okay, quite a few. Alright then, what about words spoken, curses put over you, spoken over you, you're in agreement with? Okay, there's a few of them there, alright then.

How many of you have got burdens that someone else put on you, either blame or expectations or secrecy? How many have got something in those areas? Oh, okay, we've got hands going up all over the place, alright then. So after lunch we need to come in, and have a time to minister and pray for some of these areas, and in the praying and ministry we want to be aware of the Holy Spirit, sensitive to the Holy Spirit and we want you to learn. It's not a Freedom Retreat or a Restoration Restoration Retreat where the focus is on the ministry. The focus here is on helping you get understanding about how to minister, so that's the key is, how to minister, and one of the best ways is to get some experience of it yourself, okay?

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)  

Sun 8 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.

Okay, let's just come back to we'll have a look on Page 15, Section 5. We're obviously not going to get through the whole manual but we'll just do what we can in the time that we have. Sometimes it's better to see some things, than it is to just teach a lot about them, so I'll try and contain the teaching a little bit, because you've already seen some of the things we're about to talk about. You've already seen it take place, so we talked about Jesus' ministry, we talked about the whole work of the Holy Spirit in deliverance. We looked at Jesus' teaching on deliverance, we looked at an example of Him delivering someone, then we went on to look at how demons get into people's lives. We found some of the main doors of entry. We also looked at particular bondages of the heart that create avenues or ways people can be kept in bondage, and what it takes to break those.

Now we just want to look at a couple of things, want to look at the area of the casting out of spirits, just the simple dynamics of what to do, and then we'll look at just the area of the heart, and just dealing with some of the issues of the heart, how you would - just a way of going about doing it. Remember there's no one way of doing anything - this is THE way. THE way is to depend on the Holy Spirit, and be led by Him. All the rest is people's opinions on how it could be done, so different people have different ways of doing it, and there are a variety of ways, like for example we have most years an Encounter Retreat. We have what's called a Freedom Retreat, and we have a Restoration Retreat, which Pastor Lynne runs. These are encounters, so they are set up for spiritual encounters, so over the space of a Friday night, Saturday, and maybe into Sunday, every meeting is geared for an encounter experience. In those experiences where faith is lifted up, often there's a great atmosphere where God moves, and a lot of things happen that sometimes you didn't even teach about or anything. It's just God is moving, so encounters are great ways of getting freedom.

However it's also true that process is important, and once we're free we still need to stay free, so another way of doing it, is the process that Pastor Sargin and his wife Jess have been running, and that involves systematically going through some teaching, getting insight around the various blocks of the heart, leading up to identifying main root causes, and then ministry. And of course when you have that, you learn the process then of how to identify and track your problems to the roots. That's also a very powerful way, and various other people have different ways of doing it, so I just think we just take what we share with you, and then begin to explore opportunities to pray and minister to people. None of us at this level are experts. We're all just - we can handle just the basic things, and that's good - so we want to cast out spirits. So what is involved in casting out spirits?

I think probably the first thing is you've got to diagnose the problem. You have to find the problem first of all. Without diagnosing it - to diagnose something, is to try and find out what are the roots, what are the doors of entry that create the problems, so how do we do that? These are the kinds of questions you could ask. You might like to jot them down. What is the problem? [Laughs] That's the first thing: what is your problem? What is the struggle or difficulty you're having? You notice every person that came up, I asked them well what is the problem? The second question to ask is how long have you had this problem, how long have you had it, because if it's a lifelong problem, then you know it's possibly generational root cause. You notice when I asked Megan how long is the problem? Six months - we were then able to say what happened about six months ago? Oh, my mother died. Often we don't connect an event in our life, or something that we did, with the problems we're subsequently having. We just don't connect it, because it doesn't look like it's connected - so always ask: what is the problem? How is it affecting you? How long have you had it? Those are good questions. What's the fruit and the symptoms? How is it affecting you?

It's also helpful if you ask: have you been to anyone else? [Laughs] Are you currently going to anyone else - because I've found that someone may already have done a lot of work with them, then they wanted them to repent of a sin, and they didn't repent, and now they've come to you for a different story. So it always helps to find out if anyone else has been dealing with the problem, and I hate it when they come and say: I've been to 20 counsellors, now I'm coming to you. [Laughter] I tell them: I can't solve your problem. Only Jesus can, and you've got to meet His conditions, so let's get you talking about Jesus, and the meeting his conditions. [Laughs] So the next thing is, what possible doors of entry, what possible doors of entry? Now we've given you a list of possible doors of entry. It's helpful to keep those in mind; generational curses and iniquities, things in the family that are family origin. We looked at the area of sin, habits or patterns of sin. We looked at a range of other areas; sexual sin, occultic areas and some of the various kinds of trauma and so on, so we looked at a number of ways that evil spirits can get into a person's life. We looked at quite a few of those.

The last one is, what possible heart bondages are there, because this I have learned over the years, I used to just confront the demons and deal with the legal rights, but we need to not only deal with the legal rights. We need to look at the issues of the heart, where demons are attached, because when I used to go to Asia in my initial days, I found that we had a tremendous number of people delivered of spirits because of idolatry and generational curses, and the whole immersion of the culture in idolatrous roots. But what I've observed in the last 10 years, is an increasing number of people with major problems that come out of relationships in the family, and so I've realised that it's not just the legal rights issues around generational spirits, and so on. It's also the things that have gone on in the heart, in terms of reacting to how people are being treated, and so I identified a little while ago some of these bondages of the heart, which you need to be aware of, and need to address.

We've just gone and prayed for a few people, so you can actually see that it is real, that there is freedom comes afterwards, that there's deliverance involved in it, and there's also some kind of bondage you have to break. So there it is - what is the problem? How long have you had this problem? How is it affecting you? Then what possible doors of entry, and we begin to explore their background and so on, then what possible heart bondages? So you'd keep a piece of paper and identify those things. I don't always pray for people after the first time I've met with them. I say well look, I've observed a few things here, and these are the things I've observed. Won't it be good for you to just go away and pray and prepare your heart for ministry, so in other words, give God room, now that we've talked about the things, to work on the person's heart and life. So I've found it very helpful to do that. Sometimes I pray straight away, but often I don't. Often I say: why don't you just have a little bit of time to pray and ask the Lord and prepare your heart, because maybe there's people to forgive, maybe there's some issues of grieving, so I give them a bit of homework, to go and spend some time before the Lord every day, and maybe do some journaling, and ask them to prepare themselves for ministry. Then when they come, then we're ready to go.

Now when the person arrives, probably one of the first things I will ask is: what has God been saying to you? What is in your mind? What is it that's on the top of your mind at the moment? Often the very thing that they will talk about, is the key to get into their life. It's quite extraordinary, the one thing that's just at the top of their mind, the Holy Spirit has put there, so always we depend on the Holy Spirit. How would we do the ministry session? I would just usually explain to them look - I want to explain to them how to co-operate; I need you to co-operate with me. This is not about just me setting you free. This is about us working with the Holy Spirit, so we'd talk to them about how you can co-operate, and what their part is in it. I say the first thing is, you have to take ownership, this is your problem, and even if there are demons, it is your issue to bring to the Lord, with faith in your heart, believing for Him to help you. It's Jesus that can set you free.

We'd explain the grounds to be set free, that there's got to be repentance, you've got to bring sin - sin creates the legal grounds, so I'd explain to them you need to confess sin to the Lord. It has to come to the cross, otherwise the legal grounds remain there. I'd tell them about the need to release forgiveness, that unforgiveness will keep the person in bondage; the need to renounce or speak words, to cancel bondages or agreements with demons, and then to be quite proactive in resisting, quite proactive in resisting. So I'll tell them then, as we begin our ministry time, I'm going to lead you in a prayer, to acknowledge who Christ is, what He's done for you, and to dismantle the demonic legal rights. Afterwards I will pray for you. At that point stop praying, centre your thoughts on the Lord, and just co-operate in the process of deliverance. I've found it quite helpful if people cough, often just the act of [exhales sharply/coughs] it often can trigger off deliverance. Coughing does not deliver you. Many people cough, and they're not delivered - but coughing can mean act of faith in that kind of environment, that I'm resisting this spirit. So I tell them just to co-operate, not be passive, waiting, and letting me do something to them.

Always faith in the Bible always had a dynamic active element to it. They always did something - so then we begin and we start the ministry prayer, so commit our time to the Holy Ghost, ask Him to release His gifts and anointing, and we're ready to go. Holy Ghost, we just welcome You here, we need You, we depend on You. We just invite You to come with power, with revelation, to help us uncover and see the things we need to see. Anoint us so we can minister freedom - quite simple, and not a very hard thing. Then I'll lead the person in prayer. Now you notice each time, I got the person to pray something first of all, so if I was just going through a deliverance process with someone, the prayer I lead you through is the kind of prayer I'd use. It's broken up into these parts, quite easy to remember, first of all acknowledgement of Christ: Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ. Now that's far more important than you realise. It's a confession, or profession of your faith. It's a standing up inside and saying: I'm in the kingdom of God, Jesus is my king, I'm into His dominion, I belong to Him. Everything around my life belongs to Him. I believe that what He did is enough to set me free - so it's a statement to the spirit world of where you are.

I have found it many times when I've ministered to people, they manifested right at that point, so it was just at that point the stuff started to come up. So number one, I get them to acknowledge Christ, and acknowledge what He has done. Number two, I get them to speak and just confess - Father, I just ask You to forgive me for this, this and this and this. I just repent of this sin, I ask Your forgiveness, and I receive forgiveness now. A person needs to not only ask for forgiveness, they need to receive. I thank You Lord for Your forgiveness, I receive Your forgiveness, I forgive those who've hurt me - maybe a father or a mother or someone who's hurt them. I release forgiveness to them, and I forgive myself where I've been involved. Sometimes with sexual sin people need to forgive themselves - so number one, the confession of faith; two, their sin issue; three, forgiveness issues, and then four, renouncing. I renounce every generational curse, I renounce agreements I have made, my family have made with evil spirits. I renounce them. I cancel them. I put the cross of Christ between me and the family line - and it's quite helpful to do that. That makes clear statements, if there's any agreements, I'm cancelling them right now. Those words are very important. Demons listen to the words, and they react sometimes angrily.

Then I get them to say now Lord, I call on You to set me free. I resist the devil. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name. I've just found that helpful. Other people do it different ways. There's no one way, but that's quite an easy way to remember. It keeps in mind the foundations, repentance, release forgiveness, renounce, resist, and reach out to Jesus. Okay, so how when it comes to ministering to the person, what are you going to do? Where do you lay hands? Well, ask the Holy Ghost to show you where to lay hands. You can lay hands around the head like that. You could lay hands on the belly, often demons are around the belly area or around the head area, or maybe just on the back. But if you're going to lay hands on someone, just tell them what you're going to do: I'm just going to lay hands on you as I begin to pray. Ask people, treat people with respect, got to ask their permission. Then the first thing I tend to do, is to break the agreements. I tend to break the areas of where there's agreements, so many times I'm praying for people, there's agreements with freemasonry, there's agreements with idols, there's agreements with dedications. They may have had curses spoken over them, there may be soul ties over their life; in Jesus name, I just break that agreement, I break that soul tie, I break those inner vows. Speak and break things.

As you're breaking it, remember what I talked to you, that as you imagine, you open your inner man to what you're imagining, so I just see in the spirit, I see like there's these cords around them, and I'm just cutting them with the Holy Ghost. I'm cutting them with the sword of the spirit. I'm breaking them as I speak that word, so I sort of see it. This is what I'm doing; I'm doing that, I'm breaking that thing, and so we break those, and it's done very simply. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break, I break soul ties, I break them. I break - it doesn't matter if you repeat yourself - I break them, I break them. Now you don't have to speak loud, you'll just lose your voice if you yell out. Demons don't care about loud, what they care about is authority. That's why I was talking to you about putting yourself into your words. You've got to believe that what you say will take place.

Okay then, so we break the bondages, generational curses, and whatever it is that we're dealing with at that time. Then you must command the spirits to go, so you can do it with your eyes open or eyes shut, it's just a matter of preference. If your eyes are open, you can see if anything's going on and observe it - so in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you come out. Now just raise the tone and energy of your voice, and speak right into the person. What I'll do is, I'll just get a few people up here, just so I can show you what I mean. I just need a group of people to come up, if just a group of you could just come up for a moment just so I can show you what I'm meaning. Just come and stand. You don't have to do anything except stand. Okay, you're the first up, here we go, come and stand right in front of me there. You just stand in front of me there. The others just come round, put your hand on her shoulder. You're the demons - come on, we need another demon, that's right. Come on, another one there, another lady come on over, that's right, okay.

Alright then. Now it just helps to understand, I want to just create a visual picture of what you're doing. What we're doing now is, we are praying and ministering to our sister. However, she has invisible spirit beings that have got a grip and a hold on her life, and the hold they have is through the legal rights or the traumatic experiences and reactions that go with it, and that's how they're attached. So what we're doing now is this, when we are leading her through the prayer to release forgiveness, what we're doing is we're breaking the holds of the demons one at a time. We're breaking the parts that they could grip the person's life, so now instead of actually being able to hold her and grip her and move her around, now we've broken those things off her. Now I've got to speak to the spirits. What you'll see with your natural eyes is just the person standing there. What you've got to be able to see with the eyes of your heart, or your imagination, is that there is an invisible spirit being, I'm about to address now.

So when you're talking with the person - I'm just talking with you, but when I come to ministering and dealing with the demon, now I will talk differently, and I'm in confrontation mode of a spirit, something inside her, so I will speak like I'm speaking to a specific person, speaking to a specific person, speaking to them - and in Jesus' name, I command you to go. So it looks like you're just talking to this person here, but actually inside, you believe firmly you are talking to a demon being, and you are engaging it. Now shaking her, hitting her, doing anything like that, is not going to do anything to the demon. [Laughter] There's a lot of abuse of deliverance. That's why it's created such a bad name, because people shake them, and they think by shaking them or whatever, it's going to make the difference to the demon. There is only one thing that will deal with the demon, and that is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, so Jesus said the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life. So Jesus spoke words He meant, and the life of the Holy Ghost was in them.

Now you have to speak words, and you must mean what you say, so you speak to the demon: in Jesus' name. come out. So maybe a spirit of idolatry and you command that demon to come out - loose, come out in Jesus' name. Quite simple, no long words or anything like that - come out! Come out. OUT in Jesus' name. Don't just add Jesus' name. To say 'in Jesus' name' means, I am His representative, so I don't have to tack it onto everything I say, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name you know, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. It's like superstitious, you understand, I'm just actually representing Jesus. I am in His name, and nature, representing Him, and so I don't have to keep using that. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ come out! Speak strongly. Now initially nothing may happen. Just keep reinforcing, just speak your command over more than once, and sometimes demons may actually start to manifest. Now if a demon manifests, it will show up in the behaviour of the person. Some people shut down all manifestation so nothing's seen, and it's all very quiet, that's okay. I just notice that when Jesus did it, lots of stuff happened. Maybe He had a reason for that, I don't know.

However I don't mind if there's a bit of manifestation, it doesn't worry me too much, but I manage it. I don't let it get out of control. So when we start to speak to the demons, it says in one case, in Luke 4, that the demon threw the person to the ground, and then came out. It looked like he was dead, and in fact in one case the child was thrown to the ground, thought he was dead, everyone said: he's dead! Then he just got up again like that - so it often looks like something dramatic has happened, whereas in fact all that's happened is the spirit's just protesting. When you're speaking keep speaking strongly, forcefully to the demon; come out, out, out! Arise inside, and you're being pushy. Understand what I'm saying? You're being pushy. You're pushing against something that's hostile. Probably the best way to describe it, is like this. If you saw a child, and there's a dog biting the child, you would feel very angry and upset by that, and you'd run in almost without regard for yourself, and grab that dog and begin to beat it, because your concern is for the child. Your concern for the child is so great, it overcomes your fear of the dog, and before you know it you're in there beating up on the dog, or hitting the thing and trying to get it off. Then afterwards you think, oh my God, what did I just do, you know?

So in a way we're beating up the demons. You're speaking the word of God to them, commanding them to go, so just keep it up. Go, go in Jesus' name. Now, expect that as you speak, that God will give you the names of the spirits, and you'll already have an idea because of what you've asked the questions on; spirit of death, spirit of this and that. Listen, be willing to have a go. What if you got it wrong? Don't worry about getting it wrong. You'll probably get more right, than you'll get wrong, just be better to have a turn, and ask the person afterwards how it went. So speak. Now if the demons start to manifest that can be a bit of a problem. When demons manifest, what that means is, what was invisible becomes visible. The demon actually begins to express itself through the person, so - if you just put your hands back on her again, that's right, you've got a hold of her, alright then. So if a demon began to manifest its presence - I've got them all, they're all shaking her there like that, that's it, there you go. Okay, now what would happen is, if you keep your eyes open, you can observe things, so these are what you're observing.

You're looking at the eyes. Now when a demon manifests through the eyes, there's some things you can have happen. One is, they get full of hate. Suddenly you look - ooh! That was a nice lady, what happened, you know? [Laughter] There's somebody else in there! The nice lady went, and suddenly there's something that's got cold hate, like a wild animal. That's the devil. That's an evil spirit, and that's what it looks like - cold and furious, and full of hate, or alternatively, suddenly the eyes fill with tremendous fear, so it can be fear or hate. Those are the most common ones that I see, or sometimes, the eyes will just flick up, and all you can see are the whites of the eyes, the demons trying to hide, does not want to look at you, because remember, you are representing Jesus Christ. Now you may think you're just you, but the demon sees Christ. You are dead, and your life is with Christ in God, so when you stand to minister in His name, and the anointing is on you, the demon just sees a blazing white light.

You read in the Book of Revelation, John saw Jesus, and His eyes were like a flaming fire, so great to pray Lord, I thank You, Your presence is in me, and my eyes like a flaming fire! Why not? They are. I was talking to one person, she said: I can't see you. She's standing there, that close, with her eyes open - she says I can't see you! I can't see you! I said what do you see? She said I see a blazing white light, and I can't see anything else. Isn't that amazing? So, you may think you're just you, but when you're standing in ministry, you're representing Jesus, and the demons see something different. They see Him in you, Christ in you, the hope that His glory will appear. Even if the world hasn't seen it yet, the demons can see it, and they hate it, they're scared of Him. Okay, so sometimes you see it in the eyes.

Alright, the next place to look for it, is in the hands. Now what you'll find happens is that your hands are just relaxed like that, but when the demons start to manifest, you'll see a couple of things that might happen. One is the hands go like a claw shape. When they're like that, that inevitably is witchcraft or some occultic power. It can go quite like a claw, or sometimes you'll find they'll clench up, and you see them closing up, like they're about to just break out in rage and fury - which they are - and you know then, there is hate and anger and rage. It's just all starting to manifest in the person at that time. Don't be frightened of it. You may find that their body starts to stiffen up like that, or you may find something in the mouth. Now what can happen in the mouth is that, sometimes I've seen a tongue go in a - you ever seen those snakes? I've seen exactly that with a human tongue more than once, more than once, and it's manifesting. You know when it's like that you know it's occultic of some kind, it's occultic, so often the way the spirit manifests reveals a little bit about what kind of spirit it is.

Sometimes it'll be like that, or sometimes the person may begin to roar - [roar] like there was a crazy roar - to try and intimidate you or they may scream, or they may threaten you, or they may speak to you. So all kinds of things can happen through the mouth like that. Another thing that they may try to do with their hands, clench up - the person may try and choke themself. It's like the demon's trying to stop the thing happening, trying to - I will kill her. I've heard them say that, I'll kill her. I've also said I'll kill you [laughter] more than once. Now just don't take any notice of what demons say, just persevere, continue. Be quiet in Jesus' name. Continue your work of deliverance. Don't be distracted by any manifestations. Just if need be, command them to be still, and carry on with the job of commanding the demon out. Once a demon manifests, you know you've got it beat already, and so I'll find sometimes they'll be incredibly defiant, and you'll almost be like, I've got it, you're in one another's face just looking at that demon, and then if you will just hold your ground - you have to arise inside, and hold your ground, you'll find suddenly the demon will look like this this way and that way, then they're gone. GO! [Laughs] Got you!

I've just many times, when it comes to that point, you feel like there's two people having done all, you're just standing, and then suddenly it begins to waver and then I'll push a bit harder it's gone, just like that. You've got to see it to actually experience it, the only other way to see it is you've got to experience it, to see some of these things happening. So the person may try and choke themselves so just restrain them, pull their hand away from themselves. I've had them also try and rip their clothes off, which is a bit unfortunate [laughter] and so it helps if you have someone with you, because it's hard to explain what happened. [Laughter] So ministry is best done in pairs, and there's a safety comes if you operate as a team, rather than trying to do it alone because one, you have a joint witness about what happened, and what didn't happen; two, it's safer for the person concerned because there's another person involved; three, you have joint strength, as we're two or three in agreement, there am I in the midst of you, and four, you have the anointing flow increases when you're working together in unity like that.

Of course if you're working in a team, one is praying and interceding and helping and assisting, the other is taking the lead. You can't have two people leading. If you have two people giving instructions, the demon just shuts down, and nothing will happen, so one must lead, the other supports. You can change roles if you need to, but at one time, one person leading. I've found many times, everyone's having a go, and it's just useless. Tell them be quiet all of you, just one person speak, the others just intercede. Getting the idea? So another thing that the person may do, they may begin to shake. Sometimes if a person has an unclean spirit, you may find that they just go like this, like they're trying to shake the demon out. Sometimes the person will just fall over on the ground - gosh, they've dropped to the ground. It does not mean they're delivered. It can mean the demon's just trying to get away from you, so you just go back down on the ground, and you lay hands on the person, continue to pray until you feel the Holy Spirit showing you. Okay? There we go. Well thank you, you've been very helpful. [Laughs] Thank you for the demons, give them a big clap, they did a great job, yeah. [Applause and laughter]

Okay then, so sometimes there are significant resistance, particularly if there's occult. The key thing is, if you can remove the legal grounds, the deliverance proceeds reasonably easily, without too much happening. So those are some of the manifestations that can take place, and I've had people jump, I've had them slither like snakes, I've had all kinds of things happen - had them jump around, had them even try and jump out of a window, so lots of things can happen. I quite actually enjoy it when things happen, great. However some people just speak and shut down, all forms of manifestation whatsoever, and I don't think there's a right way and a wrong way of doing it, but of all the things, preserve people's dignity, preserve people's dignity. Treat people with value, don't get caught up in the power kick of deliverance.

So how could you know if the spirits have gone? What would you do to know the spirits have gone? It isn't always easy to know, but there are several things. First of all, deliverance can be progressive, in other words, you may have more than one session or one time, like peeling layers of an onion off; two, think in terms of groups of spirits, rather than just one spirit, that you're dealing with at one time. There's often a group of them; three, how you can tell if they're gone, there's three ways I know of. One is ask the person, has it gone, and they'll tell you, yeah or no. The second way that you can try is, you feel the release. It's like you're pushing against something, and it suddenly quits on you, it's gone, then you know it's a release. The third way is the Holy Spirit just gives you a witness that the demon is gone. You have a sense inside of peace comes, and that turmoil's all gone.

Now in any situation what I encourage you to do, just keep praying in tongues, put your hand on her head, keep praying in tongues. One of the things I've done sometimes is just look them in the eye, say look at me, look at my eyes. I look in their eyes, and I rise up, and if there's any demons still in there it'll immediately manifest, so I think this comes with experience being able to work that out. Now it isn't always easy to tell the difference between an evil spirit, and emotional pain. It's not always easy to see which is which. All I can say is they look a little similar, however when it's demonic, it's got an ugly edge on it. It just looks something not right, it looks something really out of sorts, and it will yield if you speak to it. If a person's just manifesting emotions, and their grief and anger or rage or whatever, then it's an emotional expression. It doesn't yield to commands. It yields to the person's will, so if someone gets very emotional, or gets very upset, just calm the person down, deal with the roots again, some of the heart issues, and deliverance should be quite easy to do.

How come some people don't get delivered? There's always some, there's some don't get delivered, don't get healed, and the areas fall into two groups; one is problems with the person who's receiving ministry, and the other one is problems with the person ministering. So remember, we're not perfect at all of these things. No one's perfect at all these ministries - we've got to grow into these areas, and if you wait until you're perfect, you'll never do a thing. Some of the difficulties that arise from the person ministering; remember Jesus, the disciples came and said: we couldn't cast that demon out, how come? He said: because of your unbelief, so clearly preparation of the heart of the minister is quite important before you minister. Sometimes it's just lack of experience, you just didn't know what to do, and that's okay. Learn as much as you can from it, ask someone for some input and advice, and learn from there. Sometimes it can be just lack of faith. There just isn't the faith in your heart, and prayer and fasting, Jesus said, is the remedy for that, spending time with God. That's why the period preceding ministry it's quite good to precede it with prayer and fasting, because the person connects with God, and you connect with God. When you come together, everyone's anticipating God working.

Sometimes it's an unresolved legal right or sin issue in the person's life. Sometimes there's just something they didn't tell you, and you've got to ask God to show you what it is that's hindering that process, or ask the person, is the Holy Spirit showing them something, because God can reveal in the process, the issue quite simply. I remember when I was praying with one person here, they suddenly remembered something, it came to their mind. The Holy Spirit can just - it's His job to bring things back to mind. Sometimes, the reason the person doesn't get free, is because the foundations haven't been laid; lack of forgiveness, lack of repentance. Those are the big ones; sins still there, unforgiveness still there, the person doesn't get set free.

Okay then, so the second is the area of the person themselves. Now I have found I guess when dealing with people, the prime reason I've seen people not get set free is they just didn't front up and deal with sin, or they didn't forgive. Those are the big ones. However sometimes the person is quite passive, shut down, and they just come up - okay, I've been to 20 people, now you do your thing. This is not going to get anything from God. There's just a lack of faith and expectation. Sometimes we have not dealt with the foundational issues in their life, and that's why if we haven't dealt with the root system, so sometimes that's why it's there. Sometimes the person's just too passive. They stand there and they're passive. You know what? I can tell when people are hungry and drawing - faith has a draw. Faith draws something from God; passivity, the person's will is not engaged, they're just oh well here we are, just see what happens. Sometimes God will surprise them, but most times nothing happens, because God works where there's faith expectation. Getting the idea? Okay then, so those are some of the reasons.

After deliverance you need to just recognise you will be a bit tired, your body gets a bit sweaty and whatever. You get tired, so have a good shower and have a good meal, have some protein so you replenish. Deliverance takes energy out of your body. Have some good protein, and have some good rest. Your spirit, if you do a lot of deliverance, I've found sometimes I'd get so defiled, I'd pray for so many hundreds of people, I just get sick of it. I just feel dirty and grubby and horrible, and I think I never want to pray for anyone again. It's true, I just feel like that and it's just because your spirit is shocked by the engagement with the unclean, and the violence, and all the stuff that goes with it, the grief, the turmoils that go in deliverance ministry. I've found it's very helpful if you're like that, to just spend time in worship, time with the Lord, rest and refresh - but of all the areas perhaps the one that's the difficult one that people forget is the area of your soul, your emotions.

Now when you get involved in ministering to people, it's not only draining you spiritually and physically, it's actually draining in your emotions, and so I find often after ministry, I'm quite vulnerable and quite drained. I don't really want to talk too much to people, I want to actually recover. Everyone has got to learn how to recover your soul. You know He restores my soul? It's not just deep kinds of issues we've had, it's also just being refreshed in your soul, and I have found that to go near nature, or to go to the sea, deeply refreshes my soul. I can move in the spirit better after a good day's sleep, and a time out in a boat, better than if I spend the whole day in prayer. Now it doesn't sound right does it, but actually, if you understand the flow of the spirit comes through your soul, if your soul is in turmoil, then the flow of the spirit is affected by that, so I have found it's important to properly restore your soul, or you become vulnerable to temptations, vulnerable to oppression. You feel often quite down, and sometimes quite rejected after ministry time. It's quite an unusual experience. Once you've had a time when you've prayed for someone extensively, you'll understand what I mean.

So it's important get your body to have a good sleep, get some good food inside you, and then restore your soul, get something you enjoy doing - nature, craft, something you just relax doing, for some it may just be sitting in a hot pool, some it may be just do some shopping, whatever it is that restores your soul. I've found movies seldom restore you soul, unless it's comedy. Comedy gets you laughing, and that can restore your soul, but dramatic movies just distract you, but don't restore you, and so often after ministry I find I'm just so out there I may just watch television, but it does not restore my soul. It just helps me come down a bit, so Joy will say what are you watching? I say I don't know. [Laughter] I don't know, just flicking channels I think. I'm just coming out of where I've been, because I've been ministering for too long, and been in that realm for too long. I just find I just need a way. Now everyone's got to learn how to manage their body, soul and spirit.

The last thing I'll touch on there is, what about demonic attack? Do you get attacked by demons? Do we get attacked by demons? Of course! You're in a war, you're attacked by demons whether you like it or not. You're living in a war zone, so doing deliverance am I likely to get a bit more? Yes, of course you get a bit more. So what would it look like? Well, if you're going to get pressure from evil spirits, you'll get it three places, or three different timings; one is before ministry, one is during ministry, and one is after ministry, so how about that. [Laughter] However, it's just because they don't like you doing this. They take offence, that you would dare to invade their ground, so in getting involved in deliverance you're declaring war on demons. Of course they're going to fight back. They're not going to walk way. They're going to push on you to see what you've got, what are you made of. Let's test you out a little bit. Here's the thing: God says you'll never be pressured or tempted beyond what you are able, so there are some things that you need to just aware of, so let me just give you a few of those things. Let's see if I've got them written down. Oh well, I haven't got them written down but that's okay, I can just explain them to you.

So before ministry, this is what often happens before ministry; high levels of agitation, high levels of agitation. So what do I mean by that? Your spirit gets on edge. You get edgy, and you get irritable. How many know that you can have different sensations in your spirit? How many of you have woken up, and you were singing a song? That's a worship sensation. You've been engaging God in your sleep, in your spirit, and now you're in a place of worship, you wake up singing, alright? Okay. How many of you have had a situation where you're on high alert inside, and agitated or slightly anxious, but not sure why? That's spiritual conflict. You're in a war. The fact you're not too sure what it is, or where it is, doesn't mean you aren't in one. It means demons have come near to you, and they're about to push on you, or are pushing on you, and the feeling you have in your sense is to be agitated inside, and on edge, edgy. So whenever we have anything of significance, spiritual things happening in the church, I'll find times when the prophetic is moving, edgy, or get a little - there's a sort of a stir inside, and you're on edge and you don't know why, like something is about to happen, but you've no idea what's about to happen.

You can get a little tense and a bit short with people, so when you get like that you need to be aware you're under spiritual attack, and the remedy is just to pray in tongues, and rest in the Lord. You've got to learn to just speak in the spirit, and rest in the Lord, speak strongly, subdue whatever's there, and rest in the Lord. The other thing that can come up is, you can have this overwhelming sense I don't want to get involved in ministry, why did I ever think I should say yes to that person? I should never have done that. You just don't want to be involved, so all of that is the kind of stuff you can have, and then things go wrong, like for example the last two seminars - I think it went alright this time, you must have got the breakthrough then - but the last two seminars the machines broke down. We run hundreds of things through the machine and nothing goes wrong. You put one of my manuals in, and produces half of it and the rest is blank. Now what is that all about? You can't get it to come right - until Sargin prayed and then it came right.

We had a problem in the sound gear. Sound people do well in the world. They learn their stuff and they do their stuff, you come into the church and it's just got something else to it that no one told me about. It's called demons [laughter] and something can go well, then you don't even touch it and it's suddenly changed. How did that happen? There's a spiritual influence around what we do, and so often when we have meetings like this, I'll have unusual pressure come on me through the week. Lyn would know this, Sargin knows that, Joy knows it, we all know. We've been around a while, we just know oh ho, yeah, we've got a meeting coming up, demons are getting agitated, must be going to be good. [Laughter] You know, just go for it, so the tough get up and get going. So during ministry you can have some demonic pressure come on you as well. This is all it amounts to; in the middle of ministering, you can just have this overwhelming feeling, I just want to quit and go home, I've had enough, I'm out of here. Now you'd be surprised, it's so simple, but it can just overwhelm you, just like that. I don't want to do it anymore, I've had enough.

I've been amazed, very often when I've been in ministry calls, almost the whole ministry team quit on me, just gave up, just left me to it. You'd be surprised how many - have you had that Lyn, they all give up? They all give up, and you find you've got hundreds of people to pray for, and the ministry team pray for a few and then they quit, they gradually walk away and they're all gone. You think what happened? And I'm just left there with all these people, because they came under spiritual pressure, and just quit - so quitting is one thing.

A second thing that can happen is, you can get an immense block in your mind, so you can go up to someone and say hello, I'm so and so, what's your name? They'll tell you, well I'm Jeff. Then about 30 seconds later you cannot remember who you're talking to, and you can't remember what they said they came for. It's like blank. Your mind goes totally blank, and you think whoa, then you feel a bit dumb. [Laughter] I might have to ask again, I've forgotten. How could I have forgotten, they only just told me. But what it is, it's witchcraft operating, and the witchcraft freezes your mind. The witchcraft pressures on you, and you just get confusion in your mind, so sometimes when you come to pray for people, you'll feel all this confusion come around your mind. It is just witchcraft, and all you've got to do is very simply, just step back from the person, pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] You don't have to pray loud, just stir your spirit up praying in tongues and reaching out to the Lord again, just consciously resisting that demon. Let the flow of the spirit come, and then suddenly your head will clear - or you might just do this. You might say in Jesus' name, I take authority over witchcraft and unbelief. That's the other one, they're what you call blocking spirits. They block the flow, and I've found sometimes just that, was enough to unlock something to happen. Interesting isn't it?

The another thing that can happen, is you can have the most outrageous sexual temptations while you're in ministry, right in the middle of praying for people. You're supposed to be the holy person praying and bringing deliverance, and suddenly this ghastly stuff comes into your mind. You think where did that come from! Straight after it of course comes condemnation, and the reason is very simple, that many of the people are carrying unclean spirits, and so you get there, and you're starting to engage them, and the way they engage you is they fill your mind with pictures, then straight after condemn you, to try and get you to lose confidence, so you'll either be distracted, and give in to the temptation in some kind of way, or you'll just get condemned, and lose your authority in ministry. Most people don't talk about it, but that's what goes on, it's what happens, and it's outrageous. I mean you'd be surprised how many times people are worshiping in church, and suddenly unclean sexual things come into their mind. In one church I got them to put their hands up, and I had about three-quarters, almost all the church put their hands up. They were all astonished, because everyone thought I'm the only one who's got that problem, I'm really bad.

Can you understand, it's just the demonic realm. They just work in a predictable way, so those are some of the things you have during ministry, and the pressures that come upon you just during the flow of ministry. All you do is step back, pray in tongues, rise up in your spirit and go back again and continue to pray. Then the last thing is after ministry, so pressure can come on you after ministry, and the pressures that come on you after ministry are very simply, because one, you're physically depleted; two, you're emotionally depleted; three, although your spirit may be stirred up, you do need to recover, and come before the Lord. So the kind of things that happen after ministry, is that you can - here's what you can feel, now get this: you can feel immensely rejected. You can feel a total loser [laughs], and totally rejected, and of no value to anyone or anything, and you just think that's it, I've had enough, I'm not even going back to church.

Now you'd say: how could it be possible? Yesterday you were casting out demons and oh, there's this mighty thing happening! Today you're about to cut your throat, what's going on? [Laughter] Well there's Biblical precedent, have a think of Elijah. One day he's up there, calling fire from heaven and he's killed all the prophets, next day he's under a tree depressed and wanting to take his life. This is demonic attack, and so demonic attack after ministry can affect you, because you become more vulnerable. You become vulnerable then, you're emotionally depleted, and so what happens is, you may feel overwhelmed with feelings of rejection. That's very simply - it's actually quite simple, and the remedy is very simple. The problem is you're just emotionally depleted. Just go do something that refreshes your soul, and have a good sleep, and you'll feel much better. That's all it takes, it's nothing really deep, just something simple like that.

When you are emotionally depleted, old issues come up much more easily. You feel of no value, and you've just got to restore your value again, so shout yourself out, do something nice, do something that makes your soul restored, and step back up again, and you'll come right, so that's one way. Another way is you can become vulnerable to temptation, because you've just come on a high of having good experiences, the next thing the devil's on you, and before you know it you've fallen into some old temptation. Then you think oh oh! Then he condemns and oh! You think what's the use of me trying to... but this is the war that goes with ministry, so once you've been in it a little while you just learn; okay, going to do some ministry. Before you go there you're going to have a bit of pressure, during it you may have some stuff; afterwards you may have some stuff. Wake up, it's a war, this is what it means to be in ministry, and this is what Paul wrote to Timothy: endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord.

So those are some of the things that come upon you in ministry. Now you think you're the only one who has this? We have them all the time, it never stops. I can get sick, I can have things happen, I have things go wrong, I have stuff happens just on my way into ministry. You'd be surprised how many times just before I get to minister, I've just prayed up in the right place, and suddenly some terrible thing will happen, and I'm just torn apart with this conflict between wanting to do something for God and this personal thing I've got to face, now that's very difficult. This is ministry. In ministry you can be having God moving wonderfully in one part of your life and the other part is a total disaster and you don't know what to do. You think how can it be like that? Listen - and the temptation is to be preoccupied with yourself, and stop doing what God called you to do. This is why so many Christians get defeated by that. The devil just puts a bit of pressure on them, they have a bit of misery at home, something goes wrong, there's a conflict, upheaval, and then they quit. They don't understand, you didn't quit, you just got knocked out and KO'd by a devil, and you didn't get back up. Why don't you get back up? Oh, I didn't feel I was good enough. Who told you that? The devil. And you believed him? [Laughter] Get up! Just get up again.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall, he'll not be utterly cast down, the Lord will lift him back up again. Righteous falls seven times, and the Lord lifts him back up again. God just wants you to get back up again. Don't worry if you have some mistake, failure, whatever, they're all dealt with at the cross. Just get quickly in before God, put it right, and get back up again. What honours God is you getting back up, and getting in the fight again. You've got to remember this. He left the demons for us to clean up, he left them for us to clean up. He said I'm authorising the church, go clean them up, sort them out, so if we don't do that, then we're missing out the privilege. This honour have all the saints, it says in Psalm 149. This is an honour. This is an honour, that Jesus won the victory, and we would now go out and enforce the victory, and make demons yield to us. No wonder they come back saying WHOA! Demons are subject to us in Jesus' name. He said well don't get excited about that, get excited your name is written in heaven, you're part of a great and a coming kingdom that's going to fill the whole world. Amen. Great stuff. Why don't we give the Lord a clap? Don't you - I feel excited already. [Applause] Halleluiah! We love You Lord. Glory! Yes, Lord, oh my.

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Okay, right, just before we just finish our last session, firstly I want to just express appreciation to Horowai, who has set up and organised the sound [applause] and the videos. He doesn't just do the work here, he brings them together afterwards, and tries to make sense of them and clip them and puts headings and tails on it and makes it into something you can get hold of, a DVD later on. So for one hour here, there's about 12 hours goes into getting it all ready, so there's a lot of work goes into that, so really appreciate you Horowai for what you're doing in that area. We trust the resource will all be available for people eventually. [Laughs] I won't put a time - four hours is it? What? [Laughter] [Years!] Four years? [Laughter] I'm going to talk to your wife. [Laughter] I think we can shorten that quite a lot. [Laughter]

We also want to thank Pastor Sargin for setting up all the room, making sure everything was all ready, and arranging all the [applause] things that happen, and for getting something printed off. [Laughs] All the battles he's had to face getting the things printed off and all ready to go, appreciate it very much you made all that happen. You've just made it so I can walk in, and the seminar's all here ready to go. Thank you for everything and getting all that done and for the team that you've had - who have you had working with you with the afternoon teas and... Josie and Jerial, Okay, Dot's gone is she? Okay, well thank you each of those who were named then, want to give them a clap and [applause] just appreciate them, thank you very much.

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Okay, now you can see we've only really scratched the surface around all of this area, but you've got enough to get started. You've got enough to get going. If you wait until you learn it all you'll never do anything. Learning is a constant journey of experience, so I would be praying God bring some people into my life that are ready for me to pray for them, in other words they're at the level that I need. Now I've observed over the years, God just brought them into my life and every one that came in, difficult or not difficult, was exactly what I needed to learn some lessons. I just learnt, I just considered the Holy Ghost is the teacher, He wants me to learn. If I'm open, and will respond and serve people He brings into my life, I can learn, and wherever you are you can learn and take another step. You know enough now to even talk about this stuff. You'd be amazed how many people have spirit experiences and don't know what to do with it, so we've tried to focus primarily in this one around deliverance area and touch - because you have to deal with heart issues, we've had to touch into some of the heart issues.

I'm going to get you all just to pray and minister to one another shortly. Before I do I want to just pray - I'm going to minister to Sharon so Sharon, like to come up here? Sharon was sharing an experience with me over the afternoon cup of coffee, so what we'll do is we'll get Sharon to share the experience, and then we'll just pray and see what God will do. We can use her experience in this opportunity to minister, we can use it just as a way of learning together. You happy about that?

[Sharon] Yes, I'm happy.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, you'd like to tell me - you were telling me about something happened when you were young.

[Sharon] When I was very little just before I was born, my dad was driving his truck and he went around a roundabout, and I was intra womb and my mum flew out and landed on her back on the road, because they didn't have seatbelts in those days, and I was born a couple of days later premature. I wouldn't nurse very well because I was tongue tied, and my mum reckoned I screamed until she put me a bottle two weeks later. When we were reading some of the stuff going through one thing this morning, I was looking at the trauma stuff and I just started to cry, and I didn't know why.

[Pastor Mike] Mm-hm, okay.

[Sharon] That'll do?

[Pastor Mike] That'll do, that's plenty. That's enough, that's enough, alright. Bruce, like to come up and just be the catcher? Okay, so I thought that, with Sharon's permission, we'll just pray and ask the Lord to touch her, because clearly this is not a trauma that she had when she was outside the womb. This is actually a trauma within the womb, and yet clearly the signs of something of wrong are there, the fact that she didn't bond, that there was tremendous conflict between her and her mother over the bonding issue, and that of course will have had issues for you all your life. Yeah, and her mother must have got a horrendous shock, in falling out of the vehicle, being that late stage of pregnancy, so there would have been a tremendous shock and fear come into the mother; child would have known about it, and then Sharon will have carried the impact of that all her life. But often we think that's just how I am, and so we don't think well maybe actually something's happened that affected me, so we need the Holy Spirit to come.

Now I don't know all the damage that's been done, I don't know all that's been done but the Holy Spirit does. He brings things back to memory, and you notice that Sharon had no conscious recollection of this event - I've never heard her talk about it in all the years I've known you - and yet in looking at the materials, suddenly it came up, and she felt tears. That means God is speaking to her, tears are the language of the heart, so she felt the tears, and she was honest enough to share it with me. So what we'll do is we'll just ask the Holy Spirit to come, and just help with the situation and it's a great opportunity for us all to learn. Can I just take your hand? Thank you. Just close your eyes now. Holy Spirit, we really need You. We're aware that there's been a great shock and a trauma take place in Sharon's life, right back there at this point of an accident Lord, where her mother just came out of the car and fell on the ground. Lord, we don't know all that's happened but we're asking You to come Holy Spirit and to come upon her now, right to that point of trauma and to begin to start to touch her life, make Jesus very real to her. Lord, we just ask You and invite You to come right now, Holy Spirit come. [Prays in tongues]

Now just allow yourself to enter it, it doesn't matter if there's tears, let the tears come, let the tears come. What's happening? Can you tell us what's happening?

[Sharon] I feel scared.

[Pastor Mike] You feel very scared, so there's a spirit of fear has come into your life at that point. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I break all soul ties to that trauma, I break them, I break them, I break them. I command that the fear of death, spirit of fear, I command you right now come out of her, out of her now! Come out now, out now, out, OUT in Jesus' name. Release her in Jesus' name right now. That's right, out, out, out. Fear, tormenting spirits of fear, come out now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. We speak to every spirit that used that opportunity of trauma to enter your life, I speak to each of you now, I bind your operation in her life, and I command you to let her go and release her now in Jesus' name. Let her go. I break every lie it's not safe. I break every lie it's not safe for me. I break it over your life right now in Jesus' name. Now Holy Spirit, just come, come and bring healing and restoration into her life. Come Holy Spirit, come into that situation.

Just keep looking for the Lord, see what He's doing now. What are you becoming aware of? What are you seeing?

[Sharon] Jesus is reaching His hand out to me.

[Pastor Mike] Where are you?

[Sharon] I don't know.

[Pastor Mike] You don't know, but Jesus is reaching out to you?

[Sharon] I'm trying to get to Him.

[Pastor Mike] You're trying to get to Him. Why don't you just let Him get to you? Just let Him come to you, let Him come to you. [Pauses] What's He saying to you?

[Sharon] He's holding me.

[Pastor Mike] He's holding you, He's holding you in His arms.

[Sharon] I'm just a little baby.

[Pastor Mike] You're just a little baby, He's holding you in His arms, so what are you feeling?

[Sharon] It's safe.

[Pastor Mike] It's safe.

[Sharon] Secure.

[Pastor Mike] And secure.

[Sharon] And protected.

[Pastor Mike] You're protected. Enjoy that feeling.

[Sharon] It's just too beautiful

[Pastor Mike] Thank You Lord. Now just listen for Him to speak to you. [Pauses] Thank You Holy Ghost. [Pauses]

[Sharon] He said it's going to be okay.

[Pastor Mike] It's going to be okay, that's what He's saying to you.

[Sharon] It's fine.

[Pastor Mike] It's fine.

[Sharon] And I'm going to sing you a lullaby.

[Pastor Mike] He's going to sing to you, going to sing to you a lullaby. Isn't it interesting, He's interacting with you like you're a child? Thank You Lord. Just let Him minister to you, let Him minister, here it is, oh Holy Ghost just come, more and more and more and more in Jesus' name. It's alright, there we go. Isn't it interesting? Very powerful. How many could feel the presence of God starting to come and engage? So whenever we have a traumatic experience, it's retained within our soul and experiences which we have, we remember the experience, we have the memory, we have the feelings, we remember the feelings. Notice she had feelings of fear? We remember how we reacted, and we also remember what kind of response we make, so all of those things are recorded in our memory. The more powerful the memory is, the more powerful the event is, the greater the impression it makes on a person's life, so when it's a major trauma it makes a deep impression, and often the soul becomes shattered, and parts of the memory go all over, so the person - I don't remember a thing.

The Holy Ghost just brings it all back together, and suddenly they're there, they're in the event and the feelings of fear, everything related to the event starts to come back again. At that point God overrides. Now He never takes away our memories. What He does do is helps us to see a different perspective, so when you're in a shocking event, you see it from a perspective. You just see what you see, like Elijah's servant came out and he saw all of the armies of the Syrians surrounding them, and he says oh, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, what are we going to do? We're going to be killed. Elijah prayed and said Lord, open his eyes so he can see that there's more for us, than be against us. The Syrian Army wasn't taken away, but God opened his eyes, and he saw the angels and chariots of fire, and so now his perception of it is changed. Now yes, the armies are still there, but now fear and concern about what's going to happen is all taken away, because he's seen from the spiritual realm God's amazing provision, and it's going to be all okay, so he came to a place of rest.

Notice the circumstances haven't changed, the perspective changed. The vision he saw shifted how he interacted with the problem, and that's how God does a lot of healing work. He will return us back to the picture that we had, no matter how frightening it was, and we'll begin to feel the feelings and emotions of it, then He comes into it. The Lord comes into it, and we see it differently. We see it with Jesus there, and usually He speaks something, and what He speaks is a rhema, it's a living word, and this brings healing and restoration and shifts us. Often of course there are emotions come, sometimes there are demonic spirits attached around it, so you notice I started to speak to some of the spirits at one point, but then it was God engaging her, and that's how it is. Now you notice it was not a lot of praying or heavy work, it was actually the work of the Holy Spirit, and just facilitating it. She's quite prophetic, quite visual, so she easily was able to enter into the picture of it, and already we know God was on it, because He was causing feelings stirred in her heart at that time anyway.

So when you go through a course, often God can stir things that you'd forgotten about, because it's your time to deal with it. Then you bring it to Him, and allow Him to come in. Now what people generally or often do is they remain stuck, and they get stuck in trauma, stuck in the grief, stuck in the pain of the situation, and stuck in their reactions, often tormented by spirits, and then they just get stuck there. Then all through their life, anything that reminds them of that, immediately triggers off reactions, until we allow the Lord to help us. Now to allow the Lord to help us we've got to be willing to go into the trauma again, this time not alone, but this time with the Lord. I didn't try and tell what was going to happen, or how it would happen, we just invited the Holy Spirit to come, and let Him do the work, and she just talked to me about what He was doing, so you could all almost feel and see what God was doing.

You notice that when the way Jesus interacted with her, He interacted with her as though she was a little baby still, because her emotions were frozen at the baby stage. That's where the trauma is, so when Jesus was dealing with her, He was dealing with her at the point she had the trauma, at the age she had the trauma. That's why it looks like it's someone just handling a baby, and holding the baby, and the baby's going to be okay, and the reassurance. Why? Because that's where the trauma was, that's where the memory was retained, and so now there'll be a freedom come, and a shift inside her. Okay so how - oh, she's out to it still. How are we doing? Are you with us again or not?

[Sharon] I'm great.

[Pastor Mike] You're great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great, so since we're running short on time now, we have a whole section in the notes which helps understand a little bit about that area. The key point - oh there we go, you're back again with us. Whoa a daisy! Hello, hello. Okay, so how are you - anyway, just tell us was there any further experiences with the Lord?

[Sharon] Yeah, He danced with me in His arms.

[Pastor Mike] He danced with you in His arms? How wonderful. What are you feeling inside now about that whole event?

[Sharon] Incredibly light.

[Pastor Mike] Incredibly light. That's one of the things that people say, when they've been set free, is: I feel much lighter, the burden has gone, the demons have gone. Listen, just why don't we give the Lord a clap and just thank Him shall we? [Applause] So when you look into the notes, you'll see in the notes, we just lay out some teaching around it, but you can read all the notes and still not get it. It's better that you have an experience of seeing God just doing something for someone, and then you can see it happening, and there was no big stress. You notice in all of it, we depend on the Holy Spirit. Tell someone we depend on the Holy Spirit. [We depend on the Holy Spirit.] We depend on the Holy Spirit, okay and just always keep remembering,Holy Spirit I depend on You. Keep your accounts short with Him. Now of course, the thing is when you come to minister to someone, the temptation is to depend on yourself. [Laughs] Oh, I've got to do something. No, depend on the Holy Spirit.

So what we're going to do now as we finish up, it will be great to get you just to pray and to minister to one another, and I suggest you get in pairs. Just why don't you share something you'd like the person to pray into, or to pray for you for, it can be any area, anything you'd like, whatever - you may feel that God has just opened up something you'd like prayer for. Why don't you just invite the person to just pray for you in that area, and if someone asks you to pray in that area, just do what you can and depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ...the Holy Spirit, right, okay. Depend on the Holy Spirit, and just be responsive to things He puts into your mind to do. So here's what, we'll get into pairs and we'll just pray in tongues together, and each of you share one area you'd like the other person to pray for. Then you minister to them whatever you feel comfortable at the level you're able to do. Maybe you just bring some encouragement, maybe you feel like you can pray for the Holy Spirit to touch them, maybe you feel there's something that needs to be broken. Just have a go. We're going to practice, okay? If we don't do something, we'll never know what we can do, will we, so we've got to step out somewhere.

Remember, in all of it we must depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ... the Holy Spirit, exactly, so why don't you get up and depend on the Holy Spirit, a great chance to do that.

The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6)  

Mon 11 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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Jesus authority to do miracles came from the Father, who SENT him. We are also 'apostolic' because we are SENT, as as ambassadors of heaven, to fulfil our task with kingly authority. It is important we discover for ourselves what God has called us to do, and passionately pursue the mission that God has wired into our heart. It requires we take ownership of it; see people as God sees them, and execute on earth the judgements of heaven.

As in the other seminar we'll have some activations for you to do, and the activations are to develop and to build your inner life, so let's start with Session One. You see the sessions, we've outlined there various things, one of them I'll break into two. Number one is on the apostolic mandate; number two is on spiritual territory and number three, on how you exercise spiritual authority, then four, how you exercise it in your own life. Then we want to speak about your authority to minister to people, and then give you some practical things on how to build your spirit man, build the inner man, because everything you do that flows in the realm of the spirit, requires you strengthen your inner man. If we have some time we'll share with you some practical things just on ministering the spirit and how to flow with the Holy Ghost.

We will have some activations, things for you to do, because that will help you just get your spirit alive, and we'll give you some practical things of what you can do to raise the spiritual energy in your life, and also how you actually go about releasing spiritual authority. Okay then, so let's look on 1.1 and everything's got pages to it, so they're all numbered so we can find them very easily. So firstly the apostolic mandate, and let me ask you this question: if you knew that where you live in the community, God had sent you there, because He had something for you to accomplish, how would that affect the way you relate to the people and how you lived your life? If you believe that the workplace that you are working in, God actually sent you there with an assignment, how would that affect the way you relate to all the other workers, and the way you treat people, and the way you respond to problems and difficulties?

If you believe that wherever you go, you are a person on assignment, how would that affect the way you would relate to people, and to struggles and pressures and difficulties that come? I believe that if we thought that way it would change totally how we live our life. It's just we don't see we're on assignment, we don't see that at all. We just get busy with our life and so what I want to do in this first session is just look at the area of the apostolic mandate. We have a tendency to think that to become a Christian means that you come to Jesus, you're connected to Him, the spirit of God is in you, and then you're going to go to heaven. This is only a half of the story, and if you've only got a half of the story, then you haven't really got it all at all, so the full story is this: that when we receive Jesus into our life, the spirit of God comes in, we are connected to the spirit of God. We're connected to heaven, but we are given a mandate to restore the community we live in, or to change and bring what is around us into harmony with heaven. We're called to bring heaven into the earth.

Now this is the missional aspect of the church that is every believer's calling. We tend to think well missionaries are just people you send out overseas but no, the reality is the church is called to be missional in mind. In other words every person is a missionary, a sent person. Every person is called to embrace the missional aspect of what God has called them to do, so notice what it says here. Just have a look in first of all understanding the apostolic mandate. After these things - after what things? After Jesus had sent 12 disciples out, and the ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost and delivered people and healed people, it says He appointed another 70 and sent them out two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to go, Luke 10:1. So Jesus had already deployed 12 apostles, but the Bible says He looked and He saw the harvest was so great, so He then got another 70 and launched them out in two by two. So He commissioned them, and they had the same commissioning that the apostles had. They were called to do exactly the same, bring the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, bring heaven to earth wherever they went. It says they weren't apostles, they were just followers of Christ, but they had the same mission that the apostles had.

Now that word meant - it's He sent them, means literally it's the word apostello in Greek and it means something like this. The word apostello we kind of thing apostolic and you wonder what it means, but if we were to go back to what it meant in the day it was written, then you understand it. So the word apostolic - we call it apostolic now - is a Greek word apostello. What it means literally is this: if the Romans wanted to send a general into an area to overcome resistance and occupy it and bring it into the kingdom of Rome or under the dominion of Rome, they would say apostello. They sent him on a mission to do this. That's the word they'd use. If they wanted to in the Hebrew culture, if they wanted to plant another synagogue in another place, in other words to go to another area, an unknown area and plant a synagogue or we'd call it a church plant now, the word that was used was the word apostello or apostolic. They were sent on a mission.

So we tend to sort of get unusual ideas around these words and we kind of don't find them easy to take, but if you would just take that the word apostolic means, you're sent on a mission to advance the kingdom of God wherever you've been assigned, so notice that all 70 are apostolic. They're all sent on a mission, and wherever they were sent they were called to advance the kingdom of God. We want to look at practically how that might take place - so an apostle in the early language, they understood it, it was someone who was an ambassador sent on a military mission to conquer an area, and bring it in line, or bring it under the kingdom. So we think then that the church right at its origins is apostolic, not pastoral. The church tends to want to be pastoral. People want to have their needs met, they want to have someone to care for them, someone to teach them, look after them, and this is a valid part of the ministry of Christ, part of His pastoral ministry. But His primary ministry was apostolic.

Hebrews 3:1 He's called the apostle and high priest of our calling, so one of the primary identifiers of Jesus was His apostolic - He was sent. He said the Father sent Me, and He said as Father sent Me, I send you, so around Jesus' thinking all the time was this aspect of sending, so a believer may not be an apostle but they can be sent, they can be apostolic. So I believe that we're living in an hour when God is wanting every believer to be apostolic. Now that doesn't mean a title, it means I'm missional in nature. What that means is: I'm a person with a mission, I'm an ambassador for heaven. I've got a work that is unique to me, only I can do it. How would your life be different if you believed that you are quite unique, and that you have something unique to give to the people who meet you? That would change how you related to people. It's all in the paradigm and in the thinking, so if we think of church as the gathering where we come and sing songs and worship God, and we don't think of it as a missional body, people sent to do something, we totally reduce Jesus' thinking and His planning and His dreams towards the church.

So all believers are sent. Notice Jesus has given a mandate, and the mandate's very clear. It is a command. It's an authorisation to do something; proclaim the gospel, make disciples, and minister in power and signs and wonders. So let's have a look at the first apostolic mandate, and then I want to just show you just a couple of things related to this, but I want you to understand that you are designed to have dominion spiritually. You're actually wired for that. Let's have a look at the first apostolic mandate in Genesis 1:28. God blessed them, and said to them: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the sea, the birds of the air, and everything that moves on the earth. Now notice that man and woman were both given the same mandate. Man and woman are equal in this, we're equally mandated by God to be fruitful, to multiply or increase, to fill the earth, or subdue and have dominion. That means that there must be something you've got to conquer.

If you're called to subdue, there must be some thing you have to subdue or - and it's not a person, it's usually a spiritual issue. So we see that the first - here's the interesting thing. Which came first, the people or the assignment? See, think about that one. Which came first, the people or the assignment? I believe the assignment came, because man was created to fulfil the assignment. Think about that. See, in Ephesians 2:10 it tells us that we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God foreordained we would walk in them. In other words before we turned up on the earth and were born, God had prepared something for us to accomplish with our life. That means the assignment came before the people did.

Notice which came first, the garden or the people? The garden, so the assignment came first. Now it doesn't mean that the assignment is more important. What I'm saying is, that God produced people to fulfil a purpose, so think about this. If you are a manufacturer and you design a toaster, now which came first, the toaster or the purpose? The purpose. You started to think, I need to create a machine that you can put slices of bread in and it'll heat them up and make them nice and we can put jam and marmalade and stuff on it - so you have a thing in mind to which you design the machine, and then the machine fulfils the purpose. So you think about how God created us; He created us with something for us to do. If you can get this in your heart, you realise how important it is to discover what you're uniquely wired and called to do. Most people unfortunately live their life from someone else's script. In other words, we're acting out what someone else said was what we should do, rather than discovering for ourself what God called us to do, and passionately pursuing the mission that God has wired into our heart. Quite challenging isn't it?

I was talking to one young man recently and he'd been seeking direction from me, and I actually refused to give him the direction he should go. What I directed him to do was to find what he was wired in his heart to do, and he said well I don't know. I said well actually I know you know. The thing that's blocking you is you're trying to please everyone. You've lived under control for so much of your life, you've not actually taken ownership of what God put in your own heart. I said if I tell you what to do, I'll always be the one who told you what to do. You actually have to own your life yourself, and own your future yourself, and discover what God wired in you for you to fulfil. I showed him how to do that, starting to begin to journal and to write down and discover the dreams of his heart. Recently he came to me and he said: this is what I believe I should do. I said great, you've got it, I'll help you do it. Do you understand? If I'd told him, which is what he wanted me to do, it would have taken away from him the journey of discovering, and taking ownership of his own assignment, that God wrote into his heart.

Unfortunately many people live and they've been in abusive situations and strongholds and things form around the mind and what happens is we live out of what someone else said we should do, rather than discovering what God called us to do. How many are thinking about that one, see? So God had an assignment for us, and he created you to fulfil an assignment, so where you were born, the circumstances of your birth, the kind of nation you were born in, the locality you were born in, the education you had, the background you had, all contributes to forming who you are. Even if some of it was bad, when God redeems it, what is redeemed then becomes the powerful testimony that God can use to touch people's lives, so you are a person with a mission. Even if you don't know what your mission is, it doesn't change. You were sent, you didn't just arrive.

Now that changes our thinking. See evolution will teach: we just arrived and it was by chance. It is a horrendous thing because it takes away the truth of divine destiny and purpose. You didn't just arrive. No matter how you came into this world, whether people wanted you or not, you didn't just arrive. God preordained you would come. He knew you were coming, and had an assignment for you to complete. The part you have to play is to connect with God, and discover what you're called to do, and arise and break free of the things that tell you you can't do it. That is where learning to stand up, take responsibility and assert spiritual authority starts to have its first place in your own life, so you'll see getting free in your own life as a crucial part to being able to actually then have influence beyond yourself. Okay, we getting it? You're all getting quiet now. [Laughs] How many are starting to feel already that's starting to affect your thinking? How many could feel your thinking starting to shake on that? It's powerful isn't it aye?

It's changing, and it changes our concept because we tend to live out of paradigms and ways of thinking, and we need our way of thinking changed, so for example, we tend to talk about all the problems that are around rather than actually - problems? We're here to solve problems. We're not to complain about them. Complaining about problems make us part of the problem. We're called to actually go to our assignment, and change it. Isn't that great? Isn't that a great thing? I want to share with you how to actually bring about some of that change, so that you start to realise you're not a victim; you are a person who has power to bring difference, but there's always going to be a fight for that. [Laughs] Freedom always costs you something.

Okay, so the apostolic commission: in Matthew, Chapter 9, Verse 35 to 10:1. Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in all their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. So He preached, and His message was: the kingdom of heaven with it's blessings in life is really close. What is required is you repent, or change how you think. That was His message and He demonstrated the kingdom, healing every sickness, every disease among the people. When He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion, because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. So He said to His disciples: the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into His harvest. And when He called His 12 disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease.

So we see that Jesus came to restore the original mandate. The original mandate was to subdue and have dominion, so in other words, there was something that was going to oppose them, that they had to arise and overcome. We know, we've read the story how Adam and Eve sinned against God, and the Bible tells us the authority they had they yielded up, they lost their spiritual authority, they lost their garments of glory, they lost their connection with God. They lost relationship and dominion, so when Jesus came back, He came to give us back relationship and an assignment or dominion again, so notice He demonstrated He actually had authority when He healed sickness, disease, commanded nature, cast out demons. All of these He demonstrated that He lived out the message. Notice then that He came to actually restore us, so we have again this ability to bring heaven to earth. We just need to learn some of the practical ways of going about doing doing that.

Jesus identified that the greatest need, the greatest need He saw, was for labourers, for people who would give themselves to fulfilling their mission. When Jesus looked He saw the multitudes. He didn't just see a crowd of people. He was actually deeply moved, because they needed help. One of the things that is a practical thing that you could do very easily, is to walk through the streets or walk through a crowd of people and just praying in your spirit, and then begin to look into them. Just as you walk through people just look at people and smile at them - otherwise you stare at them, and they start to get what's up with you! But look at people and smile at them, and as you look at them look into their eyes and look into their countenance. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see them, as He sees them. Now you know what will happen if you start to do that for a while? You're not going to try and gauge anyone, you're just starting to open your eyes to see people like Jesus does.

We tend to see people as problems. We tend to see people as divided into those who we need their help for something, or we don't really want to be too connected with them, or they're an interruption to our life. When I first came here, I found one of the things that really helped me was I began to walk through the street looking at people, until I began to feel tremendous compassion, and you could see the problems written on their faces. You could see the burden on them. You become awakened to see people like God can see them. Even at church on a Sunday you can go in and you just get into a routine, but if you go in there and realise listen, I'm here not because I'm come to church. I'm here because God sent me here. I'm here to be a blessing, and there's someone here needs what I have to do today - so you go in, you start to look around and talk with people and if you will start to look differently, you will see the needs. It doesn't take you very long. That's the first phase is to get the heart for people; ask Jesus to give you a heart to have compassion, because your mission is always to people.

Now we may be a technical person, we may be this or may be that, but the bottom line is whatever our mission is, it will always ultimately involve people, so we need to get the heart of God for people. I encourage you, it's just such a simple thing. The first exercise you can write down that you could do, is just to begin to walk through crowds of people, and as you walk through them smile at them, look into their eyes, look into their face and just reach out towards them from your heart. Ask God to show you how He sees them. You will be amazed how your view changes.

The second thing you can do, is make a decision that you're going to start to engage people, and ask them about themselves, just take an interest in them. Ask questions. Don't try and talk about yourself in any way, don't try and convert them. Just ask questions, and show kindness and an interest in the person. Now you will find a second thing. The first thing you'll find is, how you begin to feel and see people - you feel about people and see people as Jesus sees them; second thing, when you start to ask questions and listen, what you'll find is you'll begin to discover what's really going on in people's lives. I'm amazed how people will open up and talk. If you just begin to ask questions, don't get defensive, just reflect back what you think you've heard, and they will begin - if they find you'll listen to them, they'll tell you stuff, and they'll tell you things that you never would have realised. You begin to realise this person's opened their life because they're lonely and disconnected. They want to find someone who will listen to them. Then we'll share with you some other things you can do about how to bring the presence of God.

So you are called. So notice He gave them an apostolic commission, so first He gave it to the 12, now He's given it to the 70, and as we'll see shortly in Mark, Chapter 16, He gives it to everyone. Everyone has got the apostolic commission. Everyone is a missionary, everyone is sent, so turn to someone and say well, hello missionary! Come on. [Laughter] See, it's a funny thing isn't it, that you're - it's a sort of a word you use for someone else, you don't think of it as related to yourself, but you're a person on a mission. The moment you walk out of this building, you're on a mission. Okay then, so let's go to 1.4, you're designed for dominion. In Psalm 8, Verses 5 and 6, notice the psalmist is speaking and acknowledging: you have made him a little lower than the angels. You've made man a little lower than the angels. Now that word angels is literally the original word, the word elohim, meaning God, so You have made man just a little beneath God. You have created him in Your own image and likeness. Notice, You have crowned him with glory and honour. You've made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands. You've put all things, all things, under his feet.

Now of course we don't see that. We see the consequences of sin, but this is the original design, so notice now that God designed us for dominion over His creation. That word crowned means: an ornamental headgear that a sovereign state would wear, so notice he said: You have made man just a little lower in rank than God, and You have crowned him or put a sovereign headgear over him of glory and honour, given him glory and honour, and you've made him for the purpose of having dominion over the works of Your hands, and put everything under his feet. Now you can't get it clearer. That's one of the best verses in the Bible to describe that you are royalty, called on assignment to represent Jesus in the earth. You're called to represent the King. Now many times when we speak and pray, we don't see ourselves that way, we don't think of ourselves that way. We tend to think about ourself out of what our old self esteem is.

Imagine if you were to wake up every day and think: I am royalty. I am crowned with glory and honour. I am called to represent the king of kings today, everywhere I go, I will give my very best. It gives you a different perspective on your day, totally different. It's a truth to get into your heart, that is who you are. You're called for this, and now notice in the next verse we'll look at there, around dominion, Psalm 149, Verses 5 through to 9, it says this: Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth - so it's talking about the whole area of opening our life to engage with God. So when its saying be joyful, singing aloud, high praises, what it's really talking about is us opening up the realm of heaven for God to move. That's how you open heaven for yourself; you exalt the Lord. He says He inhabits the praises of His people, so when I give myself to vocal and expressive praise, I am opening up the realms of heaven for the presence of God to flow through me into the earth.

Now notice what it says next. It says: and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute on them the judgement written - This honour have all His saints. Now that word all His saints, God has placed a tremendous honour on you. He could just wipe the devil out just like that. In fact there'll come a day when He'll send some angels, and they'll assign them all into hell, and they'll be there for 1,000 years. He can do it today, could do it tomorrow, He could have done it already, but the Bible says He's given us a particular honour, and this is what the honour is. He's given us an honour of dealing the judgements of heaven, the judgements of the word of God against evil spirits. He's given us the honour of executing that in the earth. He's given us the honour of addressing and dealing with evil spirits in the earth. It's an honour, it's not an unusual ministry. It's actually a privilege to represent God, and get rid of the ravening wolves out of people's lives. It's an honour and a privilege. Have you thought of that?

See a lot of people use the word deliverance or spiritual warfare. They think it's some weird thing and it's just for a few people... They don't realise actually this honour of bringing judgement against evil spirits, is actually an honour given to all the saints, and it requires that we worshippers knowing how to access God, and that we know how to use the word of God quite simply, and we'll show you how to do that a little bit later in one of the sessions. What a great privilege for you to bring the presence of God to wherever you are, and to change the spiritual atmosphere. I was talking to one man, and he was complaining to me about a situation at work, and I said to him well, what's the problem? He told me, well all the language and the cursing and the atmosphere, it was a horrendous place. I said is that right, what are you going to do about it? He said, well I'm going to leave. I said really? Tell me that one again - I said how many other Christians are there? He said no one. I said so - let me say this again, you're the only Christian there, and because it's all so bad, you're about to leave and resign your post? He said, well I hadn't thought of it like that but yeah, [laughter] that's it, you know? I said why don't you do something about it? He said: what on earth could I do?

I said: well the people there are under the influence of wicked spirits. They have access to their lives because their lives are unsurrendered and they run independently, but you on the contrary, you have access to heaven, to bring heaven into the earth. You could change that whole environment. I said you're thinking of it as a problem and you're wanting to get away so you can have an easier life. You're not thinking of yourself as a missionary, in a workplace, called to shift the spiritual atmosphere - and he wasn't thinking that way at all. He was thinking how can I get out where it'll be nicer - but we're not called to retreat to where it's nicer. We're called to advance, and change what's there. Can you see it's a different thinking isn't it? So what I did then was I said I'll go down with you, so we went down into his workplace, and I said I can feel it's pretty oppressive here. There's obviously spirits here. Our business is to drive them out, because God has given us authority. I said you don't have to be the boss to do that. He doesn't get to drive demons out because he's the boss. You get to drive them out because Jesus is your boss, and you represent him.

So what we did was we prayed strongly in tongues, then we began to walk around the workplace and began to address the spirits that were there. We named these particular manifestations that were happening, the various difficulties that they were facing over and over and over again; we began to speak to the spirits behind them, commanded them to go, forbade them to operate, commanded them to go out of the place, and invited the Holy Spirit to come in, and increase the productivity, and change the atmosphere in that workplace. About a week later he came back and he ran up, he was really excited, and he said we've had the best week we've ever had. I have never enjoyed work so much as I have this week. I said wow, isn't that wonderful, I wonder why [laughter], because often people don't connect the blessing and the flow of what they're experiencing, back with the things that brought it about. I said about a week ago you were about to leave this place because it was so bad; now you're saying how much you like it. I said you have had to change, in the way you approach this whole thing, you have had to deal with the spirits in the atmosphere.

I had another young man and he was complaining about his workplace and it was very, very difficult and the place he was working in, they were having breakdowns, there were all kinds and there was bad morale, there were a whole number of things there, and I said what are you going to do about it? He said well I can't do anything about it, I'm not the boss. I said hey listen, how many other Christians there? He said - would you believe it - none. I said well there you go, don't you realise that the problems are not just outward things, they actually have got a spiritual root, and a spiritual source. I said you are a believer, you can do something about that. I said now tell me, when did the problem start? He said when the new supervisor came on our line, that's when the problems started. I said what do you know about that man? He said well he's a pretty dark heavy person. I said do you think he might have been involved in the occult? He said probably is, I think he might be actually. I said really, is that right? Well we can deal with that, can't we, and so I showed him what to do.

I showed him to stand up every day, begin to pray in tongues, and to stand as an ambassador of heaven, speak into the spiritual atmosphere, take dominion and subdue every spirit that was using that man as a gateway into the workplace, and to subdue them, forbid their operation, and to release blessing into that place. I said you'll find it'll be a little challenging for you for the next few days, but if you'll just keep it up, things will change. About 10 days later he came to me, and he said I want to tell you what's happened. He said the guy's been taken off the role, and he said I've been promoted into the role [laughter], and actually the whole of the work environment has changed, the problems have decreased, and productivity has started to increase.

I could continually tell you stories just like that. We don't seem to realise just how much spiritual forces impact what goes on, and how we as believers have authority to shut them down. If we don't, who is going to? I'll tell you what happens. Most believers just forget that there is a real spiritual world, they just forget it, so we're trying to, in this series, help you understand it. It's very real, it is very present, and when you step up to engage it, then you will find that there is a real fight goes on, and if you'll persist and learn how to walk and win the battle, you'll change things immensely. Okay then, so there we go. Section 1.5, you've been commissioned, in Matthew 28, Verse 18, Jesus spoke to them saying: all authority has been given to Me in heaven and earth. So therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you; and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

So Jesus has given us a command, and it involves nations. Now nations involves government, it involves business, it involves media, it involves sports, arts, science, education. Now one of the things is, we tend to forget that the Great Commission means transformation within the community, transformation one soul at a time, and in this particular hour God is emphasising ordinary believers arising in the different areas of the community, and starting to make the presence of God, and their presence, felt. In Taiwan where we have the privilege to minister they're making tremendous inroads into the media, and in one church alone that we've been to there are now over 100 people from the media, from the arts and entertainment and TV industry are in just one church - over 100 that have been saved in the last four years. They are using their gifts to bring the gospel into the nation.

Now there are about three significant churches in Taiwan that are having an influence, and between them they have something between 200 and 250 celebrities covering the pop area, the high class quality entertainment area, and then various areas of media and television. I have prayed for them, in fact I had the privilege of praying for and prophesying over the leading actor and singer in Asia, the one who's the most famous of them all, who when he turns out the crowds just come screaming. These people are responding; the gospel is going into these areas, and we need to arise and believe it's possible to do that. So the whole church has got a commission, a mandate, not just to go and win souls, but actually get them aligned and start to shift the whole culture. It's a most exciting possibility, and so we saw how the original commission was given to Adam and Adam lost it, Jesus came to restore it. He commissioned the 12, He commissioned the 70, and then He's commissioned the whole church, and then before they started He said, Acts 1:8, wait until you receive the power of the Holy Ghost to do the work. You have to be anointed and filled with the spirit to be able to do this kind of work.

You can't engage in the realm of the spirit significantly unless you're baptised in the Holy Ghost, and released in the Holy Ghost. Jesus promised that we'd be anointed with the Holy Ghost, and this was necessary for the completion of our assignment. That's why just giftings are not enough, talent is not enough, we need to be filled with the Holy Ghost, need to be filled with the spirit of God. He told us go fulfil the assignment, make Christ known, make disciples, heal the sick, cast out demons, bring the presence of God wherever you go - and we want to help you in these next sessions to understand your assignment, and then how to arise and begin to assert authority. Amen.

Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6)  

Tue 12 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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This session begins with some activations to develop spiritual strength & sensitivity. Every believer has a spiritual territory (or 'metron') entrusted to us, a sphere of influence which is ours to govern - some permanent, some temporary. Adam (in Gen. 2:15) was instructed to 'tend', cultivate, develop his territory and to 'keep' or protect it from the enemy. Learn valuable keys to on how to govern, what to govern, and the consequences of failure to govern.

I'm going to get you to do something in a moment. It's really quite important that we actually activate and stir our spirit because it's no use just having information. In the end the only knowledge you really have is what comes experiential, and so you're going to need to experience things before these things start to come alive inside you. So I will lay out some very simple, clear teaching around these areas, but we also need to experience the life of the spirit, the life of the spirit, and the flow of the spirit as well. If you don't experience anything much, then you just have a lot of theory and knowledge.

I remember I taught one man how to stand up in his spiritual leadership in the home, and I showed him how to pray, and he stood up and prayed. The next day he rang me, he said I'm sick today. I said, don't be surprised. I've called you to stand up, and to your place that God positioned you, to speak and govern the spiritual atmosphere of your marriage and home, so clearly there's been a problem there, and it was only when you stepped up that you found it. So I said persevere, and he persevered, then the problems flushed to the surface, and then there was able to be ministry, deliverance and a whole shift in the dynamic of that relationship. So people don't know it's real until they start to operate in it, so we do have to experience the things of the spirit.

I'll show you just quite simply how you do this as we go, but what I want us to do is I want us to constantly over the whole of this seminar, I want us to be strengthening and developing internally in our spirit dimension, because if we don't do that, we don't have the strength. We need both the spirit of God, and the word of God, and we need to let God help us to grow. There's a great scripture where Paul prays in Ephesians 3, that you would be strengthened with might, or dunamis - the power of God in your inner man. I'll show you in one of the last sessions some simple things you can do, that will help build your spirit man, and change the whole atmosphere which you carry around your life.

Most people live under what's around them. Most people live under the spiritual prevailing environment, which in New Zealand is passivity, and apathy, and rejection, and passive rebellion, so those are the common things that you find in the Kiwi culture. Wherever you're in it, you'll feel that, and so what happens is, until we learn how to stand up and alter the spiritual atmosphere around us, we don't even realise what we've accepted as normal. So I can tell you now, most people accept as normal something that actually is a place of bondage and lack of freedom, so if you would just accept the challenge to experiment over tonight and tomorrow, and see what happens as you do certain things to unlock and free up your spirit and the flow of your spirit; I would expect by the end of tomorrow, that you're flowing and the spirit of God is moving freely through you touching lives. It doesn't mean it's the end of the journey, but what it does mean is that you're starting to explore what it is to flow in the spirit.

When you got baptised in the spirit it was an entrance to the realm of the spirit. It was just a gateway experience, but we have to learn to go on in those areas. Amen - okay, so what we're going to do is this. In a moment we'll get people praying in tongues, and I'm going to just get you to do it in different ways. I want you to explore some various aspects of praying in tongues. The Bible says: when a man prays in tongues - 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 14 - when I pray in tongues, my spirit is praying. In other words, when you're praying in tongues, your spirit is now being stirred, being active and giving expression in the earth. Not only that, you are praying in a language the Holy Spirit is giving you, so when you're praying in tongues, the spirit of God enjoined to your spirit, is expressing His life through you. So there is always an outworking of that, so one of the most powerful gifts entering us into the realm of the spirit is the gift of tongues - one of the most neglected gifts, and I have to keep stirring believers all the time, and continually to arise, and begin to explore what that gift can do, so we want to do some of that while we're here over the weekend.

Okay, so the first thing we'll do, and I'm not going to get anything more than about a minute, so what we're going to get you to do is just stand up, and I want you to pray in tongues for 30 seconds, see what it feels like and see what it feels like in the atmosphere. So let's just do that - are you ready? On the count of three, one, two, three, let's begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Okay, just stop now. Okay, just stop. That's our start point. You've got to have a start point, so that's just the start point. Now what I feel when I'm in an atmosphere where people are praying, I open my heart to feel what is present there, and what I feel is people are expressing but it's relatively - it's measured. It's just measured. You can feel it, like it's measured. You just give it so much, but that's it. I want us to actually break out of that, because your spirit must find expression through your soul and your body, and it's your body resists, and your soul resists, so we want to just get you to shift your body.

This time what we're going to do is, we're going to pray again, and I want you to pray as loudly as you can, give voice to your tongues, and I want you just to shake your body, make your body be obedient, because our body just wants to sleep and it wants to eat, and it doesn't want to do stuff. Our spirit always wants to pray. Our flesh, which is our body and our soul, just resists it. So what I want you to do, I want you to shake your body as if you were making your body just come into alignment, because inside your spirit is rising up to pray, and speak out in this heavenly language! So let's do it now, and I want you to as strongly as you can, and notice what happens in terms of the flow of energy in the room and in your personal body as you do this. Ready? About 30 seconds - one, two, three. [Prays in tongues]

Okay, just stop now. Alright, now what change did you notice that time? How many noticed a change, you just - okay, what did you notice? More vibrations, yeah, you're right, yeah, okay. Yeah? More freedom? More freedom, you found freedom. Now isn't it interesting, how many found more freedom that time as you were praying? Now all I got you to do, it's the silliest of things really, was just shake your body, to get your body to do what your spirit wants to do, express strongly. We have to understand that our body resists our spirit, and so you have to take dominion. One of the first places to get dominion is over just your own body, and you need to learn how to discipline your body. So I've found one of the simplest things is just shake your body, and make it wake up, just make it WAKE UP! Learn to command your body. Just speak to your body from your spirit.

So you'll find, that if you will arise in your spirit and develop your spirit life, your body and your soul will respond, and then you'll find there's a lot of energy inside you. It's spiritual energy. It's not just a natural thing. What I was doing with getting the shaking, was to get you just to make your body do what it needs to do, just to yield up, and be involved and engaged in praying, okay? Now the other thing to do is get your soul involved in that as well, so we're going to get body and stuff. So what we're going to do is first of all we'll just get your body involved again. The Bible says: clap your hands all you people, shout unto God with a voice of? [Triumph.] Triumph all you people, so I want you just for a moment now, just close your eyes and get your soul, start to get your soul - now the way you get your soul in line, you see your soul is connected to your spirit, and your soul is connected to your body.

So your soul and body form the flesh; your soul and spirit form the inner man, and our soul has to be renewed, so what I want you to do is just to focus your mind and your thoughts on this. We're going to focus our thoughts. We're going to go back in 2000 years of history, going to go right back to the day that Jesus rose from the grave, and there it is, I can stand, I can see with my imagination, I can see that mighty rock that's in front of the tomb. I see the Roman soldiers there, but there's something is happening in that tomb. The spirit of God has entered into Jesus, and the rock rolls away, and Jesus rises victorious! Come on, let's clap and shout to him [Shouts and applause] and give him the shout of victory! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Halleluiah! [Prays in tongues] Wonderful Jesus! Thank You Lord.

Now what did you find that time? [Joy.] Tremendous joy isn't it? So how was that time different to the time before? It came from something that rose up from inside as we actually engaged our mind with spiritual truth, and your spirit - if you'll engage your mind with spiritual truth and picture it, imagine it and give yourself to it, your spirit will immediately arise inside. So your spirit will respond to your body; your spirit will respond to your soul, so we've got to bring our body and our soul into agreement with where we want to go, otherwise they resist the flow of the spirit. So it's quite simple, I just learn to shake my body, make it wake up, and did you realise that Samson shook himself to activate the anointing? How about that? He just physically shook himself, and the power of God would come on him. Isn't that something? Elijah used some music, and we get the gift of... tongues. See, we activate the anointing and the flow of the Holy Spirit just praying in tongues, isn't that right? Okay then.

Now I want you to find a bit of space, and this is what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to just walk up and down and start to move, just pace a little. Just pace, pace in a bit of an area, and begin to focus on praying in tongues strongly. Come on, let's just do it. [Prays in tongues] Okay, let's just stop. Alright, now first of all what did you experience, what happened? See, some things may be positive, some things may be negative. You may find that your mind and your soul argues with you - I don't want to do it, why do you make me do it, I don't want to do this, just sit down, teach some more. You get into an argument going on inside of yourself. That is all the flesh coming against the spirit, so when you walked, how many found that the energy flowed more easily, just as you were walking as you prayed? It is, because if you sit down too long your spirit begins to shut down, because your body's inactive, so you'll find if you get your body moving it will actually free yourself up, and your spirit flows more easily. It's a very, very simple thing, but people just overlook the simple things.

Hence that's why in worship, the first songs we sing are strong clapping ones, and why are they doing that? They're to get our body awake, but you know, I can tell you this: you don't have to sing three of those songs. If everyone for 30 seconds would clap and shout for all they're worth, you'd have the same effect. That's the thing, isn't it interesting? Yet we can take so long, because it takes a wholehearted engagement to break the apathy and the heaviness off you, and all it takes is 30 seconds of wholehearted and it breaks. But people go for a long time heavy and passive and shut down, because they just didn't give themselves to something. Okay, here's another one you can try now, and that is by speaking scripture aloud.

Now I'm going to give you a scripture out of one of the Psalms, Psalm 103 and it goes like this. I'll quote it to you, but it's something you can all pray, and I want you to pray it. If you don't know where it is, you can look it up in Psalm 103, Verse 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases and so on. Okay, now let me ask you this: what part is he speaking to? [Soul.] He's speaking to his soul, so where's he speaking from? His spirit, so you see his spirit is speaking to his soul, and what is he telling his soul to do? Bless the Lord! In other words, he's saying wake up! Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name!

See he's stirring himself, and he didn't have tongues, but he did find that by speaking to his soul he could command his soul, to what? To bless the Lord, so why did he have to do that? Because he didn't feel like doing that. You read through the psalms and you find how often David was miserable. He said I began to think and I pondered, and as I pondered on my distress my soul became overwhelmed, then I meditated on the works of the Lord. I remembered the great and mighty works He did, and then everything changes you see, so you read Psalm 77, first half of the psalm he's in depression as he thinks about all his problems. Then immediately he makes a change, and he starts to meditate on the works of God, and his whole spirit comes back up again, and faith arises - so why don't we just try that aye?

Now remember, don't just say empty words. Speak to your soul, like you're telling something that's rebellious in you to come into line. Now you know what it's like when the kids are rebellious - don't want to do that. Straighten up boy, you know! [Laughter] See, so this is kind of military warfare, so you've got to speak into your own soul, so if you haven't got it you can get the Bible and open it up, bless the Lord o my soul. Bless the Lord o my soul and forget not, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Aye? Bless the Lord, O my soul. You know, come on, let's hear it on the count of three, just get your Bible out, open it up. It's a great one. I pray this, it wakes me up immensely. I love it - then you find there's other things you can do, and we'll talk about that, taking authority over your day, commanding your day to come into order.

Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits - so we'll just do that part. Are we ready? [Laughs] Okay, on the count of three: one, two, three. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits. Halleluiah, okay - no, you can carry on - forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases. Amen - redeems my life and so on, come on. Okay, try it again from the top. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, hey, come on, there we go - your diseases, yes, exactly. Redeems your life, Halleluiah, glory to God! Okay, now just stop for a moment.

Now what I want you to do is to identify what you felt as you started to do that, what happens inside you when you spoke to your soul. How many felt yourself arising on the inside? How many felt a change on the inside? What did you feel? [There was a change in the atmosphere.] The change in the atmosphere here wasn't there, when we gave voice to the word of God the whole atmosphere began to shift - so let's have a look what we've noticed. We've noticed that the spirit of God inside us can be awakened and aroused and stirred. The one that causes that is me, by my choice. I can pray in tongues any time I want, so the second thing we saw was, our body tends to resist the flow of the spirit. We can make our body be subdued by just shaking it, and once you've learned how to stir your spirit you could just shake yourself like that and be alive, just like that, once you've learned to have dominion over your body and what it does to you.

The next thing we learnt was that we could stir our soul and we stirred our soul by meditating and focussing and we stirred our soul by confessing the word of God and speaking directly to our soul. Now I want you to remember that experience, that you woke up your body, woke up your soul and stirred up the anointing within you and it only took you a few minutes - and you did it. You can do that every time and any time, wherever you are and the more you practice the quicker and easier it is to slip into that. You break out of passivity, you break out of heaviness and you notice that we found not only did the energy begin to flow in us, but the atmosphere around us shifted as well. So what happened? Suddenly there's something different there. How many can feel there's a presence of God here now? See, quite different.

Now you have to shift what's around, in order to be able to bring the presence of God in, so it's like this. It's like if my spirit is already connected to heaven, the problem with heaven coming to earth is in my soul and my body - so if I just take dominion over my soul and body, and in my heart believe the spirit of God will flow, I can give voice and God comes into the room. We're not having to wait for anything to happen. We actually bring God into the place, otherwise you're thinking like here I am on earth trying to make my way up into heaven to get near to God, rather than say I'm already connected to God; I've just got to let what is within me find expression in the earth, so the spirit of God can flow - not trying to break through to God, I'm trying to break through the resistance in my body and soul, and the spiritual atmosphere, to express what I already have.

We are already seated in heavenly places. We are already joined to the Lord, one spirit to the Lord. We're already connected into heaven. You don't have to fight your way to get there. Jesus got you there. What you've got to do is find a way to break the resistance for that truth expressing through your life. How many found that helpful? Remember, it's about your thinking, so when you stand to think, if you think oh here I am - you see when your spirit gets shut down by your body and soul, you become very self-conscious and not God-conscious. Your soul and body are causing it. Now if I would just change my thinking and set it on the word of God, set it on the truth, I'm actually in heavenly - I'm in the spirit world already, I'm already connected to God, I'm already ONE SPIRIT WITH THE LORD! [Prays in tongues] Bless the Lord, O my soul - now you see immediately it comes alive. But you have to practice until it becomes natural and normal and it's easy, see? Shall we do it one more time?

So we're just going to quote that verse again - you can go on quoting if you like, then we'll pray in tongues for a bit and let's notice what we find in the atmosphere and around. Then I'll show you something else you can do in tongues straight after that and you'll find it'll be quite different again. Ready? Okay then, so what are we going to do? We'll just quote the verse - ready, Psalm 103, Verse 1 - Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His Holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all my diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with glory and honour, oh Halleluiah. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Okay, just stop now.

Now I want you to just do something a little bit different now. Now we know when we pray in tongues the spirit of God is praying through us. What I want you to do now is, just use your language in tongues as a language of devotion and adoration. Now we're not going to pray strongly, assertively, forcefully. We're going to pray tenderly, and fix your mind that Jesus Christ is right there before you, you're in His presence, and so you're just flowing from your heart to just love Him. Feel as you do that what happens, and what happens in the atmosphere. Let's just pray for about 30 seconds and just give yourself to loving Him, and expressing through this heavenly language how precious, how special, how wonderful He is for all He has done, the privilege of walking with Him, the privilege of being His representative, the privilege of serving Him. Let's just honour Him just as we speak in our language now. [Prays in tongues] Yes Lord, oh we love You Lord. We love You Lord. We love You Lord. We honour You Lord. We worship You Lord, yes, halleluiah.

Alright, just stop right now. Okay, now how do you sense the atmosphere now? What are you experiencing now? What are you finding has happened? How many feel a real sense of God being very close to you? How many can feel that right now? How many felt like you'd like to break into song? [Laughs] Great isn't it? You just feel like there's a song is rising up, He is Lord, you know? You just want to honour Him. See, now that's a different flow again isn't it? That's just worshipping, so we enjoy His presence. Now you notice we deliberately didn't have musicians here. Musicians are wonderful. They're a great help, but what I've wanted to do is to get you to see what's possible for you to do because most of the time you don't have a musician, it's just you. But you can do things, you can make your body, command your body. You can command your body to wake up and stop being so resistant and stubborn and tired. You can command your soul, and focus your soul, where your soul begins to engage God instead of feeling sorry for himself, and your spirit can arise and we feel the presence of God very quickly.

As you feel His presence you reach out and just love on Him, reaching out to just enjoy Him, find natural language and find the language of the spirit, just to honour Him and value Him or speak tenderly to Him. You can feel His presence here very strongly - so this is about the first person, the first realm you have to assert your authority is over yourself, over your body which plays hard and difficult at times, over your soul which is very self-centred and sorry for itself and self-directed. If we can take dominion and begin to cause our soul to flow towards God and cause our body to respond and yield and co-operate, we can begin to enjoy the presence of God. We feel His presence very easily. Of course when you feel His presence then the anointing begins to flow, so it's not hard now. I just need a catcher around me now - if I was just to lay hands now, just hold her, oh! Presence of God just touch her Lord, let Your anointing fall upon her right now. There's a presence here, the presence of God.

Now you and I are called to bring this presence wherever we go, but you've got to practice it on your own first of all, until it's natural for you to be able to just engage and feel the presence of God. Now some of us may have blocks. For some it'll be a lot easier than others; some may have blocks. Those blocks - we'll touch on those tomorrow and we'll look at how to deal with some of those things and how to break through some of those things. Amen. Give someone a hug and we'll go into Session Two.

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I want you to open up then on Page 4, and second session, and we're looking at identifying your spiritual territory. This is very important for you because it's important to know what God has entrusted me with, and what's my territory is mine, and we'll look at some things in this. So the first one, 2.1, every believer has the privilege of moving supernaturally. Not all do, but we do have the privilege. Notice what it says in 1 Corinthians 12, Verse 7: But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, or each one, for the profit of all. So how many people is God willing to give a manifestation of His spirit to? Every person. So notice - is given to every person. So it's written as a reality. This is a spiritual reality: the presence of God, or the manifestation of the spirit of God, is given to every man, so no one is left outside.

So notice it's not something I have to do to work up, it's something that's given to me. I just need to learn how to receive, so every believer is given the privilege of bringing the supernatural dimension of God into the earth. Every believer, not just some - so is that for me? Well your experience may not be that, but why don't we start with what the word of God says, and see if we can believe that our experience would come up, rather than dropping the word of God down to our experience. So every believer is given something to advance the kingdom of God. Every believer is called to bring the life of God to other people, everyone, everyone. It's our opportunity to do that, and so to do that we need to learn how to. We'll perhaps touch on some of that tomorrow, how to just flow with the Holy Spirit and release the anointing of the spirit of God to touch people.

But the first thing we want to establish is, every believer has the potential to flow in the supernatural, and bring the realm of the spirit of God or the realm of heaven into the earth, every believer. Imagine if every believer in every church, when they went into the community, wherever they live, started to pray and act in a way that brought the presence of God there. That would have to make a difference. It would have to make a difference. The trouble is that we just don't do it, we just get busy and overlook it. So the first thing then is every believer can bring something of heaven into the earth. We can bring the reality of God into wherever we are - that's every believer's privilege. Second thing is that every believer has a spiritual territory. I'll use the word territory, but we will look at the original language and see there's particular words they use, but we'll just call it territory because it's something that's easy to remember.

You have a spiritual territory. It would be good if you were to consider this: what is that territory? What specifically is my territory? What does God require of me to do in that territory? And if I don't do it, what happens? Those are good questions to ask aren't they? What is my territory, what am I supposed to do in that territory, and if I don't do it, what are some of the things that happen as a result of that? Those are good kinds of questions to ask isn't it aye? Alright then, so the first thing is we'll read in 2 Corinthians 10, Verse 13 and Paul is writing. He says we, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere God has appointed to us - a sphere which especially includes you. For we are not overextending ourselves, as though our authority did not extend to you, for it was to you that we came with the gospel, not boasting of things beyond what God gave to us or our measure, not boasting of other men's labours, but having hope that as your faith is increased, we shall be enlarged by you in our sphere, to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and we not boast in another man's sphere of accomplishment.

Now it's not easy language to get to understand, so we're just going to identify a couple of words that he uses there, and then explain what he's saying. Now he uses the word measure, will not boast beyond our measure. That word measure is a word in the original language called metron, from which we get the word metre, a metre rule. The word metron is like a measure, it's like if you want to measure our something to someone, you would just stick the cup in and you'd measure it up, and then you had an idea this is the bit that I measure out to you. So you can imagine I might have several different cups, so there's a glass over there and this glass can hold a measure of water - but if I had a jug, a-ha, now I've got a bigger measure of water. So the measure then - what he's saying, the word metron there means a measure, something that's apportioned by God to a person.

So God measures out to you, something for you, so your measure is different to mine. It's unique to each person, and he says we won't boast beyond our measure, but within the limits of the sphere God has appointed to us. That word sphere is the word canon, and it means a bounded area that God has measured out for you to operate in - so Paul's saying something like this: I have been given by God an area or territory. It's been measured to me by God, for me to operate in. That's my responsibility. He says: so my measure reaches and includes you, but he says I won't go beyond what God has given me. I'll stay within the sphere God has given me. Getting the idea? So he's saying God has measured to me an area of influence, and that territory or area of influence includes you, and we've brought you the gospel. We're praying that your faith will grow, and if your faith grows then the influence will grow, and my territory will increase.

So he's saying: I didn't go into anyone else's territory. I've actually pioneered, and this is my own territory, so he's identifying I have a territory God measured out for me to minister in, and bring God's life into, and I don't go past that. Jesus Himself, you notice when the woman, the Phoenician woman came to Him and said, could you heal my daughter, and He said I'm not sent to the Gentiles, I'm sent to the house of Israel. So in other words He's saying my sphere of operation in this period of history is for Israel, but her faith was so strong she literally pulled Him out, and He ministered anyway, and she got the miracle because of her faith. So faith was what enabled her to pull a miracle out of the sphere of influence into where she was, but Jesus defined His sphere of influence: it was Israel. Now after He rose from the dead, He's now sent the gospel to go everywhere through every believer, so you have a territory, a sphere of influence.

So you have a particular territory God has measured to you. Now this would help Christians stop being competitive with one another, if they recognised actually I have my own territory that God's given me, I have my own area I'm responsible for, I should mind my business and not be worried about someone else's business, or even envious of what God has given them. So what God has measured to Bryan, He's measured to Bryan, not to me, so why should I be envious of that? Am I going to get angry with God because God did that? No, God knows what Bryan is capable of, and God has given him giftings and a sphere of influence and that's his to operate in. I should rejoice in it and encourage him in it, see? Otherwise we look at what others have, their giftings and their influence, and we get jealous of it - oh, how come they've got that and blah blah blah. We get into that negative thinking.

Why don't we say, actually God has given me giftings, He's given me the capacity to move supernaturally, and He has given me a territory to operate in. It's my job to discover what He's given me, and the territory He's given me, and to learn how to do what He wants me to do in that area. This would save a lot of frustration, because a lot of people sit in church and they're waiting for some ministry, waiting for some great thing and the most of the rest of their life is in the community. They haven't recognised that is their sphere of influence, that is their territory - for example, just using Bryan, there's no one I know in our church lives where Bryan lives - yeah, apart from you, yeah, that's right. [Laughter] Well the two are one, so I've just got to do it like that. In the workplace of course he works in a partnership, but there are people that he connects with that probably Bill doesn't connect with, the clients he has.

So he gets to meet people that I don't get to meet most of the time, and he gets to meet some people I do meet, so our territories overlap, so where they overlap is what's the church, the rest of it is his territory which is unique to him. So your job is to discover your territory, and find what God gave you to do in your territory, and then do it. Now that releases everyone to ministry, and most people are waiting for someone to get them going into some thing, in other words set it up for me so I can do it. That's okay when you're younger, but as you grow, you should actually start to say well God, what have you gifted me and what territory have you given me? How can I do something in that area? Okay, so let's have a look at our territory.

So your metron is your territory God measured you, gave you responsibility for. Your metron is your ministry assignment, so whatever your ministry assignment is, that's your responsibility, that's where you are, that's where you have an influence, and it's usually a specific location or a group of people, or a position of responsibility. It's usually a specific place, location; it involves people, and it involves a responsibility - place, people, responsibility. So my metron is not just here, it goes right up into Asia, primarily into Asia. That's where I have huge influence, far more influence there than here, so I've a stronger metron and a bigger metron in Asia than I have here. Here it's a few hundred, there it's multi-thousands. You say how did you get to do that? I don't know. Someone invited me just to go there, and then God told me to connect with someone, and then it's just gone from there.

It grows as you actually fill out and fulfil what God gave you to do, so if you realise that you have a territory that God has given you, and you discover it and then begin to think what can I do to fill that out, and bring forth fruit, and subdue whatever's in it that's negative and against the kingdom of God, you're busy all the rest of your life. It wouldn't matter if you had no position, you still have a territory. You still have something that God's called you to do, so you see whether I'm the Pastor of this church or not, I still have a territory God's given me, and so I want to try and identify that. So how would you identify your territory?

Notice what Paul says in Verse 15 of 2 Corinthians 10. I don't boast of things beyond measure or another man's labours, but have hope that as your faith is increased we shall be greatly enlarged in our own sphere. So he's talking about his own labours and someone else's labours, so he recognised his own territory that God had given to him. He said: I'm called to the Gentiles. That's an amazing thing. He's full of the gospel, he's full of the Bible, and he's sent to the Gentiles, so Paul was very careful not to go beyond his territory. Now it is important that you don't invade someone else's responsibility. When you do that, it becomes controlling, and it becomes witchcraft.

I was counselling one person, and it was about direction for this person's life, and the biggest challenge that they faced was that everyone in their life had told them what to do. What they needed to be encouraged was to identify what God had wired in them and then to step up and own it, then start to fulfil that assignment, you understand? Your territory's not what someone told you it was, it's something God put in your heart to do. That's why all ministry must flow out of our heart. Our heart has to be in it, or we're just fulfilling a duty and it's a dead thing. So Paul was careful not to go beyond his territory because there are two problems; one, if you go beyond your territory, you're into someone else's area that you're not responsible for, and meddling with their business, then you open the door for spirits of witchcraft to operate. Likewise if you don't occupy and take responsibility for your area, then again spirits come in and invade, as we'll see in a moment.

So your territory includes everything that God wants you to be responsible for. I'll say it again: your territory is everything God has given you specific responsibility for, so let's try and identify it really simply. The first thing is yourself, you're responsible for yourself. Now that seems sort of an obvious thing, but actually people forget it. You're responsible for your body, to have dominion over your body and to care for your body. If your body breaks down because of ill health you cannot fulfil your other parts of your assignment, so you need to bring your body and discipline your body and learn how to keep your body healthy so you can fulfil your assignment. Your soul is your territory. Your soul includes your mind, your thought life, your imagination. It includes your emotions, it includes your will. They are all your territory. You must govern that territory, so if you've got an anger problem your territory is out of control. Your territory's been invaded by something, so your soul is a vital part of your territory.

Your skills, the skills you have are part of your territory. You're responsible for them, and so if God has given you say a musical ability, develop it and cultivate it and grow it and have dominion over that area until it becomes productive and fruitful. Do training. A lot of people get this thing that you've come to the Lord now, and so everything natural is lost. No, actually God uses all your natural skills. They're not just natural, they're part of you, and you're a spirit being. They're spiritual. No, don't sort of try to minimise natural abilities we have, because that's what God gave you to earn a living, it's what God gave you to make a mark with your life. He just enhances it by the power of His spirit so it's more productive, but you need to develop it. So your metron firstly then is your own spirit, mind, your body and so on.

Another area is your relationship with your spouse, now that is your metron, that is your territory where the two become one. Now that doesn't mean you have the right to command, or boss, or have dominion over your spouse. What it does mean is that what's happening in your spouse's life is part of the territory God wants you to care for, so therefore you are responsible for that whole realm, the realm of what's going on in that relationship. Another area is your family. Now we're not responsible for the choices our children make, that's their territory, but we are responsible for the culture, the values, the training that goes on in the home. That's our territory. You can't delegate that to the church. You may let the church do a little bit on Sunday, but actually the primary training is in the home. You can't let the schools take over that - the primary place of training is the home. Your children are your children, not the church's children or the school's children. They are your children.

Now once you see that, you'll make it your business to know what's going on, and if something's going wrong you'll speak up, because it's your territory, and you're going to have a voice in your territory. Often in the education system it can be intimidating to parents. My experience over many years, both as a teacher and a parent, is the parents know what's going on in their kids, and then they should speak up if they're not happy about what's happening. We need to have a voice into those areas. Sometimes people in education can treat you as though you don't know anything, but I've found parents do know a lot, and they know a lot about what's going on in their kids, and what's right for their kids, and what isn't right for them. So you understand, these are your areas?

Now we're going to talk a little bit about what it means to take ownership, and so let's keep going on - so your finances are your territory. It's not just a matter of something casual. Your finances need to be cultivated and grown and developed and managed and so on. Your home is your territory, so your home has an atmosphere in it. The atmosphere's created by how you develop your relationships, what you permit in the home. There's a whole realm there where your home can be a place where the presence and peace of God is, and where people can come, and it's a ministry centre. So your home is your territory, and God gave you a home. We've always believed and bought houses that could be a place where people could come and find hospitality and ministry. Sometimes it gets a bit busy and I have to get a break, but on the other hand it is a place of ministry. It is our territory, within which we are called to use what God gave us to advance His kingdom.

Can you see we haven't even talked about anything in the church yet? We're just identifying aspects of your territory. Imagine if you were to identify each one, and begin to think what you could do to build, cultivate, develop this area. Be amazing wouldn't it? Okay then, your possessions, your possessions need maintenance and management and they're part of your territory. Your job and your workplace, now you have a great responsibility in the workplace. Why? Because if you're a believer, you are responsible to do something about the spiritual atmosphere of the place. If there is demonic activity there, you do have authority to address it, and deal with it as a representative of the kingdom of heaven. You can speak in it. We'll show you how to do that tomorrow. You can address it and change it and I've proven it. I proved it when I was a very young Christian. It's not difficult to shift a spiritual atmosphere in a place, because you have the right and the authority, and you are delegated authority to do it. Getting the idea?

Okay, what else? Your ministry, well that's an area of serving in the church or gifting and skill that God gives you that takes you outside the church, so your ministry - let's get away from the spiritualising too much - your ministry, another word, a better way to say it would be your service for the kingdom, your service for the kingdom. When you use the word ministry it sounds very important and special, but actually the word minister means servant. Actually if I can make it even clearer, it's the one who comes around and does something like this: it says I see your cup, it's just empty. Can I just - excuse me a minute - can I just help you and there you go, there you go. I'm sure that'll be much better now - see? Now that's what ministry is. People get the wrong idea, but ministry means - it's the word daikano, to wait on the tables, to meet the needs of people.

When you're waiting on the table, who's important, you or them? The person who's sitting at the table's, the important one. [Laughs] You're just the one waiting on the table. They're the one having the feed, they're the one that's being looked after.

So ministry, the word used to describe ministry is to wait on tables. It's to have a servant, or heart of a servant, to look after the needs of other people. It's nothing to do about how important you are. Insecure people with no identity get a big head about having some big ministry - I'm a this, I'm a that. Oh great, ministry means wait on tables you know, and Jesus modelled it. He washed people's feet. That's ministry, so you can do miracles and wash feet, you can do them all. No one's too important, so your ministry, what God called you to do is the territory that God wants you to grow and develop, and this is your metron, so for example with Graham and Jessie, God's put it in their heart to go out on the streets and to meet people in the streets, so God has given them a whole territory to begin to invade and to go into. That requires they do certain things.

Now everyone here can have a ministry. Within the church of course there's some areas of serving that we need to fulfil in order just to keep the family functioning properly, basics of children and youth and young adults, and sound and technical gear, and serving in the kitchen - all these serving areas, but they're all part of just keeping the household going. But beyond that we also have service within the community, and where God called you to serve, whether it's a place in the house, or a place in the community or both, that is your territory. You're responsible then to govern your territory. You say well, I'm not in charge of the ministry - but that doesn't mean to say you don't actually have a sense of responsibility for it. You see you're called to be a king, not a slave. A slave waits to be told what to do, a king designs how things could be better. See their whole attitude around this area? So you have a territory.

So you start to identify your territory, and then of course the reality is that you also have a territory or an engagement in the community. I've discovered wherever I am, God has an assignment for me there. Now that's a hard one to keep in mind because you just get busy doing stuff, but if you can imagine - have you ever seen an embassy, like the American Embassy or the French Embassy? If you go to an embassy it's an interesting thing, but the piece of land actually is foreign territory, so you can't go in there without permission because you're going into another country essentially. You're going to the embassy, the representation or the representatives of the Government of the United States, so when you go in there that's actually foreign territory. Now have a think about this. You have the spirit of God in you, and you are an ambassador, a representative of the kingdom of heaven, so wherever you are - think about this - wherever you are, then this is my territory.

So therefore I can minister and have influence wherever I go. I'm authorised, wherever I am is part of my territory, so I may be just here and then there's a group, so this is my territory, a temporary assignment. So you'll have permanent assignments which we've talked about - your own body, soul and spirit, your home, your family, your marriage. Then you have temporary ones wherever you are, so you go to a certain place, meet some people and for a short time you're on assignment; God, what do you want me to do? Have a think about this. Jesus stopped at the well, but His assignment hadn't stopped. He stopped at the well, a woman came by, and the disciples had walked past her because they were caught up with what they were doing. He saw someone in need, and in a few moments had a conversation with her that turned her into an evangelist, changed her life. Why is that? Because He had a sense of being on assignment all the time.

We tend to divide our life up, church life, rest of life, rather than saying actually, kingdom life 24/7, wherever I am I'm called to actually bring God there. I'm called to engage with it, and this is my territory for the moment, and so you'll have some assignments are permanent ones, but the majority are temporary. Some last only a little while. I meet a group of people and I have an opportunity to produce something that will bring blessing to them, or I may have a group of people and I'm with them for a longer period of time. Getting the idea? Once you start to see that you think what have you called me to do Lord? What do you want me to do here, what's my assignment here? And Jesus said I do all the things I see the Father doing. It's great isn't it aye?

So now what are your key responsibilities in your assignment? So you have a territory, so the first place to look is to go back into the Garden of Eden, and we'll have a look at what God told Adam to do. Let's get it here at Genesis 2:15. Got it? Then the Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. So they were given a territory. It's a garden. They were given two primary responsibilities: number one, tend it. Now here's what that means. That means literally to serve. It means to work as an act of worship, so work - there's no such thing as spiritual work and other work, it's all service to God. So when you consider you have a career, or whatever job you're doing, that's an act of worship to God when you give it to Him, and keep Him involved with it - that's your active worship. It means to cultivate or develop, so you have the idea of a piece of land that needs some turning over and some seeds planted in it and watering and it'll produce something.

The second thing he was called to keep it, to guard or watch over it or protect it from an enemy, so that implies that the territory, even the territory Adam had, one, it needed cultivating and developing, and required his creativity; two, there was an enemy which was real and present, and he had to protect his area or his territory from what that enemy could do. So have a think about that. He was given responsibility to cultivate, he's given responsibility to protect, so he failed in his governing when he did these things: he became silent and passive. That's how he failed, and then he eventually disobeyed, listened to the wrong voice - but he was silent. When the devil was doing all the talking to Eve he remained silent, so one of the big problems men have is, they remain silent and passive in the face of the enemy, and end up with huge problems in their lives and their families.

So what were the consequences of a failure to govern his territory? Number one, broken relationship. He damaged his relationship with God, and with his wife; secondly, loss of spiritual authority. The authority he did have that God gave him was now lost, it was yielded up to the devil who claimed and wielded it against Jesus later on. Now here's the thing you need to understand about it: if you give up your spiritual authority, the devil will use it against you, and so a person who does not stand up and lead in the area God called them to lead, will be oppressed in the area he's called to lead. There's never neutral. You arise and stand up in it, or it works and pushes down on you. You have to learn how to stand up, and to govern that area - and so he lost his spiritual authority, it become used against him.

The third thing was oppression and sickness, so once Satan had usurped the authority, then the next thing he used it too and so death entered in, sickness entered in and so on, and finally generational problems. Now we're looking at Adam. Now how about thinking about this; what would you think if I said this: that in your territory you are called to do two primary things - cultivate it to be fruitful; and guard it from demonic invasion? If you fail to guard it from demonic invasion then the consequences are, in your territory, there will exist broken and damaged relationships. You will have a loss of authority and a sense of powerlessness and oppression in that situation, and the problems that come could be generational. In other words your children for generations could be affected by your failure to govern.

This is an incredible responsibility on men, in terms of spiritual leadership in the home, to govern the home environment, the spiritual environment, and not to let their wife take up the responsibility because they gave it up. Men need to actually learn how to lead their homes, and it's the failure to lead creates the problems that we see in our culture now - so think about that. And of course Jesus reinforced this. I won't read the whole story there, but you're aware of the parable of the pounds, where the nobleman went to a far country and he entrusted his goods to his servants, and when he came back he called them to account. We saw in that parable how the servants that had been productive were given more; the servant which just only conserved, actually lost what he had. Jesus reinforced again, if you don't become productive and govern your area of responsibility, it does go away from you. You lose and diminish your authority and capacity to serve and minister, so He reinforced the same kind of principle.

So putting it again this way: if you don't guard and govern your territory, there will be damage in it. There will be oppression in it. The consequences could be generational, and they could result in heaviness, oppression and sickness. Think about this. If you don't govern your body you'll suffer ill health, then your life with be shortened. If you don't govern your soul, you'll end up with torments and troubles and pressures and anxieties and fears and all kinds of things going on in your soul. If you don't govern your finances and protect it from the enemy that'll come against you, you'll have financial problems that can affect all other areas of your life. So each one of these areas, if you fail in your metron to govern it and cultivate it, the consequences spread, but if you arise in that area, then blessing comes and great positive impact comes.

So let's go through here. What does it take then to govern your spiritual territory? Governing your spiritual territory - I want to give you about five keys. They may not apply in each and every one situation, but these are what I'd call important keys. Now the first one is probably one of the most important, although people wouldn't know this. The first one is you need to hold your territory in your heart in prayer. I want to read you something in Philippians 1, Verse 3. Paul's writing the Philippians, he said this: I thank my God in every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you with all joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now - now look at this - being confident of this very thing, that he who begun a good work in you - that's God, that's the Holy Spirit - will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now why could he be so confident that the work that he had begun would continue? Look what he says in the next one: It is right for me to think this way because I hold you in my heart, inasmuch in my chains and defence of the gospel, you are all partakers of my grace. For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you with all affection in Christ. Now what he's saying is this. He said: I came to you. You were the territory God sent me into. He said I sowed the gospel, and the spirit of God moved and touched your life, and I'm confident God will keep working in you. Why is this? He said because I am holding you in my heart in prayer, and you receive the grace that's on my life flows to you. Now he's writing as an apostle with apostolic grace and he's saying because I hold you in my heart, I can be confident that my prayer will release something in your life.

Now what does it mean to hold in your heart? Well you can see it through the language he uses. He says I hold you in my heart with affection. He says I hold you in my heart with great joy as I think about you, I pray for you. So what does it mean to hold in your heart? To hold in your heart means that from within your heart you welcome, embrace and love that person, that responsibility you have. Let me just explain to you what that would mean if you didn't do that. It's very easy for a parent to get offended with one of their teenagers, and if you get an offence, you build a wall, and you wall the person out of your heart, then you expose your teenager - they're now no longer under your governing and protection. They're now exposed to spiritual oppression.

The moment you let go of someone out of your heart, what happens is, the spiritual dynamic in the relationship changes. If I hold you in my heart with love and affection and bless you, the grace on my life will be released to you. If I get offended or distracted or refocused somewhere else, and let you go out of my heart, then you feel let go. You actually feel it. I'll give you another example of it. How many of you have had the experience of a father coming home, and he's arrived home from work, but for about an hour he's not emotionally present in the house? He's there, but preoccupied - you know what that's like? Now what do you experience when someone is there with you, but they're preoccupied? You do not feel their heart, you don't feel the flow of their spirit. They are disconnected from you. There's no flow from them to you.

Now why is it a man would come home to his wife and children, and then not be really there? Very simply he's focussed his heart somewhere else; spent hours and hours and hours focussed on work, comes home, he's still engaged in work. It's not hard to shift it. Ever heard the words of that song: I've Left My Heart in San Francisco? It means I've shifted, but my heart is still back there, because I now have not really let go of where I was. My heart is still there.

So what you focus your heart on, that's what your heart will open to, so I just taught men very simply, on your way home, instead of rushing home drive home slowly, consciously let go every worry, every care, everything you've got going on in your life, and begin to then picture your wife, picture your children and begin to hold that in your heart and thank God for them. Begin to imagine what it'll be like to go into the home and be with them all. Your heart will redirect and engage, so our heart turns. It quite moves, and we can embrace or we can let go. A woman who's got an unsaved husband, very easy to let your husband go out of your heart because you see what's wrong, and it constantly becomes a source of irritation, so instead of your heart embracing him and holding him in your heart and releasing the grace of God, instead of that there's a wall which he can feel, and there's no flow into your territory of the grace of God.

The biggest things that cause these blocks in relationships are offences, and then distractions. The life just gets re-focussed somewhere else - oh, we're getting real quiet now. [Laughter] Because it's very true, so I'll give you another example. When you pray for an unsaved husband or family member or whatever, if you are angry with them and disturbed about them and only see what's wrong with them, when you pray for them you won't be holding them in your heart. You'll be holding an offence and judgement in your heart. There'll be no grace released into that territory. You have to actually see them saved, see them before God, see them with the hand of God on their life, see them by faith, and then you can release the life of God into the territory.

So this is a big problem for many people, because offences and judgements call the heart to block out, and then when you pray you're just going through the motions, because your heart is not there loving and embracing them. You can feel it when it's like that. You feel the wall, you feel the block, so what he's saying is very simply - so the thing about your territory is take ownership of it, and welcome it, and welcome it like a friend, not reluctantly I've got to do this. I was talking to one person, and they were having major troubles with their money, and we couldn't work out why because the person knew finances, knew how to manage finances but just couldn't manage his own finances. Then we found out what the real reason was. Now here's the real reason. I could not believe this, and almost it was just amazing, and the person trained in finance and yet when we came to deal with the issue of finances this is what they said, this is what they came out with: my father put all his life into making money, and we never had time with him. I came to the conclusion money is evil, and creates problems for you - and so what he did then, he had no heart to actually operate money, and had no power over it.

So money just went from him like that, until the day he recognised what he'd believed in his heart, he came to a judgement. The problem was not the money, the problem was his father's preoccupation with the money at the expense of the family, and his judgement of his father. When he dealt with that, he was able to get a grip around money, and start to manage and start to have dominion over his money. You have to have it in your heart. You've got to celebrate and welcome the responsibility, before you can do anything much to change it. So think about it; until you actually take responsibility and celebrate whatever is your territory into your heart, you won't do the other things needed. You won't have the power to do it. It's got to be in your heart.

It's the same thing with reaching unsaved people. If they don't get in our heart, then we won't have any effect with them. You've actually got to have your territory in your heart. Jesus held His disciples in His heart. He still holds us in His heart. I've written you on my hand, how can I forget you? God has us in His heart, and so one of the first things is to get something in your heart. Now to get something in your heart, sometimes you've actually got to face that you've got resistance or reaction or judgements or offences, and repent of them and say God, forgive me for not taking responsibility. I repent of that. I come now, I put my arms around and just welcome that responsibility into my life. I thank You, it's something You've given me to cultivate and to govern and I purpose now to do it. I have been irresponsible, I repent and I decide to do it.

I remember counselling one man, and there was a major control and witchcraft operating in his marriage, and this was the thing that I counselled him. I said, whatever is in your marriage, you have allowed to be there, and so it's not whether there's something operating in your wife that's the problem. The real problem is you have not stood up and embraced what God called you to take responsibility for. You need to repent of your failure, step up inside, take responsibility, embrace your wife and the responsible leadership in your heart, then begin to pray as if you are in a role of leadership, and it will produce some results. Whew - very quiet now isn't it aye? [Laughter] So if you've absconded or given up responsibility or abdicated, then your territory will be over run, and you have only yourself - you can pray all you like. Until you own up and take responsibility for what God called you to be responsible for, that's why you've got to know what you're responsible for. I'm not responsible for other's decisions, but I am responsible for how I deal with them and interact with them.

Here's the second thing is, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us. See, whatever territory God has given you, He can give you the ideas of what you need to do. Jesus said: I'm doing all the things I see the Father do, Holy Spirit constantly spoke with Him, so ask the Holy Ghost for wisdom what to do: Holy Ghost, I don't know what to do, help me. Just show me, drop it in my heart something that I can do to help in this situation. Thirdly, develop a vision. Look and work out a picture of what's possible in that area. I think without any kind of imagination about what it could be, or envisaging what it could be, we won't properly cultivate that territory, so begin to picture what it could be. Get ideas, write some things down. Your territory's unique to you, your neighbourhood's unique to you, wherever you are is unique to you. Ask the Holy Ghost to give you some ideas about what you could do, start to write them down, start to think of the things that you could do. The goals will focus your attention and give your prayers substance, and your faith something to work with.

A fourth thing you can do is to learn - and we'll show you more of this - is arise in your spirit, and begin to use your voice to speak into the spirit world. Now there's two areas we need to speak; one is whatever spirits occupy your territory that oppose you, just speak and subdue them, and we'll show you how to do it. The second thing is, we need to learn how to release the word of God over the territory we're in. Now this is one of the most powerful things. I don't want us to get focussed on demons, although we were going to touch on them quite a lot more tomorrow. What you need to do is, suppose this is all my territory here, and I've got this ground to cultivate, and God opens my eyes and I see: oh my goodness, the whole of my territory is full of wicked spirits. Look at that, everywhere. They're just all looking and glaring at me. Okay then, now there's two things I need to do.

I should not be focussed on the spirits. I just need to dispossess them, and put into this territory what God wants me to put in, so it always has two things to it. One is, I need to address the spirits and drive them out and two, I need to declare God's word over my situation, and this is what's called building in the spirit, taking the word of God. Remember that God created this whole world by speaking. Christians continually forget the power of speaking the word of God, but tonight when I got you all to speak strongly: bless the Lord, O my soul, everything within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Don't forget any of His benefits. See - something happens in the atmosphere. We release the word of God. Now you'll find all the miracles in the Bible someone spoke, just over and over and over and over again we'll see. I'll show you the pattern. There's revelation comes, in other words you get the mind of God. You speak out with faith in your heart, and things begin to happen.

Now one of the most neglected areas in our Christian or spiritual walk is this area of arising with authority and commanding our day, commanding demonic assignments to be diminished, and commanding or release the word of God into our circumstances and environment. It is the most powerful way to shift things. I guarantee if you start to do it, things will shift around your life. It's like most Christians pray and hope that somehow their prayers will be answered, hope that somehow God will come through, instead of standing up and saying: I'm seeded in heavenly places in Christ, and I speak now and drive every spirit out of that place, and I release the word of God into my situation! You have to do that day by day, start to take dominion over your day, and I'll show you how to pray, and we'll give you some keys on how you would pray, and what you would do. I tell you, things will change around you. It won't always be pleasant at the beginning. Demons don't always leave easily, and they often create a fuss before they depart, but they will depart.

You notice in the Old Testament they had to possess the land, so God said: I've given it to you. You have to enter it, and drive out what's already in there, and then plant and sow and reap the land. So tomorrow we'll share with you some aspects of that, look at areas where there is resistance, what to do about it, and get you some more activations in the spirit to get you going. Amen. [Amen.]

This is one of the greatest privileges we've got. I tell you, God showed me this stuff when I was a very young Christian, and I saw my whole career just go up like that, and everything around me just become incredibly blessed. I know it works, and I know if you'll engage, it will work, and don't be like one of the guys I told him how to pray, and came back a week later and he said it didn't work. I said really, it didn't work? Okay, well why didn't it work? He said well, after I started praying things got really worse. [Laughter] I said really? I said don't you realise you stepped up, and started to engage the battle, and at the first blow on the nose you retreated and gave up. I said that's all that's happened. Just stay the battle, you must win. You will win. God's decreed you will win, you've just got to step up into it. Amen. [Amen.]

Father, we just thank You for tonight, thank You for Your presence here. Thank You for these mighty men and women who will arise and learn how to assert authority in the spirit world and see things change, in Jesus' mighty name. Everyone said [Amen!] Amen. Come on, let's give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Thank You Lord.

How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6)  

Wed 13 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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Further activations to stir and awaken you inner man quickly, give voice to faith decrees, and release a spirit flow. Understand the real meaning of 'authority', 'power', 'legal rights', and what Jesus accomplished at the cross to disarm spiritual powers. Know what we have delegated power to do, and foundations which have to be built in our life to ensure success. Finally, how to forbid troubling spirits and release blessing. Plenty of practical examples in workplace, marriage, family life etc.

Come on, let's come on out, we're going to begin to start off with an activation. That's right, we want to start with an activation. Alright, I wonder how many noticed what happened, what change took place, when I just got you up to go around and hug people. [Yeah!] Did you notice actually the whole atmosphere shifts, because people - the walls that disconnect us, just break down as you start to connect like that? You find that the things of the spirit are very, very simple. There's nothing really complex about it, and we find that often there's things that we have to do just naturally and practically, things which you can do which involve your soul, and things which involve of course your rising in your spirit.

So we want to get our spirit to arise today, so why don't we make our body move, and let's begin to pray strongly in the spirit, strongly in the language God has given us. [Prays in tongues] Okay, let's do one more: Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits. Okay, now this time we do it, ready, from the beginning, on the count of three. Now as you're doing it, don't just repeat something and speak something. One of the things that you'll find, if we're engaging in a conversation but in my mind I disconnect, the person that I'm relating with will feel the disconnection. Have you ever been talking with someone, and suddenly you just felt something change, their eyes have got that glazed look, their mind has gone somewhere else? What happens in the flow of your spirit is there's a disconnected, and you actually feel it.

I remember talking to my daughter and it was going fine, then I thought hello, we're disconnected. I turned around and she'd zipped off in some shop and she'd gone. [Laughter] I was actually just talking to myself, but I could feel the difference, and you feel the difference if you're talking to someone and their mind goes somewhere else, they disconnect. So one of the things when you're praying in tongues is to engage your mind as well and engage your soul. So when we're speaking - now we're going to just speak. I want you to be speaking arising in your spirit, see yourself rising up, and you're speaking to your soul, and you're telling your soul to come into line and bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Let your body and soul respond see to the voice of your spirit. Your spirit always wants to praise God - let's do it. Okay then, ready? One, two, three: Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases, halleluiah! Oh halleluiah. Come on, let's give Him a clap right now. [Applause]. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord.

Okay, while we're on it, we'll give you one more exercise to do, because your spirit will respond to you giving voice to the word of God, see so I want you to just declare: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. See, now that's a declaration from the word of God but it's personalised, so we take scripture and make it personal: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Now of course what happens is, you may not feel that way. Actually today you might be feeling incredibly frail, and you've got all kinds of issues going on, so you think I can't say that because that's not true. But actually if you were to arise by faith and say in the spirit, this is where I stand, that I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might, and I will declare what I believe in my heart; then you'll find everything around you and in you will start to shift to align with what your spirit is saying, when you declare the word of God.

So I want you to do it. We're going to just - I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. We'll say it three or four times and I want you to see what happens when you make it a declaration, you're declaring it to your spirit, to your soul, your body and you're declaring it into the atmosphere around you. I want you to see what happens when you speak, and give voice to the word of God like that. Ready? I'm strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Ready? One, two, three. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. Okay, that'll do. Right, okay, now the more you do it, the more your inner man begins to agree with the truth. Initially there's a wrestling, because a lot of you doesn't really agree with that, but as you learn to speak the word of God, and you make it a strong declaration from inside, you'll find your spirit will arise very quickly, and everything in you starts to shift, because you're declaring what God says is true about you.

See, the spirit of God is in you. Isn't that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead? How can you be weak if the spirit of God is joined to you? Are you not joined and seeded with Christ in the realm of eternity, and seeded in heaven itself in your spirit - is that not true? How can you be weak? I cannot be weak. It's not true that I'm weak. My circumstances and things around me may press in, and cause me to feel weak, but He says that when I'm weak then the grace even more abounds see? So I'm even stronger when I'm weak, because I lean in and depend on the Lord - so let's do it one more time, three or four times, I'm strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Ready? One, two, three. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might.

Now how many of you found something shifted inside you just doing that? How many felt something? Okay, what did you feel? [Different thinking, a different atmosphere, just the way you - the more you say it the more you start to believe it.] That's exactly right, so we can believe and speak or we can speak to believe. ] Whatever you are feeling begins to shift as you declare the word of God, exactly. So we have the word and the spirit. We've got to learn to take what God has given us, and work with it, see? The word of God is a sword of the spirit, it actually is a sword, so this stuff starts to sweep away. So you can sweep the air right around you real quick, it doesn't take you long. Ready? So once again we'll get praying in tongues. Now this time as you're praying in tongues, the Bible says a person who prays in tongues their spirit is praying, they're praying as the Holy Ghost gives them utterance, and it says also that you build up yourself.

So what I want you to do as you're praying in tongues, begin to speak, and just see that your whole spirit, your inner man, is starting to arise and become full of the life of God. Let your focus just be on that. Sometimes it helps to just put your hand on your belly, and as you're praying in tongues you're praying consciously to build your spirit man, so your spirit man arises. We'll see later your spirit can flow right outside your body, or it fills an atmosphere beyond you. Your spirit flows, so let's begin to arise, just filling the room with our presence in the spirit of God. Amen - you ready? One, two, three. [Prays in tongues] Okay, stop.

Alright, what did you experience as you prayed that way? How many of you felt something flowing in your life? Release, release inside, that's good. So we can stir and awaken our spirit man and we do it, we have to use our voice. You have to use your voice and your mind; use your voice to give utterance to the words of God, whether it be speaking in tongues or the written word of God, and to use your mind to meditate and to embrace and welcome the truth, so that there's no part of you is not holding on to that - and it works just very quickly. You'll be quite surprised. Now the more you practice it, the easier it is for your spirit to arise. You train your spirit to arise quickly, and you train your body and your soul to surrender quickly. Most people don't know how to do that, so they live with their spirit flat and under a heaviness, and don't realise that it's actually something you can break out of real quick. So we gave you that thing to shake your body, gave you the things of just speaking the word of God, speaking in tongues.

Here's another confession you could make: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See? I can, I can, yes I can. Yes, I can - that's a good thing, yes, yes! Come on, why don't you just say it now? Yes! [Yes! Yes! Yes!] [Laughs] See? Now when you start to do that, you start to strengthen your will, because growing in your spirit, you've got to learn to develop the power to say yes! Okay and the other word you've got to learn to say is no. [Laughter] Some people can't say no, but you see in the realm of the spirit, I've got to be saying yes to some things, and no to other things. That's the binding and the loosing, yes to some, no to others. Okay? I just wanted you to begin to say that, then we're just speaking now, why don't you just begin to make declarations and you're saying no to the devil, and no to sin, so begin to speak it like you really mean it. Are you ready? We'll do it half a dozen times, ready, one, two, three. No! [No! No! No! No! No! No!] See - okay, now see isn't it interesting what happens inside you? How many found suddenly you feel - [ooh!] Yeah, you lift up inside, even just saying no, isn't that right? But a lot of people can't say no, and a lot of people say yes to things they should be saying no to, so learning to say strong yes's, strong no's!

In the spirit I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me - ready? One, two, three. [I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!] That's quite a good statement to make, everything God has called you to do, you can do it, you can do it, yes, I can, yes I can - see? Can. Can. Can - it's a good word can. [Laughs] Okay then, I wonder if we've got another one there, okay, here's a good one. This is one I use quite regularly: The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells within me and quickens my mortal body. Now have a think about that. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead - that's the resurrection power of God, where is it? It's within you, and it says He will what? Quicken or make alive your body. Now you think about that, so as we're just going to speak it over, I'll say it again - The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, see? Same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in me, and shall quicken my mortal body.

Now begin to as you declare it, make it your declaration that your body shall arise with life as you decree the word of God, and what you'll find is you'll come alive in your body. Then I'll often follow that by just yielding different parts of my body, firstly my spirit man, my mind, imagination, your hearing, seeing, mouth, heart and affections, will, hands and works, and feet, my walk before God, consciously yielding. Then what happens as you do that, is you begin to develop awareness of your body and your soul and what's going on in it, because you consciously learn to present each part to the Lord, then you become aware, more aware when things are going on in those different parts of you, and you can quickly shake them up, see? See, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in me, and quickens my mortal body. [The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me, and quickens my mortal body. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me, and quickens my mortal body. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me and quickens my mortal body.]

Now you'll begin to find - how many found your body started to get stronger as you started to say it? You come alive with energy. Now you'll notice it's very simple, it's the spirit and the word, and being willing to actually use what God has given me, and I've got to give voice to it. You'll find everything in the spirit you have to give voice, you have to give voice to things, and if you listen to people giving voice, you'll tell whether their spirit is shut down and overwhelmed by their mind, or you'll tell whether their spirit arises and is in their words. You've just got to listen. Listen when people pray, and listen to yourself as you're speaking; am I really fully in those words, or am I just sort of saying it because this is what we have to do in this class? You'll feel the difference see, and so again, doing it wholeheartedly will get the results; half-heartedly, no results. No matter how long you do it, half-heartedly no results. What you're looking for is the release in your spirit to arise, so you start to then be free to flow from within, instead of just getting stuck in your head or your emotions or soul. Getting the idea?

Okay, why don't we just pray again, we'll just pray for a couple more minutes and just pray. As we pray let's begin to lift our hands and our hearts, we're exalting God with His heavenly language which enables us oh! to thank Him and bless Him! [Prays in tongues] - come on, let your voice rise! [Prays in tongues] Holy Ghost, we love You! We welcome You today. We honour You today. [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah. Whoa, let's give the Lord a clap. [Applause] At all times you can develop your inner man. As you do that, you'll find you'll feel another presence - you'll feel the presence of God start to manifest over your life. There's an anointing arising from within, and there's another one comes upon, and so it's very important to understand the difference. We can always activate what's within us, but we don't have control or power over God coming upon us. That's something He does when we connect properly, see?

So Jill, would you like to just come, just stand up here and just - there we are. I need someone behind her. Now I just shared with you about learning to give voice, so - I need someone to stand behind her, that's right. Okay, ready Jill? Now I want you to just lift your eyes up to the Lord, let your heart be on the Lord, and you see now that we're full of the Holy Ghost, power! And just in the release of the word, power flows and it's quite simple, see? We'll do that a little bit more later, just wanting you to get to see it and get used to it. So now we've arisen in spirit and something comes from within us that can be released, and we can release it with words. I'm wanting you to really get the understanding that your words, when they are full of faith, actually bring about some results, and so we'll see how to get them full of faith a little bit later. Okay, so if I in my heart am completely convinced that God is in me, same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within me, oh the anointing of the Holy Ghost flows like a mighty river, power! And I can believe that the power of God will just flow through her and touch her there. There we go - isn't that nice to be caught by your husband like that? [Laughter] Ready, just come - and of course now that we're starting to move that way, if you'll just open your heart to the Lord, you'll feel His presence start to come on you. It's like a [blows once gently] like something just comes down from heaven, just like that.

Now you notice we haven't done a lot. What we have done is just stirred what we do have. We have the word, we have the Holy Spirit, we must deploy what God has given us. Just open your eyes and heart to the Lord and just [blows once gently] receive from Him right now - and so we're in a place you could just pray for - why don't you pray for one another? That'd be a great thing to do right now, just pray for one another right now. Just pray. Just release the blessing of God, okay but make sure you've got someone to catch. Just try that right now. That's right. [Background chat] No catcher? Put a chair right behind her and she can sit in the chair. [Background chat] [Blows once gently] Spirit of God come, Holy Ghost come. Alright. [Laughs] Wonderful. [Background chat] Alright then, do you want to just - just come here, just take his hand. Are you ready? Okay, now close your eyes, and I want you just to begin to imagine that God is as close to me, as I am to you right now. The presence of God is here, so don't try and make something happen, just become aware God is here. Now we're going to release what God has given you - [Blows once gently] there we are, just like that. See and he begins to feel the presence of God, see? It's not empty words. It's words that are full of a heart, so you get your heart focussed first, otherwise you'll try to say something and do something and nothing happens. Alright then?

Okay then, let's just take a seat now. We'll come back to that one later on. Great stuff. How many feel wide awake now? [Laughs] You do, you get wide awake. You just become wide awake. Remember, you can pray any time, that's the gift God's given you. You can speak the word of God any time, and you can develop your heart, your meditation in the word of God, any time you wish. These are great. They're simple, we can do it any time. So here's the thing - you determine how much you grow and develop your inner man. Okay, we want to look on how to exercise spiritual authority. We went yesterday and we looked at spiritual authority and what it was, and we saw also about God has called us to go on a mission, everyone's got assignment from God. We saw also how we have a territory that we're responsible for. We saw about governing our territory; if we fail to govern then what happens is something else sits in there, and that's why many people are oppressed, because they've failed to govern their territory.

Okay then, so what we want to do this time - and we finished up with how governing your spiritual territory meant you had to hold it in your heart. I can't overemphasise how important it is to hold what God has given you in your heart. If anything takes it out of your heart, your ability to spiritually assert authority over it seems to diminish, so we need to hold in our heart what God has given us. We saw also we needed to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and seek direction, how and what He wants us to do. Thirdly, we saw in our metron, or our area of territory, we needed to begin to get vision, or get some kind of direction, and layout some kind of steps for what we wanted to build, then use our voice to speak. This is the area that I want to focus a bit more on this time, is learning how to arise in your spirit, and to speak into your territory. This is a very, very important part - and then finally of course, things are not just spiritual, they're also natural. Whatever territory God has given you, you've got to be engaged in and active in it, so for example - we'll go into this session this time, and we want to look at how you exercise spiritual authority. Then I'll give you some examples of it at the end, firstly from personal testimony, and then just some ways that you could do this.

The problem of writing down prayers is they tend to become mechanical. They can help, but they tend to become mechanical. I've always felt if you can get the dynamics sorted out, it's not hard to get a flow, which you grow in your own life. We'll give you some practical keys. Alright then, so we read in Luke, Chapter 4, Jesus was in a synagogue, and a man manifested an evil spirit. Of course everyone was astonished because the evil spirit was yelling out through the man. We've got to imagine in a nice quiet church service how disruptive that is; someone's yelling out LEAVE US ALONE! You know, you can imagine all the people looking around, and all eyes are on this man, and he's crazy in that sense. He's sort of doing something unpredictable, but a demon is manifesting, and so the Bible says he yelled out: What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? We know who You are. You're the Holy one of God - so this guy's yelling and ranting. He's manifesting a spirit, and what happened was - and I've seen this kind of thing happen on many different times. I was in a meeting in Singapore and I just started talking and a lady cleaner came into the room at the top and started yelling, holding a broom up and waving a broom, yelling why you come here? Why you do this to me? I'm thinking - and everyone's sort of looking, what's going on here? But actually it was just a spirit manifesting.

So this is what Jesus did. He directly confronted the spirit. He said: be quiet, come out of him. The demon struggled violently, threw the man on the ground, and came out of him. Now you can imagine that's actually quite a dramatic thing to happen in a normally quiet church service, very dramatic. So of course the atmosphere is just electric with the presence and power of God. This was an example of Jesus' deliverance, and the people commented, and they said they were amazed, and spoke among themselves, saying: what a word is this, for with authority and power He commands the spirits and they come out. Now this was astonishing. In a country like Israel, the problem of demonisation is widespread. You go through Asia, Africa, through South America, you go through many countries, the problem of demonisation is widespread, well-known, and they don't know what to do, so they seek out all kinds of remedies for it. But we have the answer. We have been given authority to address them.

The church must arise in this area. Now in the west, the problems are still there, it's just they're covered over, they're a little more hidden than you would expect, but the same problems are essentially in people in the west as well. It's just they think it's just me, and so in the west we tend to rationalise spiritual things, and to say it's just me, or try and find a natural cause for it, and don't realise it could be demonic. Now you notice here what they said: He said with authority and with power. The word authority means the rule of government, it's the rule of government. The word is in the original language is the word exousía, so when you read your Bible, sometimes it'll mis-translate it, and it'll use the word power, but they're actually two different words. I want to explain them so you understand completely what they are. The word exousía means a right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else - exousía a right, a legal right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else, in this case Jesus Christ.

So if you have authority you have a legal right. It's a legal right. It's got nothing to do with how you feel. It is a legal right, so for example if a family - if the parents die, and there's only one son, unless there is a legal Will that gives the property elsewhere, he has the legal right as the only heir to inherit the property. If you've purchased a building, you have the legal right to own and occupy the building, so if someone else is there, they are a squatter. They have no legal right to be there. You are the person who has the legal right. So in the case of spiritual authority, spiritual authority God delegates to you a legal right which is recognised in the spirit world, to speak and to act on His behalf. Now when the Bible says that the husband is the head of the wife, there many emotional things that go through people's mind thinking about that, but I want to just make it really simple and clear. From the point of view of the spirit world, God has made a declaration that the husband legally has authority in the spirit world, to speak and act on behalf of Jesus Christ in relationship to his marriage and family. It's a delegated right given to him.

Now it's nothing to do with whether the wife is of more value or more spiritual than the husband, it's just an order God has set in place. The demonic world will recognise the order, and do all it can to sabotage it, so a husband may not be as good a prayer as his wife. He may not know the Bible as well as his wife, but nevertheless, from a spiritual perspective, God has delegated to him a positioning in the spirit world. It's not a positioning of ruling over his wife, because the Bible says actually spiritual authority is exercised through loving service, but in terms of the spiritual world, he has a right to speak and to give directions and act, and he can address spirit powers. Now this is something people don't really understand. I'll give you an example of when I saw it most vividly. I had a couple who formerly had been Pastors, and his wife had been deeply involved as a young woman in the occult. She was trapped into it, and I won't go into the details of it, but it was a very horrendous experience, both as a young girl about six, and then again as a teenager about 16. The things she described were horrendous. I had trouble believing it all, because it was so horrendous what happened.

Anyway, she moved out of that whole thing, moved on with her life, married. They got called into ministry and later on it was very clear there were problems that were going on, and there was a strong control sat around his wife, so I got him as the husband to stand up, and I'll show you how to do that a little later - how to stand up and to pray and address the spirit world, and exercise his authority as husband, to position himself as the husband, to make a declaration I am her lawful husband, and to speak into the spirit world. He did it, and what happened was some of the issues around her life came up to the surface, but what I didn't realise was, he kept praying that way. So he kept praying day after day, asserting his authority in the spirit world, and commanding all controlling spirits to release his wife, and what happened was initially the first problems came up, then this whole layer of all this occult surfaced. We had some massive difficulties because of all of these issues.

We had all kinds of accidents started to happen; the occult group made connection with her again. It was quite a messy thing, for quite a while, and so I was puzzled as how to deal with it, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: I want you to stand as the Pastor, and I want you to speak and take authority in the spirit world, and totally forbid the operation of this occult group against this woman. He said: I want you to bring judgement against it. So I said oh okay, how do I do that? So I just rose up and prayed and decreed that no weapon formed against us would prosper, that every tongue that rose against us speaking judgement and curses, we totally cancel it's power, and defeat it in Jesus' name. I asked the Lord, called on the Lord, to act on our behalf and to deal with it.

Now what happened was within the space of a week, two people in that covenant had motor accidents and died, just like that, and all contact with that coven and this woman stopped just like that. Now we still had the problem within her, so we began to pray, and I tried to get her delivered. It was very hard, very difficult to get her delivered, and then the Lord spoke to me. He said: I want you to get the husband involved, and she was a little reluctant about that because of issues in her heart about men, so what I did was, I said to her husband: I wonder if you just pray in the other room, and I'll call you in. When I call you in, when the demon's in full manifestation, I want you to do - and I described to him what I wanted him to do. So anyway we prayed. Now what happened was the woman had fallen down on the floor. Her feet were facing the door so there's no way she could see anything that was happening, she was face down. Another woman was with her, praying for her, and I just left the room quickly, went in and her husband came in, and together we laid hands.

He put his hand on his wife's head, I put my hand on his, and he spoke these words. He said as her lawful husband, I break all covenants formed with this spirit, and command you to go now. Now as he walked in - now she can't see him - she yells out: what's he doing here? The demon recognised the authority the husband carried, and that he was determined to assert it in the spirit. He put his hand on and prayed as the husband, I put my hand on him and prayed as the Pastor, and immediately the spirit was gone, just like that. That was one of the most vivid examples I ever had in all my ministry life, of how the spirit world recognises the authority that's delegated to the people of God, and specifically in the situation of marriage; if God has called the husband the head, he is what God calls him. Now he may not be doing a good job at it, but it doesn't change who he is. The spirit world recognises it.

So when a husband stands up as the head of the home in the role he's got, and addresses the spirit world, it will respond to him, because he is the legal representative of God, authorised to speak on behalf of his family. Now it doesn't minimise in any way the prayers of his wife. What I'm trying to establish here is the recognition the spirit world has on lawful authority. Now just take it another step further. You and I are children of God. We've been raised into a realm where we are positioned, we are seated with Him, far above every principality and power. Now you as a child of God also are authorised, if you will arise and stand within that role. Father, I come before you today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I arise and I come boldly to the throne of Your grace. The Bible tells us to do that. So you see yourself, there you are standing, you're worshipping God. Now you can speak from that position of victory and authority; as a representative of Jesus Christ I speak now to that demonic spirit. I forbid your operation. I break your assignment.

Now demons will respond to that, because they recognise you are lawfully and rightfully delegated that kind of authority, but it's all to do with your positioning in your heart and faith. You've got to believe what God says about you. Ooh, you're getting quiet now. [Laughter] So authority means it's the legal right delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of Jesus Christ, and we'll show you exactly what you're authorised to do. I've given you hints on it already right now - so you have the right to speak and to act. Now because you've been given that right, it is a responsibility to dismiss demons, and to speak and ordain and speak the word of God. You've actually got a responsibility to do this, so we may neglect our responsibility. If we neglect our responsibility, then as we saw, the territory becomes invaded, problems start to come relationally and oppression-wise and all sorts of things.

Okay, the other word is the word power. Now the word power is the word dunamis; you shall receive power from on high. That's a different word altogether. That is the anointing. That is the presence of God to enable you to get this to happen, so Jesus received authority as part of His commission, but it's intimacy and obedience that maintains the flow of anointing. So what we were doing today was getting you to arise inside in your spirit, and as you arose and built your spirit life and developed the flow from within, you can feel the anointing flowing. So to describe the difference between authority and power we use an illustration. If a person trains to become a policeman, he eventually comes to a point after his training where he makes an oath of allegiance to the Government. That means I will act on behalf of the Government to fulfil its mandate, okay? Then they give him a uniform and they give him a gun - if you're in some of the countries they give him a gun, even in our country they give him a gun.

Now the authority is seen in the uniform, because when you meet that person, you're not meeting the man, you're meeting the authority of the Government. If you saw him on the road and he put his hand up you probably wouldn't say a thing, but you see him in his uniform and suddenly, if you're speeding, fear grips your heart [laughter] because you become aware of authority, and the call to account for your life. There's nothing like an exposure with authority to suddenly show what's in your heart. If you're speeding down the road, and you see a policeman step out in a black uniform, hold his hand up, suddenly you'll have all kinds of emotional things go on inside you. Now if you try to push past him, you are now up against the whole of the Government. He's not acting on his own behalf. When he's fulfilling his assignment, he's acting as a representative of Government; you take him on, you're taking the Government on.

The second thing is they have a gun, so if you don't stop, they can force you to stop - start shooting. They don't have so much of that here, but it's common overseas, and so we need authority, and to know what our authority is, and we also need power, the flow of the spirit that accomplishes what we want. These are two separate and quite distinct things. Got the idea? Okay then, now so what I want to do is, I want to look at the authority that we've been given, and to just briefly look at what Jesus accomplished on the cross. In Colossians 2, Verses 12 through to 15, is a very important verse. Demons hate this verse, because it describes something very important that Jesus did. Now you being dead in your trespasses and sins and uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with Him. So when Jesus died, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried with Him, and when He rose, we rose with Him, see? So we are risen, and he says notice, having forgiven you, some of your trespasses. Hmm? All. All. This is a crucial thing - all of your trespasses, having absolutely wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, that was contrary to us, He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross; having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Now in Jesus' walk on the earth, He was obedient in every aspect of His life, but when He went to the cross and died on the cross, He acted as our representative, and accomplished something for us at the cross. The Bible says He disarmed spirit powers, stripped off their clothes and weapons, totally took away from them the weapon, or the power of the weapons they had, and He triumphed. He completely won a great and mighty victory over them. Now what happened is this. The original Adam was given authority in the earth. He was created to have dominion. The Bible tells us that when Adam disobeyed and sinned, there was a transference. He lost his right to rule. It was taken over by the devil, so realms of the spirit that Adam and his descendants were supposed to occupy, then became occupied by demonic spirits, as far as I can understand.

So the devil, when he came to Jesus, said: all of this power has been delivered or surrendered to me, so he said: I've got a legal right to rule the earth. I conquered your ruler. Got the idea? That's how it works. We understand that, you know, you go in and conquer someone, you rule their territory. It's as simple as that. The old rules of war - so the devil conquered Adam, and as a result of conquering Adam, then he now had authority and rights, legal rights. So when Jesus came, He came as a representative, totally obedient to the Father all His life, obedient right to the point of death on the cross. But when He died on the cross, what He did was He legally broke the power of the devil to hold people in bondage. He broke the power of death, and so this is a legal thing that has happened. Now what does the devil use primarily against you? He uses sin, iniquity, trespasses. He uses the breaking of the laws of God.

Now if you were to think of your past life, and think every thing that you had ever done wrong, and the things that were right that you should have done and failed to do, to know what to do and not do it, to know to do good and not do it is sin; so if you took a list of that, that is going to be one big list. If we put it on the computer we'd probably fill up the memory, have to stick in another card and put more in. [Laughter] Okay, now imagine all of that, and then take that all the way through the rest of your life, so we've got the whole of your life from when you're born right through to when you die, we've got the lot. Those are all your sins - that's the list that is contrary to you. That is what the devil manipulates to give legal right to your life. So for example, in a person's background if there's been idolatry or freemasonry in the background, there is now a legal right established for demonic spirits to use that as an entrance point to the successive generations.

So in order to deal with the demonic realm, the legal rights issue has to be resolved, and so when Jesus died on the cross He literally paid full price to cancel everything against us. It's the most amazing truth. Now what that means very simply is this: the word redeem means to pay the full price, to get back the person who's in prison and can't free themselves. It's to go to the kidnapper and to pay the price and to get the person kidnapped free, so what Jesus accomplished at the cross was to deal with the legal right. So when He rose from the dead, He was able to say all authority in heaven in earth is now given to Me. Now get this - when He came from heaven, He left all authority behind. He now gained all authority because of this act of obedience in His life, even to the point of death, so legally everything belongs to Jesus. Nothing belongs to the devil.

The nations belong to Him, the earth belongs to Him, all of creation belongs to Him. He has redeemed it, paid the full price to now legally be entitled to rule it. So the Bible tells us one day He'll come back, and He'll assert that with great power. In the meantime we are delegated as representatives of Him, and whenever the devil has a legal right to something, we can go to the cross and say that's the place it was cancelled. So every sin that you bring to the cross, its power to hold you in bondage and create a legal right for demons is broken, so the issue of legal rights is an incredibly important one in the spirit world. That is how the whole thing operates, under law. If we walk in the laws of God, the devil can't touch us. If we break the laws of God, he has legal rights to access us. It's as simple as that, so there's a remedy for the broken law, and that is to bring sin to the cross. That's why you cannot operate successfully in the spirit world without a revelation of the cross, and the blood, and the authority given to us as a believer, to represent the Lord. Okay, so there we are.

So at the cross Jesus legally broke the power of a number of things; the power of sin, the power of curses. Galatians 3:13, He has redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us. Redeemed, paid the full price. Griefs and trauma, Isaiah 53 and Verse 4, He carried our sorrows, He carried our griefs. In Isaiah 53, Verse 5, by His stripes we are healed, so sicknesses He dealt with; Isaiah 53, Verse 5 and He took away our our iniquities - so everything the devil could use as a weapon, at the cross Jesus legally broke its power. However it's one thing to have something legally done, it's another thing to have the reality of it in your life, and so we need to understand what Jesus has done, so we can bring it into reality here. So this issue of the law, and of sin, and dealing with sin is a crucial one in addressing the spirit world. That's why any person who works in the realm of deliverance has a great awareness of what sin does in terms of establishing legal rights for demons to operate, and it is incredibly difficult to get any person free, or any demonic spirit to shift, if you don't address the legal rights it has to be there.

In fact many times a demon will actually argue with you that it owns this place; I've been here a long time, I have a right to be here. So they'll actually argue with you. When Jesus taught about deliverance, He said that the demon, after it's cast out, will go back, and says: I will return to my house. See, it claims legal right to live in the person's life, so demons look for every legal ground. They are great manipulators to try and use any legal ground to access your life, so removing legal rights is a crucial part of freedom, and we need to understand that if I have broken the law, I don't have much authority, because I'm a transgressor, to be able to set others free. I need to actually bring my own life into alignment.

So Jesus has done a tremendous work on the cross, but there's one thing to know what He's done, it's another thing to bring it into reality in our life, and that is where we have to grow and develop our faith. It's by faith these things come into being, so for example God has given every one of you legal right to deal with demons, but probably the majority of you either don't do it, or are not very successful at it. Now that doesn't mean the legal right to do it isn't there, it just means you have to grow into, and obtain possession of, what Jesus won for you. In the Old Testament Joshua had to - God said: I've given you the land, and I've given the people until you. Now arise and go in and battle, so you have to possess what Jesus has made available for you, and that's the work of faith. So Jesus done these things on our behalf, and He has now given us authority.

Notice what it says in Luke 10, Verse 19: Behold, I give you the authority - that's exousia - delegated right, to tread serpents and scorpions under foot, and to tread over all the power of the enemy. Now that's an amazing thing that Jesus said. Do you realise as a believer, that you can tread demons under foot, that you have no need to fear them? Now it's not that they don't have power. They do have real power, and they do exert that real power, and in some places it's quite terrifying. However, if you will stay in the realm God's called you to operate in, you have the right to deal with the things. You can tread them under foot, and you have authority over all their power. You don't need to be alarmed at the kind of power they have.

I was in a meeting in Indonesia and it was one of my first meetings there in Indonesia, had a very big meeting and three witch doctors came because they heard that the power of God would be there to deal with demons. So they came to the meeting to disrupt the meeting. In other words they wanted to work together to hurl curses against me, so that they could take away whatever power I had, and it would become their power. To tell the truth I didn't even actually see - I didn't even know what happened, because there was a big crowd there, two thousand and they stood up to do their stuff and they'd no sooner stood up than the power of God hit them. They fell on the ground just like that and they were thrown, they were literally hurled to the ground, and they could not get up. They crawled out. They literally had to crawl out on their faces out of the meeting. Now I wish I could claim something for it - I couldn't. Actually I never even saw it happen. I only heard about it afterwards.

Dave was with me, and they called to Dave; hey, something's happening. He went around the back and he dealt with one face to face, and got them totally delivered, and the guy came up and got saved afterwards. He recognised the power of God was greater than the power they operated. He understood spiritual power. He said this power is greater than that. We were in another meeting, Pastor Kong Hee's church in City Harvest, and some demons were starting to yell and to scream. Pastor Kong Hees mother and father were there, and she sort of got concerned with all this screaming and yelling going on, but the father was an interesting person, because they were involved in idolatry. He said I see that there is a greater power here than the power these spirits have, and they came up and got saved because of that. They recognised the greater power see - so I give you authority.

Now this is a personal verse for you; I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. So you could make it your declaration, today I have authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way hurt me. It'd be good to build the truth of that into your heart, so Jesus was responding to the testimonies of believers that He'd sent out - this is the 70. He said they have authority, I give you authority to tread over demons. So our spiritual authority, you have authority, it's just whether you use it and develop it or not. It comes one, out of our standing with God. We've got to know where we stand. That's why when you come to minister, the first thing that you'll be aware of is where you stand with God, whether you're conscious that I am in right standing with God, I have access to Him, I can live and be in His presence right now. If you are conscious of that in your heart, then it's very easy to assert authority.

The second thing, it depends on your on-going relationship. I need to keep listening to God, so it's all very well to say I have authority, but actually it's for a purpose, so I need to know what God wants me to do. Finally, we need to yield to the Holy Spirit. So here's the thing. The authority Jesus gives you, and I'll list some areas He's given you authority in - we don't own it. It's actually, we're acting on behalf of someone else - so all authority that Jesus gives you, spiritual authority, you're acting on behalf of Him. You're representing Him, and so that means you don't own it, you've got to use it rightly or it creates many problems, and not presume or make any presumptions about just because I have all this authority, I can do what I want. No, we need to listen to the Holy Ghost, and learn to be led by the spirit of God - not a very hard thing to do.

So what do you have authority to do? What has Jesus entrusted to you some authority to do? He's given you a whole number of things, for example we'll just take this first one here. He's given us authority to preach the gospel. We think well that's a pretty obvious one. Actually it's not so, because there's many countries where, if you preach the gospel they'll throw you in jail. Think of the conflict here; I read in the Bible go and preach the gospel, and yet the authorities say: if you preach the gospel we'll put you in jail. What will I do? There's two authorities in conflict here; one is the authority of God, who says to do this, and that's the highest authority; two, there's the authority of the Government, which says don't do it, or we'll put you jail - so how do I address that? How do I address this apparent conflict in authorities? Very simply.

Firstly, all authority comes from God, so therefore is subject to Him ultimately. Secondly, I should give way and yield to the ultimate authority, the authority of God who's given a clear mandate in scripture, preach the gospel; thirdly, I need to show respect for civil authorities who are His representatives, but nevertheless I can be submitted to them, but not obedient to them, so I can have a right attitude to local authorities, but not do what they tell me to do. A classic example is in the Book of Acts, where the authorities gathered the disciples together, and they threatened them that you must not preach the gospel. If you preach the gospel then we'll have you thrown into prison and beaten up, and they said we must listen to God and do what God has said, so they went out and preached the gospel. Then - notice this - they got thrown into prison and beaten up, and they just rejoiced. They didn't make a big deal of it, they just accepted they had gone contrary to the authorities, and this was what was going to happen, they said for the honour of God. So they had a good attitude, but they were disobedient.

Now you have to understand that, so for example a person who is in a work situation, and in the work situation they tell you to do something which is quite clearly contrary to the law, and to your conscience. You can have a submitted heart, but still say no, I can't do that, because you have to live out of the authority of God, not just what people tell you to do. So these are some of the interesting things. Anyway let's just carry on through the list here: Giving you an authority to act as a representative of Jesus, to preach the gospel, make disciples - Matthew 20:8. He's told us to go do it, so we're authorised to do it. If someone says: why are you doing this, or who do you think you are, very simply, Jesus told me to do it, make disciples. We're also authorised to bless. In Matthew, Chapter 10, He says whatever house you go into, say peace be unto the house. Now what a stupid thing to say. That's an unusual thing to say - go into a house and say peace. Now we don't do that kind of thing do we, because we don't understand what He was saying to them. He was saying: you have power to speak, and release blessing into a house. You can actually release the peace of God in a tangible way into the house, and you are authorised when you go into a home that makes you welcome, to speak and release the blessing of God.

So just extending that out now, wherever you go, God has authorised you to speak words that release blessing over people, to speak and call upon the Holy Ghost to touch their life, to call upon the presence of God to come into that place, to call upon or invite the Holy Spirit to come. You are authorised to do that. We don't have to ask whether this is what God wants, He always wants that. You're also authorised to break bondages. Isaiah 10:27, the yoke is broken because of the anointing, so we're authorised to break bondages, and I'll describe that a little bit further. To break curses - Matthew 16:19 - curses are words spoken, that activate demonic powers. You are authorised to break curses. God has given you authority to break them. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So to break curses means to loose something that is holding a person in bondage.

You're authorised to cast out demons, you're authorised to heal the sick, you're authorised to raise the dead. Now here's the interesting thing. We're authorised to raise the dead, we just don't see so much of it here, but in other countries, particularly Pastor Anwar, his ministry, they have raised a number of people from the dead; David Hogan, I think overall I think they've raised nearly 300 people from the dead in their ministry. So it is authorised, it just doesn't always happen, and I've tried once but it didn't work. I just need to grow in my faith. [Laughter] Okay, we're authorised to bind and loose, that means to restrain spirits or things operating, or to release things to happen. We're also authorised to forgive, to speak and release forgiveness. So here's authority that you're given to do some things.

Now the key thing is, it's great to know what they are, but how do I actually go about this? How do you operate or exercise spiritual authority, and there's several things that are a part of it, so I want to just identify what they are, because some people speak and there's nothing happens at all. Others speak and something really happens - what's the difference? The difference inevitably is in the heart. Now let me give you some simple foundations on this exercise of authority. The first thing is, you need to know your standing with God. You need to be quite convinced of where you stand with God, because if you're not sure where you stand or your righteousness before God, if you're not sure of that when you speak, you'll doubt that anything's going to happen. You've got to not doubt in your heart, when you speak something will happen, so first of all I need to know the authority or the standing that God has given me, for example in ministering right now, if I could just use an example here. Could I just use you for an example?

So just come, I'll just take your hand, alright, just take your hand. I need someone to stand behind her just in case something happens. So now suppose I've come to minister, and I need to release the power of God or something like that. Now the first thing, she's come forward for prayer, for some reason and I'm needing to minister or to bring God to her, so ministering is not praying little prayers. It's about bringing God to the person. Now the first thing that you become conscious of, is where your standing is with God, so she's looking to me to give her some answer, so I tell her well, why don't you just close your eyes, and look up to the Lord, so I direct her attention away from me and onto the Lord. It's always good to get people to look to the Lord. Why? Because it stops the operation of witchcraft around you, to try and manipulate you to do something they want. You get them looking to God rather than looking to you. He is the source. Keep Jesus being honoured all the time.

Then the second thing that I become aware of is, my goodness, what am I going to do, and what will happen, and what if nothing happens? All that sort of stuff goes on inside. Now that is all to do with your standing with God, so if - oh man, I didn't pray, oh no. Now you see that's all to do with your standing with God, it's about accusations coming to erode you, so if you're going to move in authority, and move with power, you must be completely convinced in your heart that you are deeply connected to God, and I've taken a lot of time to practice that. We use the word righteousness, but for most people it doesn't mean anything. They don't know how does this work in my life. It just means that I am able to stand innocent before God, and be welcomed and embraced by Him, absolutely free of any charges against me.

So if I was just to meditate now and to allow my mind and heart to just become fixed, that God, I am near to Him right now. I can stand near to Him. I can honour Him and love Him and His presence is here and because of that I can release the power of God, because of positioning, because of being conscious of the presence of God. Many people are conscious of sin, conscious of being alone, conscious of being not good enough. That is a spiritual pressure around you that stops you flowing with authority. You have to silence all of that, and you silence it by the truth, that my sins are all forgiven, every one of them. I can boldly come into the presence of God. I took quite a bit of time to meditate until in a moment I can meditate and become just aware of God. It just took time for that truth to be built in, but once it's built in it makes it very easy to work with the Holy Spirit. If it's not built in to your life, your standing with God, then flowing with the Holy Spirit is immediately you get full of condemnation and full of wrestles and accusations and struggles. All sorts of doubts go on in your mind, so you have to recognise that's just what they are, attacks on your mind.

We are to have the breastplate of righteousness that protects our heart from being condemned, so to operate in authority, the first foundation of that is that I am clearly established in my standing with God. If I'm not, how will I know whether He's going to back me up?

If I'm not sure He's with me, and that we're working together, if I've got doubts about my standing because of being accused or condemned, how will I move competently and boldly? Very difficult, very difficult. So the first thing, foundational thing is, faith righteousness: I am connected to God, and I am favoured by Him. I am blessed by Him. I am blessed today. I am blessed by His love and presence. See, you build these things into your life, and your authority grows as this becomes established, so all things in the spirit, you have to know exactly where you stand with God. Now I'm not saying have it as a head knowledge. It needs to be more than just a head knowledge. In your heart, you need to know I'm completely innocent in His sight, see? Now that is what gives you boldness then to speak on His behalf, but if you are not convinced in your heart, if there are doubts in your heart about your standing with God, there will be doubts that will undermine your authority to minister.

So this is the most important thing to establish is faith righteousness, I am right with God by faith in the work of another, not in my works, not whether I prayed, not whether I did well or didn't do well. I am right by faith in the work of Christ, so you become conscious of a fault quickly repent of it: I am right now with God by faith in what Jesus Christ did. This is the foundation for all faith ministry, is the righteousness that Jesus gave to me, by my believing in Him. Getting the idea? So if your heart condemns you, God is bigger than your heart, so there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, except their heart on the spirit. This is foundational to all operation in the things of the spirit. You must know I'm established, and I can boldly, quickly come into the presence of God without being condemned. Have I done something wrong? That's okay, because He's made provision. Lord, I'm so sorry, I put it right really quickly, it's over, it's out of His mind, and it needs to be out of mine. This is so foundational to all faith operation, is that I'm right by trusting what Jesus did, and that needs to be established in your life. If you've lived under condemnation all your life, and blame, there maybe a stronghold to break, so that the truth gets established in your heart. Okay, getting the idea? Rightio, alright, so that's number one.

Thank you very much. How did you do? What did you feel happen? Immediately felt the presence of God. About the time when I actually just set my heart to meditate and be in the presence of God, the moment I set my heart on that, and started to connect with Him, immediately she felt the presence of God. I'll do it one more time, you'll just see it happen. It'll just be like that. I'll describe what's happening in me, and then you watch what happens to her, alright? So just again look up to the Lord, so you direct your attention to Him. I'm holding her hands, so whatever's going on in me will be an impartation. So if I was to just begin to meditate, and to see myself standing right before the throne of God, begin to meditate and fix my heart on Jesus, and as I set my heart - there He is, and I can feel His presence right now, see? And so does she.

See, so faith righteousness. It's not just a heady word. It's a spiritual reality, and when it's established in your life, the flow of God is never ending, and you know what? Every attack of the devil on you, will be to get that off you. It'll be to get you out of that place of confidence, and to get you into a place of doubt, about where God is in relationship to you. This is foundational to all moving in the spirit. To get it, you need to establish this in your life [laughs] okay? Alright then.

So the second one is humility. If I'm going to move in authority, I must develop humility. God gives grace to the humble, and in James 4:7, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The word submit means to place yourself under, or align yourself with someone who is over you, so together you can get a great result. So it has the idea of a military victory, of being properly positioned, so humility is a crucial part, and submission is an attitude of humility that recognises the authority of God, and those that God has delegated authority to, so that's - we're on now Page 10 in our notes. So submit is a crucial issue. I have found many people, because of pride, have a trouble of submitting to anyone. I have learned as soon as I meet anyone with authority, I immediately adopt an attitude of recognising and aligning properly with an attitude of honour to that person, because this is how I can walk in the spirit, and stay in the spirit. Getting the idea?

You notice the centurion, the moment when he saw Jesus Christ, he said: you don't need to go to my house, I understand authority. Just say a command, and my child will be healed, if you just say be healed. Jesus said whoa, that's real faith. The understanding of spiritual authority requires faith, because we have got defiled in our thinking about authority by bad experiences.

The fifth thing is revelation. We do need to listen to the Holy Ghost. Jesus said in John, Chapter 5, Verse 19, He said the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; He does, the Son does the same, for the Father loves the Son, and shows Him everything He Himself does; and will show Him greater works than these. So Jesus' authority flowed not just out of knowing who He was, but out of also listening for direction. So many times He could have prayed, but He didn't, so that's interesting. He could have delivered, but He didn't, so why is that? Because personal sensitivity to what God was doing was more important than legal rights to Him, so although He legally could have prayed for everyone and healed them, prayed for everyone and delivered them, He placed listening to the Father, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the highest thing in His life. So sometimes people said: why don't You pray for him, why don't You go and see Lazarus, what's wrong, he's sick. Why don't You go and see him? He said no, there's something greater God has in mind, let's wait and we'll see something greater. So you see, we have to just constantly be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and get revelation on what to do.

And finally, the last two things are, you have to use your voice, so you'll notice whenever you read in the Bible of people exercising spiritual authority there were always strong verbal commands: rise up! See, He didn't speak to the dead man in a soft voice: Lazarus, come forth! Spoke to the wind, spoke to the waves. He spoke strongly to sicknesses and demons, He spoke to the winds, spoke to trees, spoke to dead people. He spoke and gave a command, expecting something to happen, see?

You notice in the way He spoke, He spoke with great boldness. Now one of the things you'll find when you're moving in the spirit, you've got to speak with boldness. Now that's not loud, it just is confidence that God is going to do something. So you think well, I don't feel confident. Boldness has got nothing to do with what you feel - you speak that way: In Jesus' name come out! I speak to that sickness, be gone in Jesus' name! You've got to speak strongly as a representative of God, and the last part is act of faith. I must expect that when I speak, something will happen. Now you'd be amazed how many times when you pray, nothing happens initially. You have to expect something to happen, and so in Mark 11:24, Jesus said: have the faith of God, for I tell you truthfully, whoever speaks to this mountain - be removed, be cast into the sea, does not doubt in his heart, but believes the things will come to pass, he will have whatever he says. So I say to you, when you pray, believe you receive them, and you'll have them.

So you notice that spiritual kingdoms are enforced by spirits that ride on them, so the kingdom of God, it's the Holy Spirit that advances that; demonic kingdoms, it's demonic spirits, and I must believe when I speak that something will happen, not doubt in my heart. Now if I have no confident expectation of God doing something, there will be a difficulty. There'll be nothing much happen. I have noticed when you start to pray for deliverance, many times nothing happens. You've just got to be persevering and persistent. I've found in praying to alter spiritual atmospheres, nothing seems to shift initially, so I keep my voice speaking into that situation, and eventually it yields. You've got to believe that your voice, and what you say, will come about. Notice what He says, how many times it says what you say, whoever says and doesn't doubt in his heart, whatever he says will happen, he will have what he says. So I've got to speak words, believing that this is the will of God, I insist that this command be carried out, and it's a challenge, because I've observed in working in deliverance, that demons resist people, and the tendency is when nothing happens the first time you do something is, to quit and give up, so in operating in the spirit, perseverance is a must.

Okay then, so summing it up then. In exercising spiritual authority, it has to do with positioning, knowing where I am in God, listening, having revelation, and then giving voice or speaking. This is what I want to share with you, some things I've done that have been a big help, and then show you what you could do, perhaps to be like that. God spoke to me when I was a young Christian. I had a classroom, a physics classroom. It was a very old classroom, and everything was a bit tatty in it, and the Lord spoke to me. He said every child that comes in here is under spiritual pressure, they're unsaved. He said what you can do is, you can go through the classroom every day, praying in tongues and lay hands on every seat. I want you to do this, I want you to forbid the operation of demonic spirits over every child, and I want you to decree blessing over them. See, resist the devil, and call forth the things of God.

Now that was a pretty unusual thing to get to do because, you know, it didn't make any sense to me, but I was in the early days of just listening and learning and doing. So day after day, I would walk into the classroom, and I would just speak, [prays in tongues] I stand in charge of this classroom. I stand as one responsible for every student who comes in here today. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I forbid the operation of demons against every student that'll sit in this seat - because the classes flow through the day. So I'd go around, and I didn't pray the same prayer all the time. I'd pray it once, and then just lay hands - in Jesus' name I bind every spirit operating, I release blessing, I release learning, I release understanding. I release a great atmosphere in to this classroom. I release the presence of God into this place.

Now I spoke as one believing totally it would happen. Now I wasn't sure, because I'd never seen anything like this happen before, but I did it anyway, and it took about - I wasn't sure, or didn't feel initial changes of it, but others noticed it. Now what happened was this, there were several things happened. The first thing that happened was, one of the teachers noticed the difference, and she came and spoke to me, she said: what's up with your room? I said: what do you mean? She said: well I noticed every time I have a study class in your room, it's very quiet, and they're peaceful, and I get a lot of work done too, because they're so quiet. I said: is that so? She said yes, it's the only room in the school it's like this. What's different about your room? I said: I don't think you'll want to know the answer [laughter] and she said no, tell me. I said: I'm sure you won't want to know the answer, and she said: no, tell me.

I said: well you tell me again what is it like in there? She said well, it's very peaceful, and the students really work, and I get a lot done. I said well here's what I do - I take authority over the spirits that trouble children, and release peace and the blessing of God to learn into this classroom. I could tell she didn't want to hear, but [laughter] - that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. Nevertheless here's the thing: I didn't feel any change, but someone coming in did. The next thing I saw two girls that lined up outside and they said sir, something's weird about your classroom. I said what's weird? She said every time I come by we shake. I said well that sounds interesting, I've never seen - come in and show me shaking. So they came in and [laughter] their shaking got worse in the classroom. I'm thinking wow, this is amazing! I'm only six months, eight months a Christian - this is great to see something like this, and sure enough they're shaking.

So I realised then that they were involved in the occult, they were involved in the spirit world, and what was in them was reacting to the classroom. I enquired and sure, that's what was happening. We prayed, and immediately it went, it just stopped, and so I was aware then that without me knowing that something had happened, the whole atmosphere had begun to change. So then I began to pray, not only for the demons to be still and quiet, and prayed for the presence of God to come, I prayed then for the productivity, for the work to grow and increase. In the course of a period of time, probably about three or four years, my classes just went like that in terms of numbers, and in terms of outcomes of people passing exams.

I asked the Lord to give me creativity, because remember what I said? You have to be present, and you have to engage in a creative way in whatever you're doing, so you can't just leave it all up to God. We shift the spiritual atmosphere, then you front up, and you look for whatever creative ways you can do things. God gave me some creative ideas for the teaching, and so just to give you an idea, when I started I had 10 Form 7 students - 10, that was it in the whole school - and I had 20 Form 6 students. After we'd got into this flow of praying and releasing the presence of God and bringing creativity into the school, by the time I had left I had two 7th Form classes of 20-plus, say 25 each, which was almost the entire upper school, and I had four 6th Form classes of 25-plus each, nearly the whole of the upper school. I had nearly the whole upper school in my physics classes, and almost all of them had high accomplishment in their results. I think out of 100 university entrants, I got all but four through, year after year, and they were only because they were put in, and they didn't have the maths from 5th Form level to cope with the work. It was just an administrative muck up.

So I saw the reality of it. I taught people how to pray in their workplace, the same thing; to speak, take authority over troubling spirits, command the spirit to go, command peace to come into the place, productivity to increase, relationships to change, and the atmosphere has shifted. Now remember you can't just sort of do it by remote. This has got to be your metron, not someone else's. You have the right to do it. I've got many to pray into their workplace, and things have shifted in their workplace; one, because they started to arise in their spirit, and stop acting like a victim, and release the presence of God and subdue demons; secondly, they turned up with a different attitude, and the combination brought a tremendous shift and a change. We have to understand, this is really important stuff. We are called for dominion like this. We're called to bring the kingdom of heaven into the earth, and to do that you've got to confront the spirits that are there, and then release by words of faith blessing, specific blessing into your household, into your family, into your workplace, into your neighbourhood, into wherever you go.

We can do that. We're authorised to do that, and so you can pray over your marriage. I had one man, and I coached him how to pray. He stood up and he stood as the head of his home, repented for his failure to lead, and asked God to forgive him, and re-establish him in his positioning as the head of the home. Day after day he spoke in the spirit, broke the power of control that was operating, and within a very short time issues in the marriage came right out into the open. They had to work on it. There was deliverance and healing, and there was a shift took place in the dynamics in the marriage. His wife became much more secure and the whole marriage started to shift and change. These are realities. I could give you story after story after story where people have done it. Now is it easy? No, it isn't, because the moment you step up and start to push back the spirit world, it fights back at you, and your initial response may be it gets worse rather than better.

If it gets worse, then you can say yay - we're into the scrap! [Laughter] I've only got to hang on and it'll get better. That's the thing, you've got to be able to do that. You've got to hold your ground, and not give ground. In other words, perseverance is a crucial part of shifting spiritual atmosphere. Now sometimes it shifts really quickly, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't shift very quickly, it's because something's been established for a long time, and you've just got to hold your ground and be a bit gutsy and not quit. If you just stick with it, you'll find stuff will happen, it'll shift and change. We're authorised to do this you realise. Wherever you go, you're authorised to bring the presence of God, but most of us think only in terms of talking to people, and don't consider the possibility that I could just stand and just in a few moments of time, thank You Lord, I just invite Your presence to come into this room right now. Lord, just begin to fill this room with Your presence, let Your anointing just come over everyone right now - begin to feel the peace of God.

I just begin to put my spirit right over the whole room, and the peace of God will start to come, see? Feel it. He can fill a whole room. This is amazing stuff isn't it? [Laughter] [Yes.] See, I mean I need to actually get more proactive at this, because I often find that even though I know it, I'm not always diligent in holding it out and continuing to operate in this. So in other words, can you pray from another place and have a result, alright? [Yes.] We'll give you a couple of examples. The first obvious example is found in the Bible where the woman came to Jesus, and immediately after she reached out to Him, her daughter in another place was delivered, same with the centurions. Say only the word and be fixed. okay, now I have gone in prayer at one particular time, and someone over the other side of the world got healed right at that exact time, so I do not believe in the realm of the spirit there is any such thing as - there's no limitations of the physical world.

What you do then is this: first you begin to pray and stir your spirit, so get your spirit wound up and stirred up and energised so you're alive on the inside and your mind becomes clear, so you can hear the voice of God. Then you stand in your positioning before the Lord, looking for how to pray or ask Him to - just look for Him. He may give you directions, He may not. If He does, then follow them, if He doesn't, then you know what to do. So then what I would do from that place being near Him, I'd just begin to imagine the person, the situation and I'd speak as if I was standing right in that room - in Jesus' name right now, in Jesus' name I take authority, I forbid the operation of those spirits. I release the presence of God into that place. I release this, this, this, this, this - and now what happens is eventually you'll have some things happen. There will be things happen. You can do this, but you've got to be persistent in it.

Remember if this is say, a family member, and it's in their home, and they are responsible for their own lives, you cannot overrule them or override their free will. What you can do, is contain spiritual operations, and release or lawfully invite the spirit of God into that place, to do the work. They still have to respond, and usually I've found from the moment when you start praying until when you get something shifting, it can vary, but it'll often take time for God to set up the changes in their life that are needed, so we are called to intercede. We're called also to assert dominion, so just because I speak doesn't bring it all about. What I'm doing is I'm acting as a representative of heaven, to allow something to happen. Now because you are family, and connected to family, you can speak into family, because you can stand and put the cross of Christ between you and your family, hereditary background. You can command demons to shut down, to stop operating. You can release God's presence to work, and it does have effect on people.

I remember praying for one person. Apparently - I went through a hard time, because it felt like I was just getting nowhere, and then [laughs] they just - about three weeks later, they came up to me, and they just [laughs] said: I've been tormented for three weeks, I have to come and talk, and I didn't know from the day I started, it shifted. I just wasn't aware of it, because I saw nothing outward initially, so you have to persist, you know? Yeah, but you certainly can pray from a distance. But mostly the places we would want to operate is where we are physically present, where it's obviously where we have room to move.

Yes, sorry, yes? [Question] If you're a widow, you're the head of the home. [Yes, so that does mean...] In fact actually husband and wife, because they're one, God sees them as one, however God gives a status, or a standing in the spirit world to the husband, so when they stand together as a couple of course that's the best place to be. But I was only really trying to make the point about the particular role - but for a widow, well a widow, you have everything that is your home, is your realm, so now - it's the same for a single person of course. A single person, it's their realm. If a child is living in the home of parents, then the parents are the head of the home, so therefore they've got limited authority what they can do there. You've got to then know what God said you could do.

I know one girl, and she had been delivered from a demonic spirit, went home to her home. She said what do I do? We've got a big altar in our home. I said: well that's your parent's decision, not yours. Don't go in there and speak against them, or criticise them. Go into the home as a carrier of heaven to that home, so I said: first start with your own room. Dedicate your own room to the Lord, invite the presence of God into your own room. Then as you walk through the house, every time you see the idol, just speak to it, and make a decree. I said to her: pray in tongues, speak to it. Jesus shall increase, Sai-Baba shall decrease. Just say it - so she did that, and within a year when I came back Sai-Baba had decreased. They'd shifted out of their flat, they got a smaller flat, and they couldn't have the big altar, so the altar was gone, there was just a picture. She did it - I told her again, said how's Sai-Baba? Not doing to good. So I said well, keep doing it, so she did it next year. The picture had fallen down, they now had a little wee picture. [Laughter] He was diminishing. He was just diminishing. [Laughter]

You have to understand the power of decrees, tremendous power to speak as a representative of heaven, and to declare things, and to call things into being. Now when it involves other people, you've got to give them free will to make their decisions, and let God work this out in His own timing and rate. Our role is just to speak as His representative.

Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6)  

Thu 14 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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The first place to gain dominion is with yourself. Eph. 4:27 shows us we can give the devil a foothold, or legal doorway to access our life, creating negative energies. This session gives a check-list of common doorways, and practical steps on how we can take responsibility for our life and close down these gateways. There is clear instruction on how to recognise and deal with spiritual attacks - spiritual problems need spiritual solutions. We can identify our own 'personal enemies' and deal with them ourselves. "deliver ourself from the had of the hunter". Many Q&A in this session cover a large range of situations.

So let's have a look now in Section Four on exercising authority in your personal life, and there's quite a lot to be said around this area, so I've focussed on some aspects of it, but let's look at it. The first place to gain dominion is yourself. In Ephesians 4, Verse 27, it says in Verse 26: be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, neither give place to the devil. So it's talking firstly to believers, and it's clearly possible for believers to get angry, and sinfully angry, just as well it's also possible for a believer to give place to the devil. Now the word place is a Greek word, topos meaning an opportunity, a foothold or a legal ground or right. So He's saying to believers, don't give the devil legal footholds into your life, don't give them a ground on which they can access your life.

So the first place, you've got to get the victories in your own life, and it helps if you can recognise some of the strategies that demonic spirits use to manipulate and close your life, and to identify any gates or doors. Now some of this material starts to move towards the area of deliverance, and I don't want to make this a ministry session on deliverance, or a whole major teaching around deliverance, but I have observed in the past that when you start to stand up and speak into the spirit world, if there are footholds in your life, they quickly begin to manifest. [Laughs] So I have noticed that if you have legal areas or doorways open in your life, where spirits are operative, that when you start to engage speaking into the spirit world it pushes back on you temporarily, just temporarily, to see whether you really actually will stand up or not.

So I have observed at times, so for example I got up, and for a season there I was regularly, every day, beginning to command my day. So I'd rise and speak in the spirit, and begin to speak, now I command every aspect of my day to come into alignment with God's will for my life. I speak over every aspect of my day, to fully align with what God has purposed for me. I take authority over every assignment - I'd begin to speak and break things, and I found when I did that for about three days, and then I had a lot of trouble. I found that there was a lot of pressure around my mind and emotions, and it was like a discouragement to stop praying that way. So I've observed with working in exercising your spiritual authority, that the most common experiences people have initially are that there's a little bit of turmoil, pressure comes around you, or conflicts come in that area you're praying into.

So because this was a personal area, the pressure came around me personally in prayer, and I kind of felt like quitting. After three days at it, I felt like giving up, and I thought whoa, this is getting hard - but it was actually just a spiritual pressure I had to keep working against, and I had to look to see if there were any grounds or reasons that that pressure had a right to stay there, and put that right. I have found when people have prayed into marriages, sometimes the initial thing that happens is turmoil takes place, but then problems come out to the open, and you can then talk things through. Healing, resolution, and new ways of living together can take place. In the workplace, sometimes the initial outcome of praying is greater turmoil than ever, but again if you'll just keep up the pressure, it shifts and aligns with the word of God.

Remember it says: by faith we understand the world that we see was framed, or set in place, or ordered and created by the words that God spoke, so we have power to speak and frame up our world to align with what God wants. It doesn't absolve us from engaging and doing things, but this is an incredible important part, is speaking the word of God - so in 4.2, spirits try to make you ineffective. In 2 Corinthians 2, Verse 11, Paul said: lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices. So although at the cross Jesus legally or took the legal rights of Satan away, for practical operating purposes, he still operates unhindered, because people don't know that. Once you know what Jesus has accomplished, and believe and stand on it, then the devil loses ground immediately before you.

But he does have his devices, he does have his ways, and he does work on people's lives. It's when you start to pray, you start to see it. He said: lest Satan should take advantage - the word advantage means to defraud, take what belongs to another by deceit. So he's saying demonic spirits will try to take what God has planned for you, by manipulating your thoughts, your mind, your emotions, so you don't realise what's going on. That's why we do need relationships, so people can talk into our life, and say hey listen, I'm a bit concerned about what's happening, I can see this. We all need that and not go it alone.

We're not ignorant, or without any kind of knowledge or information about the devices of the devil, so here's an interesting verse here in Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 2. Jesus says: He made you alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, who once walked in the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. So He's saying: this is what your life was, and He's saying that when we were in the world and lived without Christ, it said evil spirits could work in our life. The word work there is the word energayo, from which we get energetic or energy, and it means to be operative, to energise, or put it this way: the way spirits operate is they creative negative spiritual energy in your life. They energise things that are already there, so they become difficult to overcome, or they bring pressure on you, and it's a very real pressure, a very real energy.

In Acts 10:38 it tells us that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost, and it says to heal all who were oppressed, or held down by the devil. So if evil spirits are operating, you feel pressure, or you feel strong energy inside, trying to move you or manipulate you, so for example if you're in the grip of temptation, it's like your whole inner being is energised. It's like your mind and thoughts get captured by this thing. If anger is starting to flood your soul, it's like a huge amount of energy inside you that rises up, and demons manipulate that. So the word that's commonly used to describe the activity of demons, is that they energise problems in your life, or they bring to life and give power to things inside you. Likewise it tells us that God also does that. He energises, but He energises us to do good, and the Bible also tells us the word of God works mightily in you who believe, so God's word energises us.

The spirit of God energises us, but also demons energise us, so we see that our inner life can be energised, either negatively by demonic spirits, or positively by the spirit and word of God, so there are common areas that demons attack. It helps if you're just aware of it; in the body with addictions and sicknesses or weaknesses or weariness, in the soul with conflicts and emotional turmoil, feelings that rage out of control, accusations or condemnation in the mind, pressures of temptation that seem so real and powerful, and when you're in the grip of temptation God seems so far away, and the temptation seems so very real. But once you've resisted it, the energy of it dies down, so some of you may have - can you remember a time when you were going through an immense spiritual conflict, how much energy it took inside to overcome it? It's like it's real energy that's there, and then after it's subsided, it's like you're back at peace and at rest again, so there was a real energy almost took over, and took all your thinking and emotional and spiritual effort to get over it.

Spirits can come around and bring heaviness, and bring oppression, passivity. These are common sorts of things that spirits bring, so if you notice some of those things happening, you can identify perhaps there is a spiritual pressure around me. They come on finances. There was a season when we were establishing the church here where we had accident after accident after accident. We had financial difficulties and pressures and setbacks one after the other, and it become really distressing, until God spoke to me what it was about, and I was able to stand up and assert spiritual authority against it. From that point on it changed, and then it just subsided. We went without any insurance claim for years, but prior to that I'd been turned down from a company because we had so many. It was just in the season when there was spiritual conflict I had all of these problems happen.

Difficulties in your circumstances - Sargin was sharing with you last night how just even trying to get the notes out, the machine violently resisted printing. You put anything else in it prints it; you put this in, it won't print it. Last time we were [laughs] last seminar we did I remembered after we'd talked, he put it in and we got the notes out, and it's printed only the odd pages, every even page had not printed. Now it's never done that before, it just did that on that seminar. It's never done it before, never done it since. It just did it for that seminar - so these are the kinds of things. You get setbacks, and they create irritations. You've got to learn how to rest in God, and just find a place of peace in the middle of it, and assert your authority.

So demonic spirits can bring these pressures around. When I go to Asia I have all kinds of things happen over there. One of the churches tries to look after me very well, but they know from experience that things tend to go wrong when I go there [laughter] and so they had a car. [Laughs] They put this lovely car outside to pick me up from the hotel. When we got to the car it wouldn't start, so they've got this nice car, and it's just shut down and won't work outside - and we're talking about nice hotel, and it's on the main street of Singapore, and the church car is broken down right there at the gates. That was really embarrassing for them, they really got so embarrassed so they rang up for the spare car - the spare car's got a flat tyre. [Laughter] So it's like they were oh, so sorry, so sorry.

So next year they remembered the experience, going to really do this right, so they got an Audi, and they had it all serviced the week before I went there. I get there and their head's hanging down [laughter] and they said we're so sorry about the air con. I said what about the air con? He said well something happened with the window of the car, it's just dropped down. We've never seen it, we've no idea why [laughter] and now there's no air con. They took it to the firm, and the firm says we've never ever in all our cars in all the world had that trouble. They said it doesn't happen to this kind of car, so they fixed it for nothing. But it's just we had lots of things like that, all kinds of stuff, so the spirit world is very real, and if you start to come alive in spiritual things, you will experience things that you had not perhaps experienced before, which are not so explainable by natural means, but they can be explained if there's energy, and something reacting from the spirit world against you.

So you've got to learn to step up against it and halleluiah, [prays in tongues] you know? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and arise inside, and let us speak the word of God over your circumstances! Make it back down, see? Got to learn to do that, get some toughness inside you. [Laughs] However it also helps if you close down some of the gates of your past and again, this is not a deliverance conference but it doesn't hurt that we talk about these things, because we will teach on deliverance at a later time in the year at another seminar. So to close the spiritual gates, very simply a gate is a portal through which something goes. A gate gives you entrance from one place to another, one room to another, and there are spiritual gates, places where demons can move from the spirit world and manifest in the natural world. So we can have gates - I don't know whether you realise it, but you are a gate.

You're a gate for God to enter this world. Think about that. The first revelation that Jacob had was: this is the house of God, this is the gate to heaven, so the house of God is a gate, so you are a gate through which the blessing of God can reach people.

But also there can be gates in our life through which demonic spirits enter and access, and of course you wouldn't necessarily be aware of it. You would just think that this is me, I've always been like this, and when you get into fellowship with spirit-filled people, then pretty soon you start to become aware of those areas that you've got some problems. So there are a number of them, I'm not going to teach on all of them. I just want to just highlight them, but there are a number of common gates that spirits use to come in and to oppress people. Wherever there's a legal ground or right exists, spirits can come in and operate against you, and bring pressure on your life. Here are some of the common gates that spirits deploy or use. Now remember, it's a legal ground, so it's something that someone has said or done, that created a right or an opportunity for a spirit to use it, to come in and out. Jesus taught that demons come in and out of people because they have a right or an access to do so.

So here they are, some of you will be very aware of these, some of you these may be some new things, but they're listed there with a little bit of explanation. They're not entirely a full list, but there are some major ones; number one, generational sins and curses. Some of the gateways to spirits and problems in our life began in our family with our parents or grandparents, great-grandparents or beyond that, and this is a major source of problems. So you can be born into this life already with demonic access points into your life, and they may start from very young, or they may manifest as you grow or come into adulthood. Some curses can be passed down three to four generations; some can be passed down - sexual sins - over 10 generations, so every one of us is connected in our DNA to the generation that went before, and spiritually we're also connected to the generation that went before. Anything that gained access say through idolatry, or spiritism, or sexual sin, or various things that people have done, if it's gained access into the family line, it will come down generation after generation.

Some family lines are terribly weakened because of a pattern of sin that's been there over years, patterns of alcoholism or gambling or lust or sexual perversion. These things, once they get into a family can affect - one of the most dramatic cases that - and I've seen lots of them over the years, but I'll just tell you this one. I prayed for a lady in a city in New Zealand, and she's a Christian worker. She said I am tormented with these problems of unclean images and pictures. I'm tormented in my mind all the time. I said how long has it been like that, and she said all my life. I said to her well have you been molested or exposed to anything that would have created a trauma in your life? No, she said none of those. So I thought well it has to be generational, so I said what's in your life has come obviously from the previous generation, so I asked about the background.

Her grandparents were missionaries in China in the '30s and they had a son and a daughter and they'd taken their family to live in China. They were missionaries in a particular province of China, and the son and the daughter went to school in another province of China. The girl and the boy were somewhere around about 10, 11, 12, about that age group as far as I remember, but the Japanese invaded China, that part of China and took over and conquered that province, and took the kids into custody. Over a period of time the girl was quite badly sexually abused by Japanese soldiers. Eventually the kids were released and went back to their parents, but already the damage had been done, and so the family I think maybe returned back to New Zealand. The young girl and her brother grew up; the girl married, and the girl who married was this woman's mother, and the marriage didn't last. The marriage broke up, and so eventually this girl who'd been born, grew up and served the Lord, and she'd come to me for this help.

So what we did was we just acknowledged that it's most likely that the reason she was tormented was because of a generational curse into the family through this sexual abuse, so we got her on behalf of her family to forgive the Japanese soldiers for what they had done, to hold the cross of Christ between her and the family line, and just to cancel all the things that had taken place. We did that and prayed, she had a massive deliverance, and she was completely freed. She to this day, as far as I'm aware, has never had a problem with those tormenting things coming into her mind. They were of a spiritual nature, and by asserting authority and dealing with the legal rights, she was able to be set free of this tormenting spirit - very, very powerful. Very powerful, and so there are lots of stories like that.

So you have authority to renounce and to cancel every generational curse operating around your life. You have the authority to act as a representative of the family, and to stop those things happening. Sometimes we need ministry from others, but there's an amazing amount you can do yourself, and so this seminar is about you being empowered rather than being dependent. However there are issues in our life sometimes we just need to open up to someone else and have them pray for us, so dealing with a generational sin really does involve acting as a representative of the family. Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess the sins of my family. We have been involved in this, and this, and this, and also I have done these things too, so we bring it to the cross. You've got to come to the cross, and when we bring it to the cross, now Lord I ask for Your forgiveness, and I receive that forgiveness - so has to be addressed.

We've got to bring it the cross through confession. We confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us, it's quite simply done. Now in Jesus' name, I renounce every generational curse. I break the power of all agreements and attachments that have been formed in my family line. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line. I forgive those who have been involved in these things, and now I claim freedom. I'll show you just simply, in a later part of this study, just how you can simply deliver yourself - not very hard, might like to try it some time. Quite convenient, quite easy to be able to deliver yourself. Just a matter of rising in your spirit, take authority, and deal with the sin and command the things to go - so another area related to generational sins and curses is the issue of dedications. Baby dedications are very common in cultures which have idolatry, so they'll dedicate the child to an idol, dedicate the child to a temple, and when doing so, the parents because they have authority over the child, give authority to a demon to enter their child. So that right, that legal right has to be broken and cancelled; in Jesus' name, I renounce every word spoken over me that dedicated my life to an idol or a temple. I cancel that dedication. I break the agreement with that idol and temple, I break the soul tie attaching me. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you Satan go from my life.

So these things are not very hard. It's actually quite a simple thing to break them, but you just need to be aware that they're there. I was in one meeting one night in Singapore. A lady came in and she had a massive deliverance, and she came up afterwards and told Joy I was prayed for and dedicated to a temple when I was a little girl, and I've been tormented all my life. She said: I've been crying out to God to set me free, and the Lord spoke to her and said: go to this particular church, City Harvest; go to this particular meeting, because there'll be someone there who can help you, and she came in, and we were teaching on this stuff. She came and got set free that night, so she spoke to Joy, and Joy I think might have prayed for her and got her set free. So dedications give a legal right for spirits to enter, ungodly soul ties - a soul tie is an attachment or bonding between people. People can be bonded together, and it can be a very positive thing.

God decreed that Adam and Eve through sexual intercourse, two would become one. So soul ties can be formed through sexual relationship, and bringing the two so they become one, they become one in flesh. In this particular scripture here, it says in Genesis 34:3, it says that the daughter of Jacob, Dinah, she was raped by this guy, and his soul tie - he was bonded or became bonded to this girl, so a soul tie is a bonding. It can be very good, it can be a husband and wife, a bonding in marriage, parents and children, very good. It can be also in church, but they can also be quite negative, so when a person has sexual sin, they're bonded to each sexual partner. A person involved in idolatry is soul tied to the idol; a person who's had a traumatic experience, often they're soul tied to the trauma. A person is in a controlling relationship, often they're soul tied to the controller; someone abuses them, violently, physically or verbally or emotionally, often the person becomes soul tied and bonded to the controller, the abusive person.

So soul ties, also these bonding create a ground through which spirits come in and manipulate. We have had many people become free of terrible tormenting unclean thoughts when soul ties to sexual partners were broken. The power of the thing seemed to dissipate and yes, they could remember, but it's not the driving energy tormenting their mind and emotions, so demonic spirits use these. They also use ungodly beliefs. What you believe the Bible says: as man thinks in his heart, or believes in his heart, that's how he is. If you believe a lie, you are in agreement with the demon already, if you believe a lie. The Bible says: the devil's the father of lies, so if I believe a lie, for example I believe a lie that I'm a failure, everything I do will fail, then now I have got an expectation in my heart that whatever I do is not going to work out. The more I fail, the more hurt I get and bitter I get, until my whole life is surrounded by an atmosphere of expectation, I will fail or be rejected.

Let me give you an example of that. Have you ever had an experience where someone's talked with you, and there's something about them you just can't wait to get away? You just don't want to be there, and you just kind of want to get away. It can even be a small child, and there's something about them, they're so demanding or something, and it's almost like you just want to get away from the child. Usually what's happening there is there's a spirit around the child's life of rejection, and a deep expectation they'll be rejected, and it's almost like they project it out. You feel, you get defiled by that thing, and so ungodly beliefs or lies in our heart create a great platform for spirits to affect our relationships immensely. Okay, another one is vows, whether they be external or inner vows. A vow, you make a commitment or a pledge or a promise, it can be ancestral vows of course that people make. Personal vows open up the door for demons. Many times they take the form of an inner vow.

Inner vows are vows formed in the times of pain or very difficult experiences, like a person who's abused by a man, she may say: well I'll never let any man near me, or I'll never let any person or any male get near me and have access to me like that. So an inner vow creates - it's a vow rooted in bitterness and judgement. Now that creates a legal ground for a spirit to enter. I prayed for one woman who continually miscarried baby boys, and she had made an inner vow I'll never carry a male child, and it outworked in her body, and her body rejected every child that she had that was a male. So inner vows are very, very powerful things, and people form them when they're hurt, or a person who goes through for example their family is very financially hard up, so they perhaps are having to wear second hand clothes, and they don't have the things at school that everyone else has. They go through a humiliating experience at school. They can often make a different kind of inner vow: well when I grow up I'll always have enough money. So their life becomes driven by this bitterness inside, and this inner vow, and it's driven, but there's never enough, because at the same time they believe in their heart there's never enough for me.

So they're driven by the believe there's never enough for me, and driven by an inner vow, I'll make sure I've got enough, and their whole life gets into a pressure to get money, and it can never be solved because no matter what they've got, it's never enough. I can remember one particular couple now, eventually their marriage broke up, but he was worth millions, but he was still driven, totally driven. His heart was shut down, and it went right back to his childhood where he'd suffered a great loss and made these inner vows, well I'll never lack, and I will do this. Of course those inner vows become demonically energised, and the person becomes driven. A rational person will look and say: you've got everything you need, why are you still working like that 24/7? Why are you doing that? They can't explain it, and their explanation's not rational, it's spiritual. A spirit has gained access, and has authority in their life, and is driving the behaviour, so you need to be aware of this in your own life as well as in the area of ministering to others. These things, in order for the person to be healed, they've got to actually go back and remember, and let the Holy Spirit show them where these vows were formed, and renounce the vow, because it will control your life through demonic empowerment.

Another area that is common for demonic spirits to afflict people are word curses. A curse is words spoken over a person's life, for example words spoken by a father have great potential to empower a child, or to curse them. I can remember one girl we prayed for - it was heartbreaking. I got so upset when I heard it - but her father, she was a teenager, and she was just experimenting with dress, and trying to get attention and stuff, so she'd dress a little bit promiscuously. Her father called her a slut, and he literally labelled her that more than once, and she thought well if that's what I am, I'll go be that. Now she had actually no intention of being promiscuous whatsoever, but the father's words over her became like a cursing on her, when she accepted them, and then she acted out or lived out what had been spoken over her. So I have found many people have had curses put over them, either cursed themselves: I'm a failure, I'll never get anywhere in life, those kinds of things, or a common kind of cursing is a death wish: I just wish I was dead. I just hate my life, I wish I was dead. Those kinds of things can be spoken out in an emotional time as a teenager, and then open the way for a spirit to come in and bring bondage.

Then finally, the last one there is the area of sin habits, where people just get locked into patterns of repeated sin, so it could be anger, it could be unforgiveness or bitterness, it could be hatred, jealousy. People get locked into patterns of sin, and spirits then will enter and energise it, so it becomes quite a problem to get free of. Now here's the deal: you've got authority to break any of those bondages. You can do it. You can minister to others and set them free. You can minister even in your own life to set yourself free, which we'll share in just a moment. So how do you need to deal with these gates? How do we shut the gates down? Now suppose these are gates in your own life; be open to the possibility you may need someone to help you. It's not always just about praying for yourself. Sometimes we need to submit, and just let someone else pray for us - but here it is.

Pray strongly in tongues. The first thing is get energised, let the life of God begin to flow in you like a river. This is a big start. Now listen for the Holy Ghost to show you what you need to be praying for, and then you need to speak words from your spirit, so these are the kinds of things. Now speaking strongly doesn't mean speaking loud. See, I can speak strongly from my spirit because I'm purposefully speaking strong words. I command you in Jesus' name - and speak strongly. It doesn't have to be loud, so people think, and what they do is they substitute speaking from your heart with authority, for speaking loudly. They make a lot of noise, but it's like empty words with no substance in them, so speaking with authority in Jesus' name. So here's some things that you could do that would break the power of holds over your life. One would be just to repent: Lord, forgive me, I just confess to You Lord that I have done this, I have said this, I've acted in this way. Always we need to just confess sin and deal with sin. We've got to get it to the cross.

If there are people have hurt us, or we have unforgiveness, we have to let that go. Unforgiveness locks our life up. It's a doorway for demons, Jesus said in Matthew 18: then renounce, or speak, or cancel any curses. So if I wanted to cancel a curse over my life generationally: Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I'm redeemed by His blood. I'm redeemed body, soul and spirit. I belong to You. Now that's positioning yourself. I've found in all moving in authority, just get positioned right: Father, I come to You, and I stand before You. Standing before God, and opening the heart, and declaring who we are, is a great way to start. Then well Father, I just confess to You the sin of our family. We have been involved in freemasonry, we've made agreements and covenants with idols and demons, and grieved Your heart. Lord, I renounce this curse, and all agreements made with freemasonry, at every level of freemasonry. I renounce the curses made, my father's side of the family and my mother's side of the family. I cancel them now, and I hold the cross of Christ between my family line and those things. I refuse them today.

Now - in fact, actually in my family line there has been freemasonry. I had to get rid of some of the regalia, and discover some of the effects of freemasonry, emotional difficulties, difficulties in loving women, all kinds of difficulties that were in the freemasonry background, spiritual turmoils, and conflicts, and sickness. So renouncing those things now in Jesus' name, I release forgiveness to every family member who has opened the doorway for these things, now in Jesus' name, I command you to go from my life. So some things I've had to just deliver myself - wasn't that hard, just pray and energise your spirit, go through the step by step process of dealing with the legal right, and commanding the spirit to go. Then just cough and begin to just allow the thing to come out. You'll be quite surprised when you do it, all sorts of things begin to happen. [Laughs] It can start off with a little cough by faith, and end up with a coughing fit. [Laughter] Whoa! What just left? I don't care, just it's gone, that's the main thing, begin to worship God. [Laughs]

So you can deliver yourself. It's not so hard, and I've got a section there, just a little bit on the whole area of self-deliverance. We'll touch that in a moment, so why don't we just stop at that point, and perhaps some of you may want to ask some things just about where we're at on that point. Then we'll go on and just look at two sections in this, the final two sections in this part, which are on recognising spiritual attacks, and just how to deliver yourself. So why don't we just stop for a moment, and some of you may just have a few questions you wanted to ask, either about the last session on spiritual authority, or on this session just related to just some of these gateways and doorways.

Yes, okay? [I was just wondering is it possible to break dedications that were made to evil spirits, like if you're aware that they were maybe dedicated, a parent or someone in the family line was dedicated?] Well we are responsible, can do something for our own life, then those who are after us. We have no rights over our parents and see, we have no rights there. All we can do is pray, and stand against the influence, and pray and rebuke that whole spiritual area, and ask the Holy Ghost to release light into them, so open their eyes to see. So if you have been dedicated, or your children have been dedicated, you have rights there to be able to exercise authority. When it comes to your parents, the relationship is one of parents to child, so you have no authority over their life, except one of influence, so you can speak and command the dis-empowering of generational spirits, but you've also got to pray that God will open their eyes to see. They have to choose for themselves to do that. I think we can stand as an ambassador on behalf, and speak into those things, but let the Holy Spirit help you in that.

Okay, someone else, yes? [Can we place the cross between us for our children and the generational influences without actually knowing that particular generational sin?] Sure, yes. I think the more specific we can be, the better that is, and so to locate the generational sin, have a look at patterns that appear in the family. So you would ask first of all, you just begin to pray in the spirit, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the thing to you, have a look at patterns in your family. One of the first places you see is patterns in the family, but sometimes it only comes by revelation, and the Holy Spirit can reveal the thing to us. Some people pray and command the demons to reveal it, and thoughts come up to the mind, but it's better that there be specific prayer, rather than general prayer. Specific prayer has specific results. General prayer often is ineffective, so I think it's a good place to start, but I think it's better that we actually ask the Holy Ghost to help us identify what the specific issue is. That would be better, okay?

Yes? [What about in your workplace, if you're not allowed to talk about God or Jesus and it's quite tempting to defy that, and there are times when I know Jesus is the solution, but you cannot speak about it.] Right. [So how do you reconcile that, what do you do, because you know you can help by talking about God, but you're not allowed to.] [Laughs] Okay, so that's the classic thing that we said before, you know, that you have to - we know Jesus calls us to reveal Himself, so we're called to preach the gospel, yet you have an employment situation where, if not explicitly, then at least implicitly, you're not to speak about Jesus. It's to be secular education, so you would break the employment contract if you start to preach the gospel in your classroom, so that's the dilemma.

God says to do this, the authorities say to do this: where do I stand? I think number one is, your heart attitude is not to be in rebellion against authorities, but to be co-operative with the intention of it all. I think number two, you can speak, and take authority over the spiritual atmosphere in the classroom, and release things. I had many kids come to Christ in my classroom, but I didn't necessarily talk to them about Jesus in the classroom - but many came. We had many kids come to Christ, a whole heap of them, because the Holy Ghost so shifted the atmosphere they just wanted to come and talk, wanted to connect, wanted to hang out. Then hanging out, they wanted to ask things, so you'd talk about stuff then, and you can talk - so I don't think often I spoke openly about Jesus in the classroom. But what I did do, when it came to the area of teaching around sexuality, I was quite blunt about the Christian perspective on it, and that was quite an interesting thing for them all.

I thought well, they're getting junk. I'm going to give another point of view because this is education, and at least they should be exposed to another point of view which is biblical, and Christian, and gets results - so I did, unashamedly, you wouldn't have worried about that. But I think today the environment's become much more difficult, so therefore I think great wisdom is needed, or you lose your credibility, and then eventually lose your job, and lose your ability to influence. But if someone comes and inquires, or someone comes and asks, I think there's a lot we can do without speaking the name of Jesus. You can talk biblical values, you can talk about values, you can talk about the conflict of values, you can talk about the values which are specific for you. I think there's much we can do, and I determined I would do as much as I could, because everyone else was blatant about what they were doing [laughter] so I thought if someone comes and says: you can't do that, I'm sorry, I didn't realise that, thank you very much for pointing that out. Then I'd be a little wiser in the future. [Laughter]

You know, I think you don't want to live under fear and intimidation, and if someone makes a complaint, you've got to say: well I'm so sorry, we were talking about values - I think to blatantly preach Jesus is a misuse of your authority as a teacher. People understand they're coming to a secular classroom to receive education; they're not expecting the teacher to talk their own personal views. However the reality is that the life of the teacher shows up in their teaching, so whatever the person is living will show up in how they teach. So I've got no shame in saying well, this is who I am actually, I'm a Christian, I do this, and I believe these things. I've found the kids would ask questions. Well if they ask questions, I'll answer the questions. [and pray] Yes, exactly, yeah, so we prayed at home.

So I used to take the line this is my room, everything that comes in here is coming into my territory, and the presence of God is in my territory. That's how I took it and released the presence, prayed for the presence of God to fill the place, and for them all to be successful, because for a parent to come to - they want their kids to succeed. They don't necessarily want religion, they want to succeed, they just don't know how to get success, so I worked: one, creatively to create an environment where learning was very relational, and they got success; two, to work the spiritual atmosphere, so it was quite open and accepting in there. Yeah, seemed to get good results. We just went like that, and they were very sorry to see me go. [Laughter] And I got the same results when I started up a school, same thing happened, again spiritual environment, and also enabling them and empowering them to learn properly.

Yes? [Can I just ask, in my marriage were my prayers ineffective because I was not actually - even though he wasn't walking in the authority that God's given him, my prayers weren't effective because he was not a christian] Alright, okay, that's a good question, so there's a struggle in a marriage that eventually broke down, and so the question is, were my prayers ineffective? I think that God is the only one who can answer whether prayers are effective or not. I think we tend to look at them all as being effective only in terms of getting what we expect or hope. The reality in relationships, God gives everyone a free will, and if people continually resist God there are devastating consequences that take place, no matter how faithful the Christian or the believer can be. So the Bible says that the unsaved spouse, whether it be husband or wife, is sanctified by the faith of the saved person, so I believe God looks at them, and sees them as being one.

Now how do you then deal with the situation with the unsaved or the back-slidden husband? I believe you stand in their place, since they have failed in spiritual headship, you step up, and without usurping their role, step up in prayer, praying to break those things around them, release the blessing of God. But we have no guarantee what the outcome will be, because the outcome rests on a person's decision, and so all we can do is make the chances of it happening far greater. In other words, by removing some of the spiritual pressure and releasing the atmosphere of God, but people still reject God, so Adam and Eve walked in the most perfect environment, but still made their own choice, which had consequences. God let them make the choice, but made them accountable for the consequences, so in a marriage situation, I believe the first thing is your own heart attitude; secondly is that you stay faithful in prayer, and do the part that you can, but then sometimes marriages break down because someone just is resistant, and they make decisions and choices that lead to destruction.

You're not responsible for those decisions or choices, and if you have prayed faithfully, and stood in the gap and believed God, and done the best you could, then you've done the best you could. You know, you read the men of faith, it said some got great victories, and others died in faith, you know? So we forget the last group. We just want the great heroes stories of seeing it all work out, but there are many people, and they just stood in faith, they didn't see the answer, but they refused to doubt. They held on to the very end, even at the loss of their life, and God calls them men of faith, so I believe if you stay in a place of faith, believing, trusting God and do all that you can, then however the outcome is, at least you can walk away honourably, saying I did all that I could. Yeah and that's how you would feel of course, yeah. Sometimes when you engage in this kind of prayer, issues surface which actually the whole foundations of the marriage become bare. Then the challenge is, will we work to sort this out and build a better relationship, or will we not? So prayer, like I was sharing of opening up the spirit world, can expose stuff that formerly was hidden. People still make their decisions though, and sometimes they make bad decisions, you know?

Yes? [When you have a Christian marriage, and one of the partners is oppressed by the enemy, and no matter how much ministry is offered they resist it and the marriage breaks up, is that affecting their salvation?] I think that's a totally separate issue. A person's salvation rests on the work Christ did, and their trust in it, and it should have an outworking, that their life begins to show it, so true faith actually has some outworking of a walk with God of some kind.

If a person's oppressed, it means a part of their life is under the control of the enemy, which is usually in this case the soul, so the mind and emotions, and what you don't know is, what trauma the person has gone through, that gave access to the spirits into their life. [I know the trauma, but they would not bow to any ministry. They were...] I understand that. [...it meant that they were burdened, but they were convinced there was nothing wrong.] Of course and that happens, so I think the issue of a person's salvation lies ultimately in the hands of God, and God alone. I don't think we could ever know where people stand, and just because a person refuses to acknowledge a problem, and won't receive ministry, I don't think that means they're not saved. I think it just means they're refusing to acknowledge a problem, and there are many reasons people refuse to acknowledge a problem.

Some, they actually intuitively know that to acknowledge it, I'm going to have to go through some terribly painful stuff to deal with it, I'd rather not acknowledge it. Some people have actually built - it's almost like they dissociate inside, and put the pain in a box, and carry on just like nothing has ever happened. But the pain is still there, and they don't want to go there because of the pain, what it would mean to them. In such a situation, when a person stays in that kind of denial, you can't do anything until they come out of the denial, so sometimes - my experience with working with people has led me to conclude that even if you can see what's wrong, until they recognise a need, they don't make a change. So the first aspects of prayer is that God would awaken their heart to see their need.

Usually we try to tell a person what their need is, and they just vehemently resist, so I've sometimes changed the praying: God, open their eyes so they can see. Whatever it is that's holding them back, we just stand against that - and it can be just immense grief, because the first phase of grief is shock, and the inability to come to grips with what it is. So no one really knows all of those things, but trauma and grief, denial, and just sometimes just stubborn resistance: I won't admit I've got a need, that can come out of inner vows. I think that prayer can increase the opportunity and the likelihood they would open up, but it doesn't guarantee it. We still have - everyone is given a free will, so you can't override someone's free will. When we override... [Can God?] Well can God - that's a good question. Firstly, he can. Well Paul's determined to go down the road and kill Christians. and He just goes pow, and zaps him off, but He never overrode his will. He just gave an encounter that opened his eyes up, and he suddenly realised he was making a big mistake.

God has given man a free will. If He takes it away by overriding it, the core of being human is taken away, so God - it seldom overrides a person's free will. Free will is what makes me a human being. If I don't have free will, or my free will is taken away, I'm a slave, so that's one of the dilemmas. God has created man for dominion and given him free will, but not choice over consequences, so God doesn't override free will, and He has set in place consequences. That's how He has set up the world to operate, so only by faith can we access something coming in from heaven to earth, but God doesn't override free will. So I think it's extraordinary that you are given free will to the extent you can choose a destiny that's eternally lost, it's incredible that God would give so much, but taking it away would so enslave you, you wouldn't be human. So it's the dilemma God faced; He gave man free will, but with it the potential he could just misuse it, or use it to rebel, and therefore all this destruction.

So we have to be very careful we do not override the will of another person who's an adult, and a responsible adult. To do that involves witchcraft, because witchcraft is the usurping the authority that someone else legally has, which is what their response - so responsibility and authority go together, so what you're responsible for, you have authority over to do certain things. If I move and take up your responsibility, and minimise your authority and take over, I'm now operating outside what God has called me to do, and I've taken over. I'm operating in witchcraft, which is an unlawful authority, so I didn't put a section but I'm thinking about it, that perhaps I should put a section in related to this, because unlawful spiritual authority, or unlawful authority, is a problem everywhere, where someone has taken over and controls another person's life, and the person lets them do it, because it's easier for them to give up responsibility and let someone else run it. This creates a spiritual dynamic where witchcraft operates, and sits over the whole marriage or relationship, and it creates huge problems. Sickness, infirmities, all kinds of things come in.

Many families and marriages and churches are full of this, so when you arise and start to operate in spiritual authority, the one thing you become intensely aware of, is the issue of witchcraft and the whole Jezebellic operation. I haven't included it in this, but that's a whole sort of area of its own. It's got major issues around it. It can never operate unless someone gave permission for it to operate, so for example God held Ahab responsible for the corruption in the nation, and He judged Ahab because Ahab gave up responsibility, and allowed him to be usurped by his wife. So we tend to get into this anti-woman thing and blame Jezebel for this and that, which is actually totally unfair, because men and women are both capable of controlling behaviours, and the spirit is totally impartial who it works through. The issue is whether we take up responsibility, or abscond or abdicate. Everywhere you abdicate something will come in and take over. That's just the reality.

So that's why I have discovered in this area, if you have abdicated responsibility over an area of your life or responsibility, something will sit in there, and when you arise, repent, ask God to forgive you, take up your responsibility, start to pray, you will engage and have some conflict. You'll find then something sitting there. Most people aren't aware something's sitting there until you step up and try actually change your life. Then you find it's there, and then you find it pushes back against you, and you have some problems.

I want to have a look at Section 4.7, how to recognise and deal with spiritual attacks, and then just the issue of self-deliverance. I think these are quite - everyone is going to go through issues of spiritual attack at some point. Now we don't want to over-dramatise it, and kind of be looking for demons everywhere, but there are times when pressure comes on you. It's helpful if you know what it is, and know what to do about it. If you don't, you'll just try to push on. Spiritual problems need a spiritual solution, but don't spiritualise everything. Some things are very natural, very practical, so the dilemma you have is, where people look for a devil everywhere. You'll see what you want to see, so let the focus of our eyes be on God and His goodness, not on the problems. But having said that, we do recognise there are times when you come under immense spiritual pressure, and it is very real, and it can be stressing if you don't know what to do with it.

So we'll just read a verse in Revelations 12:10-11. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying: now salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto death. So notice here it says: the pressure against believers is unrelenting, day and night. Isn't that interesting? So notice that they are accusations, so one of the things the devil wishes to do is to accuse you continually of lacks, failures, faults, flaws, to heighten your awareness of what's wrong, rather than your awareness of what God has done for you, and where you stand.

Essentially he wants to erode your standing, so you don't feel near to God. You feel just not good enough, feel bad: I'm not good enough, nothing's good enough. So spiritual attacks come in the form of accusations or condemnation, where you feel pressured in your mind, that you're not good enough. Now the devil doesn't say you're not good enough, he'll fill your mind with: I'm not good enough, I'll never be good enough, nothing I do is good enough, there's something wrong with me. Now when there's a flow of thoughts like that, they will energise any strongholds you have in your heart, but they are a flow of spiritual energy that comes in. It can be just heaviness, it can be feelings of dread, particularly when you're facing situations where there's a lot of control in those relationships. You can come under tremendous spiritual pressure, and feel almost like fear and anxiety, and it's totally out of proportion to what you're facing.

Temptations, confusion, oppression, so some people just have a heaviness come. Now I've shown you how to lift the heaviness off quite easy, but we must actually conquer these things. So you are always responsible for the state of your life. Don't go blaming anyone else, don't be the victim. We're responsible, so if something's not right, we've let it not be right, or we're on the journey of sorting it out. So to overcome means to conquer, subdue and come out victoriously, so the first place you've got to conquer and subdue is around your own life. Notice it says: they overcame the accuser, they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. That's what Jesus did on our behalf; the word of their testimony, confessing to what Jesus has done, and then persevering and holding on to it, and backing up the devil on it. So whatever comes against you, you've got authority to defeat it. You can defeat it, and it will back up. I've learned this with demons: they will always back up, once you've determined that you know what you're doing, and you're going to keep on resisting them. They back up, and then the atmosphere changes, and you're free again.

So how can you deal with it? In James 4:7, notice these wonderful scriptures: Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will? [Flee from you.] Flee from you, and that word means to seek safety, by running away from the danger that you present. Now that's a good word to know, that the devil will flee. Of course the devil's not interested in you personally. He's got really low level evil spirits interested in you. They just do his work, so you're dealing now with just low level spirits, and here's the deal. If you will align yourself with God, and make a stand to resist, he will flee away in panic and terror, because you've really got to him, so that's the promise. So the outcome of the demons fleeing away is a result of two things; one, of you're actually aligning yourself with God, and two, making a stand against the devil. The two words are quite interesting words. One is the word hupotasso, hupo to be beneath, and to stand or position yourself beneath, meaning literally position yourself right with God, and then the other one is anti-tasso, position yourself anti whatever the devil's doing.

So it's all about positioning yourself in your attitude, your thinking and in your words. So how would you go about dealing with a spiritual attack? It's helpful if you ask these kinds of questions: What am I feeling? If you can put a name on what you're feeling, you bring it out to the light. Many times we have lots of feelings swirl on, and then we think some new thoughts. Then there's more feelings, and then there's more thoughts, and before you know it, you're in a swirl of thoughts and feelings and turmoil, and all in emotion. If you get like that, get up and pray in tongues! [Prays in tongues] Shake the thing back, and then stop and evaluate what you're feeling; what is it I am feeling? Try to get a name on it. Is it fear? Is it anger, is it irritation of some kind? Anxiety? What am I feeling?

Then ask the question, well what triggered that? Was something said, something someone did, or didn't do? What triggered this? I wasn't feeling like that when I got up - why am I feeling like that now? When did that change? Now if you can just get your spirit free first of all, and just go through this little process of asking these questions, what am I feeling? What emotions or feelings or things are going on inside me? Then what happened that has triggered that off? Then evaluate, well what happened, what actually happened that caused that to take place? Have I made some assumption, had some expectation that wasn't met? Try to evaluate what's happened. You'll find the most common reason people get in a mess, is they made an assumption: oh, I thought you were going to do that. You didn't [mutter mutter], and now you're in a turmoil about it all, and it's all building up inside, and the devil's just having a hey day in your life.

Just stop! Well what is it that's gone on, and try to evaluate what happened, because if you can evaluate, then you'll look at what your part was in it, and you can deal with your part in it. Then here's things you can easily do: pray in tongues very strongly, because praying in tongues as we've already found energises your spirit. I understand there are a couple of people not free to pray in tongues. We'd like to pray for you after lunch, and just activate that part in your life - so listen. Listen for promptings of the Holy Ghost, because He may show you things to pray for, and then learn to speak directly. I can remember there was a time in my life, I remember I was teaching Christian school. I was having these problems, these unclean thoughts coming into my mind, and I was thinking oh, I was feeling down, because I was struggling with these thoughts. I was thinking well, what am I teaching in a Christian school, and I'm struggling with these thoughts, what's going on.

The Lord dropped in, and He said: it's a spirit invading your mind, just rebuke it. Oh really? I never thought of that - and so I did. I just got praying in tongues, and just spoke directly: in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority over that unclean spirit. I forbid you to come around my life now. I thank You Lord for Your presence here inside me, the spirit of holiness inside me. I began to pray and focus my mind on the Lord. Immediately the whole thing all just left, and it stopped - it was so quickly it stopped, I couldn't believe it. I thought I've been putting up with that stuff around my head for half the morning, and here it is now, just suddenly went, when I knew what to do. It was a spiritual attack which comes, sometimes in the way of heaviness. Often heaviness is an indication something's about to happen, or is happening around you, but also invading thoughts, invading emotions, and so learn to speak.

Speak God's word over your situation. Speak and reject the operation of that spirit, and then begin to declare God's word over your situation, quite easy. Then re-engage and do something else. It's not hard. What am I feeling? What triggered off that feeling? Have I done anything or has anything happened, were there assumptions I made, or someone's disappointed me? Try to get an evaluation what's happened. Is there anything I need to put right with God? Okay, get it right and now in Jesus' name, so we pray in tongues [Prays in tongues] stir up your spirit. In Jesus' name I speak to that spirit. Now here's one of the things I've found, and I found this by experience. If you'd like to both just stand up, just come and stand up near me. When we tend to think of these things - just stand here just like that - when we tend to think of the spirit world, because we live so much in the physical world, we tend to just not be very aware or conscious how it might work.

So what would happen was, I would have these thoughts coming in around me, and bombarding me you see? For a season I had these terrible thoughts of rejection, I just don't belong, I'm not loved, and all that kind of stuff. Then it took me a little while to realise they were my thoughts, and I had an issue in the heart, but actually it was a spirit of rejection was pushing against me. Just hold your hands out like that, just push against me, see? So I couldn't see the spirit, but I was overloaded in my mind and emotions with thoughts. Then I'd start to feel sorry for myself, and so there's another spirit - so put your hands up, both of you keep your hands up there - so now I'm not even aware or conscious that there are spirits at that stage. All I know is that all the time I've got this pressure pushing on me, feeling sorry for myself, and this pressure, putting on a feeling I'm not good, not valuable, not acceptable. I couldn't work out what it was, I just struggled with it.

It was so common I just thought it was me, and when it would come it would come every now and then, I'd have an event, and these demons would just immediately just trigger off, come in and start pushing on me, and I'd go down sometimes for three days into a heaviness, into a dark hole. I had no idea what it was. It never occurred to me it might be a spirit. It never occurred to me that I actually might have personal enemies. I never thought of that. [Laughter] It just never occurred to me. You know, the devil's sort of out there somewhere kind of thing, you know? It wasn't reality. You read in the Bible, you know, submit to God, resist the devil. It's all sort of out there, too far for me, and then I realised - keep your hands up, hold your hands up - [laughter] I realised that I'd go through life, and next thing boom, I'd run into these things, and I'm in depression for two or three days. I didn't realise there was something there.

I had no idea there was a spirit that was involved, none whatsoever - until the day the Lord showed me, you need to stand up and take dominion of this part of your life. If you'll get the victory, then all your life will change, so what I did was, I would start off by beginning to pray really strongly in tongues, get fired up in the spirit, energised in the spirit, and then in my imagination I'd picture and see there's a spirit there, the name - self-pity. I'd see that there was another one there, the name - rejection. I would speak to them: in Jesus' name I take dominion over you. I decree your power is broken over my life. I reject you, and refuse to yield to you - and same with the spirit of rejection: I hold the blood of Jesus over you right now. I had no idea what the blood of Jesus did to the demons, but it seemed a good idea to do it. [Laughter] It turns out they really don't like it. [Laughter] I didn't know that. I found that out since.

The other thing they don't like, is you praying in tongues. They absolutely hate it. I've heard them scream at me when I've prayed in tongues, and so now get this. I'd pray in the spirit, get energised in the spirit, turn to this one, push against it, push against it, and then turn around and then just begin to meditate on the truth, and open my heart to embrace the truth, and reject the lies. Now what I found was, now this was the first stage of doing this, and I did this for something like three weeks; I'd get up, begin to pray in the spirit, turn to the spirit go in Jesus' name, I have authority over you in Jesus' name. Now of course they would think the next day hey, we've been around a long time, we're not going that easy. So I'd wake up the next day, they're still there, and I never felt any change. I just did it by faith, and then I would meditate that God is with me. I declare the truth, I'm accepted in the beloved, meditate in the truth, and I'd search my heart for any experience of rejection, so I could forgive and release blessing to those people.

I'd meditate, primarily meditate in the truth. Then one day I stood up, got into praying [Prays in tongues] just like every other day. [Prays in tongues] Prayed in tongues, and I pushed [whoosh] like that, and I pushed [whoosh] like that against them in the spirit using words. Suddenly I felt the atmosphere change. I thought I've actually just hit these things, and engaged. I've actually got the victory over them, they've gone. They've backed up finally, and then when I began to meditate in God's presence and love for me, I just fell over, because I was just so touched by God - but for three weeks it had been just a journey of faith, and then the actual experience of recognising I could feel these spirits back up, because after three weeks they realised I was not quitting. They backed up, and they were gone, and I had a great space of freedom in my life for a long time - until the next stuff came up. [Laughter] Getting the idea? It's not so hard to do.

Now if I was to ask you now, to identify what are the things that most commonly press in on you, and trouble your thoughts and emotions, so that you would say actually, these are besetting things. They seem to sit around me all the time, and push against me. If you could write them down, what would they be? There's usually not many. I wrote down these ones; I wrote down rejection, because I felt that I always felt not good enough, then self-rejection, because I actually rejected myself. Then fear of rejection, because I actually did fear that this would happen to me, then unbelief, because I realised unbelief was under-girding all of those, and finally self-pity, because I'd get in a pity party, down, depressed. So I realised there was a cluster of them, just like that, and I just pushed against them and pushed against them, stood and decreed they were subject to me, their powers broken, and I'd turn, meditate in the word of God, and arise in my spirit, and it shifted. I wonder what sits around your life, that you could say: I refuse to tolerate this any more.

Now there may be root systems in your heart, but I'm sure if you'll identify first of all what the problem is, and you start to pray and resist it, and declare the truth over your life, that many things will shift pretty quickly. Other things you may need to actually identify when it first started, how it got in there, and be willing to acknowledge sin, or acknowledge unforgiveness, and let it go. That'd be great. It'd be easy to get rid of these things now. Every time they come around, oh, that's just you, in Jesus' name be gone! This is who I am. Now you'd be surprised how effective it is, because we declare, we make confession of what God says. How about that?

Okay, now suppose there was some stuff there, so that's how you deal with some spiritual attacks, and you just end up praising the Lord and redirect your attention, and there you are. Now I learned that if I didn't rise and fight, I could go down into a pit quite quickly, and stay there for quite some time, and be quite depressed. You know sometimes all it takes, is for someone to just say: come on, you're not yourself, stand up again. Okay [Prays in tongues] and suddenly it's all gone, it's all gone away. You've just stood up inside and pushed the stuff back, so spiritual pressure comes and goes. It'll try and lock in where there are strongholds in your heart. Jesus said: the devil comes, he's got nothing in me, got no hold in me. So let's just have a look if you needed to get delivered, and I want to teach just a little bit on how you could deliver yourself, so then I don't have to do it all. [Laughter] It gives you empowerment to deliver yourself, and many of us, rather than wait a whole week in torment, it would be better if you just rose up in prayer, and pushed the stuff away from you.

So in Proverbs 6, Verses 4 and 5: give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. In other words, this is a very important matter - deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. So of course the fowler is a reference to Satan who hunts and traps and destroys wild birds, captures us, and wild animals of course in a snare struggle violently to get free. So God says - notice the command - deliver yourself. In other words, He says: seek your own deliverance. I've found I'm surprised how many people want someone to do it all for them, but actually this is your life, and you have authority over it, you do something for yourself. So what would I do? The Bible tells us that freedom is my responsibility, not someone else's. Your freedom is your freedom, it's about you. It's about what you have in your life, so I have to co-operate with God, and here's the key verse. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you, so how can I deal with some of these things, and get myself free?

So I have found sometimes prayer and fasting is an important part of it, so if you've got an area of your life that's resistant, then - it's in Page 16 - why don't you just have a season of fasting to break through? Have a season of prayer and fasting, and become aware of the presence of God. If there's sin in your life, or there's something you've done that's wrong, you do have to confess it, because that's the legal ground, and so you may find there's a pressure around a sexual area, because you've yielded in your mind and emotions, or embraced, or allowed your mind to wander, and in your heart there's a sin taken place, even if nothing externally has taken place. So repent it; Lord, forgive me, cleanse my heart of all of these things, and if there's areas where you need to forgive; sometimes we're feeling rejected because someone hurt us, and instead of forgiving we sat on it, stewed on it, had actually unforgiveness sitting in our heart, and the rejection just got deeper and deeper. So whatever it is, you need to repent of it. Then here's how you actually get the demons to go, quite simply, and I've done it a number of times myself, because I've found being in the role I am, and doing what I do, spirits come around and harass me from time to time. I go through conflicts of various kinds, and it affects me emotionally and spiritually, and I need to be set free sometimes.

So I have people that I can just go to, and when we get together we'll pray, and they'll pray, if they see anything they'll pray for me, and I'll pray for them. But other times. and I don't have to do it, often these days, but I would actually deliver myself. So how would you go about delivering yourself? Well the first part is just to recognise you've got a problem, there's something sitting there that may be not right. Then you've got to actually address the issue of sin, so I begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now if you can imagine spirit, soul and body - perhaps I'll just get three people up here. It'll just help me if I get three people, just the first three here. It'll just help you visualise this alright? Okay then, come on up, just stand forward here, alright, then there. Just have to stand, just stand there. You don't have to do anything - come and stand here in the middle, that's right, okay, there we go and here we are, spirits.

So spirit, soul, body, just got you like that, spirit, soul and body. Now demonic oppression is always through the body and the soul. Here's the gateway here. The life of God always comes through the spirit, and here is where the place of conflict is, right there at the centre of your will. Whose will will prevail? So this part of you here, the soul and the spirit, is called the inner man, the hidden man of the heart, so sometimes when the Bible's talking about your inner man, it's talking about your spirit, or it's talking about your soul and spirit. When you die, your soul and spirit together go into glory. Okay then, now the flesh refers to your body, and also aspects of your soul that are unredeemed, and so when the Bible talks about your flesh, demon spirits access your flesh, your soul, your mind, thoughts and emotions and your body. So when you're doing self-deliverance, what you must do is arise in your spirit. You have to arise in your spirit. You have to arise inside and flow in your spirit, no matter what you're feeling.

Now you understand now, if she arises in her spirit by praying in tongues and energising her spirit, and makes a decision inside in the deepest part of her being, I am going to resist, and I'm going to take authority over this thing, then what she can do is just speak into her soul, to any demon there, or into her body, to any demon there, and command it to be expelled. It just requires a decision on the inside, so what you do then is very simply stir yourself up praying in tongues. Father, I come to You, and I stand in Your very presence right now. I repent of the sin that's allowed that demon to come into my life. I thank You for forgiveness, I receive Your forgiveness right now. Now spirit, I speak to you now - GO in Jesus' name. Just command it just to go like that. What you can do then is just breathe out [Coughs] and what you may find is, as you start to cough, it becomes a major thing, and you're now in a manifestation mode, and something's going out, or it can be they just go simply like that.

But I know that two important foundational parts of it are: any sin is repented of; and two, you arise in your spirit, and command the thing to go. You might be very surprised when you arise inside, and command things to go, just what happens. You may have manifestations in your body, you may find yourself coughing, you may find yourself heaving. I've even known people when they've done this to actually just immediately start to throw up. I'm not into all of that kind of stuff. I think that the demons can go real quickly, real easy, but I have noticed sometimes with me, when I've prayed that way, there's been quite a coughing take place. I think oh, that's a lot of coughing. [Laughter] A lot of coughing. I don't worry about it. I'm not going to be condemned by it. I'm just taking authority and cleaning out the system, just very simply. Sometimes just because of the trials of life, stuff sits on you, and it weighs you down, and you can arise in your spirit, and command those things to go, and they will go. Then as soon as you've done that, just begin to praise God, thank Him for your liberty again, just worship Him, get your mind redirected.

Alright, so it's not such a hard thing to do. Now there are some things that you would need perhaps to get ministry for. If you can't get yourself free, certainly go see someone, and ask them to help you get set free - so there it is, self-deliverance. You can deliver yourself, and you can push away spirits that come against you. Now not everything is a spirit. They just exploit what's already there, so if you've got thoughts and patterns of thinking, beliefs in the heart, you've got issues of sin, they will just exploit them. Put your heart right with God, resist the devil, the demons will flee. Amen.

Alright, perhaps we'll just finish there. In the afternoon we want to have a look at a session, and talk to you about how to build your spirit man and develop that inner life and secondly, we want to look at just ministering to other people, how to go about ministering, and it's quite a simple process. Remember that in all of the situations of ministering where you're exercising spiritual authority, it always has these ingredients: one, you are arising to be in the position God's calling you to be; two, you stir your spirit, so you're alive in your spirit; three, you speak with expectation that something's going to happen. So I'll give you some things to do a little later this afternoon, and you can have a try and see what happens when you do it, and see how things go. This is something you grow into. You grow from level to level to level, so we'll get you doing some activations and do two, maybe three sessions in the afternoon, and I'm sure you'll go away mightily empowered for new things that God has for you.

Horowai, you had one question, perhaps we've got time for that. You mentioned before in the break - would you like to just raise that question again now? It was a very good question. [Horowai] [Had to do with last time you talked about how territories, we cross over into each other's metron...

[Pastor Mike] Right, okay.

[Horowai] ...and you also brought up that question about witchcraft...

[Pastor Mike] Okay and your question was making that clear, how to make that clear? Alright then, in working relationships, whether it be at work, whether it be in a church ministry, or whether it be in family, or wherever you are, the issue of boundaries defines what I'm responsible for, what you're responsible for, and in all work situations and relational situations, boundaries come up to one another like that, and often overlap. In other words, people start to move into someone else's area of responsibility. Now when there is good communication, and when there's a loving serving heart, it's very easy to flow like that, and we help one another, and we work with one another, and there's a natural flow. But it can become ungodly, and it becomes ungodly when this happens: when someone deliberately picks up the responsibilities of others, and they consciously let them go, so you get someone who's got a great heart - they're an enabler. They actually find their identity in doing things to help everyone: oh I can do that, let me do that, I'll do that.

Basically they're driven by this need to do things to get approval, so what'll happen is, they'll take it all on, then they'll get angry and react because they're doing so much, and you've got a conflict because boundaries got blurred, and the person's operating outside their area. But this is normal. This happens in life all the time, so when one person yields up their responsibility, and someone takes it up, this is called blurred boundaries, and when that happens conflicts will happen inevitably, because now the territories are not being properly governed. Now it's a very simple way around it. You just talk to one another, and just clarify who's responsible for what, and how you're going to talk and work together, it's so simple. But if people fail to do that, then one can feel resentful, because they feel they're losing power and someone else is taking over, and that is definitely unlawful, and they've actually got to step up, and there's a confrontation needed to bring out to the open what is happening.

It doesn't need to be angry, but it can be. It doesn't need to turn that way, but it sometimes does, so if you have yielded up responsibility, someone's taken it over, you've got to talk and say hey, we need to talk about our boundaries again, they've become blurred. I need to be clear what I'm responsible for, what you're responsible for, and how we're going to communicate together over those areas. It also happens if someone deliberately invades someone else's area. That becomes a problem as well, so you've got to talk and negotiate that stuff, but what happens is spirits use the blurred boundaries to invade and oppress. That's where the problem comes. Remember, don't blame the spirits on everything. They know where they had work. It's actually human beings that create the problems. We create the environment within which they seize an advantage to come in to oppress. Okay, someone else had a hand up, yes?

[Female participant] [What happens if boundaries that are blurred because of incompetence, and so other people will come to you, to try and get things done?

[Pastor Mike] Okay, so you've got two people working side by side; one person's skills or attitude or whatever means they're not capable of functioning properly in the job, and so now the other person, everyone's bypassing them and coming to this one. Now that's a problem.

[Female participant] If you don't do it, everything will collapse, so someone has to do it or it all goes to pieces.

[Pastor Mike] Now you see therein lies the problem. The person who thinks they've got to do it, is the one who's now become the problem. They weren't the problem originally, but they've become the problem, because they are empowering the incompetence of the other. What needs to be addressed is the incompetence of the other person. It has to be addressed, so it requires love and truth, talking, and an outworking of a better way of working the responsibilities. Once you bypass the system, then what you do is create problems, so if we've got two people, and one's incompetent, the other's highly competent, and people bypass and come to the competent one, then that creates a malfunction, and a discretion in the whole flow of the relationship. And of course don't think that the one who's incompetent doesn't know what's going on either, and they will be going through all kinds of stuff. They will feel something shift, they may not know what.

They'll feel resentful and angry, they will feel they're being eroded, they'll go through all kinds of things, and it's not sometimes because they're incompetent. It can be because they're difficult people to deal with relationally, and that also causes the transfer; people bypass them to go to where they can work relationally, and that creates problems as well. So the only way to deal with it is, you've actually got to talk face to face about what is happening, bring it to the light. It doesn't need to be an angry thing, you'd just be simply hey, I noticed this is something that people are bypassing and going here. The effect is to undermine the situation and overload this situation. We need to have a talk about why this is happening, and we need to come up with a strategy we agree on, to sort it out. If this is a skill lacking, let's talk about what skills: can we upgrade the skills? Can we talk about it and work it out? If this is a relationship thing, can we talk about it and work it out?

Now the easier thing is for the person who's competent to stay silent, and fill in, and take it all over. Now they have become a participant in the whole deal. Before they were just willing. Now they're actually empowering. It stays and works because they're doing that, and there's many situations like that. Usually I've found no one is happy in it, no one. No one is happy. Everyone knows what's going on, and no one is happy, and they're not happy because it's not out in the open, in the light. There's nothing like having things in the light. It's so freeing to have everything in the light, even if it's terribly painful: listen, the job you're doing, you're not doing well, you're missing this and this and this, and this is creating these problems. It's better to have it out in the open, than it is to have it hidden away. When it's hidden away, that's when spirits work, that's when you have your mind tormented, that's when all kinds of stuff goes on in the spirit world, because of the blurring of boundaries.

Remember that these invasions of territories make room for demonic spirits to operate, so where there is a situation where say, a family will collapse because one person is not doing their job, or something in an organisation will collapse because someone's not doing their job, it's better to face it. Long term, it's better to face it, and better to do it more quickly than keep a long time, so we're better to face the situations rather than continue in an unhappy situation, because the one who keeps doing everything will feel burdened eventually. They will become resentful about that, and the one who's not doing it will feel rejected in some kind of way, and they will in the end react at some point.

[Female participant] Oh yeah, I've seen it.

[Pastor Mike] So you find that marriages, where the man retreats and the woman takes - because she's got a great sense of heart for the home and responsibility, she'll rise up and take responsibility. Then she's burdened, and he's guilty because he's not doing anything, and feels she's taken over - but actually he was to blame. He was responsible. He should have actually initiated and worked these things out, so sometimes there are conflicts come around blurred boundaries and you can fix them easily or the hard way. [Laughs]

Okay, well praise the Lord. Father, we thank You for what You're teaching us, help us to learn how to walk in the spirit, move in the spirit, keep everything in the light and to disempower demons. Help us to learn how to bring Your presence in Jesus' name. Amen.

Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6)  

Fri 15 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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This session starts off with clear instructions on how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the Gift of Tongues. Mike then describes the functions of our spirit - our life source, able to energise and illuminate our whole body, illuminate our mind, release creativity, bring insights, commune with God, and flow out to others. Learn how to cultivate and strengthen your spirit dimensions, including meditating on scripture to encounter God.

How many have been challenged in your thinking during the morning, just starting to think - that's great, wonderful. It takes a little time for these concepts to get in, because they shift how you view your life, and your responsibilities, and how you interact with them. I had some very good feedback in between times, very good. Okay, so before we go any further, I just want to, just for the sake of several who are not baptised in the spirit, or not released in tongues, I want to just speak about being filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, so I want to speak about it a little bit, just so faith lifts up. I want to show you how you can receive, and then what we'll do is get those who don't speak in tongues, we'll get you to come towards the front. We'll get everyone else to gather around, one big crowd, and then we'll just pray all together, and that takes it away from being sort of self-conscious, that maybe you just haven't got the breakthrough yet.

So let me just give several scriptures related to being filled with the Holy Ghost. Firstly, very clear Jesus' ministry, He began His ministry with an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The Bible says the spirit of God came on Him, and the heavens opened up, and He heard the voice of God. From that point on in His life, He encountered an open heaven, an open spirit world. He encountered His Father's voice, and the leading of the spirit of God, so before He left, in Luke 24 He says this, in Verse 49: He says behold, I send the Promise of My Father on you; wait in the city of Jerusalem until you be clothed with power from on high. Now He's not talking here about being born again. He's talking about an empowerment, or a clothing.

In John, Chapter 20, He talks about sending them, so in John 20 He says this, Verse 21: As the Father sent Me, so I send you. So He's commissioning them again, and He said when He had done this, He breathed on them, and said: receive the Holy Spirit. So what happened was, He imparted to them the Holy Spirit. They were born again at that point in time. The parallel of course, when God created man, He breathed into him the breath of life, and man become a living soul. Now Jesus the last Adam, breathes into His followers, and they are born again, and He imparted through breathing the flow of the spirit of God. But He did say again, Acts 1 and Verse 4, He said being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the Promise of the Father, for He said: John baptised you in water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Spirit.

So now He's saying, even though they're born again, before they begin their ministry assignment, He wants them one, to be clothed with power - He uses different language to describe the same thing. He calls it the Promise of the Father; He calls it being clothed, or being endued from on high with power. He also calls it being baptised, or immersed into the spirit realm, and so what He's referring to when He uses the word baptised in the spirit, He's referring to us being immersed into the realm of the spirit. So the baptism in the spirit, being baptised in the spirit, is an entry experience into engaging the spiritual world, but it's only an entry experience. It's a great entry experience, it's a powerful entry experience, but the expectation is there'd be other things happen once we'd had that experience.

Then we read of course in Acts, Chapter 2, how the Holy Ghost came upon them, and suddenly the sound came from heaven like a rushing mighty wind. It filled the whole house were they were sitting. There appeared to them divided tongues like fire, set on every one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost - and they began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So we see here in Acts 2, the first experience of being baptised in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost came on them. The power of God literally broke out of heaven upon them, and the first consequence of being filled was to overflow vocally. It says they spoke as the Holy Spirit gave them, so you have to speak. It's the Holy Spirit who gives the language, so the language of tongues is not a language that we learn. It's an imparted flow of the Holy Spirit into our spirit, so the spirit of God clothes our spirit and we choose to speak, so you can't expect God to open your mouth and talk. You've actually got to speak, you've got to actually do the speaking.

They spoke as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance, and it says people could understand some of them speaking. They spoke in our tongues the wonderful works of God, so clearly it was a dramatic experience, because people said hey, it looks like they've been drinking wine. Oh, they're full of joy and laughing, and filled with the Holy Ghost. There are other examples in the Bible of the same thing. Acts, Chapter 10, the Holy Ghost falls upon the Gentiles, first sign, they began to speak in tongues. Acts, Chapter 19, Paul goes to a group of believers that have been baptised in the Holy Spirit, haven't even heard. So he taught them, laid hands on them, they were filled with the spirit, began to speak in tongues, and to move in the gifts of the spirit - so clearly in scripture we see this encounter with the Holy Spirit, the filling up, the overflow with tongues.

So what about the gift of tongues? Let me give you a couple of things on it, then we'll talk about receiving quickly, and get you a chance to receive. So in reading in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 14: If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit is praying, my understanding is unfruitful, but my spirit is praying. So there is a part of you, your spirit man that can feel, sense, smell, experience, see, hear, also speak. Your spirit is speaking, and you're speaking the language that God gives you, so it's not coming from your mind, where you're thinking what you're saying. It's a flow from inside. It says when we speak in tongues, it says that we are speaking, and it builds up our spirit man - so I don't want to go into a long teaching on tongues. It's a whole teaching around itself, but the gift of tongues primarily is a communication flow with the Holy Spirit, to enable you to pray, to praise, to pray when you don't know what to pray, and it builds your spirit man.

Have a think about this. When I went to Asia, whenever I go to Asia I'm in a totally new culture, and one of the things about the culture, it has it's own language. If I don't know the language of the culture, it's difficult to operate in that culture. Everything is unfamiliar, so one of the first things they give me when I get there is an interpreter, someone to help me with the language. The language is important to living and experiencing the culture properly. In fact if I've got no one who helps with the language, I can't even do anything there, so just taking it from a natural level, flowing in another culture is highly difficult and ineffective if you have no one to help you with the language. So the same thing, the realm of the spirit is not the same as the natural realm. The real of the spirit is much more intense, and so we need a language to express in that realm.

When God speaks to you - most of you know computers I suppose - when God speaks to you, it's like if you've ever in your computer received a zip file. A zip file, you just download it, there it is, you've got a zip file. Now when you unzip it, there's just all this information in the zip file, so when you receive from God you can receive a download really quickly, but as it takes time, and when it opens up there's so much in it. Praying in tongues is a vital part of helping us engage in the realm of the spirit, so how do we receive? We receive very, very simply. The Bible says in Mark 11, when you stand praying for whatever you desire, you must really want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Number two, when you desire, when you pray, you've got to ask God - we've got to come specifically saying God, this is what I want. Three, we must believe that we receive it: whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive it, and then following that, you will have it.

So when you pray, there has to be the believing I will receive it. If I come saying well let's just give it a go and see what it'll do, that's not believing. That's waiting until you see, then you believe. So I need to know from the Bible, and from hunger in my heart, this is for me, and I come to Him saying: God, I just want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. I'm yielding and surrendering to you. Now what would stop you flowing in the spirit, and flowing in that expression of tongues? There's probably several things. One would be if you're locked up in the occult, or if there are occult bondages that have never been freed. That is a problem and a block for flowing in the things of the spirit. We assume that that is not true for most of you here today if not all, so then there are two other things that come to mind immediately.

One of them is, if you've ever had teaching that was anti the Holy Spirit. That creates a blockage around your life from receiving, because the words that have come sit in your life, and the moment you come to receive, they come back to life and they actually stop you. So it's important if we've ever been exposed to teaching where people taught against the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, that you actually renounce that, because it creates a barrier to receiving. Getting the idea? So I know that people that have been in those situations, they often have a block, because the moment they come to pray their old teaching comes up and argues against receiving, so there's no flow from their spirit to respond to faith.

Another or a third common factor that people have in not letting go to flow into the language of tongues is strong cognitive control over their life. So when a person has shut down the emotional dimension of their life, and shut down that right-brain aspect, the creative aspect, and just lives out of logic, and lives out of reasoning, and lives in their mind and thoughts and is disconnected from the heart, then this often is a major block to flowing with the spirit, because the moment you come to pray, you're back in your brain trying to work out what to say, and analysing everything that's happening, instead of actually letting go control, which is effectively what's happening, and just saying: God, I just surrender. I let my heart, my inner man just express it's love for You through this new language. It's literally the control of your mind has to let go, and allow the flow from your heart and spirit to just emerge.

I've found for me it was a little bit of a difficulty. I got filled with the spirit dramatically and quickly, but then my mind would actually consciously argue. It would reason. I'd be praying in tongues, and I could feel the joy rising up, and then the mind arguing, arguing, arguing. It's like a lawyer [laughter] argues, reasons everything away. So strong cognitive control in your life, or blocks to the emotional area, can stop the flow from within your heart, because the language of the tongues is a flow of the Holy Spirit, in your spirit, flowing up outwards through your life. So if you can just surrender control and let go of that area and relax - sometimes people find that when they're in the shower they relax more, and they're able to get going into flow in the gift of tongues, but everyone's got his own way I guess.

But we want to just pray for people to be filled with the spirit and just get a breakthrough today. We'll just see what the Lord will do, but if you could just approach it really simply in harmony, God, I don't want to be held back any longer. I don't want any blocks. I'm just coming to You right now and I'm letting go what any wrong teaching, any control over my thoughts, I'm just letting it go to You. I'm just going to worship You in all Your beauty, and I'm going to let my mouth speak this new language which You give me. Amen - so we'll do that then. So what we'll do is we'll just make it a little easier for everyone, rather than everyone being conscious of themselves, so we'll get those who would like to be specially released in this area, why don't you come and just stand around me just in the front. The rest of us all come around and stand around you, so just firstly those who haven't got a breakthrough in their life, if you'd like to just quickly come, just come up to the front here.

So if you just make room for people to come through, just come and stand facing me. You're not facing the camera, that's the one, there we go. [Laughs] Okay, there we go, good stuff. Okay, come on now, that's right. We got everyone here? Righto then, now what I want is for everyone else to come around, surround them. We're going to just love them, and be together and believing God for this release today. Okay, just bring everyone else up, that's right, that's the way. Close your eyes and make everyone vanish. That's the simplest thing, make everyone vanish. If you're thinking about other people, or about yourself, you won't let go. Alright then, now Lord, I'm just asking right now that You would just help. We need Your help. Some Lord have been prayed for before, and they haven't had a breakthrough, and we don't know why, so we ask Lord if there's any reason for there being a blockage, that almost immediately You will bring it to their mind right now.

If there's any form of blockage that would stop the flow of Your spirit, I'm asking that just right now You would bring the thoughts to their minds, they would begin to see just in a moment what the blockage really is. Lord, if it's pride, unwillingness to let go, well just make it just be clear so they can see that. Lord, if it's a block in the emotions, Lord just help identify what that is. Lord, if it's wrong teaching, or teaching that's been contrary to the Holy Spirit, Lord I ask You to bring that up to the surface. Whatever it is that may have caused a block, let it go, whether it's disappointments and then fear that I'm not good enough to receive anything from God. That's another thing that would stop people, I'm not good enough, and my life is such a mess. That would stop you, that would stop you receiving, but there's no reason. See, God has already made you good enough. You are totally acceptable to Him. He loves you very deeply, very dearly. You're very precious. Jesus said these words: if someone asked the Holy Spirit, will God give him a stone, you know? The Father, if a child asks for bread you know, will He give him a stone or will He give him a serpent. I mean how much more will the Father give you, the Holy Ghost.

So this is what we're going to do, we're going to just lead you through a prayer. We're going to come and gather around you if you're comfortable with that, and just lay hands on you to pray for you. Every one of us is just going to worship God together. What I'd like us to do is in a moment after we've prayed through the prayer together, I'd like all of us to begin to speak in their language, and speak and honour God together. Amen. Do that together, and the thing is just relax. Don't try and make something happen. Just say God, I know You're there. I know the Holy Spirit, I know You're there inside me. Rise up inside me. I just yield my tongue to speak right now. Are we ready? Okay, I'll lead you in a simple prayer.

[Repeated by congregation] Jesus, I open my heart to You now. I so much want to be filled with Your spirit. I want to have the language of tongues to worship You, to pray effectively, so by faith now, I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues. I thank You for giving this to me, and I open my heart to honour You now, and to speak in this new language, in Jesus' name.

Let's take a deep breath in, let's all pray together. [All pray in tongues] Holy Spirit, come and fall upon him right now. Let the power of God just come around his life today. Father, in Jesus' name just break the controls around his mind and emotions. I release Your anointing to flow right now. Let it go, that's right, let go. [Prays in tongues] I break every spirit of fear, not being good enough. I break it off your life now. I release the flow of the Holy Ghost. Lord, touch Steve right now. [Prays in tongues] Let the power of God just come around his life right now. [Prays in tongues] That's right, proactively speak and pray, that's right. [Prays in tongues] Holy Spirit, come upon him, that's right. Let's hear it now, speak those words. [Prays in tongues] That's right, you've got it, that's right, you've got it, flow - that's right, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord for Your power coming on him right now. [Prays in tongues] Loose him right now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come. Thank You Lord.

That's right, now just relax. Just relax. Don't try too hard, just relax. Inside you just now begin to just see Jesus, and you love Him so much. You love Him so much, He's been so good to you, so faithful to you, and everything in you wants to just love on Him with this new language now. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Let Your anointing flow right now over her life. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Father, in Jesus' name I come against control. I break the power of controlling words, controlling spirits that have crushed and broken her heart. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I release you from those things right now. Father, pour Your spirit into her life today, in Jesus' mighty name. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord, thank You for filling her right now. Thank You Lord for the overflow of Your love. Thank You Lord for the overflow of Your Love. Thank You Lord for Your anointing just flowing right now. Come on, Holy Spirit we thank You.

We thank You for Your presence. [Prays in tongues] That's right, let that language rise up now. Thank You spirit of God. [Prays in tongues] I break every lie that I'm not good enough. I break words spoken over you that wounded and broke your spirit. I break those words right now. Thank You Lord for Your anointing just flowing. That's right, now just begin to allow your spirit to rise up and just express love. [Prays in tongues] Let's all pray together a little stronger now. [All pray in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Holy Ghost, fill him right now. Thank You Lord, we break control. I come against all control. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I break it's hold over your life right now. Thank You Lord. Loose him right now. Father, release Your anointing into his life right now. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Holy Spirit come over him right now, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues]

How are we doing?[Laughter] Holy Ghost, fill him! Fill him Lord! [Laughter] Long overdue. [Lots of laughter] Holy Ghost, fill him! [Laughter, praying in tongues] Holy Ghost, fill him right now with the power of God. Thank You Lord, fill him. [Prays in tongues] That's right, that's right. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost, come on him right now Lord. Thank You Lord, thank You for Your love flowing around his life right now. [Prays in tongues] Holy Ghost, come. Thank You Lord, pour Your anointing into his life right now, fill him oh God, fill him. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Father, right now just speak, take authority over grief and disappointment. In the name of the Lord Jesus' Christ, I come against the spirit of grief and disappointment. I break it's power in your life right now. I command you to release him in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord, thank You Jesus. Thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Son, I love you. God loves you very deeply. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, praise the Lord, hallelujah. Thank You Lord. Praise the Lord.

Okay, hallelujah. [Laughs] Give me more Lord! [Laughter] Holy Ghost, praise the Lord. Amen, amen. Amen, praise the Lord. Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap shall we. [Applause, laughter] Holy Ghost, fill her Lord, fill her. [Laughter] Joy of the Lord, let it come around her life. [Laughter] Wow, we've had some really good results. Any got a freedom, got a release? That's fantastic. Did you get released today? That's awesome, that's [laughter] - don't even go there. [Laughter] Okay, how are we doing? How are you doing? [Laughter] How are you doing? Well, interesting when you come to that kind of point, suddenly all the stuff you've got in your heart starts to choke up aye? [That's true, yeah.] Now you see you'll have had a lot of pain and grief and stuff you've pushed right down and when you push it down - it's just there near the surface now. [Laughs] Holy Ghost. Well it's great fun. Can we just get the air con on a bit? It's really hot in here. Man I got hot suddenly. It's off? Maybe you could cool the place a little, just getting so warm. Wow, got hot all of a sudden here.

[Laughs] Well that's great. Don't you love the Holy Ghost? [Yes! Yeah!] [Applause] I just love the Holy Ghost. He is so wonderful. He is so wonderful. Man, we better keep going so we can get things finished. [Laughs] There's a great presence of God here now. Thank You Lord. Well there we go. Okay, we're just going to look at strengthening your spirit man or building your inner man. I want to share with you a few keys on that, then we'll look at ministering to people. So we're looking at Page 19 in the notes and we're just going to jump one section and we'll come back in a moment, just strengthening or building your spirit man. First of all I want you - we'll just have a look at divine design and see how God has designed us to function, because many times we kind of - spiritual things have an appearance as though they're very difficult, whereas in fact they're not difficult. It's just when you don't understand it, it seems like it's just another world or something, but in Genesis 2:7 God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

So man is made in the image of God. God is a spirit; we have a spirit dimension to us, so we are a spirit being. You're a human being, you live in a body but you are more than just your body. Your body's called the house you live in, so we have a body we live in. We have a soul where our personality, will, mind, emotions and memories exist. We also have a spirit, and the spirit part of us enables us to communicate and connect with the whole realm of the spirit, so living and operating as a believer is about living and operating from the flow within our spirit. When man sinned and fell, he lost the spiritual connection and had to live out of his mind and soul, so your spirit has a number of functions. Let me just identify for you some of the functions of your spirit, so we can understand them. Number one, your spirit sustains your life. That's something people don't really understand. We kind of think of life as being a fairly natural sort of thing, but notice what it says: the body without the spirit is dead, even so faith without works is dead also.

So very clearly the body without the spirit is dead, so your spirit is what provides the energy that sustains your body. I'm sure there's also biochemical processes and so on, biological processes which are in place as well - but the Bible's very clear. Without your spirit, your body dies. Your spirit is therefore essential to the functioning of your body. If I chopped off a finger I could continue to live; chopped off a couple of legs, still continue to live. So there's a lot you could lose and still live, but you can't live without your spirit, so your spirit is vital to the life that you live on the earth, so if the person's spirit is withdrawn they die. Now the Bible tells us your spirit can be broken. It can be crushed, it can be wounded, so your spirit is quite vulnerable. Your spirit can sense and respond and be affected by what goes on around it, so a person's spirit can be crushed, and when your spirit is broken it affects your health, for example the Bible says that a broken spirit dries the bones. In other words, when your spirit is damaged through trauma, through words, through control, through abuse, then what happens is it doesn't generate the energy that would allow you to live a very vibrant life.

Similarly, if your life is dominated by demonic spirits, your spirit is restricted from flowing, and so again, you don't live the free life and the abundant life that God has intended for us to have. So the second thing we notice is that your spirit energises and inspires your thoughts. Now here's something - remember we got everyone praying in tongues, and we asked you what was the effect of strong praying in tongues, what did you feel happen to you? We come up with actually your body came alive, you felt quite energised. How many felt that? Some of you said this, an interesting thing; you said that your mind cleared. How many had that experience, your mind cleared? Very good. Now notice this scripture here. It says in Proverbs 20, Verse 27, the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. Now that's an interesting thing. The lamp is something that illuminates, so the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord; it illuminates, or it searches all the deep places of his heart.

Here's another scripture, 1 Corinthians 2:11. What man knows the things of man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God. Now your spirit, we try to describe it in different ways, but your spirit is like an energy source inside you. Your spirit fits into your body like a hand fits inside a glove, so if I was to look at a person, I see through their eyes into the soul and spirit, you're seeing the living person. If the spirit leaves, you look into those same eyes; they're dead and lifeless. Now your spirit provides life on the inside. It also illuminates your mind, so if God wants to drop things into your mind, He will do it through your spirit. The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, so when your spirit is flowing you think clearly. You notice when we got our spirits moving, our heads started to clear? You sit down for a long time, become passive and your body's inactive, your spirit will start to shut down as well. Stand up, shake your body, move, speak in tongues, and your head clears just like that. It's just a very simple thing to understand.

So how many have known this experience, that you had a problem you faced, and you didn't know what to do about it, so we went to bed on it, and in the morning woke up, and you knew what to do? What part of you was figuring out that problem? It was your spirit, so even though your body is at rest, your spirit through the evening or night is not at rest. It's just alive, it doesn't sleep, so your spirit can commune with God while you're asleep. Your spirit can illuminate your mind with ideas, so imagine your spirit being like a lamp that can just flash an idea into your mind. Where does creativity come? It comes up out of the spirit of a man, so when a person's under control they can't release creative thoughts, because their spirit is crushed down. So the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, so your spirit's like a flash-light. It will light things up, and it will give insights to yourself, so if you're going to gain insight to your own life, you have to be able to reach into your spirit, into the deep parts of you, and draw from within and tune in to the flow from your spirit. We'll identify that in a moment.

You notice when someone's spirit is alive and energised, their whole countenance seems full of life. Ever seen singers on a stage, we say they have what's called charisma. Actually charisma is just the life of their spirit flowing unhindered through them, and you notice the freedom is incredibly attractive? When someone's really free, you can see it on their - it's like their face is lit up. Have you ever noticed when you've seen people in say, the Indian culture, who got saved, and you see them standing alongside people who are unsaved, they look like they're lit up on the inside. It shows on the countenance. If someone is under oppression of an evil spirit they look black or dark, so clearly the activity of the human spirit, and the spirit of God, illuminates and brings life, and it brings ideas to us. The Holy Spirit can give you many ideas, but He always does it by illuminating your spirit.

The third thing about your spirit is this, is your spirit flows out. Your spirit can flow to touch people. In Proverbs 4:23, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it shall flow the issues of your life - so your spirits movement is a flowing movement like water, like a river, like some form of energy. Jesus said in John 7:38, He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now notice again the flowing nature of your spirit, so your spirit flows from you, and your spirit actually can fill a whole room, so for example, I'll give you a few examples. How many of you have closed your eyes, but as you've walked near a wall, you can suddenly be aware there is a wall there? As yourself I wonder what part of me knew there was a wall there? Now of course if you've moving too quick and don't take notice you just bump straight into it [laughter] but if you were in a perfectly black room and you started to walk, and just walked quietly towards it, knowing there's a wall there, it's almost certain you'll feel the presence of the wall before you actually hit it, especially if your spirit is energised and alive.

Have you ever had the experience of someone sneaking up behind you, and you suddenly become aware someone is there? How do you become aware? Your spirit is aware. Have you ever been in a room, and someone extremely important came into the room, or with a lot of authority came in the room, you feel the whole room change. See, so authority is actually tangibly felt. When you get in the person, someone with immense authority, you feel it engage the whole room, the atmosphere changes. It's the spirit dimension around people's life, okay. So for example a person who is showing up emotions in a very strong way, the influence actually affects the atmosphere; for example if a person is very angry, you can feel the anger, even if they're not saying anything. Ever meet someone who's seething with anger? You can feel it. How do you fee it? Something is emanating out from them.

A person who's peaceful - have you ever met someone who's incredibly peaceful, they carry a spirit of peace. When you come near them, you become very calm. It's actually quite nice being in their presence, because you feel the peace. Have you ever met someone who had self-pity governing their life? You can literally feel the emanating self-pity, and you feel like it's drawing you in, and you have to do something or say something and help them in some kind of way. Have you ever been near an arrogant person? An arrogant person, they put out into the atmosphere that they are superior to you, so you feel put down, even if nothing much is said - so whatever's inside us flows out of us, and the spiritual part of you can pick it up. It's helpful for you to be aware of that dynamic flow. I'll just give an example here - don't mind using you as an example again? Can I use you as an example? There we go.

Just come and stand there. I need someone to stand behind her. Now, so we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, and so He fills us up. So we pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] then our whole spirit can become filled, until the whole atmosphere around me starts to be filled with the presence of God. Now if I was to lay hands on her, then there can be a release of what's in me, just through the contact of laying on of hands, so I could just go: power of God, and the power of God starts to touch her. But the power of God can touch her also without me connecting. If I was just to allow my heart to be filled with the presence of God, just release the power of God touch you now - now she'll start to feel the power of God just come around her life touching her. Now see I didn't touch her that time, but something flowed. Your spirit substance flows. The things of the spirit flow beyond you. It's helpful to realise that, so therefore, just your presence in a place can affect what's going on around you.

If you're conscious that God is inside you, you're filled with the presence of God, you begin to release the peace of God. We saw it come into the meeting just before, so your spirit is vital to your life. Your spirit can affect the quality of your life. Your spirit can gain thoughts and ideas, your spirit can flow out of you. That's the most wonderful thing, to think that something can flow out of you through your words, or just being there, that touches people. Healing can flow, life can flow, so we want to minister to one another shortly. We want to get that flow going, want to give you an exercise to try. So those are some of the things our spirit can do. Here's another vital thing, and that is your spirit can be strengthened. In other words you can become really strong in your spirit - or you can be very weak.

So Ephesians 3, Verse 16, I pray that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man - so the inner man is your spirit being, joined to the Holy Ghost. Strengthen means increased in dominion, and with might, supernatural ability, dunamis see? So here's the thing, that the Holy Ghost can strengthen you. Now how is that going to happen? Well I'm glad you asked that [laughter] because we want to see exactly how that happens. I always ask the question, how does that happen? If I don't know how it happens - well it's wonderful, it sounds very, very good but how does that happen? I still feel weak like I was yesterday. See, we need to know what we can do that will engage the Holy Spirit working with us. How can I become strong on the inside?

Now if I wanted to gain physical strength like my son-in-law [laughter], then I'd have to do a number of things, but the most important - I could eat the right food, drink the right drink, but here's the most important thing of all: you'd have to exercise. All exercise involves the same kind of thing, various forms of it but essentially, you have to exert your muscles against something that is resisting. You have to actually overcome the resistance, and in overcoming the resistance, you begin to build strength inside yourself. So we can pray that we'll be physically strong, and you know it doesn't work. You can pray you'll be physically fit - you know it doesn't work. You actually have to do something to get physically fit. You can pray that God will strengthen you, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. We should pray that God would strengthen us, but there are ways you can co-operate with the Holy Ghost for that to happen, so let's have a look at some.

Here are some keys to growing your spirit, or strengthening your spirit. One of them we've already seen. Number one, probably the first one everyone could do is praying in tongues. He that speaks in an unknown tongue - 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 4 - strengthens himself, builds himself. So when you speak in the Holy Ghost, your own spirit can start to rise and become very strong. See, that's one of the ways you strengthen your spirit, so that's why praying fluently, praying forcefully, praying strongly, strengthens and builds your spirit. It's not the only way, but you could do that any time you want - pray in tongues [prays in tongues] and as you pray in tongues let your spirit rise up inside you. Allow yourself to be aware I am growing and increasing in my spirit, and you come alive very, very quickly, so that's one important way. You can pray that way all the time, so we'll get you to do a few of these things in a moment.

The second thing you can do, one of the most important things that your spirit responds to, is the word of God. I can't emphasise enough how the word of God will strengthen your spirit, but it doesn't strengthen your spirit just by reading it. You've got to get it in you, so one way that the word of God can strengthen our spirit, is when we learn to speak God's word, pray God's word, declare God's word. This is a way - Jesus said: the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life, and so notice in Hebrews 3, Verse 1, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, or profession - so spoken words have power. They can release something, see? So if the word of God, spoken with a heart that believes it, releases power, I can release power and strength into my own spirit by speaking to myself. Now one of the things secular people understand is the importance of self-talk, of what you say to yourself. Most people are talking to themselves all the time: oh, I couldn't do that, it'd be hard, I don't know what's going to happen next, that's not going to work out. You've got a lot of endless, relentless, negative chatter going on.

But if you were to start speaking the word of God over your life, speaking the word of God into your heart wholeheartedly, it would have an effect on you: I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might! Your soul says no you're not, you're just a sissy boy. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might! Begin to confess the word of God, let the word of God grow in your life. Speak it upon your life. Say what God says about you: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Everything God called me to do, I can do it through Christ who strengthens me! Now see these are strong affirmations of God's word over your life, so praying the word of God, speaking the word of God over your life, will strengthen your spirit. Try it a few times. We've already done a few exercises on it. It affects you. It affects you.

Here's another thing. Worship is another way of strengthening your spirit man. Your spirit responds to the presence of God in worship. Now in 2 Corinthians 3:18 it says we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed or totally changed. So what it's saying then is worship, when I engage God properly, changes me. You say well I don't feel changed, I just sung some songs and lifted my hands up, didn't feel changed one little bit. Well it's because worship is not just about singing songs and lifting your hands. It's about your heart engaging with God and experiencing God, so I have to actually do more than the externals. It's about my heart, and the focus of my heart, and as we allow our heart - see your spirit will easily engage God. It's your body and soul that are the resistant parts, so that's why I encourage you to do this. I encourage you to clap your hands [All clap hands] make your body wake up: WAKE UP BODY! I know it's after lunch - WAKE UP and come alive just like that. Pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues]

Now I can get my spirit alive very quickly. I've learnt to do that very easily, but then the next part is actually the worshipping part. Now worshipping is much more tender, and I have found it most helpful, the problem you find as you worship is your mind wanders, starts to think oh, that'd be nice, sit down and watch television - [prays in tongues] - [laughter] yes, that'd be lovely. I wonder what match is on right now - [prays in tongues]. You see? We're not going to engage in worship much that way, see? So worship is consciously and intentionally letting your heart reach out, and affirm the love and value you have for Him, so if I just get my mind distracted I'm not really worshipping. I'm going through the motions. They draw near with the lips, but the heart is not there, because the mind has gone somewhere else, but if I was to just ponder that Jesus is with me and I just begin to say oh, I love You. Thank You Lord for Your goodness to me. I just worship You, I just give You everything. I just love You Lord and thank You for Your presence - and I can start to begin to feel and become conscious that He's there, feel the atmosphere starting to change.

Now that took a moment or two - but you say well, that doesn't happen for me. Well it didn't happen for me either until I practised. I practised worshipping. I practised giving myself to Him, lift my hands up and dance and praise the Lord and just give - I learnt to just give myself to Him. I found sometimes for me initially I was so hung up, I found it helpful just to just give myself physically, and dance before the Lord, celebrate His presence and just give myself, then yield to Him and say: I love You Lord, just come and fill me and overflow and just crash on the bed and let Him just come all over me. I learnt to explore what it is to just stand in the presence of God and enjoy Him. Sometimes it can be just so delightful, you just want to just stay there admiring Him. Worship engages Him, and you just begin to feel His presence. Other things just seem to change. You come out of a time of worship, where you've engaged the presence of God, other things seem to not have so much importance any more. The difficult part is getting rid of the baggage so you can engage Him personally.

So it's helpful to picture, to use your mind - that brings us to the next one of growing in our spirit man, is to develop our spiritual imagination. Now people sometimes get trouble with this, and notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:15; Meditate on these things; give yourself totally to them, so that your progress or profiting might appear to all. To meditate means to revolve around in your mind, to picture, to use your imagination to see spiritual truth. It's true that whatever you set your heart on, your heart will open up to, so you set your heart on problems you'll open up to problems. Set your heart on the Lord and meditate, so you may not feel anything much about the presence of God, you may not feel that He's there at all. You may think He's a long way off. I lived with God a long way off for a long part of my life, but then I learnt that if I would meditate and picture truth, just imagine the truth, in other words use your imagination. The Bible says: love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength - that would include my imagination.

So if I was to just imagine what it is to stand in the presence of God who loves me, and hold the picture that Bible says of what He's like, His countenance, His eyes, His face, His beauty, all that He is, and just meditate: now what does that feel like to be welcomed by Him like that? Just imagine seeing the scripture. I have found an interesting thing happens, that as you do that, you begin to write into your heart the truth. If I was to say: what is the sum of this multiplication problem, three times four? Three fours are? [Twelve.] Now you didn't have to stop and think about it because you'd learnt it by heart. How did you learn it by heart? By repetition, so repetition of seeing the same thing, welcoming the same thing, affirming the same thing, it begins to grow in our heart as a spiritual reality, and so it doesn't really take long. Once you've started to meditate and hold your mind, fixed - I've meditated in Psalm 23 on Jesus being my shepherd. I've meditated in Revelations about Him being the great and glorious coming king, and each time you meditate, you begin to see Him differently.

Initially you have to allow your mind - then I just read the scripture, try to get the picture, and then I imagine what that would be like and just stay there imagining it, trying to feel it and then the Holy Spirit takes over and a flow comes. I'll just show you again - you can be my helper again Mary, that'll be a great idea. Come and be my helper again. We'll pray for lots of people shortly, but I want you to just help me in this one. Now I want you just to close your eyes, and I want you just to be open for how God might touch you. I'm not going to try to minister to you, or pray for you in any way. What I want to do instead is just holding your hand just to stay joined to you. What I want to do is to just meditate that Jesus is my friend, my wonderful friend, my shepherd. Thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. So I begin to meditate and see Him there, standing just in front of me. I begin to see everything, see His eyes so full of love and life, countenance so joyful, just reach out to receive His love.

You see the moment I locked in, she started to feel the overflow. Meditation enables you to open your spirit and heart to the truth of the Bible. That's why we're to not only read the Bible, write the Bible, memorise the Bible, but meditate, allow our mind to reflect on it. There's at least three different ways of meditating I'm aware of now, but one way of meditating is to meditate into encounter with God. You don't hear much about that. You can meditate over a truth of scripture, and begin to look at it, and begin to gain insights and see how it might apply to your life. That's one way of looking at scripture. You can meditate on scripture also to enter in and experience God, that's another way of meditating. You can meditate on scripture just to build it into your heart, by repeating it over and over, so there's at least three things I'm aware that we could do with scripture: one for insight, one for impartation, and the other to open up the realm where God is.

So Mary, could you come up and describe for us what you experienced? Well [laughs] that's pretty quick, so I'll just take this off so you've got access to talk - here we go. There we go, just talk into that.

[Mary] I just felt just overwhelmed by His love, by His presence. It just - I couldn't stand, yeah...

[Pastor Mike] Still can hardly stand.

[Mary] ...I can still feel it, just... [laughter] yeah. I can't stop it.

[Pastor Mike] Now you see where it's - yeah, you can't stop, yeah. [Laughter]

[Mary] I can't. It's just overwhelming, His presence.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so see how it got opened, meditation opened the way for that to happen. There's a strong presence of God.

[Mary] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] There it is - oh! Holy Ghost, come now. Praise the Lord. She's feeling the presence now. [Laughter] Be really good for us to just do a couple of things then shall we? Why don't we just do that? We'll just put into practice at least a couple of the exercises we've learnt now shall we? Now, you're going to need a help for this, so what you're going to need is you're going to need a chair to fall back on so - we can't catch everyone, and so we're not going to catch anyone. [Laughter] You have to catch yourself [laughter] so I'll give you three things that we're going to do. We're going to do the three things that we just learnt which strengthen your spirit man. One of them was that we would speak strongly in tongues; two, we'll confess the word of God, and each time we do something, again notice what it does for you. Then the third thing we'll do is we'll meditate, and I'll just help you with the meditating in just focussing your mind.

Now some people their mind doesn't focus easily. It's like a butterfly, it goes everywhere. That's just a matter of reigning in your mind, training your mind to stay in one place and not go everywhere else. Once you've trained your mind you can stay there, and you can lock in and stay there a long, long time. Now we realise then our mind can be trained to serve our spirit. Now initially you may find it a little bit difficult. Everyone's experience will be a bit different, but just see what God does anyway aye? Why not try, okay? Come on then, stand up then where you are, and then position yourself so you've got a seat, so should you fall over unexpectedly you don't fall on anyone else. [Laughter] If you are a very, very big person you may want your chair backed up to the wall so you don't just go clean head over heels, straight over into someone else. There we go Tim, straight up against the wall. [Laughter]

Okay, are we ready? So why don't you just shake your body, just loosen your body up. We've just had lunch and so we're a little bit all getting tired and no energy, ha ha! Holy Ghost! Alright then, now let's begin to pray in tongues as strongly as we can, and let's stir our spirit up! [Prays in tongues] Praise the Lord. Okay, next one. We're going to make this declaration: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. [I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might! I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might.] Well that's good. How many felt - some falling over already. [Laughs] Okay then, now you should find that the energy level has shifted considerably in you, and as you meditate on those scriptures and decree them more and more, they start to become alive, lift your spirit the moment you speak them.

Now I want you just to meditate, just reach your hands out just in front of you like that, just like your hands are upturned and open. Have your eyes closed and your legs resting just against the seat, see because if you fall over you'll just want to sit down. Otherwise you'll tumble and take three or four people with you and we try to avoid that if we can. Okay, now we're going to meditate, so just pray quietly in tongues for a little, just let your spirit flow. [Prays in tongues] Now to meditate means I'll fix my mind and begin to focus my attention on scripture, on the Lord, so just stop praying now. I want you with your eyes closed, I want you to take this scripture. The Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd see? Now that means He is my friend, so use your imagination to extend out and see Jesus standing just before you, about one foot away and He's your friend.

Try to imagine what a friend would be like - eyes glazing, full of glory and purity, and full of joy to see you. That's what a friend is, they're always happy to see you. See Him like that, His countenance, very happy to see you. Friends are always happy to see one another. They smile and their face lights up - see Him like that. The Lord is my friend. Look at Him a little harder - there it is. He is the Lord God Almighty, just full of life, full of light and amazing love. Meditate on that, just think about that. His hands are reaching out to you. That's what friends do, they open their hands wide, oh, it's so good to see you. Now as you reach out to Him - just reach out. He does love you. Imagine what that love would feel like, if He just reached out and hugged you, and His love just flowed into your life, and you just received it now. Just receive it [exhales once quickly] just receive it right now. [Exhales once strongly] Receive the love of God right now - its come. Thank You Lord. Oh whoa, hard to stand up if you stay meditating on that.

Now just stay relaxed so you can receive. Some people are not used to receiving, they're used to doing. You've got to give up doing and just Lord, I just receive. [Exhales once strongly] Holy Spirit come, make Jesus real right now. Whoa! See, keep your mind just fixed on Him. Now begin to worship Him; oh Jesus, I surrender to You. I give myself to You. I just receive Your love now, receive Your goodness into my life. He is overwhelming. Imagine that God of heaven and He's your friend, how amazing - so love on Him. Allow your heart and spirit to just reach around, Jesus, I just so love You. I receive Your love into my heart. [Exhales once strongly] Come on, touch people. Touch people who are watching, let them experience Your love and Your presence flowing. Now as you're reaching out to Him, what do you think He would want to say to you? Listen for Him. Let His thoughts just rise in your mind. They'll be quite personal - I love you. Let Him talk with you. Enjoy Him.

Your spirit is made for encounters with God. Your spirit is made to experience Him. We can have many levels of encounter, but we can always pray in tongues and meditate, and always become conscious of His presence. Sometimes it can really overwhelm, and you can have visions and hear things or see things. It can begin to open up, and it's like you enter into heaven itself - come on. So it does our spirit good to be in the presence of God like this. It builds your spirit when you pray in tongues, it builds your spirit when you confess the word of God and meditate in the word of God. These things build your spirit. You worship Him, it builds your spirit. Wonderful Jesus, we just thank You for Your presence here right now, touching lives. [Exhales once strongly] Come Lord upon people right now. Thank You Lord.

Now some of you will be very, very engaging in the presence of God, and others, your mind will be going all over and thinking oh my, what am I supposed to feel? What's supposed to happen? This will take you away from where you need to be. Don't try and analyse things. Just Jesus is my friend, I believe the scripture He's my shepherd and friend, so what does that look like, and what does that feel like? Just dwell in that, and just embrace that truth into your heart. There are many truths in the Bible we can meditate in that will bring us near Him. This one's my favourite. We can meditate on the cross, become deeply aware of what He's done for us, so meditation will help you in your spirit man. It'll help you grow and become sensitive, help you become conscious of God. It's just so few people really do it, but once you've learned how to do this and engage God, then your life begins to change. Alright then, so let's just - well everyone wants to stay meditating. [Silence]

Alright then, so we'll just open our eyes again, and just come back out. You can go there anytime of course. How many people just really felt God connect with them, or they connected with God, who really felt the presence of God? Wow, look at that, so many people. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't that wonderful, so these are keys you can build your spirit man, and of course the last one I've put down there is obedience. We've got to learn to obey what God speaks to us about, and so using - your spiritual senses are developed as you exercise, so every time you say yes to God, your spirit strengthens. Every time you say no to the devil, your spirit strengthens. When you are slow and resist responding to God, your spirit is weakened, so we want to be strong in our spirit man. How many found that helped you, you've kind of got touched by God? Some of you are quite weepy because you've experienced God. Like to tell us about your experience? Can you? Some people may not be able to, that's right.

[Female speaker] I felt it in here and here and I was bending over, but I started looking up but then I felt it in here and I just wanted to bend over and then yeah...

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Female speaker] ...I just - God's love for me I guess, just...

[Pastor Mike] God's love for you.

[Female speaker] Yeah, just makes me cry.

[Pastor Mike] Exactly. Yes, very good, very good. So you started by lifting up, because your consciousness is God is up there, and that's okay, lift up your hands and so on, but then as the weight of His presence started to come around you, that's what caused you to bend over. It's called the weight of glory, yeah. What happened to you Mary, what did you experience?

[Mary] Similar.

[Pastor Mike] A similar kind of thing?

[Mary] Yes, similar, just experiencing a wave of His love...

[Pastor Mike] Very good.

[Mary] ...and peace and just overwhelming, I just...

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Mary] ...couldn't stand and that.

[Pastor Mike] Wasn't so hard either?

[Mary] No.

[Pastor Mike] Anyone else like to tell what they experienced? Yes?

[Female speaker 2] He said to just to hear what the Lord says to us, and He didn't tell me He loved me or anything, just said we should do this more often [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] Nice one! [Laughter] We meaning you and Him. [Laughter] Awesome, that's great. Bryan, what about you?

[Bryan] I actually felt there was something in there, its unexplainable, but you want to cough from the anointing [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] You needed to get delivered. That was supposed to be the last session. [Laughter] So you felt like you wanted to cough like something in you obstructing you?

[Bryan] It's kind of like breathlessness...

[Pastor Mike] Right.

[Bryan] Manifests

[Pastor Mike] Right, to gain breath.

[Bryan] But I think the thing is that the physical presence was absolutely tangible

[Pastor Mike] Tangible presence you really strongly felt, okay. Someone else felt something like that, yes Jill?

[Jill] Yeah, I felt it was like a warmth...

[Pastor Mike] Like a warmth.

[Jill] ...like a blanket around me - not a blanket but something with life, like arms around me

[Pastor Mike] Wow, feel His arms around you, isn't that wonderful. Yes?

[Jill] I just felt Him cuddling me.

[Pastor Mike] Ah wonderful, that's good, we all want that, yeah. Anyone else had a different experience, yes?

[Male speaker] I felt the amazingness of Him giving ministry to just me

[Pastor Mike] Just you, isn't that good?

[Male speaker] Giving ministry

[Pastor Mike] Isn't that great? And that's accessible all the time. Yes, what did you experience?

[Female speaker 3] I was here and enjoying that part of the service, but then there was all this really deep deep stuff [unclear]

[Pastor Mike] So you gained perspective on your life when you come into the presence of God, it refocuses you, your life. Oh, that's wonderful. Anyone, one other want to share? Well it was a great time together wasn't it aye, just enjoying the presence of God and so moving in authority, it's not just about all strength and shouts and ra. It's actually about the substance of your connection with God, and expressing that through words and actions in the earth, and this is the thing; we can grow in these areas, and our whole life in ministry, everything changes. Amen.

House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6)  

Sat 16 Feb 2013 « Back to Top

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Find out how to go about cleansing a house/building (or object) from demonic manifestation, and shift atmospheres. You've only truly learnt when you can do, so be led as a group or individual in exercises showing you how to release the spirit of God within you into another - power, spirit, joy, healing. What you think and what you say is important, and we all need to practise.

In this session I want to just speak on house cleansing. I haven't done this one before, and I want to put this one in and speak on it, because this is a problem for many, many people. If you just look in your notes, Page 24, I want to just talk about house cleansing. Now increasingly we're finding that not only people coming to us who are troubled with evil spirits in their personal life, but many of them have troubles in their house. Some of the problems they have are in the house. I had someone ring me up in a panic a while ago, can you please come urgently to our house, there's a ghost in the house?

Anyway I couldn't come immediately, I did come as soon as I could, went there and sure enough there were some problems, and this particular woman had gone back to her mother's house. When I sat there talking with them, sure enough, you could hear the noises in the house and they said whoa, can you hear it? Can you hear it? You could hear banging and noises going on in the other part of the house, so I thought ooh, this is interesting. They were absolutely freaked out to say the least and I said look, its okay. We can deal with this very quickly, it's only a spirit and it will go. Shortly I'll command it to leave, but I really do want to know how it got here, so let's just talk a little bit about the house. They said who was actually renting this apartment, and it was the girl's mother. I said were there troubles in here when you first arrived? No, there weren't.

That's interesting - when did the problems begin? She said well when my daughter and her friend came to stay. Now we've narrowed it down, they came in with these new people, and so I spoke to the daughter and friend. I said well when did you first have these problems? Oh, they had it in the previous place they were in. I said well, what we're trying to do is isolate and work out whether the problem was in the house, and you've come into the house and now you have the problem, or whether you brought the problem into the house, and now people in the house have the problem. So I asked again and the girl said - I said well it's either the young man or the young woman; one of you has been responsible for this happening and I said were either of you involved in the occult? They said no. I said well was one of you involved in a sexual relationship with someone in the occult, and the girl said yes.

I said did it end in a bad way? She said yes. I said did he curse you? She said yes. I said well it's not surprising you've got these problems with spirits; you're not connected to God, you've opened your life through this relationship for two to become one, he's spoken cursing over you - you now have a spirit that's going to follow you wherever you go. I said you need help to deal with it, and the first place to find help, you need to come to the one who can help you, which is Jesus Christ. They're looking for a simple answer, I'm wanting to get them to the foundational answer, which is the Lord Himself. So we prayed, led them to Christ and then commanded the spirits to go, and the place just went calm, and peace came into the place.

So it's quite common these days for people to report that there are problems and difficulties in their house, and you have authority to deal with it. You have authority to minister to people in various ways and areas, we've looked at that, but you also have authority to deal with issues related to houses and properties where there are problems, where people are being spooked by spirits. So just for your equipping, we'll share with you just how you go about doing it. It's not very hard at all, but let's just look at a verse on this. Deuteronomy 7, Verses 25 to 26: You will burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that's on them for yourselves, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it, or be cursed. You shall utterly detest it, and utterly hate it or abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.

Notice here he's saying specifically to the Hebrews, when they go into the Promised Land, not to bring into their home objects which have been used in idolatry. The reason they would bring them into their home was because often these things were quite valuable, they were carved with silver and gold or porcelain, and they were quite expensive objects. I prayed for a businessman in Taiwan not so long ago, and he had over a million dollars worth of objects. When he became a Christian he destroyed all of them, the whole lot. That's a lot of money isn't it - because he didn't want to have hooks into these things. So you notice it said: lest you be snared, or be caught in a trap. Now let me just give you a couple of examples, just from our own ministry experience.

When we first went to Dannevirke, I'd got filled with the Holy Ghost, we went and stayed in a school house, and we'd been there only a matter of a week I think it was. I'd gone and we'd talked with the Pastor of the local church, made a great connection there. We now felt like we had a home to go to, to talk about spiritual things. That night Joy went to bed and went to sleep, and I just stayed and watched a bit of television and went back to bed, and no sooner lay down in the bed, I was just lying there, just thinking about things, and this tall, about seven foot tall dark figure walked into the room, and freaked me out is the only way I can describe it. I could not speak. I was frozen in fear. I was absolutely terrified - it was a spirit being, a demonic spirit. So this thing absolutely terrified me. I felt every hair on every part of me just rise up - aaah! I felt like I couldn't even breathe, the fear was that much.

Then Joy woke up praying, and the thing seemed to divert it's attention onto what she was doing, and I felt free, and I could get up, so I got up, turned the light on, got the Bible out. Oh! [Laughter] Where do we start! I'm too young a Christian to know what to do so one, I got the light on. That was a big help! [Laughter] I'm a bit scared of the dark. [Laughter] And then I read Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures... I was pretty - didn't know much to do then, but anyway that was enough for the night, and we were okay for that. [Laughter] But we had to actually realise there was a spirit in the house, and we needed to cleanse the house, and get the spirit out of it. I then discovered that there were heaps of them in the school as well, and so once I'd learned what to do, then I began to go over - sometimes I'd go over at night to the school, and I'd walk through it in the dark [Oooh!], and pray in tongues, and decree the authority I had over all of those demons, and I overcame totally all fear of the things of the dark. [Laughter]

I used to be terrified to go and put the things out at night, and want to run back to the house. [Laughter] It was bad - so anyway we had that spirit in that house, and that was a bit of problem later on. One of our babysitters, we came home and she was weeping because she was absolutely petrified, because she'd heard footsteps walk up and down in the hall. Anyway we prayed, and got rid of this thing out of the house.

When I came first to Hastings we had some neighbours not far from us, and they said can you come and help us, we've got major problems of oppression and sickness in our house? I said I'll come over tomorrow. I prayed and I felt the Lord say to me: they've got some masks from Fiji, so I went over and I said: have you got any masks from Fiji? They said yeah, we have, we brought some back. I said don't you realise they pray over those things, and impart spirits into them? Your problems began when you got the masks in the house, so we prayed. I told them to destroy the masks, but then he came over the next day, he said: I tried. I poured petrol on them but they would not burn - and they were wooden. Isn't that interesting? I said okay, well next time put some petrol on them, and I said that's a good start, then pray and bind the spirits, and decree destruction on that object. Well he came back the next day, and he said whoa! [Laughter] It went off with such a big bang we nearly all got burnt [laughter], and they just burnt to cinders, just burnt right out like that.

So those were early experiences we had, just related to these things. We had another experience at one time where we had a whole group of young people, and they brought some of the music that they were listening to, really heavy bad stuff, and when a couple in our church burnt them, they took a photo of the fire burning, and you could literally see faces in the fire, a quite extraordinary picture. You can see things in the fire as they burnt these things - so demonic spirits get access to buildings, to objects and to people, occasionally to animals. We need to just know what to do. It's not hard, it's really easy. Any person could do it, you just need to know what to do, that's all. So sometimes evil spirits will get into an object because it's been invoked, someone laid hands on it, they carved the idol, laid hands on it, so any object which has been used in idolatry almost certainly will have a spirit attached to it.

If something's been hand carved and is the representation of some God, almost certainly it'll have a spirit has been imparted to it, through the laying on of hands. You've just got to be aware of that. Now wherever a person brings such an object into the house, the demonic spirit can then come and operate against the people in the house. Sometimes people have been involved in the occult in the house, or there's been a trauma, or maybe a murder in the house. Have you ever noticed if there's a murder, often people will just go and burn the house down? Have you ever wondered why on earth would you do that? I mean why would you do that? It's a waste of money, but it's because of an old superstitious fear, that if there's something like that has happened the place is demonised, and the only way to deal with it is to burn it to the ground, put it to judgement by fire. Isn't that an interesting thing?

Now we don't need to do that. We can actually pray and see the house cleansed quite easily, so God warned them not to bring things into the house that were of an occult nature, and He said: if you do it, you'll bring a snare on yourself, so we need to look at how to deal with the house. Common indications that a house needs cleansing are these kinds of things. Here's a few of them. There may be others, but these are the most obvious ones: unexplained noises at night, or sounds at night, voices, someone walking, doors opening and shutting, objects moving, rattling of chains - I haven't heard that one, but I understand that's another one, yeah. Objects moving spontaneously without anyone touching them, spirit beings appearing at night, unexplained areas of coldness in a house, and we're not talking about lack of insulation. We're talking in an area that should be warm, and it's actually quite funny cold, strange atmosphere. I've seen that in some houses.

Constant sickness in a house, once they moved in the house they became constantly sick; constant oppression or heaviness, or even strife and conflicts in the relationships that began when they moved into the house; recurring nightmares, constant turmoil in relationships or children terrified of unseen beings. When we first came here we had major spiritual warfare to break through and see God move, and on more than one occasion our youngest daughter woke up absolutely terrified and obviously seeing spirits, so they would come, and they would enter the house and try and torment the family, and try to wreak havoc in the home. I remember one night I could tell, you hear the sound of her cry. After a while you know your children's cry, and this one, this was a terrified cry. Got out of the bed, straight around in there, grabbed her and put her in bed with us and she was in the bed, and she would look out, then she would suddenly bury herself down, so she could see the spirit. I couldn't see it, but I became immensely aware that the thing was there.

So this was a demonic defilement as a result of engaging in the work of God, and there probably being occult curses directed against us, who knows. Whatever it was, there was a spirit in the house, needed to get him out, and so we had to learn how to pray and how to deal with it. Let's have a look then at how you can deal with it, and I'll show you some things which are obvious things, then some things which are perhaps not so obvious. Deuteronomy 7, Verse 2: When the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, you shall conquer them, utterly destroy them, make no covenant with them nor show mercy. So God delivered His enemies into the hands of Israel, and He required they totally conquer them, so if you ever encounter this, it's your responsibility to totally conquer it, and deal with any defilement. Now the principle causes of defilement are - as far as I'm aware - ungodly objects inside the building; defilement that's been caused by previous occupants of the building, so they were involved in idolatry, had a little altar there or spiritism of some kind; or there's been curses put on the building or the land, often by indigenous people.

Sometimes the land may have been built on, that had a lot of blood shed on it, so there's all these kinds of issues in the land. We had a neighbour of ours and he came over and said you're a minister aren't you? I said yes. He said can you help me? I said why? He said I'm having tormenting spirits in my house, so we went over and prayed through the house, and he had temporary relief, but they were back the next day. I said that's interesting, and so we had a talk with him about it. I went and prayed around the land, and when we prayed around the land, then they left completely. He was completely at peace, so clearly whatever it was, there was something on the land, associated with the land. Sometimes it could be just occult things, sometimes it could be a murder. Have you ever noticed that some areas of highway, which are straight, have unusually high accidents, and no one can explain it? Possibly it would be explained if people could look into the history of it, and see if there was blood shed or fights or battles, or occult practices in that area. That would give explanation for why, on a straight stretch of road, there's an unduly high number of accidents that cause death.

In fact some parts of New Zealand they say are high accident areas, slow right down. They drop the speed level down, but still they have the accidents. We had one area that we prayed - there was a whole section of a road, and the people that lived there said look, could you help us do something about this? We're having accidents here all the time. We went into that area and prayed, and that was the end of it, they didn't have accidents after that. So there's a spiritual reality here, that actions of people on the earth open gateways for spirits to come and create problems, so objects, there can be some specific objects that cause defilement. Obviously pagan objects of art, where there's statues or false Gods, they're the most obvious ones. Many objects are obvious; any objects used in spiritism, occult jewellery, Masonic regalia items, occult books, Ouija boards, occult toys, some music items, some video games, some pornography can create that problems, pictures and magazines and drugs. All of these can create it. You've got to let the Holy Ghost show you what the problem is, and we'll show you the simple steps.

Now here's an important practical point. You have to exercise wisdom about destroying the property that's in the house [laughs], particularly if it belongs to someone else. You have responsibility over your own possessions, but someone else's possessions are theirs, so that creates a difficulty. You need wisdom in handling objects that have been owned by a child, or by teens. You can totally destroy your relationship with a teen, or any hope of them coming to Christ, by going in and taking some object in a religious fervour and crusade, burn it because it's "of the devil", you know? Now this is not going to help build relationship and help that child come to the Lord. They will alienate you completely.

So some objects are obvious occultic and defiled, get rid of them. Some objects are completely not, don't worry about them. Some objects, you just may not be sure about. The ones you're not sure about, just ask the Lord, what do you say? Maybe all you need to do is just bless them, so for example, you buy some jewellery second hand. Now you have no idea what on earth went on behind that piece of jewellery, so it helps, it just pays to take the jewellery, lay hands on it, say Father, whatever has been on this before, we just break it now, and we dedicate this to You, and wear it in Your honour and glory - just a simple little prayer just like that. It just helps to do that - so how do you go about doing the house cleansing? It's not very hard. We just go into a house, just begin to pray in tongues, speak in the spirit, start to worship God and open our heart to the Holy Ghost. You need revelation from the Holy Ghost.

I'll enquire of the people in the home, try and find out what is the problem, which room is it in, when did it first start, because when it first started gives you a clue many times to what the source of the problem is. So listen to the Holy Spirit; Lord, show us are there any legal things that we need to address? Are there any issues we need to renounce or speak over? Ask Him to guide you, so if we discover some objects, we say well you need to destroy those, and so we pray over them if we're not certain about them. So what we do is just exalt Jesus and confess His Lordship; Father, we just come to You in Jesus' name, we confess Jesus Christ is Lord and saviour today. There's nothing like acknowledging and standing strong in the spirit. Then the second thing we do is, we break all agreements that were made to invite evil spirits in; Father, in Jesus' name I speak in this room now, I break every invocation, invitation, every covenant made with an evil spirit, inviting it into this place. I break those invitations. We cancel their power now.

If there was a trauma; Father, in Jesus' name, we come against every spirit associated with traumatic accident or death. We break the power of that cursing on this building, in this room, now in Jesus' name. So speak quite simply to break agreements, break curses, and command the spirits then to go from the house; In Jesus' name, I command each spirit, go now. You'd be quite surprised. We were in one building, and actually the [laughs] team that was with us got freaked out, because they felt this whoosh! Something just flew past them like that, and they got such a shock - woohoo! What was that? You know, but it was something had been there really in the room, they just sent it out - so we have authority to deal with this, you see? The person who's asked you into their house is a Christian, this is their house now. There's no right for demons there, got to get the demons out, and then just invite the Holy Spirit; Holy Spirit, we welcome You to come. We dedicate this room, we dedicate this part of the house completely to You. We invite You to come, and to bring peace, and to bring Your presence as we make You welcome today - very, very simple.

Sometimes we've anointed places with oil where there are real major issues, but only if the Holy Ghost led. You'd be quite surprised then what happens. We have been in some places, and you could feel the whole atmosphere just shift like that. Now I'll give you an example. This is a really good one. I was called to do a funeral, take a funeral. It was a tragic funeral, because a woman had committed suicide, gone into the bathroom, filled up a bath and cut her wrists and died. That's tragic, absolutely tragic, and so I was asked to take the funeral. The funeral was down the road here, just down Orchard Road. It was at the crematorium, and they've got a little chapel there. So we went in there, and I went in there with two musicians from our church to set up a keyboard there, and to just create a bit of atmosphere for worship. As I got in there - now the Holy Ghost must be just on me over this one, and I came in there. As I walked in, the oppression was immense. You could feel heaviness and death, and grief and despair. It was horrific.

I could feel it, and I just walk in there praying in tongues, and suddenly I said: in Jesus' name, every spirit of grief, death and despair, out now! I did it just about that quick. I caught the two others by surprise, and they nearly fell over because they suddenly felt this rush out of the room, and the peace of God just came in like that. It just descended into the place just like that. Now when it came to the funeral, the presence of God was so strong there, that people - now this is a suicide. You'd expect everyone to be overwhelmed with grief, but the presence of God came so strongly, that people just sat there, just enjoying His presence. It was amazing. It was like a total turnaround, and we were able to preach the gospel and share, bring a message of hope, and open the way for people to come to respond to Christ. It was amazing - but that is taking authority over the spiritual atmosphere. There's something there that causes the problem - take authority over it.

So if you're ever in some atmosphere, or some place where it's clear there are spirits there, now it may not be appropriate to do what I just did then. What you can do is just get in a corner, just away from everyone, and when you get in the corner and just out of sight, just out of obvious connection with everyone, just begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now I just speak in the spirit now. I speak to every spirit here. I command you to go now in Jesus' name, just be gone out of this place right now. I assert my authority over you in Jesus' name. I just release Your peace and presence Lord, let Your peace just come into this room right now, begin to fill it, invade it. We invite Your Holy Ghost to come, and bring peace just now - and you can change an atmosphere just like that, if you know your authority. Otherwise you'll look at it, and it'll overwhelm you, and you'll back up, so that's why practicing praying and practicing speaking and practicing in this area, you become more familiar with it, and it becomes nothing for you to just oh, there's something here. Alright, we'll just speak into it now: In Jesus' name, go. I've done that in a number of situations and you feel a change straight away. People don't know what - they haven't got a clue what you did because they weren't seeing, and you didn't make a big noise of it. You just brought the presence of God with you into that place, and isn't that what we're supposed to do, bring the presence of God? Heaven to earth. Isn't that fantastic?

Okay then, now let's just talk a little about ministering to one another. How many would know what to do now? If someone's got a haunted house you could go to it and pray right now, wouldn't that be great? So ask God to give you some opportunities and keep your ears open, anyone's got a haunted house say great, I'll come and help you! [Laughter] Remember, if there's a demon in there, it's not a ghost, it's not a person, it's not Uncle Fred. They're long gone you know. It isn't one of them. It's actually a demonic spirit, and there's always a reason it got there. Ask a few questions. Ask the Holy Ghost to help you, but ask the questions: find out, was it in the house before they came, or did they bring it into the house with them. That'll give you the clue.

If it's in the house before they came, someone else has brought it in. You can address it quite easily by breaking the covenants, agreements, whatever traumas been there and just releasing the presence of God to come, or if it came in with them, you've got to talk to the person and say hey, let's work out how come this thing is here. Was this in the last house you were in? Oh, it was, then you have brought it with you, which makes an interesting thing. How keen are you to get rid of it? You know, most people are really keen to get rid of. Then you can talk and say well, the spirit world is very, very real, and what you're experiencing is an evil spirit, but there's also a spirit called the Spirit of God who's a very good spirit, very kind and loving spirit. He comes to us when we receive Jesus Christ - and you can just quickly, easily share the gospel, lead people to the Lord, and then pray and bring peace to the home. It's quite simple, and there's a lot of people have got this problem right now.

They pay exorcists and people to come in and pray prayers and do stuff, but we've got the answers. We can make it happen, quite simply, quite easy, and if you pray in the house and there's no lasting freedom, consider praying around the grounds as well, just inside and outside the house. Sometimes it's both, and if there's still no freedom then it's in one of the people, and they're inviting them back in. Now this guy over the road said could you come back, my house has got spirits again? I said well I cleaned them out, how come they come back in? [Laughter] He said oh, I had a friend over here, and he's a psychic guy, and he downloaded in the house. [Ooh!] I said well, what are you thinking, you know? You've got to stop him doing that kind of stuff. You've got to protect your house from this happening. I said this guy has brought the spirits in. He's not a friend, he's actually brought problems to your house. Consider that next time you invite him in, and tell him not to do it. So we prayed and again the house got cleared out. Amen.

Okay, alrighty then, well we could spend a lot more time but I think - I've written out quite a few things just on ministering, but what I want to do is, I want to give you a chance to pray and minister to one another. So we're going to give you just two or three exercises for you to do, okay, so the first one, I want you to get used to speaking with power, speaking with authority. So we've got a very simple exercise that we can do, and we'll just need a couple of volunteers. I'll show you exactly what I want to do - two of you will do fine, here we go, come on up, right in front of me. [Laughter] Then I'll try some others as well. Okay then, so we'll get one third person - like to come on up? That's the way. There we are, okay then, come and stand behind her, that's right. Now you are the catcher, okay and you are the receiver and you're the one who's going to minister the power of God. Isn't that right? What did you say, oh no? Why did you say oh no? [Laughter] Tell me what you're thinking when you said oh no?

[Female speaker 1] Oh, I don't have the confidence.

[Pastor Mike] You don't have the confidence?

[Female speaker 1] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] What if I showed you step by step?

[Female speaker 1] Okay, I'll give it a go.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, alright, so first of all I want to just get a couple of things. Do you have the Holy Spirit inside you?

[Female speaker 1] I hope so.

[Pastor Mike] You hope so, you're not sure? [Laughter] Okay, alright then. Well these are what's called foundational for ministering to people, is to know where I am, and what I have inside me, you see? So when we get born again we receive the Holy Ghost, so what I'll do is I'll just approach it a little differently, and I'll help you with it, there we go. Here we are, alright then, so the first thing you can just ask is, can I practice on you?

[Female speaker 1] Can I practice on you?

[Pastor Mike] Awesome! Great! Great, positive response. That's the way. Okay then, so you just keep your eyes open, you're the catcher, and if she falls over, going to need to make sure you've got your eyes open to catch her, alright? She has a tendency to fall. [Laughter] Okay then, now just lift your hands up, that's right and look towards the Lord, that's right. Now what I want you to do is put your hand on her shoulder, that's right, okay then. Now we're going to pray in tongues together. Now I'm with you here to help, you see, and this is how close God is, He's even closer than I am to you, and so let's pray in tongues together shall we? Come on, let's pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now as you're praying in tongues, the Holy Spirit's inside you, see? He's arising and flowing through you. That's right, rise up a little more strongly, [prays in tongues]. Alright then, now this is what we're going to do next.

I want you to, with your eyes closed, to just begin to meditate that God is in me. His spirit is filling me up. I'm being filled with the spirit of God. Just set your mind, not on trying to do something, but on God being in you. Then on the count of three I want you to just speak the words strongly and release power, speak the word 'power' okay? Ready, power, so we meditate, just consciously be aware God is in you. Thank You Lord, Your presence is here...

[Female speaker 1] Power.

[Pastor Mike] No, one more time - one, two, three, POWER! (whispered)

[Female speaker 1] POWER!

[Pastor Mike] There you go, that was a bit better now you see? She's been touched by the - you've been touched by the presence of God. [Laughter] Okay, that's alright. Thank You Lord. Just release Your anointing, touch her right now, just minister and flow, there it is, it's the presence of God. Okay, now so when you started to speak out, what did you feel inside yourself? See it helps to reflect, and to think what you experience. Whether it was good or bad, whether there was struggles or not, all of it is a learning opportunity, so when you were first asked to do something your first feelings were what, I can't do this?

[Female speaker 1] Mm.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, alright then. Now you can either reject that, or you can embrace that. If you embrace it, you will have trouble. If you reject it and say no, I refuse that, God is in me, God can work through me, then you'll be ready to start to minister. If you let the thought stand, it will hold you captive, see? So we reject that thought. Now when you come to actually speak out to her, what did you feel happen as you spoke?

[Female speaker 1] Don't remember

[Pastor Mike] You can't recall? That's okay, that's alright because most people - you're probably caught up with being in front of everyone and it's overwhelming. That's alright. It's okay, don't worry about that. I'd be overwhelmed if I was there too. [Laughter] Okay then, we ready? Just one more time now, we'll just quietly pray in tongues. Thank You Lord, [prays in tongues] Now what we're going to do is, just going to together, on the count of three - I'll go one, two, three - then we'll just speak and release the power of the God with the word power. [Prays in tongues] Now become conscious, God is with us, we're working as a team, hand in hand with the Holy Ghost, who's going to release His power - three, two, one - POWER! Now that's more like it. Now you've got it see? Okay, now that was great, that was great.

Now you see, between you doing it the first time, and that time, something changed inside you, and it's what changed in you that enabled you to release power into her, so what changed in you was your confidence shifted, from being overwhelmed by perhaps being self-conscious initially, and I can't do this. You moved progressively to where actually you arose - in the way you responded, I felt you stood up and went for it, and that's what got the result. [Laughs] Come on, good on you, let's give her a clap. That was fantastic. [Applause] So remember, everything we can learn from. Whether it works or doesn't work, we can still learn, and the key to learning, is evaluating what was going on in your thoughts, and in the feelings that you had, as you sought to minister. So I just asked the questions, just asked the questions to try and work out what's going on. If you have doubts, remember doubts and unbelief stop the flow of power. Bryan, come on over here, let me just pray for you. Can I practice on you?

[Bryan] Sure can.

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful, that's good. Close your eyes and look up the Lord. Now this is what I want to do [laughter] I want to just pray in tongues. Got someone there behind him, he's - okay. Okay [laughs] he's used to this, so he'll be [laughter], so I begin to just pray. Father, I just thank You for Your presence here right now. I become conscious of God. Thank You Lord, that You are wanting to impart to him right now, in Jesus' name, the POWER of God release into him now. [Laughter] I tried a bit hard. [Laughter] Okay then, now you remember it's about being God conscious, and releasing what God has given. Amen - so why don't we get into groups of three, and practice on one another. Remember, you get into a group of three; one has eyes open, and is the catcher, one has their eyes closed, looking up to God to touch them, one of them is the one who's ministering. The one who's ministering say, can I practice on you? Say yeah! Come on, give us your best shot! Come on, be open and then we work through it together. Are we ready? Come on, let's try it. Let's all try it.

We're releasing the power, with the word 'power', so get into groups of three. Come on up the front, there's room up here. There's room up here. Okay, room up here. Find someone that's got - are we ready? Who's catching Lyn? I want to know who's catching Lyn? Steve, I'm relying on you to do a good job. No dropping her. Okay, are we all ready? Now to do this exercise, what I'd like you to do is this. You'll all be lined up in a row of three. One is the catcher, make sure the catcher knows they're catching. Who is catching? Okay, tap the person you're going to catch on their shoulder, so they know you're there, okay, alright then - and keep your eyes open. Alright then, person receiving, who are the people receiving, put hands up? Oh glory to God! Okay, who's the person praying? Awesome. Now ask the person receiving can I practice on you? [Can I practice on you?] Yes, great. Okay then, tell them now look up to the Lord, He's going to minister to you.

Now let's do it together, okay? Put one hand on the top of their shoulder, now begin to pray in tongues. [All pray in tongues] Thank You Lord, Your presence is inside me. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Okay, now on the count of three we will release the power of God, by speaking the word 'power' - three, two, one - [POWER!] Oh, look at that, wow, whoa! Goodness me. We'll do it again, we'll practice together. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost, come upon her and touch her. We thank You Lord for Your anointing here now - three, two, one - POWER of God! You just held back. [Oh, okay.] You held back inside. You need to give yourself. [Oh okay.] Yeah, okay, awesome. Change over. [Laughs] Okay, alright, are we ready? Okay then, the person who's catching, wave your hands, let's find out who's catching - great. Tap the person so they know you're catching them, okay. Alright then, person receiving, wave your hands. Okay, good on you. Alright then, and the person who's praying? Okay, good stuff. Okay, ask them can I practice on you? [Can I practice on you?] Yes, do your best.

Okay then, the person receiving prayer, lift your hands up, turn your eyes towards the Lord just to receive from Him. It's not important who's ministering to you, it is important your heart is open to the Lord to receive from Him. Now the person doing the praying, remember what Jesus said: if you will say to the mountain, be removed, and not doubt in your heart that what you say will come about, you will have what you say. You are going to say 'power'. You are going to speak a word of power into this person's life, so I want you just to pray quietly in tongues. [All pray in tongues] Let your mind settle that God is inside you, the mighty God that created heaven and earth lives inside you. [Prays in tongues] On the count of three - three, two, one - [POWER!] Whoa! That was a good idea, a chair, well done! Good thinking. [Laughter] Well done. Need to do that more - do it at home with the bed. [Laughter] Whoa - over you go! [Laughter]

Okay, change around. Change over. [Laughter] Okay, whoa, glory to God! [Laughter] Yes, indeed. [Laughs] Alright, now remember, when you're doing this, you're extending your faith to believe that God will flow through you, like a mighty river. Are we ready? So person catching, put your hands up and wave, tap the person on the shoulder so they know you're catching, okay. Person receiving prayer, lift your hands up and wave - good on you. Look up and close your eyes - whoa, you be careful with Leon - His sister will be on to you. [Laughter] Okay, are we ready? So those who are ministering, put your hand lightly on them or touch them somewhere, begin to pray in tongues, and you are believing that as I speak the word, this power of God will flow through me. They will be touched. They will be touched, because the power of God will flow. I have confidence God will work through me. Thank You Lord. [All pray in tongues] Three, two, one - [POWER!] [Laughter]

Awesome, well done! Woops - how are you doing? [Laughs] Careful with these fellas. [Laughter] Okay, wonderful.

[Female speaker 1] I was just going to say that it's - what I thought was, it's not really hard believing that Christ is in me, and realising that the words are what releases it. You know what I mean?

[Pastor Mike] Yes, it's Jesus' words, yes.

[Female speaker 1] So forget about you...

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Female speaker 1] ...and just realise that the power...

[Pastor Mike] Is of God.

[Female speaker 1] ...is of God.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, great, you've got it. You've got it. Alright then, we'll stop for a moment. Okay, remember we have this treasure, Christ in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be of Him, and not of us, so you've got to remember, it's not about you trying to make something happen. The moment you think I've got to make something happen, you now are trying in your own strength. There's no flow of anointing. You have to realise, I'm just a channel of the Holy Spirit; it's the glory, it's the goodness of God flowing through me, and He comes through me, one, when I believe; two, when I speak. It's Him, and His power. It's not you, and your words. That's just an expression externally for it to happen, but He won't work except He works through you, so your part is crucial. I hope you would see, even from our examples before, how even just the thinking in your mind going off just a little bit can shut the power down.

The moment you think I'm not good enough, it's over, there's no power going to flow, because see that thought, if you hold it and agree with it, means I'm not connected to God. It's all about me. Do you see what I mean when I said that the devil will try to get you disconnected, so you're out of positioning? That's why taking scriptures, meditate on my positioning with God, is crucial for moving in the spirit. I've got to know where I stand, and the moment it comes up as a problem is when you try to pray for someone, because you think it's about you, you centre on you, and your spirit closes down, and the anointing stops. Alright then, we're going to try it one more time. I want you just to listen again. We're going to do it a little bit differently this time, and I want you this time, instead of saying the word 'power' - I was just getting you used to speaking strongly. This time I want you to realise, it isn't actually about your words. Your words are one way of expressing.

It's actually releasing by faith, so this time we'll try it, and this time I want you to do it, and do it quite simply, just by breathing, blowing [exhales gently once] releasing the spirit of God, releasing the anointing. [Laughter] Of course if you've been eating pickled onions or garlic then don't do this at all. [Laughter] They will wither and fall, but not because of the Holy Ghost. [Laughter] Okay, so ask: can I practice on you - get in threes again. Hands up who's catching. Okay, hands up who's receiving - okay, close your eyes, look up. Hands up who's ministering. Okay, now this is what I want you to do, just listen carefully now. Listen carefully. I want you just to put your hand on them now, just one hand on their hand, or on their shoulder. I want you just to quietly pray in tongues, and I want you just to meditate, to picture in your mind, that Almighty God Himself is inside you. The word spirit is the word breath, so it's not about me just blowing or breathing out. It's actually about me letting go my heart to this person. It's releasing all that God is in me, I'm letting God flow through me.

You are joined to the spirit of the Lord, one spirit, so if you let your heart flow to them, the spirit of God will flow with you - so pray in tongues now quietly, become just mentally aware God is inside me, amazing, great, Almighty God is inside me, and I'm just going to release what He has given me into this person - three, two, one - [Exhales gently once] release. Look at that, see? Oops! Adden, last man falling. Catchers aren't supposed to fall. [Laughter] Adden's greedy for the Holy Ghost, he wants everything everyone can give him. [Laughter] Aah, too much! [Laughter] Awesome. Okay, how many got something happen? There was a flow of power? That's wonderful, that's some, not as many as this time, okay. Alright then, now just stop and listen again. It was easier, when I said speak a strong word, for you to believe something would happen, than just breathing, because you're depending on what you do, rather than depending on the Holy Spirit.

In a moment I'll show you how to do it, and you're not even going to say anything or do anything much. We're going to believe that God will come on them as we pray, okay? Alright, so this time we're going to try it again - oh that's great, that's really a help, so it'll make you look good when you blow. [Laughter] Okay, are we ready? Can I practice on you? Begin to pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now begin to meditate that God is in me. Focus on the source, not on what you've got called to do. Thank You Holy Ghost, thank You Lord You are in me, dwelling inside me. I just see Your presence, Your power filling me right now, and Lord, I thank You. We love this person, we're going to release You to them. Now ready? Three, two, one - [Exhales gently once]. Wow, there we go, look at that. Awesome. You caught him that time, that's good. I was getting a bit worried, he's falling over all the time, don't want him to break anything. [Laughter] Praise the Lord, he's quite touched. Feeling warm? Yeah, that's very good.

Okay, how are we getting on? [Laughter] Now remember, it's all just practicing, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't come off 100 percent every time, we're just all practicing. We're just practicing. Are we ready - woops! Someone practiced very hard, they fell over. Who was that? Was that Gary? That was Sargin behind the camera. [Laughter] He was giving a bit of a help. Okay, are we ready this time? Can I practice on you? Thank you, do your best. Okay then, put your hand on them lightly, begin to pray in tongues. [All pray in tongues Begin to meditate God is inside me, thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, spirit of the Lord come - three, two, one - [Exhales once quickly] Very good, very good. Very good. Okay - hey! And of course some people are like the Rock of Gibraltar. Tom, it's okay, he's never fallen over for me either. [Laughter] We could try together some time.

Alright then, okay, don't give up. Alright, are we ready? We'll do one more. Like to come over? Just come over, yeah, come over. Okay, this time just watch this way. Bryan, I need you to catch your wife. [Laughter] You can come and catch him. Alright then, okay, now I want you to listen. Now we are called Ministers of the Spirit, okay? Ministers of the Spirit, and so we are called to minister what God has, and bring what God has to people, so I will just begin to meditate that - you know the Bible says the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost? Okay then, I'm just going to meditate on how joyful God is, and I'm just going to release - through the word 'joy' I'm going to release the joy of the Lord, see?

Ready? Okay, so I just begin to meditate, and when you meditate, don't be all serious, you know? I'm meditating in the joy! Let the joy rise up, thank You Lord, You are so full of joy. Thank You Lord for Your wonderful joy - three, two, [laughs] one - JOY! [Laughter] It's a great thing to be able to laugh and enjoy God. Jill, just come and stand over here. Yeah, just if you can, just come and just stand - just be where people can see. Need someone - Bryan, need someone strong who can help her. Oh, Bryan's not stable, that's right. Just take a step. [Laughs] Just get you up there, that's right, just because - the camera can see you, otherwise it can't see you see? [I don't care.] Just focus on the top of the head. [Laughter]

So I just begin to meditate again, just in the joy of the Lord. Thank You Lord, I just see His abundant joy. I just allow it to affect me, and JOY! [Laughter] We are ministering God to people. You're bringing who God is to people. It's not about trying to do some big thing; it's actually about being a gateway for God to flow, and how that happens, see? [Laughter] Alright then, so you got that? Want to do another one? [Yeah!] One more, okay. [Laughter] Jill's sort of had it. She's out to it now. [Laughter] Kath, come on over here. There we are - get to the stage you need all the joy you can, isn't that right? [Laughter] Okay, just relax and look up to the Lord. Again I just begin to meditate the joy that God has. He is full of joy. [Laughs] I begin to see it, and let it just come and affect me, and if I'm yielding to that joy I can [laughs] release it - three, two, one - JOY! [Laughter]

Ministers of the spirit, ministers of God. There's many ways and aspects we can minister, so why don't we try that. That'd be great fun. Some of you look like you could do with a laugh. [Laughter] So let's just try. Now the person who's receiving, now what you're receiving is, you're going to receive an impartation of joy. Now joy is not to be contained deep inside me, so deep it can't be seen. When you're receiving joy, just laugh, just let go, yield to it. [Laughter] Oops, put her on a chair. Okay, find some people to connect with. Start with a reasonably happy person, it'll be a little easier. [Laughter] We may need you to give them a help Sargin. [Laughter] Okay, can I practice on you? Hands up those who are catching - good, tap them on the shoulder. Okay, ready? Those who are receiving? Great, okay. Those who are ministering the joy?

Now if you're ministering joy, allow yourself to feel a bit of it before you give it away. [Laughter] There you are, just pray quietly in tongues and begin to fix your mind that Jesus is there, full of joy. He's the most joyful person. The Bible says He's anointed Him with the oil of joy above everyone, so He's a very [laughs] happy person. Three, two, one - [JOY!] [Lots of laughter] Hey, good one. Okay, come on then, change over and try it with someone else. There you go. Okay, who's catching? Okay, great, touch them on the shoulder. Who's receiving? That's it, good on you. Okay, get ready for a good laugh. Who's praying? [Laughter] Okay, put your hand on them, begin to pray in tongues. Now just begin to give yourself to the joy. Thank You Lord, You are so full of joy. [Laughs] Thank You Lord for your joy, filling my soul, filling my spirit - three, two, one - [JOY!] [Lots of laughter] Joy! Holy Ghost come! [Laughter] Joy of the Lord touch her right now. [Laughter] Joy in the Holy Ghost! [Lots of laughter] More! More! [Laughter] Holy Ghost come on her! [Laughter] Thank You Lord. Fill her Lord, fill her right now. Thank You Lord. Come Holy Spirit, thank You Lord. That's right, just let go like you're relaxing, letting everything go just to receive.

[Laughter] Holy Spirit, come on her right now. [Laughter] Ooh, what's happening over here? Did he not catch him right? Did you not catch him? [Still working on Peter.] Oh Peter, okay, good, good, good. Okay, great, great. Alrighty then, that's good. [Laughter] Holy Ghost come on her right now and fill her! Touch her Lord, fill her, fill her. [Laughter] Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill, get her drunk Lord, drunk in the Holy Ghost! Totally drunk and full of the spirit, thank You Lord. Alright then. Now while you're in groups of three just combine with another group of three. Just get with another group of three, so you've got now groups of six, five or six. Five or six - or two. [Laughs] Okay, you're in a group of five, somewhere round about that, okay then. Now this is what I want you to do.

I want you to enquire in the group, is there anyone with a physical sickness in their body, they're in pain in their body, and if there is, one by one, bring them into the centre and pray for them. So I want you to pray for them to be healed. Now to pray for them to be healed, what we're going to do is we'll pray in tongues, then we'll speak and command the infirmity to go, speak directly to the infirmity, exert your authority, command it to go, and release healing: in Jesus' name I command this infirmity to go! [Laughter] The spirit of insanity has finally left. [Laughter] Okay, so just check out if anyone in the group has a physical sickness, and if they have - put your hand up if you've got a physical sickness in your body. Right, look at that, there's heaps of people around, okay, that's good. Alright then, so put one in the centre, gather around them and pray for them. After you've been prayed for, check and move your body, see if anything's happened.

[Female speaker] Should we check her heart out?

[Pastor Mike] I don't know. Listen, if it goes boompity-boompity-boomp you know. [Laughter] Just pray now, just go for it, pray now.

Don't pray long prayers. Command the infirmity to go, release the power of God. Then move around, pray for the next person. Find out what the problem is, lay hands, pray in tongues, command the infirmity to go, release the power of God. When you've finished praying, move on to the next one.

Alright then, thank You Lord. Thank You for Your healing presence, healing power coming right now. Dot, you look like you've been wasted. [Laughter] [Exhales once quickly] More, more. [Laughs] Thank You Lord.

Okay, let's just draw into a close now. How many people experienced the healing, something happened in your body, you were healed? Over here - who else? How many experienced the healing of your body - God bless, over there, there - two, three. Anyone else? You've just got to move and check. Sometimes it takes a little time to check whether it's free, but check straight away on how you are. Okay, I think we should just finish up now, we're on a great note and let's just - half past four, it's quite late enough I think, but why don't we just thank the Lord for what He's done, and for the things we've learned today.

Father in heaven, we just give You the honour and the glory. We thank You Lord we've learnt so much. Lord, help us to take in what we've learned and to apply it into our life, and to begin to arise. Father, we pray for an arising, and a whole new level of authority and power, and an ability to see things in the spirit world shift and displaced around us. Lord, we give You all the honour and all the glory, in Jesus' name. Everyone said [Amen.] Praise the Lord.

Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8)  

Tue 10 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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To advance the Kingdom, we must overcome an inferior one, that currently has dominion over people’s lives. This doesn't happen by our will power or hope, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we depend on Him and grow in God. To be free we need to remove the armour, or belief system, from our lives that have bound us up, so the demon or strongman can be easily cast out. Demonic strongholds creates an energy, but the Holy Spirit can energise us, to get great victory and freedom over any area of our life.

Introduction:

I have with me one of my daughters, her name is Joanna. My wife sends her love - she’s at home looking after Jo’s children. She’s being a good Nana with the three little boys. For those of you who don’t know us, we have 7 children and 20 grandchildren - very big family, very blessed!

It’s so wonderful to be with you; to have a chance to share with you, to pray with you, and to minister to you. We really love coming to this church. For us, this has been the doorway to Taiwan. It’s been the connection with Pastor Jonathan and Euan, and made the way for us to come to Taiwan. We’ve been coming two or three times a year now, for probably ten years; and seen thousands upon thousands of lives transformed. So, I really want to honour Euan and Jonathan for making room for us to come to this nation, because it was their invitation that made it possible for us to build a connection and some wonderful relationships in this nation.

God has given us incredible favour and we’ve been able to minister to pastors and leaders across the nation, to minister to churches, and privately, to some of the most influential people in your nation. I’ve been able to go to people that others would have no access to; and see God move in their private homes and touch them. We just love Taiwan. I love coming here, and feel a great affinity with Chinese people.

When we first came here, we had the most enormous spiritual conflicts that I have faced in ministry. Every day, the interpreter would get sick; day after day, a new interpreter. I’d say: “Hey, what happened to the last one?” “Oh, sick.” I never see them again. Finally at the end of the first week, I got very sick. It’s quite embarrassing when you come to bring the power of God to people, and you’re sick - I just had to push through what was actually just demonic resistance. I think about the first three or four visits, I would get sick each time, and so would the people around me. Then we just broke through it completely; and there has never been any trouble ever since.

Sometimes in our ministry, the resistance we face, we find, is very real. We just have to have the courage to stand up and face it, and push through, so I just determined that I would not back down. In my first week of ministry here, I think about day 4 or 5, I got so sick I couldn’t even speak. I remember waking up with no voice; and saying: “God, I did not come here to be sick. I came here to help.” So, I just kept quiet all day, and when it came to the meeting at night, immediately I had my voice. I finished speaking - no voice; and then there’s hundreds of people to pray for. I said: “Lord, I will not back down. Help me.” He showed me a key to releasing the power of God without me having to speak. So, we’re always learning all the time; and I hope to be able to share with you things that will really help you.

Main Message:

Our theme then, is deliverance and ministering deliverance. Since all of you have had some foundations in this area, I want to do more focus on removing demonic houses. I want to go past just the casting the demons out, to looking at the structures demons live in.

Just as a way of leading into that, we’ll just look at something Jesus taught on deliverance. We’ll look at Matthew 12:28. In verse 28, Jesus said: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Jesus is teaching about deliverance; and He brings out several things.

1.) Deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom. So, it’s the kingdom of heaven coming into the Earth. It’s the authority of Jesus establishing itself in someone’s life. It’s an advancement of God’s kingdom, by overthrowing the demonic kingdoms. So, deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. Jesus said to pray for the kingdom to come. So, when you are doing deliverance, it is really kingdoms in conflict. It is a superior kingdom, and King, displacing an inferior one.

2.) Secondly, the power to make this happen is the Spirit of God. You can’t do this work except by the Spirit of God. It requires the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit; and for that to happen, it requires a person to exercise faith. So, one of the things I want to do with you, is to share about working with the Holy Spirit; because deliverance is not about methods. It’s helpful to have a process, or a way of approaching deliverance, but we should not depend on it. We should depend on the Holy Spirit to help us. You can’t do the deliverance work without the Holy Spirit, so your own relationship with the Holy Spirit is vital. “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out the demons”, so the power that you need working through you, is the anointing of the Holy Spirit; and that comes by faith. We need to learn how to listen to, and respond to, and work with, the Holy Spirit. So, constantly in your ministry, you need to be listening to the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk a little more about that later on.

3.) You notice the next thing He teaches here, “If I cast out demons”. So, deliverance requires a person to confront the spirit. You can’t just pray for God to do it. You yourself need to confront the spirit. “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. So, we see now, in the dynamic of doing deliverance, it requires the person to work with the Holy Spirit, to exercise faith, speak and directly confront the demon; and when the Spirit of God works with them, then the kingdom of God becomes established. So, when we’re doing deliverance, we need to be sensitive to, and working with, the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk a little more about that in another session. We’re just giving some foundations now.

Now, look over to verse 43-45, Jesus said: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, but finds none. Then he says: ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Notice some things that Jesus speaks here. What He is sharing is extremely important, because He’s helping us to understand the invisible spirit world; and He also identifies a problem with deliverance. The issue that He identifies is the one we want to focus on: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through the dry places”, or: “he walks through dry places”. Jesus is describing what happens after the person is delivered; and this is of concern for you as a small group leader or a cell group leader: what happens to the person after they’ve been set free. We need to understand that there’s a spiritual dynamic happens after deliverance; and the problem is: so many people focus on doing deliverance, that they miss the bigger picture.

Casting out the demons is only a part of the work; our main work is to disciple people to follow Christ. Deliverance is about removing the spiritual forces that hinder the person; but we have to do more than just remove the demon, and here’s why. Jesus said: “When the unclean spirit goes out of a man”. So, in other words, after deliverance, the spirit is forced out of the person. The question is raised, well what happens to the demon?

Firstly, we notice that it walks. Demons are low-level spiritual beings. They’re quite limited and confined in their activities. When someone exercises deliverance, the demons are literally forced out. Then, they walk through dry places, or in other words: they move to where there is no anointing of the Holy Spirit. They rapidly exit; but they seek rest. Evil spirits constantly seek somewhere to live. They seek a dwelling place. They’re not looking to lie down; they want to gain access to some place they feel at home in. So, the demon is looking for another spiritual home. Evil spirits constantly seek to find a person to get into, so they can express their nature - that is their goal. They want to enter; and then once they’ve entered, to increase their hold and destruction in the person’s life.

You notice it’s seeking someone to get into. When it can’t find someone to get into, it plans to return. You notice an evil spirit has personality. It’s a spirit being, with a mind to think, and an ability to make decisions. It has the ability to speak and communicate. So it’s an invisible spirit being, with an ability to think, to plan, to speak. It’s like you’re dealing with a hostile spirit being. Notice what he says: I will return to my house, out of which I’ve come. The spirit can remember the person they came out of; and the demon is a legalist – notice what he says – ‘my house’. He claims the person, to have a right to enter them - so evil spirits look for a legal right to establish entry to a person. We’ll come back to that and develop that shortly.

So, the demon looks at this man, and said: “This is my house.” Now, the Bible tells us that: our body is the temple of the Spirit. We are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we belong to Him. So your body is the house you live in; and you invite the Holy Spirit to come in. So your house becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. Evil spirits look at people and say: ‘that’s my house.’ In other words, they claim legal grounds to enter.

Notice what it says: “When he comes, he finds it swept and put in order”. So, an evil spirit can locate the person they came out of. You can imagine from the realm of the spirit, that they can identify people. If I cast a demon out of him, and the demon moves a long way, it remembers who it came out of, and can relocate him again.

You say, ‘well, why can’t we just cast him into hell?’ There’s absolutely no scripture that indicates we are able to do that. In fact, there are many demons that are bound in hell, and they will be released in the last days. The Bible also tells us, that at the end time, Jesus will confine the demons into hell. Until then, they are Earth-bound spirits that look for people to gain access and destroy.

Notice the next thing: the demon can assess your spiritual condition. He finds it empty, swept, put in order. The word ‘empty’ means on holiday, loitering, not productive. The word ‘ordered’ means literally, to look good on the outside. Here’s a disturbing thing to realise: when we look at people, we only see the house they live in. It’s like a veil that covers the person. The Bible tells us that he is a spirit being, with a soul, living in this house.

So, the spirit sees us differently. When we look at a person, we just see the outside; when a demon looks at the person, he sees the inner man. When we look at a person, the body seems solid; when a demon looks at a person, this is just water vapour, and he sees the real person inside - and your spiritual condition is visible! From the spirit-world point of view, the real man is visible; and the evil spirit can assess the person’s condition.

I was doing deliverance one time, and I had a man come with me. It was quite a difficult deliverance, and the demon manifested strongly, and began to threaten me. I stood up against it, and then it did an unusual thing. The man turned or backed away from me, and he turned and looked at the man who’d come with me; and I saw him look, and then he laughed; and then he began to talk about the things happening in this man’s life. He uncovered what he could see! The man got very embarrassed, went very red in the face; and I said: “You’re not able to do this ministry. You haven’t established your authority properly.”

It was quite a shock for me to realise that the demon could recognise the person’s condition. If we’re going to maintain deliverance, and move the person into freedom, we must ensure that the root issues are dealt with, and the demon has no grounds to re-enter.

You notice it says in verse 45: “He goes and brings with him seven other spirits more wicked, they enter in, and the man’s state is worse than when he began.” In other words, evil spirits can communicate with one another, and they work together to increase the bondage in the person’s life.

So, here is a conclusion we reach, when we look at that passage: it’s not enough just to cast the demon out; we must deal with the root issues in the person’s life, and they must become established in their walk with God. In other words, they can’t remain just passive, idle; they need to be now active in their spiritual life.

There’s an interesting scripture, where Jesus poses a question; and it says in Ephesians 4:28 – “Let him who stole, steal no longer; but rather let him labour, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.” So, this is what Jesus is saying: it’s not enough for the thief to stop stealing; he needs to have a change, where he becomes willing to work, and to give. “Let him that stole, stop stealing; rather, work and give.” You notice for the thief, his freedom comes not when he stops stealing; but when he’s giving. Stop lying; but rather, speak the truth and love to one another.

So, it’s not enough to just deal with or confront the negative, the person must move their life to starting to embrace kingdom life. Another way of putting it: there’s no neutral position. We know we’ve passed from death to life, when we love. A clear teaching in this is: once we’ve cast the demons out, the person needs to be established so they’re walking with the Holy Spirit - that there’s real change in their life.

Let’s have a look in Luke 11, and Jesus is again talking about deliverance. Luke 11:20 – “But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Now, notice what he says in verse 21-22: “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armour in which he trusted, and divides his spoils.”

So, in this, the context is deliverance. Jesus identifies some things: 1.) A strong man. 2.) Armour. He says : if you want a person to be free, remove the armour. The strong man is a demonic spirit, who prevails over an area of a person’s life. It could be, for example, a stronghold of rejection. The person’s life is dominated by feelings and thoughts of rejection. At some point in their life, a stronghold was established. A stronghold is a mind-set. It’s a way of thinking, and it’s resistant to truth. So, when a person, for example, has got a deep root of rejection in their life, it is a stronghold. It’s a way of thinking about life; and every interaction with life, the person interprets it through the stronghold.

I’ll give you an example – suppose two people are standing talking, and the pastor walks into the church. He’s very busy, preoccupied, thinking about the next thing he must do. The two people say – “Hello pastor”; but he doesn’t hear them, and he just carries on. One of them thinks: “Oh, he’s busy, I’ll catch him later.” The other one thinks: “He doesn’t like me. This man doesn’t like me. I knew it! He doesn’t like me. He’s got something against me.” All through the service, they’re all stewed-up. The more they think about it, the angrier they get; and the whole worship service is ruined for them, because they can’t get it out of their mind – “the pastor rejected me today.”

Now, you notice that both men had the same experience, but each interpreted their experience differently. One had no root of rejection – “He obviously didn’t hear me, he’s busy. It’s ok, I’ll catch him again.” The other one – “He didn’t want to hear me.” The other one, same experience, but when you ask the question: “what does that mean?”, “It means he doesn’t like me. I knew he didn’t like me!” So, the person’s emotions get stirred up, the stronghold gets stirred up; and the demon constantly torments them.

What Jesus is saying, is that the spirit of rejection is the “strong man” exerting influence on his life. The “armour” is what conceals him, or protects him from being cast out. The armour is the root systems of bondage in the person’s life. The key way that demons gain access, is through deception. The person believes the lie, and the demon hides behind the lie.

So, if the person has a root of rejection, there may be a spirit of rejection, but there’s also a lie; and there’s also some emotional pain; and there may be some experience they had where it has come in. What Jesus essentially is saying is this: remove the structures that the demon lives in, and you can easily get it out. Remove the armour, or the defence system of the demon, and it’s easy to deal with it.

So in our ministry, we should not just focus on casting the demon out; but work with the person to find out the structures that the demon lives in. Remove the demonic house, and there’s nowhere for the demon to take hold. Remove the demonic house, and there’s nowhere for the demon to grip on, and so it has no place to come back in again. So, if you cast out a demon of rejection, but the person still believes the lie (I’m unloved and unwanted), then after a few negative experiences, soon the demon will come back in again. So, deliverance is not just casting out demons; it involves us ministering to the person, and dealing with the strongholds that allow the demon to sit there.

To do that, we need to identify what they are, and how they work. So, in ministering to people, we want to find out what are some of the structures the demon used, to occupy and hold them in bondage. That raises the question then: “how do demons gain entrance to people’s lives?” Now different deliverance ministries approach this in different ways. Some don’t even look at the root systems, but I think this is a mistake, because once the demon has gone out, it will come back in again. So, different ministries have different ways of looking at it; but in the end, it will come down to the same things.

So, number one group is legal rights. Legal rights mean sin. I’ll just list these 3 things, and then we’ll come back to them later. 1.) Legal rights. A legal right means the demon has a right, under spiritual law, to occupy the person. It has authority to be able to go there; and that authority has been given to them because the person sinned. For example, in Ephesians 4:27 “Give no door or room for the devil. Give no foothold to the demon.” The word ‘door’ or ‘foothold’ is the Greek word ‘topos’ meaning: a legal ground. So, don’t give a legal ground for an evil spirit to enter. We’ll explain what some of those are later. A major door that demons use, are legal rights.

When we walk in God’s order or guidelines, or when we walk in the law of God, we live under blessing. When we break the law of God, there are consequences. We reap what we’ve sown, and demonic spirits have legal right to access. A little later we’ll demonstrate that Jesus, at the cross, dealt with legal rights; and when you are ministering to people, you need to deal with the legal rights, and remove all grounds for the demon to be there - it’s quite simple to do.

A second major doorway is the area of traumatic experiences - trauma, or traumatic experiences. A trauma is an emotionally painful or shocking experience. It could be an accident, it could be a frightening experience, or it could be a long period of stress. So, a trauma has an emotional and physical impact in a person’s life; and demons use it to ride into the person’s life. Sometimes when you are trying to help a person, you’ll find there’s a traumatic experience with pictures and memories, and the demon is locked in on that.

Then a third major area is personal reactions to trauma and pain. When a person is hurt, they usually react, and try to control the pain. They try to control their life; and in attempting to control their life, often they create legal grounds for demons to come in.

So my experience in working with people indicates that all of these are connected. Legal rights, trauma, reactions. When we’re working with a person, working with a problem in their life, we need to be thinking of: the legal rights; the traumatic experiences; and the internal reactions. We’ll talk a bit more about these, and then I’ll give you a step-by-step way you’d look at a person’s problem, to try and analyse what the issues are.

Now, when demons get into a person, they create a number of problems inside them; and they tend to affect different areas of a person’s life. These are the areas that get affected:

1.) They may experience spiritual manifestations. So, if a person has got, for example, bad dreams, tormenting nightmares, spiritual manifestations that are obviously wrong, you know it’s occultic, or there’s a spiritual root.

2.) Evil spirits also affect the mind, the thought life, with thoughts that keep prevailing.

3.) Evil spirits affect the emotions, with emotions that rise up, that can’t seem to be managed.

4.) Evil spirits affect the body, with sicknesses that don’t seem to be able to respond.

5.) Evil spirits affect a person’s life, with cycles or patterns of failure.

Now, how does this work in a person’s life? I want to just explain, and help you understand the dynamic of it. We’ll just look at just a few scriptures; and we’ll start off first of all with Ephesians 3:20. The working or operation of demonic spirits in strongholds creates energy inside people; but the Holy Spirit also creates energy in us.

Let me just give an example – here’s an example. When a person gets angry, you feel angry. It’s like this enormous energy inside you; and it’s a negative energy. When a person is depressed, they feel this pressure and energy around their life which is quite negative. When a person is being tempted to sexual sin, they feel this passion of energy inside them. I want to show you just two sides of the coin here.

The first one, we find in Ephesians 2:1-2. It says: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience”. Notice what it says here – spirits work in people. The word ‘work’ is the greek word ‘energaio’, from which we get the word ‘energise’. So, when a demonic spirit is inside a person, it releases strong negative energy into them; strong spiritual pressure. Demonic spirits release a strong energy into people. It pressures them. It pushes on them; pushes on their mind, pushes on their emotions, pushes on their will. So, when a demonic spirit is operating, there’s literally a flow of energy.

Now, have a look in Romans 7:5 – “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.” Notice how it says ‘something at work inside us’. Sin works in people. The word ‘work’ means ‘energise’. So, evil spirits energise people. Bring pressure, negative energy into their life; but sin also does the same thing. So, sin, when sin is working in a person, it creates negative energy in them. You notice, in trying to describe the spiritual effect of sin and demons, it uses the word ‘energise’.

When demons are operating, or sin is operating, the person experiences strong pressure and energy flow inside them that’s very negative. You can’t overcome it by willpower, because it’s a spiritual energy. Sin releases spiritual energy in us. It’s something living inside a person. It’s something that works in you, constantly demanding more and more. Demonic spirits release negative energy, it works in people. When a person is under the influence of sin, and demonic spirits, there’s this massive spiritual energy pressuring their life. So, if we’re going to deal with the demonic, we need to remove the sin, and remove all of that negative energy.

Now, look back in Ephesians 3 again, and we’ll read down to verse 20 – “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us”. Now its saying: for a believer, there is a power also, that works in us for good. It’s the same word – ‘energise’. The power that works in us is the power of the Holy Ghost. In other words, one work of the Holy Spirit is: to energise our life; to impart in us strength to overcome.

Notice what Paul’s prayer is, in verse 16 – “to be strengthened with might in the inner man through His Spirit”. So, it must be possible there, for us to be strengthened with might, in the inner man, by the Holy Ghost. The word ‘strength’ means: ‘greatly increase in vigour’. Strengthen with might - that’s the word ‘dunamis’ – ‘miracle power’. So, what he’s saying in here is this: that even though sin creates negative energy that leads to isolation from God; and even though demons create negative energy; we have something else that energises us for good! It’s the power of the Holy Spirit! So the Spirit of God can energise us, to get great victory over any area in our life.

Look what it says in 1 Thessalonians 2, we read in verse 13: “For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.” There’s that word again – ‘work’. The word of God can energise your life! The word of God can greatly energise your life. We see now, that there are sources of negative energy – sin and demonic spirits; and there are sources of energy for victory – it’s the power of the Holy Spirit and the word of God.

So if I’m going to help someone come into freedom, I need to remove the sources of negative energy, deal with the issues of sin and the trauma, remove the demonic spirits; but willpower alone is not enough to walk in victory. It’s not enough just to exercise willpower. So often, what we tend to try and do, is we try to get people: “oh, stop doing that. Do this, do this, do this.”

What is needed is: the person needs to be energised with life. They need to know how to activate, and be strengthened, in their inner man; and they need to know how to be energised by the word of God. So whereas their lives were characterised by defeat; now their lives become characterised by the power of God, and the word of God. I always ask this kind of question: “How do you get the word of God to energise you?” The Bible says that’s what it does; but how can my life be energised by the word of God? How can my life be energised by the Holy Ghost?

So it’s not a matter of just dealing with the negatives; you want to bring people into life. Don’t think just of deliverance as: ‘we cast out the demon’. Think of it as: ‘we move them out of a place of negative life flow, into a place of life in God’. The casting out of the demon is just one part of that. In bringing the person into freedom, my goal is to uncover what is creating negative energy in it, and confront it; and then lead them into a life where the power of God is flowing, where they are energised with the life of God; and we want to know how to do that. How to identify and remove the roots; and then how to bring people into a place of life?

When people are in a place where they are energised by the Holy Spirit; this is what the Bible says: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ sets me free from the law of sin and death”. In other words, I need to be in a life flow in God; not just trying to cast my demons out. I need to transition out of being in bondage and darkness, and come into a place of life and strength. So, this is the process called discipleship – moving people into a place where their life is vibrant in God.

You’ll find when you’re working with people, usually they just want you to take away the pain, to fix them up; but our goal is to bring them into life in Christ. When there’s life in Christ, there’s a flow of the power of God.

[Student is invited to come forward for a prayer demonstration]

“Come, come.” We’ll just finish with this. “Look this way. I want you to just put your hand out, towards me. That’s right. Take my hand. I need someone behind her right now.” Now, God wants us to be able to bring his life to others. It should not be hard. It should be very easy. “You just close your eyes right now, and just in a moment the presence of God will come on you. Thank you Lord, for your presence coming right now, the Presence of God.”

In other words, don’t just try to fix a problem; bring them to the source of life. Don’t just try and get rid of demons, bring people into a place of life in Christ; and we’ll show you some ways of doing that.

“Just come. Come. Just take my hand. Close your eyes. Just open your heart to receive; and let the presence of God just touch you like that.” So, we believe for God’s presence to come. We’re called to carry the presence of God. So, have a vision for people carrying the presence of God, rather than living under demons. We’re often so negative in the way we think about things. So, we think – “oh, demons. Got to fix them up”; but think that people are made for God’s Spirit. So, we want them to be carriers of the presence of God; to have a life that God fills. So where before they were under demonic influence, now they’re under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The presence of God is touching them.

“Come. Close your eyes. Holy Spirit come on her; come on her right now; and we can just open ourselves to the presence of God.” I always want to know how does this happen? How do you build then, a life that God lives strongly in? It can’t be hard, it must be easy. I want to help you in that part of it as well. So, what are the things we look for that we need to confront? How do we deal with them? How do we begin to build people’s life in God, so they move from being demonised to being filled in Spirit and power?

If you only think of deliverance as casting out the demons, you’ll be happy to chase the demons; but if we think that God’s heart is concerned about getting people filled with the Spirit, then our desire is not just to confront the demons. It’s to move people in their life in what they experience. Amen.

Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8)  

Tue 10 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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Explore the different doors of entry into a person’s life, from generational curses to inner vows. We get freedom through the Power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus has won on the Cross for us. He won the total victory, which was utterly complete, covering all intentional and un-intentional sin. As you open your heart, and take ownership for your sin, rather than blame others, and then repent and release forgiveness, healing and freedom will flow into our lives.

We want to look now at some of the doors of entry for evil spirits; common ways that spirits enter people; and what to do about dealing with them. If we just try to confront spirits, and we don’t deal with the root issues, you’ll find that it’s very difficult to get them free, and then they tend not to stay free. So, we want to look then at just some of the ways that spirits would enter a person’s life. Some of these, you will be aware of; there may be some new ones. We’ll look at each one, and then look at what you would need to do to deal with that specific issue.

We looked at three main areas: 1.) Legal rights – we’re going to look at legal rights. So, we want to understand: what does this mean; what are some examples of doorways that spirits use; and then how do we demolish that legal right.

Before I go into the list of that, I want to look at what Jesus did for us on the cross. We’re just going to look at 3 areas of scripture, and we’ll see the extent of Jesus’ work on the cross, and realise that He addressed every area that we need to deal with. Then, when we look at each specific area of ministry, we will look at how you would address the problem. Before we go to the doorways, we’re looking at foundations for freedom.

First of all, we look in Colossians 2:13-15: “ And you, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”

We see here what Jesus has done on the cross. It says: He forgave us ALL our trespasses. A trespass is an intentional breaking the law of God. So, Jesus has forgiven ALL our trespasses; and it says: “He wiped out the list of requirements against us, contrary to us, took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” Jesus completely removed something that was written against us. In other words, every law of God that you broke - whether you knew it or didn’t know it, every possible violation of God’s law that has been listed and recorded against you. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand that everything is recorded.

In the Old Testament, deliberate breaking of the law had an offering required. Also, if we sin through ignorance, there was still an offering required. Can you imagine someone and they’re watching your life; and the angel has a big role in recording every breaking of the law. For some of you, he’s writing very fast, it’s a very big roll! It’s a hard-working angel writing down all these things. The Bible says: Jesus took the whole roll. It says: He took it to the cross.

So, everything the devil could say to you: ‘Hey, you did this. Oh, you did that’. Every kind of accusation he could make, he just points to the scroll – “See. On this day, at this time you did this.” Every possible error, mistake you’ve made. Jesus took it all to the cross. Notice what it says: when He took it to the cross, He forgave all the trespasses. Forgive means: release the debt. The devil says: you sinned, you must pay. Jesus took it to the cross - release! Every person released!

Then it says: “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them”. So, when Jesus took our sin to the cross, He’s removing the weapons the devil has against you. He’s removing, and taking away, all his weapons. We see in Colossians 2 - every possible sin, every possible legal right the devil has for you, Jesus took it to the cross, shed His blood, in order that that can be broken.

Remember we saw the scripture in Luke 11 – “Remove the armour. Remove the sin.” We must confront the sin issues. God has a remedy for sin. If you say: “Oh, it’s just my weakness, you know.” Oh, ok - it’s not sin then, it’s not going to go to the cross. However, if we acknowledge sin, we bring it to the cross. 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We notice what Jesus has done. At the cross He took all our trespasses. So, if a person is demonised, and the cause is sin - take the sin to the cross. People just want you to pray for them. We must bring the truth to them, and point them to God’s solution.

The second scripture’s found in Galatians 3:13-14 – “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” You notice now that the issue of curses are addressed. These two verses talks about blessings and cursings.

Let’s have a look at blessing. “The blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ, we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. A blessing are: words spoken that bring power. Notice that blessing means: receiving the Holy Spirit. To be blessed, is to receive an impartation of the Holy Spirit, enables us to go forward in life. So, the blessed life is empowered by the Holy Spirit. A blessed life is living in the flow of God’s spirit.

It says in verse 13 – “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law”. Cursings are words spoken that have spiritual power behind them, spiritual power that’s destructive. The power behind a curse is an evil spirit. So, it says that Jesus became a curse for us. There is a little known verse in the Old Testament that says that everyone who goes to death on a tree is a cursed person. This was written hundreds of years before the Romans invented crucifixion. So, when the Romans put Jesus to death by crucifixion, the very method of death that they chose meant all curses of humanity fell on Him – all generational curses, the curses of God’s laws being broken, all the curses of Deuteronomy 27, all of those curses were broken at the cross. Christ redeemed us. In other words, He paid the full price. It is a legal price. He paid the price to ransom us away from the captor.

So, when you are dealing with people, if there’re cursings resting on their life, whether they are generational or other kinds of cursing, the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary is the remedy. We must bring curses to the cross, where their power is broken. So, every time you face someone who has a cursing around their life, there is a process of bringing that cursing to the cross, where its power is broken, and release of the Holy Spirit and blessing comes. When we are ministering in the area of cursings, we would expect deliverance from evil spirits, and a release of the presence of the Holy Spirit. We’ll show you what to do with those a little later.

Let’s have a look at Isaiah 53. These are good scriptures to know and to memorise. There is a legal ground for us to be set free. If evil spirits use legal grounds to enter us, then God removes the legal grounds to free us. So, when you are ministering to someone, remove the legal grounds; and the evil spirit has no room to remain there. Let’s have a look in Isaiah 53:3, and I want you to notice as we read these 3 verses, I want you to read the scope of Jesus’ work on the cross.

“He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Here it is – “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. Grief means to be weak, sick, diseased, to be afflicted. Sorrow means mental and emotional pain. So, He bore our griefs and our sorrows. Verse 5 – “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities”. Transgression is an intentional breaking of God’s law. Iniquity is the crookedness inside us that bends us towards sin. Iniquity is the twist towards sin. So, He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity. “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

So, we see here, in the 3 scriptures we’ve read, at the cross, Jesus dealt with our sins and transgressions. He dealt with all curses that are against us, He dealt with our griefs and sorrows, our traumas and painful experiences we’ve had, and He dealt with our iniquities, the crookedness in us that leads us away from God. So, Jesus made full reconciliation for us.

Our part is then: how do we apply this? You remember in the Old Testament they had to apply the blood. It wasn’t enough that the blood was shed; the blood had to be applied (to the door). So, always, we have to apply what God has done. In other words, there’s a faith action people must take, to apply the work of Christ to their life. So, when you are working with people, there is a part you play; and a part they play. They have a part in their own freedom.

For example, when you consider salvation - Jesus died on the cross for people to be saved, for every person to be saved. So legally, every person can be saved; but for salvation to manifest in their life, there’s something they must do - they must repent and believe. So, there’s always something people must do, to position themselves for God to work. Our role is to work with people to bring them to a place where they apply what Jesus has done to their life - first to get free; second to stay free. They need to apply what God has done for them. It requires faith. So, there’s always the foundation you must lay in a person’s life for them to be free.

I found the most common reasons people are not freed, or don’t stay free, is that the roots have never been pulled out of their life, or the person hasn’t cooperated in the process. So, we will now look then at the foundations for freedom; and we looked at what Jesus has done. However, every person also has a part to play. They have something that they must do.

I will give you a list of the things that people must do. Number 1, a person must recognise and take responsibility for their life and their failures. It’s very common for people to want to blame someone. It’s common for people to want to make excuses; but a core part of a person getting set free, is taking responsibility for their own sin, and their own failure.

For example, in Proverbs 28:13 – “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” So, if we conceal our responsibility for our life - usually people do that by blaming someone else, or minimising it, or just denying there’s a problem. So, if we deny or minimise or blame someone else, this is frustrating the work of God to set them free. If you’re working with someone, and they won’t own up and take responsibility, you can’t go any further. If a person doesn’t recognise what their part in this is, they won’t actually get free. I find this very common; the biggest challenge is to help people see the truth, because often people cover it or bury it or pretend it isn’t as bad as it seems.

I had one woman I was praying for recently, and she was struggling because she could not get pregnant. She wanted a family, and I talked with her and listened to her story. I said to her: “You have a family already. You have 4 children, but you took the life of each of your children. The children are in heaven now. They’re real people. They have a name. What you have done, is created the problem you have now, where you can’t conceive.” So, it was quite difficult for her to come to face the reality, that her inability to have children now, is because she’d had 4 abortions.

I said: “If we’re going to pray for you to be healed and have children, you have to face the reason why you’re in this condition. You have 4 children in heaven, whose lives were cut short by your hand; and Jesus knows them all. You need to come to Him, He has forgiven you, you need to reach out to Him and receive that forgiveness. Then, we can pray for you, that the results of the sin can be healed.” She preferred to be healed without dealing with the reason why she was like this. So, I said “You need to come to forgiveness, first of all, and to acknowledge the children you have, and what you did.” So, God touched her very deeply, and she named each of her children. So, the first challenge in working with people is to find out what the roots of the problem, and bring people to the place of recognising and being responsible.

You’ll see this in 2 Timothy 2. It says in 2 Timothy 2:24 – “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.” You notice in this verse, you see a person who is taken captive. In other words, there’s someone who has gotten influence over their life, and they’re acting against their will, they’re doing things according to what the devil wants them to do. There’s a need to get out of that snare, or out of that trap.

You notice that the key to getting out is the person has a truth encounter. You share with them the truth. If they acknowledge the truth and come to repentance, then they can escape the snare of the devil. Notice it says in verse 26 “they may come to their senses”. The word literally means “to sober up again”. So, when you share the truth with the person, often there’s a conflict for the person to come to admit that’s what’s happened; that’s when they can come free. As you are working with people, you may find that there’s almost like a conflict going on, like confusion in their mind, until they acknowledge the truth. You notice that acknowledging the truth and repenting, precedes getting out of the snare.

In our process of working with people, we will ask questions to diagnose the problem, present people with the truth, and then show them the journey out of their problem; then confront them with power. Does it make sense? We spend time asking the questions, diagnose the problem to its roots, and help them see the truth. If they’ll acknowledge the truth, and come to the place of repentance, you can set them free. If they don’t acknowledge the truth, or are unwilling to repent, they don’t get free; or if you get them free, they don’t stay free. So, always in our ministry, it’s a ministry of the truth, and then the power.

As I was talking with this woman, and she was a leader of some years, she was very distressed at not being able to have a child. When I said ‘You have 4 children’, you could almost feel like this fog of confusion around her. I had to be quite slow and clear in trying to help her see the truth, because she had believed a lie: this is just something I got rid of, it’s solved a problem in my life; but I had to get her to understand ‘Actually, you have 4 children. They live in heaven’. The reason you have the problem, is because you’ve taken their lives. Of course, she had all the reasons why she had to do this, and how she buried all of the pain related to it.

I said: “We can’t proceed for freedom, until you face the reality. This is what the Bible says about this situation.” You could feel the confusion around her mind, and then suddenly you could see it come clear, and she realised what she’d done. Then, she began to grieve over what she had done; and then we’re in a place to pray and minister to her, because she’d acknowledged the truth and come to a place of repentance. So, always in our ministry, it follows kind of like a process of diagnosing the problem, find the roots, and bring the person to be responsible for what they’ve done. At first she was very bitterly blaming people. I said to her: “While you blame people, you remain a victim. You can’t be free, if you blame someone else. If you blame someone else, then you are giving them the power for the situation. If you take responsibility, you are now becoming empowered.”

So, the first area that you will strike or work with people is, they must recognise and be responsible for their sin. Once a person has recognised and taken ownership, then something can happen. I had one woman that I prayed for, well I was going to pray for, I was asked to pray for her; and she said: “I’ve got this man who wants to marry me. What should I do?” That’s always a trick question! So I said: “Tell me about your situation.” She said: “Oh, well I was going with him for quite a while, about 3 or 4 years, and then we broke up. I went with another man, I had a child to him and now we’re broken up too. So, now this man wants to marry me.” I said: “Can you tell me why you broke up?” She said: “He was unfaithful to me 3 times.” I said: “Sounds like a good reason to break up. Maybe after number 1 would be better. Is he a Christian?” “No he’s not a Christian.”

I said: “I don’t think we should keep talking. The answer’s very obvious. He’s been unfaithful 3 times, he’s had no change in his heart - he’s going to keep doing the same.” But I could tell she wasn’t listening, because what she wanted is to marry this man. I said: “By the way, tell me about your own family. Tell me about your father.” “Oh, I don’t see my father.” “Why is that?” “Well, our family broke up when I was 13; and he lives somewhere else now.” I said: “Out of interest, why did it break up?” “Oh, he was unfaithful.” “Just out of interest, how many times?” “Oh, 3 times.”

Now, it was quite unusual that that came out like that. I said: “You have bitter roots against your father, and judgements against him, you have never dealt with. This is why you are attracted to the same kind of man, and are blind to what he’s really like. So, this relationship is a disaster. You need to deal with the bitter roots in your heart against your father.” To my surprise, she said that she couldn’t see it. Actually, she didn’t want to see it. She just wanted to marry this man. So, I said: “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. You won’t face the truth, that you have deep bitterness and demonic spirits inside you.”

So, when working with people, the first part is the diagnosis and establishing what the problems are. Help the person to see their part in it. Then there are some steps out of it.

1.) Recognise and take responsibility.

2.) Repentance and confession of sin. It’s crucial if a person’s to come free, that the sin issue is dealt with. If sin creates the legal rights, sin has to be removed; and it’s removed by repentance and confession. 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So, we need to deal with sin. People need to repent and deal with this issue of sin. Repent means turning away from it. Sin leads to death. Turning away from it leads to life. Many times, if you find deliverance difficult, it’s because the person has not really repented.

3.) The person must release forgiveness. Mark 11:25 – “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him; that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” Forgiveness is another major reason why people are not free.

Unforgiveness keeps the person’s soul bound to the demonic spirits, and whatever’s been done against them. When a person is holding unforgiveness, they usually have resentment and anger in their heart because some injustice has been done, something’s been taken from them. It may be real or it may be imagined, but unforgiveness is a debt they must pay. It’s a demand: you owe me! It could be against a father – you broke up our family, I’ve suffered these years - you owe me. So, it’s a demand that there be a repayment of some kind.

Forgiveness is: we’re letting go of that demand. “I release you. You don’t have to say sorry. You don’t have to pay me back. You don’t have to do anything. I have let go my demand.” So, if we’re going to get people set free, we need to understand the importance of forgiveness. In Matthew 18:34-35, Jesus said: “If you do not forgive every person, his brother, from their heart, then you’ll be delivered to tormentors.” In other words, evil spirits have a legal right; they can access your life, if unforgiveness remains in your heart.

Now, I have found increasingly, this is a problem. It’s not enough just to tell the person – “Hey, you need to forgive.” The person must let go from the heart. It has to be a heart decision: to move from death to life. “I let go the unforgiveness, I release forgiveness, and I’m willing to bless the person.” Jesus said: “Bless those who curse you, forgive those who despitefully use you. Pray for them.” So, forgiveness is letting go and blessing. So, I have found, rather than just mechanically say: “You have to forgive”; and then the person prays a prayer, but their heart isn’t in it - they generally don’t get free. Forgiveness is a decision. It is a choice; but it needs to involve the heart. It needs to be a heartfelt letting go.

So I found often, people pray a simple prayer to forgive, but in their heart they have not let go, because they’ve buried the hurt and buried the anger. So, if you’re working with people, I’ve found this is a helpful approach. Sometimes you may be aware a person’s been deeply hurt by someone. Now, let me help you understand this.

If Jonathan comes to me saying: “Pastor Mike, can you forgive me. I’ve caused some damage. Will you forgive me?” I say: “Yeah. Yeah. No problem.” Now, the question is, he didn’t tell me what he did; and I didn’t ask. Was this a dollar; or was this a million dollars? How much have I been affected by what he did? If it’s a dollar, I say “Hey, nothing.” If it’s a million dollars... “Ahh. You ruined my life! All these years I save and you’ve taken it all away! You want me to forgive you?! I’m so angry.”

You notice now, there’s a difference - I have got connected to my loss. Now when I forgive, I understand what I’m letting go. Many times when people forgive, they just say a prayer from the head, but the heart isn’t really in it. So it helps, when you’re working with people, to address the pain of the heart. What did this person do? How did it affect you? How do you feel about this? Now, a lot of people just deny how they really feel. It’s very common in Asia. They endure, with a knife in the heart; but bitter, very bitter inside. When people are bitter, it shows up – sharp words, the bitterness flows like a river, and it defiles.

So sometimes before I pray for a person for deliverance, I get them to talk or to write, how this thing has affected them. How do you feel about this? Are you angry? How angry are you? Because often people have pushed it down; and I found it very helpful, I just interact with the person through questions, because the moment the person acknowledges the feelings, they start to connect with the heart. When you think about this person, what do you feel? “Oh, I don’t think about them at all!” Yeah, because you want to avoid! But when you think, what do you feel? Afraid, angry, hurt. So, let the person bring these things out.

Sometimes I get people to write an “anger letter”. It’s never to be seen by anyone but them and God. It’s to take out of the heart, and put the feelings in front of themselves. Sometimes with the father, sometimes with the mother, sometimes with other people; I tell them: “When you write the letter, write the good things first. Then start to say a bit... because if they don’t write the good things first, they’ll go through this process. They start to talk about the bad – “oh he’s so mean to me”. “Oh but he wasn’t that bad”. “Oh, I feel so angry about this.” “Oh, but he wasn’t that bad. He was kind.” So they can’t connect with the heart.

If the issue is with your father, write down all the good things, and say ‘thank you for the good things’. Then, write down the things that have caused hurt and pain; and write how you feel, and allow the feelings to come out, and then grieve over them and weep over them. Now release forgiveness - you know what it is you’re letting go of. “I release them, I forgive them, I bless them.” Forgiveness is very important for being free. God calls me, not to live in this place that demands on people, but to live in a place of blessing on people.

So sometimes I’ll just stop ministry, and get the person to journey through the process of facing their feelings, and expressing them, and forgiving - especially if the person has been abused or traumatised. So release forgiveness. “I forgive them, I bless them.” I encourage a person, if this has been a deep longstanding pain with a family member, for the next 3 weeks or so, each time you worship God, think about that person, put your arms around them and bless them and pray for them; because you can’t do that, and have anger and hurt in your heart. These are foundations for people to get free. Failure to recognise sin stops the whole process. Failure to repent of sin stops the process. Failure to forgive stops the process.

The next thing is that people need to renounce or cancel bondages in their life. I’ll explain what these are, and how you do it. Bondage can be as simple as a generational curse. It could be an inner vow a person made. Like for example, I was praying with a person recently, and she was trying to get pregnant. As I spoke with her, I asked her: “Have you been pregnant before?” She said: “Yes. We have one child; and I want another child, but I’ve had 3 miscarriages.” I said: “Tell me about the first child, and the process of pregnancy.” It was extremely painful, extremely difficult for her. I said: “Did you ever make an inner vow – I will never have another child again.” She said: “Yes I did.” I said: “That’s what’s happening. Your body is reacting. It is rejecting each new child. You’ve made an inner vow – I will never have another child. You need to renounce and break that curse over your life.”

So I’ll identify the specific things to renounce shortly. There it is: Recognise; take responsibility; repent and confess sin; release forgiveness; renounce any bondages, speak words to cancel them; and then reach out for God to set you free. So, we see now, the foundations for freedom. Notice the last one I had – you reach out to Jesus to set you free, because otherwise, people make an idol out of you in ministry. They want you to fix them up. They put the responsibility on you, rather than being responsible to reach Jesus for the help.

[Demonstration and Exercises]

I’ll just show you what I mean. I’ll just demonstrate something with you. I just need one volunteer. Just please stand here. Can I take your hand? So when it comes to ministering to people, if the person looks to you, to come-through for them, there is a pressure that comes from them. You are under pressure to perform. You’re under pressure to do something; and pressure from people can lead to quite strong witchcraft. Jesus never allowed Himself to be pressured by people over ministry. He always did what He saw the Father doing, or was moved with compassion.

I have found a very simple thing you can do. It’s something like this: “I want you to close your eyes now, and I want you to look towards Jesus. From within, look towards Him, expecting for Him to touch you.” Now, I’ve directed her attention away from me. So immediately, pressure comes off. I’ve directed her towards the Lord, expecting to receive; and even as she does that, the presence of God will start to come on her. There’s a flow of God’s presence. Now, if I was to do the same thing, not focus on her, or trying to fix her, I just set my attention, focus my attention on Jesus, the source. His presence starts to come, and she starts to feel the anointing come on. Ministry flow needs to be Holy-Spirit-directed. So, we work with the person’s heart, to open up to the Holy Spirit; and then we listen for him [Whoosh] and it’s very easy to minister his power.

So, always turn the person towards Jesus for their help, because people tend to want you to fix them; which makes them a victim, and you’re the rescuer. That’s not empowering, because here’s what happens: if I’m the victim, and you have to rescue me, then if I don’t get free, it’s your fault. ‘I need someone more anointed. I come for someone more anointed.’ Same thing, “you have to get me free. It’s your responsibility”. See, I’m still thinking like a victim, rather than being empowered; but if it’s my decision to receive and respond in faith, then my faith will release the power of God.

“Just come stand. Just come and stand there. Can I take your hand? Close your eyes and just in your heart, look up to the Lord; and as you look up to the Lord, the presence of God will come on you.” See? Just like that. Now, ministry should flow out of rest. You notice, I really didn’t do a lot. I just directed him to the answer, and He could feel the presence of God come on him. So, I have noticed in ministry, it’s the anointing that flows from within us, the energising power of the Holy Spirit; and there’s an anointing that rests on people when they open their heart to the Lord. I can release the power of God very strongly, because we’ve created an environment for ministry.

So, don’t think about having to perform, and fix people. When you think: “I’ve got to fix you up”, then you are the rescuer, they are the victim; and you have to play Jesus to them, and if nothing happens, you’ll feel very bad. Next thing, you feel you’re the victim. “God, why are you not doing this?” That’s a problem - you all know that. So, it’s important that you get right alignment for power to flow. I always direct the person’s attention to the Lord, away from me, so we are working with the Holy Spirit to administer freedom; and you’ll find the flow of anointing comes much more easily.

“Ok. Come? You know you want to be prayed for. That’s right. So, just stand there. How’re you doing? Alright? Praise the Lord.” So, in working with the person now, I need to realise I cannot rescue her. I cannot fix her, and it’s not my job. It helps if you realise that. I’m here to represent Christ. I’m here to bring Christ to her; and help her come to Christ. So, my ministry is about bringing her to the one who can rescue her. So if I keep thinking “I’ve got to fix her”, I’m under pressure now to get the right answers. But if I’m just a minister, to bring God to her, and her to the Lord, I can just relax; and ministry always flows best when you are at rest inside. The dove doesn’t rest where there’s agitation. So, if you are at rest inside, the anointing flows easily. Ok.

So I’ll just take her hand, touch her like this. “Now, I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to look up to the Lord, just expecting Him to touch you, expecting His presence to come on you.” So, I’m in a place now, I’m just directing her towards the Lord. Now, I can just reach out to the Lord too. “Thank you Lord for Your presence.” So, when you’re reaching out to the Lord, what do you do? What I do is, I just begin to picture Him standing there; and He’s very close to me, and I just fix my eyes upon Him. Jesus said: “What I see the Father doing, that’s what I do.” So ministry flows easily that way. Connect the person to the Lord, you connect to the Lord, and then it’s like it just flows. [Whoosh] Holy Spirit just come. Very easy, and it’ll flow very easily.

Now, we haven’t gotten into deliverance yet; I just want to show you about positioning people for ministry. So when we’re preparing a person, we’re preparing their heart to reach out to Jesus for their miracle. You’re taking it away from: I fix you up; to: this is your problem, and I’m working with you to find God’s solution. Is that clear? Then that keeps a lot of pressure off you and it keeps everyone’s thinking right. It has something you’ll notice, that when the person’s heart is prepared and right, you literally can feel the Spirit of God come on them. When the person’s heart is not right, or there’s something missing, it’s like the Holy Spirit stays away. Notice that. Notice it.

“Just come. We’ll just see if we can do this over here. Can I take your hand? You don’t have to do anything. Just close your eyes. I want you to just open your heart to the Lord, like you’re opening up doors to let Him in.” What I’m looking for now, is just for the presence of God touching her. Every time I do this, I can feel how open a person is to the Lord. You can feel it, because you either feel the Spirit of God settle on them; or you feel like hesitancy, like a lack of flow. Now, the Spirit of God has started to settle on her now. She’s just relaxing now. So it becomes easy to minister.

Sometimes you feel like almost an invisible wall. You feel these things. You either feel a flow, or you feel resistance; and you’ve got to learn to notice those things. Notice the flow. Remember it says in John 7:38 – “Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” So the Spirit of God moves in flows. What I’ve done is given you some of the foundations of how you prepare the person; some things they do, and then your part is to work with the Holy Spirit, and direct the flow of ministry. Amen?

“Just come again. Ok. That’s right.” The flow, we’re looking at the flow. So I just take his hands, and see, I’m not trying to make anything happen. Just open your eyes and your heart up to the Lord; and I can literally feel the flow of power from heaven coming. Notice all I did was direct him to the source; and watch the flow come; and then I am open to the flow as well. That makes ministry a lot easier for you. Instead of trying to make things happen, become more sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit, sensitive to His flow. Sensitive to His moving, listening for Him all the time. Once you move in your thinking that way, instead of just trying to fix someone; we’re working with the Holy Spirit. “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out the demons”. Now, we haven’t got into casting out yet, we’re just getting you to think about working with the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.

Alright then, rather than teach some more, I’ll get you doing something. That would be probably quite a good move. Perhaps you could put away your books. We’ve got about 10 minutes to go. I’ll get you to do some things. Just remain seated for the moment. I’ll show you what I want you to do. Books away... Now, we’re all ministers of the Spirit. In other words, God has put an anointing upon us, and we can stir up that anointing. We can stir the flow of the Spirit. This is what I’m going to get you to do. In a moment, we’re going to pray strongly in tongues, and stir up our Spirit man. Then I want you to get into groups of 3. You can go anywhere in the auditorium to be in a group of 3, and this is what we’re going to do.

I’ll just get a couple of people here. 1,2, 3. Ok. Come. Come on up here. This is just a lot of fun. “You’re going to be a catcher. Always have your eyes open.” Ok. “You’re going to be the one who receives; you can close your eyes.” “You’re going to minister. Yes? You’re going to release the power of God.” This is what we do. We’re going to follow it step by step. This is how we do it. First step, “Can I practise on you?” “Yeah, do your best”. OK then. “Your close your eyes”. Take her hand. That’s right. Now, I want you to pray in tongues, because praying in tongues, your spirit stirs up. Don’t try to do anything yet. Just pray in tongues. I’m just asking her to stir up her spirit. Even while you’re doing it, without even trying, the Holy Ghost is coming on her. Ok. Can you feel the anointing on her now? Yeah. It’s strong isn’t it? Well you just release the power of God from within you, on the count of 3 just blow on her. Holy Ghost come. There you go. Look at that.

“Now, what did you feel?” I’ll ask again. “As you began to pray in tongues, did you feel yourself rising up inside? As you prayed in tongues, what did you notice happening to her?” “I felt the Holy Spirit just begin to fill her.” “You start to feel like a flow, like something has come on her. It seems like she was then having trouble standing. As you were praying, and she was looking to the Lord, the Spirit of God starts to come on her, and you recognised that. That’s great. It’s important to recognise the movements of the Holy Spirit. Then you can just quite easily release the power of God.” [Whoosh] “Like that. Just from within you. It’s not the external things; it’s what happens within, by faith.”

“Now you notice, I’ve positioned you so you couldn’t push her over. Some people want to push people over - as soon as you do that, you are leaning into your flesh, and not drawing from the Spirit. Yeah? That’s exactly what’s happening; and the Holy Ghost will lift off you like that. You’ll have to push more? Don’t do that! People don’t like it! If you start to push, they’ll push back. Don’t like it. No one wants to be pushed. I’ve seen them go like that. That’s not ministry. That’s pushing. Good. So you didn’t have to do that.” “Stand up again.” Right, so we’re going to get you all to do this. Get into groups of 3. “Can I practise on you?” “Yes please. Smile.” Take a hand. Pray in tongues. Just relax as you pray in tongues. You are stirring the flow of the Spirit; then release the power of God. 1, 2, 3 - power of God. Look at that. That wasn’t hard was it? That was easy wasn’t it? Was that easy? No problem. Give her a clap.

Ok. Now, you notice, “Can I just take your hand?”, if I am praying like this, there’s no way I can push her - absolutely no way. Now you can lay hands like this if you like. It’s fine to do that; but train yourself to minister to people without pushing, so you learn to release the power of God. “Cough it out. Out in Jesus’ name! Let it go. Now, now, now. Loose in Jesus’ name. Thank you Lord.” Now, we didn’t expect that to happen. I wasn’t even looking for that to happen. It just started to happen, because we’re in the flow of the Spirit. “Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch. Right now. In Jesus’ name. Thank you Lord.” Now, what’s happened is, the anointing flowed, and then spirits started to manifest. I didn’t even want to do that, but it happened anyway. “Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch her.”

Now, we haven’t had a chance to look at the root systems, things just started to flush up. So, I’ll just listen to God. We’ll just pray. “In Jesus’ name. Fear.,Spirit of fear: Go. Let her go now. Now, in Jesus’ name, release! Release her now, In Jesus’ name, let her go. Thank you Lord. Touch her. There we are. There you go. Feel a bit better now? Lord touch her. Just let your power flow out of heaven.”

So, when you are in the flow of the Spirit, that’s when things happen; so rather than trying to make things happen, learn to flow with the Spirit. You just never know what will happen. So, I’m not asking you to do deliverance; I’m just asking you to get in the flow of the Spirit. There’s plenty of time for doing the deliverance later. I just want you to understand the flow of the Spirit. So here it is, we get into groups of 3: one catching, one receiving, one praying. Then just follow me, quickly. Groups of 3. Anywhere you want to go. Find a space.

Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8)  

Wed 11 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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Explore the issues in the heart that can hold us in bondage. Discover that ungodly soul ties, inner vows and word curses are three entry points into our lives, where we can open ourselves to bitterness, jealousy, anger, complaining, addictions, etc, which then become strongholds in our lives, that the enemy can come in and take hold of. This includes other peoples words and actions towards us. As we recognise these traits in our lives, we can take ownership of them, renouncing and releasing them from our lives in Jesus Name.

Introduction

Let’s welcome the Holy Spirit this morning. Lord we open ourselves to You, we want You to touch us, we welcome You. May the kingdom of heaven come into this place. May we see your presence established, your kingdom established. We reach out to You Lord today, we thank You for all You’ve done so far, and all You will do today. In the meeting this morning, in the meeting tonight, we thank You. We treasure Your presence. We love what You do. Most of all, we set our heart on You. We give You the honour Jesus, and we thank You for what You’re doing. Amen.

That was very exciting last night wasn’t it? I always love it when God moves, just surprises us. I didn’t expect that demon to manifest so quickly. Let’s just this morning, continue where we were; and as I teach, I’m changing the flow which I normally teach in.

Summary of Last Session

What I want to do this session, is I want to look at heart bondages. We’ll just quickly look at where we were yesterday. We looked at Jesus was anointed to set people free. We looked at Jesus teaching on deliverance, and how deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. We saw that Jesus taught that once demons were cast out, they will try to come back and re-enter the person. This has brought deliverance into a lot of discredit over the years, because people have focused on the demons, rather than focused on the issues the person has.

Jesus said that after a person’s delivered, and the evil spirit’s gone out, they will seek to re-establish their hold in the person’s life. So we saw as a result of that, the need to deal with underlying root issues. In other words, our role is not just to cast out demons, but it’s to bring the person out of darkness and into light. It’s to help them journey in their life so they’re walking with God. We saw one of the scriptures in Ephesians 4 – when is a thief, not a thief? It’s not when he stops stealing; it’s when he works and gives.

We identified different avenues, or ways, evil spirits get in. We saw number one, they come in through legal rights. This is where a person has broken the law of God, and the demon claims a right to access. Remember in Jesus’ teaching, how the demon says “I will return to my house”. If you were listening yesterday, when I began to pray for that girl at the beginning of the meeting, the demon began to speak to me and say “She belongs to me”. In other words, the demon is claiming “this is my house”; or that I have a right to ownership. So, it’s important, if we’re going to set people free, that we remove all rights to ownership. We’ll show you how that’s done quite simply.

Now, for a Christian, Jesus Christ is their owner. Demons can never own a believer. When the Bible says: “we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus”, that means we are purchased, a price has been paid to set us free. A person is saved when they believe in their heart, and confess with their mouth, that Jesus Christ is my new owner, my new lord; and we are moved by the Spirit of God into a new kingdom, with new rights and privileges.

You remember when I was inviting people to come to Christ, I quoted John 1:12; and it says – “To whomever who received Him, even those who believed in His name, He gave the right, the legal right, to become a child of God.” So, when we put our trust in Christ, there is a legal standing, we shift in our legal standing, and we are now privileged to be sons of God and heirs. So, a demon can’t own a Christian, they can just oppress a part of their life.

You may have noticed at the beginning of the corporate prayer, I led people in a confession of faith. “Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, and all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ.” This profession of faith helps position the person for deliverance. When the demon says: “she belongs to me”, it’s absolute nonsense, because the person has already confessed: “I belong to Jesus Christ”. Sometimes I will remind them: “she belongs to Jesus Christ”. So, we saw a major doorway of entry is through legal rights.

A second major doorway is through traumatic experiences, where a person has a painful experience, and it affects them emotionally, and hurts them deeply. Similar experiences can affect different people in different ways. We’ll come back to the trauma area a little later; but let us say this: that when a person has a traumatic experience, the shock can open the door for a spirit to come in. For example, during teenage years, many people have some extremely distressing experiences at school; and the mental pictures and the beliefs that formed often are open doors for demons to affect them.

Then we saw the third area was how people react to painful or traumatic experiences. We’ll come back to each of these a little later.

How is it then that people are set free? What is the basis for setting people free?

We saw first of all, we must know what Jesus has done. We looked at the work on the cross; and what Jesus has done legally for us. You need to know these things; able to quote them, able to speak to demons the Word of God.

Secondly, we looked at what the person’s responsibility is. We found they need to recognise, and take responsibility for their problem. They needed to repent and confess sin, they needed to release forgiveness, and usually to renounce any bondages or agreements that they’ve entered into with evil spirits; and then actually make a stand to resist the devil.

In James 4:7 it says – “Submit to God, or position your life in alignment with heaven. Resist the devil and he will flee from you”. Very clearly from that scripture, we are to position ourselves aligned with God. The word ‘submit yourself’ is the Greek word hupotasso. The word tasso is to position yourself. Hupo is the word beneath. So, hupotasso means literally ‘position yourself and the leadership of Jesus, so together you can get a victory. The word ‘hupotasso’ is a military term. It’s an alignment in God’s order, so that great victory can be won. It would be used of troops aligning for battle. You understand it? It’s not a subservient; it’s actually a functional word.

When it says for example, ‘wives submit to your husbands’, this is not a controlling, superior kind of thing. It’s about alignment for victory. ‘Submit to God’ means: align your life with God’s order. If there’s sin, repent. If there’s unforgiveness, forgive. If there’s bondage, renounce. So, submit. Position yourself you can get the victory.

The second word is the word ‘resist the devil’. That’s the word antitasso. ‘Anti’ means against; ‘Tasso’ means position yourself. You notice the use of the language is ‘position yourself under God, so you’re aligned for victory’; ‘position yourself against the devil, and he must flee or run away from you’. Now, when you look at that scripture, it’s quite clearly puts a responsibility for the person to align themselves and take a position in the battle. Remember that scripture - it’s a very powerful one to remember, when you’re preparing people for ministry. Your role is to help them align with God, and make a stand against the devil.

You can see then, if a person loves their sin, and doesn’t really want to let go of the sin; they’re not submitting to God, and they’re not resisting the devil. If a person is unwilling to forgive, they’re not submitting to God, they’re not submitting to His order, they’re staying on the side of the devil.

In James 4:7 –Submit to God, or position your life in divine order or in align with the kingdom; resist the devil; then it says draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. You see the person is able to move from being oppressed by a spirit, into enjoying the presence of God.

The key point is the issue of change. When we’re ministering to people, we want to help them see what their part is in getting free. Otherwise, we have this kind of ‘victim culture’; or ‘you come to me, I come and fix you’; which keeps the person a victim, and makes you the rescuer. We need to build in people faith for their breakthrough. We need to look at how to do this.

Main Message

What I want to do now, is I want to look at some of the bondages that come in the heart. I want to identify what the bondages are in the heart, and how you could break these bondages. Then, we’ll go back to the doors of entry, identify each one, and show what you do to help a person get free. What we’re going to do now is look at heart bondages.

You remember we saw in Luke 11, the need to remove the armour, so we can then set the person free. I want us to look at a verse in Proverbs 4:23. It says – “Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it, flow the issues of life.” In other words, be a watchman over your heart. The Bible says: there’s a reason you need to guard, or watch, over your heart carefully; because it’s out of your heart that the borders or limitations of your life are established. What is happening in your heart will always find a way to manifest in the world around you.

Jesus said: when people speak, they speak what is in their heart. In Proverbs 4, it says – ‘out of your heart flow the issues of life’. In other words, we don’t just live from our head and our thoughts; we actually live out of the flow of what’s in our heart. If there’s a root of bitterness if your heart, it will just flow like a river of poison, into every relationship you’re in. It will be demonically empowered; and it will just show up in your life. It will defile all your relationships. So, we need to be able to recognise these things, and to deal with the root.

Inevitably, what’s in the heart will find its way out through the words, or the countenance will be seen by its fruit. For example, if someone is bitter, if you ask them “Are you bitter?” They say “No, of course not.” “Are you harbouring deep anger and unforgiveness?” “No. No. Why do you think that?” If you know what to look for, you will find so many people are very bitter. Let me just share what you look for. These are some signs of bitterness flowing. We’re just going off course now, but I may touch it again another time.

Bitterness shows up in a number of ways.

1.) First of all, it shows on the face – there’s no joy. A bitter person cannot be joyful. Their joy doesn’t last, because their heart is bitter.

2.) Secondly, if a person’s got bitterness, often you can see it on them on their face. It looks sour. It just shows on some people. The older they get, the more it shows - it can’t be hidden. You find some people, when they’re older, they’re sweet and loving; other people when they’re older… You can feel it.

3.) Another way it shows is in sharp words. Sharp, cutting words. The word ‘bitter’ means literally ‘to be sharp’. When you hear sharp, cutting words, bitterness underlies it.

4.) It’s also seen by anger that’s suppressed. When a person’s bitter, they often hold anger underneath. You can literally feel their disapproval, but they’re not saying anything.

5.) Another way bitterness shows, is complaining. Complain this, complain that, and complain about something else. They can never rejoice and be thankful.

6.) So, another sign of bitterness is ingratitude; because underlying bitterness is anger and unforgiveness; unforgiveness is a demand. So, when a person is bitter, they can’t be grateful for what they have, there’s still a demand for what they don’t have.

7.) Another evidence of bitterness is blaming. It’s all you. You, you, you. That constant blaming, accusing people, is evidence of bitterness, and resentment, and anger.

8.) Another symptom of bitterness is the inability to congratulate other people on their success. So he gets promoted, “Oh, why did he get promoted. He doesn’t deserve it.” There’s an ability to celebrate the victories of other people.

You ask the person “I think you’re bitter.” “No. Why are you saying this to me?” So, I used that just as an example, to show you that: what is in the heart, will find a way out. These are some of the evidence of bitterness, which is like a root that defiles. So, I just use it to illustrate that if things are in your heart, they find their way out. No matter how much you try to pretend and make your life look good, it flows out; and if you’re spiritually sensitive, you can often feel it. It’s like there’s a tension around the person.

We’ve established then, that whatever’s in your heart will flow out into life. I want to just share with you then, some typical bondages of the heart; and then what do you do to deal with each one of them, because demons will attach to these bondages of the heart and intensify them. It’s very helpful, when you’re ministering people, to be aware you have to deal with heart issues. Here’s a list of some of the ones I have commonly found – bondages that affect the heart of people, and affect their lives. Later on we’ll talk about trauma as something specifically separate.

Number one: Ungodly Soul-Ties. A soul-tie is a bonding between one person and another. It holds them in close connection. It is a bonding between people. God intends that we be connected, and bond to other people. So, bonding is a very important aspect in life. For example, a child needs to bond with its mother, or it never forms secure relationships. So, bonding is the very first skill a child must learn. Bond with the mother; and of course later, it leads to learn to separate.

When they’re up to about 15 months, they cling to mum; and they breast-feed, they’re looked after. Then, about 2 years old, they become independent. “No, no. I want me.” All these kinds of things; but this is normal development. If the child doesn’t bond with the mother - and sometimes happens if the mother attempted an abortion, or didn’t want the child - then the child has difficulties all through its life, and forms ungodly attachments to try to meet this insecurity. A soul tie then, is a bonding between two people; and the bonding can be very positive and helpful, or it can be ungodly.

Examples that are healthy include: the mother and the child; husband and a wife; members of a church; friends, close friends. So, the bonding is good; it’s an attachment that enables you to have close connections. So, we can be bonded. We’re made to be bonded and have relationships.

Now, the devil doesn’t create anything new. He just perverts what God has set in place. So, a soul tie can be ungodly. An ungodly soul tie is a bonding that is destructive, or brings negative energy into the person’s life. They are attached, but it’s not healthy. They are attached, and it’s an ungodly attachment. They’re attached, and demonic spirits use it to defile them. This is far more common than you realise – a soul attachment that is ungodly, and creates a doorway for demonic spirits.

Let me give you some examples of some ungodly attachments. The first one, if people have sexual relationship or intimacy without being married, they bond together; and that is an ungodly soul tie. Sexual relationships before marriage lead to a number of soul ties to the different partners – it’s like an invisible cord, attaching the person back to the other person; and their heart wants to return to that person, and it can’t fully enter into marriage. They keep remembering the sexual images, and the things they’ve done together, and demonic spirits torment their soul. So you need to be aware, if you’re dealing with sexual sin, it’s not enough to cast out the demons; you need to deal with the soul tie. Break the soul tie.

Proverbs says: a man shall be held by the cords of his sin. I used to think that, like sin wrap cords all around you. I now understand that they’re like invisible cords, which take you back to where you sinned, and hold you back in time with that experience. People can be soul-tied to a controlling person. The person is so much under the control of another, it’s like there’s an attachment to that person; they can’t break free and form their own life. A soul tie needs to be broken, because it’s like a co-dependant relationship. A person can be soul-tied to an abusive person. Even though they’ve been hurt, it’s like ‘I can’t seem to break free of the person.’

A person can be soul-tied to someone they have an infatuation with. This is where the danger comes in counselling. If a man counsels a woman, there can be an unhealthy soul-tie formed between them. Maybe one to the other; or it may be just the other way around. Sometimes people get soul-tied to a dead person. In other words, maybe a grandmother – they were very close to the grandmother, because there was a conflict in the family. Even though the person has died, it’s like they haven’t let go, they’re still attached.

People can be soul-tied to pornographic images and websites. So, when men look at a woman, look at pornographic sites and the images, their soul can be attached to those things, and then a spirit comes through that soul tie. One of the worst aspects of pornography is, it actually physically alters the brain; and repeated exposure forms neuron paths in the brain like tracks. So, the slightest trigger, and the man or woman’s thinking go down this track towards perverse things.

So there are soul ties that need to be broken. Attachments to images, attachments to websites; because a person becomes addicted to a website, and they may have paid money to go on the website, now they’re trading with a spirit of perversion; trading with a spirit of prostitution. So there’s a soul tie to the images and to the sites that they’ve gone to.

With women, it’s often like a romantic fantasy. So, they may become soul-tied to some character in a soap opera; or they begin to fantasise about some pastor, some spiritual leader, and have all of these fantasies in their mind – they’re soul-tied to them.

People who worship idols can become soul-tied to the idol. So, these are some of the areas where people can become bonded in an unnatural way. It can be that a certain kind of sexual fantasies, the person becomes bonded. So, whenever there’s an ungodly attachment, demonic spirits use the attachment as a way accessing the person’s life to torment them, and energise that problem.

So, how do you deal with a soul tie? Very simple, there’re just two steps to it. First, the person needs to renounce the soul tie. That means to speak words that cancel it. So, they must recognise the attachment, and then renounce it. They must want to turn away from it, not just continue to entertain it. The person then would just say: “In Jesus’ name, I renounce this soul tie, I renounce this attachment in my soul to the sexual relationship, to this image, to this idol, to this fantasy, to this website, I renounce the soul tie.”

That’s the first step. The second step – when you’re ministering to the person, speak as though you’re cutting something. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that soul tie, I cut that attachment, I break it in Jesus’ name”. See yourself like you’re taking the sword of the Spirit and cutting it. What’ll happen is, sometimes demons manifest, even the moment you do that. So, if there’re sexual soul-ties to various people, I just picture these long cords going back, and say: “Jesus, I break them, I break them, I break them.” When you picture something, it tends to put faith or confidence that what you’re doing has effect.

One area I forgot to mention, an important area related to soul ties, is that people can be soul-tied to a trauma. When you minister to trauma, one thing that’s important to do is, to break the soul tie to the trauma. It’s like the person is frozen in time, and in their memory, they’re attached back to something that happened years ago.

The second heart bondage is the area of bitter root judgements. A bitter judgement is a judgement that’s made out of feelings of bitterness and resentment. It causes a cycle of reaping to take place in the person’s life. For example, “You can never trust a man; they’ll always let you down.” “You can never trust a woman, they’ll always try and control you.” “Don’t trust authorities, they’ll always abuse you.” “Never trust anyone; people will always let you down.” Now, those are judgements. Bitter judgements often have the word ‘always’ or ‘never’ in them. “Never trust a man. They’ll always let you down.” There are so many different kinds of judgements: “I’ll never succeed. I always fail. Nothing I do ever works out.”

You notice there’s a common thread of negative bitterness in there. When there is bitterness in our heart, and we make a judgement, it’s like negative faith. We begin to attract into our life, the very judgement we’ve made. Notice what it says in Hebrews 12: 14 – 15, it says “Pursue peace with all people, in holiness without which no one will see the Lord, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness spring up, cause trouble, and by this, many become defiled.” A bitter root judgement is a reaction to being hurt. You may have been hurt by one or two men, and then you judge “all men are like this”.

Jesus said in Matthews 7:1-2, “Don’t judge, or you will be judged. For whatever judgement you judge with, you will be judged. In the measure you judge, it’ll be measured back to you.” So, when we face difficult or painful circumstances in life, we choose whether we release grace into it, or judgement. If you release judgement, you set in place a cycle of reaping the very thing you judged. For example, a woman who judges her father bitterly will usually attract a person into their life who’s just like their father. It’s like a belief that that’s what will happen. It literally attracts and draws into the person the very thing that they’ve judged. You would be amazed how frequently the problem a person has, is a reflection of something they walked away from in their home life.

I prayed for one woman who was deeply bitter that her mother had adopted her. Her whole life had been negatively affected. Then I found to my amazement, she did the very same thing. It’s like what she was reaping in her life was the very thing she had judged. So, when you judge something or someone, you set in process of reaping the same thing somewhere in your own life. So, a woman who judges her father will most likely end up attracting a man just like him. A woman who judges her mother will turn out exactly like her. All the time hating it; and not even seeing that she’s just like her mother.

So, bitter root judgements are important to cancel. A bitter root judgement is a reaction, judging someone because of a painful experience. Here’s the problem: people often forget they made the judgement. Once they make a judgement, it becomes demonically empowered, and then they begin to reap the same thing over and over in their life.

How does the person get out of the judgement? Firstly, they need to recognise there’s judgement taking place. Acknowledge the pain, it’s important to acknowledge the pain; forgive the person they’re angry with; and then cancel the judgement. Renounce it. “In Jesus’ name, I renounce each bitter judgement I made against my father. I renounce each bitter judgement I made against men. I cancel that judgement; and I bless and forgive.” Then, once that has happened, you can “In Jesus’ name, I break that judgement over your life. I break that cycle over your life. Spirits of bitterness - go.” Because inevitably, there’ll be spirits associated with it.

Another heart bondage is the area of Inner Vows. A vow is a promise you make. An inner is a vow you make into yourself. It’s a promise you make as a reaction to being hurt. Usually, an inner vow consists of the words: “I will never”, or: “I will”. It’s an inward vow that’s made, and once you make the inner vow, it locks into place in your life, and becomes demonically empowered. Often the person forgets they’ve made the vow. Whenever there’s an inner vow, there’ll also be roots of bitterness that are just growing deeper and deeper in the person’s soul.

I’ll give you an example. I had a woman that came to a Bible school I was speaking at, and she brought her husband and her baby with her. She said: “I want to thank you for your teaching on inner vows.” I said: “Tell me what’s happened.” She said: “Well, I have two children. The first child, the pregnancy was so difficult, that I vowed I would never have another child. I was so sick, and so distressed, I vowed I’ll never have another child. After the child was born, I forgot all about that; and I wanted another child; and we tried and we had three miscarriages. I finally decided to come to Bible school. When I heard about inner vows, I renounced the inner vow, I cancelled the vow I had made, and by the end of the year, I was pregnant and we have had another child. We would not have had this child unless we had dealt with the inner vow.”

She had vowed to herself: ‘I will never carry another child’; and her body responded, and rejected all other children. So, when a woman has miscarried, and it happens several times, you have to consider the possibility that there may be inner vows; or in the case of miscarriages, maybe idolatry.

So, how do you deal with an inner vow? The person needs to acknowledge the pain of the situation; if necessary, release forgiveness; and then renounce the inner vow. Renounce and cancel the inner vow. Then, you can just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break that inner vow. I release you from it.” It’s just as simple as that. It may be there are spirits attached to it, there could be spirits of bitterness and fear; but the inner vow itself is very easy to break. The person renounces the vow, and you just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break that inner vow now. I release you.” Sometimes deliverance happens immediately.

I remember one man I prayed for, and he was extremely wealthy, but he was extremely driven. There was no rest inside him. When we talk with him and interacted with him, we found that he had grown up in a family that was very poor; and he had been embarrassed by the clothes they used to wear to school. So, he made an inner vow: “I will never be poor. I will work and have money.” Now he had money, he couldn’t stop working; and he couldn’t enjoy what he had, because in his own heart he believed he was poor, and he was driven by this inner vow. No matter how much he had, it was never enough. He just had to keep working to get more. So, his family was deeply hurt by this drive in his life. He needed to renounce that inner vow, and release or acknowledge the grief and pain he’d experienced as a child.

Here’s another one – word curses. A word curse is a negative pronouncement over a person. In Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”. So, there are two forms of word curses. Firstly, self-cursing; a person speaks words that literally curse themselves. They speak into their own heart words which are negative, destructive. For example, a death-wish: “I just wish I was dead.” Often when people are in pain, they make a death wish. “I wish I was dead. I’d be better off dead.” They come into an agreement with a spirit of death, and it affects their life, and numbs their heart. So, this is an important area to deal with.

You’ll find often when people have been sexually abused, or abandoned in a relationship, or abused in a relationship, they just wish they were dead. So, in a prolonged period of stress and pain, the person may make a death wish. “I wish I was dead.” They may forget they made it, but find that their heart is numbed, and they can’t seem to experience God, or experience relationships.

The person may have just spoken words of failure into their own life. “I’m useless. I’m stupid. I’m never good enough.” Those words become an ungodly belief system in their heart. They’re like bitter judgments. “No one will ever want me. No one would ever accept me. I’m unwanted.” Almost all of these things are quite short, but they form a belief structure in the heart, that demons inhabit and use to torment them. When you believe a lie, spirits of death and hell are able to enter and torment.

Word curses can come from other people, for example, words spoken by your parents or authority figures; school teachers; spiritual leaders. Spiritual leaders have to be quite careful, because you can very easily curse people, by speaking words of failure or negative words over them. So, words of failure, name calling. These kinds of things can be like fiery darts, which go into the person.

Sometimes people grow up and they have humiliating experiences at school. Teacher says: “You’re stupid. You’ll never come to anything. You’ll never pass that. You’re a failure.” Those words, if the person agrees with them, they sit in the heart as a negative belief; and then that belief begins to control their life. So you find when you’re dealing with people, or working with people, you just need to be aware of these kinds of word-curses, or failure-statements, that the person believes.

I prayed for one church leader recently, and her father was part of a big family, and they could only afford to educate one son. He was very smart, but the family could not afford to send him to university. So, he became very bitter because of this. He felt, all his life, that he’d been cheated and robbed. He had one child – a daughter. So, he put a pressure on her to live out his expectations. He wanted her to fulfil his dreams, and so he pressured her all the time academically. No matter what she did, it’s never good enough. Constantly he pressured her. Every time she did anything, he would find fault, and he would scold her, and tell her she could do better. So she grew up lacking love and affirmation; and believed in her heart: “I’ll never be good enough”; and she formed bitter judgements against her father.

Then when I checked out her leadership, I asked about her leadership in the church. Guess what she was doing? She was putting huge pressure on her members, trying to get them to perform, just like her father had done to her; and she’s constantly finding fault in them. Nothing they do is good enough. In other words, there was an outflow of bitterness in her life, and it didn’t matter what she did, it was never good enough. So, demonic spirits were tormenting her through these belief systems she had in her heart. These are some of the heart bondages that form, that people need release from.

Another kind of curse that comes over a person is a curse of secrecy, where a person has been sexually abused by someone, and the person says: “you mustn’t tell anyone. If you tell someone, you’ll be responsible for our family breaking down. You’ll kill your father/ mother.” So, this vow of secrecy creates a huge problem over people’s lives. You’ll be surprised, when you’re praying for people who have been sexually abused, how frequently there is this vow of secrecy over them. The result is they live tormented by spirits of death and hell. They are angry, because they want to tell someone about what’s happened, but they’re fearful if they speak, their family will blow up. So, terrible despair and torment comes around people like that.

It’s very easy to deal with these things. Where there are word curses spoken by the person, spoken by someone else, or even vows of secrecy, you just need to: acknowledge this is what it is; the person needs to release forgiveness to those who hurt them; and renounce the words. “I renounce the vow of secrecy. I renounce the vow. I renounce those words I spoke. I renounce that curse I spoke over me. I refuse those words I listened to.” Once the person has renounced it, you just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break the cursing.” Command all spirits associated with the curse to go.

So these are some of the burdens that come on people. You can see then, that bondages that get in the heart affect the person’s life. We’ll in another session on the area of trauma, and how trauma affects people’s heart. So with these bondages of the heart, if you can just be aware of them – soul ties, bitter judgements, inner vows, cursing, self-cursing, and these kinds of things spoken over a person’s life. If we’re aware of those things, we can cancel them and break them, and set the person free. Amen.

It’s quite simple. All you need to do is uncover it, get the person to renounce it, and then cancel its power. Command any spirits associated with it to come out; but if you don’t know those things are there, you’ll try and do deliverance, and there’d be all these areas of bondage, that the demons use to resist. If we remove the structures in the person’s life, the demons must come out. You see, the process of deliverance is not just casting the demons out. It’s looking at the life and heart of the person, tearing down the demonic house, and then confronting the spirits.

In one of the sessions, I will just give you a list of things to look for as you are working with people, so when someone comes to you with an issue, if you just mentally have this list of things, you can just know where to look. Often the problem is that we don’t know where to look. So we try to deal with exterior things, rather than heart things. “Out of the heart flow the issues of life.” If the person’s soul-tied, break the soul tie. If there are bitter judgements and expectations, break those. If there are inner vows, break the inner vows. If there are word curses, break the word curses. If there are traumatic pictures, break the attachment to the trauma. Then we’re able to get the person free quite easily. Amen.

Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8)  

Wed 11 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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Explains three main legal grounds, upon which demons can gain access to your life: generational curses; the occult; and sexual sin. The issues and bondages that come into our lives through these door ways can be broken and cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are redeemed and set free by the Cross of Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge and identify these areas of sin; then renounce and release forgiveness as necessary; then call upon the name of Jesus, who will set your free!

Review

Welcome back. We were looking last time, the last session, at the issues of the heart, dealing with root issues in the heart. We explained what some of them were, and how, when people go through difficult experiences, they react, and this forms bondages within their heart. If we don’t deal with what lies in the heart, you won’t in the end, get the person free.

So, what we’ve done is to show you some of the bondages that the heart can be gripped by: ungodly soul ties; bitter root judgements and expectations; negative expectations of the future; inward vows; traumatic experiences; word curses. All of these things bring bondages to the heart, and when we’re thinking of setting people free, we need to be aware of those bondages, and how simple it is to break them. The challenging part is rebuilding the life forward.

[Main Content]

We want to just look at the area of legal rights. The most common doors of entry are: legal rights that are given up by the person through sin. Again, the key to dealing with each one is usually quite simple. Once you have these keys, and a strategy of working with people, you’ll find a huge improvement in the results you get with people when you’re ministering to them. So, we looked at some of the heart bondages.

Now let’s have a look at some of the legal rights. A legal right is a ground or area, that the evil spirit claims a right to have a hold on the person. It’s always a sin base - either someone’s broken the law intentionally, or accidently. So demons really have no power over people, but they try to deceive people, and draw them to break the law of God.

Let’s just identify some of the common ones; and with each legal ground, we’ll just show you simply how you deal with it.

1.) Generational Curses and Iniquity. A curse is a spiritual power that operates until it’s stopped. An Iniquity is crookedness, or twist, or a bent towards a certain kind of problem or failure. So, a generational iniquity or curse is a problem that passes down from one generation to another. From a natural perspective, when you go to the doctor, he’ll ask your family medical history; when you go to the insurance company, they’ll also ask your family medical history; because they recognise that some weaknesses or illnesses come down genetically through the family line.

God considers us connected generationally, so spiritual influences can run from one generation to another. If you violate the laws of God, and open the door for an evil spirit, then generations after you can experience the effect of that.

For example, in Exodus 20, God speaks to His people about idolatry. In verses 3 – 6: “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

So God is speaking here about the generational consequences of idolatry. To “visit the iniquity” means the crookedness, or tendency to sin, spreads from one generation to another. If you think 4 generations, you’re thinking – you, your father, grandfather, great-grandfather- there’s a lot of people in that family grouping. In one part I think Deuteronomy 23, it says – illegitimacy brings a curse from to 10 generations. In Deuteronomy 23 it also says that incest will bring a curse for 10 generations. So just to summarise: the sins of one generation can have consequences that go on for generations.

So what happens is, a demonic spirit that enters the family line; and because you are legally and genetically connected to that family line, the evil spirit has a right of access to your life. So many times when we’re praying for people, we find that the source (or the root) where this problem began was beyond them, but was in their family line. So when families have been involved in idolatry, or with forms of spiritism, divination, sorcery, there’s an open door created in the family line.

Now, we are not responsible for what our parents did; we are only responsible for what we do. However, the consequences of what they do, we can experience. How is it that these problems keep repeating one generation to another? Some of it may be in the DNA. Scientists don’t yet know enough about DNA to know how it could be corrupted by sin, so some can be genetic. Some are spirits, evil spirits that are in the family line. Some behaviour is just learnt – people copy their parents. We need to understand that Jesus has made room for this power of iniquity and cursing to be broken.

Let me give you an example of a generational curse. I was asked by a woman in New Zealand to pray for her. I said: “What is your problem?” She told me the problem, and what I always ask is: when did this problem begin; because it can give a clue if a situation is generational. This is the problem she had: she was tormented in her mind by sexual images. They were sexual images of a perverse nature; and she was single, and she was a Christian worker. I said: “Have you ever been involved in sexual sin?” “No.” “Have you ever been sexually abused?” The answer was no. “How long have you had this problem?” “Pretty well most of my life.”

So when a person says: “Most of my life”, or “It began when I was young”, this is a clue it could be generational. So I asked about her family background, and it was very interesting what she told me. Her grandparents had been missionaries in China, and they had a son and a daughter. They sent the children to school in another province, and when the Japanese invaded China in the 30s, they took over the province that these kids were at school; the children were taken prisoner by the Japanese, and the girl was sexually abused by Japanese soldiers. She was about 12 or 13. Eventually the children were rescued, and the parents left the mission field. This woman grew up, she got married, and she had one child - the girl who I was praying for - and the marriage broke up.

Now it’s not surprising the marriage broke up, because she carried the trauma of sexual abuse by these Japanese soldiers; and in those days, you just didn’t talk about anything, you just buried it. So when she was sexually abused, demonic spirits entered the family line; and these were the cause of this young girl, who’s now grown up, being traumatised. The problems this woman was facing, did not originate with anything she had done. They originated in what had happened to her mother, and so the spirits had come down the family line, and were affecting her. We led her to pray and forgive the Japanese soldiers, to stand on behalf of the family and break the cursing that’s over them, and then she was delivered, and her mind cleared.

I’ve prayed for many people that the cause of their problem has been generational. Young men, young women, tormented with demons, and it’s not their fault. It came down the family line. This is particularly so if there’s: idolatry; any form of spiritism; any form of sexual perversion; a door is opened for these cursings to come.

When you’re working with people, and you’re trying to solve a problem in their life, inquire to search for when this problem began. The person is responsible for their own life, just like this woman’s problem was her problem. It was her battle. It was her demons. But the root where this thing had got established was generational. So when you’re working with people, try to assess whether the problem has got a generational root that’s energising the problem.

I remember coming across this first in a Christian school; and we observed an interesting thing. We had all these children, they all had to learn or memorise Bible verses; and there were 3 children in the school, they could remember anything except the Bible. There were 2 from one family, 3 from another family. None of them could remember scripture. They’d learn it; then it’s gone! They could not hold scripture in their mind; but they could learn other things. I really prayed to find out why it is these children cannot learn scripture.

Then I came across it one day. The parents, the father in both families, had been involved with freemasonry. They’d been involved as a freemason. They’d made these curses, or these oaths of allegiance to freemasonry, and it had opened the door for evil spirits to come into the family. Even though the children had done nothing, there were demonic spirits that tormented and stopped them from retaining spiritual things. So when we broke the curses of freemasonry, they were able to memorise scripture. It’s like there was a confusion that left. There were no big manifestations; just they were able to learn scripture. That was one of my first experiences of how curses can come down family lines.

I’ve prayed for very many people where the origin of the problem was in their family background. If you check the family tree, the problems are quite easy to pick up. If you start to pray for them to be exposed, it’s quite surprising how they just suddenly come out to the open. Now there are usually indications that a spirit is operating, or a curse is operating. I’ll give you some examples of a curse operating; what sorts of things you’d be looking for. If you look into the family tree, these are the kinds of things you’d look for, and these are all located in Deuteronomy 28.

Here they are, just quickly and simply. So if there are curses operating in a family - there may be a pattern of mental or emotional breakdowns; there may a chronic sickness and disease that won’t go away; there may be patterns of barrenness or miscarriages, bleeding problems; there may be marriage and family breakdowns; there can be financial setbacks and losses; you could have problems with being accident prone; there could be a history of suicides or violent deaths; there could be a pattern of mistreatment or abuse; there could be patterns of inability to settle – the person’s constantly moving around; or the person may just find that there’s constant spiritual problems.

So, when you’re working with someone, try to track the problems to the root, because often they’re in the family line. How do you deal then, with a demonic curse, or curse operating in the family line? It’s actually really quite simple. I’ll give you the steps.

First, it has to be recognised of course. So, we would identify – “Look, this began in your family line, and it’s continued with you.” So this is what you do... This is what the person needs to do: Firstly, the person needs to renounce the curse in the family line, as a representative of the family. They need to stand up, representing the family, and renounce the curse. If they have sinned themselves in the same way, they need to ask forgiveness for being a part of this. Thirdly, they need to release forgiveness to family members who opened the door for the curse. Release forgiveness. Finally, place the cross of Jesus between them and their family line, and ask Jesus to set them free.

So if you are praying for someone, and there’s a generational curse, you lead them in a prayer, something like this. 1) Confession of faith: “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, all iniquity. I belong to Jesus.” That’s called a profession of faith.

“I stand as a representative of this family. I renounce this curse. I cancel its power. I break all agreements made with evil spirits in my family line. I break all dedications of children to idols and temples - in Jesus’ name.” You see, we’ve dismantled the things that have been done, by speaking words. So first, the profession of faith, position yourself. Second, stand and speak to break the curses. Third, release forgiveness. Then get the person reach out to Jesus to get them free.

I’ll go through it again now and pray a prayer. Firstly, the confession of faith: “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse; every evil spirit; all iniquity. I stand now as a representative of my family. I renounce every curse, every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, every dedication of children to evil spirits. I cancel all of those agreements now. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line. Lord I ask You to forgive me for where I’ve participated in this sin; and I forgive my family members who opened the door to this spirit. Now Lord, I ask that You set me free. Satan, go from my life now.”

Notice in making up that prayer, it consists of those things which I shared with you were foundations for freedom. Confession of faith; recognising and being responsible for the sin; repenting of it; releasing forgiveness; and then renouncing and resisting the devil. The exact order you pray these things, and the exact wording, is not important. Catch the process and the way of handling it. I’ll just go through it again.

“Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, all iniquity, and every evil spirit. I belong to Jesus Christ. I stand as a representative of my family. I renounce every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, all dedications of children idols and temples. I renounce and cancel all of these agreements. I hold the blood of Jesus Christ, and the cross of Christ, between me and my family line. Lord I ask You to forgive me, where I have participated in these sins; and I release forgiveness to my family members who opened the door to that sin. Lord, I reach out to You to set me free. Satan, go from my life now.”

Ok. Now that’s a simple prayer. Then, often as you lead them in that prayer, the demons start to manifest. So then all you have to do is very simply this: “In Jesus’ name, I break the family curses... break them in Jesus’ name.” See it like something attached to the person - and speak to it. Speak with authority; not loud, but firm. “I break that curse. I break all agreements with evil spirits. I break dedications to idols and temples. I break this curse in Jesus’ name. I break soul ties to idols. Now I command these spirits to come out. Out, in Jesus’ name.”

It’s not hard, once you get the understanding of the flow of ministry. When a person sins, they enter into legal agreements with the demon; so by confession, they are reversing it all. Confessing their faith in Christ; bringing sin to the light; cancelling its consequences; and then reaching out to Jesus to set them free. It’s quite easy to do it. How many reckon you can do that? That’s not so hard, quite simple!

Now remember, depend on the Holy Spirit to guide you. Don’t worry about trying to get the exact wording right, or you’ll focus on methods rather than the flow of the Spirit. So that’s one major doorway of entry, and it’s a very common one.

2.) Another common one is occult involvement. In Deuteronomy 18: 9 – 13, ““When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God.”

People have a fascination, or a fear, of the spirit world. Today, the media are invading the generation of young people, with supernatural videos and movies and all kinds of things like that. There is a generation arising hungry for the supernatural, and there’s a generation existing, that’s afraid of the supernatural.

In every culture you go, people are aware of a hidden spirit world; and people reach out into that spirit world, hoping for usually one of three things, or more. They reach out for protection, because they’re afraid of the evil spirits; they make offerings to them, not realising that when they make the offering, they’re now submitting and trading with the demon. So when a person makes any offering to an idol, or any kind of sacrifice to an evil spirit, it is now trading with a demon, and the demon has legal access to their life. They have done a trade. Trading is an agreement. The moment a person bows to an idol, or makes an offering, it has come into agreement with an evil spirit.

Usually it’s for protection; or it can be for provision – blessing on life and finances; or it’s to get power over their enemies. It doesn’t matter what culture you go into, you will find people involved in the spirit world.

The major branches of the occult are twofold. 1) Divination. Divination is another word for fortune telling. Chinese love fortune telling, they love it! When they become Christians, they want to have a Christian fortune-teller: “Please come and prophesy for me.”

So fortune-telling is reaching to the spirit world for guidance. How accurate is that guidance? The reality is that the spirit world is very highly connected - it’s like there’s a demonic internet. They can connect and communicate. So when you reach into the spirit world, you do not connect with a ghost of an uncle, or father, or mother. The Bible says it is appointed to man once to die; after that, judgement.

So people connect with a familiar spirit -a spirit which can give information about the family which is accurate. Because spirits observe people, they’re aware of what they do; and if you consult someone who’s connected to an evil spirit, you can receive information about your family which may be quite accurate; but in doing so, you come under the influence of the spirit. You’ve invited it now to speak into your life.

Evil spirits do not know your future - it is hidden from them. Some aspects of your life are open to them, but they see things God is bringing to you, and they try to disrupt that. If a person goes to a fortune-teller, and listen to the words, literally what they’re doing is agreeing with a demon, and it then becomes empowered to manipulate their circumstances. It becomes addictive, to the point where people can’t make major decisions without consulting the fortune-teller. Today they call those people ‘psychics’, and they have these psychic hotlines, but it’s actually a familiar spirit working with the person.

The other branch of the occult is sorcery. Another word for sorcery is magic; or spiritual power. So people get involved with sorcery, usually because they’re rejected and bitter, and they want power. It becomes extremely addictive, because once the person connects with evil spirits, they feel they want more and more power. Every culture you go to, you’ll find sorcerers; and the more primitive the culture, the more you’ll find it holds, literally, whole villages under its power.

For example, in the days of Marco Polo, Marco Polo visited a man by the name of Kublai Khan; and he witnessed to him. Kublai Khan, Mongolian, father of Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan said this to him: “I observe your Christianity would be good for my nation. I am willing to embrace Christianity.” Now that’s a key point in history. But he said: “However, if you look around me, you see I’m surrounded by sorcerers; and they have real power. They can make a cup lift off the ground and travel across the room and come down in front of me. They can change the weather; and I fear they have power to kill me. So go back to where you’ve come from, and return with a hundred men, who know how to move in the power of God, and can overcome these sorcerers; and I and my nation will turn to Christ.”

This is a strategic moment in history; but when Marco Polo went back, it was 25 years before anyone came; they sent 2 people, not a hundred, and one died on the way there. The nation did not turn to Christ; and subsequently, Genghis Khan literally invaded all of Asia. It would have been under the gospel centuries ago, except for the hold of sorcerers on this king’s life.

Now this is quite a growing problem again. I was in a Bible school, and I had a word of knowledge on a young man addicted to playing an online game called World of Warcraft. It’s one of many games very popular among young people; but in this game, they role-play. They act out, in their imagination, the part. This young man had taken on the role of a sorcerer; and so he would use powers to defeat his enemies and increase in power; but he could become addicted to playing the game. Now he was in the hold of a demonic spirit.

I said to him: “This is what Jesus’ words are. ‘If you look on a woman to lust after her, in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery.’” In other words, Jesus is saying: what is birthed in the heart becomes real in the spirit world. So a person can have adultery already living in their heart, but they’ve not actually committed the physical act. They’ve opened their life to a spirit of adultery. I said: “Your imagination is a doorway to the spirit world; and by giving yourself to this game, you have given yourself to this demonic spirit; and a spirit of sorcery has come into your life.”

So I got him to renounce the game, renounce the identity he was playing. The moment he did, the demon manifested on his face, and he fell on the ground, began to yell; and we got him delivered. So even though he hadn’t actually been involved in sorcery at a practical level, he had engaged on it through the internet, and become demonised.

We had an alter call and over 200 students came up and they got delivered of the same kind of thing. These are people who come to study in Bible school, to learn how to be a leader; but in their personal life, they’re engaging in sorcery. So we need to understand, sorcery is a significant problem to this next generation. The media is full of it; the movies are full of it; and young people are drawn to these things.

What I shared about the addiction to the video games of sorcery, also applies to games of violence. In a recent interview on Discovery channel, with a man who murdered his parents, it turns out he was very bitter against them because he was adopted. Even though the parents tried to care for him, he was bitter against them; and in his teen years, he immersed himself in his room, watching TV and programs over and over again. In his imagination, he saw him living out one of the characters in ‘The Matrix’. One day, he just shot his parents in cold blood.

Now the murder shocked everyone; but it was already building in his heart before it got there. It was very clear, as I watched him on the television, he had a generational illegitimacy - bitter roots against his parents who adopted him; spirits of abandonment; bitter roots against the adoptive parents; hatred that had been nurtured over a period of time; and then through the fantasy realm, had just activated a spirit of murder in his life.

He could’ve been helped if someone knew what to do; if someone knew to deal with the generational roots, and deal with the fantasy that had come into his mind. So how do we deal with occult roots? Very simply: the person needs to acknowledge they’ve been involved in these things; they need to confess and repent of them; and then renounce all agreements they made with the evil spirits. They must cancel all agreements made with evil spirits. If they cut themselves, or invited the spirits in; whatever thing they were involved in, they need to renounce it; and then reach out to Jesus to set them free.

If I was leading someone through a prayer like that, I would first start with a confession of faith. “Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from every evil spirit, from the power of sin. Lord I confess to You now, that I have been involved in the occult in these ways; and I ask You to forgive me. I renounce now, I cancel all agreements I have made with evil spirits. I cancel them, I reject them, and I reject the spirits. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me, and I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life now, in Jesus’ name.”

You see its similar process. It’s made up with the same bricks that we shared on the foundations for freedom. Once you’ve got that process, it’s quite easy to apply it in each place. You may vary it a little, in its order or its wording, depending on what the Holy Spirit says. So then, how do you minister? First, break the agreements. Second, command the spirits. Break the agreements, command the spirits. “In Jesus’ name, I break every tie to this evil spirit. I break the agreements you made.” Or maybe: “I break the soul-tie to that fantasy game. I break the attachments to that spirit.” Now sometimes, even as you break those attachments, or break the agreements, sometimes even at that point, the demon starts manifesting. “Now, come out! Out!” Command the spirits to come out.

So it’s quite straightforward. Using those foundational blocks for freedom, the person will: acknowledge their sin; confess it to the Lord; renounce the agreements; release forgiveness to others; ask the Lord to set them free, resist the demon. You break the curses, break any attachments, break any agreements, and command the demons to come out. Straightforward isn’t it?

3.) There’s another third area. The third area is sexual sin. Sexual sin opens the door for spirits to enter people’s lives. The reason is this: God has set a law in place, that two become one flesh through sexual union. So when a person is involved sexually with another person, there is a joining or a bonding of their lives together. In 1 Corinthians 6, it tells us that: ‘he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit; but if you’re joined to a prostitute, you’re one flesh’. In 1 Corinthians 6:18, it warns us that every sin is outside your body; but sexual sin, something is imparted into you. Luke 4:33-36, there’s a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit.

Sexual sin affects people in different ways. 1) There is a soul tie formed to that person. 2) There are memories, pictures of what they did, and what they experienced. 3) There are reactions in the heart when the relationship breaks up. So when a person has been involved with someone sexually, and the relationship breaks up, there’s always grief. Often because of the pain, people make bitter judgements about men or women; they make inner vows; or even death wishes to try and shut down the pain. 4) Demonic spirits that can enter the person’s life.

Sexual sin affects people deeply. God wants us to be clean, so we can love and worship. It’s very common for people who’ve been involved in sexual sin, to find it hard to worship without unclean pictures coming into their mind. So one of the unfortunate consequences of sexual sin, is there are imprints into your mind as a result of these experiences. The journey of freedom can take a little bit of time.

When we are dealing with sexual sin, we are dealing: 1) with the spiritual issues – which is sin being confessed and repented of, and demonic spirits being cast out; 2) we’re dealing with the soul ties, the attachments to other people. 3) We’re dealing with the defilement in the soul – reactions to being hurt; and lasting impressions, or toxic memories, that are there. People can be forgiven in a moment, just by confessing the sin. They can be delivered in a short time; but the mind then, needs to be renewed, so they begin to pursue holiness and purity, and overcome the invading sexual temptations.

In the area of sexual sin, we need to understand that the Bible teaches very strongly and clearly about its dangers. The reason the Bible speaks so strongly about it, is not because it’s worse than any other sin. Sexual sins are sins; it’s because the impact on people’s ability to be intimate with God, and with one another, is deeply affected. God made us for relationships. He gave the power to be able to express love in an intimate way. So, when we’re involved in sexual sin, it affects people’s ability to be intimate, to be close and feel loved. It affects people’s ability to form relationships. It’s like a constant polluting of the mind.

The kinds of areas that you need to be able to identify are the following kind of sins. Now the church needs to be able to speak really clean, clearly into this area. It’s a far bigger problem than you realise; and because there’s a shame and secrecy over it, these problems go underground, and people live tormented with these unclean things going on in their life. They conceal it, and then become isolated because of it.

Some examples of sexual sin: Fornication – that’s sexual sin, you’re not married; Homosexuality, Lesbianism; Pornography. I believe habitual masturbation is a major problem; Sodomy, or anal sex; Prostitution; Rape, or sexually molesting someone; Incest (sexual relationships between people in the same family); Adultery; and Bestiality (sexual connection with animals); then just the whole realm of fantasy and perversion.

We need to understand that the Bible has got a lot to say about these things. We need to learn how to minister to people to set them free. This can be a whole area of addiction in a person’s life, and they may need to go through a course, to help reprogram their lives to be free. But at a very simple level of ministering to people, this is what they would need to do.

1.) Acknowledge the sin. Acknowledge specifically what it is; and confess it to the Lord. Repent of it. Remember that’s our first step, so lead the person to confess their sin. “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess these sins of fornication, of pornography. I bring them to the cross, and ask You to forgive me.” Assure people of the promise: if we confess, then we are forgiven. So, number 1, people need to confess the sin.

2.) They need to renounce ungodly sexual soul-ties: “In Jesus’ name, I cancel ungodly sexual soul ties to each person I’ve been involved sexually with; each image I’ve been attached to; each fantasy I’ve allowed to live in my mind. I renounce the soul ties to it now.” Little by little, you just dismantle this thing.

3.) Now we deal with reactions. “Lord, I renounce now, bitter judgements I made against the opposite sex. I renounce any inner vow I made to protect my heart. I renounce any death wish I made. Now Lord, I release forgiveness. I forgive those people who used me and hurt me. I forgive them and bless them.” You notice it’s like, just one step at a time, you’re: dismantling the structures the demons live in; pulling down the house the demons live in - the sin, the soul ties, the reactions, the bitter reactions, and releasing forgiveness.

I’ll go through it again. “Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess my sin to You now. I ask for Your forgiveness. I renounce now, every ungodly soul tie, every joining in sexual intimacy, every attachment to an image, whatever it is you’ve uncovered in counsel. I renounce it and cancel it now.”

Now the reactions: “I renounce death wishes – wanting to die because I was hurt. I renounce it and choose life. I renounce every inner vow I made, that I would never let anyone near me again. I renounce it now. I renounce every bitter judgement. I renounce it and cancel it now. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me. Now Lord, I ask You to set me free.”

You see how we’ve just systematically pulled down the demonic house. Then you can start to minister to them. How would you minister? Start with breaking things: “In Jesus’ name, I break the ungodly soul tie. I break it. I break it.” You speak what you’re breaking. “I break the attachment to images. I break the attachment to websites. I break those things now. In Jesus’ name I break them, and break the other bondages. I break that inner vow. I break that death wish.” Once you’ve assessed what it is, you just break it.

Now you command the spirits. You command unclean spirits; and usually there’ll be spirits of bitterness; spirits of death; spirits of rejection; spirits of grief. Let the Holy Spirit guide you what to pray for. If you could just imagine for a moment what that person went through, you’ll begin to be able to name quite clearly the things they’ve gone through: Spirits of rejection; Spirits of bitterness; Hatred of men; Self-hate; and Shame.

You begin to start to lock-in to a flow. Often people carry over their life a deep shame. “Father, in Jesus’ name, I break the shame. I command the spirit of shame to come out.” Wherever there’s shame, there would be self-hate, and maybe death wishes. So let the spirit of God guide you how to make that flow a prayer.

There are a couple of other areas I also pray for people. So I pray like this – “Father, I ask that you remove out of this person, every defiling influence that was imparted. Lord, remove it out of their body and soul.” Sometimes people feel like there’s something, the person’s leaving them. “Lord, we pray healing into their spirit and soul. Lord I just pray for Your cleansing to flow right through this person.”

Now you get the idea how to minister. It’s not very hard. When we have an alter call, and we call up people and their sexual sin; break the soul ties, speak into and command shame, and bitterness, and unclean spirits, and death to go. What you’ll find as you are looking into the person, are: reactions against the person who hurt them - bitterness, hatred; and then reactions against themselves – Shame; Self-hate. Self-rejection. Bitterness. Grief.

So it doesn’t take much to think about this: that when people have got into this kind of turmoil, they have issues with God, issues with another person, issues with themselves. So you just speak into each of these areas.

So there we are. Those are some of the major areas that we need to learn to minister into; and there’ll be also the area of trauma. We’ll talk about that tomorrow briefly. Now, the last one on that list that I didn’t mention, I’ll just mention it briefly now, are just patterns or habits of sin. You just need to identify these. I’ll just give them to you quickly: Unforgiveness; Bitterness; Hatred; and Rebellion. Those are common sins in people’s lives; reactions to others, jealousy. So those are common heart sins; Rebellion. Every one of these, the Bible makes it clear, opens the doorway to evil spirits. Unforgiveness; Bitterness; Hatred; and Rebellion - all of those things open the door to evil spirits. When a person is rejected, they usually rebel.

So it just helps you to understand that those issues of the heart need to be dealt with too. Unforgiveness, Bitterness, Hatred. The person needs to just repent and release forgiveness. Then we command the spirits to come out.

So, we see then, we’ve got many many keys now of how to minister to people. We’ve started to see now that evil spirits use doorways into lives. Dismantle the doorways, and then you command the spirits out. Dismantle the doorways, dismantle the demonic houses, and it’s quite easy to get the person set free.

So tomorrow we’ll look briefly at the issue of trauma, and various kinds of how trauma affects people. Then we’ll look at how to work with people to build freedom in their life, because it’s not enough just to cast the demons out; we need to get the person to walk in new life. That will involve growing in their spirit, and renewing their mind, and handling the pressure of temptations and the old things coming back. It’s quite simple – humble yourself under the hand of God; submit to God, resist the devil, he will flee from you.

There are some practical things I’ll share with you that’ll help a person rebuild their life. Mostly people just want you to fix them; but we need to encourage people to journey with God, and take responsibility for building a Godly life. It’s easier to cast out demons than to build a Godly life, because building a Godly life requires discipline, and developing good habits in your life.

Tomorrow we’ll have a chance to minister to people as well. So we’ll use the first session tomorrow to just finish the teaching, and the second session to be able to have a flow of ministry. Amen. God bless you.

The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8)  

Wed 11 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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Humans are very unique - not only living in the natural world, but can also connect to the spiritual world. Jesus came to tell us about the Kingdom of God, which is full of light, peace and joy; but there is another Kingdom which we are all born into - the Kingdom of Darkness - which rules by tormenting people, and using sin to control them. Jesus came to set us free, by shedding his blood on the Cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us, we need to continue and allow the Holy Spirit to change our thinking, by the renewing of our mind - that we would be kind, tender hearted and loving to one another, and set free in our hearts.

Tonight we’re going to pray for people to be set free of tormenting spirits. I’m sure many of you have come, and that’s what you’re wanting - a breakthrough in your life. Breakthroughs can be dramatic and sudden, or we breakthrough progressively.

So at the end of the meeting, we’re going to have an opportunity to pray for people. At the end of the meeting, any person who wishes prayer can make their way up and we will pray for you. We want to bless you. We want to help you. That’s the heart of God. He loves you and desires you help you. We’ll also extend an invitation tonight. If you’ve come here and you’re not a Christian, at the end of the meeting we’ll extend an invitation; an invitation for you to receive Jesus Christ, to become a follower of Jesus. So we’re going to share tonight about God’s goodness. We’re going to pray and minister to people; and then give you an opportunity to make a decision if you would like to receive Jesus Christ.

When we’re born into this life, we’re born separate from God. Every person that’s born into this world is separated from God by sin. The problem is not God’s; the problem is ours. God loves people; His heart is to help us all the time. The nature of God is loving; His heart is always towards us. His heart is towards you; but sin blinds us to what is real. We become self-centred, and we want to live our life without God. We violate God’s laws, and troubles and problems come into our life. God always desires to come in and to help you.

So we’re going to share a story from the Bible tonight; and I’ll mix it with some real life stories. We want to show you how you can be set free tonight. God always desires to help us, we just have to open our heart and be willing to let Him. The first step towards God is to become aware of our need. So when we’re born into this world, we lack a sense of purpose; we wonder why we’re here, we long to find some meaning in our life, and we find ourselves with problems we can’t solve. This is called sin - living a life without God. Jesus Christ came into this world to address the area of sin, and to make it possible for us to receive new life.

At the end of the meeting, when we pray for people, we’ll be praying for the power of God to touch people. We’ll be praying a deliverance prayer. A deliverance prayer is a prayer to release you from evil spirits. It’s a prayer to break areas of your life that have been in bondage, to set you free. Jesus said: “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly”; but He said: “The devil has come to steal, kill and destroy.” So there are very real evil spirits. They seek to enter people’s lives, and to bring destruction.

Tonight, we want to challenge those spirits. Tonight, we want to confront them. We want them to know Jesus Christ is stronger than every evil spirit. So evil spirits seek to enter people’s lives, and they always do it by deception. The majority of times, people don’t know they have an evil spirit; and it continues to work in their life, creating problems for them. Jesus came to: confront evil spirits; to deal with the issues of sin which allow the demons in; and to reconnect us with God, so that the Spirit of God could come in us. No person is made to live with evil spirits. We’re made for the presence of God. We’re designed to bring heaven to earth.

So at the end of the meeting, we’ll have an opportunity for people who are struggling and tormented by evil spirits to be set free. I will tonight, preach on one area; but I encourage you to be open if you have a problem to come forward. When the anointing or power of the Spirit of God begins to flow, there comes a sudden change in the atmosphere. We can’t see God, because He’s a spirit; but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. His presence can be seen touching lives.

When the presence of God comes into a meeting, sometimes demonic spirits begin to manifest. When Jesus spoke in some meetings, demons began to cry out. So it’s possible that during the course of the meeting, before we get to the end, that demonic spirits may begin to manifest their presence. If they do, people may shake, cry, yell, or fall on the floor. Don’t be distracted by that. We will keep our focus on what God is doing.

So tonight, during the meeting, if you start to become agitated, it’s possibly an evil spirit. If you start to feel deep fear inside - it’s not you, it’s the spirit. It’s afraid, because it knows what’s happening. If you start to feel very angry inside - it’s not you, it’s the spirit, very angry, because it sees what’s happening. If you suddenly feel: “I don’t like that man, I want to kill him”- that’s definitely a spirit. We don’t worry about that. We believe that Jesus will set people free. So if you become agitated during the meeting, then you come up to the front; and we will minister and pray for you. Amen? Amen.

So Lord we welcome You to come tonight. We welcome You to come in power tonight. Holy Spirit we invite You to come into this meeting. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I speak to every evil spirit present here tonight: you are subject to my authority, in Jesus’ name. When I command you, you will manifest your presence, and come out of people. Lord we thank You tonight for Your presence to touch people. Amen.

Let’s just pray for a few people, and I want us to just enjoy the presence of God. Don’t put your hand up for me to pray for you. Just let me point you out and pray for you. I just want to listen to the Holy Spirit, and as I listen to the Holy Spirit, He will show me who or what to pray for. Ok?

Let’s have a look around and pray for someone. Can I just pray for this girl just here? Just come. Thank you Lord. God knows all about our lives, and His presence is here tonight. Praise the Lord. Thank you Lord. Lord touch her tonight. Just close your eyes. Now, God’s presence is very near, and when we open our heart to Him, even though we can’t see Him, His presence can just come on us. Just touch us like that. Presence of God is here.

So people just suddenly feel God’s presence come - it’s a good feeling. Sometimes people laugh, sometimes they weep. God touches people in different ways. “Come and touch her Lord. Release Your joy into her life. Don’t block it. Laughter is good for you. It’s good for all of us. What did you suddenly feel?” “She’s really happy.” “Did you really feel happy? You want more?” “Yeah.” “Spirit touch you.” “Come. Touch you even more.”

“You want what she had? Close your eyes, and it’s like you just open your heart. Presence of God just comes.” The spirit world is very easy for us to reach into. It’s very easy for us to connect with God. God is not a long way off. God is very close; and when we open our heart, His presence comes to touch us.

So, we can’t see God, but His presence is here. This is a great church. This is a church that worships, a church that prays, and the presence of God is here. The Bible says that the kingdom of heaven, that’s the realm where Jesus Christ is King, is a kingdom with peace and joy. A kingdom where there’s joy, where people are free. “

So, it’s wonderful to know that we have an open heaven where God can help us. Some of you tonight have very deep problems. You have some things that are really troubling you. God wants to help you tonight. He’s willing to help you. All we have to do is extend faith towards Him. Jesus said: according to what you believe, it will be done to you. So when you come for prayer, always come expecting God to touch you. Come expecting something to happen. Expect God to minister to you. Amen.

So when we pray for people, you’ll feel the power of God come on you, and if there’re spirits inside, they may manifest. They may stir. So, at the end of the evening when we pray for people, I’ll lead you in a corporate prayer to reach out to the Lord. Extend your faith for Jesus to touch you. It’s not about me, it’s about Jesus. When you extend your faith towards Him, He will reach out to touch you.

Now, there’s someone, a woman down here; and the Lord shows me that you have been having nightmares almost all of your life. You have these recurring nightmares that wake you up, and you feel fear when you wake up. In fact, many times you have a light on, because you don’t like it in the dark. Who’s that woman that has that problem? That’s a spirit causing that problem. There’s a woman somewhere in front of me here, and you have this problem. God bless. Just please come.

So you say – how could you know this? Well I don’t, but Jesus knows, and He wants to help her. So isn’t it wonderful? Jesus knows. He knows about you. It’s alright. He loves you. He wants to help you. You’ve been having these problems most of your life. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s a family spirit, and God wants to set you free tonight. You don’t have to live with that fear. Jesus wants to help you. So, in just a moment, I will command the spirit to go. In just a moment, it will leave you, and you won’t be tormented anymore.

“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break generational curses of idolatry. I break them. I break them. I break them in Jesus’ name. I break the agreements with idols, I break sacrifices to idols, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command this tormenting spirit: Come out of her now. Loose her now in Jesus’ name. I break words of dedication, where you were dedicated to the idol. I break that dedication now. I loose you from the words of dedication. I cut the soul ties to the idol and temple.

In Jesus’ name, loose her now! Loose! Loose! Come out of her now. Come on. Out. Out. In Jesus’ name, release her now. Release! Loose! The blood of Jesus has broken your power. You will loose her and come out of her now. Spirits of fear. Spirits of terror. Spirits of idolatry. Spirits of death. Spirit of witchcraft. Loose her now! Come out. Out. Let her go. Thank You Lord for Your anointing coming on her now. Thank You Jesus. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, come out of her. Come out. Come out. Just cough it out. Out! You will release her. You will release her now. Release! Let her go. Let her go. Out. Thank You Lord. Thank You Jesus.

“Lord just come upon her now. Thank You Lord. Peace. Peace. Father, we just thank You for Your presence. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Tell me what’s happening in you now. Tell me what you’re feeling. Just talk. Just tell me what you’re feeling. Some things left you.” “It’s hurting her.” “Where’s it hurting? In your stomach? Ok. Just put your hand on your stomach now. Church, I’d like you to reach your hands out to her now. Just pray in tongues now. Thank You Lord. Just touch her.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you now to come out of her. Come out. That’s right. Cough. Out. Out. Out. Spirits of bitterness. Spirits of hate. Spirits of fear. Go. Go. Go. Go in Jesus’ name. I break generational witchcraft. I break generational agreements with evil spirits. I break it, I break it, I break it. In Jesus’ name, I command you now, spirits of divination, go. Spirits of witchcraft, go. In Jesus’ name, release her, release her. I break the generational curses over your life. I break them. I break them. Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch. Touch. Holy Spirit come. Thank you Lord.

Alright then, just to help you explain what’s happened. The Lord gave me what’s called a “word of knowledge”. It’s a little bit of knowledge, about one person at one time. He showed me a problem she had all her life; and she showed courage. She came forward. It’s not always easy to do that. What happened is, as I began to speak and command the spirits, they began to manifest and come up out of her. First, there were screams. Then there were tears. Then she began to cough; and the spirits started to come out of her.

So, God has touched her very deeply. It’s quite traumatic to be tormented by spirits all your life. She was troubled with the nightmares from when she was very young. So we know the spirits came in through her family. Night after night she would be tormented by the spirits. It’s very hard to explain that to people. Usually people feel quite ashamed, and they don’t want to tell people they have such a problem. But these were tormenting spirits. Jesus said: the thief comes just to steal, kill and destroy; but He came to give us life.

So tonight, God has started the work of delivering. There’s been a huge degree of freedom, so there is of course grief with this; but she’ll be free from those nightmares. She won’t have to go to sleep with the light on. She won’t have to go to sleep afraid of the dark, because Jesus has conquered the darkness, and brought peace to her. Now, there are other areas that God wants to touch her. So we just allow God’s spirit to continue to work in her life.

There’ll be other people here tonight, also troubled with the same issue; and God wants to set you free as well. Some of you will be troubled with nightmares. Some of you troubled with, like you wake up, and someone’s grabbing you. This is a spirit. This is a demonic spirit. Some of you at night-time will feel like someone’s touching you or molesting you, but there’s no one there. That’s an evil spirit.

God wants to set you free of these things. That’s why Jesus came – to deal with the issue of sin, and then to set us free of tormenting spirits. He wants you to be filled with His spirit. Where His spirit is present, there is peace and joy. You notice when I was praying for some of the other people, that there was a joy came on them. There was a peace came on them, kind of happy. God’s spirit brings great things to our life.

The fruit of God’s spirit in us is: love and joy and peace. Demonic spirits bring turmoil and agitation. God wants us to be free of that. That’s what tonight’s about. It’s about people being set free of spirits. So later on tonight we’ll extend the invitation: that God will set you free also. Amen. Come on let’s give Lord a clap shall we?

[Teaching]

We’re going to have a look at a passage in the Old Testament. We’re going to go to the book of Exodus. We’re going to just look in a couple of places. We’ll first of all look in Exodus 1:13 – 14. Then we’ll look in the book of Exodus 15.

The Bible is a revelation of the unseen spirit world. The Bible helps us to understand there’s an invisible spirit world. That there was a real physical world; and human beings are quite unique. We can live in the physical world; and we can connect with the spiritual world. Jesus came to talk about the kingdom of God. Jesus came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.

In the kingdom of heaven, there are no evil spirits. The kingdom of heaven takes on the nature of the king. Jesus is King over the kingdom of heaven, and His kingdom is: full of light; full of life; full of creativity; full of peace; full of joy. It’s an amazing kingdom, and He wants to bring that kingdom to you.

The problem is, there is another kingdom - the kingdom of darkness. When Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against God, demonic spirits began to manipulate, and govern, and rule over people’s lives; tormenting them with burdens, and problems, and pressures; bringing sickness and affliction to people.

Jesus came to set people free. He said: the Spirit of the Lord anointed Him, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. So Jesus ministered to people, and set them free of tormenting spirits, and introduced them to the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, there is no sickness, there’s no disease, no torments. Where Jesus rules, His life prevails.

Now we’re going to have a look at a story in the Old Testament. These stories in the Old Testament are pictures of the invisible spiritual world. We can learn from these stories, we can learn about Jesus Christ. We can learn about the hidden spirit world. So we’re going to look at a story of Israel, and we’re going to first of all, look in Egypt, where they were in bondage.

The people of Israel were held as slaves in the land of Egypt. They wanted freedom. They yearned for freedom, but they were dominated by a foreign military power. They were slaves that served taskmasters. They wanted to be free, but they could not be free. They needed someone to deliver them.

This is just like us. Before we come to Christ, we may think we’re free; but we are living in sin, manipulated by evil spirits, and our life is very hard. Our life is served with bondage. Look what it says in verse 13. “So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service, in which they made them serve, was with rigor.”

So we see a group of people who long to be free; but they are ruled over by cruel taskmasters; and they made every part of their life hard and difficult. It says: they made their lives bitter. In other words, the people were hurt. They were abused, they suffered; and they had no way to escape. They were literally slaves in a foreign country; and their heart became very bitter.

When people are in pain, when people suffer in life, and get hurt by others, often they hold resentment and anger and their heart becomes bitter. When our heart becomes bitter, it opens the door for evil spirits to enter, and to cause sickness and diseases.

I prayed for one young man, and he was deeply bitter against his father. He was angry. He was resentful; and he let it go down into his heart. So his life was bitter. He could not appreciate or enjoy the good things, because he had such bitterness in his heart. The result was, a spirit of infirmity came into him; and it began to steal his health. He developed pain in all his joints, his back began to stiffen, and his life gradually came under threat that he would be paralysed. The bitterness in his heart had opened a doorway for evil spirits.

Whenever people are involved in idolatry, or there’s bitterness in the heart, demonic spirits will enter. I have also found wherever there’s idolatry, people serve under those idols, serve under the demons, their lives become bitter. Idols do not offer us any solution. Rather, they make our life harsher. So these people were made very, very, bitter.

God heard their cries, and He sent Moses to them. Moses is a picture of Jesus Christ. A prophetic picture of a deliverer. Moses delivered the people of God out of Egypt. God sent plagues on the Egyptians. Each plague was an attack against the gods they worshipped. The last plague of all, the people of God shed the blood of a lamb; they put the blood on the doors of their house, and a destroyer went through the nation, and everywhere the blood had been applied, the people were spared.

This is a great prophetic picture, that one day Jesus Christ would shed His blood on the cross, would die and give up His life on a cross, that every person who would believe that Jesus shedding His blood was enough to break the power of sin. Every person who by faith receive Christ, the blood Jesus shed would break the power of the devil, break the power of sin, and set them free. So, there came a great day, when the people of Israel left Egypt. They were saved! The Egyptians had been destroyed; and the people of God journeyed full of hope. But God didn’t want to just save them. He wanted to bring them into a place of great blessing; but in order to go into that place of blessing, God needed to change them.

I want you to look with me in Exodus 15; and we’ll read from verse 22. “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” Verse 27 – “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.”

So when we give our life to Jesus Christ, and we begin to follow Christ, not everything is easy. There are often challenges on the way. God is leading us in a journey to blessing; but He wants to change you. He wants to free you of bitterness in your heart. So God saw all of these people come out of Egypt; and they were rejoicing and celebrating; but God knew they still had a slave mentality. They still thought like slaves. They still fought like a victim. So God wanted to change them. He wanted to free them from slave thinking. He wanted them to become sons and children, and enter in an inheritance; but in order to enter their inheritance, they needed to change.

God has many things planned for you; but you need to grow. You need to let God work in your life. Sometimes there are hindrances in our hearts, hindrances in our life. Sometimes there are bondages in our life. We had them before we were saved; and after we got saved, God says: I want to change you. I want to free you. I want you to experience the kingdom of heaven now. So how am I going to do that?

Notice what happened here. The people just had a great experience, a victory. They’ve had 3 days with no water. It’s hard to walk in the desert with no water. They were thirsty. They suffered temporary lack. You see, God could see something they couldn’t see. God saw them come free, and God had planned the journey for them. God knew there were some sweet water, wells, and palm trees. God had already provided for them. It’s just they couldn’t see it. So when they experienced 3 days with no water, they became very distressed; and what was in their heart came up. The waters they drank were quite bitter, and so what did they do?

Difficulties are opportunities to grow. Notice what happened. It says: the people complained. They were bitter after years of slavery. So as soon as difficulty came, what was in their heart came up. God wanted to change their heart; but before you can change, you must see the need for change. Sometimes we experience some difficulties in life, and then an opportunity to see what is in our heart, an opportunity to grow and change. The people were bitter; they saw themselves as a victim. God wanted them to be healed; He wanted to release the bitterness they held.

When people come to know Jesus Christ, often they’ve had years of painful experiences, that have caused their heart to become bitter: Family experiences; broken marriages; broken relationships; disappointments. Now, if you ask a person: are you bitter? “Not me. Oh no. I go to church. I read the Bible. No, no, no. I wouldn’t be bitter. Why do you ask that?” So people can be bitter, and not be aware of it; but pressure and difficulties cause what’s in our heart to come up.

There are several ways you can recognise bitterness. The first one is seen here – complaining. If you hear someone complaining, they’re bitter. Do you know anyone that complains? “Oh, it’s that person next to you isn’t it? It’s not me! I would never complain.”

You notice the second thing they did is: they blamed. Bitter people want to blame someone. Bitter people are always looking for someone to blame. If I blame you, you are the reason that I’m so angry. You make me so angry! It’s all your fault, you know. It’s not my fault. Hello - it’s my anger! If you’re angry - it’s your anger. No one makes you angry - you get angry all by yourself!

You can tell when people are bitter - there are a number of evidences of bitterness. Let me just share with you what they are. You notice here, they complained against Moses. Let me share with you some of the evidence of bitterness. 1.) Complaining. 2.) Blaming others. 3.) Lack of joy.

Bitter people can’t laugh, you know. They’re very bitter and sour. It shows on their face. You look at the face, lots of frowns. Their lips, it looks like they’re sucking a lemon. As they get older, it gets worse. It shows on the face more. All that frowning, all that bitterness, lack of ability to laugh, to have joy.

Here’s another sign: a lack of gratitude. People who are bitter aren’t thankful. They focus on what they don’t have; rather than what they do have. A person who is free of bitterness, is thankful: “I’m so blessed. I have so many wonderful blessings.”

But these people couldn’t be joyful, and couldn’t be thankful. Instead of saying: “Oh, thank you for getting us out of Egypt. Thank You Jesus”; it was: “Hey, why no water? It’s all your fault. You led us here. How come you lead us here? I think you want to kill us. We should go back.” See - lack of gratitude. Here’s what happens: lack of gratitude; and often there’s judgements.

People who’re bitter make a lot of judgements. They’re very critical, finding fault. These are evidences of bitterness. Bitter people can’t enter and experience God’s blessing unless they deal with the bitterness.

Israel was bitter. Their bitterness caused them continued cycles of failure and defeat. When you’re bitter, you usually can’t see it, but the fruit shows up: blame; no joy, can’t celebrate; lack of gratitude; judging. Always wanting more; never satisfied.

There are sharp, cutting words. Oh yeah - when someone is bitter, there’s a sharpness in their words. You can feel the sword go through you. There’s an example in the Bible of a woman and a man, the man’s name was David. His wife’s name was Michal. Michal was Saul’s daughter. David was Saul’s son-in-law.

Both of them were deeply hurt by King Saul. So what King Saul did was this – King Saul was envious of David, so he chased him away. He put a reward on him – kill on sight; dangerous fugitive - shoot to kill; chased him through the land. If David made any friends, he’d kill the friends. He chased him right out of the country.

Then, he did something else: he took David’s wife, and gave her to another man. She’s still got a husband, she loves her husband, but he drags her away, gives her to another man. It breaks her heart - she’s forced to sleep with a man she doesn’t love. Forced to go through a marriage she should never have gone through.

So David went on that way, and she went on this way; but God had a destiny for them, that together they would rule Israel. Eventually, God brought them back together. Eventually, God made way for David to be restored and become king.

Now David has been badly treated. He’s been hurt very deeply. He’s been rejected. He’s been falsely accused. His friends have been killed. He’s been hunted down. But his heart was free of bitterness. How was his heart free of bitterness? He forgave. He reached out for the goodness of God. He said: God is good to me; I will show grace and forgive.

So when the opportunity came to kill Saul, he would not. He says: God can deal with Saul. I put my life in the Lord’s hand. Mostly when people are hurt, they want to get revenge. Someone was telling me, for the Chinese, ten years not too long to wait for revenge. So he had his ten years, but there’s no revenge in his heart. When the time comes for him to be king, he brings the ark of God, and he is full of joy. He’s celebrating, he’s rejoicing, his heart is free; and he wants to bless King Saul’s family. He’s grateful to God for blessing. There’s no bitterness in him - his spirit is free.

But his wife was very bitter. She did not reach out to God and bring grace into her situation. So the Bible says in 2 Samuel 6: She looked out the window. What’s this? She was unable to experience the blessing of God. The greatest revival in Israel’s history, and she is looking through the window, not being part of it. Bitterness will keep you out of the presence of God. Bitterness will leave you tormented.

Second thing, she looked, and she sees her husband; and she despised him in her heart. She looked down on him, because bitterness is in her heart. When David came home, he’s full of joy, full of gratitude, full of thankfulness to the Lord. He came home to bless his household; but his wife says: “Oh, you’re the king, and you carry on like this! Why you do this? You make a fool of yourself.” Bitter! “Geh geh geh” like that. You know what I’m talking about? You heard someone do that? Sometimes I’ll hear people do that. “Geh geh geh!” It’s like a sword. Stab. Stab. Stab. Words have power of life and death.

So one is sweet; one is bitter. One is enjoying God’s blessing; one is outside God’s blessing. Each had a choice as to how they would respond to difficulties. One forgave, and came into blessing. The other, it says of Michal, because she was so bitter, she remained barren all her life. She was never able to produce any fruit in her life. Bitterness will leave you unfruitful, and it will defile your relationship. Her marriage became empty. Her life became empty, and she died in bitterness, with her dreams unfulfilled, because she never dealt with bitterness in her heart.

Unfortunately, this is true of many Christians. We let the hurts of our past remain in our heart. We stay bitter against parents – father, mother, people who’ve hurt us – rather than choosing to release and forgive. The Bible says in Ephesians 4 – don’t grieve the Spirit of God; don’t let any bitterness, or anger, or wrath, or malice get into your heart; but rather, be kind, be tender-hearted, forgiving one another.

One of the greatest problems I have seen among Christians is bitterness - roots of bitterness. It shows up with: complaining and blaming; inability to celebrate, lack of joy; unable to celebrate someone else’s victory. When someone else gets promoted, if your heart is free – you say: “Hey, wonderful. I’m so glad you’re promoted. Oh, you buy that new Mercedes? Wonderful, I’m so glad.” But when bitterness is in the heart: “Oh, how come he is promoted? How come he has a Mercedes, and I have no Mercedes.”

Bitterness stops you celebrating with others. Bitterness focuses your heart on injustice, rather than on the goodness of God. Over and over and over again, God wanted them to deal with bitterness, with the deep resentment that comes out of years of living in bondage. You can’t afford to be bitter. You can’t afford to let anger stay in your heart. You can’t afford to harbour resentments. You can’t afford to harbour unforgiveness. Jesus taught this in Matthew 18:35, He said that when people are unforgiving, demonic spirits have a right to enter and torment them.

So, what did God do in this situation? Look at this. Just watch this now. God already planned the waterfall. God was not holding out on them. He already had a water plan. But before they got to God’s water plan, there was just a little dry period; and up came the bitterness. Look what happens. It says: Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and when he cast the tree in the water, the bitter waters become sweet.

God knew that they would face the hardship. He knew they would face difficulty; but He’s already made a provision. It’s just they couldn’t see it. God had to open their eyes, that He had a tree. That tree is a picture of the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, He took injustice, He took sin, and He said – “Father, forgive them.” When you and I suffer injustices, suffer hurts and disappointments, we need to come to the cross and say: “Jesus, as You forgave me, I forgive them. I bring Your cross into this situation to make my bitterness sweet.

Joseph had every reason to be bitter; but he found Christ in the middle of it. He was betrayed, thrown in prison, he was falsely accused, he was jailed, he was ignored; and when he came out and saw his brothers, he said: “Don’t be hard on yourselves - it wasn’t you who sent me here - it’s God who had a plan for my life. It was God who sent me here - I needed these experiences to prepare me for my destiny.” His heart was free of bitterness. His heart was free of unforgiveness. He saw that God had a purpose in the difficulty - to prepare him for greatness.

Now, listen to me. God wants to change you; but to change, you have to recognise what the issue is, that God wants to deal with. Some of you are harbouring unforgiveness and bitterness – against a husband, against a wife, against a father, against a mother, against an older brother or sister, against an uncle, against some teacher, some spiritual leader.

As you go to pray, you keep being troubled by this person, tormented by spirits; and you notice when pressure comes on you, instead of turning to God - you complain. You blame. You can’t laugh and enjoy life. You don’t seem to be able to celebrate others’ success, because there’s bitterness in your heart. When it comes to the presence of God, it seems somehow you’re not able to access. It seems in your spiritual life you’re not very productive. Your relationships are full of conflict.

Maybe the problem is not the other people. Maybe the problem is in your own heart, and God wants to hear you. In order to be set free, it’s very very simple. I need to come to Jesus Christ. I need to repent of holding these deep attitudes in my heart, and release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me; and as I release forgiveness, God’s power is released to deliver me. I have found one of the most common reasons people are sick and why they’re depressed, and why they don’t get delivered – it’s bitterness.

God wants you to be freed. You just have to make a decision tonight, if you will come to the cross of Christ and release forgiveness. “But well it’s so not fair”. It isn’t fair. Forgiveness means: I release the debt, because God has forgiven me much, I will forgive others and bless them. Jesus said: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who despitefully use you.”

If you have someone who’s been cursing you, forgive them and bless you. “I don’t want to.” No. That’s bitterness that’s saying that. If someone has used you, and hurt you, and manipulated you, and damaged you, then pray for them. “I don’t want to do that.” That’s because of bitterness, so you’re the one who’s tormented.

Tonight you can be free of that. God wants to set many, many people free tonight of bitterness; resentment; unforgiveness. You’ve just got to make a decision: “It’s time for change. I will come tonight to the cross. I will let go of my hurt, and my heartache. I will let go of my sorrows. I will release forgiveness. I will start of bless instead of curse.” Will that change the other person? Not at all; but it will change you, and you can be free.

As we pray for people, many people will be set free of all kinds of tormenting spirits. Listen, I have found that whenever people are involved in idolatry, there is bitterness. Whenever people are involved with evil spirits, there is bitterness. Whenever people have been involved in sexual relationships, there is bitterness. Whenever people have suffered at the hands of others, there is bitterness. But Jesus can make the bitter waters sweet. He can turn your life around, and you can be a blessing for others.

Here’s the most interesting scripture: Now, the God of all comfort, comforts you in your distress, so you can comfort others, in the same way God comforted you.

Let’s just close our eyes right now. Firstly, I want to extend an invitation to any person here tonight who’s not yet a Christian – you have not yet received Jesus. I’m inviting you tonight to come to Jesus Christ. Jesus said: Everyone who received Him, everyone who believed on Him, He gave the right to become a child of God.

So tonight if you’re here, and you’re not a Christian, there’s a spiritual vacuum in your life. It can only be filled by relationship with God. Jesus invites you into relationship with Him, and to become a partner with Him, in changing the lives of others. He said: “Come, follow Me. I’ll make you to become a fisher of men. Come, follow Me. I’ll change you, and your life will be sweet to people. Come follow Me, you won’t walk in darkness. I will have the light of God’s life. Come follow Me.”

That’s Jesus’ invitation tonight. The Bible says: “God so loved the world (loved you), that He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for your sins, that whoever would believe in Him, would not perish but have eternal life.

This is what I want you to do – you’ve been here in the meeting tonight, you’ve felt the presence of God, you’ve seen the Spirit of God touch people, you’ve see joy come into people’s lives like an invisible river from heaven. You’ve also seen a young woman set free of tormenting spirits. God is real. It’s not my power. It’s the Spirit of God; and that same Spirit that brought joy to people, that set that young woman free, is here for you.

Here’s what I want you to do now – every person wishing to receive Jesus Christ, please raise your hand tonight. Raise your hand and let me know. “I want to receive Jesus.” Just put your hand up. Put your hand up wherever you are. This is an important decision, to receive Jesus, to become a Christian.

This is what we’re going to do now: in a moment everyone will stand; and we will begin to clap and celebrate; and every person who put their hand up, and even those who didn’t put their hand up, if you’re wanting to receive Jesus tonight, to open your life for God to forgive you, this is what I want you to do. Make your way up to the front, make a row facing me, and I will lead you in a simple prayer. If you brought someone, and they don’t know Jesus, ask them if they’d like you to come up with them.

Praise the Lord. I’m so glad you came tonight. Jesus knows each one of you. He knows you by name. Each one of you is a person he knows. He knows your struggles. He knows the difficulties you’ve faced. He knows what challenges are in your life. He knows where you’ve failed, and He loves you. He loves you. He gave His life on the cross for you. The Bible says: in heaven, there’s great rejoicing when the sinner comes and responds to Christ. So right now in heaven, there is rejoicing.

I’m going to lead you now in a prayer, and when we pray this prayer, the prayer’s just talking to God. God will hear and respond. I want you to just close your eyes. Close your eyes. When you close your eyes, you can just be aware God is near us. When you speak, He will hear you. He will forgive you. His peace will come in your heart. He will take away the shame of failures, of things you’ve done, of things that were done to you. He loves you. Church, would you help us with this prayer? Let’s pray together. I want you to listen and speak these words out.

“Father in Heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for accepting me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, and to rise again from the dead. I turn away from sin. I turn away from false gods. Jesus I receive You as my Saviour. Please forgive all of my sins. I receive forgiveness now. I receive Your Spirit into my heart, and I give You my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

Thank You Lord. Just keep your eyes closed. Shortly after this, we’re going to pray for people to be set free, pray for people to be healed, but this is a special moment. God loves you. Touch her Lord. Pour Your love upon her life.

[Ministry]

I break the hold of this spirit. I command it in Jesus’ name. Lord touch this dear lady. In the name of the Lord Jesus, I break the power of cancer in your body. I curse every trace of cancer. I command healing to flow, in Jesus’ name. Touch her Lord. Touch. Touch her Lord right now. Release.

Praise the Lord. Let’s just worship the Lord. Worship the Lord together. It’s a great joy to see people get saved, to give their life to Jesus Christ. We want to pray for people to be delivered of spirits. We want to pray a deliverance prayer. Some of you here tonight have come for healing. Some of you have come for deliverance. I want you to listen how the ministry will happen...

We will get you to line, in a row facing the front. Then what we will do is this: if you have sickness in your body, please put your hand on the part where there’s sickness, so we recognise you’re sick. After we’ve prayed for you, check whether there’s any change in your body. So if you need prayer for sickness, put your hand on your body. Otherwise just come into the row. If we see you with your hand on your body, we’ll know the prayer is for sickness, for healing. If you don’t have your hand on your body, we will know it’s deliverance you need. Let’s just worship the Lord while people start to get their place.

While you are waiting, worship the Lord. Don’t be passive. Look to Jesus for your healing or deliverance. Look to Him for your miracle. Keep your eyes closed. Focus your attention on Jesus. Before I lead you in a prayer, this is a deliverance prayer. If there’s any bitterness in your heart; if there’s sin; or there’s things you know you’ve done wrong - ask Jesus to forgive you right now. Just confess it to Him. Is there someone you need to forgive? Release forgiveness right now. Maybe there’s sickness because you’re unforgiving?

So just while we’re just worshipping quietly, “Jesus please forgive me”. Talk to Him, tell Him what’s happened. Bitterness, anger; hate; jealousy; unforgiveness; rebellion; addiction; idolatry; spiritism. Whatever it is, “Jesus forgive me”. It’s very important you do this. Is there anyone who has hurt you, and you’re holding something in your heart against them? Forgive them. Release them. Just release them right now. “Father I forgive. I forgive.”

This is what we will do. I will lead you in the miracle prayer. At the end of that prayer, you begin to worship the Lord. When we come and lay hands on you, stop praying. Stop praying. Just receive the miracle. Receive healing in your body. Then, check your body. See what change has happened. If it’s deliverance you’re needing, then just breathe out heavily. God will set you free. Are we ready now? Just follow me in this prayer.

“Father in heaven I come to you in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, every sickness, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ. I renounce all curses over my life. I cancel them now in Jesus’ name. I ask You Lord to forgive me. I ask You Lord to make me clean. I ask You Lord to heal me, to deliver me. From my heart I forgive those who’ve hurt me. I forgive them and release them. Lord set me free now. Satan go from my life in Jesus’ name.”

Let us begin to worship the Lord. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I speak to every demonic spirit – spirits of witchcraft, spirits of idolatry, spirits of death, spirits of bitterness and hate, spirits of infirmity. I command you to go. I command you to loose people today. Lord we release Your power. Lord touch people tonight. Delivering, healing, releasing people. In Jesus’ mighty name.”

Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8)  

Thu 12 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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Many problems we have in life come from traumatic experiences, which have often happened in early childhood: in the womb; early childhood; or during school years. These experiences tend to shut us down, and control the memory of the trauma. We do not realise that these experiences are actually controlling you: relationships; reactions; and approach to life. The effect of these traumatic experiences can only be overcome and healed through prayer; by exchanging old memory pictures with scripture memorisation; and by inviting the Holy Spirit and the truth into the situation - for total restoration in Jesus name!

[Intro/Review]

Great to see what God is doing. I want to try to conclude with a teaching part in this first session, so we have room to work with the Holy Spirit in the second session. So, if we just go back again and just quickly outline what we did – we looked at Jesus’ teaching on deliverance; how deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom; and that in order to minister deliverance, a person has to work with the Holy Spirit, and it requires faith to do that - you must believe that when you come to pray for someone, something will happen. Then we looked at Jesus teaching on what happens after a person is delivered, and we saw that demons, once they’re cast out, will try to re-establish a hold again.

So, we concluded from that, that it’s important a person make changes in their life, so that there’s no structure for the demon to come back to. That meant we need to think beyond just casting out demons, to demolishing demonic structures in the person’s life. We identified 3 major roots that demons use – legal rights, traumatic experiences, and then reactions to traumatic experiences. We saw that there are certain foundations; the bases upon which someone gets free.

The first is the work Jesus did for us - Jesus at the cross, redeemed us. So, you’ll find sometimes the demon will argue – the person belongs to them; so we have to be able to contend, and hold the word of God – this person belongs to Jesus. We saw that there are also personal foundations - we must prepare the person for deliverance; and failure to get a person delivered usually is because we haven’t prepared them very well.

We saw that the person must first recognise what the problem is, and take responsibility for their part in it. If a person won’t recognise what the problem is, and take ownership, you can’t move them any further. All personal change starts when we recognise the need for the change, and take responsibility for our part in it; and we saw so many times that people will come and want you to fix them, but they don’t want to take ownership of why they’re in this mess in the first place. As a minister of deliverance, we need to help them see how they got where they are, and what their part is in getting free.

We saw that: one, the person needs to repent of sin, and confess it. They must turn from sin, and bring it to the cross. Two, they must release forgiveness, and also receive forgiveness. Sometimes people have difficulty forgiving themselves. So forgiveness – firstly receiving forgiveness for themselves; and then release it to others who have hurt them. If a person won’t release forgiveness, they tend to remain in bondage, and you can’t easily set them free.

We saw also, the importance of people renouncing bondages in their life. To renounce means to speak words to cancel something that’s been constructed. So for example, if a person has worshipped an idol, and served an idol, and come into an agreement with a demon, they need to speak words that cancel this agreement. If a person has been dedicated to an idol or a demon, they need to speak words to cancel it. Jesus said: “The words I speak are spirit and life”. So, words are very important.

We saw also, the need for people to actively resist. They can’t be passive (oh, just do something to me). There’s a spiritual warfare that goes on around deliverance; and people must be willing to resist – to make a stand against the devil, and on the side of reaching out to Jesus for freedom.

So, we looked then at some of the structures in the heart; some of the bondages that get established in people’s lives; just so we could identify them, so we would know what needs to be dealt with.

We talked about soul ties – attachments in the soul to people, images, and things. We talked about bitter root judgements, or beliefs in the heart. We talked about inner vows, word curses, where people curse themselves, or they receive cursings from others.

We also shared that when people have trauma, this affects them as well, and traumas have to be dealt with. So, we saw some of the bondages in the heart – soul ties, bitter judgements and expectations, inner vows, traumatic pictures, and word curses. Sometimes people put burdens or expectations on people.

Then we started to look at how you address the doors of entry; and we looked at several specific doors. Generational curses – it’s established over a family when someone does something; it’s dismantled when someone deals with it. We saw that the curse is dismantled when someone, as a representative of the family, owns up to the sin, brings it to the cross, and holds the cross of Christ between them and this problem. We suggested that if you’re going to diagnose problems, always identify where it began, because that’ll be a clue to generational curses.

We shared that occultic practises and idolatry open the way for demons. We saw that sexual sin opens the way for evil spirits. We saw patterns (or habits) of sin: anger, bitterness, hatred, unforgiveness, rebellion, bitter judgements. All of these create doorways for spirits to enter a person’s life.

[Main Content]

So, now what I want to do is I want to look just briefly at the area of traumatic experiences. Then I want to show you some steps to how to find if a person’s got the root of the problem; and then how we focus on freedom or helping the person walk out of it.

So, we need to look at the area of trauma. It’s a big area, and I’m learning my way into that right now, because I have found that many of the problems people have began when they were very young; and often it began with a traumatic or painful experience.

So, a trauma is an overwhelming emotional experience. It’s an experience that overwhelms the emotions and soul; and it leaves an indelible imprint in the person’s memory.

Now, there can be many traumatic experiences ranging from mild to quite severe; and different people react in different ways. You need to understand this – people don’t forget what happened to them - the more painful the experience, the more deeply it’s imbedded in their memory. So if an experience is of a major one, and extremely painful, or it’s a prolonged one, then it imbeds in the memory.

For example, the person has a motor accident. The shock sometimes is so great, that the whole of the mind shuts down, and it’s like it doesn’t remember what happened. So you talk to someone who’s had maybe a motor accident, and they remember before and after, but they don’t remember the accident. Actually, they do have memory of the accident, it’s just they’re not conscious of it. It was such a trauma, that the memory gets dispersed through their body.

When a person has a traumatic experience, they have a memory imprinted in them; and the memory consists of these things: it’s chemically imprinted into the body; and demonic spirits use it as a doorway of entry. When a person has a traumatic experience, there is first of all, a memory or a picture. The memory of the trauma is made up of these things.

1.) There’s a picture. There is an image. There is something they remember vividly. If you were to think back into your life, can you remember a very embarrassing situation at school or a very embarrassing or painful situation in your life? Most can remember something. What happens is, a picture comes up. So your memory retains the trauma first as a picture.

2.) Firstly there’s the memory of the experience; and secondly: how the person interpreted the experience. What did this mean to them? For example, for a person who was sexually abused, there’s the picture of the experience, the memory of all the smells and sights and sounds and feelings of it; and there’s how they interpret it - what did this mean? I’m powerless. I’m worthless. Men will hurt me. There’s the reaction that the person makes; like an inner vow. I’ll never trust anyone.

So, within the memory of the trauma, there’s: a picture, a belief they formed about it; and a reaction to it. The picture, feelings, what they believed; and how they responded. All of it is contained in the trauma.

So, for example, when you have a person who is sexually abused, they have a picture of the abuser and what happened; there’s the feelings and sounds and smells and sights - all of that is remembered. Then what they believed about this thing: “I’m powerless. I’m useless. I’m worthless. It’s my fault.” Then, how they reacted – “I must never tell anyone. I’ll never let men get near me. You can never trust men.” So, those heart reactions we talked about. So when a person has a trauma, all of those are in the trauma. Particularly powerful is the picture, and what they interpreted that picture to mean.

Now, later on a person can control it all, and bury it all. Later on they may see something, or hear something, or smell something, and it triggers the memory; and all the emotions come back up to the surface, flooding up. I’ll give you just a simple example. Late last year, one of my daughters who lives in Indonesia, miscarried after 5 months. I left and went immediately to be with them, to comfort them, and also to take a service, and to walk them through the process. So after a long trip on the plane – I get off, a little bit of time, then we have a service and a few days, very busy days. I had to keep all my own feelings managed, because I’m there to serve people. Then I came home, it’s Christmas, I’ve got lots of things to do.

About 4 weeks later, I was sitting watching a television, and a song came up – Amazing Grace; and I just began to weep and weep and weep, because the last time I heard that, was in the service we held in my daughter’s home. So I had pushed down all the grief of the experience, but hearing the song again triggered off the memory, and up came all the grief that I had buried; and I could vividly picture being in the room, seeing her singing, and my grandchild dead in the box. It was time for me to grieve and to let go. So, it’ll be just as simple as something like that.

Now, my daughter who went through a huge grief over this situation, and particularly the way they do the cremations, there was quite a traumatic experience for her. So, she was left almost in shock; and I said: “It is important for you, that you see this from God’s point of view. It’s important you have a different picture, because the last picture you had was deeply distressing for you.” I said: “You need God to put a different picture inside you. You can’t remove the memories people have. What you can do is open the way for God to show them a different picture.”

So when we go through a painful experience, we have a limited perspective – what we see is very around our own pain. So, one of the ways you approach a trauma, is to invite the Holy Spirit to take the person back into the experience, and to show them Jesus in the middle of it. This takes some willingness on the part of the person, to be willing to let the Holy Spirit go there. Most people just try to bury the memory and the pain. It’s like locking it up in a room, and then just not letting anyone in. They just try to control the pain.

So I encourage them, if you’ll just let Jesus into that room of that memory, if you’ll let Him come into that room, and be willing to go there again and feel the pain, He will speak to you and comfort you, and He’ll change that situation for you. So, with my daughter, I asked her to close her eyes and to look into that picture of what she saw, and to invite Jesus to come into it. She saw immediately. She saw Jesus standing there, and she saw Him grieving, and she saw Him pick up her child, and hold her child in His arms. He smiled at her and spoke to her; and immediately the grief all subsided, because instead of the memory of a casket going into flames, she had a memory of Jesus taking her child. It brought a deep release for her.

So, when a person has a traumatic experience, they need the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus in that experience. If you think of in the Old Testament, I think its 2 Kings 6 - Elijah’s servant looked out, and they were surrounded by the Syrian army, and he was terrified. So when he looked at his experience, it was overwhelming, and he was filled with fear; and he cried out in fear to his master. He didn’t know what to do; and Elijah prayed this way: “Lord open his eyes, so he can see what he hasn’t seen. Open his eyes, so he can just see there’s more for us, than against us.” The Holy Spirit opened his eyes, and he saw in the spiritual realm from God’s perspective, he saw the presence of all the angels. He still could see the army, but now he could see something else. He could see the overwhelming power of God on his side, and he came to peace.

This is how, one of the major ways, that God heals traumatic pictures. I usually explain to the person that they’ve just put this memory in a room and locked it up. I explain they’ve tried to save themselves. I ask them to be willing to go back to remember what they didn’t want to remember; and invite Jesus to come in. So, often the person will start to weep as they remember; and then I ask them: “Look and see where Jesus is. What is He doing? What is His face like? What is He saying?” I get the person just to talk to me, what they’re seeing. What happens is, a different picture comes in; and it overwhelms and changes the memory. It shifts it, and puts something in that wasn’t there, and that’s the last thing they remember.

For example, I had one girl, and she had been adopted when she was 5. She shared her testimony to the church that she’d been adopted, and how when she heard our testimony and she came to Christ. When I heard her testimony, I said: “Look, I feel the Lord put on my heart to pray for you. He wants to heal you. Can you remember the day your mother gave you up?” This is what she said: “I remember it vividly.” In other words, it’s a picture in her mind; and in that picture is a lot of grief. In that memory is a picture of her mother handing her over to a stranger. A huge amount of grief; and she questions: why she do this? What’s wrong with me? I must be bad, because I’m being given away. All kinds of things were in her mind.

So I said: “I’d like you to do this. Just to close your eyes, and to allow yourself to remember that experience” and she began to cry. She remembered the experience, and she began to just weep in front of us all. Then I said: “Look and see if you can see Jesus.” She said: “I can see Him.” I said: “What does He look like?” She said: “He’s weeping. He’s very sad about what’s happening.” I said: “Why don’t you just reach out to Him?” Now, I didn’t expect her to literally reach out. It’s like she reached out like that, and then she froze; and she remained there like that for an hour and a half, standing in a meeting just like this. Just down on the ground like that, frozen for an hour and a half.

You just can’t do that. It’s impossible to do that, and hold your hand out like that. She was literally caught up in a vision, and then I just preached; held an alter-call for salvation; we got people to stand around her, so she didn’t get bumped. Then suddenly she just came out of it like that; and I said: “What happened?” She had been in an encounter with Jesus. I said: “What did He say to you?” “He said to me: it’s not my fault.” All these years she had believed the lie: ‘it’s my fault’, and she was tormented by spirits. When Jesus spoke to her the truth –“it’s not your fault. You’re not a bad person. I love you. I’ll never leave you.” Jesus spoke with her. I saw her the next day, and I actually didn’t recognise her, she looked so different. There was a joy and a life in her.

I remember praying for another girl who’d been sexually abused and I asked: “Are you willing to go and remember what happened?” She began to weep, described the scene, and described her father coming into the room. I said: “Now look for Jesus”; and she saw Him, she began to weep. She said: “He’s full of compassion. He’s weeping, because He sees what’s happening, and He’s very sad.” I said: “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, looking for what He does and says.” She just interacted. She said: “He’s coming towards me. He’s standing between me and my father, and I can’t see my father now. Jesus says He’ll protect me.”

So, she was totally transformed. Within a space of about 3 weeks, she was greatly reconciled with her father. So, she got healed from the trauma. The picture of the trauma was replaced with a picture of something different. Now, sometimes there are demons inside the trauma, there are soul ties to the trauma. So when you feel the Holy Spirit lead, break the soul tie to the trauma, and command spirits to come out; but let the Holy Spirit do the work of revealing Jesus.

Often people are incredibly angry, very bitter, and they need to be lead through prayers of forgiveness. So, the core of the trauma is a picture, feelings that go with the picture, the way the person interprets it, and what they believed, and then their reaction. So the reaction – people repent of that. The lie is replaced by them seeing the truth and hearing the truth; and sometimes they just need to re-live it, and the soul tie broken.

I encourage you to try this sometime. I encourage you, if someone has gone through a painful experience, to ask them to invite Jesus to come into the experience and heal them. You might be surprised how easy it is, and how very quickly people can be set free. I prayed for one woman who was grieving over an abortion; and she saw Jesus standing, holding her baby. Tears began to come down, and Jesus spoke these words to her: “You need to forgive yourself.” He’s already forgiven her, but she wouldn’t forgive herself.

So, these areas you’ll find many people have got all kinds of experiences; and it’s always got a picture, feelings that go with the picture, beliefs that go with the picture, and a reaction. The belief is changed by seeing and hearing the truth; the reaction is changed by repentance; and demons are just cast out.

Let me give you just some situations of trauma, just so you’ve got some ideas what you may be looking for. If I give you a list of some typical trauma experiences that people have, when you are working with people, you’ll know something to look for. So, remember, a trauma is a negative picture that’s imprinted into the person’s memory because of some painful experience. What is a trauma for one person may mean nothing to another.

So, I’ll just give you some of the typical ones, or ones that we have experienced in ministry. Firstly, pre-natal experiences... Prenatal means the child’s in the womb. So a child in the womb that’s rejected can become quite traumatised, and have memories that last all of their life. For the last hundred years or so, people have believed that all of the experience, or memory and identity of the child, is in the brain; so if the brain hasn’t been formed, then they have no awareness. The last 4 or 5 years, experiences or research with ultrasonic scanning of the child realises that’s not true. When a child is in the womb, it is deeply aware of the mother and the environment.

A child unwanted in the womb, experiences deep rejection. A girl in the womb who comes to realise both parents want a boy, experiences deep rejection in the womb, and can be demonised from that point. A child in the womb is deeply aware of the mother’s emotional state, and so it can be traumatised if the mother has deep anxiety or fear, or there are conflicts in the home. So a child in the womb is aware when the mother’s speaking to it; when the mother’s speaking to the husband; when the father’s speaking to it; and when the father’s speaking to the mother. The child is aware of these things.

So, if the pregnancy has complications, for example the mother gets toxaemia, the baby is traumatised by the fear of death. If there’s an attempted abortion, the child is aware of it, and remembers it. If there’s been a previous abortion, the child is aware of it, and is affected even while it’s in the womb. So only the Holy Spirit can reveal if the issues go right to the prenatal experience.

Sometimes birth traumas can leave an imprint on the child. Premature birth, the cord wrapped around the child’s neck, sometimes the force of delivery can be very difficult, and traumatises the child. If there’s no bonding with the mother, the child can be quite traumatised.

People tend to think because the baby can’t speak, it doesn’t know. The reality is, children are very vulnerable, and demonic spirits can enter them, and they can be traumatised. There can be childhood traumas e.g. a child is adopted, or abandoned, or rejected. If there’s turmoil in the family; physical or verbal abuse; frightening experiences. A divorce can traumatise a child. Serious sickness, or long sickness; surgery; accidents. The death of someone in the family or a close friend. School experiences. When we talk with people we find most remember very painful experiences from school. Broken relationships. Accidents. A miscarriage can be a trauma. An abortion is always a trauma.

So, there is all kinds of ways that people can experience a shock to their system. Demons use that to come in and then torment the person. So, when you are working with people, look for the possibility there may be a trauma of some kind in their life, a powerful negative picture. So, we have to ask the Holy Spirit to bring these things to the surface as we talk with people. I’ll just show you some steps to follow in this. So, traumatic experiences create these problems. 1.) The picture, the memories, the feelings, the reactions, the beliefs. 2.) Sometimes the person is soul tied to the trauma and you just need to break the soul tie. 3.) Sometimes there are demons attached into the trauma, and once you minister into the person, then you can cast the demon out.

So we’ve now looked at a range of doorways for demons to come in. So, if you are trying now, or sitting with a person, and trying to work out what is the person’s problem, so let me give you some steps for diagnosis. Usually when someone comes to you they’ve got a problem. “Please help me.” So, you have to ask questions and listen. If someone comes with a problem, you begin to inquire, like you’re searching for contributing roots to the problem. So, whatever problem the person has, we begin to ask a number of questions.

We are looking for several things, and so we’re looking for root systems that support the problem, and allow the evils to be in there. Our approach in ministry is: tear down the demonic house - remove the demonic house; then cast out the demons. So remember what the demonic house is made up of: it could be generational curses; it could be patterns of sin; it could be reactions, like soul-ties and bitter inner judgements; or it could be made up of traumatic experiences.

So, this is how we would approach it. “Tell me what the problem is. How is it affecting you? How long have you had this problem?” When you ask the question ‘how long’, you can begin to find whether this was a generational problem. Here’s what we would look for in diagnosing the problem.

1.) Is this a generational issue? In other words, is there a generational curse operating? Do members of the family have the same problem? So when you’re talking to the person about their problem, did other members of the family have the same problem? How long have you had this? Often the clue to where to look is found in when the problem started. So it’s like we’re searching. We’re trying to gather information, and we’re listening to the Holy Spirit. He may prompt you to ask random questions. So, number 1: is this a generational problem?

2.) Are you soul-tied to some person or event? Is there someone who contributed to this problem, and you are attached to them? So the problem may be a soul-tie to someone sexually; a soul tie to someone who abused them; or a soul tie to someone who abandoned them. So are there any soul ties? Are there any bitter roots – unforgiveness? Are there any bitter roots present; or bitter judgements against someone? “I can never trust men. Men will always let you down.” Are there any bitter expectations? So you’ve got to ask the questions, and try and find these problems. Has the person made any inner vows? “I’ll never do this, I’ll never do that.” Did you make any inner vows?

Maybe it comes up with nothing, but you just mentally have some things you’re looking for. Are there any word curses in the person’s life? They cursed themselves; or a death wish of some kind? Are there things they’ve been saying to themselves? Are there words others spoke over them? You’re looking for that, it may contribute to the problem. Are there any habits of sin - patterns of destructive sin? Are there any of those? Are there any traumas? Are there any pictures in their mind that are creating negative memories, negative pain. Then, what kind of demons are in there? So, if you begin to think about the person’s life that way, then you systematically can deconstruct the demonic house.

Use the tools of: repentance and confession; release forgiveness; receive forgiveness; renounce the bondages. If we don’t look to the heart issues, we’ll just try and change their behaviour, and it won’t last. You have to deal with what’s in the heart. So when a person comes to you with a problem, don’t be in a hurry to pray for them. Search it out. Ask questions. Listen. Notice if you see emotions come as you talk to the person. So, if I’m talking with a person, and I see tears come in their eyes, I just stop. “What’s happening now? What are you feeling? What triggered that feeling?” It tells me something is going on in their heart.

So, you notice that this is not just a 1, 2, 3, 4 step to fix everyone. It requires we be sensitive to the Holy Spirit; and He will show you where to go. So I start, I relax the person, ask questions, begin to find my way to the root of the problem, and then I look for all the contributing issues: Generational issues; Soul-ties; Inner vows; Bitter judgements; Death wishes; Word curses; Sin. Everything has got a way you deconstruct it; and then when you deconstruct it, deliverance is very quick. So always think: deconstruct the demonic houses; remove the armour. Take away the armour the demons trust in, then deliverance is straightforward.

Now, is this always easy? No it isn’t; but often you’ll find if you’ve got a process, it’s much easier. You may like to share, without identifying it, just the situation we had last night. You share about that. Well you were there...

I’ll backtrack. I’ll start with your visions. Is it ok if I start with your visions? I won’t do the vision. I just shared that last picture.

So, in this situation that we had, we had to establish very clearly, responsibility; so the person understood what they had done. She was grieving and in tremendous pain. She was tormented by what she had done. So I had to put it very clearly, but also in love, and gently. “You chose between yourself and your child, and you chose yourself; and you have taken the life of your child.” I shared a vision God had given me of children in heaven, and how God cares for them. So I said: “When you chose the abortion, you chose what seemed like a simple path; but you didn’t realise you would have other problems after it.

So initially, you feel relief, because you’ve solved a problem. Now you have different new problems which are even worse. So we took her through the journey step-by-step, to help her out of her situation. First come to the Lord and confess the sin. If you confess, God will forgive you. So we dealt with the issue firstly of confession of sin. Then we dealt with the issue of grieving over the child, and prayed that God will give her a vision; and she opened up her heart, God began to reveal himself to her, and Jesus spoke to her. She saw Jesus with her child, and Jesus said: “You need to forgive yourself.”

Then I got her to listen and find out what this child is. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Immediately there was a witness straightaway - we knew exactly what it was. I said: “Now give your child a name, and release your child to the Lord.” She did that; and that’s when she saw Jesus holding her child, and smiling at her, and speaking to her words of comfort.

So step-by-step, this is a process. We dealt with the sin, I commanded the demons, we led her into an encounter with the Lord, and got her to take full ownership of the name of the child, and it brought great closure. You could see her countenance visibly changed afterwards. We had systematically deconstructed what the devil had built over her life. It started with a lie: “this is nothing. You can get rid of it without any problem.” It ended with her acknowledging the truth: “it was her son. This is his name, and she took his life.” But Jesus has forgiven her, and He’s now caring for the child. So it’s a journey through the process; and it was just step-by-step-by-step.

With the young man, I had to take him through similar steps to own his sin and failure; to come to and open his heart to the Lord and to be healed. It’s amazing what God will do. You’ve just got to deconstruct the demonic houses. Our tools: taking responsibility; repentance and confession; renouncing bondages; releasing forgiveness; and receiving God’s healing. So, use these tools to help deconstruct the houses. Once you’ve got in your mind what you’re looking for, you’ll find it’ll come up over and over again, the same things: Generational problems; Soul-ties; Bitter judgements; Inner vows; Death wishes; Word curses; Sin patterns; Trauma pictures; Demonic spirits. Each part has got a way of solving it.

Now, the only way you can get competent at this is: you have to just experiment. You’ve got to just be willing to work with people. Don’t become the person – “I’ve got to fix you.” Instead - “this is your problem. Jesus has the answer for you. I’m here to help you find Jesus, and His answer. I’m here to help you face the truth, even if the truth is unpleasant.”

So when we’re ministering to people, the responsibility for their problem is always theirs. Jesus is the one who has the answer, and we need the Holy Spirit to help us show what the real problem is, and to make the answer real. So we come to the person in an attitude of humility and love, and help them see the truth; and when they acknowledge the truth, we can lead them out of the problem. That makes deliverance a lot easier.

So in ministering to a person, if you’re struggling to get them free, then there’s something you’ve missed that God sees, and can help you with. It may be sin, it may be unforgiveness, it may be some bondage to be renounced; but if you deconstruct these houses, then the demons go out quite quickly.

[Ministering to People]

Now I’ve got a few more minutes, and I want to just share just what you do with a person afterwards. I want to just open up some scriptures for you. I want to share with you just some scriptures, just so you see the principle, and then I want to show you just some specific things you can do with people.

The first scripture we look at is James 4:7. Now, notice these scriptures – they have to do with freedom. “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So you can see there very clearly that God requires that we resist. To resist something is to actively stand against it. It also requires that we align ourselves with the Lord. Submit. Resist.

Now look at another scripture which is quite similar to it. It’s found in Ephesians 4:22-24. Notice it says in verses 22 – 24: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, who was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” So you notice then a process of resisting – putting off the old, and renewing. Renewal in the mind, and in the way you respond.

So, change needs to be intentional. In other words, people often are happy for you to pray for them, but they don’t see their need to intentionally grow in this area. There is no neutral position in the kingdom of God. Jesus said: the devil, the spirits will come back; they will be outside trying to gain entrance again. So, the person needs to be active in pursuing their freedom. There’s always a price for freedom; but when you are free, and enjoying freedom, you never want to go back into bondage again. You never want to go back where you used to be; but you have to hold the freedom you’ve been given.

You’re very well aware that a nation can break free of oppressors, but then they have to maintain their freedom. So, how do you do that? It needs to be quite intentional. For example, a person has a problem with pornography. “Oh pastor, pray for me. Fix me up.” It’s not going to work, because already by that language, they’ve put the responsibility to solve the problem in someone else’s hands.

So I begin to talk to them. Firstly there’s the sin. You are sinning, and you’re sinning as a habit in your life. Habits take time to change. I said: “You have two problems: 1) a deep rejection in your life; and 2) when you’re in pain, you’re finding comfort by looking and comforting yourself by these perverse things.” So first, there’s a deep spiritual problem; secondly, there’s an emotional problem; and thirdly, because you’ve been doing this a while, there are now tracts in your brain, that the moment you get a trigger, you’ll think down that line. You can’t expect one prayer to fix up months, if not years, of damage.

Becoming free requires some steps. There is a process you need to follow. There is a journey out of this sin. It starts by bringing it to the light, and dealing with the sin issue; but in order to stay free, there’s some things you have to do. So, what kinds of things? Now, this is fairly general, but it will apply in most situations. So, I will give you 5 steps of a process. This is not the only way of approaching this, but I’ve found this is quite helpful.

1.) Build or strengthen your spiritual life. We need to energise our inner man, our spiritual man; because we overcome sin by a greater power, not by just trying harder. So, energise or build up your spiritual life. The Bible tells us in Jude 1:20 – “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” I encourage people to pray strongly in tongues every day, and build the amount of time they’re praying in tongues, because when you’re praying in tongues, you are building and strengthening your spirit man. So I think it really helps if a person energises their spiritual life.

2.) The person needs to renew their imagination, or their mind. This is the biggest one of all. It’s one that people don’t really do very frequently. The word ‘renew your mind’ means to literally ‘renovate’. You renovate your mind by meditation. Notice what it said in Ephesians 4: “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” Romans 12:2 says the same thing: “Be transformed by the renewing or renovation of your mind.”

So how do I do that? Meditation is how you do that. Meditation is picturing or imagining God’s truth. You need to see the truth of God. So your imagination is a very powerful way of accessing the realm of God. In 1 Timothy 4:15, Paul writes to Timothy and he says: “Meditate in these things, and give yourself to them, and you will profit.” Now, your mind cannot take hold of anything abstract. If I say to you for example, God loves you. That is abstract. Yeah, I get it with my head, but I don’t feel anything in my heart about that.

So if I ask Christians – Do you believe God loves you? They’ll all say: yes, God is love. God so loved the world. Quote all the verses. But if I ask a different question – Do you feel loved by God? Do you experience Him loving you? Then people go quiet, because they don’t experience it, except when they come to a meeting. It’s not really what happens in their life. In their life, they pray, but don’t feel God at all. Coming to a meeting, they’ll start to feel God, starts to get touched, weep. It’s a long time between Sunday and Sunday. So meditation is using your imagination to picture the truth of God. Constantly repeating every day, it gets into your heart that this is what the truth is.

So, let’s take this, suppose the person’s struggling with rejection. So they believe – “No one loves me. I’m not accepted.” Now, that is a lie that gives room for a demon to torment them; and while the lie stays in the heart, it will keep affecting the way the person sees everything. Lies can only be displaced if you reject the lie and embrace the truth; but if you’ve believed all your life that you are not accepted, that you are rejected, then when I tell you that God loves you, you won’t believe it. Meditation is the biblical way of bringing truth into our heart. So I need to not just say the scripture “God loves me”, I need to picture it. What would that look like? What would that feel like?

If I will imagine the truth, repeatedly imagine the truth, and embrace the truth, it will start to form in my heart as a belief. Because this takes time and discipline, most people don’t bother to do it, they just have repeated problems. So if you want to get a truth in your heart, you need to take the scripture, memorise the scripture, and then imagine the scripture being true. Every day, use your imagination to see it, to reach out and embrace – this is the truth. Hold it in your heart as long as you can. Then go back there again, and again, and again, until that truth rests in you, and it comes alive in you. Pictures are how your inner person works.

If I asked you this question, tell me what is the most comfortable place in your house, where you love to go and rest? Then, if you were to close your eyes – “Oh, yes I’m there right now. I can see it.” It’s a picture that comes to mind. So you have a picture, and that picture is always associated with the same thing – with rest. So, if I’m going to change my inner belief system, I have to change the pictures.

Now, I’ll just show you. I just need someone to help me. “Would you like to help? You don’t have to do anything. Just come on over here where people can see. Can I just take your hand? What I want you to do is just this: I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. Just make everyone vanish. I just want you to be open to what you may feel and experience in the next few minutes. Now, I’m not going to pray for you and minister to you; what I’m going to do is I’m going to meditate, and I’m going to talk to people as I meditate. As I mediate, what I’m meditating on will become real for me, and there’ll be a flow of God’s love in my life that will touch you. So you just remain standing there...”

So in order to put the truth of God’s love into my heart, I began to meditate on Psalm 23 – the Lord is my shepherd. The word shepherd is a friend. So, I just begin to picture Jesus, and He’s standing in front of me. I use my imagination to see Him, as He’s described in the Bible in many places.

His eyes blazing fire, compassion and love, looking straight into every part of me, reaching out of me, no condemnation. I can see His eyes looking at me, loving me. I look on His countenance and I see Him smiling. Someone who loves you, smiles at you. I see Him smiling. I see the brilliance of who He is. His hands – kind of like they’re reaching out for me. He’s my friend; He’s welcoming me into His world. I look at that, and see this is the Jesus, who loves me. So I open my heart and allow that love to just flow into my life, allow my heart to become filled with that, filled with the Spirit. See, it’s very real. I feel His presence right now. It’s flowing. “Oh, Jesus.”

Now, while I was meditating, it started with me creating a picture, but I’ve done it so often that immediately I could connect with Him straight away. It’s like, I’ve done it so often, that each time I do it now, I can go straight to where He is. Meditation creates tracks in your mind; a pathway for you to come into the presence of God. So, the moment I stop and go into Psalm 23, oh my friend, there He is – my friend; and I can step into His presence.

Now, I’ve done that so often, it just now is a habit of coming into His presence, to be aware that Jesus is with me. Now, was it like that at the beginning? No it wasn’t. I just thought I was imagining things. I didn’t feel God at all. I didn’t feel anything. I felt silly. I just felt like I’m making it up, because what was in my mind, my heart was fighting against it. So meditation is imagining the truth over and over and over, and embracing it until your heart receives it. Amen.

“Come. Come.” “What did you feel? Oh, you’re crying. Why are you crying? What did you feel?” “I felt like Jesus holding me, embracing me.” Now, I don’t recall saying that, but meditation opened the way to experience the reality, and then the Holy Spirit moves, and it’s now got a life of its own. So in meditation, you take Biblical truth, you begin to picture it, you hold it in your heart and embrace – ‘this is true. This is true’; and then the Holy Spirit begins to make it real in your life.

I just did that for several weeks. I thought: if I can experience God’s love, each day, like this, my life will change. So instead of doing lots of things, I built one thing into my life. Sometimes we’re so busy, and we have so much information, we don’t build anything into our life. It’s not enough to know all the knowledge; it has to be worked into your life. So, for the person who’s struggling with sexual sin, they need to picture every day, yielding their body; and just speak into their mind, reject all the thought trees. Begin to picture Jesus accepting them. Picture Jesus’ holiness flowing into them. You need to change the pictures. Beholding Him, we are changed.

“So, can I just practise with you? Close your eyes. I’ll just hold your hand. Just imagine now, Psalm 23. The Lord is my friend, and I look at Him, and I see His countenance – eyes loving me, countenance smiling, hands reaching out; like I feel I want to just take a step towards Him and be in His presence. You notice as soon as I took a step towards Him, there was a flow of His presence start to touch.

Meditation is one of the most powerful keys to changing people’s lives, and yet so few people do it, because it takes effort. It takes time to reprogram your inner being; but imagine this – imagine if you were to work on this area in your life, and you found it easy to experience God. Wouldn’t that be great? So it’s worth it. So I just took time until one day, I just suddenly felt God there. Every day for 3 weeks I didn’t feel God - every day for 3 weeks! It felt like I was making it up; and then when the truth got in my heart, I suddenly felt Him, and began to just cry and cry and cry.

So meditation - you use your imagination to picture truth. Try to imagine what it looks like, what it feels like. So, when we come to the area of holiness, people don’t know what it means. So we try hard to be holy. It doesn’t really easily work, because you’re always making mistakes; but what if I was to meditate on holiness, to look at Jesus and see how pure He is; and to stand there imagining what it would feel like, if there’s absolutely nothing in my life, how clean I would feel, how clean in His presence. See, meditating on His holiness, we’re changed into the same thing. Then you get to like it. You don’t like the other things. You’ve changed. It’s a daily spending time with God to build that in our life.

So, just to close this up now... If a person’s going to journey forward in their life, they need to invest in building their spirit, so the life of God is flowing. 1) Praying in tongues is one way of doing that. 2.) Renew the mind by meditation, confessing God’s word.

3.) We need to capture old thoughts quickly. If you find you’re starting to think negatively, stop it quickly. Capture the thought and reject it. We need to change how we respond. So, very simply, in Romans 12:21, we overcome good with evil. So you just respond differently. If someone hurts you, you start to feel angry, “oh Lord I just let go that anger to you. Lord I forgive them and I bless them and I show then kindness.”

4.) It’s quite intentional changing of your life way. One of the things I think is of huge help is to be open with others. We need others to help us in our journey. 1 John 1:7 – if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Christ cleanses us.

So, in sharing these things, we’re really looking at the process of discipleship, walking with Jesus. Don’t think of deliverance in isolation, think of deliverance as a part of the discipling process, pulling down demonic strongholds, casting demons out, and helping the person journey to become what God wanted them to be. There’s no neutral position, there’s no passive position. It’s the pursuit of God. Amen. God bless you.

Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8)  

Thu 12 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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We are called to pray for people, and to be a minister of the Spirit of God. Come spiritually prepared, and believe that God is with you - guide people’s attention to the Lord, not the prayer! There will be conflict before, during, and after ministry, and the battles will be within you. Believe God is with you, take risks, and reach out in prayer. Keeping your eyes on Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit, you will be able to minister healing and freedom, in Jesus name, to people.

I just want to just talk about ministering to people. Now, I notice I’m doing a lot of praying for people at night time. Partly that’s because people have this huge expectation some man of God will pray for them; and I understand that, you know; but the problem is if we continue to give in to that, then it minimises what you can do. So, I want to talk about a couple of things in ministry that can be of help for you.

There is always a spiritual warfare around ministry. It’s just recognising what it is, and then learning how to deal with it as it comes up. The first conflict is before you pray for the person. The second conflict is while you’re praying for them. The third conflict is after you’ve prayed for them. Get the picture? You’re ministering the Holy Spirit, there’s going to be some conflicts; and the battles are all inside you.

I want to just show you quickly how you can deal with them. If you want to become good at ministering the Spirit, you just have to practise. No practice, never become good. You’ve got to practise. You want to play the piano? Practise! If you look at the piano, ‘Ah I might get it wrong!’ You never play. You have to practise. So, it’s a humbling thing that we have people to practise with. We have to be willing to stretch out and take risks.

I’ll just show what I mean. I just need one person to volunteer. Here’s the first part. What if nothing happens? What to do? “Just stand there. Face me.” So, the first conflict is the willingness to position yourself to minister to people. So I’ve put myself in a place of being vulnerable now. I’m taking a risk. So, many people, the battle is just to get to that place. So, you have to make a decision. I’m called to be a minister of the Spirit, God is with me and I will step up and take risks. To take risk means: I’ll step out, looking for God to do something. So, every time I step out, I feel a little bit nervous. It never stops, because you’re becoming vulnerable each time you do it.

So, what can you do about that? You just make a decision, “I’m called to be a minister of the Spirit, and the way God teaches me, is by engaging with real people, with real problems. I will make myself available. Yes, I’ll do it.” You’ve just got to make that decision. If you don’t make the decision to put yourself where ministry is happening, you can read all the books but you never really learn. If you want to ride a bike, first, get on the bike. “Oh, I read so many books about how to ride a bike. I have so much information. I know all about the bike.” “Hey, did you ever get on one?” “No.” “Then you can’t ride a bike.” See, knowledge is different from experience. There are some things you can only learn it with experience.

So the first battle is to say: ‘yeah I’ll come and pray.’ Now, here’s the thing some of you are missing. When I take a meeting, there is an anointing released, and anyone who prays gets to tap in on that anointing. One of the best times to learn is when we have a big meeting, there’s a flow of power. That’s the easiest time to get to learn, because there’s an anointing present; and the only way, see I can lay hands on you, and I can release an impartation to you. This is what happens - 95% of the time, within 3 weeks it’s gone. You have to hold things on your life. You have to make it your own; and you make it your own by practice, you make it your own by meditation. You have to give yourself to ministering. So the first battle is this.

The second battle is, when I come to pray, I start to think “Oh”, all the pressure now to try and solve her problem. So what I’ll do is, I’ll just direct. “I want you to close your eyes, and just open your heart to Jesus. I want you to look to Him.” What I’ve done is I’ve got her attention on the Lord, not on me; and that just stops so much pressure. Now, if I focus on “Oh, what to do?” I become afraid, and I start to close up my spirit. So you have to set your attention towards the Lord. I just, as I close my eyes, I just begin to think about Jesus being very near to me. Of course, I’ve done that every day. I did it this morning. So when I close my eyes, I become very aware of Jesus near me and His presence is here. I can feel His presence straight away.

So, you have to do your homework in your personal life with God. Ministry is about bringing the life of God to people; and before I come to pray, there’s apprehension – what if nothing happens; what if I have feelings of inadequacy. Make a decision – I’m going to step up and trust God. When you come to pray, you may feel somewhat concerned, ‘maybe nothing will happen’. Push it aside and focus on the Lord. “Thank you Lord for Your presence is here; and I see You touching her right now.” What I did was I began to picture Jesus standing there, and life is flowing through me to touch her; and that’s exactly what happened.

Of course, after you’ve ministered, then sometimes doubts can come. You wonder about ‘was it good enough’. Just stop. Stop it. Don’t go analysing. You just did what you could; you just ask the person: ‘was this helpful?’ What can we learn, and learn next time, new things. It’s a journey of learning.

“Just come. She’s asleep. Here we go. Just come. Alright then. So, just close your eyes.” You must centre people’s attention on Jesus. Otherwise they put a demand on you, and you’ll start to feel manipulated to try and make something happen, rather than leaning on the Holy Spirit. Now, when you’re praying for people (you’ve done your counsel), when it comes to praying, depend on the Holy Spirit. Always depend on Him. So, I just set my mind listening for Him, what He wants to do; and I become conscious on whether the anointing is settling on her. If I feel a wall and a block, you’ll feel like no flow, there’s something happening I don’t know about. So, I just need to ask the Lord – “What is it Lord?” Then, power of God.

Sometimes there are blocks in ministering to people. If there’s a block, sometimes I can just overcome it with just a power surge, but most times, you need to stop and ask the Lord what the problem is. It could be a control spirit over the person. It could be unbelief. “In Jesus’ name, I bind that control spirit, I bind the unbelief. Loose her now.” Often then, power will start to flow. Or, there may be an issue in the heart that you have not yet addressed. You just need to say “Hey, I don’t feel the flow of the Spirit, let’s talk about that. Is there something that we’ve missed? Let’s ask the Lord to show us what’s missing” You close your eyes, and you get them to close their eyes – “Let’s ask the Lord: Lord, show us what it is we need to deal with.” Interact with the person.

[Practise Exercises]

We need to just have a chance to pray with people now, and I’ve run out of time so much, I’ve got so many things I want to do. I would love to get you praying for one another. Then we’ll have an alter call at the end, and we’ll just have to believe for God to touch you, wherever you need to be touched. This is what we’ll do. I’ll get you into groups of 3, and I want you just to get the feel of ministering power to one another. We just need say, 3 people – 1, 2, 3, just come. Stand there. Ok.

So, it’s very simple – just step-by-step. This is the purpose of this. I want you to get used to releasing power. Now, we release power usually with a word of command. It’s from within. The steps we’ll take are very simple. “You’re the catcher. Eyes open. Be ready to catch.” Sometimes people fall over “Ahh”. Sometimes they go “Oh!” So, be alert. So, you have your eyes closed. Just ask now – ‘Can I practise on you?’ ‘Yes please’. Be encouraging! Just stop here.

Jesus cultivated an environment for ministry. When the people were not responsive, little power flowed. If that happened with Jesus, then it will happen with you. In some places, He took the person out of the town to pray for them, because the atmosphere of unbelief was so strong. Sometimes He put people out of the room, because the atmosphere of faith was not there. It is important to set up the ministry; to create expectation for God to do something.

Alright, so again now, you are going to minister the power of the Spirit to this lady. We ask again. ‘Can I practise on you?’ ‘Yes.’ I like a big smile. Ok then.” So, the lady receiving, just close your eyes and focus on the Lord. In a moment, the power of God will touch your life. I want you to close your eyes, and I want you just to begin to picture Jesus standing, and He’s just where I’m standing, just with you now. God is with you. Begin to pray in tongues. Activate the flow of the Spirit. Become aware that God is with you. God is with you. Then on the count of 3, we’re just going to release the power of God. So when we come to 3, rise up inside, and release the power of God. Just speak the word “Power!” 1, 2, 3, “Power”.

Alright then, I just want to change around. You catch; and you be here. That’s right. What I want you to do, ask her again, same question: ‘Can I practise on you?’ “Yeah you can’. Close your eyes, and just begin to pray. Pray in tongues. When you’re praying in tongues, God’s spirit is flowing in you; as you begin to feel his presence in you now. That’s right. Don’t focus on praying, just focus on… There it is.

Now, same person praying - two different experiences. Don’t worry about that. It’s ok. Now, there was somewhat of a difference in the ability of the people being prayed for to receive. That’s what makes the difference - it’s the person receiving. So always, there has to be faith. Ministry has nothing passive in it. You’ve got to be 'believing God actively for something to happen. Amen.

“Come up again. Just come. I need a catcher. ‘Can I take your hand? Can I practise on you?’ Ok. That’s good.” Remember – creating a positive environment is crucial. You’re the leaders. You need to be expecting God to do something. So, when you’re ministering, build expectation. In a few moments, God is going to touch your life. The power of God will come on you. I can see already the anointing’s coming on her. Holy Spirit come, touch, now. I rose up inside, and released the power of God.

“Come. You come too. Give me your hand. Stand behind her. Thank You Lord. There we go. Close your eyes. I want you to look up. God wants to touch you. God wants to pour His Spirit out on you. There. Now, you notice: I was speaking something. I was declaring something.

“Come. Just come. There we go. Isn’t that nice? Amen. Praise the Lord. Give me your hand. Close your eyes and look up to the Lord. God wants to touch you, wants to touch you like He touched the others, wants to touch you with His power. I want you, just for a moment now, just see your heart like two big doors just opening up. “Now!” Touch her right now.

Now, I was preparing her to receive. How did I prepare her to receive? I wonder if any of you noticed what I did. I’ll show you what I did. First, I got two experiences, where she saw God moving. Testimonies will do the same thing – share stories of God moving. Secondly, I got her to open her heart. I used a picture to help her open her heart. Then, I just prayed more strongly. Then something happened. So always, we have to learn how to build faith for things happen!

“Just come along here. 1, 2, 3. You’re the minister, you’re receiving, you’re catching. Ready? ‘Can I practise on you?’ That’s good. You can almost tell this is going to work. I want you to just imagine God is just as near as I am. The Spirit of God is filling you, just release the power of God right now. There it is. 1, 2, 3. Ok. Very good. You feel the power flow?” Don’t be timid. Don’t be shy. Come on, get bold! “Thank you Lord. Close your eyes, look up to the Lord; thank You Lord for Your presence. Touch her right now in Jesus’ mighty name.”

Ok it’s your turn. I want to get you into groups of 3. I want you all of have an opportunity to pray for someone. Ok? So, find an area or space you can practise. Get into groups of 3. If you haven’t got 3, put your hand up. Ok. We’re ready. One person catching – eyes open, one person receiving the prayer. Ok, person ministering – we want to do it just step-by-step.

Step 1 – “Can I practise on you?” “Yes yes yes”

Step 2 – Person receiving – close your eyes, open up your heart. God is going to touch you. Person ministering – begin to pray in tongues, quietly praying, begin to picture God’s power flowing. On the count of 3, release the power of God. Just blow on the person, or speak the word ‘power’.

Ready? 1, 2, 3. “Power!” Oh. That’s good. Very good. Try again. This time, take their hand – “Can I practise on you?” “Oh, yes. Do your best.” Are you ready? Person receiving – close their eyes. Person praying – listen to me. I want you to see this. As you begin to pray in tongues, begin to imagine Jesus. He’s full of joy; smiling; very happy; and we’re going to release that joy. The joy you can see, you’re going to release it into people.

Ready? 1, 2, 3. “Joy!” Woah. Very good. Change around; or try again. Ok. “Can I practise on you?” “Yes, yes, yes. Do your best.” Ok. Close your eyes if you’re receiving. Person praying, begin to meditate on Jesus. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Begin to see Him. He’s full of joy. That joy is inside you. You’re going to release it. 1, 2, 3. “Joy!” Wow. Very good. Alright.

Now, listen again. Jesus said: “Out of your inner-most being, from within you, will flow rivers of living water.” Now, here’s the question: where does the flow come from? From in you. You must let go your heart to the person. You must let go of what God’s given you. You can’t sort of just stand like this: “Blah blah blah”. What’s happening is this –you’re saying ‘keep away from me. I’m going to pray from a distance.’ You can’t minister from a distance. You have to release what you have.

Just hold her. Ready. So you arise in your spirit, “hoo”, release the power of God. It’s like what God has given you, you give to them. The word ‘spirit’ is the word ‘breath’. That’s why I was getting you to breathe, or to speak. Hold her. That’s right. Come stand here. Lift your hands up. “Ooh power of God touch her”. Now, you notice I let something go from inside. There’s a power flow from within. There’s nothing passive about ministry. Got her? Ready? Just lift your hands up.

So, you rise in your spirit, and it’s going to release the power. “Power. Touch her Lord right now.” Oh. It’s alright. God’s touching her. It’s just sometimes it’s more visible than others. So if I was just to come a little closer. “Thank you Lord. The power of touching Lord, right now”. Now, the problem is one of receiving. It’s not one of giving, because if I just go like this: “Power - touch her right now.” You see the whole group goes down. So this is an issue of receiving. I just need to help her receive.

“I want you to just close your eyes and relax. God loves you. He does love you so very much. I want you to just see it’s like you’ve got two big doors on your heart, and I want you to just open them up so you can receive. So you’re used to giving to everyone else, but not used to receiving. Jesus wants you to receive as well. Just in a moment now, I want you to open up your heart, like you’re opening a door”. “Whooh - touch her”.

Now, what was the difference? The difference was the heart positioning to receive; and as I started to pray I was asking: “Lord what is the problem”. I felt the Lord drop into my heart: “She gives out to everyone else, but doesn’t find it easy to receive for herself”. So then what I encouraged her to do, was to picture her heart like it had two big doors on it, and opening them up. As she began to do that, the Spirit of God began to move into her. It’s all to do with preparation; and some people just never fall over anyway, so don’t worry about it - it’s not about falling over. I’m just trying to teach you the dynamics of flowing with the Spirit.

“Did you feel the difference that time? Yeah. You felt God start to touch you? And it’s true - you work and serve a lot, and give out to everyone else. When you give out to everyone else, it’s often that after a while, you don’t think there’s anything for you. God does love you. Close your eyes again. He loves you. See Him just standing before you; and He loves you. Father, in Jesus’ name, I break the spirit of rejection. I break every ungodly belief: that I’m of no value, and my life doesn’t count. I break it now in Jesus’ name. Lord, release Your presence. Touch her Lord.”

So the root problem was rejection. Even when nothing happened, I was still asking God: what’s happening? Get the idea? Learning? Alright then, so let’s do it again. Let’s pray one more time. Are we ready? Find someone to practise on. “Power! Power!” Ok we’re ready. “Can I practise on you?” “Ok. Yes. Do your best.” Just listen to me very carefully. Listen to me.

Now, I’m speaking to the people receiving. If you believe in your heart that there’s nothing for you, nothing will happen. If you look at the person praying for you, and think they’re not very anointed, nothing will happen for you. You have to realise this – that even if the person is not highly anointed, it doesn’t matter - your faith can release the gifting in their life. Jesus said: “If they receive you, they’ll receive Me.” So if you’re standing there right now, and someone has got hold of your hands, just as you close your eyes, imagine that’s Jesus there; and open your heart to receive. That’s right. See Him, smiling, loving you.

Now, if you’re ministering. Just release the power of God right now. 1, 2, 3. Power. It’s all about the heart begin aware. Try again. She’s unconscious - try someone else. Change around. Person receiving, close your eyes. What’s happening over there? That’s a spirit. One person pray in tongues, the other person command it out. Speak straight into the spirit. Ok. We’re ready. Person receiving, close your eyes. Jesus is about to minister to you. Person ministering, begin to see Jesus reaching out to this person. On the count of 3, rise up and release joy. 1, 2, 3. Joy!

See? It worked. Try once more. Just change around. Power! “Can I practise? Can I practise on you?” Person receiving, close your eyes. Woah. Catch her. Careful. We’re ready. Person ministering, begin to pray in tongues. See God’s Spirit working through you, then release the power of God. 1, 2, 3. Power! Alright then.

“Now, just stop. You’re trying to do it from your head, not your heart. Try one more time. I want you to close your eyes and open your heart; and see Jesus is with you. His power is flowing through you. Just see it. Focus on Him, not on the girl. Focus on Him. Now we’re going to release the power that’s inside you. 1, 2, 3. Power! See what happened that time? See? Quite different - from inside; before, it was up here. You were looking at her, and you were outside, not inside.”

Ok. Turn around then. Change over. Ready? Ok here we go. Look at that. Come. So now, I showed you a method – 1, 2, 3; but the anointing of the Spirit is like a river. So, don’t be strained or artificial. Try to be very natural.

Now, you notice this – I encourage you to pray without putting your hand on them, so you would resist the tendency or temptation to push them. If you put your hand like that, you’ll start to think “I need to help God. I push.”

I’m trying to teach you to arise from your spirit and to flow from your spirit. When you are flowing from your spirit, you won’t need to push; you just touch, and the presence of God just comes. So, it’s not the method, it’s the flow.

Someone else come. When you’re speaking to demons, you don’t flick them off like you’re swatting a fly. That’s not how you get rid of a demon. You have to use words. The words we speak are spirit. You need to speak to the demon.

Where is the demon located? In here, or around there? Ask the Lord to show you where. He may want you to put your hand on them. You must speak with force from inside. You must believe what you say will come to pass. Jesus said “Have the faith of God, speak to the mountain: be removed.” You must believe what you say will happen. So, we need to speak words we mean. So, it’ll be: “Loose!”, and you can see power flow. If we were doing deliverance, the demon would feel that. “Loose!”

Speaking those commands, the demon is forced up to the surface. They can tell whether you believe in what you’re saying. It’s not just saying empty words; its saying words filled with faith. “I believe that as I speak, something will happen; and if I take care I believe that when I speak ‘Power!’ that power will flow.” So, you need to believe when you speak, something will happen. Now, we just want to have a chance just to pray for people; and we covered so many areas, we just have to believe that God will do something.

So, if you had areas of generational curse, idolatry, spiritism, or sexual sin, some traumas, say: “God I need You to touch me. I know I need to be set free.” Please make your way to the front. Just make rows. First row receive, second row catch.

Let just worship the Lord. So, I look and I see lots of people. I can think one or two ways: “Oh, so many people - sigh”; or I can think like this: “every time I pray, I get stronger, because I’m exercising my authority.” So, you could get stronger too, if some of you helped in the praying. So if you’re not receiving prayer, maybe you’d like to come up, and be involved in just in doing some of the praying.

Now, remember what we said. Just prepare the environment. Now, what you didn’t realise, when I was getting you praying for one another, I was also preparing the environment; getting you to open up, getting you to relax, getting you to open to the Holy Spirit.

There’s no way that we can pray in detail for any person. I just have to believe that when I lay hands on you, the power of God will come on you; and you need to believe that too. Even though I don’t know everything that’s happening in your life, that God’s power will come on you. So, prepare your heart. Talk to Jesus now, about the issue you want the breakthrough. Be specific. Don’t come up saying: ‘well, whatever God wants to do, He can do.’ It’s just religious - it doesn’t work. Jesus asked the blind man: “what do you want?”

You need to tell Jesus what you want; where you want your breakthrough. Is it a generational thing? Is it something to do with spiritism? Is it some torment in your mind? Is it some traumatic experience? Is it some sexual sin? Is it some heart attitude? What is it that’s the problem? Just bring it before the Lord right now. Is it a fear? Is it some area that holds you back? Is it shame? Is it rejection? Have you been under the control of people so long, you feel deeply angry and rejected? Is there some picture that comes to mind? Talk to the Lord right now.

If there’s sin, ask Him to forgive you. If there’s someone you need to forgive, speak words of forgiveness. Come on. Let’s do that right now. Just speak with the Lord. Speak with Him. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. There’s been this sin in my life. I just come to You. I ask You to forgive me.” Talk to Him about what it is. Some addiction; some bondage. Talk to Him. He loves you. He forgives you. So you release forgiveness. Just release forgiveness to people who have hurt you, betrayed you. Release forgiveness.

Now what I’m going to do is this. I’ll lead you in a prayer. It’s a fairly general prayer, but you’ll know the part that works for you. After we’ve finished praying the prayer, just reach out and worship Jesus. The moment someone lays hands on you, stop praying. Just, if there’re spirits inside, cough them out. Just let go of what’s inside. Let go of what’s bottled up inside. Are we ready now?

“Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus. I renounce generational curses. I renounce agreements with evil spirits. I renounce ungodly soul ties. Lord I ask You to set me free. I forgive those who’ve hurt me; and I reach out to You Jesus, to set me free now. Satan go from my life. Now! In Jesus’ name.” Ok. Let’s begin to worship the Lord. Thank you Lord.

“In the name of Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority now. I break generational curses. I command spirits of idolatry, witchcraft, spirits of divination, bitterness, hatred, sexual spirits, unclean spirits, I command you to go. I come against spirits of shock and trauma. Go! Go! Go!”

Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8)  

Thu 12 Sep 2013 « Back to Top

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We learn that Jesus came to touch people's hearts, by bringing revelation of the Power of God, for: salvation; healing; deliverance. Jesus made it clear we would have difficulties and problems, but He has overcome all evil with good - on the Cross, and through His ministry to us. As we face the reality that we are hurting and suffering, and allow the Lord to help us repent and forgive, He will always respond. God is committed to our character and growth, not our comfort.

I want to share with you two verses now; and we’re going to go into Psalm 84.

The Bible tells us that the ministry of Jesus was to touch people. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, the power of God was upon Him; and He set people free who were oppressed by evil spirits.

When Jesus described His ministry, He said: the Holy Spirit was upon Him to preach the gospel, to explain to people how they could be reconciled to God. Jesus said: Repent, change your mind, for the kingdom of God is near you. But Jesus also came to heal the broken-hearted, and to set people free who were imprisoned by evil spirits.

Psalm 84:5 – “Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage or a journey. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.”

Now, Jesus made it very clear that in the world we live, we will suffer difficulties, problems; and he said: but have courage, because I’ve overcome everything that could come your way. Jesus understood family pressures. He understood betrayal. He understood what it was like to be rejected. He understood what it was like to experience people criticising Him. He understood what it was like to face injustice; but He always manifested the life of God. He always overcame evil with good.

These few verses here describe how we can become free. He talks about the valley of Baca. The name Baca means ‘sorrows’ or ‘weeping’. So the Bible uses a picture to describe a painful experience in our life. A valley is a low place. The mountains are the high places. So when a person is in a valley, they’re in a place of challenge and difficulty. There are many valleys mentioned in the Bible. There’s the valley of the shadow of death. There’s the valley of trouble. There’s a valley of sorrows or weeping.

So in this passage, God describes a valley – a difficult place in life. Valleys happen to every person. Difficult experiences, experiences that produce sorrow. It can be a marriage; a family; finances; ministry; in the workplace; or with our friends. Sorrows come in life. So when a person is in the valley of sorrow, there’s grief and pain in their heart.

The Bible tells us in this verse, it says: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley of sorrow.”

So valleys are inevitable. They happen to everyone. Valleys are painful, but valleys can be profitable –we can grow in them. Whatever experience you are facing, God intends you to grow through it. He wants to come to you in your valley; He wants to show you how much He loves you; and He wants to help you walk out of your valley. God does not intend us to stay in the valley. He intends us to pass out of the valley.

So blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley; and makes his valley-experience a well that refreshes other people. Whatever painful experience you’ve gone through in life, you can remain stuck in it – being angry and resentful and sad all of your life; or you can choose to reach out to the Lord and change, and make your valley a well. A well, for the people who were reading this, was a place of refreshing and life.

The Bible uses pictures to describe spiritual experiences: a valley of sorrow, for a time of weeping and difficulty; becoming a well of blessing, with God’s spirit moving in that situation. Valley of sorrow; well of blessing. It says: they make the valley of sorrow into a well.

So you can’t stop difficult things happening to you. You can’t stop life happening to you. But when painful experiences happen, you can choose what you do with it. You can become bitter; or you can become better. You can become sour and hurt and resentful; or you can grow in the grace of God. You can be angry and blaming others; or you can reach out to God to help you. You can become twisted and distorted by this experience; or you become sweeter, and more gracious.

You choose - it’s your choice. We have no choice, sometimes, over what other people do to us; but we can choose how we respond. So, the Bible says: “blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley, makes it into a well, and God begins to pour rains of blessing on him, and that person goes from strength to strength”.

That’s from one level of strength to another level of strength. You want to be strong? Handle adversity well. You want to become a bigger person? Handle your difficult situations well. So we see, God’s plan is never to leave us in a valley of sorrow. In fact, the Bible tells us in Isaiah 53 – Jesus carried our grief and sorrows, so we don’t have to carry them.

I want to ask two questions. First one: why did people get stuck in a valley? Why do they get stuck? The second question: how do you get out? How do you make your valley into a well? So you come out stronger, not weaker and bitter.

So firstly, why do people get stuck in the valley? Over the years I’ve met many Christians, and many non-Christians, and their lives are full of grief; they’re in pain. There is a part of their heart where there’s a valley of sorrow. So I’ve tried to find out why people stay there, when they don’t really want to be there. Every now and then, someone will say something or do something, and it triggers off their anger, and triggers off their reaction.

So here are some of the reasons I’ve discovered why people remain in a valley; why they carry sorrows in their heart; why they have a place in their heart where they’re stuck. There are several reasons - let me just give you a few of the reasons.

The first one is when a person denies or minimises that they’ve been hurt. If you get hurt by someone, or some situation; and you deny that you’ve been hurt, or you sweep it away and say – “It’s nothing really”; then you are embracing a lie. The pain is buried, and you’ve covered it with a lie.

I have found many, many women suffer - women who’ve had abortions for example. Deep in their heart of hearts, they know what happened; but they’ve covered it and minimised it, and denied what it really was. So there’s a part of their heart where they’re sad. Until we face the truth about our situation, we can’t get free. I’ll show you the steps out in a moment. So when people deny or minimise there’s a problem... I’ve found often in Asia, people won’t talk about the things that hurt them. They’ll bury them in the heart, and hold them down in the heart; trying to get on with life, and not face the thing and deal with it.

Another way that people stay in the valley is through unforgiveness. Unforgiveness means: you’ve hurt me, and you owe me, and I refuse to release the debt. When we hold unforgiveness in our heart, the Bible says we open the door to tormenting evil spirits; and they torment you. They keep reminding you: it’s not fair. They keep stirring up hurt, stirring up injustice. They keep stirring the fire inside you; and each new experience adds to the previous one. I find some people are angry, and they’re just about angry at everything. But really what’s happened is: they were hurt, and got angry, and they never forgave.

Anger is like a debt, similar to unforgiveness. When a person is angry, they believe something was taken from them, something they were entitled to was stolen. “You owe me. You need to apologise. You need to put it right.” So anger and unforgiveness are like a demand – you pay me back. But you may never pay me back, and what you did may be so serious, and so bad, you can’t pay me back.

So, if I remain angry and harbour unforgiveness in my heart, I am trapped in the valley. I’m stuck in the place of sorrow. Trapped in there by my own unforgiveness; and God is saying – “Hey, I want to help you. I want the valley to become a well, but you are holding onto your unforgiveness and anger. You won’t let go, so you’re staying in this difficult place. I want to get you out of there.”

There’s another reason that people may stay in the valley – is they make Inner Vows. They harden their hearts; they speak “I’ll never let any man near me again.” “I’ll never trust a woman.” “I’ll never be in that position again.” So when we make an inward vow, it’s rooted in anger and bitterness – we stay in the valley. “I’ll never be like my father.” “I’ll never be like my mother.” These kinds of statements are rooted in anger and bitterness; and they’ll keep you in the valley.

So there are many reasons that people stay in a valley: Denial; Minimising; Unforgiveness; Anger; Inner vows; Judgements. People just get their lives all messed up. Now, we can choose how we handle difficult situations. So notice what the Bible says – “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord.” Blessed! That means God’s favour rests on them. Notice why the person was stuck in the valley – was because they were trying to control all the pain, and control their own life. They were trying to manage their own world. When we control our own life, we don’t make room for God.

So here are the steps out of this – “Blessed is the man.” In other words, God’s blessing flows on this person. Here’s number 1 – “whose strength is in the Lord”. That word strength means: ability to get victory is found in the Lord. So blessed is the man who comes to the Lord for victory over the situation. Instead of just trying to control it, instead of trying to bury it, they come to the Lord and bring it to the light. It says –that person, makes the valley of sorrows into a well.

How do they make it into a well? They make choices. They make choices that give God room to move; choices that allow the Holy Spirit to come into their life; choices that let God change their heart; choices to open this pain to the Lord to heal.

God doesn’t want you to walk through life suffering alone. This is what it says in 2 Corinthians 1 – “Now today, the God of comfort; God who comforts people, comfort you in all your tribulation.” So God is a God who comforts people. Every difficult, precious situation, God wants to come and comfort you. Now the God of all comfort, comfort you in all your tribulation.

Now listen to this: “...so that you may be able to comfort others, with the comfort you have received.” So if you’ve been through a painful situation, God wants to come and comfort you, and heal you; and if you are a living testimony of the power of God to change people’s lives, you can help others, because you understand them, you’ve experienced the same pain.

So what are some of the steps out of the valley? They’re usually far easier than you think. The difficulty is just doing it, but the steps are easy.

Number 1 – I need to face the reality of my plan. I need to be honest - I’m hurting. What happened to me, really hurt me, and I’m suffering. The first step to any freedom is just honesty. Instead of pretending, and covering, and saying: it’s not much; say what it is – I’m hurt.

Number 2 - I need to be honest. I need to face the situation – what happened to me, how did it affect me, how did I react. When you ask those questions, you start to really face the problem. Now I need to reach out to the Lord –“Lord I need Your grace to help me now.”

So number 1, I need to face the problems with honesty. Number 2, I need to ask the questions – what happened, how did it affect me, how have I tried to react and solve this problem.

Number 3, I need to ask the Lord to help me now and make a decision – I will forgive. I will grieve over what happened, and I’ll forgive. Sometimes we just need to grieve before we can forgive properly. Tears are the language of the heart. Issues of the heart, you have to process from the heart. Jesus said – When you forgive, forgive from the heart. Usually what happens – tears come, and that’s a sign or language that we’re sad.

When I work with people and we’re counselling them or talking with them, I always watch their face. I found the moment you touch the heart, the place where the person is in pain, the windows to the soul – the eyes start to flood with water. You can just tell the person’s really hurting; and I usually focus on that, because that is the place God wants to heal them.

So, face the situation. Ask the questions – what happened, how did it affect me, how have I tried to protect myself. Then come to the Lord with these things, grieve over the problem, release forgiveness. Start to bless the people who hurt you. If there’s any inner vows or judgements, renounce them; and expect God to help you, to give you grace to come through it. Expect God to speak to you because His words bring comfort.

I remember I was facing an incredible situation – one of my daughters had been sexually assaulted, and I was broken-hearted by this; and I was in a valley of sorrow. I could not be fixed by anyone. People didn’t even understand how sad I was. Deep at the core of my inner-most being, I was struggling with whether I could trust God again. So I had it all bottled up in my heart. I just tried to carry on life, tried to be a good Christian, tried to overcome.

Someone said to me –they were trying to help me – they said: if you could say anything to God, what would you say? So I was alone one day with God, and I began to weep. I began to face the sorrow. Then I spoke out my heart, and I said: “God, I feel You’ve let me down. I expected You to care for me, and look after me, and now I don’t trust you. I’ve prayed, and I pray for my family. My family is hurting, and You have allowed this thing to happen, so I’m struggling to pray anymore.”

I was just honest with God, and began to weep as I shared my heart, and shared the real struggle. There was a silence for a moment, and I could feel God coming on me to help me. When you are honest, God always responds. It’s just sometimes we try and pretend it’s better than it is. I felt the Lord begin to speak to me, tell me how much He loved me. He said – “I’m not committed to your comfort, I’m committed to your character.” He said – “I want you to grow. I know this is a sad experience for you, but in the midst of it, you will grow, and your family will grow, and I will come and help. Then you will be able to help many others.”

I began to weep. He said – “When you pray, you’re just praying for everything to go right in your life; and I’m not committed to your comfort, I’m committed to your character. Then He said to me this: “You know how you feel about your daughter. I feel that about My people too, when sin defiles their lives.” I just began to weep and weep as I felt the heart of God, and I let go. I said: “God, I thank you that You’re going to help us.” Within a space of 3 months, my daughter had an amazing encounter with angels, and her life changed. God supernaturally came to help, and the situation turned around.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord. He turns to the Lord in the midst of sorrows and troubles, instead of trying to control it all and bury it in the heart. Blessed is the man who turns to the Lord, and makes choices that turn the valley into a well. You can choose to trust God. You can choose to follow His way. It says in that scripture, we’ll read it again now: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.” In other words, whose heart is willing to go through a process. We just want someone to pray and fix us, but God wants you to journey with Him and trust Him. So I went from strength to strength to strength.

When I think about that situation now, there’s no pain in my heart. I’m sad that it happened, but God has given great victory; and we have prayed for hundreds of people to be set free, who were grieving over a similar trauma. “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart embraces God’s process. They go through the valley of sorrow and make it a well, and the rain fills them, and they go from strength to strength, and they experience God.” That’s what the Psalm is saying.

Blessed is the man or woman whose strength is in God, who turns to the Lord in the midst of their trouble and says: ‘God, I’ll go through the journey and the process with You.’ They pass through the valley, they don’t stay in the place of being bitter and angry and sad and resentful - they turn it into something sweet. Instead of being angry, they forgive; instead of cursing, they bless; instead of being bitter, they do good, show kindness. That person goes from strength to strength, blessed by God, enjoying the presence of God.

You can’t enjoy the presence of God when you let bitterness in your heart. When Paul wrote, he said: don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Don’t let there be bitterness and anger and fury in your hearts. Don’t let there be malice, payback. Rather, be kind, tender-hearted. Forgive. Enjoy the presence of God. I love the Holy Spirit. I love the presence of God. I want my life to be free. So whenever sorrows come, you must make a choice whether to stay in the valley, or turn it into a well.

Please just close your eyes right now. Tonight there’d be people here who don’t know Jesus. You were born into this world separate from God; but God loves you, He has a destiny for your life. Jesus came and died on the cross for your sins, and rose from the dead after 3 days. This is what He said: to everyone who received, to everyone to believed on Him, He gave power to be a child of God.

If you’re here tonight and don’t know Jesus, I want you to make that decision tonight. “I will receive Jesus Christ. I will turn to Him – the God who loves me. I’ll trust my life to Him and receive Him into my heart.”

[Sinner’s Prayer]

“Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, and to rise again from the dead. Tonight I turn away from sin. Tonight I turn to You. Jesus, I receive You as my Saviour. I ask You to forgive all my sins. By faith now, I receive forgiveness. I receive Your Spirit into my heart, and I give You my life tonight. Before heaven and earth I declare, Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

Repentance from Dead Works (1 of 7)  

Sun 13 Feb 2011 PM « Back to Top

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This is not talking about repentance from sin, but from living a self-centred life at the core of our being, a life lived out of duty, obligation, legalism, my efforts to be loved, needed, valued, feel good. The life of God flows out of a vital love relationship with God. He is the centre, not us. Our identity is with him. His life flows through a life that's yielded and open, and in love with God as a father.

Prelude: Open your Bibles with me in Hebrews 5:12, I want to begin a new series. Last week we shared with you about the parable of the unforgiving servant, and we saw how a person experienced the grace of God, came into what you'd call salvation type experience of the grace, the forgiveness, the blessing of God and then did not stay in that place of grace. By being unloving and judgemental to fellow believers in the house, he shifted himself out of being under the flow of grace, and ended in his own life under judgement and demonic torment. There's a tremendous principle to understand of the need for us to remain in the grace and the light of Jesus Christ, so we're going to do a series in this coming seven weeks called First Principles, or the foundational doctrine of Christ.

Message

Hebrews 5:7 - “Jesus, who in the days of His flesh, when He lived on the earth, He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear. Though He was a Son (the Son of God), He learned obedience by the things He suffered, and having been made perfect, He became the author (or the originator or the one who brings a flow of salvation) of eternal salvation, to all them who obey Him. Called by God as a High Priest, according to the order of Melchizedek (so Jesus is a High Priest within a particular supernatural order called the order of Melchizedek), of whom we've a lot to say but hard to explain, since you've become dull of hearing.”

In other words, Paul is saying: Jesus Himself was ushered into a priesthood of supernatural life and power. We want to talk to you more about that, but because of your immaturity, you can't handle the truth! That's virtually what he's saying: you're dull of hearing.

Now he starts to talk about Spiritual Immaturity. Hebrews 5:12 “Now by this time you've been Christians for many years, you ought to be teachers. You need someone again teaches you the first principles of the doctrine of God; you need milk and not solid food. For everyone who takes milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. He is a babe...” (and that's not kind of “babe” babe - this is a “baby” baby)

“...and solid food belongs to those who are of full age; that is, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore leaving the discussion of the doctrine or the first principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection”. Jesus was made perfect. Jesus grew into that maturity.

He's saying: “we need to get off foundations and move into maturity, not laying again the foundation” - then he begins to describe the foundation: “repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine of baptisms; laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; of eternal judgement - and this we will do if God permits.” What we will do: we will go on to maturity - IF God permits. Its possible God will not permit you to come to the fullness of what you're called to, unless the foundations are properly laid, so let's open our heart on this.

The key in this particular passage is the challenge of the apostle for us not to remain childish or baby, but to actually grow to maturity; and so this is about the first principles of Christ - the foundation of Christ. It's not just about Jesus Christ and what He's done, it's the foundations for us to become what God wants us to become. If these foundations are not laid properly in our lives, we will wrestle, struggle, we do the best we can; but never get to where God wants us to get to. This is why this is called “foundations”.

So there are many things that are basic in the Christian life, so I might ask you what's basic to the Christian life? What would you say? Well you'd say: prayer; read your Bible; come to church; get fellowship - you'd say a whole lot of things. You notice none of them are mentioned there? So this is nothing to do with that - these are the foundations for building. It's about how your life is built, and you becoming all that God wants you to become. These must be put in there. These are not just a set of teachings. It's not just six steps and now I'm away. It's not that at all. It actually is a foundation.

You notice when a building is first being constructed, they lay a foundation. You don't see the foundation, but it carries the whole weight of the building. Now you never remove the foundation. It always remains there, and the stability of the building depends on the foundations being present, being strong, and being able to support what you're building. So what he's saying is: this doctrine of Christ, or the first principles of Christ, is a body of teaching on how to live your life in such a way, we can corporately become what God wants us to become. Christian life is never a single or alone life; it's always lived in community. It is what you call a “living foundation”, so each part of this is something to be living inside you. It's something you live out in your daily life. It's not something - I heard that tape, I'll pass it on. This is something that needs to be operative continually in your life if you want to progress.

If any of these areas are not operative in your life, you can't progress. You'll be around a long time, but there's a huge difference between: being a 10 year old Christian; and a Christian who's had one year's experience 10 times - just repeated the same stuff. So you notice then, the first things are these are the foundations to Christ, the anointed life, the anointed one; and we know there is Jesus Christ who is the pattern, but it also refers to the body of Christ of which you and I are a part. That's the first thing.

Second thing is, it's foundation to your identity, and how you do your life with Jesus. It's foundational - the foundational substructure. Notice he calls it the First Principles. The word first comes from the word arché, from which we get principality. It's something which is the beginning. If this isn't there, you don't go any further. You just keep busy, but you don't go further.

Notice these first principles - the word ‘principle’ means: a foundation on which, or the beginning of something from which, everything else springs. Or putting it simply like this, it's your ABCs. If you don't learn your ABCs, then you remain illiterate. It doesn't matter how hard you try - and I'm sure you try real hard - but if you haven't learnt your ABCs, you experience a sequence of failures. You can't put your finger on what's wrong - it's not because you aren't trying; it's the foundations aren't there.

It’s like learning your times tables. You know, one of the things we had to learn was our times tables. You just had to learn it. If it wasn't learnt, and it wasn't in you, then you could not proceed in maths. You'd get so far, you'd try the best, and you struggle as much as you can. No matter how well intentioned you are, no matter how much effort you put in, you just don't get anywhere. You just have a sequence of failures. Why? The foundations essential to going forward are just not there.

Now this happens with believers as well - if the foundations are not there, the consequence is immaturity. Notice what he says: “you are dull of hearing”. You're not actually spiritually sensitive to the things God is saying. In fact, the Bible tells us that in the last days, people will want to hear teachings that tickles their ears, and makes them feel good - not teaching that forms Christ in them. God's plan is not you just get saved and go to heaven. God's plan is that His Son, and the nature of His Son, and His loving life, is formed in you. So the foundations are absolutely essential.

Notice it says that a person who hasn't got the foundations in them - the Bible calls them a babe. That word babe means: one who's so young, they can't talk properly - a spiritual babe. It doesn't mean they don't make sounds; it's just actually there's not a maturity, spiritually, around them. To be of full age means you lack nothing; you've actually been completed in the things God wants to build into your life.

Maturity has to do with being able to exercise your senses to discern good and evil; so a person who is growing in their Christian life - this is what they can do. They have developed their spiritual sensitivity, because their foundations are laid, and they can discern good and evil. Now of course you'll be thinking straight away: well I know good and evil... If someone gets drunk, that's evil; if someone gets sober, that's good. If someone steals, that's evil; if someone gives out, that's good. That's very true, all that's true, but that's not what it's referring to here. It's referring to something different to that.

What was the name of the tree that Adam and Eve ate from, that led them to substitute their relationship with God for something else? It was the tree of good and evil - so you need to compare this with the original - Paul's referring to that. What did they do? They substituted a relationship - a love relationship with God as a Father and provider; they substituted that, with knowledge about what is right and wrong. I'll show you exactly the nature of the fall, because if you don't understand what the fall is, you won't understand why this needs to be laid so strongly.

So to discern good and evil is very simply this: it's the spiritual capacity to tell what is the motivation of something; whether it flows with the life of the spirit, or whether it's just someone putting on a good. Is this real, and the life of God is in it; or is there something at the core of this, you can tell this is just someone really trying hard? In other words, it's the ability to discern what is religious, from what is the flow of the spirit. Many people come into a meeting, they can't even tell the flow of the spirit. Many people don't know how to live the life of the spirit.

If you don't know how to live the Life of the Spirit, you will be living out of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. God wants us, in this coming season, to grow inside - by putting foundations in us, and then learning how to engage, live in, and bring the life of the Holy Spirit into our daily life - but there has to be some foundational things put in.

Notice now it describes the foundations - it gives an overview, and it describes six of them. The first one is repentance from dead works. Notice it doesn't say there: repentance from sin. Most people when they read it read that - repentance from sin. They think: that's for a sinner; that's someone who's just come into Jesus. No, this is a foundation to be a believer. It's something you have to live in. Repentance from Dead Works - we're going to look at that today; and then: Faith towards God.

So repentance from dead works is, turning away from a life which is: I will do it; it's my way; I will do this - it's out of the will, it's out of the flesh. It actually doesn't have the life of God in it. It's a life lived just out of yourself, trying to do the best you can; and you turn to God - faith towards God is to turn towards God, to receive His love, receive identity in Him, receive positioning in Him, so you can bring forth good works, living works. So it's not stopping doing things, it's actually repenting from the inner motivation of wrong things.

The third is Doctrine of Baptism, which is about separating your life from worldly value systems, a world system governed by the devil, a life of sin and independence of God; and being a part of - connected to God vitally, and connected to the body of Christ; and flowing in a new life, community life, where you love people and you share your life with people.

The fourth one is the Laying on of Hands, which is the impartation by people who are anointed - five-fold ministry, elders - into your life, to active and impart giftings, to get you up and going, to help you go where you need to go. That's part of body life.

The next one is the Resurrection of the Dead – there are many aspects to it, but we'll just keep it at this level - It's about how to flow in resurrection power. You notice the testimony Graham gave today, the feeling of resurrection power coming into his body, caused death to be restrained; and he lived when he should have died - Resurrection power.

Finally, Eternal Judgements, which means a number of things, but one thing it includes is judging the things which are not originated in the spirit of God; and that brings us back to Repentance from Dead Works.

So this is a living foundation. There's a lot in it, but I want to try and keep it down to something you can apply in your life. So the first thing then is to recognise that this is about setting you up to: live and flow in the life of the spirit; to become connected to God and to people; and to show what God is like. That's what Jesus came to do - to reveal God, reveal His love, reveal His nature, reveal His power. So it's about walking in a new identity.

If you don't get established in who you are in Jesus Christ, what you'll do is you'll just try hard to be a good Christian, and you'll find it's incredibly frustrating because the power isn't there, so this is foundational. Before we move on, I want you to have a look just at the fall of man, Genesis 3, and see why Repentance from Dead Works is so necessary.

Genesis 3:1 – “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field the Lord God had made.” Serpent is an embodiment, a physical embodiment of Satan. “And he said to the woman: Has God said you shall not eat every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: we can eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, which God said: you shall not eat it, you shall not touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman: you shall not surely die. God knows in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened. You'll be like God. You'll know good and evil.”

Notice – “You will be like God”. He didn't tell them that there was a down side to all of that. “so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasing to the eyes, desirable to make one wise, she took the fruit and ate, and gave it to her husband with her; then the eyes of them were opened, and they knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, made coverings, and when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

God said to Adam and Eve, He called them and said: “where are you?” “I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Now before Adam and Even fell, you have to understand this: they walked in love and in unity with God, and in love and in unity with one another. That's how it all started - it started with love and connection - God was joined to them. The spirit of God was joined to them, they were clothed in the glory of God. Whatever they did, they enjoyed absolute peace and security, unbroken fellowship with God. What they chose to do was this: they rejected their Father's love. The rejected the love God has; because if we love Him, we'll do what He says.

They rejected God's love; they rejected Him. They sinned against love, and against relationship.

Here's something people don't think. We think of sin: you do something bad. Actually when we sin, we sin against love, we sin against relationship. Someone is always affected by our sin - and so they rejected the Father's love. Now what happened as a consequence of this, they lost a number of things - the Bible says they “fell”. What does that mean, they fell? Here's what they lost: they lost something they walked in.

The first thing is, they lost their relationship with their Father. In other words, they had no relationship with the Father. That left them disconnected from a Father, without identity; without a Father to father them, they had to father themselves - they became spiritual orphans in the world. That's the first thing that happened - they were cut off from the love of God. Now if you're cut off from the love of God, guess what? You've got to find it somewhere else, because you're designed for love. People will always find love, and value, and identity somewhere.

Second thing is, they lost their identity. They're no longer a child of God - He is not owning-up to them, He's no longer their Father. They're separated from their Father. Now they have no identity, and when a person's got no identity, you know what happens? They feel insecure; they feel threatened; they feel defensive; they feel afraid; they feel ashamed.

You know what the question is: who am I? The question people ask everywhere - Who am I? People don't know who they are, because they define their identity out of what's around them, and who they're connected to, rather than what God says we are.

So he lost his identity; and the next thing they lost was the supernatural life of God that kept them alive. So eventually they were going to get sick, they're going to grow old and die. What a tremendous loss - embracing the knowledge of good and evil, but letting go their Father, their relationship with God as Father. Their lives were dramatically transformed; so what happened inside them? A number of things happened...

The first thing you notice is: emotional turmoil - fear, grief, guilt, shame, pain. You notice they were so emotionally-numbed that God actually had to push them out of the garden.

What happened then? What came into the heart of man is: I need to be someone; and if I need to be someone, I'm going to have to do something, to be someone. I want to be someone - you know what - I'll get a lot of money, then I'll be someone. No matter how much money you get, you're still not someone, because you're separated from your source, where you came from.

I know what I'll do, I'll get a lot of possessions, and I'll get cars and boats and houses - and I'll get all these things - so there's an ambition to get more and more things, but people still aren't happy. Why? They still don't know who they are, because you're not defined by your money, and you're not defined by your possessions.

Ok, I need to get a position. I'll work hard, and I'll get to the top of this or the top of that or top of the school, top of the community, top of the government or I'll get to the top of the church. But all the same, right inside, there's still a desire that can't be quenched, because even if you get all those things, it still doesn't give you the answer.

Well then, I'll try hard to be accepted in love. I'll really work on my relationships. I'll do all I can - well it's still not going to solve the problem, the problem's far deeper than that.

Well I know what - I'll work out what's good for me - and so hence man began to live this way. This is how we define life: if it's good for me, it's good. If it's not good for me, it's not good. That's how far we've fallen. That's how self-centred we are; and so we come to church: if it's good for me, I like it. If it's not good for me, and I don't like it, then I won't accept it. We're living from a totally wrong centre.

Man became his own centre, not God; so this issue of Turning from Dead Works is an issue of shifting your centre.

So what happens if you become a Christian? Well, you give your life to Jesus Christ; and the spirit of God comes into you. Now the dilemma is this: you have to leave the old centre. You have to leave the old self-centred life. Why do you have to leave that? Because it doesn't work! The spirit of God, and the life of God, does not flow through a life that is self-centred; it flows through a life that's yielded and open and in love with God as a father.

A classic example of this is the Prodigal Son. Remember the Prodigal Son left the home, and he abandoned the Father's love, and went out and he got broken, he got attached to all kinds of things; but here's the thing: he repented of his lifestyle, came back, and received a gift! He didn't have to do anything - just he turned, he repented; and the Father just shouts, he embraced him and hugged him, restored him, gave him what he never deserved. That's grace operating! This is the life of God.

How did he get it? He just repented; and he could hardly even believe all the things that God had for him, when he let go the substitutes, and attached back to his father.

The older son is representative of religious people - people who become religious. What do we mean by religion? Religion is your efforts to get yourself right with God, your efforts to become righteous, and better than others. So what was going on in the elder son's life was something like this: he was a hard worker. He tried to live a perfect life, but you know what? You can't be perfect trying to live a perfect life, because you always blow it somewhere! So he tried so hard, trying so hard to please his father, trying so hard to get approval, so hard to get acceptance - but it's all about him working.

The father said to him: this was always available as a gift to you - you didn't have to do all the work; but he just got working so hard, trying to be good; and the result was this happened inside him: he then looked down on the brother and judged him. He despised someone who was less than him. He worked to be superior, he tried to be better than the other, he tried to present himself as being good; but actually it was all his own works, his own rights, his own struggling and driving. He was a driven man. He was striving to get acceptance and love - and it never came to him. Then, when he saw what grace looks like, instead of saying: I want some of that; he refused to repent. Now you've got to remember this: this is a reference to the Pharisees of Jesus day, who: tithed, went to church, did well, kept laws, looked scrupulous on the outside - but it didn't change the heart.

They were watching Jesus. You know what they did? They were the ones who complained when they saw grace. Why did they complain when they saw grace? They did not have the foundations of Christ in them. They were religious. It is very easy to become an elder brother, very easy to become religious; and so what they did, they needed to be seen. Why? Because it's no good doing something like praying; unless you're seen. They used to give - they'd be seen. Why? There's no use giving, unless someone sees you; because I mean, that's what it's all about. They fast - well we've got to let people know we're fasting - and so the whole lifestyle was: what will people think of me? It was governed by the fear of man, and pride, which is at its root.

This is what religion looks like. Religion can't help people. It doesn't matter how strict the religious life is, it's a life of bondage. Why? Because this is not how the supernatural life comes. That is what you've got to repent of. That is what needs to be removed out of life.

What did he end up like? He ended up resentful, judgemental, rejected, critical of his father, critical of his brother, refusing to enter in, and actually quite angry at his father's graciousness.

The life of a religious person is in conflict and contention with the life of Christ. Wherever people flow in the life of Christ, there will be contention, and arguments, and opposition from people who do not have the life of Christ, who are in a place of religion, and separated from the revelation of God's love.

So we see here in that story of the Prodigal Son, the elder brother was totally opposed to the spirit of grace. I tell you what shows up in your heart. What's shown in our heart is when God shows goodness to someone else - someone else gets the promotion, someone else gets blessed, someone else gets something happen good to them - what's in our heart flushes up to the surface. Churches are so struggling with people like the elder brother, thinking: if I'm just good enough, or I just get this next key, I'll get my breakthrough. If I just fast enough, God will be impressed, and He'll move on my behalf; and so we get into a do, do, do, work, strive, struggle - no rest, no peace, and no flow of life.

Now this is not what Jesus came to give us. You see, this is the consequence of being out of connection, out of relationship - so what has Jesus done for us? Let me just give it quickly, and then you'll see what you've got to break free of. This is what Jesus did. It tells us very clearly in Colossians, Chapter 2, it says: He took away every failure, every fault, the list of everything tipped against us, everything that we failed, and everything we could fail, and He removed it, took it to the cross, declared it cancelled, and broke the power of the devil. Every curse you could be under, He took it to the cross. Galatians 3:13, He broke the power of cursings. Why? So you could be blessed. How do you get blessed? Definitely not by working hard; definitely not by trying to do something else.

Ephesians 2:6 says: “Now we are seated with Him” - already in a spirit dimension, already in the place of blessing.” I hear people pray: “God bless me.” No, He has already blessed you - it says in Ephesians 1. God has blessed us already, with all the blessings. How did you get blessed, and where are the blessings, and how can I get them? “You are blessed with every blessing in heavenly places that's in the realm of the spirit, in union with Christ.”

The key is this: that when you came and repented of struggling, striving, pain, all kinds of issues, when you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him, His spirit comes into you.

Now this is what happens: you become a new person. You are not someone who has to try to be better - you are already better. You don't have to try to find God as your Father, He already now is your Father. You don't have to try to be blessed, you are blessed, because of your position and your union. So what Jesus came for, was to offer us His spirit in us, united with Him. We are already in the place of blessing - it's just a matter of flowing in that life, so it is released.

So now why do I pray? Why? Because I'm already blessed, and I want fellowship with my Father, to birth His things into the earth.

Why do I fast? Why? Not to get something from God, but because I want to be sensitive to my Father, so His life can flow unhindered, and I can hear clearly from Him.

Why do I enter into spiritual warfare? Because my Father has obtained freedom for me now, and I will stand in that place of victory, not fighting the devil for the victory, but standing decreeing where I am in Christ, who I am in Christ, what I have in Christ. I will step into that position with faith in my heart!

What an amazing thing. We already have acceptance, we have forgiveness, we have redemption - we have all these things. How do we have them? Here's how we have them: they're all in Christ. They're all in Jesus, the anointed one - I must abandon trying to work hard to get it. This is the problem before I become a Christian. Now when I become a Christian, this is what happens: the spirit of God comes into me, and I am - 2 Corinthians it tells us - one spirit with the Lord. Wherever I go, the spirit of the Lord is there. Now I don't have to bring anything down from heaven - I'm already in heaven. I don't have to try to make God bless me, I am already blessed.

How am I blessed? Well, the blessings come here with Him, with Christ, the anointed one. The anointing of Christ within me, the presence of Christ within me, His spirit within me, is what brings me into a life of blessing. What I need is not to try and now behave, and perform, and do more; try to look good for your sake - not at all.

I need to remain connected here, because if I separate, and I try now to work hard, I come under the law. If I'm under the law, the grace and anointing doesn't work for me anymore. If you're under law, you have fallen from grace. Grace no longer works and empowers your life. Now you are under guilt, self-centredness, and struggle. You've got to cover-up; you've got to pretend you're something you're not; you've got to try hard - and that's where many people end up; but if I stay in Christ, and the key to my life on the earth is being in Him, now everywhere I go, Christ is with me.

I need to meditate, dwell in, and live out of who I am in Him. I am a blessed person. I'm a loved person. I'm an accepted person. I'm a redeemed person. I'm a forgiven person in Him, connected to Him.

Now here's where the Dead Works issue comes up. Dead works are works which flow out of my own efforts, and my own struggles, to be: loved, needed, valued, feel good. Whenever I feel a bit ashamed, or blamed, any kind of thing like that, and I start to try and cover up, and do good works, and try harder, then I remove myself from the life of grace. So how do I abide in Christ? How can I get His life to flow through me? How can I live in the flow of blessing? How can I live in the flow of the anointing? I’m glad you asked!

Here's the first thing you need to do: you need to repent of dead works. That word ‘dead’ is the word ‘necron’ - a lifeless corpse, something that's got absolutely no life in it. Dead works means doing things out of guilt, obligation, duty, fear, shame, all kinds of stuff; trying desperately to be loved. You notice when you do that, you have moved yourself from Christ, and you're now self-centred, trying hard. What you need to do is repent, which means turn your - switch it off! Turn away from it; I'm not going to try to make myself any better.

Now if I will abandon trying to do all that stuff, trying to be noticed, trying to be important, trying to get people to love me, trying to get position in the church, trying to get some kind of title, role, rank, some kind of anointing, some kind of special deal - if I would just stop all that nonsense called Dead Works, and just rest, that everything I need in my life right now, where I'm at is in Christ, I can relax and start to enjoy my life, and enter the Rest of Faith, where I can live my life at peace, instead of being anxious, worried, stressed.

Worried about what will they think? It doesn't matter what they think - it's what He thinks. It's what Christ thinks. It's about being connected to Him; so Repentance from Dead Works is the first step in separating from that old self-centred life - where it's all up to you, and you've got to try harder.

When people come into a church, this is what happens: they learn keys and principles. If you'll do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - you'll be blessed! I know what I need to do, but I'm stuck on #1, so couldn't remember the other four - I wasn't quick enough, didn't get them down. So what happens is: if we don't watch, we move from grace - the undeserved flow of God's life - and end up under the law.

Now how does this really show up? It shows up in how you relate to other people! It shows up in how, particularly, you relate to the body of Christ. If you realise that all your life is in Him, in Christ, then you begin to catch His heart, and you realise He's in others as well. If I'm going to walk with Jesus, the anointed one, and let His life flow in me, I've got to respect and honour and value those in His body who also carry the same anointing - I've got to learn how to love people. I've got to learn how to value people. I've got to learn how to let His life flow through me; and the first step is just repenting, turning from your dead works, so then you can get into a place of faith. Now I'll talk about faith in the next session.

For most, faith means: also trying hard, trying hard to believe. What they're really saying is: I'm still stuck here in my dead works, trying hard to be a better person, hoping God will do something. Unfortunately, He doesn't do it for me - He does it for Ian, or someone else like that. Do you understand?

It's actually about a divine life flow, a divine life flow. Repentance from dead works has to be established as a way of life. It is the first foundational keys to making it possible for you to engage the life of Christ.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you're living out of duty, obligation, legalism; where you do things out of a wrong motive, a wrong attitude, resentful, guilty, shame-based, fear-based, all that kind of stuff. Ask God to show you where that is; and why don't you say: God, at the centre of that activity, it's all about me, and what I get out of it. Lord, I open my heart to the cross, to change - it's the cross, and what Jesus did.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank you for the wonderful grace that is extended to us in Jesus Christ. How amazing is that grace - that accepts us, that loves us, that redeems us. Oh Father, what a great heart of love. It is hard for us, who work so hard, to comprehend how much you love us; but we see in the Prodigal Son who deserved nothing, but when he came with a repentant heart to be reconnected with his father, he didn't have to do any great thing. You just reached your arms around him, and loved him and welcomed him, celebrated him, wept over him, dressed him in fine clothes, restored him to sonship and authority - and he didn't deserve it.

Oh my, we don't deserve grace, but You're empowerment to live is what enables us to change. Father, right now in these next few moments, speak into our hearts. Is there any area where we're walking in dead works - self-centred, worried about what people think, looking after ourselves, covering up who we really are, concealing the reality of an inner life that isn't going so well; desperately trying to look good, struggling with guilt and shame - all these things. Lord, today show us, so we can repent and turn from them. Father, Father, thank you for your love.

Is there any person here who's never made the first step of a changed life, which is to receive Jesus Christ? You can feel the love of God just touching you, you can feel the spirit of God moving around your heart. God is reaching out to you, to bring you back to Himself. You're a child without Father, and He wants to bring you back into His family. The answer to that is found very simply, and Jesus said: “whoever received Him, whoever believed on Him, whoever opened their life to make Him welcome, He gave the right and privilege to become a child of God.”

It's something happens in a moment - when you receive Christ, the Spirit of God enters your heart. I'd love you to pray with me right now this simple prayer, a prayer to change your heart and change your life. I'd like you to follow me this prayer...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. Today I turn away from sin and dead works, struggling to be good enough. I turn to you the living God. Jesus, I receive you into my heart and life. I ask you to forgive me. I ask you to be my saviour. By faith today I receive you as my saviour. I give my life to you, and I thank you for your spirit coming into my heart right now, making me clean, making me different. Today Lord Jesus Christ I belong to You. Amen.

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

1. Introduction
Heb. 5:12 – 6:3 “Let us go on to perfection” to maturity, to the fullness of God’s purpose.
Context of this passage = going on to perfection, following the example of Jesus Christ.
First principles = foundation of “Christ” – The Anointed One.
Many things that are basic to Christian life not mentioned here e.g. prayer, fasting and giving.
List of 6x principles – these are a foundation for building not just set of teachings.
- not just a set of steps to take – six living foundations.
Called 1st Principles of Christ because they establish and form Life of Christ within us.
They are foundational to the new way of being and living.
Foundation = NT 2310 = substructure that supports a building.
First = NT 746 = Arche = 1st in a series, principal.
Principles = NT 4747 The first thing from which others in a series arise;
e.g. military rank.
= The fundamentals, the ABC’s, the “Times Tables”.
Without the Foundations – consequence is spiritual immaturity
Vs 12 “… you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the doctrine of God”
Babe = NT 3516 = Nepios = babe without the power of speech – one needing milk.
Full age = NT 5046 = Teleios = full grown son, lacking nothing for completion.
Maturity = have constantly exercised their spiritual senses and growing.
Discern good and evil = able to see through to the root (love)
= identify what flows from Spirit of God and what flows from law.
= Identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self centred.

2. Overview of First Principles
Heb 6:1 – 3 “…. Not laying again the foundation”
(i) Repentance from Dead Works - Turning from self centred life, efforts to be righteous.
(ii) Faith towards God – Turning to God, receive His love and righteousness, and identity.
(iii) Doctrine of Baptisms – separation from sin and immersion to Life in the Spirit.
(iv) Laying on of hands – impartation of grace, gifts, callings to fulfil destiny.
(v) Resurrection of the dead – flowing in the life of the Spirit.
(vi) Eternal Judgement – judging all that is not of the Life of the Spirit.
This is about receiving and flowing in the love and life of the Holy Spirit.
It is about the exchange of our life for His supernatural life.
It is about walking in our new identity and position as a child of God.
It is foundational – it under girds and supports the Kingdom Life of the Holy Spirit.
It is a way of life not a series of steps.



3. The Fall of Man
Gen 3:1-10 “You shall be as God” – knowing good and evil.
Adam and Even walked in love and unity with God and with one another.
They rejected the Father’s Love – sinned against love and relationship.

What was Lost in the Fall
They fell from a relationship and life where God was the Centre.
(i) They lost their love relationship with God as their Father and with one another. Eph. 4:18.
- Cut off from the life and love of God – man was now orphaned, self centred.
(ii) They lost their identity as a child of God who clothed and gave identity.
- Adam was naked, ashamed, self conscious, self centred, insecure.
- Lost! Who am I?
(iii) They lost the supernatural life of God that sustained them, Life of the Spirit.

What they experienced as a result of the Fall
Emotional turmoil – guilt, shame, fear.
Ambition to be someone by doing, to clothe nakedness.
Constant identity crisis – concealing true identity (fig leaves).
Trying to be accepted, loved, and approved of by doing.
Struggling to control their personal life and circumstances.
Defining good and evil from self centre – what is good for me, not good for me.
Under law - trying hard to be good enough, be righteous.
Religious – doing good works to try and establish own righteousness.

4. Example of Older Brother
Lk.15:25 – 3 “He was angry and would not go in”
Seeing the younger brother experience grace exposed his fallen condition.
Elder brother: Loyal, faithful, hardworking, good – profess to love his father.
Hidden Motivation
Serve to find identity in works.
Need to be seen and recognised.
Bitterly disappointed and striving.
Looking for love, identity in works.
Hidden Sins of his heart
Striving Resentment/Anger
Pride Striving for superiority
Jealousy Cold and unloving
Self rights Rather be right than have relationships
Judgemental Opposed to Christ to spirit of grace
He needed to repent of Dead Works.

5. What Christ Has Done for Us
(i) Removed the list of failures and disempowered evil spirits. (Col. 2:14-15)
(ii) Broke the power of cursing to release blessing of Holy Spirit. (Gal 3:13-14)
(iii) Raised us up to be united with Him in Heaven. (Eph.2:5-6)
(iv) Blessed us, made us without blame, accepted, redeemed, forever.(Eph.1:3-5)
All of this is a free gift – cannot be earned – by grace through faith.
Gal 5:4 If we do not rely on grace – its power is made to vanish.
Repent of Dead Works before faith can become effective.
Repent = total change of mind and heart.
Dead = 3498 = Nekros = a corpse, lacking in vitality, life, power.
Activities which are not moved with love and power of the Holy Spirit.
Activities filled with self centred agenda.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What are the “first” or “elementary” principles of Christ in Hebrews 6: 1-3?

Why is an understanding of these essential? Hebrews 5: 12-13

(They are foundational to a new way of being and living and they establish and form the Life of Christ within us)

Maturity = full grown son; lacking nothing for completion.
= have constantly exercised their spiritual senses and growing.
= discerns good and evil. i.e
1. able to see through to the root.
2. able to identify what flows from the Spirit of God and what flows from law.
3. able to identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self directed.

How can we discern what flows from the Spirit of God and what flows from law?
e.g. in our thought life, attitudes, beliefs, impressions, feelings, inner reactions or responses, behaviours.

How can we identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self directed?
What would be the fruit or effect that each would produce in our lives and the lives of those we influence?

Can you share from your own experience a time where you were able to discern that you were Holy Spirit directed and a time where you were directed by law or self?

What did you experience internally?(Law/self = condemnation, shame, insecurity, fear, striving, dryness, depression, jealousy, judgemental/critical attitude, anger, resentment, cold and unloving, control, focused on your rights, feeling that you’ve got to meet certain standards to be right with God and to attain His blessings and provision.)

(Holy Spirit = flow of love, peace, joy, energy and life, enthusiasm, inner security and strength, rest, assurance, confidence (it’s going to be ok) trust, sense of intimacy with the Lord, vitality and power.)

What was the outcome?
What was the impact on those around you?

Do your motivations and actions flow more often out of a fear - base or a faith / love – base?

Review in the notes “What Christ Has Done For Us.”
THE FINISHED WORK OF JESUS CHRIST AT CALVARY IS THE BASIS UPON WHICH YOU RECEIVE FROM GOD NOT YOUR PERFORMANCE OR HOW GOOD YOU ARE!

What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to about in this session?
Has He helped you identify dead works within your life?
Where do you need to repent ( change your way of thinking ) in order to believe God?

Faith towards God (2 of 7)  

Sun 20 Feb 2011 PM « Back to Top

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What is Faith? How would I know if I had it? How do I get it? Can it be grown and developed? How can I grow and develop it? Turn towards God to receive his love, receive identity in Him, receive positioning in Him, so you can bring forth good works, living works.

Review

We're going to just open up our Bible at Hebrews 6. We looked at this whole area of the foundational principles, and we saw that for any building, you have to have a foundation. If the foundation is weak, the building will not be strong.

Hebrews 6:1 "Now leaving the discussion of the foundational principles of Christ, let us go onto maturity (or to the fullness of God's plan), not laying again the foundation of: repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine of baptisms; of laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement - this we will do if God permits"

So Paul (or the author) is talking about us going on in the purpose of God: "let us go on"; but he also says: it's impossible to do it, if you haven't got a strong foundation built in your life. So he said: the result of not going on is - people remain immature. They remain babies, when God wants us actually to grow. So as we start this, I want to first of all just give the big picture of what this about.

The Bible tells us Jesus came with a particular mission: He came to reveal what God is like; He came to reveal the Father, and the heart of God as a Father. Throughout history, people have never known God as a Father. They had various ideas about God, revelations of God, but this was the first time anyone had brought a message that God is a Father, and we can be born again into His family. We can be joined into Him, and have His life come into us. We can have a relationship with God as a loving Father. So the Bible says: Jesus was the express image of the invisible God.

He said to His disciples: "If you've seen Me, you have seen the Father". So if we want to see what God is like, as a Father, it's all wrapped up in Jesus Christ, and how He connected with people, how He loved people, and in His day He totally upturned the religious works of the day. So Jesus came to invite you and me into a similar relationship.

In one part He said that where I am, the relationship that I have with my Father, I want you to be there also. Now just think about that for a moment. Right through Jesus' ministry He said: I do the things that the Father has shown me to do; I do the things I see the Father doing. He said: the words I speak are what the Father has given me. When everyone was about to leave Him, He said: I'm not alone - the Father is with me.

Jesus lived His life out of an intimate love relationship with God, His Father; and He said in John 14:1 "Now I go to prepare a place for you". So just before Jesus left the earth, He said: I'm going to prepare for you a place of relationship, identical to mine; that where I am, the relationship I have, you can have that also. Now people know the words of that, but seldom experience the reality of what it is to walk day by day feeling, sensing the love of God as your Father, embracing you, encouraging you, valuing you, guiding you, revealing His love to you. It's out of this source that we can have a secure life.

We saw last session that if we don't find our centre in God, we'll find something else as a substitute. We'll find money, but money will never satisfy. We'll look for properties and possessions, but they never satisfy. We look for position and power, but they never satisfy; and people who seek those things are really seeking something that cannot be found there. Sometimes people seek to find fulfilment of these needs in their life through religion. Religion is just trying hard to gain acceptance with God, and acceptance by people. It cannot change a person, in fact it's just a heavy burden.

So Jesus made it very clear: He's called us to come into relationship - not into doing lots of things, but into experiencing a love relationship with God, out of which our life is transformed. That's what He offers, so these foundations are the foundations of that relationship.

Notice it doesn't talk about prayer, doesn't talk about fasting, doesn't talk about Bible reading. It's talking about foundations in your belief system. The Bible says that what you believe in your heart, that's the way your life will go. So out of the abundance of your heart, that's where your life flows. Your life flows out of what you really believe; so if you come to church, but in your heart you still believe there's something desperately wrong with you, you will never enjoy intimacy with God; because as soon as you try to become intimate with God, the message of your heart, there is something wrong with me, something not acceptable about me, will come up. The shame of your past activities will come up, and there will be a wall between you, and being intimate with God.

So the tendency for church people is to try to work harder, to be good enough to experience the love of God. We cover over, that we have no real relationship with God, by just trying to do the right things - this is what Jesus did not call us to. Notice this: we're called not only to experience that; we're also called to grow.

Now, in the Bible it talks about this. It says in 1 John, it talks about children, while God has forgiven your sins. Then it talks about spiritual young men, you're strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you've overcome the devil. That means they're in a place now they've grown, matured. They're not having struggles with temptations. They've grown - and then He says: Fathers, you know Him, who's from the beginning.

So the Bible lays out stages or phases of growth. We could be a spiritual child, and it doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. You could be a spiritual child, childish, continually wrestling with failures, wrestling with shame, wrestling with guilt, wrestling with unforgiveness, wrestling with tormenting thoughts. That is child stuff.

If you're a young man, then you've learned how to confront those with the word of God. You become established in who you are in God, you become strong in the word of God, strong in spirit. Now the devil's not a problem for you. You're not worried about attacks from the devil. You've actually learned how to recognise them and subdue them.

Then you're called to grow from there to become a father. A father is one who knows what God is like, as a Father, and is able to reveal that love to people in such a way their lives are attracted, and they are blessed, and benefit from it. Jesus was a spiritual father to the disciples. Why was He like that? Because He could reveal the love of God, and the nature of God to them.

If we're going to grow to maturity, it's not going to be automatic. We have to lay foundations, and the first foundation we saw was Repenting, or turning from lifeless activities driven by guilt, fear, shame, desire to please, desire to impress, desire to be something. All of those kinds of things - and church is full of it. Society's full of people struggling with lifeless activities. When you get into some situations, you'll notice how dead the atmosphere is - there's no life in it. People are being polite and correct, but you don't feel authentic love flowing - you feel there's something missing there.

You go to some families, and they might be polite and everything's nice together, but you feel there's no bonding of love. There's something missing in the middle of it. It is the love of God flowing, it's the life of the spirit of God, so we're called to repent from dead works. In Hebrews 9, Verse 14, it says: "Now the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you". You need to be clean from dead works. Cleanse your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.

Notice this: the first thing is, God wants us to be cleaned up from all the dead, lifeless, barren activities, the frustrating things, that never caused us to feel love, or to have an identity; and to instead connect with God, and the overflow is such that now we're serving God, our life is an abundance of activity and vitality.

It's not we just stop doing stuff. There's a change on the inside, in the core motivation of why we're doing it. If we're not secure in who we are, that: I am my Father's child, I'm a child of God, I've come from God and I'm going to God, I have an eternity with Him, I have a destiny on the earth - if we are not secure that we're loved by God, we will then do things to try and meet the insecurity.

We will try to act or do things that cause us to feel good; so some people are very generous people, and they give and they give and they give and they do all kinds of things, all sorts of things. But the Bible says: if you do lots of things, but don't have love, what profit is it all? It's actually driven out of a motivation to feel good about yourself. What God is wanting is to change us on the inside, so we experience love, and love flows naturally.

When people are living in dead works, they tend to relate to people on the basis of: if you can help me get what I want to get, then you can be my friend. I see you're quite a wealthy person - you can help me get what I want - I'll be your friend. But you - well no not you. No, no. You come from Flaxmere - but this is the kind of thinking that goes on - you know that! That's called partiality, where we divide the world up - people that can help us get somewhere; and people that can't help us get anywhere - now that is full of dead works.

What God is looking for is to so change us, so that His love and His nature flows out, and it's natural to love people. That's why one of the first things He does - and you'll see this in the progression of these - is after we become connected to God and experience His love, He wants us to put us in a family, where we can be immersed in a family, and learn how to grow up in love, and learn how to represent Him properly - which is the remainder of the teachings in this.

So God wants us to then serve Him, but it's a serving that's a joy! That's not something that's a burden. It's something joyful - it flows out because you're in love with Him, and you get up and you talk with Him, and you begin to experience His love, and out of that there's an overflow in your life.

So we're called to turn from Dead Works, and turn instead and replace them with something called Faith towards God. We turn away from activities which are dependent on our own effort and energy, which tire you out, get you drained, frustrated; and we become like the older brother, resentful because we're not getting what we think we should get. A lot of people burn out. Burn outs are often because of a lot of dead works, wrong motivations; but if we repent of those, and now we come into Faith in the living God, our life will begin to flourish, and something flows out of it. It's called the life of the Holy Ghost.

Main Message

Now let's have a look in Hebrews 11. Let's see what faith is, a little bit about faith. Some of this for some of you will be elementary, but for others it might be quite an eye-opener. So faith, Chapter 11 verse 1:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, for by it the elders obtained good testimony. By faith we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen, were not made of things which are visible.”

So let me just outline a few simple things, so we can understand faith. I need to know: what is faith; how would I know if I had it? How do I get it; and can it be grown and developed? How could I grow and develop it? These are quite important things; so the first thing is: Faith is different to Hope.

Notice: Faith is the substance of something you hope for. Hope has to do with the future, so many people confuse faith and hope. Hope is about the future. Hope is something in my mind. It is thinking about, and optimistic and expectant of, something really good in the future; but faith is now. Faith is something I have now. It's a conviction and assurance I have - so I know now it's present. So hope has to do with the future; faith with now. Many people confuse faith and hope. They say: “I'm believing God for this”, but actually what they're doing is: they're hoping God will do something. Faith - you know it, it's a conviction.

So the second thing is: Faith established in the Heart; not the Head. With the heart man believes; so you can know lots of the Bible, and have no faith at all. You can know many scripture verses, and still have no faith, because it's all in the head. Faith is an issue of your heart - with the heart you believe.

Now let me tell you this - all of us believe some things. Every person here believes something. You believe something about yourself, many things. You believe things about God, you believe things about people, you believe things about life. You possibly haven't stopped to evaluate what you really do believe, but your core beliefs are what move you to live the life you live. Coming to church isn't what does it. It's actually what you believe in your heart - so if you believe in your heart, because you had painful experiences when you were younger, that I'm not of any value... Perhaps you grew up in a very strong, controlling family. Your opinion or feelings or desires were never consulted, and you have established in your heart an angry, hurt, firm belief: nothing I do is ever good enough; I'll never get anywhere; or no one really cares about me.

Now those are three distinct beliefs. If those beliefs don't shift, what will happen is, your life will run through those beliefs. It will filter how you run your life. It'll bring into your life: exactly what you believe is what you'll have. So faith has to be established in the heart. I must then reform my belief system to believe what God says is true. Most of the struggles you have as a younger believer is to shift your belief system, and become established in what God says is true about you. God says: you're accepted; but I don't feel accepted - then you've got a struggle in your heart with your belief system. God says: you're forgiven; but I don't feel forgiven - you've got a struggle in your heart with your belief system. God says: you're a child of His, and He's near you all the time; but I don't feel He's near me all the time - well then, you've got a struggle in your belief system.

So we live our life out of the beliefs we have in our heart, so faith is important to get established in our heart. Faith deals with the things which are not seen, so I don't see it, but nevertheless (says faith), the things which are not seen are very real. So for example, the love of God is very real - it's incredibly real; and when you experience the love of God, it just touches your heart. You often begin to weep. You feel God loving you, and you feel His presence; so it is real, but not seen. It comes from the realm of the spirit, into the natural realm, by faith; so everything you and I will receive from God must have faith in it. I must believe what God says about this, for it to manifest in my life. You may have grown up rejected, and believe that you're not acceptable to anyone. Well faith will shift that, and acceptance will be established in your heart; and then no matter what anyone does, you are secure. You're not dependent on what people and circumstance is doing any more. You are secure inside because faith - you have it now!

People say: how do you know you're accepted? I know! I know! I know! I know! How do you know your sins are forgiven? Oh, I know! I know! How could you possibly know? What's the evidence? The evidence is in here - I know it, because it's come into my life as I believe what God said; and it brings liberty. It brings tremendous liberty - so faith needs to be established in our heart.

So faith is also expressed through the words we speak. In Romans 4:17, God calls the things to be, not as though they are. So faith comes into our heart. Faith comes, we hold the word of God, because whatever you believe in your heart, you'll speak with your mouth; so when there's faith in our heart, we will confess what God says. We will speak what God says. God said to Abraham - changed his name from ‘Abram’ to ‘Abraham, Father of Nations’. So for years, Abraham was saying, when they asked him “who are you?” – “I am Father of Nations”. Excuse me, you don't have any kids? I am Father of Nations. I don't like to put this out, but you're wife is nearly 100 years old. I am Father of Nations - and you're not looking too good yourself. I am Father of Nations.

He chose to believe God, and he professed his faith. He did not stagger, though his body and her body were old, and the result of holding in faith was: a miracle took place; and guess who the Father of Nations is? Abraham - but there was a walk of faith to establish it. The Bible says: we walk not by sight, but we walk by faith. We don't walk by the things we see. We walk because we, by faith, can see what God has said is true - and we hold onto it. We've got to see the healing in prayer before you'll experience the healing. You have to see what God has planned for you, before you'll hear it, and see it in life.

So faith always reaches to what God says in the invisible realm, and causes it to manifest now. Sometimes there's a delay between my knowing I have it, and seeing it happen in life - so that's faith. So let's just talk about faith in relationship with God. Have a look in Verse 6. Now without faith, it's impossible to please Him – impossible! If something is that important, I should make it my life's study to know about Faith. Why should I? Because without it - I can't please Him.

Now just coming to church doesn't mean you're in a place of faith. It means you came to church. It could mean you're in a place of faith. It could mean, like me, you just come to church. When I was a Catholic, I used to come to church - it's what you did Sundays. It wasn't a matter of faith, it was a matter of fear - I'd go to hell if I didn't. I had to come to church. Even when Joy took me to her church, I'd still go to my church. I had this belief: I'll go to hell if I don't go to church! I'd go to church; but you understand there's no life in that. It's kind of: God, a whole hour, you know? You understand? I'm not going to meet God. It's just doing a religious activity - there's no faith in that. Faith comes when I'm here because I want to be - I want to be in the presence of God. I want the atmosphere of God! I want God to speak to me! I'm here because I want to be - the presence of God.

So notice, it says: without faith, it's impossible, impossible, to please Him - impossible. So notice it says: “he that comes to God must believe He exists, and also that He rewards those who diligently seek Him”. So 1) He exists; 2) He's a rewarder; and the key ingredient is my faith - that shows up by diligently persisting in seeking Him.

So He's a rewarder - God blesses us. Sometimes we look around and we say: how come they're blessed, and I'm not so blessed? Well maybe there's a reason. Maybe they diligently sought God, and changed their beliefs. So you notice then, faith is foundational to the relationship with God. Let me just put it to you this way: without faith or a trust in God, you can't walk with Him. You can't build any relationship without trust. You can't build a marriage without trust. You can't build a business relationship without trust - so without faith, without trust in God's character and words, I can't walk with Him at all.

If I'm going to argue with Him; and doubt what He says; and reason what He says; and continually take what He says, and put it through my mind, and filter; and I've got my own opinions about what works - if I'm going to walk like that, I can't walk with God. It's as simple as that. Walking with God means I develop a relationship of trusting Him, because I continually am experiencing being loved.

Now this is the stumbling point for so many people, they have unresolved issues of the heart, and they stop trusting, or won't trust God. When you won't trust God, this is what you've got to do: you have to take control of your own world and life, and be God yourself. So we're made to bond to God who is a Father, a loving Father and spirit being. We're created to bond to Him, to trust Him, to have a relationship with Him, and faith is what makes the connection, so by faith we enter relationship with God. By faith we maintain it.

Now let's just talk about entering relationship with God. How do you enter into a relationship with God? What is the key thing?

In Ephesians 2:8 , the entrance into relationship with God has got nothing to do with where you've come from, what education you have; its got nothing to do with your family background, got nothing to do with anything natural at all. It's actually like this - verse 4 –God, who is rich in his mercy, rich, rich in mercy... Most people, when they think of God, think He's angry and judging them - ooh oh, got a big stick, gonna catch you out! But the Bible says: He's rich, wealthy, abundant in mercy and - look at this! - and His great love - great, abundant, extravagant love! He absolutely loves you! So it says: “When we were dead in sin, He made us alive together in Christ; by grace you're saved, and raised us up together, made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ, in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness, kindness towards us.”

Notice these words: grace, mercy, kindness, love - that's what God is. So how do I enter relationship with God? Very simply: by grace. By grace are you saved through faith, and even that's not of your own - not of works, lest you boast. Now you know the verse, but the tendency is to forget what it really means. Grace is an empowerment by God that changes our lives. It's something we don't work for, or we don't earn. If you work for it, it isn't grace, it's your reward. If you didn't work for it, and it's a gift, then it's grace; and grace is the power of God to shift you on the inside.

You can't work for it, you can just receive it; so either you get given grace to change, or you're working hard to change - there can't be any in-between. I either get God's power to help me change, and so I do change, and it's real change, and its change on the inside; or I got none of that, I'm just working hard trying to be a good person, to overcome that temper. You'll notice when you do that, you're under law; so by grace you're saved through faith, not of works. So it's a gift.

Anything you do to try and earn your standing with God - so let me show you how it shows up subtly in many people. Well I had a bad day yesterday, didn't pray - I feel distant from God; or I prayed today, I'm real near to God! Now all of this about your nearness to God is dependent on your works. He doesn't change at all. It does not depend on your works - prayed two hours today and 15 minutes tomorrow, doesn't make any difference to your standing with God. Your standing with God, your identity, is given to you as a gift. When you receive Jesus Christ as your saviour here's what happens; you become a new person. He puts His spirit into you. You are now joined to Jesus Christ. You're joined to the spirit of God. You are joined to the spirit of God. He doesn't break that joining. You are joined now to the spirit of God, and so God's life, His own very life is engrafted into you. You're what's called “born again”. Now you are not what you used to be - you are a child, a son or daughter of God. Who am I? I'm a son of God! God is my Father!

You see, this is who you are now; but the trouble is, if it's not established strongly in your life, you'll live out of who you used to be - a reject, or fearful, or afraid, or ashamed, or embarrassed, or broke, or whatever. See, this is the new identity, so I don't have to work to get that, I am now, by the grace of God, a child of God. Now I've just got to learn how to live and walk with Him. So faith got me started, and faith is how I continue. It's all going to be grace, not trying hard. The harder you try, the more condemned you'll feel about your condition - that's the terrible thing about it. Have you noticed that? The harder you try, the more difficult it gets, and how you get bogged down and just want to quit and give up. Why? Because when you do that, you move away from grace and come under law.

If I am right with God, in any area of my life, by trying to work at it, then I've shifted and I've come under law. Paul said: don't frustrate the grace of God. Don't cause God's grace - which is freely and generously given, to help you grow and live your life - don't frustrate it and stop it, by then trying to perform to be good to get it.

Don't frustrate the grace of God, by struggling hard and working to be a better person. Learn to believe what God says is true about you.

This is what he said: “This is the work of God: that you believe”. The problem is learning to believe. Why? Because immediately, when you try and believe what God says, the strongholds in your mind and heart rise up and argue; they argue against, and they reason against, the life of God. The Christian life is much easier than you think - it's about grace. I can see when I said that, that some of you don't agree; and the reason you're not agreeing is because you're looking at your experience and saying: my experience is hard, and therefore, the Christian life can't be easy.

Jesus said: “My yoke is easy, my burden is light”. It's easy; it's light. If it's getting heavy, you've moved out of grace, you moved out of faith, you're trusting in yourself again. The moment it gets heavy, you're out of faith. You're struggling in your own efforts.

Jesus said: there's a Rest of Faith; so when faith is in your heart, you know what happens? There will be two ways you'll tell... One is you'll come to rest. You just actually become at rest inside. You're not struggling, striving, and uptight; you're at rest. You're quite confident and calm. There is a rest of faith. The second thing that happens is: the way you talk. You talk out of that place of rest, out of the position of rest. Our struggle is not to try and do things, or make God do anything. Our struggle is one of struggling to overcome unbelief, doubts, negative thinking; and just believe what God says is true, and come to rest in that, so there's no more struggling. When you're resting in what God says, you're in a place of faith. Faith - it's not your feelings. Your feelings will come into a bit.

So we walk with God by faith. Notice in this last scripture, we'll look at, Galatians 5. Now he's talking to the Galatians Church, which started off believing, and then got into trying doing.

“Stand fast in the liberty with Christ has made free, don't be entangled again in the yoke of bondage”.

In other words, don't go back under laws, regulations: you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you must do this, you've got to dress like that, you've got to have this hair cut, and I can't have that hair cut, you've got to behave like this, behave like that, you've got to go here, not there. All of that kind of stuff is a yoke of bondage. God wants us to grow like Him, and get to know Him, and to get to know His nature, where we can love people without having them to be monkeys and perform for us.

So notice what he says. He says here, for in Christ Jesus - Verse 4 – “you become estranged from Christ, if you attempt to make yourselves right with God by the law... (By doing things; if you try that way) ...you have fallen from grace.”

How many have had a situation like this, where you had someone that really hurt you, and you found it really difficult to forgive. So now you struggle trying to be nice to that person? Why are you struggling trying to be nice to that person, when actually you want to slap their face? Or worse even! Why are you struggling to be nice? Because behind it all, you're thinking something like this: I'm a Christian, I've got to be nice; and you know deep in your heart, is war and vengeance and murder! And when you're not trying to be nice, you're thinking of how you could pay them back, and what you'd really like to say. What is all of that about? That's not the Rest of Faith! You've come under the law: I need to be nice.

Why not stop coming under the law? When you come under the law, the thing that happens is, there's no power of God to help you; and it's real hard to love some of these people - it's really hard! Christian life is so hard, I've got to love people, but I don't like them; some I even hate them. Some have ripped me off. I know what I'll do: I'll just subtly avoid them; I'll just cut them out. It's all a manifestation of hate. The problem is in the heart. If you're not in the Rest of Faith; you just come under the law. You're struggling now, trying to be a good person.

Actually the reality is this: you already are a loving person. Why not just admit the war in your heart, and come and repent from that Dead Work of trying to love them; trying to manufacture the life of God? Instead just: repent of the dead works; surrender to the Lord, ask Him: Lord, help me to see this person like you see them; help me to love them. Let your love flow through me. As you begin to meditate on the love of God for yourself, and for people, and very soon you start to find it coming naturally rather than forced, add-on. When it's an add-on, it doesn't last. Somehow you'll definitely blow it. You've tried so hard to be nice - nine times you were nice! Oh, I'm nearly there, but the tenth you blew it; and all the nine just didn't count for anything, because the tenth you really blew it! So you're back now to do what you need to do: humble yourself, just repent and change.

Notice it says: “don't get in the yoke of bondage”. Learn to live a life out of the new identity: I am a loving person; I love people because that's who I am. It's not because: well they don't deserve it! Oh come on, you got back under the law again. Grace has got nothing to do with whether you deserve. Grace comes, not because you deserve it, but because it's free; because God is good. God loves you, so He wants you to love others. He can love people through you; so you notice there: faith works by love; so the life of faith is cultivated by spending time with God, beginning to experience His love, listening to hear His voice; because by hearing His voice, faith suddenly comes into your heart.

It's cultivated by meditating in the word of God, and allowing our mind and heart to be renewed. When faith is there, there's works flow out that are very real. You don't have to try to love people - I've got to go out and love the sinners! It's what we have to do - love the sinners.

Now you can see a person in the grip of bitterness in the law. If you have to do it, then it's not flowing naturally; you've got a love deficit in your heart. When you're full of love, it just flows out. Have you ever seen a drunk man, when they're full of booze, and they start to love - and they've got love for everyone, you know? I love the world - you know, something changed, they were overflowing.

When we get filled with the spirit of God, which is a spirit of love - it flows to touch the world. So foundation 1) to walk and repent of all of that legalistic striving, struggling, dead empty work. Repent of the motivations. Instead start to turn to the Lord, and allow His word to shift your heart, so you begin to discover who you really are; you're a loving person. Why? Because you're in the image of Christ. You're a forgiving person. Why? Because you're in the image of Christ. You're a generous person. Why? Because you're made in the image of Christ. You already have those things in you. They just need to flow - not try to make them happen. They're already there. That's who you are; and when we start to live a life like that, we become at rest inside. That's actually who I really am. I love being generous. I just love it. It's who I am.

Live out of the identity. I love being gracious. Why? Because it's who I am - it's what my Father is like - I'm like Him.

I love forgiving. Why? Because my Father's forgiven me, and I'm so grateful, I just love to forgive. I don't want people under the law.

The life of faith, it's a life where grace flows out and touches people. What a great life.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, what a loving Father You are. I feel overwhelmed by the wonderful love that You have. I thank you for that love.. The presence of God is here; and the presence of God is also where you are right now. God is a loving Father. He really does love you, and He wants you just to turn away from trying hard in life, and trying hard to be a good person, and to believe.

Believe that God loves you so much, that He sent His only son Jesus Christ who gave His life on the cross, so all the sin could be broken and it's power broken, every curse taken away; so you could be ushered in to the family of God, and become a child of God, just by believing in Jesus Christ.

Maybe some here today, and perhaps you are struggling in your life, struggling with all kinds of issues. What a great day to say I'm going to repent of those things, and begin to open my heart to my Father that loves me. I'd like you just to follow me in this prayer...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me, thank you for accepting me, thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord, I've struggled so hard to make my life work. I turn away from those struggles. I turn away from sin. I turn away from a life without you. Jesus, I receive you as my saviour today. Please forgive my sin, forgive all my struggles to try and look good. Lord, forgive me. I give you my life today. I receive forgiveness. I receive your spirit into my heart. I belong to you. Before heaven and earth today, I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. Amen.

Father, I just thank you for each person that prayed that prayer for the first time. Let the spirit and love of God just flow into their heart. God loves you so much - more than you realise. You have so much to discover about this God, who wants to make Himself known to you.

Perhaps today there's ones who are struggling. You've lived under legalism, under the law and you've wrestled with that. Today would be a great day for that yoke - Paul calls it a yoke - a yoke of duty; a yoke of having to; a yoke of lots of little things you have to do to be good enough, to be acceptable. God wants you free of all of that. I'd love you today, if you've been struggling under that kind of yoke; those that are present - I'd love you just to come forward. We want to lay hands on you, and want you just to let go of the struggling, repent of the trying and the efforts, and open your heart for God to reveal His love to you. As people lay hands on you, I know you're going to experience something of the love of God.

It's a terrible thing trying hard, trying hard to be good enough. I did that for many years growing up, lacking a revelation of love, I struggled feeling I was never good enough, struggled so hard to be good enough; did so many things in order to get acceptance. What I needed was a revelation of God's love. It comes by faith - after you stop and repent of your dead works.

If there's people struggling, and you're caught in the bondage of legalism, of works, heaviness, oppression. People here who are struggling with oppression over your lives, some are struggling with failure and the fear of failure; other ones struggling here with the fear you'll be rejected. Some of you have come - there's about three people come today, and you've had real troubles in your life with God, real troubles in your walk with God, and your biggest fear is whether you'll be accepted, because of the things you've done. God loves you. He wants to help you today.

You know, the problem with the law is you have to keep the whole lot of it. Jesus came to set us free of the law of obligations and duties; have to do this, have to do that. He wanted us to come into a relationship of love and grace; wonderful grace of God, that frees us up to be ourselves. How great to be yourself in Christ.

I came up with a religious background, a Catholic background. It took me quite a bit of time to realise I'd brought with it a lot of the baggage into my Christian life. I just needed to let it all go, needed to let go striving, struggling to be good enough, struggling to meet God's needs, struggling to get my sins forgiven, all of that kind of stuff; and just: God, I thank you I already have it. I am blessed with every blessing in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. I have forgiveness. I have redemption. I have acceptance. I have it now - that's what I have being a child of God, so now I'm going to meditate in it and dwell in it.

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

1. Introduction
Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection (maturity), not laying again the foundations …”

(a) Jesus came to reveal His Father – reveal what God is really like, a loving Father
Heb. 1:3 “… bring the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person”
Jn. 14:9 “… He who has seen me has seen the Father…”
Jn. 10:30 “I and my Father are one”.

(b) Jesus came to call us into relationship with the Father – sons and daughters
Jn 14:3 “I go to prepare a place for you – that where I am you may be also”.
Jn 1:18 “…the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him”.

(c) God calls each of us to be born again into His Family and then to grow up”
Rom 8:29 “… He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son …”
1 Jn. 2:12-13 Children (precious infants) - Young men – Fathers.
Spiritual fathers – one who represent God the Father and reproduce His Life.

(d) Growth to maturity is not automatic – requires foundation to be laid
The First Principles of Christ are foundational for growth. (Heb. 6:1-3)
Heb. 9:14 Blood of Jesus Christ … cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Dead Works = activities that have no life or love of God.
Works activated out of guilt, fear, duty, personal gain.
Called to Repent = totally turn from dead activities and selfish motivation.
Blood of Jesus Christ has power to cleanse the conscience so free.
“Serve Living God” = activities that flow from love and trusting obedience.
Jn. 6:29 – “This is the work of God that you believe on Him whom He has sent”.

2. Faith – What is It?
Heb 11:3 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for …”

(a) Faith is not the same as Hope
Hope is directed to the future – an attitude of expectancy concerning things to be.
Faith is established in the present – now!
It is a confidence, something real and definite within us here and now.
Substance = 5287 NT = to set in place under, confidence, assurance.
Evidence = 1650 NT = connection, proof, assurance.

(b) Faith is established in Heart not Head
Hope is anchored in the head. (1 Thes.5:8 .. helmet, hope of salvation)
Faith is established in the heart.
Rom 10:10 with the heart man believes unto righteousness.
Faith is not a mental acceptance of bible facts – produce no change.
Heart faith produces genuine change in the life of person who has it.
Believe is always associated with a change or motion – “into”.

(c) Faith deals with things “Not Seen”
Heb 11:1 “…evidence of things not seen”
Not seen = not exist = they are invisible to physical senses.
Faith deals with the real spiritual realities of God’s Word (2 Cor. 5:7).

(d) Faith produces a rest from struggle, uncertainty, doubt
Heb 11:3 “We who have believed do enter that rest …”
When faith is present in the heart – there is also a rest from struggle.
Often there is a conflict between what we see and what God’s Word says.
Faith produces a deep confidence that what God says is true in spiritual sense.
Rom 4:17 “… call the things that do not exist as though they did”.

(e) Faith expresses itself in confession – speaking in agreement with God.
Rom. 10:10 “with the heart man believes, with the mouth confession is made to salvation”.
Whatever the heart is full of overflows in our life.
Confession = Gk homologia = to say the same thing as.
When there is faith in our heart we speak out what God says (2 Cor. 4:13)
Heb 3:1 Christ is the high priest of our confession.
He represents us in heaven using the words we have spoken.

3. Faith and Relationship with God
Heb. 11:6 “without faith it is impossible to please God…”

(a) Faith is foundational to our relationship with God
Faith is basis for entering relationship and for continuing relationship.

(b) By Faith we enter into relationship with God
Eph. 2:8 “By grace have you been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works …”
Grace = the supernatural enabling power of God given to us.
Grace = Gift, nothing that we have done except believed.

(c) “By Faith” we continue in relationship with God
Faith in Jesus Christ positions us as Children of God – Our New Identity.
Eph 1:3-1 He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ”.
- We have a new nature, identity, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption.
- We already have these things we don’t have to work for them.
Gal. 5:1-6 Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
- We must not fall back into trying to please God by doing.
- Learn to receive the Love of Father – it energises our faith.

(d) Faith can be cultivated and grown
Faith is cultivated through intimacy and hearing God’s voice (Rom. 10:17)
Faith can be “little” or “great” or “dead”.
Faith is cultivated by meditating in Word of God.
Faith that is real has works that can be seen (Ja 2;17.

Baptised into Christ, Baptism in Water (3 of 7)  

Sun 6 Mar 2011 PM « Back to Top

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A foundation of believing that causes you to step up to the reality of who Jesus says you are. I am immersed into something that I was not in before. I am a totally new person, connected to God vitally, and connected to the body of Christ. Water Baptism is my testimony to the world that to the spiritual powers, that old person died, I'm joined to the living God, the power of sin is broken. I'm a free man, there's a new person risen up, born again.

Welcome to our next session in this series, a series of Foundational Principles. It's found in Hebrews 6, and this session today we're going to be looking at the Doctrine of Baptisms.

I encourage you to have a Bible, to read your Bible, to follow along the scriptures that we share, and open you heart to let the spirit of God touch you and change you right where you are. We will pray for you right at the end of this session, and we'll believe for the spirit of God to come into the room where you're watching, and to touch your life very, very powerfully.

Let's just open our Bible in Hebrews 6. The author is saying:

“Leaving the discussions of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from: dead works; of faith towards God; of the doctrine of baptisms; of the laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement -and this we will do if God permits.”

So the author is speaking first of all about the challenges - that if these Christian believers were very mature, they actually should be teaching the word of God. They should have enough in them now to be able to instruct others, to help others; and yet they remained immature. They remained spiritually like infants, and so he says: we want all of us - let us all go on to maturity.

In other words, God's goal for every one of us, as a believer, is to grow into maturity; but for that to happen he says there are two things need to happen:

1) You must have a foundation in your life. If the foundation is not laid, you cannot become all that God intended you to become. It is impossible.

2) You can't go on to maturity unless God permits; so God has a vital part in your growth and development, to fulfil your course and your destiny. If you wish to remain a child, well that's fine; but it's not what God has planned for you, and you're selling yourself short of all that God intends.

So you notice he says here: “laying a foundation”. The foundation of any building is unseen - it's under the building, supports the building; and we saw in Christchurch during the earthquake, if the foundations aren't secure, and the ground it stands on is not secure, then the whole building can collapse very, very easily. So there is a foundation to be built into your life. It is a spiritual foundation.

It is something real and substantial. When it's there, you can build your life. When it isn't there, your life just goes in what seems to be a cycle of the same kinds of things, and you never grow up, and never mature. That's not God's plan. God's plan is for us to grow and to represent Him, and to advance His kingdom everywhere that He positions us.

So we saw the first two of these foundations: #1 was Repentance from Dead Works - the turning away and abandoning of activities and things that we do, trying to somehow gain favour with God - dead works that have no life in them, that are full of duty and guilt-obligation, motivated by fear, and the wrong kinds of motivations. Any work and activity you're not motivated by love, and a response from God, becomes a dead work.

The second one was Faith - Trust in the Living God; and we shared some aspects: that without faith, it's impossible to please God. We must learn how to lean on Him, and to trust in Him, and it's not just something you start your journey with. It's something you continue walking in; and the biggest challenge in all of that, is the challenge to let go control, and to learn how to trust.

So then we come to the next one. You notice it says that the foundation here is: the Doctrine of Baptisms; so in other words, the teaching concerning baptisms is the thing that becomes the foundation in your life.

The word ‘doctrine’ just means literally ‘to teach’ or ‘to instruct’; but when we think of that, we think from a Western viewpoint. We think like this: I've got something to learn, and so I've read the book, I've got some information, that's it. But from a Hebrew point of view: doctrine was something you believed, and put into daily practice. There was no such thing, in the Hebrew culture, that doctrine and lifestyle were separated; that is a Greek concept. So when it says about the doctrine, it's talking about beliefs which you live out in your life. So the beliefs, the teaching, the insight concerning baptism, is something for you to live out daily in your life; and as you live it out, a foundation for building, a life with God, is established.

When most people read that, they overlook the word doctrine straight away; and they just think: baptism - oh I've been baptised. But when you look at their life, it's evident that they're not living with the foundation properly established. They've had an experience; but the foundation has not been properly put in their life - that's why they can't stand. So the foundation here is the teaching that surrounds baptisms - plural, more than one baptism.

So God wants us, if we're going to grow and mature and have insight, to understand: what is the teaching associated with baptism; and then embrace that insight, and begin to live that out.

Let's have a look at the word baptism first of all. Mark 4:20, and the word baptism of course is a word, when you read it, you think: baptism, oh, I don't know. I'm from the Anglicans or from the Catholics, well you take the child and you sprinkle on them - that's what baptism meant for me, when I was growing up. If you've been to Pentecostal Church, maybe you're like me, and you went down the river, and got baptised in a river, so that's what it means to you.

The word baptism is - this is what happened: King James, when he got it translated, didn't want to offend the local church of his day, so he said: don't do anything that'll upset them. So what they did was, they just translated the word Baptidso and made it Baptism - so they never really translated it. If you really want to understand what the word is, you've got to see how they used it; so in Mark 14:20 it tells us that Jesus said: “ one of the 12 who dips his finger in the water with me”. That word ‘to dip into the water’ is the word bapto, the word baptism, so “to dip into the water”. So bapto is the root from which baptism comes, It means you dip into something. It's never a sprinkling on - it's always an immersion into something.

In another scripture, Luke 16:24, the man in hell cries out: “Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and give it to me to drink, because I'm tormented”. So notice “dip the finger into water” - so it's an immersion. If a boat sank, it was bapto, it was baptised - it sank into the water. If you dye a garment, you bapto it - you put it into the dye, and it comes out changed.

So always the thinking and understanding, to a Hebrew reading, this is very, very simple: to baptise someone, is to immerse them completely into something. You are always baptised into something. So as we look at the word, and what these different baptisms are, I want you to think that you are placed into something – bapto. If you put your hand in the water, you're immersed and surrounded by water; the water has an effect on you - you get wet.

So when we're looking at the word ‘Baptisms’, and the teaching of Baptisms - the teaching of baptisms is about you being immersed into something you were not in before. It's about being placed into something; and it always concerns change. So when we look at these different baptisms, every one of them represents a change in your lifestyle, in some kind of way.

So what are the different baptisms? 1 Corinthians 12:13 says: “By one spirit, we are baptised into one body”. The Bible talks about us being baptised into Christ. That word Christ means ‘the anointed one’. It can represent: Jesus Christ, who was Jesus of Nazareth - the anointed one. It can represent the body of Christ, which is also called God's Christ, the body of Jesus Christ on this earth - His representation. So one of the baptisms is a baptism into Christ: into Him, Jesus Christ; and into His body.

The second baptism is referred to in Romans 6:3 - “as many of us were baptised into Jesus Christ, were baptised into His death”. So a second baptism is a baptism of water; so we are baptised by a person, and we're dipped into water. I was put into a river - it wasn't a river in flood, but it was a great river. I've tried to baptise people in rivers in flood - it's quite fun really, you've got to hold them real tight! So there's a baptism in water; and we sometimes have quite a separation in time between a person receiving Christ, and being baptised in water. We'll see in the Bible that was not so - they just baptised them as soon as they believe.

In some cultures, you can believe in Jesus Christ - to them, He's just another God; but the day you get baptised - you have sent a clear message to everyone: I'm a Christian. So in some cultures, the day you are baptised, is the day that it's clear to everyone: who you are, and where you stand. So water baptism, for some, in some cultures, means the difference between life and death. The day they get baptised, they're shut off from their family, shut off from their relatives, shut off from the culture - and now they are really living a different life. They've entered a new way of life.

So the third baptism in Luke 3:16 – “Jesus will baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” - so there's a baptism in the Holy Ghost.

So each of these baptisms is an entrance; it's an entrance into something that has changed. So the baptism in the Holy Ghost is an entrance for you, into the supernatural realm. Some people never go past that. They never go past the entrance, or the doorway; but the baptism in the Holy Spirit enables you to enter the realm of supernatural living - because of what the other two baptisms mean.

Finally, a Baptism in Fire – “He'll baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire”. So the baptism in fire, basically that represents a change taking place in your soul. As you go through difficult experiences of life, which the Lord allows you to go through, and it's like a fire begins to hit your life.

How many have been through a fiery experience recently, or the last year? The purpose of it was very simple - it was to bring change in your soul. It's to help you to see the need to let go control, and to learn how to surrender and yield to the Lord, and let His life flow through you.

So even though we put our hand up, and said: Jesus Christ is my Lord; we find as we walk with God, many areas are unsurrendered, and fiery experiences can being dramatic change internally in our life. From that, we begin to grow further and further into the purpose of God.

So there we have it, so we've got four baptisms mentioned there: the first one, the baptism into Christ, is a change in Identity - it’s a change in who you are. The second one is a change in your Positioning, in relationship to the spiritual powers - you are now out of the kingdom of darkness and in the kingdom of light. The third one is a change from being powerless to having Power; and the fourth one is a change in your Soul - so you can walk with the Holy Ghost, and live a life that's incredibly productive. Each one is a change.

Now I'm just going to go briefly through two of these baptisms: Baptism into Christ; and Baptism in Water. I want you just to allow the spirit of God, to just help open your understanding, to what the instruction concerning this baptism is; because as you get a hold of it, and embrace it, and live in it - it shifts you, you change.

One of the most common struggles that believers have is this: they keep thinking and remembering how they used to be, and live condemned, because old problems seem to be there. The devil seems to continue to condemn them. Let's just have a look at two or three scriptures related to this.

First John 20:21. We're going to look about what it means to be baptised into Christ - there are some distinct meanings, and distinct parts to it. Now this is talking about the operation or work of the Holy Spirit: where you are born again, and become changed in who you are. Jesus had received, and had the disciples there in front of Him, after He had died, and then He said: “As the Father sent Me, I send you”. So He's sending them into the world, He's sending them on a mission of advancing a kingdom; but they cannot advance the kingdom of God, unless they themselves have a foundational experience of being placed into the kingdom of God, of being placed into Christ, of being placed into His kingdom.

When He had said this to them, He breathed on them, and said: “Receive the Holy Ghost”. So at that moment in time, as Jesus breathed upon them, the spirit of God flowed from Him, came into them - and a change took place inside them. A change took place. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6: 7 – “when we receive Jesus Christ, we become joined to Christ”. That's a marriage term - you are in covenant, connection. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

So first thing that happens is: God puts His spirit into your spirit, and you are now one with God. You are one with Jesus Christ. You are one with the spirit of God. You are joined, the spirit of God is fused with your spirit - you are one. You have now had something dramatic take place inside you.

The old nature, which used to live in sin, now is declared to be dead. Now you're born, and you're a new person in God's eyes. You're a totally new creation, it says. So the first thing is, the spirit of God comes in. Second is, now the spirit of God is inside me, and I'm born again, now I am joined to the Lord. I cannot be ‘not joined to the Lord’; I am joined, and one spirit with Him.

The third thing that happens is: now I'm a new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, it tells us: “now you become a new creation. The old has passed away”. You say: I don't feel like the old has passed away. Nevertheless, it's a spirit reality. Your experience may be that you still wrestle with old things; but the teaching of baptism in relationship to this is: you have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness; you're in the kingdom of light - you are a new person.

It teaches very, very clearly, that the power of sin has been broken. You are placed into Christ; so when God looks at you now, He sees His Son in you. Before, He saw Adam in you, He saw the fallen man. Now He sees His Son in you. He sees you as a place, or as a part of body of people, called the body of Christ. Notice what it tells us in 1 Corinthians 12: 13. It says “By one spirit, we were all immersed into one body”.

Now there may be lots of different churches around with different names - it makes no difference. There's only one body of Christ. Those different names are historic names, representing different waves of reviving in God, but they often become divided. The body of Christ consists of: those people who are joined to Jesus Christ, and have embraced their identity in Him.

You are now a new creation! You are no longer a sinner! Do you sin? Yes, you do from time to time, but from God's eyes, from God's point of view - you are now in His Son. When He looks at you, He sees His anointed Son Jesus Christ. When He looks at you, He has placed and hidden in you, His Son. He sees the life of His Son in you. You are a totally new person.

Not only that, that same spirit that placed you and joined you to Jesus Christ, has now placed you into a body, where you have a new identity and a destiny. Before, your eternal destiny was one separated from God. Now, being baptised into Christ means: I'm a totally new person! Completely new! Old things have passed away.

Now I have to believe that, hold onto that, and then outwork that in my life. I don't have to make myself more spiritual. I do not have to make myself a better person. I already have changed. That old me has died. That old me has been crucified when I identified with Jesus Christ, so now there's a new creation; and not only that, you're not only born into the family of God - now you're part of a body of people.

This is an aspect of the truth that people struggle with: Christianity is not to be lived alone. You are part of a body, a body with many members. Notice what it says down in Verse 27. It says: “now you are the body of Christ”. You are the physical representation of Jesus Christ on the earth now. You are joined to Him, one spirit; and so therefore, when you and I walk the earth, Jesus Christ is walking the earth again; through individuals who are connected as part of one body, with Him as the head.

It's very important to understand that. If you don't listen to the commands of your head, your body is going all over the place, you've got major problems in your life. If your head does a lot of thinking, but there's no connection to the limbs and your body, then you're confined to a wheelchair. It's important that every one of us is joined at the head, getting instructions from the head; but God also connects us to a body - that's why the local church is important. The local church is just one part of the body of Christ. It's a place, usually has the unique DNA, unique flow of life, of God, according to the men of God that have been raised up in there; and so it has the capacity to prepare people in a certain way - so different local churches are quite different in many ways, yet we are all one body of Christ.

That's why we bless the other churches, and do not speak against them. It is wrong to speak against them. Why? Because in doing so, you're speaking against the body of Christ. We're one body. It is right and godly to bless the churches of our city, pray for the Pastors, pray for the success of churches. Why? Because from God's point of view, there's only one body of Christ.

So the first thing that happens then is: the spirit of God comes into us; and the first foundation of baptism is this: your old person's gone, you're a new person now. You're a totally new person, and you're part of a body which is found in every nation of the earth. You're part of a group of people called the Church of the Living God; the body of Jesus Christ, called to represent Him, and make a difference advancing His kingdom! You're called to do something! Know Him and do something, advance His kingdom! Fantastic!

So we're part of a body - embracing that truth enables you to understand this. If I embrace the truth: I'm baptised into Christ; He's in me, and I'm in Him; and I'm part of a body. Now I begin to think differently - I need other people. They have something that they can give to me, to help me grow as a believer; and I have something to give to them. I have a destiny that's worked out in a local church, but also in the community. You and I now are different people.

If you don't embrace that truth, you'll live like just nothing much has happened - you just come to church. Christianity's never been about coming to church; it's about being church. It's about being someone, connected vitally to God, who has an overflow of kingdom life to give to others. You need to see: I am a gift to this community! We are a gift to this community! We are a gateway into heaven, because we're joined to Christ! His life is able to flow through me!

You can understand why this is called: the Principles of Christ, the anointed body. Jesus Christ is in heaven; He also has a body anointed by Him, and representing Him in the earth; not just Pastors and leaders and ministers represent Him - you represent Him, because you're part of the body of Christ.

Now you start to take that truth into you, and think about: every day I go out, I'm joined to Almighty God, God is in me, I'm in Jesus Christ, He's in me, and I represent Him in the earth. Now that'll affect the way you live - it'll affect how you do stuff. You go into your business, and it doesn't matter what you're doing seven days of the week, you're still who you are. If you're one thing on Sunday, and something different on Monday - that's called a hypocrite; but you are what? You are a believer. You're born again! The spirit of God is in you! You now represent and carry the life the King inside you! Now that is a foundational part of baptism. I'm no longer who I used to be - I'm a new person now. I think differently, live differently, I have a destiny to outwork! It's found within a body.

So let's go to the second one then, Baptism of water. In Matthew 3:13-15 we see - even Jesus got baptised. John was baptising, and Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptised by him. John tried to stop Him. He recognised who Jesus was - Son of God. I need to be baptised by You, and You're coming to me? Jesus said - now notice this: “Permit it to be so, for it is fitting for us, to fulfil all righteousness.”

Now John's baptism was a baptism in repentance. He required that men repent of their sin, believe in God, and then He would baptise them. Always repenting of sin and believing in God comes before baptising them. When the Pharisees came to him, he couldn't baptise them. He said: your life doesn't show up that you have repented and believed. You're just turning up because you want to be a part of the crowd, and don't want to miss out on anything. Your motives aren't right.

So John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. It was only a partial thing, to prepare the way for Jesus Christ coming. Now Jesus committed no sin; He had no need to be water baptised. Nevertheless, He said: “It's right that I do this”. It is right that I do this. So notice this, that Jesus had committed no sin - He was baptised to establish a pattern, an example for us. He went down and submitted to the ministry of His day; submitted to the anointed man of God, who had the word of God in that hour - the prophetic anointed prophet of God.

In other words, He submitted to what God was saying in that hour. He went down into the water baptism, came up. Notice what it says, the experience He had: “Immediately the heavens were opened. He saw the spirit of God came on Him like a dove alighting on Him, then suddenly a voice from heaven came saying: this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.”

So He encountered God at His water baptism. He was also baptised in the Holy Ghost. Now you and I are called to be water baptised. There are two conditions to be water baptised. The first condition is very simply, repentance. Repentance, in Acts 2:37-38, Peter had preached. After he preached they said: what must we do to be saved? He said: repent and be baptised; in other words: turn away from a life that's not Christ-centred, a life that's not God-centred, a life that is self-centred; and turn to the living God. So the first thing is Repentance.

Then in the Book of Mark, in Mark 16:15-16, Jesus said: “Go preach the gospel, and he that believes and is baptised will be saved”. Now you notice: Repenting, Believing, and Baptism are all connected. It is important you are water baptised. If you were sprinkled as an infant, you were not water baptised, according to what the Bible says. You need to be baptised - after repentance and faith. There's no evidence anywhere in the Bible, that there wasn't repentance and faith - these were the conditions before baptism. It doesn't say how old a person is, but they must be old enough to be aware of sin, to have turned from sin, and have trusted Jesus Christ. Then they get water baptised.

So notice this, that water baptism itself is built on the foundation of: Repentance; Faith in Christ - the spirit of God's come in, you've been brought into Christ, into the body of Christ. Now the obvious thing to do is to bury, in a symbolic way, in a representative way, to make a statement outwardly, of the change that's taken place inwardly.

So when you get water baptised, it's not that you go down and we sing a few songs, you go down the water and come up and you get wet and maybe raise your hands. It's much, much more than that. There's a teaching connected with it; and it's the teaching of it, associated with the doing of it, that brings about the change.

It is possible for you to experience massive deliverance when you get water baptised. I've seen people get massively delivered. I've seen people go down in that water, come up and many, many aspects of their old life just disappeared in a moment. Why? Because they held onto the truth associated with water baptism.

Let's have a quick look at it in Romans 6, and then we'll just finish up. We'll read from Verse 1, and Paul is talking about sin reigning over people; and now the possibility of the power of God living in our life, and reigning in our life.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, so grace can abound? Certainly not! How shall we - notice what he said - who have died to sin”. Not will die, but have died to sin - that's what the Bible says. This is part of the teaching of baptism - water baptism. When you came to Christ, you identified with Him. What did you identify? He was our representative; He went to the cross representing us; He died as our representative; He was buried as our representative; He rose by faith in the power of God, and is alive, and full of resurrection life.

Here's what baptism is: Baptism - we identify with what He has done.

Notice what it says here: “Shall we, who have died to sin” - you've already died to sin. You're dead to sin. Before you were Christians, sin had power over you. You had no power over sin. You could discipline your life, you could try real hard, but sin always was there, waiting to conquer you. When a person comes to Christ, this is what it says: “we have died to sin”. “Don't you realise, as many of us were baptised into Christ, were baptised into His death”. We were immersed into His death - I'll explain this in a moment, and it says: “therefore we are buried with Him, through baptism into death; that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we would now walk or live with a different lifestyle.

So it's not just the water baptism - it's the lifestyle. It's the difference between: living a life where you live in sin and self-centredness, doing your own thing; and a life where the spirit of God is in you, and you're starting to live by the power of the Holy Ghost, and the life of God; the resurrection life shining through you, changing you, giving you victory, giving you power in your life.

In verse 5 it says: “knowing this, if we've been united with Him in the likeness of His death, so shall we be in His resurrection. Knowing this, our old man was crucified with Him...” - now that's not your father there. Your old man is your old nature – “...was crucified with Him - that the body of sin might be done away with; no longer slaves to sin, for he who has died is now free from sin. So if we died with Christ, we believe we shall live with Him”. Verse 11 - now reckon yourselves (now here's the key of baptism) – “reckon yourself: I'm dead to sin, it has no power”.

Now let me just give it to you in just a few simple things. The first thing is: our old nature that caused us continually to sin, had no help of reforming and changing. When Jesus Christ died, when you put your trust in Him, His death was your death. When you trust in Him, the spiritual reality is this: that the power of sin in your life has been broken. Not only when He died, you also legally died with Him. Now if you're legally dead, the devil's got nothing to accuse you with. You can't accuse a dead man of anything.

If a person's got a problem with alcohol and cigarettes and all that kind of stuff, and they continually can't get over it; but if they're dead, you can put a bottle in front of them, they're not going to touch it. Why won't they touch it? They're dead. There's nothing in there alive anymore that goes for those things, so what he's saying is this: that when Christ died on the cross, if you put your trust in Christ, then God considers a legal reality that you died then. You literally died. Your old nature, it's power's completely broken, and was taken to the cross and died with you.

The only thing you could do with a person who's dead is bury them, so you bury them underground. So not only were you crucified with Christ; when He was buried, we were buried with Him; and what happened then, the power of God raised Him up to live with resurrection life.

So these are the realities now, that you are free from the power of sin; so how do you get free from the power of sin? Well here's the thing most people try and do: they just try harder; and when you try hard, you're always condemned.

When I got water baptised, I was declaring to spirit powers: the old Mike Connell died. It's right and fitting today we bury him, and he's out of your sight legally. A new person has risen up, who is joined to Jesus Christ; the spirit of God is in him, he's part of a body of people, and the resurrection life of Christ is in him. He will live to advance the kingdom of God, and destroy the works of the devil! Sin - I'm dead to sin.

If you will take the position you're dead to sin, then the reality is: sin doesn't have its power any more over you. So the teaching of baptism is: sin’s power is broken, you are free - you're a free man. After the Second World War, the war was over, and it was declared that the Japanese had been defeated, but there were still many people in a prison camp. They were in a prison camp, because they didn't know the truth; and when they did find the truth, they were still too scared to actually do what they needed to do: just to stand up and take over the camp and walk out. Many people today live like a prisoner in a prisoner of war camp. Already the battle has been won at Calvary. Already God has established a spirit reality: that you are free from the powers of darkness, you are free from the power of sin; but if you don't wrap yourself in your heart, and embrace that foundational truth, you'll live like you're in a prisoner of war camp - still bound by old sins and old ways.

But if I get the truth - I'm free! I can arise in my spirit, and decree into the spirit powers: power of sin is broken, the life of God is in me; and the law of life, of the spirit in me, overcomes the law of sin and death! Are there struggles? Yes, but you don't win them by struggling trying to overcome sin. You get them by taking your position in the spirit: the work is done, I'm already free, its power is broken. I'll acknowledge that and hold to that!

Water baptism is your declaration to spirit powers, and to the world around you: my old life, living in sin, is over! I am a dead man! Dead men get buried. Now, when I rise up, there's a new person, a new creation full of the Holy Ghost, full of the life of God, ready to advance the kingdom of God; part of a body of people, called the body of Christ, called to advance the kingdom of God in every nation of the earth! What a great truth. What an exciting truth. What an exciting truth!

First two foundational things in the teaching of baptisms: 1) I'm a new person. I'm joined to the living God. 2) The power of sin is broken. I'm a free man, and if I'm free, do I need to be condemned? No! No condemnation to those who are in Christ! Walk after the spirit of life. Why? The old man died. Now he's condemned, not me. I've risen again. I'm part of the body of Christ. I'm joined to Jesus Christ. No condemnation to me, now I'm in Christ! Oh, there might be immaturity; there might be the occasional lapses, and falls, and difficulties, but there's no condemnation! Why? Because I've escaped that in Christ, I now have a new life in Him. What an amazing thing! Well, you do need to embrace those truths - you're a new person. Live like a new person. Think like a new person.

When you get up tomorrow: I'm a new creation in Christ! I'm born again! Spirit of God lives within me, that same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, is quickening my body today - giving me energy and life; quickening my mind, quickening my thoughts, quickening my spirit. I'm joined to the living God, and I'm part of a great body of people, spread throughout the world! It's going to take over the world! The Bible says in the Book of Revelation: “now the kingdoms of this world, have become the kingdoms of our Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ - and His Christ, His anointed body, walking under His kingdom”. What a great day we live in! No wonder I need to get water baptised! I need to make it right, smart, clear: I'm out of that old scheme, I'm a new person, I'm getting up new!

See, so water baptism's so powerful - being baptised, placed into Christ, into a body and a family; and buried, the old thing buried so I can step up into the new. I can't wait until next week - to get filled with the Holy Ghost! So next week you want to come along, get filled with the Holy Ghost? We'll pray and lead people through to get filled with the Holy Ghost. Why? It's only the entrance; it's a baptism into a new realm! It's a baptism into a new dimension! It's a baptism into a supernatural life of the kingdom; a life of miracles, where the kingdom of God is advanced through people who believe!

No wonder it says: “all in the body of Christ can prophesy, all of you can move in the gifts”. Why aren't you doing it? Well, probably you've forgotten the truth of baptism - about who you really are. Oh, well I'm just me, and I'm condemned. Listen - that's not who you are. You're an anointed person! You're a person called to carry the life of God! You need to know who you are in Jesus Christ! He says: “child of God”. He says: “born again”. He says: “an ambassador”. He says: “you are blessed with every blessing” - you've got to just start to agree with what He says. That's what this baptism thing's all about. It's about being immersed into the realities of the new creation, and staying there because you believe the truth.

So many people just get baptised, and their life doesn't change, because they didn't get a hold of the foundation in their life: I'm a different person, a new person; and that new person is a loving person, a generous person. If I read the Bible, I can find what the new person is like. The old one - well I used to be mean and selfish and fearful; but the new creation man is a quite different person - so that's who I am. That's me, I identify with that. Oh well that's the old things just trying to come back - but that's not who I am. This is who I am: loving, and I'm generous, full of God. You see who are you? You'll live out of who you believe you are; and if you still believe you're that poor wretch, lost in sin, and condemned and struggling and in bondage, you will live that way.

So the doctrine of baptisms is a foundation of believing, that causes you to step up to the reality of who Jesus says you are. Water Baptism demonstrates your Belief in that. Holy Ghost Baptism launches you into a reality of it, in terms of Power. Baptism is suffering the experiences, which we welcome and rejoice over, because they enable Christ to be seen more clearly. What a great foundation! If you don't have that foundation in your life, you'll just live out of the old.

Closing Prayer

Perhaps there's someone here who's never taken the first step to receive Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus said: “To as many as believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God”. This is a day for you to become a child of God. This is a day for you to open your life, to receive the spirit of God, and the moment you receive the spirit of God - as you turn away from sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ - trust that He died as your representative. He took all the punishment of sin, and has made a way for you to be changed. As you believe and embrace that in your heart, I'll tell you something - you are changed. You are changed. You're going to be a new person, different person. The old will have passed away, and straight away after that, you'll just want to get water baptised - find a bath and full it up, or go to a river if it's a clean one - whatever, but get baptised real quick.

Let me just lead you in a simple prayer. I wonder if we could just pray the prayer together:

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me, for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord Jesus, I turn away from sin today. I receive you as my saviour. I give you my life today. I ask you to forgive me, to make me clean inside. By faith I receive forgiveness now. I receive your spirit into my heart and I give you my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare: Jesus Christ is my saviour, and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.

If you’ve prayed that prayer for the first time: welcome to the family of God! God's spirit has just come upon you, and touched you. Next thing you'll want to do is get water baptised. Someone who's there as a believer can take you to get water baptised. Otherwise fill the bath up, and do it there - but get water baptised; make a declaration to the spirit powers of your identification with Jesus Christ, and that you are truly rising up to be a new person.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction
Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundations …”

The foundation of any building is unseen, but it determines the size and capacity of the building.
Our life and relationship with God must also have solid foundations for us to grow and mature.
In order to grow and ‘go on’ there are two conditions (i) Hope foundations (ii) Permission of God.
Heb. 6:1-3 Lists foundations essential to build our relationship and life with God.
(i) Repentance from dead works - turn away from activities that have not the
life or love of God.
(ii) Faith towards God - trust in the word and character of God, expressed in words and obedience.

2. Doctrine of Baptisms
The Doctrine of baptisms forms the next part of the foundation.
Doctrine = NT1322 = teaching or instruction (about the meaning of baptisms)
Western thinking “doctrine” is about knowledge or information.
Hebrew thinking “doctrine” is about teaching that is lived out experientially (Act 1:1)
Baptisms = NT909 = Baptismos Greek It is a Greek word written in English and not translated.
Mk 14:20 “…it is one of the 12 who dips with me in the dish” Dip = bapto = to immerse.
Lk 16:24 “..send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water …” Dip = bapto = to immerse.
Baptize = to dip or totally immerse one object into something.
Bapt = NT9:11 = to overwhelm, cover wholly with a fluid, to stain with a dye.
Baptism is the immersion of one thing into another so that it becomes changed.
Baptism is meant to impart to you a foundation of change.

3. Different Baptisms (4x)
Baptisms – is plural, there is more than one baptism – each one is to bring change.
(i) Baptism by Holy Spirit into Christ
1 Cor 12:13 “For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body…”
The Holy Spirit brings about a change in identity and destiny when we receive Jesus Christ.
We become joined to Jesus Christ and become part of a Body of people representing Him.
(ii) Baptism in Water
Rom. 6:3 “…as many of us were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his
death.”
Water Baptism is a declaration of our change in identity to spiritual powers. The old life of Adam no longer rules, we are no longer a sinner but have died to that old life and been replaced by a new person joined to Jesus Christ.
(iii) Baptism in Holy Ghost
Lk. 3:16 “…He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”
Baptism in the Holy Ghost is a change from being powerless to being powerful. It is an entrance experience into a realm of supernatural living and power.
(iv) Baptism in Fire
Lk. 3:16 “…He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”
Baptism in fire is an experience that changes our soul so we let go control and learn how to flow with the leading and directing of the Holy Spirit.

4. Baptized into Christ
To be baptized into Christ means to have a change in identity and destiny.
It means the following becomes a spiritual reality.
(i) The Spirit of Christ Himself is imparted into you. (Jn 20:21)
(ii) You become ‘joined’, one spirit with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 6:17)
(iii) You become a new creation, no longer a sinner but a child of God (2Cor.5:17)
(iv) You are placed by the Spirit of God into a Body of People (1Cor 12:13-18,27)
· Instead of living your life independent, alone, your own way, you are connected to Jesus Christ and placed in a Body of People with a destiny to fulfil.
· God has made you in a unique way so He can live His life through you and extend His Kingdom through you in a unique way.
· Embracing and living out these truths lays a foundation for growth.
· Embracing this truth you become connected to a local church or expression of Body of Christ.

5. Baptism in Water

(1) The example of Jesus
Mt. 3:13-15 “Jesus came from Galilee to John and the Jordan to be baptised by him”
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance into remission of sins (Mk.1:4)
John made 2x requirements (i) Repentance (ii) Confession of sins (Mk1:3-5)
Jesus had committed no sins. He was baptized to “fulfil all righteousness” i.e. He established an example and pattern for all believers to follow.

(2) The Conditions for Water Baptism
There are two conditions to be met before people are baptized in water.
(i) Repent Act. 2:37-38 Repent and let everyone of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ.
(ii) Believe Mk 16:15-16 He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.
Water Baptism is built upon the foundation of repenting and believing.
Water Baptism is the public response to an inner change (Act. 8:12/35-39)

(3) The Spiritual Significance of Water Baptism
Baptism is the immersion of one thing into another so that it is changed.
Baptism is meant to result in change – not just something you do – go into water.
Baptism is meant to impart to you a foundation of change:
(i) The old corrupt sinful nature has been crucified and is dead (Rom. 6:6)
(ii) You have died with Christ when He died on the Cross (Rom. 6:6)
(iii) You are freed from the power of sin (Rom. 6:7)
(iv) Sin has no more dominion over your life (old you is dead) (Rom. 6:11,14)
(v) The resurrection power of the Holy Spirit is within you giving you spiritual life (Rom. 8:10)
(vi) You are stating and declaring by water baptism that reality to spiritual powers.
· Old Life under power of sin is dead and buried (Col.2:12)
· New resurrection life of power and victory has begun.
· Embracing and living these truths lays a foundation for growth.
· Embracing these truths – you refuse condemnation and embrace grace and life of God.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit (4 of 7)  

Sun 20 Mar 2011 PM « Back to Top

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Immersion into the person, and power and presence of the Holy Spirit, so it lives around you, and is on you, and flows freely from within you. The entrance into a supernatural living.

Introduction

Foundational Principles, Hebrews 6:1. These are the principles that you can build a great life walking with God. This is the fourth in the series, we're doing the teaching on baptisms.

"Now leaving the discussion of the elementary principles or doctrines of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundation of: Repentance from Dead Works; and Faith Towards God; of the Doctrine of Baptisms; of Laying on of Hands; of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgement. And this we will do if God permits".

God wants us to go forward, to grow; not to remain static, but to grow. To grow forward requires two things: 1) that you have spiritual foundations strongly established in your life. The foundations of a building are unseen, but the whole building depends on the strength of the foundations. It would be unwise to build something on weak or incomplete foundations. 2) it requires that God permits us to go on.

So God requires: 1) that we embrace, and open our life, to the foundations being set in place; 2) that we walk with him.

So we've been sharing with you some of these teachings. The one we're on now is: Doctrine of Baptisms. The word doctrine means: 'the teaching' or 'instruction'. There are some experiences we can have, and there's a teaching related to them. The teaching and the experience form the foundation.

Main Message

In the Western culture people tend to think of teaching just as information; we don't relate it to life. From a biblical point of view, teaching and life went together. In other words: what you knew was what you were living out. So you notice it talks about the doctrine, or teaching, of baptisms (plural); there are more than one baptism referred to in the Bible, last week we saw a reference to four of them.

You are Baptised into Christ; so when we receive Jesus Christ as our saviour, the Holy Spirit comes into our life. We are born again. We become joined, and become one, or we become ‘in’ Jesus Christ. Not only that, we are put by that same spirit into a body of people. We become part of a church, a body of people called the body of Christ, God's family universal. We outwork our conviction of that belief, by committing to a local church, and being involved in it.

The next baptism we saw was a Baptism in Water. The teaching or the instruction behind that is that, when we came to Christ, we identified with Him, and received Him as our representative; then our old life, literally its power of sin, was broken.

The Bible says very clearly, the power of sin was broken when we came to Christ. You don't need to live in sin any more - and so our old nature died, and we have become in Jesus Christ a totally new person.So if someone dies, the natural thing to do is to bury them; so baptism in water is literally a public acknowledgement of an inward reality: my old life, living for myself, living independently has finished - it's out of sight. That old nature, that old life, lived under the power of sin, living as everyone else lived, has now ended; a new life has begun.

Water baptism is your testimony to the world, and to the spiritual powers, that old person died. There's a new person risen up, born again! He's a child of the living God! It's a great change - but that's not all! Now God wants to immerse us into a different life, and so we come to the Baptism in the Holy Ghost...

Baptism in the Holy Ghost - the word ‘baptise’ is to ‘dip into’ or ‘immerse you into something’; so baptism in the Holy Ghost is immersion into the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The presence and power of the spirit of God lives around you, and is on you, and flows freely from within you. It is literally the entrance into a supernatural living.

You can understand then, that the whole process: Baptised into Christ, and Water Baptism, deals with our old life. Now Baptism in the Holy Ghost, and the Baptism in Fire, refers to the whole new realm of the way you're going to live. So being baptised in the Holy Ghost is just, literally going through the door, into the first of a whole realm of supernatural life.

The original man that God created, Adam and Eve, were connected to God, and lived in the supernatural dimension. They carried the power of God. They carried the creative life of God. When they fell and were disconnected from God, sin ruled over their lives; so when we come to Christ, the power of sin is broken - we're water baptised, declaring now: I've got a new life. It's in Christ. I'm joined to Him. I'm one with Him, I'm part of a body in the world, and now I'm going to immerse into a whole new dimension - oh! An interesting life, and journey, that's supernatural! That's why the church not living in the supernatural is totally short of what Jesus created us for. So let's just have a look at a few scriptures...

The first thing, we're going to have a look at the Baptism in the Holy Ghost. Luke 3:16 – “John the Baptist answered, saying to everyone there: I'm baptising you in water, but One who is mightier than I is coming (that's Jesus Christ) his sandal strap I'm not worthy to loose. He will baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with Fire.”

Isn't that fantastic! He will baptise you with the Holy Ghost and Fire. In other words, He will put you into a dimension where the spirit of God clothes you, and you are immersed in the life and flow and power of God. That's what he's talking about here. You say: oh, that's not like my experience. Well, we need to bring our experience up to what the word of God says; not bring the word of God down to what we experience.

So it's an immersion into the person, and power, and presence, of the Holy Spirit. Suppose you went into a river, and the river's sort of flowing over, and you stand under a waterfall. As you stand under that waterfall, you are immersed in the water. That's kind of what it's talking about - immersed in something that's coming down from you, and touching every part of you. You are immersed in the waterfall.

So the baptism in the Holy Ghost then, is where your soul, your personality, your life, becomes immersed in a dimension of God – supernaturally; and of course we can live in that, or you can go back to living like you used to live. We have to choose what we're going to live like, so it's an entrance.

Luke 3:21 – “When all the people were baptised, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptised.” So Jesus got water baptised, and following water baptism, as He rose up out of the baptism waters, He immediately was baptised in the spirit. So from a biblical point of view (Jesus being the model), Holy Spirit baptism would normally follow directly after Water Baptism; as you rise, you bury the old life, bury the old nature, declare your old life is over. Now as you come up out of the waters, it's reasonable to expect you'd be filled with the Holy Spirit, so look what happened...

It says: “while He prayed, heaven was opened; the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said: You are My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased."

Jesus is the pattern for us. Note that after His water baptism, He reached out and prayed - He prayed - that's how He entered into this experience, being baptised in the spirit. Notice the things that happened:

1) Heaven was opened. The supernatural realm of the spirit became open. He had free access to intimacy with God, the Father.

2) The spirit of God came on Him, and remained on Him.

3) He started to hear the voice of God. Notice what the voice of God said - He hasn't even begun His ministry, done no great action - and the voice of God says: “This is My beloved Son. I'm pleased in Him.”

So He had the Father confirming His identity. He has moved from being a child, unrecognised, and now He is standing clothed in the spirit of God, ready to engage the world in His ministry. Straight after that - Luke 4:1 - we find Him being led by the Holy Spirit. So that's the example of Jesus.

Now Jesus made a promise. As we look in the life of ministry of Jesus, you have to notice that everywhere He went, there was supernatural manifestation and demonstrations. If you follow Jesus' ministry, you will notice these characteristics:

Firstly, He continually seemed to have access to the Father. He continually seemed to hear from the Father, so much so, that He said: “what I see Him showing me, that's what I do”. What I see Him doing, I do it too. What I hear Him saying, that's how I judge things. So He continually flowed in a flow of the presence of God, speaking to Him.

Second thing you notice is: the supernatural around His life. The two went hand in hand. When you look at the ministry of Jesus relationship with God: access into the realm of heaven; and the flow of the spirit, characterised His life and ministry.

Now what did Jesus promise? I want us to look at a couple of scriptures. First of all look in John 20:21. Jesus has finished His course on the earth. He died for our sins, after three days rose from the dead. Now He's appeared to His disciples, and He's about to commission them, and so this is what He says, in Verse 21 – “As the Father sent Me, I'm sending you. And when He said this, He breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit."

At that point it was like He was replicating what God did with Adam. God breathed into Adam, and Adam became a living soul. Jesus breathed into them, the spirit of God entered into them. They were now born again. They were now children of the living God. Of course some point after that they must have got baptised in water.

So what happened then? They were joined to God. They were now born again, but their experience wasn't complete. Jesus had a mission for them to accomplish. He had a purpose for them to accomplish on this earth, and in order to accomplish His mission, they needed access to the supernatural. Why? Why did they need access to the supernatural?

It's very simple. We live in a Western culture here, but the majority of the world doesn't have a Western world-view. It has a spirit world-view, and in cultures where you go to in the world, some of the things that are evident in every culture I've gone to, is the evidence of witchcraft, of cultism, and strong manifestations of spiritual power originating from evil spirits. Jesus was sending them into such cultures, to change the culture. To change the culture, they needed to have power to overcome evil spirits, and power to heal the sick. They needed power to go with their message. The kingdom of heaven is not just hot air and talk; it's also in power. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2 – “I didn't come preaching in fancy words, but in demonstration of the spirit and power of God”; so it was essential before they went to witness, that they had power in their life.

Now this is not a different power that they got, that we get. It's the same power; the same promise. So if we have a look in a couple of scriptures, say look in Luke 24:49. He says: “behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you; wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high”. So now He says that there's something more for you to get. There is a promise for you: it is to be endued; or literally that word ‘endued’ means: ‘to sink into some clothing’; so I am endued with this red shirt and black trousers. In other words, I'm clothed with them - so what He's saying is: you will be clothed with power. That word is supernatural power. God wants you to be clothed with power, wants you to have power available in your life. No power => something's missing.

Many Christians seem to live without any power - and are not disturbed by that - but Jesus said: “wait until you receive the power.” That's what you need to be able to do the work - so He said: “wait until you are clothed with power.” Power will come upon you.

The same thing is repeated in Acts 1:4. He's assembled with them, and He says: “Wait for the promise of the Father, which I've told you about; for John baptised you in water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.” Verse 8 – “You shall receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you.

So notice He's talking, not about an experience, where the spirit of God enters us. Now He's talking about being baptised, or dipped and immersed, into a dimension where the Holy Spirit operates. He uses different words for it. One word He uses is to be ‘clothed with power’; another one, He says, is for the Holy Ghost to come upon you. Another word He uses is ‘Baptised in the Holy Spirit’. So the Bible uses several words to try and get us to understand what it means. I'll pray for a few people shortly, and try to demonstrate what He is meaning by this...

He used ‘baptised’. So what is the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Notice He says: “You'll be baptised in the spirit; the spirit of God will come upon you”. In some other places it says: “the spirit will be poured out on you”. Another place it says: “the Holy Ghost fell on them”, so clearly it's talking about an experience, where the spirit of God comes upon us, and something changes in us.

Now I believe there are two parts, or two aspects of it. The first is the invisible presence and power of the Holy Spirit comes on you, and begins to clothe you. It begins to saturate your life. You become different when the Holy Ghost comes on you - absolutely certain, you're quite different when the Holy Ghost comes on you. Notice it's a sensation where He comes on you; but not only that, what happens is He fills you; and the life that's in your spirit is able to flow through your soul, because your soul now begins to be free, because it's soaked, saturated in the Holy Ghost.

What is it free to do? It's free to express the life of the spirit that's within us. It's free to move in gifts of the spirit. You're free to receive spontaneous impressions, promptings, pictures, images, things from the Holy Spirit. So we experience the spirit of God baptising us: firstly as something coming on us; and then something arising from being saturated in Him, and beginning to flow through us, and express in the world.

So being baptised in the Holy Spirit - you are immersed into a dimension of the spirit of God moving and operating.

Now Brydon and Sharon, won't you just come up and stand over here for a moment. Just come up on the stage, it'll be a lot easier for the camera to see. So the Holy Spirit comes on us, and then His presence arises within, and flows through us.

I want you just to lift your hands up to the Lord. So Sharon, what now we're going to do is, we're just going to pray that the Holy Spirit will clothe you, that the power of God will just come flowing, and just [WHOOO!] touch you life, just like that. It's like something comes out of heaven. It's like heaven opens [whooo] and there's just like a flow of God just begins to come. A person starts to get touched by God.

Right now, he is clothed with the spirit. When you clothe with the spirit, sometimes you feel Him, sometimes you can't stand; so you notice it's like something invisible came over him. It's like something that was heavy, so heavy he couldn't stand. It was like something you couldn't see just came on him.

What's happened now is: the spirit of God is resting on them. We tend to think in terms of concrete things, but the Holy Spirit is able to move and flow; so what's happened now - the spirit of God has come on them. “Spirit of God has come on them” - so Holy Ghost is on them. Now when we get baptised in the Holy Spirit, not only does the power of God come on us, and clothe us; actually it activates, and we become filled inside as well.

When I talk about being clothed, you tend to think of a physical body and physical clothing. When God talks about clothing, He's talking about your whole inner man being saturated, soul and spirit. When your inner man is saturated, soul and spirit, something is going to rise up from within you; and the first expression, as we'll see in a moment is, normally people speak in tongues. Sometimes they just fall over; sometimes they look like they're just drunk, and can't stand up - but always there's a flow from within.

So notice the Bible talks about “the Holy Spirit was poured out on them”? So it's like a pouring out, something from heaven just comes down like that over the person - God's spirit coming on them.

Not only does the spirit of God come on them, the spirit of God fills every part; so our soul now can flow with the Holy Spirit, if we will let it; and now we can actually activate gifts of the spirit; and we can flow, so the spirit of God flows through us.

Now one of the first expressions of the Holy Spirit flowing within us, that happened in the New Testament is - they began to speak in tongues. When the spirit of God came on them (in Acts 2, Acts 8, Acts 10, Acts 19); when the Holy Ghost came on them, they began to do something. Because they were filled, they began to speak in a language they'd never learned - and it's the Holy Spirit that gave them the words. [Speaks in tongues]

Now you see they began to speak in a language of the spirit. There's an entrance into a new dimension. They're so filled, they're starting to talk.

Acts 10:44 – “Spirit came on them, as on us at the beginning, they began to speak in tongues.”

Acts 2 – “spirit came on them, they began to speak in tongues.”

Acts 19:6 – “Paul laid hands on them, they were filled with the spirit, began to speak in tongues.”

Something from within them began to flow out - something from within. So we get charged with the Holy Spirit. So if I just begin to now allow myself to become filled with the Holy Ghost – “Thank you Lord” - I begin to thank God and just - because the Bible tells us: continue to be filled. Don't keep drinking wine, be filled with the Holy Ghost. How do you get filled with the Holy Ghost? Thanking God, praising God, speaking in tongues, wandering, just beginning to just enter His presence, [Speaks in tongues]

Now I'm starting to come alive with the Holy Ghost! So I'm sure, if I'm alive with the Holy Ghost, if I was just to touch her, power of God would just go [bop] like that, straight down into her. So something happens. You get full of the Holy Ghost. [Speaks in tongues] I'm filling up with the Holy Ghost! [Speaks in tongues] and the spirit of God; and when you're praying in tongues, the spirit of God is giving you the language, your spirit is praying, and now you're starting to energise!

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14 – “when you speak in tongues, your spirit is now talking!” Most people didn't even know they got a spirit, let alone how to talk. They're too busy blabbing away, they don't stop. Let your spirit talk, see?

So when you pray in tongues, 1 Corinthians 14:14 – “my spirit is praying”. In 1 Corinthians 14 it says: “when you're praying in tongues, you're speaking to God!” You're speaking in a language He understands. Why? The Holy Ghost is giving you the language.

1 Corinthians 14:2 – “When you're speaking in tongues, you are speaking mysteries.” You're beginning to speak out God's will, God's purposes, a powerful gift. [Speaks in tongues]

1 Corinthians 14:4 – “When you speak in tongues, you are building up yourself. Some people think they don't need to build themselves up. That's why they remain weak. The Bible says: “it's given to build you up” - so why wouldn't you want the gift? It'll build you up - and that word build up means ‘to build a house’, or to ‘structure’ or ‘construct’ something.

What is being constructed, when you pray in tongues? Your spirit becomes mightily energised with the life of God! You begin to build your inward man. That's why many people are weak - they don't build their inner man - spend too much time eating. Build the inner man, you see, and when you begin to pray in tongues, now the power of God starts to fill your body, energise your body. It energises your soul.

You know what's going to happen next? If you pray in tongues, it's like you become so filled with the spirit of God that you begin to start to sense in your soul the thoughts of God. You begin to flow in the Gifts of the Spirit, and your whole body becomes alive and energised.

Something is alive in me, causing that to happen. All I've done is to make visible what the Bible says the Holy Ghost does inside a person. He energises you, fills you with supernatural life! If you want to live a life that's trying hard, that's good, good for you; I'd rather have a life that's got a power boost. It's much easier.

Notice that as you activate that life, very commonly in the New Testament, Joy is associated with the life of the spirit flowing in you. So it's quite common, when you begin to pray for people, that they begin to start to get the joy of the Lord. “Holy Ghost, just come, fill her now Lord, just let that joy just come around her life.” See - joy begins to come on people. Isn't that right? Joy in the Holy Ghost will be flowing over her life! Joy in the Holy Ghost. If you're watching or reading this right now - this life of the Holy Ghost is going right to you!

The Bible says: “Be filled, not with wine, but be filled with the Holy Ghost.” You can feel, as we begin to express His life, how the life begins to flow. The life of the spirit is a flow from your inner man. Look at that - the presence of God - she can't stand up. It looks like she's been drinking. She hasn't been drinking, it's just she's under the influence of the presence of God. How did that happen? I began to stir my spirit and speak in tongues! What a great gift we've got.

Now to Mihi and all those who are watching, if you would just lift your hands right now, God is about to touch you, just where you are. Just watch this: “Holy Ghost, come into Mihi. Come into the room behind her. Touch people right now with joy in Jesus' name!” There it is - she can barely stand - the power of God.

How do you get filled with the Holy Ghost? Of course you want to be filled with the Spirit of God. Why would you live life with only half the experience? Water baptised; but never dipped into the realm of the spirit. Now some people think: well, I got baptised in the spirit - I've done it, tick that one off. No, no, no, no! It's a doorway into a flow of life and power, you've got to stay there.

How do you stay there? By constantly being filled by the spirit; being led by the Holy Ghost.

Why does God fill you up like that? Why - He wants to energise your power, bring power into your life. He'll want to bring your prayer life to a whole new level, to fire you up in the Holy Ghost! How wonderful.

So when you're Baptised in the Spirit, it's your entry into a whole new realm where you can experience spiritual realities. You can learn to flow with the Holy Spirit. You can minister the life of the spirit. You also engage spiritual conflict. You become aware of the demonic realm.

Why do you become aware of it? Because very simply - you're called to conquer it. That's why the power is given. Funny, in the West, they won't even talk about it – strangest thing. Now you and I know it's very real, isn't it? Some of you, right now if you're watching, you'll be a little agitated, because the presence of God here will stir up the presence of any foreign spirits; but right now we can just share with you very simply how you can get filled with the Holy Ghost. It’s great to get people filled with the Holy Spirit, and praying in tongues, and activated.

How do you feel? Good; Wobbly. It's a good feeling though isn't it? What happened to you? It felt like sprinkles of something were coming on you, and you feel fresh inside I guess. Can you stand again? Well not too sure - no. No, we're beyond standing now. Okay, we're going to have an altar call in a moment, get people to come up and get filled with the Holy Ghost.

So the realm of the spirit, what a wonderful realm it is - this is where you and I are called to live. You say: it's hard. No, it isn't hard. Living without the Fire of the Holy Ghost is hard - it is really hard. Living without His vitality, and having to face the burdens of life is very hard; but oh, to be able to get up and praise God, and speak in tongues, enter His presence, and experience Him, and hear Him speaking to you - oh, your life becomes so energised!

How does a person get filled with the Holy Ghost? Well, you need to have given your life to Jesus, first of all. You've got to become a Christian first of all; but then the Bible says in Mark 11:24 – “When you stand praying, whatever things you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” Notice here's what is needed:

1) Desire. I must want to be filled with the spirit. I must desire God to clothe me and fill me.

2) Ask. I need to ask Him. I need to just come and ask Him in faith, believing that He wants to do this. Jesus said: “this promise is for you”. Peter said: “It's for you, and your children, and everyone who's afar off.”

3) Believe

4) Receive.

5) Then you do have to step out, and yield to the Holy Ghost, and let His voice express through you. You speak, and the Holy Ghost gives you the language, and a whole new dimension starts.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just do that right now? If you're reading this, you could follow me in this prayer; and God, the same God that's here, is there where you are too. He will respond to your prayer.

So I'm going to lead everyone in a prayer. I'd like you all to follow me in the prayer. We're going to reach out, believing, and asking for the Holy Ghost to fill us. You say: well, I've already been filled with the spirit. Good - ask again!

Then we receive: take a deep breath in; and then we stretch out and begin to yield, and let the spirit of God flow through us - begin to speak in tongues. Let's really speak in tongues. I believe there's going to be great joy start to come into the house, come into you wherever you are.

Lord, I'm asking you right now, that as people pray this prayer, that joy will come into that meeting. Let's lift our hands right now, lift your hands up to God, who is there for you. Thank you Lord. I want you to follow me in this prayer...

“Jesus, I confess You as my saviour and Lord. I believe You died on the cross for my sins, and You rose again from the dead. I declare You are my saviour, and I belong to You. Now Lord Jesus, I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I want to be baptised in the Holy Ghost. I want to be clothed with power. I'm asking You now, according to Your word, to fill me with Your spirit, to give me the gift of tongues so by faith now I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues, and I praise You with my new language.”

Come on, let's praise Him now. [Speaks in tongues] Holy Spirit come, begin to touch people, begin to fall on people, touch people's lives right now. Let the joy of the Lord, Holy Ghost come. Fire, let the fire of God come on people right now. We release joy. We release liberty. We release freedom right now in Jesus' name.

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

1. Introduction
Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation …”
In order to ‘grow’ or ‘go on’ there are two conditions:
(i) Foundations Laid (ii) Permission of God
Heb 6:1-3 lists foundations that are essential to build our relationship and life with God.
Doctrine = NT1322 = teaching or instruction about the meaning of baptisms.
Note: Western thinking (Greek) - Doctrine is about knowledge or information.
Hebrew thinking - Doctrine is teaching that is lived out experientially.

Baptisms
(i) Baptism into Christ You are joined to Jesus Christ and to the body
of His people (1 Cor. 12-13).
(ii) Baptism in Water Your old life is dead, a new life has begun.
(iii) Baptism in Holy Ghost You enter the supernatural realm of the Holy
Spirit.
(iv) Baptism in Fire Your soul life is purified by fiery experiences
that test your faith.

2. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit

(a) The Promise of Baptism in the Holy Spirit
Lk 5:16 “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”.
Baptise = NT907 = to immerse in, to dip into, with = en = in, into.
Baptise in the Holy Spirit = the whole soul or personality is immersed, surrounded and enveloped in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
= the entrance into the supernatural realm of the spirit.

(b) The Example of Jesus
Lk 3:21-22 “..Jesus also was (water) baptised and while He prayed the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove …”
Following Jesus water baptism He was immediately baptised in the Holy Spirit.
Note what happened:
(i) Heaven opened – access into the supernatural realm of the Father God
(ii) Holy Spirit descended – He was dipped, immersed into the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
(iii) A voice came from heaven – He was affirmed in His relationship and Sonship.
(iv) He was led by the Spirit (Lk4:1)

(c) The Promise of Jesus
Jn 20:21-22 “…and when He had said this He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit”.
- Jesus imparted the person and life of the Holy Spirit into His disciples.
- They became born again, joined to the Spirit of God indwelling them.
(1 Cor. 6:17).
- This was not the baptism in the Holy Spirit.


The Promise of Jesus
(i) Lk 24:49 “Behold, I send the promise of the Father upon you, but tarry in the city
of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high”.
“Clothed” = NT1746 = Enduo = to sink into a garment, to cover with a
clothing, to put on a garment.
“Power” = NT1411 = Dunamis = supernatural ability.

(ii) Acts 1:4-8 “… wait for the promise of the Father … for John truly baptised with water
but you shall be baptised in the Holy Spirit not many days from now”.
“Baptised” = NT907 = to immerse in, to dip into.
Vs8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon and you shall be witness to me…”
The Holy Spirit will come upon and envelop or cloth you with His Presence and Power.

3. What is the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?

(a) The Bible describes this experience several ways:
Acts 1:5 “You shall be baptised in the Holy Spirit..”
Acts 1:8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon…”
Acts 2:33 “..He poured out this which you now see and hear …”
Acts 10:44 “..The Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the Word.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience where:
(i) The invisible presence, and power of the Holy Spirit comes upon a person
and surrounds, envelops and clothes them.
(ii) The invisible presence and power of the Holy Spirit arises from within your
spirit surrounding and sensitising the soul to spontaneous impressions of
the Holy Spirit.

(b) The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the entrance to a supernatural realm of life
New realm of awareness (Acts 2:17-18)
New realm of functioning (1 Cor. 12)
New realm of power (Acts 1:8)
New realm of revelation (1 Cor. 2:9-10)
New realm of guidance (Lk 4:1, Rom. 8:14)
New realm of prayer (Rom 8:26)
New realm of conflict (Lk 4:1,14)
Holy Spirit rests upon and immerses the person!

(c) We need constant daily filling with the Holy Spirit
Eph. 5:18-19 “Be not drunk with wine … but be filled with the Spirit”.
Be filled = continuous, ongoing, something that happens as a result of yielding.
Acts 4:31 “When they had prayed … they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…”

4. Speaking in Tongues

(a) They speak in Tongues!
Acts 2:1-4 “… they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues…”
Acts 10:44-46 “…for they heard them speak with other tongues and magnify God.
Acts 19:6 “…The Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

(b) What is Speaking in Tongues?
It is an overflow from your heart of the Holy Spirit speaking through a yielded soul and voice.
Some Key Features:
- Your spirit is praying (1Cor.14:14)
- The Holy Spirit is giving the language (Acts 2:4)
- It is a real language with meaning (1 Cor. 14)
- You are speaking to God (1 Cor. 14:2)
- It builds, energises, enlarges your spirit (1 Cor. 14:4)
Edify = NT3618 = Oikodameo = to build a house, to construct.
Where is the house built? Within You! Your spirit is enlarged and becomes charged with life.
- It gives voice to God’s will and purpose (1 Cor.14:2)
- It enable your soul to become energised with spontaneous communication of the Holy Spirit.

5. How to be Baptised in the Holy Spirit
Mk 11:24
(i) Desire
(ii) Ask
(iii) Believe – exercise faith
(iv) Receive gratefully
(v) Yield your soul and voice to allow Holy Spirit to speak through you.
N.B.: You speak! He gives the Words!

Laying on of Hands (5 of 7)  

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In the laying on of hands, in the spirit, there is a flow from one person to another. God has called you not just to experience Him, but to connect to people tangibly, and release what He has given you.

Review

We're carrying on our series on Hebrews 6, the First Principles; and we've talked about: Repentance from Dead Works; Faith towards God; and the Doctrine of Baptisms - baptised into Christ, and into His body; baptised into water; baptised in the Holy Ghost.

Today we want to speak on the Laying on of Hands. I encourage you, if you have a Bible, to follow it through; then at the end of this service, we want you to be touched by the presence of God, so let's read from Hebrews 6:1.

"Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundations of: repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine or teaching of baptisms; of the laying on of hands; of the resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement. And this we will do if God will permit."

And so we see it's talking here about foundations - spiritual foundations. The Bible likens your life to a house - a house needs foundations. The first spiritual foundation to be laid is your relationship with Jesus Christ. So the first of these foundations are: repentance from dead works, empty activities, and trying to gain favour with God; instead coming to a place of faith and trust in the living God. The first part of the foundation takes us out of a life of sin, and puts us into being joined to God, and brings us into a body called the body of Christ.

Then, as a consequence of that, we begin to understand what ‘baptisms’ is. The doctrine of baptisms is the teaching. Baptism is to be ‘immersed’ or ‘dipped’; so because we are now immersed in Christ, our old life has gone away, from God's point of view; and so we are water baptised.

Water baptism - we're buried. The old life is buried out of sight. We arise to walk in a new life with God. Water baptism is about saying goodbye to an old self-centred life, a life which is all about me and what can I get out of life; to a life lived to bring honour to God.

So following the water baptism is: Baptism in the Holy Spirit - the immersion into a new realm of the supernatural. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is usually accompanied by the gift of Speaking in Tongues - a language we've never learned, a language of the spirit; and we are ushered into a dimension of the spirit.

It's your choice whether you stay there, live there, walk there and grow in the supernatural dimensions on your life; but never, never stop short, or at the beginning. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is just the beginning of that life in the spirit.

Main Message

Now we're going to look at the doctrine of Laying on of Hands, and it’s very simple. It's just what it says - it's actually you lay hands on someone. One person lays hands on another person; and as a consequence of that there is a spiritual connection between them. It's not just some empty ceremony - in the Laying on of Hands: as we lay hands on a person, there is a connection of one person to another.

One of the most important things that we need in our life is human touch. God is a personal God. He's not sort of someone remote and far off, and so touch is very vital to human life.

One of the ways that God has ordained that things are transmitted into our life, is through connecting and touching; and particular ways we can touch, lay hands on people is one of them. Notice when Jesus healed people, sometimes He touched them first - many times He laid hands on them; so we'll look at what the laying on of hands is for, but let me get you to understand what is really at the core of it...

The core of Laying on of hands is very simply this: when one person lays hands on another, it is because they have something to give to the other person. There is a connection takes place, between one person and the other; and if he believes and exercises faith... Sometimes we like to think that God will just do it out of the air, or out of the spirit world, that we can just get everything we need just directly from Him - and it's true - God does supply directly to us; but God also works through a body of people, and God uses people, who are filled with His spirit, to carry His life to others.

So the laying on of hands acknowledges that: not only does God want to touch me; He wants to touch me through another person - that God gives something to a person that I can receive.

If you'll just lift your hands to the Lord just right now, and if you will just close your eyes and open your heart expecting to receive. I'll lay hands on you, and then something of what God has given to me, will flow into your life. There's nothing dramatic or mystical about this. It's just that in the Laying on of Hands, in the spirit, there is a flow from one person to another - there is a real tangible impartation. Something flows, from one person, to the other person.

Now I can only give away what I've received. You and I are called to carry the spirit of God. That's why God put His spirit in you - so you could be joined to Him, and walk with Him. That's why you got baptised in the Holy Ghost - so you could enter a dimension where the power of God is in your life. Part of carrying the power of God, is that you share what God has given you. So in the laying on of hands, which can be just as simple as just a touch; or it can be as intentional as me going “Holy Ghost come on him”; or it can be just simply that I just touch. The power of God flows - there's a tangible flow of power; so through the laying on of hands, I make a physical connection with him; and what is in my spirit, connected to God, flows from heaven, and he receives.

Now this is not for ‘special’ people. This is for all who have been connected to Christ, and ushered into the realm of the spirit supernaturally, by being baptised in the spirit. This is something every believer is called to do, because the Bible says “signs shall follow all who believe”. “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”. You have to understand that God has called you, not just to experience Him, but to connect to people tangibly, and release what He has given you. You and I need to be filled with the spirit every day, carrying the life of God to give to someone else.

Demonstration: Now I want you to consciously lay hands on him. Now I want you to become very conscious the spirit of God is inside you. Just meditate for a few moments: “God is in me. Almighty God is in me. Great joy is in me”.

I want you to intentionally step forward, and just put both your hands on his head - as you do that, expect there will be an impartation from you to him. Are you ready? There you are. You have something to give from God.

That's true of every believer - you have something to give. You have something to give - if you hunger for spiritual experiences, hunger that you might build up people; and then take what God gives you, and give it to someone else. God wants you to have something to give to others; so at the end of the service, pray for someone next to you, and lay hands on them. We all have something to give. Tell someone next to you: you have something to give. Now there is an atmosphere of expectation, and I want you at the end of this service to pray for someone, believing for God to release His power through you. Why not do that?

So people receive an impartation. What are the purposes of the Laying on of Hands? We need to have a look in the Bible; and we'll find that there are five distinct purposes for the Laying on of Hands.

1. Blessing - the first purpose of laying on of hands is for blessing. Blessings in the Bible were prophetic; prophetic impartations to people's life. Genesis 48:13 – “Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand towards Israel's left hand, Manasseh with his left hand towards Israel's right hand, brought near him. And Israel stretched his right hand, laid it on Ephraim's head, who was the younger. Then he blessed Joseph.” Verse 20 –“He blessed them that day, saying: "By you Israel will bless. May God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh!" He set Ephraim before Manasseh.

So you notice here that there is a blessing imparted. It is a prophetic word spoken, and it becomes reality in the person's life through the laying on of hands - it becomes real by the laying on of hands. So in the Old Testament, blessings are not just: “well, God bless you” - it was far more than that. It was God bless you with this; bless you with long health, good health, long life, favour. It was always prophetic of that person's destiny; and so words of blessing imparted life, and when the father laid hands on his son, there was a blessing imparted to them.

In the New Testament, women brought their children to Jesus, and they wanted Jesus to lay hands on their children, because they knew if He lay hands on them, there would be something of the life of God imparted into them. How wonderful to grow in a family where fathers speak words of blessing into their children, who lay hands on them, even while they're in the womb, prophesy over them, and speak into them blessing and health and life. Your words carry power. The laying on of hands is one way that power is released into the life of another; so the first purpose is one of blessing.

There are a number of examples of people being blessed, in Numbers 27:18-20 – “then Moses laid hands on Joshua”. There was a need for leadership transition. There was a need for a leadership shift. God had spoken, and identified; and in this what happens is: God speaks; Moses lays hands on Joshua; and God takes something of what is on Moses' life, and puts it on Joshua. Joshua arises to a new level of authority; so with the laying on of hands, there can be an Impartation of Authority into your life.

Something happens inside you. You need to believe, for it to happen. You need to have faith, for it to happen; and when God has commanded it to happen through the laying of hands, your whole inner life can come up to a new level of authority in what you can do, in how you can operate, in the way God will work through you. This is why the laying on of hands is such a wonderful thing to have happen - particularly when we have anointed men and women of God do that.

The second area of Laying on of Hands is: Impartation of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Let's look in Acts 9. It's also in Acts 8 - so go into the Book of Acts; and the Holy Spirit, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, was often imparted through the Laying on of Hands.

Acts 8:17 – “The apostles laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit”. They knew they'd received the Holy Spirit - they began to speak in tongues.

Acts 9:17 – “Ananias who's just an ordinary believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ, went his way. He entered into the house where Paul was staying, and he laid hands on him; and said: Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road as you came has sent me, that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost”. Notice in verse 17 – “he laid hands on him”.

So two things happen - the first thing is that God has spoken to him, to go to find Saul. Now you've got to understand, that's a scary thing to do. Saul has just been murdering all the Christians; and God speaks to an ordinary believer, and said: this man, in spite of what you've heard, in spite of what you've seen, in spite of the stories, in spite of their bad reputation, I see something in him that others can't see.

He said: I want you to go to his house, find where he is; and then lay hands on him, and speak over him. Often we can only see people through the eyes of their history. We know them in a community for what they are, and what they've been like, but we need to see as God sees.

He sees your destiny. He sees within this murderer, a man who could change a generation. He sees within people who others say are failures, He sees someone who could make a generational difference - and how did it happen?

He listened to the voice of God; he came and laid hands on him. As he laid hands and spoke, the Holy Ghost came on him. Paul was filled with the spirit, and also he was healed. So the Laying on of Hands is used for imparting the Holy Ghost. There is transference; an activation of something can happen, when there is faith for this to happen.

Here's a third use of Laying on of Hands – Romans 1:11. Paul has spoken, and he said: “I really long to come to you, that I might impart to you some spiritual gift”. So impartation of spiritual gifts can happen through the laying on of hands.

Look at these verses very clearly - 1 Timothy 4:14. Paul is writing to Timothy; notice what he says: “Do not neglect the gift that is in you”. So Timothy has a gift, and it's in him. It's a charisma. It's a supernatural operation of God (doesn't tell us what it is).

He says: “don't neglect it”. It was given to you by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the elder-ship. So notice how he received the gift....

1) He's got a gift. 2) The gift is in him. 3) It was given to him; and it was given to him by a prophetic word spoken, accompanied with the laying on of hands, and something entered his life. He was gifted; and could do things he'd not done before.

Notice what it says in 2 Timothy 1:6. It says: “Here I remind you stir up the gift of God which is in you, through the laying on of my hands. Now notice how it came - by impartation.

So Timothy was clearly known to Paul. He was known to the elders. That meant he was connected into a local church. This is not something that sort of happened by a wayside. He was a part of a community of believers; and there came a time when they laid hands on him, to impart to him, and activate him in the call of God in his life.

This was a young man, and he became a Bishop over thousands and thousands and thousands of people. How did it happen? He had a wonderful gift operating in his life. How did he receive the gift? Someone spoke prophetically the mind of God; and when they laid hands on him, it was imparted into him. Notice Paul says: “It was imparted by the laying on of my hands, accompanied with the words of prophecy”.

Later on Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:18, he says: “now war a good warfare, according to the prophecies that came over you” - so with the impartation of the spiritual gift came an area of conflict. You see, when hands were laid on him, it's because God had a mission for him. To get the mission done, he needed to have spiritual activation, he needed spiritual empowerment.

So when Paul laid hands on him and the gift was imparted to him, he was responsible to keep the gift alive, to keep the gift operating - that was his job; and Paul has to write and say: Timothy, come on, don't be scared. Don't be fearful, don't be intimidated by all those people. Come on, stir up that gift inside you, that gift got dormant. You left that gift that once operated in you, you've let it fall down inside you. Come on, activate it again!

So the laying on of hands will impart the gift, but it's your responsibility to keep whatever God's given you alive, burning and on fire!

How did he lose it? It became dormant. It was never gone. It just became dormant. I wonder how many are sitting here today - and once you moved, and someone laid hands on you, there was an impartation. Someone imparted, and you were activated in a gift; but it is dormant - it's not operating.

What happened? The devil has come to steal away something God put in you, to make you a blessing, to fulfil your destiny. It's your responsibility to keep it alive! What happened? Did you get hurt? Did you get a setback? Did you go through a fiery trial? Did you go through a disappointment? What did you go through - or was it just people intimidated you?

Paul says to Timothy: come on, stir up, activate - get that gift fired up in you again! He said: remember the prophecies that I spoke over you. Begin to use them like a weapon of war! Speak what God says about you, not what people are speaking about you. It doesn't matter what people are speaking about you; it's what God is speaking about you that really counts! You need to be agreeing with what God speaks about you; and if He's prophesied over you through someone, then get that word, use it as a weapon of war - and speak! Declare it into the atmosphere with faith; and I tell you something: heaven will respond to your faith, and there'll be a flow of life through you! Activating the Gifts of the Spirit – fantastic!

So here's another one that it's used for (or two): Deliverance and Healing. So have a look in Luke 13:10 - there's a woman who has a spirit of infirmity. She's sick. She has a serious back problem. Jesus in a synagogue, there's a woman with an evil spirit. For 18 years she was bent over, could not lift herself up. When Jesus saw her, He called her to Himself and said - now notice this. He spoke, and then He laid hands on her. Woman - you are loosed from your infirmity.

He spoke to the woman, and then He laid hands on her; and when He laid hands on her, the words He had spoken immediately was activated. Many times the words of God, once they're spoken, require us to do something. Jesus laid hands on her. He wasn't afraid of the demon, not afraid of any evil spirit in people. He just laid hands on her; and the moment He laid hands on her, there was transference of power - the demon came out, she stood up, and she was healed.

So Deliverance can be done. The Laying on of Hands is a part of the ministry of Deliverance; it's not all of it. Deliverance ministry requires the verbal command - the speaking to demons directly; or speaking and commanding the situation to change. But with it, we also lay hands on people.

So the next area is Mark 16:15 - the Great Commission. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes, and is baptised, will be saved. He that does not believe, shall be condemned.” Now notice this: “These signs will follow those who believe”. Follow those who believe. Do you believe that you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, can be used by God supernaturally?

It says: these signs will follow those who believe. In other words, as you begin to share the gospel, as you make Christ known to people, as you engage with those who are lost and unsaved and in desperate need - you can expect God to do something. “These signs follow those who believe: In My name, they'll cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they'll take up serpents; if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they will recover”. They will recover!

So “Healing the sick” is associated with the gospel. The gospel is not just words, it's about God moving to endorse His words; and so the Bible calls you to lay hands on the sick people. How many know some sick people? We're called to lay hands on them in faith, believing that they will recover. That word ‘recover’ means ‘become well again’.

Sometimes people recover; it takes time, a gradual process. Sometimes it's immediate; but you know we're called to do our part, which is: pray and lay hands on people. Lay hands on them, and believe for God to flow through and touch them. When you lay hands on people, sometimes they feel the power. Sometimes you feel the power. It can be like warmth, it can be like electricity. Sometimes you feel nothing. Don't look for what you feel - just do what God says to do - lay hands, expecting God to do something.

Faith is always necessary for people to be healed. Without faith, people are not healed. I've noticed an interesting thing. I was in a church in Taiwan, and there was a man there in a wheelchair, and we prayed for him and helped him out of the wheelchair, and he began to walk. He began to walk so quickly, he didn't want me to hold his hand. He just began to walk up and down, and he was incredibly excited about walking; but what I noticed was, people who were with him were almost in a panic.

Notice what they're seeing: they're seeing him walk, for the first time unaided in years; and you know what's the uppermost thing in their minds? Get him back in the wheelchair - he'll hurt himself! In other words, their natural mind had not caught up with what God had done. Their natural mind was saying: oh, oh! It just actually wasn't registering he was healed. The natural mind was saying: he can't be out of a wheelchair - he needs a wheelchair! In other words, they were frozen in time in their thinking, and in their mentality; and God had moved, and they hadn't caught up with the miracle.

I said: no, fold up the wheelchair - because this is what I've learnt, that if you put him back in it, they probably won't get out of it again. I've learnt that when you pray for someone - this is some of the things I've discovered, in praying for people to be healed.

The first thing is, many people wait until they feel something; and if they don't feel anything, they don't think anything's happened. The second thing that many people do is this: they have felt something, and found a little freedom; but they focus on what God hasn't done yet - they focus on their sickness. I ask them this question: did you feel God touch you? Yes, I did. Has the pain gone a little? Are you freer in that limb? Can you move a little more? Yes, I can. Well, then don't focus on what hasn't happened - start praising God, and thanking God for what's happened - and the miracle will continue to go right through your body, until it is complete!

Sometimes miracles are progressive. When you see when blind eyes are opened - it's usually instantaneous. Well, I've had that come in stages too – I prayed for one person, they could see a little. Prayed again, see a little better. By the time I prayed the fourth time, they could see clearly – I just kept praying and believing. So an important thing in this area of faith healing, or healing by faith, is that people keep their faith active.

You keep your faith active - thank you God you've touched me, thank you you're healing is worked through my body right now. By your stripes I am healed - in other words maintaining a position of faith, in spite of some of the symptoms that may still be there. Does that mean that we don't go to doctors? Not at all, doctors have their place. The Bible tells us to: “go first to the Lord”.

James 5:14 it tells us this: “If any be sick...” - this is what it says. It's quite interesting, the revised version of the Bible says: “if any be sick, reach into the medical cabinet and get something to fix you up”. The revised, revised version says: “if any be sick, call the doctor immediately”. It doesn't say that!

The Bible says this: “If anyone be sick, let him call for the elders of the church, and they'll come and anoint him with oil and pray over him, and the prayer of faith will heal him”. Presumably that means Laying on of Hands as well.

So many people make the prayer of leaders in the church the last place... I'm going to you now, to pray, because I've been everywhere else, and nothing else works - now I have to come. Not a lot of faith in that. God says: no, believe Him for health. Believe Him to keep you in health. Believe for healing, when healing is needed. Do we need the doctors? Yes, the doctors are helpful; but just make your first place prayer. Turn to the Lord first, and say: God, touch this sickness, touch this thing.

We had one situation with one of our daughters. She had an eczema condition for years and years and years, and we tried all kinds of things. We prayed for her, and prayed for her; took her to doctors, gave her things; and more recently it's got worse and worse and worse. Nothing we did - even praying - seemed to make any difference. When she was here last, Janice prayed for her actually, and she felt the touch of God.

We just gave her a book, and she went away, and she began to look at the issues of her heart; and look: perhaps there are some blocks to healing taking place. She began to look at some generational things that may have been in her life. She began to look at some areas of attitude in her life; and then she just prayed some prayers to put her heart right before God. She woke up the next morning, and almost all of the eczema had gone. God did something no one else could do, no medicine, nothing else could do it. God could do it! So don't be discouraged if, the first time you pray, nothing happens.

Finally, the last is the area of Commissioning Believers. In Acts 13:1-4, they commissioned people into acts of service by the laying on of hands. So the Holy Ghost spoke to Saul, and spoke to Barnabas - spoke to them, put it in their heart that they had a call of God; and then God spoke to church leaders and said: now's the time of that call - so they laid hands on them after prayer and fasting, and sent them out. God worked through them mightily and powerfully.

Throughout the Bible, the Laying on of Hands was used to set people into roles. In Acts 6, they set deacons into roles. They prayed, and the spirit of wisdom and power came on them, and many of them worked in the supernatural, and did miracles.

The laying on of hands enables you to give what you have to someone else. Don't minimise what God has given you, and don't hold back from reaching out to someone to pray for them; because just making that connection, and believing God can release something into their life - that changes them forever.

Closing Prayer

If you're reading this, or listening to the Audio - you know something could happen to you, in just a moment of time. I'm going to pray a very simple prayer. This is a prayer to open your life to the power of God, to the person of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for your sins. As I pray this prayer, I'd like you to follow this prayer with me. I'd like you to speak this prayer aloud, and as you do this, in this few moments, in the room that you're sitting in, I'll tell you what will happen.

God will hear your prayer, no matter what country in the world you're in. His presence will come into your life. Your sins will be forgiven. You will be joined to the Lord. Let's just pray the prayer together shall we?

Congregation: “Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me. I thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord Jesus, I believe you died for my sins, and you rose again from the dead. Today I ask you to forgive me. I receive you as my saviour. I give you my life today. I receive your spirit into my heart and before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. Amen. “

Now those of you who're online, God's presence has come into that very room right now. If you have a sickness in your body, or if you have a need in your life right now, I want you to believe for the power of God to flow straight to you, and to touch you right where you are. I'm going to pray for you right now. I want you to believe in a few moments the power of God will come into that room where you're sitting right now.

Pastor: “Father, I thank you for each and every person that is watching right now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I rebuke every spirit of infirmity. I command you to go from their life now in Jesus' name. I command sicknesses to go in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I release the power of God into that room right now, into each person that is listening or reading. Father, touch them with your mighty power. Now there it is - God's presence in that room with you right now. Check out and move your limb, check out your sickness, and give thanks to God for what He's done for you.”

Church, while we're sitting here right now, before we finish, I want you to do this - we’re going to do two things. We're going to stand up on our feet; and we're all going to pray in tongues. Then I'd like you to turn to someone, and I want you to ask: can I pray for you? Then lay hands on them, and release the blessing of God.

Let's do it right now, let's just pray - 15 seconds praying in tongues, speaking in the heavenly language. [Speaks in tongues] Thank you Lord, you are filling us afresh with your power. Thank you you're filling us afresh with your anointing and your life. We have something to give to those around us, in Jesus Mighty, Mighty, Mighty name. Thank you Lord.

Won't you turn to someone near to you, and offer: you can pray for them, pray and release blessing over their life, healing into their body, if they need it. Let's just minister to one another. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord, for your wonderful presence; thank you Lord for touching people today; thank you Lord, Holy Ghost, come and fall upon people right now. Touch people right now; minister to people right now, wherever they are - let your presence fall. Let the power of God flow through them. Find someone you can pray for, believe for God to touch them with power.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:
Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation ….”
The foundation of any building is important, is unseen, but it determines the capacity and stability.
Growth to maturity is not automatic – it requires that the foundations be laid in our lives.
- Repentance and faith – establish our new identity as a believer in Christ – Children of God.
- We are baptised by the Holy Spirit into Christ and into His Body or family.
- We acknowledge we identify with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection by act of Water Baptism.
- We enter a new realm of supernatural living by being baptised in the Spirit.

Laying on of Hands:
Definition: one person places their hands upon another person (usually the head) with a definite spiritual purpose – usually accompanied by prayer/prophetic words.
In the laying on of hands there is a spiritual connection and transference of spirit life and power from one person to another – you cannot give what you do not have.
The person receiving the spiritual impartation exercises faith that God will impart to them through the activity of another person e.g. Mk. 5:27-30 woman; Lk 6:19 Multitude.

2. Purpose of Laying on of Hands

i) Impartation of Blessing
Gen. 48:13-15 “Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon Ephraim’s head … and he blessed Joseph …”
Blessings were Prophetic words spoken over a person that became imparted through the laying on of hands.
The blessing was not able to be revoked once it had been imparted. Gen.27:34.
Blessings with laying on of hands acknowledged someone was chosen by God for a purpose.
Other Examples:
Num. 27:18-20 Moses lays hands on Joshua and imparts authority and wisdom.
Mk. 10:13-16 Jesus lays hands on children and blesses them – spoke into them.

ii) Impartation of Baptism of Holy Spirit
Acts 8:17 “Then they laid hands upon them and they received the Holy Spirit”.
Acts 9:17-18 “Ananaias lays hands upon Paul and speaks over him prophetically. Paul receives baptism in Holy Spirit and is healed”.
N.B. Ananaias held no office – he was a disciple of Christ who listened to the Holy Spirit.


Mk. 16:17 “These signs will follow those who believe...they shall lay hands on sick …”
- Laying on of hands is not just a ceremony – it produces a real spiritual effect.
- There is a real spiritual contact between two people and transference takes place.
- This is a ministry for all believers – we carry the life and power of God.
- God works through people making vital faith connection with other people.

iii) Impartation of Spiritual Gifts
· 1 Tim. 4:14 “Do not neglect the gift of God which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the eldership.
· 2 Tim. 1:6 “Stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
- Timothy had some spiritual gift – supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit.
- That gift was given to Timothy by impartation.
- Timothy was known by Paul and the eldership and in relationship with them.
- Through prophecy the will of God was revealed – by laying on of hands it became effective.
- There was a real impartation and a subsequent spiritual conflict over this gift.
- Paul also urged Timothy to stir up the gift and warfare using the prophetic word 1Tim.1:11-18.

iv) Deliverance and Healing

(a) Deliverance
· Lk. 13:11-13 “Woman you are loosed from your infirmity, and He laid His hands on her…”
· Jesus spoke a word of command and it became effective as He laid hands upon her. The tormenting spirit of infirmity departed from the woman and she was healed.

(b) Healing the Sick
· Mk. 16:15-18
5 supernatural signs are associated with preaching the gospel.
“These signs shall follow those who believe” – this is a faith ministry for all believers.”
“They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover!”

i) Healing the sick is connected to preaching the Gospel and demonstrating its power.
ii) Recover = to become well again.
- It is up to God how the person is made well and how long it takes to recover.
- The healing may be instantaneous (a miracle) or they recover gradually.

iii) Impartation of power
- The person may feel a flow of power through them – warmth, electric.
- The person may feel nothing at all.

iv) Faith is necessary (Mt.9:29 “according to your faith be it done unto you”)
- The persons faith must remain active.
- People tend to wait until they feel better.
- People tend to focus on what has not changed i.e. focus on the sickness.
- People need to focus on what God’s Word says and stay active in faith
(a) Thank God for what He has done.
(b) Continue to confess the Word of God in the face of negative symptoms.
- If the person lets go of active faith the healing may not be fully complete or may be lost.
v) Jam. 5:14-15 “If any among you be sick …”
- God expects believers to be connected with a local church and leaders that minister.
- God expects believers who are sick to seek healing from Him first – call elders.
- OK to receive help from doctors but seek the Lord first – I believe God!
- Oil is symbolic only of the person and power of the Holy Spirit – Faith contact point.

v) Commissioning Believers

(a) Apostolic Commissioning
Act 13:1-4 “Having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them they sent them”
- Holy Spirit had already spoken personally into hearts of Saul and Barnabus.
- Holy Spirit spoke prophetically and publicly confirmed their call and directed their going.
- Laying of hands was done to confirm, commission, and confer authority.
- God had already gone ahead and prepared the way for them. (Act 14:16-17).

(b) Setting in of Leaders
- Acts 6:2-7 “…and when they had prayed they laid hands upon them”
- They publicly acknowledged the choice of these men and committed them to the task.
- They imparted authority and grace for the task.

Resurrection of the Dead (6 of 7)  

Sun 3rd Apr 2011 « Back to Top

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Jesus was the first-fruits, the first-born to be resurrected from the dead, and appear to many in a resurrection body - immortal, incorruptible, able to vanish in and out, no longer constrained by the physical world. He was a pattern for all that is to follow. This teaching covers the first resurrection, 1000 year reign of Christ on earth, and the second resurrection. Which one will you be in?

Introduction

Welcome to this series: the First Principles in Christ. We're now on the next principle called ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’. We trust you really listen, and let God speak to your heart, and that you are established and changed because of this.

Hebrews 6:1 - “Now leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation: Repentance from dead works; Faith toward God; the Doctrine (or teaching) of Baptisms (Baptism into Christ, into Water, in the Holy Ghost, Baptism of Fire); of the Laying on of Hands (last session); of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgment. And this we will do if God permits.”

Review

Last week, we looked at the Laying on of Hands. When you touch someone, you make connection with them; and the Laying on of Hands always implies there's relationship. We saw that the Laying on of Hands enabled us to receive from anointed men and women of God, to receive for our needs, to receive impartations; but also that we could lay hands on others, and we can give.

So we're in a position where, if we are connected to the body of Christ, and we are known - we're in a place where we can receive someone laying hands and imparting to us - activating, imparting gifts; but also God wants you to reach out and be part of His mission, and to lay hands on the sick, to lay hands on people, and see them recover.

Main Message

Today we want to look at: Resurrection from the Dead. Now the first four principles dealt mostly with this present world; and what happens in this present world - this realm called Time - the physical realm.

The next two go together: Resurrection from the Dead; and Eternal Judgment. Resurrection from the Dead deals with the next realm, the realm of eternity, the realm where God is. We live in a realm called Time - it's only a small thing compared to the realm of eternity where God lives.

In the Bible, there are quite a number of people who were raised from the dead. Let's have a look at one of them in Mark 5. Jesus ministers to a small girl. Her father had called Him to come and visit, because the girl was very sick; and we read in verse 39 Jesus came in and said to them, "Why are you making all this noise and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping," - but they ridiculed Him.

When He put everyone outside, He took the father and the mother of the child, and those who were with Him, and entered where the child was lying. Then He took the child by the hand, and said: "Talitha, cumi," which is translated, "Little girl, arise." And this girl here, who had been dead - immediately she rose and walked; she was 12 years old, and they were overcome with great amazement. He commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given to her to eat.

Let's have a look at another resurrection from the dead, in John 11. There's a whole number of examples; but this is not what the teaching of Resurrection from the Dead is about. John 11:38 (Lazarus, Jesus' friend, is dead) Then Jesus, again groaning within His spirit, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, "Roll away stone," and Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said "Lord, by this time there'll be a stench. He's been dead four days."

His body has actually started the process of decay. He said: "Did not I say to you, that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?" They took away the stone from the place where the dead man was. Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said: "Father, I thank You that You've heard me. I know You always hear me; but because of the people standing by, I said this, that they may believe You sent me." When He said these things, He cried: "Lazarus, come forth!" And he who had died come out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said them, "Loose him, and let him go."

So there are stories of people being raised from the dead. In the Old Testament there were Elijah's bones, which were so full of resurrection power, that when a body was dropped on him, immediately the man came back to life again.

In the New Testament, Jesus healed and raised from the dead, a young boy that was dead; this young girl raised-up Lazarus from the dead. We also see in the New Testament, that Peter raised a young girl from the dead; and also Paul raised a young man from the dead. In fact in Matthew 10:7-8, Jesus specifically says - now get this: “raising people from the dead goes with preaching the gospel”. See?

It goes with preaching the gospel; so He told: wherever you go, preach the gospel of the kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and so on. So the ministry of raising people from the dead was entrusted to the church. How far we've slipped from that! How far we've slipped; yet I've heard stories, in the last two or three years, of people that were prayed for here in New Zealand, that rose again from the dead - so God, in these latter days, is restoring great power to the church.

Now here's something you need to understand. All of those people, who were raised from the dead, that we just read about - all died; so when we're teaching the doctrine of Resurrection from the Dead, we're teaching about something that goes much beyond that, and I want us to go there now.

Let's have a look in Matthew 27. We’ll just look at when Jesus rose from the dead. I want you just to stick with me, as we're going to go through a few scriptures, and I want you to understand what this is about, because you'll understand this is the great hope of a Christian believer. In fact it's a foundation to become Christian.

Matthew 27:62 – On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered to Pilate saying, "Sir, while He was alive, the deceiver said 'After three days I will rise from the dead.' So command the tomb be secured until the third day, lest the disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, 'He's risen from the dead.' And the last deception will be worse than the first." Pilate said "You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how." So they went, and made the tomb where Jesus was buried secure, sealing the stone and setting a guard - which is probably four Roman soldiers.

After the Sabbath on the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. Behold, there was a great earthquake, and an angel of the Lord descended from heaven; and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightening, his clothing was white as snow; and the guards shook for fear, and became like dead men. But the angel answered, and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He is risen, as He said. Come and see the place where he lay." They walked in - in another version it tells: they walked in, and they saw the grave clothes. Now they were wrapped around Him, and they had not been unravelled - they were just empty. He had risen - literally risen, completely out of the grave.

So Jesus was the first to rise from the dead. The Bible calls Him the first born. He is the first man truly resurrected. Acts 26:23. It says "that Christ would suffer, and that He would be the first to rise from the dead". So when we're talking about Resurrection from the Dead, we're talking about a total change of a person's body - going along with their spirit being rejoined to them, so they come alive. We'll show you a little more about this in a moment.

1 Corinthians 15:20 – “Now Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of those who have risen from the dead”. There was something about Jesus' resurrection that distinguished it from all other people who were returned to life. They were returned to life, but ultimately they died again. Jesus' resurrection was completely different; and so from the Bible point of view: He is the first fruits; the first born; the first one to be resurrected from the dead - and a pattern for all that is to follow. So Jesus was the first one.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 tells us that Jesus was seen by Peter. He was seen by the 12 apostles. He was seen by upward of 500 people. He was seen by James; then He was seen by the apostles again. In fact the Bible makes it very clear, that Jesus, after He rose from the dead, was seen by hundreds of people. Hundreds of people were eye witnesses. They saw Him die on the cross; they saw the Roman soldier put the spear into His side - they knew He was a dead man. They took Him down from the cross, and now here He was - He appeared to them.

Now it's very easy not to understand what that meant - to have someone, that you saw die; and you know that is a dead man; and where they buried Him in the ground; and then suddenly He's there, standing full of life in front of you. That is very, very scary!

So what was His body like? What was He like? In all the other cases of people who rose from the dead, they had been like dead on a slab, and then their spirit came back into them. They woke up, and they were restored to health, and away they went with their life again; but there was something about Jesus' resurrection that was completely different. The Resurrection of the Dead, the Resurrection of Jesus - His whole body, His original body that He had lived in, that He had died on the cross in - was totally changed. The power of God changed that body; so no longer was it a physical body, limited to the physical realm. The body He had was reconstructed, and had unusual capacity. Let's just read a few verses...

Mark 16:12 - After that, Jesus appeared in another form, to two of the disciples - and they didn't recognise Him. So Jesus, in His resurrection body, had the capacity to change into a different shape. He wasn't recognised - think about that. His body was immortal, incorruptible. That meant there was part of it ‘not old’ anymore - no teeth fell out; no hair fell out; there was nothing old anymore. Everything was renewed, and could never corrupt. He would never die, He's absolutely immortal - so He could not be killed or shot.

Luke 24 offers another example, or a situation, of Jesus after He rose from the dead. Luke 24:16 – “and Jesus has been walking with them, and their eyes were restrained, they didn't recognise Him”. Have a think about that - here's someone they have lived with for three years - now He's walking with them, and they can't recognise who He is. He has the capacity to change Himself.

When Mary, who knew Jesus very well, met Him in the garden, she thought He was a gardener - she did not recognise Him. So in the resurrection, the body of a person is able to change shape, able to change form - the word there is ‘morph’.

Notice in Luke 24:30-31, “It came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him - now notice this - and He vanished from their sight”.

So when a person has been resurrected, their body can never be corrupted again. They can never die. There's no way they can be killed. They are beyond that happening to them. Their body can change shape; their body can vanish in and out of the physical realm, and into the realm of heaven; and their body is able to suddenly appear, come through walls and turn up.

Can you image that? Can you imagine how scary that is, to have someone do something like that? How it just defies all thinking? You're talking to someone, and you've touched their hand, they've shared food with you; and then suddenly, in front of your very eyes, they're gone - just like that!

The mind can't comprehend it. You read it, and you've seen it in the scriptures before, but often we don't take time to think about what that must have been like - to be talking with a man; walking with a man; sitting and eating with a man - and suddenly you recognise it's the Lord; and then right there - His dish still there in place, cup of coffee still there in place - He just vanishes in front of your eyes.

In other words, He was no longer constrained by the physical world. He was able to enter into the realm of eternity, and back into the physical world, at ease. That's what it means to have a resurrection body - incorruptible, totally.

Further down, in Luke 24:36 – “Now the disciples were in the upper room and they shut the door. As they said these things, and were talking, Jesus Himself stood in the midst and said ‘Peace’; but they were terrified, frightened, and thought they were seeing a ghost”.

Imagine if you've got the doors locked, and there are just 12 of you in the room, and suddenly - boof! Someone turns up there! They were freaked out. They were scared. They were terrified. This is beyond human reasoning.

In Luke 24:39, they said to Him – “Look, behold My hands and Feet, it's Me”. It's Myself, it's Me. Hey, come and touch Me, handle Me. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, like you see I have, and He showed them His hands and His feet.

So you notice it looked just like a human body, but it had unusual power and qualities - no wonder they were terrified. Do you think you'd be any different? Because it's supernatural, the supernatural tends to frighten people. It's indescribable.

So He rose from the dead, and I want you to understand that He wasn't the only one who rose. Have a look back in Matthew 27:51 - This is straight after Jesus died on the cross. “The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom; the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the graves were opened”.

Notice this: when Jesus died on the cross, the graves broke open. Now for a Jew to have the grave break open, it's very serious. They had to go and guard the grave. They couldn't do anything about it - it was the Sabbath. They had to sit there, and wait, and guard these places; so they would have been waiting outside those graves.

Now this is what happened - it says: “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection. They went into the holy city and appeared to many”. So Jesus was the first to rise from the dead; and notice it says: many - not all. Many were raised from the dead after Jesus' resurrection; and not only that, they went into the holy city, and they appeared to many.

So who were some of those people? Well, probably Joseph; was because Joseph knew this was going to happen, and that's why he commanded His bones to be taken from Egypt and buried there near Jerusalem. Probably Abraham knew, because that's why he bought a cave; and his descendants were all buried in the cave with him.

They wanted to be near what they knew would happen one day - Jesus Christ the Messiah would come, He'd come into the earth, die on the cross and rise gloriously from the dead! And at that time, they also would rise with Him - they had a great hope that stretched for centuries.

They looked and saw Jesus day. Jesus said: “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced”. Abraham saw the day of the messiah, saw His resurrection from the dead. He got it by revelation, and it become a great hope. The only thing he purchased in his life, that I'm aware of, was a cave - to be buried near where this was going to happen. His hope was of the resurrection.

So the Bible tells us many - not all - at that time, rose from the dead. They had a resurrection body. They could walk in and out of rooms; walk in and out of heavenly realm; just walk in and out - they were immortal. Just imagine that.

What would you do, be part of that? Imagine if that was to happen today - what wouldn't you give to be part of that? If some were resurrected, and others weren't - what wouldn't you give, to be part of that? Think about that. You'll see that that's the great hope that we have. It's a great hope. That's what motivates us to move forward with God and to grow – it’s very, very important.

So belief in the Resurrection is totally foundational to the Christian faith. Because of this, it tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:13-16 - If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then: 1) your sins can't have been forgiven; 2) it's a waste of time believing in Him, because He's dead like everyone else.

So Jesus Christ, being raised from the dead - God proved this was the Son of God. You see, the political leaders, the religious leaders came together saying that He's not the Son of God. They put Him to death; and God raised Him up, and proved He's the Son of God by resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:19 tells us: “and so if there's no resurrection, the Christian faith has no hope for anyone” - but there is a resurrection. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He will come again, and there is a great hope.

In Romans 10:9-10 tells us “If you believe in your heart, and confess with your mouth, if you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.” Foundational to becoming a Christian is belief in the dead and resurrection of Jesus Christ - the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Many other religions have founders. All of them are dead; none rose again from the dead. There's only Jesus Christ, only in Christianity has our founder died on our behalf, and then rose from the dead, seen by hundreds, and will one day come again. You and I need to recognise this is unique to the Christian faith.

The Bible tells us: all will experience resurrection. In Hebrews 9:27, we ask the question: what happens when people die? It's very, very simple, I can't develop it - I'd like to, but just in brief. In Hebrews 9:27 – “It's appointed under man once to die, and after that judgement”. The judgement - final judgement comes, after the resurrection.

“But its appointed a man once to die”. You don't get a second round; so if you think you're coming back again well, you're not coming back again - once to die. Every person has an appointment with death. None of us can shake it - unless the Lord comes, and we are changed, then we will die, and we will have an appointment with God. That appointment with God is going to determine then our destiny; so death is just a separation of your body, and your soul, and spirit.

The Bible says we're a three-part being: spirit, soul, body. We live in a body, but we are a spirit being; so when a person dies, their body just returns, and disintegrates, and just becomes dust in the earth again. God, by His power, is able to reconstitute the entire DNA - every part of who you were, when you were alive on the earth - put it back together again, and resurrect that body that you lived in. So the body you're in now - God is going to resurrect it. Thank God for that! You get more teeth! God will resurrect that body.

So what happens after you die? Well, immediately after you die, if you're a believer, the angels “gather you”. Luke 16 – “the angels gather you into the presence of the Lord”. You're welcomed into heaven, and you're there until the day of resurrection. If you're a person who's rejected Christ, walked anti-God, then the spirit of death takes hold of you, and you can never be in the presence of God. You will always be separated from Him for eternity.

In Luke 16, it describes it, that place of suffering; where people that we know, are now there. They have their memory. They remember who they were when they were on the earth. They remember their loved ones. They have memory of people that they had relationship with on the earth. They remember experiences when they were on the earth.

They also suffer terribly. A rich man, who was in hell, suffered immensely. While he was there, he had memory of his brothers, his family, his experiences in life - he had all of that memory with him. It doesn't tell us if he was aware of what was happening on the earth, so I don't think people in that place are aware what is going on, but they remember their family members.

He saw into the realm where Lazarus was. He saw into the other realm; the realm where people are in rest with God; that realm called Paradise; that realm of heaven now where people go. He saw into that realm, and he was distressed, because he could see there was a great divide, and no one could cross it. After you die, there's no coming back. After you die, there is no chance to have a second chance. After you die, there's a decision made of where you'll spend eternity; and you make that decision on the earth. If you receive Jesus Christ, then it sets the course of our life; now we must walk with Him, and stay in Him, and not abandon Him.

So what happens then, at the moment after you die? Within a split second, immediately your spirit and soul leaves your body, goes into eternity; and your decision of how you responded to Christ will determine what happens to you in that place.

Now the Bible says: “all will rise from the dead”. In John 5:28-29, this is what Jesus said - He taught this: “The time will come when all, all who are in the graves will hear His voice, the voice of Jesus Christ and will come forth; some to a great resurrection, some not to a great resurrection”.

Revelations 20:11 - I want to stick with this, and then we'll come to the end. “Now I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things that were written in the books. The seat gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hell delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Death and Hell were cast into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death. Anyone not written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.”

So the Bible teaches then, that all will be resurrected from the dead. Jesus said: “all will come forth to be resurrected from the dead” - so every person that's ever lived in history, there will come a day when they will rise from the dead; their body will be changed, their spirit will be reunited with their body. They'll be there again, that person there again. At that time, the books are opened, and then eternal judgement takes place - and there's no one exempt, no one exempt.

Mark 12:24 – “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living”. So people do not vanish, they do not cease to exist when they die. They go into eternity, and they're either in the presence of God - Paul said to “be absent from the body; present with the Lord” - they're present with the Lord.

Stephen, when he died said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. So the Bible's very clear - when you die, you're either: in the presence of the Lord; or in your place of torment. There comes a point where there'll be a resurrection of all people; and following that resurrection, a determination is made of your destiny forever – forever- based on what you did.

Revelations 20:4 says: “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for their witness to Jesus, and for the word of God, and had not worshipped the beast or his image, not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived - notice this - they lived, and they reigned with, Jesus Christ for a thousand years”.

In the beginning of Revelations 20, there will come a point in time when the devil will be bound and imprisoned; so the spiritual powers which have deceived the nations for generations will be bound - their influence will no longer be there. They'll no longer be able to cast their influence upon the nations of the earth; so there will be a period of a thousand years, and in that period of a thousand years, all demonic activity will cease. The devil and his cohorts will be bound for one thousand years. That 1000 years will be a period in earth's history, that has never been seen ever before, but which is prophesied from one end of the Bible to the other.

There will be an unprecedented season of prosperity and peace in the earth - it's a great hope to look forward to. There's no political solution to the dilemmas that we face in the world. The only solution, really, ultimately is the coming of Christ; when what He will do will bind spiritual powers.

Revelations 20:1 – “I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having a key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years; he cast him in the bottomless pit, shut him up, set a seal on him, so he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were finished.” But then he's released for a little while.

So there will be a period where there's no demonic activity. Can you imagine no demonic activity? A lot of people can't understand the extent to which demonic activity creates the problems in the nations. Much of the church in the West won't even acknowledge it, and deal with it; but for us who understand things of the spirit, we understand there is a very real spirit world. Spiritual powers influence people, and they run, and control, and manipulate the courses of nations. They control what goes on in the earth, through deception, through spiritual power. Can you imagine when they are bound for a thousand years, what it will be like on the earth, without all of that there? An unprecedented season of peace and prosperity in earth history - until the devil is released again.

“Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgement was committed to them”. So now he sees in the spirit - and he sees thrones. A throne is a position of governance, a position of authority and power - authority that the devil has had to give up. A body of believers has taken possession of those; and now have the power and authority representing the Lord, to bring about amazing and substantial changes in the earth.

It says: “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness for Jesus” - clearly they come up. They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years, but the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.

Now notice this - that some people enter the first resurrection; some people do not. The assumption everyone has, is that they would be; that all in the first resurrection would be Christians. It's an assumption, rather than a reality.

Notice what it says: “the rest of the dead”. That's all other dead people - apart from those who the Bible refers to, enter into the first resurrection. Now among those who come into the first resurrection, are people who gave up their life for Christ. Imagine that, this is the kind of people it's talking about - people who live their life for Christ, passionately, fervently; and some of them laid their life down for Christ. They are counted worthy to be in that first resurrection. I don't think someone who's a lukewarm believer, and lives in compromise, and doesn't represent Christ - it's hard to imagine how they could be in that.

Not only that, it says: “I saw thrones, and they sat on them”. You notice, if you read right through the Book of Revelation (first four chapters), that only those who overcame were ever given that kind of authority. So the first resurrection - it says: “blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power. They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”

I don't think we should assume that we will reign with Christ, if we don't: walk with Him; fellowship with Him; and endure suffering for His sake, in this life. Think about that. The assumption automatically is: everyone just makes it in; but actually, notice what the Bible talks about. The Bible talks about those who live a life that honours God - a life that overcomes the difficulties that are in the current church age, the current age we live in.

Jesus spoke to the Lukewarm Church of Laodicea. He said: “Blessed is the man who overcomes luke-warmness, apathy, and indifference. He shall sit with me in my throne”. So God has reserved rewards for those who walk with Him; so we can all access and come into heaven, but when we're resurrected, and how we're resurrected, and the realm we live in, in resurrection - now that varies; and that depends on what you have done with your life, as a steward of Christ while on the earth. Think about that.

Notice we just already read: “the books were open”; and Jesus said in another part, in Revelation 22 – “I come, and My reward is with Me, to give each man according to his works”. So very clearly what it's talking about here is a resurrection of reward, a resurrection of privilege.

It's spoken of in other parts in the Bible. I'll just give you two references to it; one is found in Hebrews 11:35, and it says: “some had great victories with their life. Some did great things to change nations. Others were put to death - now notice what it says - they were put to death; and what they were believing for was a more powerful, or a stronger, resurrection”. You see they went to death because they believed there was something - a prize to be won.

Paul spoke of the same prize, we'll just look at that, and then finish for today. Philippians 3 - Paul was aware of this too. He begins to talk about his own journey; now Paul was a great apostle - he did amazing things.

Philippians 3:10 – “oh, that I might know Christ, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death - notice this - if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead”.

So he's saying: I'm doing these things - IF I might get to here. When there's always a word 'if', you know there's a possibility that you may not get there. You will catch the bus - 'if' you're on time. If you're not on time - you don't catch the bus.

He's saying: I do these things - I seek to know Him; I seek to discover the power of His resurrection. I seek to walk in the fellowship and friendship, connecting with Him over the rejection that often comes for being a Christian – “being conformed to His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead” - and the word resurrection here is a word used no other place in the Bible.

It's the word ‘Anastasis’ - resurrection is Anastasis, meaning ‘out from resurrection’ - the resurrection that causes people to stand up, stand out from everyone else that is dead. He's talking about the first resurrection; and notice what he goes on to say, in Philippians 3:13:

“Brethren. I press on, I do not count myself to apprehend, one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, reaching forward to the things which are ahead, I press to the goal for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let any of us who be mature, having that same mind, and if you're thinking differently, God will reveal it to you.”

Notice what he's saying: My whole life is motivated because of what I see is coming in the future. There is a day when there will be a first resurrection. I want to be in that resurrection. I want to be with Christ. I want to be part of that great resurrection.

Can you imagine what it'd be like to be living on the earth for a thousand years? You can never die, never suffer, never be put to death, never be corruptible; and you can now fulfil a mission for God - bringing the earth into the order that He intended it to be brought into.

What this is called is: the Hope of the Believer. This is called: the High Calling of God, in Jesus Christ.

Paul writes in Colossians 1:27 - “It's Christ in you, the hope one day you'll be filled with the glory of God” - your body will be resurrected, and you will walk this earth representing Him, just as He did after He was raised from the dead. What an amazing thing!

Notice what he says in Philippians’ 3:20 – “Our citizenship is in heaven, from where we eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus who will transform our lowly body, that it might be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working whereby He can subdue everything”.

It is not too difficult for God to do this thing. It is very clear, in that first resurrection, not all will rise, but there will be some who have died, who will rise from the dead; there will be some who are alive, who will be changed; and Christ will be seen in His people. What an amazing motivation for you and me to serve Him passionately, and to come into such a wonderful destiny that He has for us.

The Bible tells us that this resurrection life has already begun in you. Romans 8:11 says this: The same spirit, the Holy Spirit, who resurrected Jesus Christ, changed His body, joined Him back together, raised Him from the dead; when you became a Christian, that same spirit of God was put in you, that same Holy Ghost is in you.

Notice what he says: the same spirit, that was able to raise Jesus from the dead, can: quicken, energise, activate, and restore your mortal body. You can be filled with the life of God, because He's put His Holy Spirit in you. It's a resurrection spirit!

That spirit that you've got in you, that Holy Spirit of God, raised Jesus from the dead. It can energise you with life. That's why we encourage you to build a spirit life; because if you don't, you won't have life resurrection power inside, filling you, making you healthy and full of life, energy, vitality, able to release the power of God to people.

It's not just for a handful. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, the resurrection power of God has already started in you. It's your responsibility to cultivate your relationship with God, so you live energised in the Holy Ghost, full of the power of God, flowing in the gifts of the spirit, releasing the life of God to others.

This is the privilege of every believer. Resurrection took place when I received Christ. I come alive, my spirit is joined to the one who's risen from the dead. Now you and I can walk in a new life. When you got baptised in the Holy Ghost, it's the entrance into that realm of life.

It's not so difficult, not so hard - it's a life serving God. It's a life where you meditate. It's a life where you let the word get into you; you learn how to praise strongly, and the life of God begins to fill you. It's for every believer! It's for every believer!

One day, there is a hope, that if I serve God, walk with Him, fellowship with Him, and endure things for His sake - that I will qualify for that great resurrection, the first resurrection. What an amazing challenge we have!

Closing Prayer

Father, God, we thank you for such a great hope that is set before us. If you are reading or listening online, then the best thing you could do, would be to open your life to Jesus Christ. If you're not a Christian today, then you're not walking with God. You have a destiny separated from God, and that destiny will start the moment your heart stops. When your heart stops, time will stop. You'll enter eternity, and you know what I say is true. What a great thing, if we were to just receive Christ right now.

I want us just to pray this prayer together; and then we're going to stand, and just honour Jesus; and clap to Him who rose from the dead.

Father in heaven, I open my heart to you. I thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. I thank you that you raised Him from the dead. Jesus, I believe in you. I receive you as my saviour. I turn from all sin. I turn from all false gods. I receive you as my Saviour, and give you my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and friend forever. Amen! Amen!

Let's give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Halleluiah! We believe in you Jesus, your power rests within us today.

Why don't we stand together, and let's begin to pray in tongues. Let that life of that spirit, that raised Christ from the dead, begin to express inside us right now.

I want you to do this for 15 seconds, pray in tongues as strongly, as loudly as you can and see the difference. [Prays in tongues]

Father, let the resurrection life of Jesus grow and increase in us, manifest through us, touching the people around us; and Lord - to you we give all the honour and all the glory. Jesus - thank you for dying on the cross. Thank you for going into the deepest parts, thank you for rising from the dead. You're our saviour and you've set us FREE! You've set us FREE! Come on, let's celebrate! Free. I'm free!

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

1. Introduction
Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundations …”
· The first four of the foundational principles deal with this present world – realm of time; physical realm. The last two of the foundational principles take us into the realm of eternity, realm of God.

2. People Raised from the Dead
· Old Testament:
2 Kings 13:21 A dead man arose from the dead when his body touched Elisha’s bones.
· New Testament:
Lk. 7:14 Jesus raises a boy from the dead.
Mk. 5:35-42 Jesus raises a girl from the dead.
Jn. 11:39-44 Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead – healed restored and raised.
Acts 9:40 Peter raises Dorcas from the dead.
Acts 20:9-12 Paul raises a young man from the dead.
· Mt. 10:7-8 “As you go, preach, saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, freely you have received, freely give.”
Raising the dead is part of the commission that Jesus gave his followers. This demonstrates the power of God and the reality of life after death. All these people died – None of this is the resurrection referred to in Heb. 6.

3. The Resurrection of Jesus

(a) What happened?
· Mt. 27:62 – Mt. 28:7 “I know you seek Jesus who was crucified, He is not here; for He is Risen!”
· The Romans sealed his tomb and posted a guard to ensure no-one stole his body.
· When the women entered the tomb they found empty grave clothes – He had vanished.

(b) Jesus was the first to experience resurrection
Act 26:23 “that Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead..”
1 Cor. 15:20 “But now Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
1 Cor. 15:3-8 Jesus seen by Peter, the twelve, over 500, James, all apostles, Paul. They were all eye witnesses to seeing Jesus after His resurrection.

(c) Jesus Body had Changed
Mk. 16:12 After that He appeared in another form to two of them.
Lk. 24:31 He vanished out of their sight.
He stood in their midst – touch my hands and feet!
His body incorruptible, immortal, transformed by the power of God.
He was able to change form, trans-locate, enter in and out of heaven.

(d) Others Rose from the Dead with Jesus
Mt. 27:50 -53 “…the graves were opened, and many of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the graves after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”
This is why Joseph wanted his bones buried near Jerusalem.
This is why Abraham purchased a cave near Jerusalem – Abraham, Sarah, Isaac buried there.

4. Belief in the Resurrection is Foundational to Christian faith
Rom. 1:3-4 God declared Jesus Christ to be the Son of God by resurrection.
1 Cor. 15:13-16 Resurrection proves our sins are forgiven at the Cross. Without resurrection our faith is empty and without hope.
Rom. 10:9-10 Belief in the resurrection is foundational to being saved.

5. All then will experience Resurrection

(a) What happens when you die?
Heb. 9:27 “It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement.”
Death = separation of spirit/soul from body – your body returns to the earth and decomposes.
Your spirit and soul go into eternity to face Creator God to be judged.
Angels of God gather godly who trust Christ to heaven.
Angel of Death gathers ungodly to place of torment (Lk 16:19-31).

(b) All will rise from the dead to face Eternal Judgement
Jn. 5:28-29 “..all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth …”
Rev. 20:12-15 “..and anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
God is able to re-assemble every part of our body again by His great power.
All will be raised from the dead and enter eternity of judgement/ suffering or of joy.
Mk. 12:24-27 “God is not the God of the Dead but of the Living.”

6. The First Resurrection
Rev. 20:1-6 “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the First Resurrection”
There are two resurrections – and there are different realms of existence in the Kingdom.
The first Resurrection - Precedes the 1000 year rule of Christ on the earth
- Precedes the general resurrection of all dead
- Brings people into a realm of authority and rulership (thrones).
- Is for those who overcome in this life. (Rev. 3:21)
Mt. 25:1-13 10x virgins.
Heb. 11:35 - stronger, more powerful resurrection.
Phil 3:15 – Paul saw this as something to attain to – a great hope.
Resurrection = exanastasis = the ‘out from’ resurrection = to stand out from the dead.
Phil. 3:20-21 – transform our lowly body that is might be conformed to His glorious body according to the working by which He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

7. Resurrection Life Now
Rom. 8:11 “If the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, He that rised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you”
- Jesus now dwells in heaven.
- We who have received Jesus are joined spirit to spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17).
- The Holy Spirit within you can quicken and energise spirit, soul and body.
- Quicken = to make you alive with the life of another!
This life of the Spirit begins when you receive Christ as Saviour.
This life of the Spirit is empowered when you are baptised in Holy Ghost.
This life of the Spirit can be developed and expressed through you.
- Prayer – Mediation – Word of God – Serving – Obedience.
This life of the Spirit that dwells within will resurrect our mortal body.

Eternal Judgment (7 of 7)  

Sun 10 Apr 2011 « Back to Top

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Sometimes we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God we forget or overlook that there is another side, that God is also holy and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life and what we've done in our life. All of you have an appointment to keep with this. There is no exception. Matt 16:27 I come and my reward is with me, to give to every man according to his work.

Introduction

Welcome the last in our series, in Hebrews 6 - First Principles; we're going to look today at Eternal Judgement. We trust you'll just open your heart, to just hear the word of God; and may the spirit of God move where you are, and touch you, and change your life today.

Review

Hebrews 6:1-3, “Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of: Repentance from Dead Works; and of Faith towards God; of the Doctrine of Baptisms; of Laying on of Hands; of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgement. And this we will do if God permits.

So we see a number of truths, which are foundational to being established in Christ. Every one of these truths is a foundation, so it's not all that we learn. It is the part which has to be laid upon, which everything else builds.

We saw at the beginning, the need for us to turn away from activities and works to try and gain the approval of God - religious activities; to repent of those things which are dead and lifeless, motivated by wrong motives; and to turn towards and have faith in the living God, faith in what Christ has done for us. As we do that, we are immediately born again - the spirit brings us into the realm of the kingdom of God.

Next was the Doctrine of Baptisms; and we discussed being baptised into Christ - being placed by the Holy Spirit into Christ Himself, and into a body of people.

We looked at Water Baptism - the public declaration that our life as we knew it is over; and we're now entering a new life of following Christ.

We talked about Baptism in the Holy Spirit - an experience that opens the door. It's a door experience to the supernatural.

We saw the teaching concerning Laying on of Hands - that God wants to impart into us; so therefore we need to be in a body of people where we're known, where people can lay hands, impart, release, activate gifts into our lives; and we ourselves are authorised by the Lord to lay hands on the sick, and to minister to them.

Then we saw the doctrine and the teaching about Resurrection. We saw that the difference between: a person being raised from the dead; and the teaching of resurrection - the one day when all will be raised from the dead. We shared about the first resurrection and the second resurrection.

Main Message

This last one we want to do is a very, very important teaching, on Eternal Judgement. The word ‘judge’ means ‘to look’, or ‘to distinguish’, or ‘look right through to the source’ of something, the motivation behind it, to see clearly through to what lies behind it; and to evaluate.

So the Bible talks about a foundational principle called Eternal Judgement. There are judgements that God does in history; or in other words, judgements in the present time; and one of the principles is: God's mercy always rejoices over judgement, but God does judge sin. At the cross He judged sin; but also made way for mercy for those who repent.

So there are some ways that God judges and deals with sin now. The most common one is just the principle of sowing and reaping - what you sow, you reap. If you sow sinful actions, sow hate and bitterness; then you will reap a harvest of that, the Bible tells us. Not only that, but demonic spirits use our violations of the law of God as a doorway through, to cause destruction in our lives.

There are some times in history where God has intervened. We can see, as we read the Bible, God directly intervened in histories, in a number of areas, bringing judgements into the earth. We see in the New Testament how Ananias and Sapphira, when they sinned, then they were judged right on the spot - they died on the spot, in church; so there are some judgements that take place in the course of life. However, the primary way that God operates with us, is according to how we respond to His word.

We're going to look now at Eternal judgement - Eternal judgement which is different. Eternal judgement has to do with the judgement that will take place. All of you have an appointment to keep with this; there is no exception.

Hebrews 9:27 says: “It's appointed unto man, once to die. You don't die twice, you don't come back again - once to die; and then after that – judgement; so this is a very important truth.

Because people don't experience judgement, and because justice is often perverted in a nation, people don't have a fear of God; nor understand: we will all have to give account for our life.

Sometimes when we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God; and we forget or overlook that there is another side - that God is also holy, and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life, and what we've done in our life.

Ephesians 2:10 says: You are His workmanship. “We are His workmanship, and we are created in Christ Jesus” - notice what we're created for, for what? “For good works, which God has prepared...” When? “...before the foundation of the earth”.

I want you to just note that, because everything we say after this is going to lever off that particular scripture.

God created you - He had you in mind, before you were even thought of, by your family; and He designed you to be born into the earth - whatever situation, circumstance, nation or background - He designed for you to be born into the earth, and He set out a destiny for you. He designed and created you with giftings to accomplish something with your life; to accomplish something not trivial; but purposeful, meaningful, which would impact people.

He has “created you for good works”. In other words, you are designed to do things that extend the Kingdom of God; so having come to Christ - not by any work we did, but solely on what Jesus Christ did on Calvary; having been made right with God, just because we trusted - now we are to spend our life on the earth serving God, and accomplishing something with our life.

What we accomplish, is different for every person. These works, that we're to accomplish, were written by God for you to accomplish - something only you can do. There's something that every believer in the body of Christ is called to accomplish. It's not done in a Sunday meeting. It's not done in any church meeting. It's primarily done when you live your life. You and I are called to accomplish things for God.

You and I are agents of God in the earth. We are an ambassador for the kingdom. We are a gateway for the life of God to flow and express in the earth; and you and I are mandated by God to do good works - to actually accomplish something with your life.

Hebrews 9:27 – “It is appointed for men once to die, and then the judgement". Accountability for our actions is foundational to the Kingdom of God; accountability for our actions is foundational.

Romans 14:10-12 says – “Why do you judge your brother? Why do you look at the person next to you and criticise them and find fault with them? Why do you despise your brother?” Why do you look at other Christians, other believers and criticise them, despise them, find fault with them? Why do you do that?

“For we shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ”. All - that means everyone - no exceptions.

“We all stand before the judgement seat of Christ. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee... (every knee => no person, who has ever lived, shall not fulfil this) ...shall bow to Me, every tongue confess to God, so each of us shall give account of himself to God.”

So people may get away with stuff in life. I don't think they really do, because they reap what they sow; but eventually, all must give account - so we see that it's a principle of the kingdom that no person is exempt. Every one of us, are going to give account; not for the person next to us, but for ourselves.

Think about that moment. This is an appointment you will keep. There'll be a day when you will keep this appointment, and you'll stand before the judgement seat of Christ; and what will be on view is how you've run your life - that's a very sobering thought. It's something to cause us to think about our life, not live week to week, day to day; but to think of the course of our life, and begin to consider how we can be productive with our life - because it will come to an end, and we'll give account.

So you notice there, it's the ‘Judgement Seat of Christ’. That word ‘judgement seat’, is a word in the Greek called ‘Bema’; it means literally, a rostrum. This referred to a rostrum that Caesar stood on, and he would give a verdict about someone. If they were judged to be guilty, they were given a black stone; if they were judged to be innocent, they were given a white stone; but it was a place of judgement, where a person's life was assessed; and the judgement was final, no appeals. You don't get a lawyer, and appeal, and have a second go. The judgement is final - absolutely final; so it's a place of calling to account.

2 Corinthians 5:9-10. “We therefore make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be pleasing to God.” This is our goal - we want our life to be pleasing to God. It doesn't matter what people think in that sense, it's whether our life pleases God.

He says then: for here's why we endeavour to please God, this is why you live your life to please God: because one day you're going to have to stand before Him. “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Same truth: Everyone is going to appear before the judgement seat of Christ. The judgement seat of Christ is a place that believers go; this is where believers are judged. People who have not received Christ are judged differently, at a different place in time; so this is a judgement for believers.

Here is the deal: it's according to how you've behaved, or conducted, your life. What we have done, whether it be good or bad; so every action in your life has some value, good or bad; and every action in your life will come before the Lord, without exception.

The purpose of this judgement is reward. What God has in mind is reward - “that we may receive”.

God's purpose is (at this judgement): it's for believers; it's to look at your life - what did you accomplish with the life; the opportunities, giftings, talents, and resources you were entrusted to? How did the world benefit because, and how did the kingdom advance, because of what you did?

On the basis of what you did that's worthwhile, there is reward - it is acknowledged by God. Now this is justice! People, who pour out of their lives in the service of God, will receive from God, a reward that goes on for eternity. People who waste their life doing their own thing will obviously not receive such a reward.

There is a problem in our culture called Egalitarianism - where everyone wants to be just equal. In eternity, we will not be equal at all; in hell, people will not be equal. There are different degrees of punishment in hell; different degrees of reward in heaven - you have to understand that.

When you understand and hold this in your heart - that I've only got a temporary assignment on the earth, which is preparing me for eternity - you begin to look at your life differently, and operate your life differently, because you have an eternal perspective.

The judgement is to receive something. If you are a believer in Christ, you will not be judged, condemned and sent to hell. John 3:18 – “He that believes in Me shall not be condemned”.

So if you're a believer, the purpose of this judgement (at this particular judgement seat), is not to judge whether you go to heaven or not; it's about what you receive in eternity.

Again Jesus tells us in, John 5:24 – “He that hears and believes in Me shall not come into judgement, for he has eternal life”.

So if you are a believer in Christ, this is not about your salvation. It has nothing to do with your salvation; it has to do with your service - what you did with the life God gave you.

So the next thing we see is that believers will either: experience reward for the life that they lived; or they will suffer loss. 1 Corinthians 3:8. “Now he that plants, and he that waters, are one; and each one will receive his own reward, according to his own labour”.

So every person will receive a reward, according to what they did. What are you doing with your life, to follow the Lord, to honour God, and to walk out His destiny for you? That's what is in mind here. It's not the person next to you - it's you, and how you live your life. This is what God has in mind.

So the Bible says Matthew 16:27 “everyone will be rewarded according to what they've done”. In other places, for example in Rev 22:12m Jesus said: “I come, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according to his work”.

So we are saved without any works; but for eternity, our position, our stewardship in eternity, is governed by what you do with your life now. Our life is just a training ground. It's a preparation for eternity, so we keep that in mind. So salvation is free; but we walk with the Lord.

1 Corinthians 3:11 – “No other foundation can anyone lay, which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. So the foundation in our life is Faith in Christ.

Now you begin to build: “so if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver and precious stones; wood, hay and straw, each one's work will become clear”. You notice it's talking about a foundation being laid in your life; and then you're building on that foundation. It describes two kinds of materials you can use: gold, silver and precious stones; and wood, hay, straw.

“Each one's work will be made clear or manifest, for the Day will reveal it (that's the day the Lord returns), for it will be revealed by fire”. The fire will test everyone's work, what sort it is. “If the work he has built on it endures, he will receive reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved.”

So you notice now, the people that He's talking to and writing to, are believers. He's saying that every believer is a builder. You build your life; you build and extend the Kingdom of God; and how we build will be examined.

What you build like will be examined, and it says that if God examines what you've built, and discovers it's wood, hay and straw, then there is nothing of value taken with you into eternity. There's no reward for what you have laboured - but you are saved. The image or picture is like someone who escaped out of a smoking house and it was burning down, but they got free and they've escaped. They didn't bring anything with them - but they're saved. So they have an eternal life, a wonderful, joyful life in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Bible also describes that there are rewards for those who serve faithfully, and we need to understand the nature of those things, and the seriousness of the issue that's at hand for every one of us. Notice that the works that they have done is: their service for Christ, how we've lived our life.

Eternal judgement is a key foundation in the life of a believer, because of this: we understand that one day, every aspect of our life will be scrutinised, with a view to being rewarded. God is not there to judge us; He's there to reward us. All He's going to do is evaluate whether there's anything worth rewarding.

He's not going to condemn us. If we believe in Jesus Christ, we've passed from condemnation to life. That's not the issue any more. The issue for us will be: have you accomplished anything with your life that God could celebrate, and acknowledge, and reward for all eternity? That's the issue. Important issue, isn't it?

If every one of us is a builder; every one of us has come to Christ, is building and extending the Kingdom of God, we're an agent for the Kingdom of God; and we work with people, we impact people, we influence people, we run our life, and fulfil the course God gives us (it's our responsibility to discover that); then there comes a point when our life will be evaluated, and what we've done will be evaluated.

You won't be evaluated on whether you were a preacher or not, or whether you went to the mission field or anything like that. You'll be evaluated as to whether you fulfilled the course God had ordained for you.

It's a terrible thing to put a ladder against a building, and climb to the top of the ladder, and find it's against the wrong building - not very good. In other words, you were busy, but you actually were busy doing all the wrong things, that you were never called to do. This is an issue of discovering what God designed me, and called me, to do - and then doing it, very simple.

God is not going to approach us with anger. He approaches us with love, that we're His children. What He's looking for is, He's saying: is there something I can find and discover, in how you've run your life, that I could highlight, and reward, and acknowledge for eternity? That's what the spirit of this is like.

Let's have a look then, at what kind of principles would God use, to evaluate our life. Many of us would think: I haven't got many talents, and I haven't had much opportunity, and so on. So Jesus, in the Parables of the Kingdom, explains exactly how evaluation will take place. There's no doubt left, if you read the parables Jesus taught. Most of Jesus' teaching was to His disciples, and the issue is the issue of the kingdom, and our entrance into the kingdom, then being stewards of kingdom truth and life to others; so in many places He has recorded exactly the basis.

Number one is: the Quality of what you've built - what sort it is. Notice it says there in 1 Corinthians 3:13 – “Each one's work will be clear, for the Day will declare it. It will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work, what sort it is” - what quality, or character, is around what you have done.

So what God will look for is this: what Motivated you in doing what you did? Were you just trying to get ahead, look good, impress people; or was there genuine love motivating your work? Without love, no matter what you've done, it doesn't count for anything. Prophesying without love is “clashing cymbals”.

Giving your life to be burned, and not having love is quite a waste of time; so what He'll be looking for is the motivation of the heart - have I grown in love; has it been motivated by love? Has it been motivated by obedience?

Have I listened to what God wanted me to do; or I just went and did what I wanted to do, and then asked God to bless it? Come on, a lot of people do that. They just do whatever they want to do, ask God to bless it, and think they've done a great thing for God. Listen, God will evaluate all of these things.

What He's interested in, is your stewardship of His plan for your life. He's already written out the plan. The question is: whether you discover it, and walk with Him in the outworking of it.

In Matthew 7, Jesus spoke over a number of people who had worked miracles, cast out demons, done all these kinds of things. He said: “I didn't know you”. Your work is of inequity. You just basically did your own thing, using my name. The Bible is full of these stories.

So the first thing then is: what is the motivation behind the works we have done? Did we listen and respond to the Lord; and do we depend on Him for His strength in helping us day by day? So clearly prayer and listening to God undergird the kinds of things that He calls us to do.

Here's another one, in Matthew 25. So firstly God looks at the underlying motivation, He looks at what lies under the work, what kind of work it really is. If it's just selfish, advancing yourself, doing your own thing, and feathering your own nest, then it won't last, because it's got no kingdom nature in it. The nature of the kingdom is love.

Now these are Parables of the Kingdom. They all come in response to Jesus being asked: “Tell us about your coming"; and He told them a number of parables. I don't have the time to go into each one of them in depth. I want to just highlight some things. I encourage you to study them, because these are parables that you will one day fulfil in your own life.

Matthew 25:14-30 “There is a day coming, the kingdom of heaven...” - notice it's about the kingdom. So the issue here in hand is not salvation, the issue is your stewardship of the resources God gave. “The kingdom of heaven is like a man went to a far country, who called his servants, delivered his goods to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability”.

You have a king, going to a far country, that's Jesus Christ. The servants of the king, are the servants of God, and everyone is given an entrustment. They have different ability, so one of the principles is our potential. Did you fulfil your potential? One of them had more ability than another; so he was given more talents than the other one was given: one was given five; one given two; one given one - each according to their own ability. So here's the thing.

When making evaluation of your life service, God will take into account your potential. So you don't need to look at someone who's highly gifted, and say: well I wish I was like them. Actually, you're you; and God knows your potential. He's given you an entrustment - just take what you’ve got, and put it to work. So He will evaluate on the potential.

Now you notice the one that had five talents, he went away and got another five, so that's 100 per cent increase. The other who had two, went away and got two talents - he also got 100 per cent increase. So both of them, although they have different ability, have got different results, but they both realised their potential.

They both did the very best they could with what they had, and the commendation to both are identical. The fact one had five, and got another five, and had more ability - that's not taken into account. What's taken into account is: he actually fulfilled his potential; so the commendation to that one there, in Matt 25: 19 - “A long time after, the lord of those servants came, and settled accounts with them”. He that received five came and said: Lord, you delivered to me five talents; I've gained another five. He said: good and faithful servant, well done.

He gets commended - and he's called ‘good’; and he's called ‘faithful’. Faithful means productive, and fulfilling what God has given us. “You were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of the Lord. The one who had received two talents came: Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents beside them; and the Lord said: to him well done you good and faithful servant; you've been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of the Lord.”

Notice just a couple of things in there. The first thing you notice is, they had different ability - but they both fulfilled their potential. Second thing you notice is: they both got the same commendation - well done good and faithful servant.

Now notice what happens - this is in eternity now. “You were entrusted with things in time, now I call you to be a ruler over things in eternity” - and so what's at stake is our inheritance in the Kingdom of God, for eternity. So we see there, in that particular story, that both of them received joy, and they entered into what? [Authority; Eternity].

It delights God, when we fulfil our potential. It delights Him when we're productive. He loves it. He says: I'm really joyful, really happy about this.

But the one who had one talent, he said: oh, you're a hard man. You reap where you didn't sow; and gather where you haven't scattered. “I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground”. So that is a believer, it's a servant of the Lord, who has opportunity, has talent, has gifting, has ability; but refuses to be productive.

Why is he refusing to be productive? Number one: wrong concepts of God. He didn't really take the time to find, and get to know, what God is really like. Secondly: he looked after himself – “I was afraid”, and so I just looked after myself, making sure that I get by.

What the master says to him is this: “You wicked and lazy servant”.

The word wicked means: you have a negative influence in the kingdom. You actually demoralise, and discourage other people, because of your slackness - that's what the word wicked means. It doesn't mean its evil; it just means it's a destructive influence, or harmful influence, or demoralising influence in the kingdom.

And he called him lazy. He said: “you knew that I reaped where I haven't sown, and gather where I haven't scattered. You should have deposited the money in the bank at my coming, and I would have received interest. So he took from him, for everyone who has more will be given, he will have abundance. He who does not have, he will take away what he has, so he cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

Principle #1 is Quality. What is the kind of motivation in our work?

Principle #2 is Potential.

Now there's another parable that looks the same; but it is not – there’s a vital difference. It's the Parable of the Pounds (Minas), in Luke 19:11 – “Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. Therefore He said: A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return”. That’s: Jesus has gone to heaven, has received His kingdom, and will return.

“He called 10 of His servants, delivered to them 10 pounds, and He said to them: do business (or trade), until I come.”Here that there are 10 servants, and 10 pounds, so everyone gets one each. So this time, all have an equal opportunity. One of them, with his one pound - he has 10 - he produced 10 from the one; and another one produces five from the one; and another one doesn't do anything - like in the first parable - he just buries it, and hides it.

So notice what the master says, when He comes back, in Luke 19:15 – “wanting to find out how much everyone had gained by trading, he came and said: well Lord, Your pound...” - notice he said: Your pound. It belongs to You, it's an entrustment - it's earned 10. Wow! And He says: “well done, you good servant. Because you were faithful over little, have authority over 10 cities”. The second came and said: “master, your pound has earned five”. Wow! Likewise, be over five cities.

Now notice the difference here: they both had an equal start, but one was far more productive than the other. The one who was more productive received a greater reward. Notice the nature of the reward - it isn't clear, all we know is that it has to do with the responsibility of governance in the kingdom; and it's in proportion to how productive he was - in this life. Think about that - How productive are you?

So he was faithful. To be faithful is to be productive. An opportunity in the eternal kingdom was given to each of the two that were productive - the other one lost the opportunity.

So we get down to the last one; and you think: well man, I didn't get to be a Christian until I was very old - sort of been around a few years, you know, and wasted a lot of my life. You feel: man, I've wasted my opportunities; or: my circumstances have not enabled me to do what I really wanted to do. Many people find themselves in that, and they feel a lot of grief over that.

This will help you then, in Matthew, 20:1, there's another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, who went out in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. When he agreed with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them to his vineyard. When he went out the third hour he saw some others, and he said you go out into the vineyard and whatever is right I will give you. Again he went the sixth and ninth hour, and about the eleventh hour he found some still standing idle. He said why are you standing idle here, and they said no one's hired us. He said okay, go to the vineyard and whatever's right, you will receive it.”

“So when the evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said the steward: call the labourers and bring them their wages, beginning from the last to the first. And those who were hired about the eleventh hour, they got one denarius”. Then the others came - the first came, and they thought: I should get more.

What happened was, they got the same - so they complained against the landowner, saying: “these last have only worked one hour, but you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day”. He answered and said: “Friend, I'm not doing you wrong. Didn't you agree for one? I'm giving you what's just”.

First of all, it's a Parable of the Kingdom; and it's a parable of labourers being put into service in the kingdom, to be productive. Notice the vineyard, which always speaks of people in the kingdom of God; so it's talking about being productive for the Lord in His kingdom.

That one guy, who got in at the beginning of the day, got one denarius for the whole day. Then through the day he employed others; until finally get the last one. It was a 12 hour day, the last one in the eleventh hour just got in, only did one hours' work, but he got rewarded exactly the same. Of course it got them a bit upset, because that's ‘not fair’. God is fair, God is just – “shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”, so the issue here is one of opportunity. What kind of opportunity did you have?

They were all employed to serve. Some had more opportunity than others; and some had less opportunity. God took into account, in dealing with them, how much opportunity they had. So you may serve the Lord all your life - saved at 16, served faithfully all your life; and then someone else, at the age of 40 gets saved, and they look back and think: well I didn't get a chance. They've come in later on in life. They still get the chance, and they still can be completely productive with the opportunity they have.

Some may come in, and they're in the last decade of their life - they can still be completely productive, and completely fruitful, in the last season of their life. God takes into account these four things.

1) Quality, the nature of what you've done; what motivation what was in it; and whether you heard from God, and did what He wanted you to do.

2) Potential - did we fulfil the potential in our life? Did we actually labour, and come to the best that we could accomplish with our life?

3) Productivity - did we actually produce anything? If a person has produced more, they're rewarded more.

4) Opportunity - how much opportunity do we have?

All of those, of course, you could study in detail. I encourage you to do it, encourage you to look at it, read it; and begin to think then, and reflect back to your own life: what am I doing with my life while I'm on the earth?

Many Christians are not established in this truth. Because they're not established in their truth, they just do whatever they want to do - live their life the way they want to live. Their life is very similar to the world; their values are very similar to the world. However, what they're doing is, losing an opportunity to invest in eternity. They're losing an opportunity in life to actually, not only benefit now, but to gain for all eternity.

So we'll just finish with the last scripture. In Revelations 20, there is another judgement called: the Great White Throne Judgement. This is an eternal judgement too.

So after the Judgement Seat of Christ, comes the beginning of a thousand years. The Great White Throne Judgement, as far as I see it, comes at the end of the thousand years.

Revelations 20:11 - “I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God; and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things written in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were delivered in them. Death and hell gave up the dead that were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works.”

Now I want you to see these two statements; the Book of Life; and ‘books’. They're two different things. The Book of Life, is a book in heaven, a literal book, where is written the name of every person who has come to trust in Jesus Christ to be their saviour.

Their name is written in the Book of Life. They are born again; the Spirit of God has come into them. They are acknowledged; they belong in the Kingdom of God; they're children of the kingdom.

Revelations 20:15 – “Anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire”.

Anyone; everyone; so what is crucial? Number one - crucial thing - is that you and I come to Jesus Christ, come to faith in Jesus Christ, come to trust Him as our Saviour and as our God, to give our life to Him. Why? Because at that time, your name is written in heaven, your name is written in the Book of Life; and when the final day of judgement comes, that will be the only basis upon which you'll be judged - is your name in the Book?

If your name is in the Book, then that judgement's not for you. If your name is not in the Book, then you're in deep trouble, for eternity.

The next one: notice it talks about ‘books’. It says: “the books are opened”; and it says: “everyone is judged according to their works”, by the things written in the books".

Remember I said at the beginning, in Ephesians 2:10, that: “God has prepared works for you to accomplish”? So they're written somewhere. God has a scroll written in heaven; and a scroll is different to a normal book. A book has got pages in it, you just open the pages. A scroll, you have to unwind it; and as you walk into and fulfil what God is giving you now, the scroll unwinds - He gives you a bit more.

He doesn't give you the whole thing. He's written the whole thing; but He's actually gives you opportunity to choose whether you: walk with Him; obey Him; walk and open that scroll; and begin to walk out your life and your destiny.

Now you notice that there are books (plural) - so every person, for every person - there is a book in heaven with your name on it. There must be a room where all the books are kept. It must be a big room; so right now, you know that there is a scroll, or a book, that has a destiny in heaven - God's plan for what you could accomplish with your life on the earth; and there is also a record written, of everything you've ever done.

If you've sinned, then your sins were blotted out of that - no record, it's taken away, it's erased. “Your sins, I'll remember no more” - but what you have done as a servant of God is recorded. It will play back like a video; and in that video, you'll not only see what you did - you'll see the thinking that was behind it; the motivation that was behind it; the actions that you did; and the effect of your actions on others.

It always disturbs me when Christians act and do things, without considering how it will affect others. There is a ripple effect, when you throw a stone in a pool. Whatever we do affects others; so part of the evaluation of our life will be like a video - and I don't know how God does it, like a great hologram, or a video.

You'll just see your life played out very, very quickly; and you'll become aware of your thoughts, of your fears, of your motives, of your intentions, of your feelings, of the actions - and the effect it had on people. You become aware of it, in a very short space of time - and God will evaluate it completely.

What He evaluates will determine what level of reward He'll give you for eternity. So this is an amazing, wonderful, hope that we have. The Bible tells us in Titus – “Every believer should be careful to ensure they're doing good works”. We should be careful to maintain a life where we're actively doing good; and every one of us needs to take into account that one day. We may have fooled people - we can't fool God.

One day, there's an eternity at stake. Can you imagine that great day, when you stand before the Lord, and all those things that nobody noticed, those sacrifices you made, that secret giving, that praying that you did, when your heart was broken but you stood firm before God. No one saw what you were doing, but you stood firm in the midst of difficulty. Others left you, but you remained firm, you remained steadfast. Things went wrong. It seemed like God had let you down, people hurt you in various ways, but you stood firm with the Lord, and you walked out your destiny.

I tell you, on that day - you will rejoice! There is a crown for you! There are opportunities for you in eternity; and He will say: “well done, good and faithful servant”. That's what you and I should have as a motivation (or could have as a motivation), in our life.

It's not what people say: “You have your 15 minutes of fame, it's all over” - there is an eternity! The one person that you want to be saying: oh, I'm so glad to see you, well done you good and faithful servant! Come and enter into the joy! I want you to rule over, I want you extend my kingdom; I want you to be responsible for these things in eternity! What a tremendous hope, what a tremendous joy.

So how will it work out in your life? Well, don't copy me - I've got my own scroll to walk out; but neither hinder me in doing it. Every person has their own distinct and unique call. Together as a family, we build and encourage and strengthen one another.

The ‘giftings’ of ministries are to equip you to do things God called you to do. They're not what I was called to do. They're what you're called to do, and it's our responsibility to discover how God has wired us, and what He has gifted and called us to do; and wherever that is, however that is, whatever form it takes; and then passionately, wholeheartedly just get about doing it. Amen!

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank you today, for the great and mighty truths of the foundational doctrines of Christ. We thank you Lord for all that you have taught us, as we've done this series. Those of you who are listening or reading this online - you're just looking at: maybe you don't know Jesus Christ, but you've already been struck by what I've said. I'd love you just to follow me in a very simple prayer...

“Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I turn away from all sin. I turn to you, the living God. Jesus, I give you my life today. I declare before heaven and earth, you are my saviour and my Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

May the Spirit of God just touch you where you're watching, minister His love and peace into your life right now; and may your life become productive in serving God.

Father, we just thank you for this great church. Thank you Lord for the opportunities you've given us over many years, to touch the nations of the earth, to be productive, so productive in so many ways.

Father, I pray that from this people many will rise up, be productive in their homes, their families, their schools and the community, in business - wherever God, you have designed and directed them to serve. Let them be incredibly productive, incredibly fruitful.

Father, I just pray that you'll continue to bless us as a church in every way, that we would be fruitful in extending your kingdom. Lord, we just give you the honour today.

It is incredibly sobering to us, to know: not only do you love us deeply; but that we will also give account for our lives. So Lord, we live our life, and choose today, to turn to you with a humble heart, and ask you to forgive us where we've fallen short, and to empower us to hear, see and do all you've called us to do. And everyone said: Amen. God bless you.

It's been a great series - trust you go over the scriptures I gave you today and have a good think about them. God bless you. Have a fantastic day.

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

1. Introduction
Heb.6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation …”
Eternal Judgement is a key foundation in the life of believer.
Judge = to separate, to distinguish, to see through.
Current Judgements – these occur in time:
(i) Principle of Sowing and Reaping – Gal.6:7-9
(ii) God brings discipline to our life – Heb.:2:5-11
(iii) God’s direct intervention in History e.g.
Sodom and Gomorrah
Noah
Anananas and Sophirra
Eternal Judgement – judgement awaiting every person in eternity.
- Heb:9:27 It is appointed for men to die once and after this the judgement.
- Eph.2:10 created in Christ unto good works.

2. Accountability for our Actions is Foundational to the Kingdom of God
(i) All of us shall give account of our Lives
Rom.14:10 “We shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ … each of us shall
give account of himself to God”.
No person is exempt - all of us shall give account.
Judgement Seat = “Bema” = rostrum, place a person was sent for trial and called to account.
Place of judgement used by Roman Empire – Acts 25:10

(ii) What will be judged in our works
2 Cor.5:9-10 “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad”.
The issue to be judged is how we have behaved.
Every act good and bad is brought to the light.
Every act has some value or influence.
Bad = 5337 = phantos = worthless, no value.

(iii) The Purpose of this Judgement is Reward
2 Cor 5:10 “…each one may receive the things done”
The Judgement Seat is to determine what we receive.
The believer in Christ will not be condemned.
- Jn3:18 “He that believe in my …not condemned”
- Jn 5:24 “He that hears and believes – shall not come into judgement”
The believer in Christ is judged for purpose of Reward.

(iv) Believers will be Rewarded or Suffer Loss
1 Cor.3:8 Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labour”
v14 work endures judgement – receive reward.
v15 Work not endure judgement – suffer loss but saved.
The Bible repeatedly teaches that salvation is free but that Servants of God are rewarded for the works they have done – their service for Christ.

(v) Eternal Judgement is a Key Foundation
Since all of us will give an account of our lives we are motivated to:
- Centre our life on eternal values.
- Be productive and fruitful in serving Christ
- Remember our life on earth is a preparation for eternity.
- Continue to grow in our relationship with Christ.
- Love people in every situation.

3. How Will we be Judged?
There are several principles that God will use to evaluate our lives. Jesus message was about the Kingdom of God and entering that Kingdom.

(i) Quality – What sort of work?
1 Cor.3:9-15 “…test each ones work, what sort it is”
2 categories of works described.
Our works are tested by fire to discover the nature of them.
To discover the value of our works
- What was the motivation behind actions - Motives
- Did we listen to and obey the Word of God - Obedience
- Were they done in our own strength and ability - Power

(ii) Potential – did we fulfil our potential?
Mt.25:14-30 Parable of the talents – 1 talent – 15 years wages
Each was given according to ability – potential.
Each had opportunity to serve and be productive.
The 2x talent and 5x talent servant both were 100% productive.
They received the same commendation and reward.
Faithfulness is not assessed by what we have but how we use it – how productive.

(iii) Productivity – what quantity did we produce?
Lk.19:11-27 Parable of the Pounds – 3x months wages
Each was given the same amount to work with.
Each had opportunity to serve and be productive.
The King wanted to know how much every man gained by trade.
Each possessed equal ability.
Each was different in their faithfulness.
Faithful = productive.
The more productive servant received greater reward.
Rewards for serving Christ = extended opportunity in Kingdom.
Failure to make active use of talent/pound entrusted is considered : wicked.
Wicked = 4190 = having a negative, hurtful influence.
By God’s standard of wickedness is not just doing evil but failure to do good.
Mal.3:18 “He will discern between righteous and wicked, the one who serves God and the one who does not serve Him”
Outer Darkness = outside, outside the door
= Shade, shadow
Placed for a season of time outside the door in a shadow e.g.
- Mt.22:11-14 Wedding Feast
- Mt.25:1-13 Parable of Virgins – 5 wise entered supper.

(iv) Opportunity – How much opportunity did you have?
Mt.20-1-16 Labourers in the vineyard.
Labourers were employed to serve in the vineyard.
Each agreed to a reward for their labour.
The ones employed later in the day had less opportunity (time).
They received the same reward as the others.
God takes into account how much opportunity.

4. The Great White Throne Judgement
Rev.20:11-15 “They were judged, each one according to works”
A record of our life is recorded in a book – a scroll. It is written in detail; thoughts, motives, actions. Not just your actions but everything concerned with them:
- emotions, thoughts, motives, all displayed.
- The impact or ripple effect of your actions on others.

Book of Life – those who have received Christ.
- Not in book = eternal punishment

Books – your personal life story in detail.
- every sin repented of is blotted out, erased.
- Every aspect of a believers life is judged.

Kingdom – Levels of reward and levels of punishment.
Ps.139:23 “Search me oh God and know my heart today”
Titus 3:8-14.

Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding  

Sun 26 Oct 2008 AM « Back to Top

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Mike and Joy Connell, together with their daughter Josephine, share their story of reconciliation—testifying of how God can turn situations around when we obey Him.

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

I want to share with you two principles; then we're going to share a testimony about the goodness of God, the tremendous goodness of God in our lives - how God has just brought blessing. It's almost like fairytale stuff, you can hardly imagine that it could happen like this.

We want to share with you our testimony; and to highlight what we did that activated these principles - because God just doesn't move. God is always good, but His goodness is released as we position ourselves for things to happen. You actually have to make decisions to position yourself for God's blessing to come.

Positioning means: you take on an attitude; or you say words; or you do the right things; that make room for God to come and to touch your life.

The Bible says very clearly: we must believe that God is a good God; and we must believe that He will come and touch our lives.

We're going to share about is from our background, from our lives. Where we came from, an what happened to get us here; but we want to talk specifically about how God wonderfully came on a wedding that we took, the weekend before last.

The wedding that I took, was that of a daughter we adopted out before we were married; and for me to be able to take the wedding, to shape how the whole wedding service went, how the reception went - is absolutely unbelievable. To have even been there was a miracle; but to have had the ability and the privilege of being able to shape how it went, and make room for God to come, was even greater.

I want to first of all highlight the two principles; and then talk about how we activated these principles at various points in our life; and how God has been so faithful, and has given us a testimony that's just unbelievable.

With children being adopted out, the stories don't usually end as good as this one. This is just one out of the box, but it demonstrates that God is always good, so no matter how the story ends, God's goodness never changes.

For some people, finding their adoptive parents is very painful; and often it increases the pain that they experience. In our situation, it was exactly the opposite, and we want to share some of the background.

So here are the two principles:

1) James 4:6 – “God gives Grace to the Humble.

When the Bible talks about humility, it's talking about a ‘positioning of your heart’ - an attitude you take; and humility is not sort of grovelling stuff.

Humility means: I come up-front and agree with God about life; I agree with Him about my mistakes and failures; and don't try and cover them up or be defensive. It's really important.

Humility enables me to look at my life as God sees it - both the negatives; and the potential.

The Bible tells us: God will give an empowerment to those who humble themselves; so it means positioning yourself to come into agreement with God: 1) about your mistakes and failures - so you're open about them; 2) about what God says about you, and your life (if He says: “you're forgiven”, then you're forgiven). Humility means: I believe it and stand on it; and 3), it's about your positioning - what God has called you to do, and to be.

Humility can manifest itself by boldly and strongly standing up. To some people it looks like pride, but it isn't. It's actually I'm in agreement with God about who I am, and what I'm called to be, and do. So that's humility.

2) The second principle is: the Principle of Honour.

The Bible puts it negatively in Romans 1:21 – “When they knew God, they did not glorify Him, or give Him honour for who He is. Neither were they grateful to Him; then their minds become futile and darkened, and they moved away from God”

Principle: Whatever you respect and appreciate, will come towards you; whatever you disrespect, will move away from you.

Respect and honour and value will attract people into your life. Disrespect will cause them to pull away from you.

If you don't place value on money, it will soon depart from you. When you treat it with respect, and handle it well, it will come towards you. Life operates this way.

To ‘honour someone’ means: to give them appropriate recognition and place and value. It can be in: an attitude to them; our words; what we do. When we honour people, we place value on them, and we position ourselves so they are lifted up.

It's very important, if we're going to walk successfully and enjoy God's blessing, that we learn: the Principle of Humility; and the Principle of Honour.

There's three grounds upon which you honour people:

1) You Honour them because of: what they have done. If someone does something notable, you should honour it, and value it, and appreciate it.

2) You honour a person's character - the kind of person they are. If someone is courageous, they may never stand out from the crowd, but in a moment of pressure they were courageous. You honour that.

3) We're called to recognise the Position and Rank that people have in our life; to value and esteem them, just because they have their position. That's why the Bible says: “Honour your parents - that it may go well with you”. You say: you don't know what my parents were like... It doesn't matter; you honour them because: that's the positioning that God has given them in your life; and if you do it, you'll come into blessing.

Two principles: Humility - coming into agreement with God about life, and what He says about us, and standing up and believing that what He says is true; and Honour - being willing to give value, and appropriate respect, for people. You'll find it will always release the grace of God.

Having said that; we want to talk and share about how these principles were applied in our life - in relationship to: what happened before we were married; and then how God has worked this out in our lives since then.

[Joy Connell] There's a verse I'd like to share, that the Lord drew to my attention this week. It talked about “preparing the way for the Lord, make straight in the desert”. It was a very ‘desert’ place for many years - a highway for our God - because God wants to come in to desert places.

It said: “Every Valley shall be exalted”. It was certainly a very ‘valley’ time for me - having a child in secret, and releasing it for adoption - a very, very low place. But it said: “Every valley shall be Exalted”. To be there on her wedding was a very high place - amazing.

It said: “Every mountain shall be brought down low”. It was a huge mountain for me, to face my parents at the time of pregnancy. It was just a mountain I couldn't cross. To have all my family there last Saturday, standing with us, was huge.

It said: “The crooked places will be made straight, rough places will be made smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed”. We saw the glory of the Lord revealed.

“and all flesh shall see it together”. Everybody there in wedding place saw the glory of the Lord. They didn't know it was the glory of the Lord, but it was.

He said: “The mouth of the Lord has spoken”; because God gave us promises. What He decrees and declares - it does take place.

I believe it's a time for prophetic decrees over many of your mountains. I know many of you are facing mountains, but God can bring them down - and when He does it it's just absolutely amazing.

If you go right back to the beginning of the Bible, when Adam sinned – “through fear he hid himself”. At the time after we'd been dating for about seven years and there was just huge conflicts. The fear - I just took the same response that Adam and Eve did. They just hid themselves with secrecy; and think: this is a way of coping.

I also had inner vows - things you've told yourself in the past, which have become very binding; then, when you face a crisis, you operate out of these things that have been programmed inside you. Even though they're not the best way, it's the way that you do, because of things you've told yourself that you will do.

I was never going to “trap anybody into marrying me”, or go through the shame of the pregnancies and marriages I saw, in the church I was in.

These inner vows I'd made just said: “there’s no way I'm going to go there”; but what happens is: they're strong controls, and they actually build walls around your heart; but that was in place at that time in my life.

Also, my own way of coping with a crisis... Mike was saying humility is “acknowledging God's way”; but if you don't turn to God, you have all sorts of ‘great ways’ of coping with life.

The enemy will also put a few good ideas in too, but when you listen to those, and make your own way of coping - basically there's immediate short-term relief. You protect yourself, but all these ways lead to great isolation and pain, further damage, and huge bondage. But that was what it was like, way back in 1969.

[Mike Connell] Prior to us getting married, I wasn't a Christian, and did not know the Lord. When Joy got pregnant, we made a decision that we'd adopt our girl out - a very bad choice, very bad decision. It was just made in the pressure of: inability to stand up and be courageous.

Having made one mistake, we then coupled it up with a second mistake. When you cover things over, you never, ever prosper (the Bible says); and so for years, we endured tremendous grief and pain.

There wasn't a year went by, that we didn't remember our daughter, and didn't pray for her, and wonder what was happening to her. You just can't get over these things; they're just part of your life.

But the day that we got married, I made a decision to receive Jesus Christ into my life; and asked the Lord to become part of our lives. Then I went before Him and totally repented, and came into agreement with what He said, about what I had done: the failure to be responsible; the failure to actually stand up and be courageous for Joy's sake; the rejection of a child, and all that would come upon her as a result of that.

I made a vow before the Lord that day, coming out of repentance (some vows are very good to make).

I said: “No matter where we are in our lives, I know there is a day that You will bring this daughter back to us, because of who You are. It's got nothing to do with our rights, because we gave our rights up; but because God is good, You will bring her back”.

And I knew in my heart, I had a faith, that she would be restored; so when I repented, I said to the Lord then: “the day You bring her back, no matter what position, what standing I have in life - I will be open and transparent about who she is, and her place in our lives. We will give her the acceptance, and love, and welcome that we withheld from her, when we sinned.

That's what humility looks like. You actually turn around completely, and come into agreement with God about what needs to happen.

Some years later we came here. The Lord was speaking to us about issues in our life, and we ran a wedding renewal or a marriage renewal service.

[Joy Connell] The church was still quite small, but when we got married, the only neutral place we could get married was the nurse's chapel! We had: a Catholic priest; and an Anglican minister (who was married to a Brethren, and understood my side of things). It was just amazing. God came through.

It just seemed totally impossible to get a marriage which both families would accept; but Mike was flatting with some guys who had left the seminary training to be Catholic priests. One of them broke his leg, and was in Wellington Hospital, and fell in love with a Presbyterian nurse - and he created a precedent for us. He got special permission from the bishop (or whoever it was) - and he was able to get married.

So we just followed in his wake, and God made a way, which just seemed totally impossible. But we realised that a lot of things had changed from when we got married. We were very broken, barely saved, finding a way back to God; and we realised that there's others in the church at that time that were like us. They'd come to the Lord, things had totally changed for them; and they were ready to make a fresh renewal of their marriage vows, so we got about 12 couples... We met for about three weeks, and we talked about the foundation of our marriage; and prepared ourselves to go through this ceremony again - which was for me the very first time I actually lifted the cover off my big secret.

I hadn't even told my parents about this daughter; but with this small group, we talked about our background, and we decided: this is the time to bring out our baggage. Maybe we should at that time write to welfare and see if we could reconnect with our daughter we lost?

You know how good God is? Our daughter's mother Carol decided it was our daughter's right to know her heritage, and she wrote, and those letters had landed the same day at welfare. As a result of interest on both sides, they gave us information, and we started to make contact.

For me it was incredibly difficult; when you've covered something, and lived with denial; to face the reality - I couldn't cope with even a photograph of her.

I meant to have something shut away, and behind a big stone; and God says: “roll away the stone” - you don't want to go there. I mean its death there. It's ugly there. It's painful there; but when you actually roll it away, and look at a photograph, and think: actually this is a person.

Her name was Josephine. I thought: that's kind of a bit of a religious name; and the Lord reminded me about how Joseph was: separated from all his brethren; and came back and had a reunion.

It was quite a big thing to actually face reality, when you've been living in denial for 18 years; but we had to really roll away the stone, remove the covering. Then you feel incredibly vulnerable and fragile, and dependent on God.

That's actually just what He wants us to do, when we let go whatever we hid behind. They had fig leaves in Genesis; but they had to actually take those fig leaves off, to receive the covering of skin; and the provision of what Jesus Christ had done on the cross. For me that was quite a vulnerable stage too.

[Mike Connell] So again the issue of humility came in. We had to face the issues in our personal life. We put matters right with one another, and realised that all our lives there'd been this deep hurt. To come and actually admit it... the Lord spoke to me, and clearly He said: you need to put this matter right.

I had to put it right with Joy; I had to go to her father, and put it right with her father. We had to actually come clean about what we had done, which was wrong; and when you do that, when you position yourself the way God says - He provides blessing for you. He provides grace.

[Joy Connell] Yeah, I remember my parents - I invited them up. I said: “there's something I want to talk to you about...” I took the two of them out to the Old Flame, which is the best restaurant I could think of, and sat them down.

I just had to deeply apologise for my secrecy, what I'd hidden from them; and asked their forgiveness for what we had covered at that time, because...

[Mike Connell] That's actually honouring them, by putting right what was wrong. Where there'd been dishonour, there had to be honour restored - and that made such a difference.

[Joy Connell] Then we wrote to Josephine, and we apologised to her. We both apologised for the rejection, and the effect it had on her life; and asked her forgiveness.

Then we decided to make her very welcome. We invited her to come and stay - and that again was a miracle. She was half way through dentistry school. She's a Dentist in Whakatane, and at that stage, she was half way through dentistry training in Dunedin, and she was going back to do a summer school paper; so we invited her to stay after that paper.

Of course, when you pastor a church, and you've got six children that look a bit like you, you can't just turn up with another one the next Sunday...

[Mike Connell] Looks like you...

[Joy Connell] ...without saying something to the church. But this church is amazing. We stood up, the Sunday before she arrived to stay, and shared our testimony. Some of you I know are still here - I remember some of your faces. At the end of the service, God was so good then, He just - I think everybody's closets were opened, and all the skeletons came out. God just moved, and brought quite a wave of tremendous healing. But also as a church family, you were tremendously responsive to us, and we invited her to arrive. She arrived right on Mike's 44th birthday.

[Mike Connell] What are the chances of that?

[Joy Connell] That was the day she said she was going to arrive.

[Mike Connell] She had no idea when my birthday was; but the day she chose to come was my birthday!

That week we had just an unbelievable time; and over the years since then, she's connected to us, come to know and love us. She cries every time she comes home, and has become quite bonded and connected to our family.

It was just amazing when, the young man that's asked her to marry him came, and he honoured me by asking me for permission. I had no right. You understand that when you give a child up for adoption - there are no rights; and in those days, there was also no contact - no way to make contact. It was closed.

When we gave the child up, and God spoke to me - I knew in my heart she was going to come back; but there was no possible way it could happen, because you never had any contact with them.

You couldn't get the contact; and then the law changed, and made this possible. She came back, and we were able to reconnect; and he asked me for permission to marry her - which was a great honour to me.

She also honoured me, and asked me to help with the service. She'd come to the weddings of our family - and had just got blown away; and she said: I don't know what it is - but what you've got I want.

I was in a position then (this is what's so amazing) - to shape a service, in a way that God could come into the service. I was in a position to help shape the reception; so that the things that needed to happen there, for God to come, were in place. We taught her about how to honour her parents, how to actually address them and speak to them - and the things she needed to say, as she exited from their care, and came in to start a new family.

[Joy Connell] That time, even though Mike had a chance to prepare her, for the wedding, and coach her how to honour her parents - which of course, immediately met with a burst of tears. Mike wasn’t as emotionally connected to them; but he listed all the ways in which they had come through for her - and how to honour them.

In the meantime, I was flying to Taiwan, and I was watching a movie on the plane about an adoption story, and I felt quite stirred after watching this movie; so I decided to write Josephine a letter.

It was coming up to her wedding, and I honoured her (in a letter) for her courage; and for the steps she was making; for the choice that I regretted, but the choices that I've made since, which were great choices, like: marrying Mike; giving our hearts to the Lord; building our lives on Him - and just encouraging her in those responses.

But I forgot to post this letter; so when I was in Taiwan, at the hotel, I got some hotel paper, and posted the letter - stuck it in the counter at the hotel.

That letter arrived the day of our women's conference - when she was having a pamper day (ahead of the wedding). She'd invited me to join her for a pamper day, but I couldn't make it (because we had our women's conference), but as she was leaving to go on that pamper day, my letter was in the mail. She felt I was with her.

[Mike Connell] We went to the wedding. The wedding practice was very, very difficult. You have to come to face things.

One of the things about walking with the Lord, is that He never spares us from the consequences of bad choices.

One of the things about growing up, you have to learn that bad choices have bad consequences; and although God will forgive us, there's a ‘walking’ out of those consequences.

Of course for me, one of the biggest challenges was to on the day of the wedding - to have another man walk my daughter down the aisle. That was very, very hard. You'll see it - I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of it just in a moment. [See video attachment]

The night before, I was very distressed. We did the wedding practice, and went to have time with them - but there was no presence of God there! It was very awkward - just so uncomfortable, that after the practice, I just went to the beach - and just wept before the Lord.

I said: God, You've got to come and help us. This is just so difficult!

It looked like there was going to be no real Value and Honour. You know what Kiwis get like - that funny humour, that's kind of a putdown sort of a humour?

I so wanted God's value, and presence, to come into the place; but it just seemed like it was impossible for that to happen - so I went home. I was quite upset, the night we'd met with the family, and did the wedding practice; and I went home saying: God, You've got to help. You've got to show me how I can actually make a difference in this service tomorrow - and so we talked about it.

I would’ve spent probably a couple of hours, just waiting on God, to get something that was appropriate for that situation. It was an incredibly unusual feeling - we'll show photos through as we go, then you'll kind of catch the feel of it, as we do this.

It’s a most unusual feeling to have some ‘other man’ bringing my daughter down the aisle. It was quite challenging to deal with the emotions that went with that; but I had to face the consequences of choices I made years ago.

I knew that the Lord would provide grace; and what He did was: He showed me to speak on honour - to actually demonstrate honour; and to use honour to unlock that service.

So we had Kate and Andrew (our son-in-law, and daughter-in-law) put a song together - and as they began to sing - the atmosphere just began to change. It wasn't even a song they chose; but nevertheless, because of what's in their lives, the atmosphere began to shift and change - and the presence of God came into the place. You could feel the change; and of course everyone's looking at me: what's he going to say? What do you say? How much do you say?

We felt for her parents. Originally we had felt: perhaps just a couple of members of our family come; but Jo wanted everyone there, so we were kind of ‘very sensitive’ about this. But the Lord showed me exactly what to say.

[Joy Connell] The little boy ‘Alex’ is Josephine's little son.

[Mike Connell] That's her father and mother; and that's them giving our daughter in marriage to Steve.

I felt the Lord show me to actually honour the parents - because they would be feeling uncomfortable. And humility is ‘knowing your position’, and adopting the ‘right position’. Sometimes we can be in charge; but sometimes you actually have to be the servant.

You've got to see how God has positioned you; and choose to position yourself in that way. I actually spent time, and honoured them; spoke directly to them, honoured them.

It was a very difficult choice for them, to take home a baby that had...

[Joy Connell] Congenital hip.

Amazing surprise; this mother claimed to be an atheist, but she looked at our baby, and said: I just ‘knew’ she was going to be alright - and at 10 months, she got up and walked!

[Mike Connell] No one wanted her, in the hospital - which we had no idea about.

Her own (adoptive) mother was resistant to her having this baby, because she thought she might be a cripple; but she felt in her heart that she should have the baby. So I honoured her for choosing to welcome Josephine into their lives.

We honoured them for the education, and family life they'd made. We honoured them for encouraging her to seek us out - knowing that this would be quite a difficult thing for them. And we honoured them then for...

[Joy Connell] Opening their home to us.

[Mike Connell] ...welcoming us into their home to meet with them and have time with them.

[Joy Connell] It's funny, the first time they met us (soon after we met Josephine), we went right to the bottom of the South Island; two sets of parents, and Josephine, having a meal together - it was big of them to invite us into their home. But what amused me: half way through the meal, the mother was just pouring out her heart, and her feelings, and emotions... and she suddenly said: hey, but you're complete strangers! I don't know why I'm doing this!

[Mike Connell] So what I did was honour them; honoured her brothers, our own family for coming and being with us, and supporting us. The whole family - everyone turned up - there wasn't anyone left out.

Everyone turned up; and then I honoured Steve, for the way he had conducted himself in approaching me; and Josephine, for her courage in actually being willing to seek us out; and then to make us welcome in her life and heart.

I indicated very clearly: it was not ‘by right’ we were there; it was by privilege - and by her choice, the goodness of her choice.

I shared a message for them that “wisdom builds the house”. By wisdom you build a marriage; by wisdom you build in various ways - you can build relationships; business; and ministries.

But wisdom is making choices from God's perspective - and I acknowledged that we'd made a bad choice. We'd lived to regret it; but now we were glad that God had made a way for this day to happen. It was like a miracle that we could be there, involved like that, on that day.

[Joy Connell] Its one thing, when God restores things - He's got such a big heart; there's just one other thing...

On the journey, before we had the wedding day, Mike and I went to Nigeria to celebrate - I think it was our 25 year wedding anniversary. But the prophet in Nigeria put his bony finger in my face - and read my mail!

One thing he brought out was: in God's eyes, Josephine had been like an orphan. I mean, if I could have selected her home... the home she was great. We were both teachers; they were both teachers. She was brought up in the country - had her own pet lambs and calves, and had a wonderful upbringing!

The only thing missing was the God element. She was totally foreign from the things of God; so in God's eyes she was an ‘orphan’ to His family. I thought: wow - God, You have a heart for people that are orphaned from Your things. It's better to have nothing in the natural, but to have Jesus, who is everything; than to have everything - and not have Jesus.

So that incident really made me feel deeply, and agree with God about orphans, and His heart for orphans - and our own passion for orphans was really birthed out of that. I'm just so excited that many people here support orphans - because God is on their side!

And He was grieved, that she was orphaned from the things of God.

[Mike Connell] When it came time for the reception, we wondered how that would go. When we went in - we noticed that Jo had done an interesting thing.

She sat at the main table; and she'd positioned the table with the two parents right in front of her - so they were given equal positioning. Quite amazing! I mean you can't make that happen. Then she stood up, and honoured her natural family (her adoptive family); and then when she'd honoured them, and appreciated them - she honoured us.

It was incredibly heart-touching; but when you honour people, it unlocks something. Look at a couple more pictures there, very happy couple.

What happened then was, her mother had said: she was ‘not going to say anything’; and then suddenly she said: “I want to say something.”

Understand that honour: opens the way for people to come near; and also brings God near. When you honour people, God's presence somehow, sometimes... it just seems to come in. So she stood up and what she said just stunned us.

[Joy Connell] Yes. The night before it was so awkward! I mean, she didn't kind of even want to look at me, or acknowledge me - she just got busy, busy, busy, busy...

[Mike Connell] It was obviously painful.

[Joy Connell] After she'd been honoured at the service, it just kind of disarms people. After Josephine had honoured her, the mother stood and she - this person who wasn't going to speak, she was so beautiful.

She spoke from her heart; and I don't think Josephine had ever heard her speak from her heart; but she honoured each of her children. Three of them are adopted; and they have one of their own - how precious each of them was.

She honoured Josephine, for the tremendous joy she'd brought into their life, and all the wonderful experiences they had. Then what blew me away... (weeping)

[Mike Connell] She said that each year, when they had Christmas, and had her birthday; that they remembered the family that had lost her, and were deeply grateful that: our loss was their gain.

Of course that's very - you can imagine how we felt about that; because every year we'd remembered: we'd lost a daughter. It was quite heart-touching, for both of us, for her to say that. We both stood and shared; and I just shared that: there hadn't been a year go by that we hadn't thought of our daughter, and prayed for her - and that it was a great loss.

We just appreciated Josephine for her willingness to allow us to come back into her life; so it was quite - it was unbelievably heart-touching. You could hear sobs down the back. I didn't even dare look around to see who's - there are tears everywhere! I didn't even dare look around, and see who's sobbing down the back; because we realised that right through the whole of the group, there were broken marriages. There were adopted people, there were people who'd lost children, there were blended families, there were all kinds of things there; and when people are in the presence of honour, it unlocks their heart.

[Joy Connell] It makes way for the Lord to come in and...

[Mike Connell] It makes way for God to do things.

[Joy Connell] ...it's a powerful thing to experience: that honour does make way for the Lord to come.

Josephine didn't want us to say too much at the reception, if her parents didn't say too much, so we were kind of positioning ourselves. But when both her mother and father spoke quite well, and quite long, she gave us an opportunity to speak; and again, we wouldn't want to say too much, but just wanted to honour her - for how beautiful she looked; and what she'd done to open her heart for our family.

Steve - the most amazing thing about her fiancée; well two things. First of all, the very first time she visited us in our church, she went back to her flat. While she was away, one of her flatmates got baptised in the Holy Ghost. She said: I know what you're on about - I've been to my birth dad's church - and I know what you're on about!

The second thing was, she had a few other relationships... and then when Steve came on the scene, she's like: I knew you'd like this one - because one day, Steve was prayed for by somebody like Mike - planted down on the ground for 20 minutes with a back injury, and came up totally healed! So he had a real awareness of the power of God. She said: I knew you’d like this one!

But the week before the wedding - the Saturday before the wedding - he was 28 metres below the sea, and out of air. He had to shoot up to the surface; he got the bends, and was flown in a decompression unit - and got released two days before the wedding!

I'm just so grateful for Steve - that he was with us, that God had kept him. I wonder if it was a demonic assignment actually, when things like that are so difficult. God's got a great purpose and destiny for people's lives and I believe that's still being unfolded.

But I honoured him for what he'd done; and again said: it was not by rights - it was a significant event to be a part of, but we really had no rights; just that God is so incredibly good, the grace of God, and the goodness of God. So we both just had a chance again just to acknowledge God, and acknowledge and honour which again was part of the process.

[Mike Connell] We'll just finish with a couple of things, but what was amazing was the impact on people. There were lots of things I won't disclose, because they were just very, very precious; I just feel it wouldn't be appropriate to share them.

But there was a couple of things that were really thrilling.... One was that Jo has a son called Alex, who's seven years old; and prior to the wedding, he had been talking to Steven. Steven asked him: “Do you want me to be your step dad?” He said: “No - I've got a dad - I don't need a step dad. I'll just call you Steve”.

But when we'd had this time, and the presence of God was touching people, he said: “why are people crying?” Jo said: when people say words from their heart - they feel something; and he said: “I want to say something”.

So he took the microphone - this is a seven year old - and then he honoured his mother for being so beautiful, and so good for him. Then he honoured Steve; and he said: Steve, I'd like you to be my step-dad. I'd like you to have that place in my life. Well...

[Joy Connell] He sat down and burst into tears.

[Mike Connell] He sat down and burst into tears; and we're thinking (sob) you know - so there were many things that happened like that.

There was one other thing that was notable for me. Although it had been so awkward prior to the wedding; after the wedding, her mother came up and said: thank you for coaching her in how to put on such a great event. I just thanked her for acknowledging it, and so on; but really, what we had done: we'd coached her in the principle of honour.

As she did it, all the way through, the presence of God came, and made this even just an extraordinary event. We are deeply grateful to the Lord - it's something we could never do.

We believed that He would bring her back. We believed that we'd be part of her life; but we never would have guessed that God does is more than enough, that God gave us more than we expected.

I want to encourage you all to consider those issues of: Humility; and Honour - they can unlock so much in our lives.

Closing Prayer

I know some of you will have been really deeply touched. Perhaps it's really touched your heart; and you're not a Christian, you don't know Jesus Christ; you haven't experienced for yourself yet the personal love of God for you.

Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, to everyone who personally invited Christ into their life, He gave them power to become a child of God; to have their sins forgiven, to have a new relationship with God, His Father; and to walk as part of a God family.

What a great thing for you to make that decision today. We made it - I had so many things wrong with my life before I came to Jesus Christ.

The goodness of the Lord is before us. Why don't you make that decision yourself?

If you're here today, and you don't know Jesus Christ; why not become a Christian? Receive the love of God, into your life. It's a personal choice to connect with God.

Perhaps you're disconnected from God. You've once had a relationship with the Lord; but because of disappointments, things not going like you thought - you've drawn back; and today you need to renew your relationship with the Lord. Just be honest, be humble.

Humility is: admitting my condition. You say: God, I need to come back to you today.

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Related Article written by: Dawn Seow (www.citynews.sg - 16 June 2012)

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

In 1962, Mike and Joy Connell were freshmen at a university when they met in school and fell in love. But because Connell was from a Catholic family and Joy from a strict Brethren background, their families were against their relationship.

“We were both the eldest in the family and we faced a lot of pressure from our families,” Joy recounted. “There was tremendous resistance between the Protestants and Catholics at that time, which caused strong religious opposition in both our families; so we kept breaking up and coming back.”

Six years later, they made a mistake and Joy found herself pregnant.

“I was in shock, fear and shame, thinking to myself: what do I do? We made a silly decision and that was to hide in secrecy and not tell our family. We were living away from home and so I managed to give birth to the baby without anyone knowing,” she said.

While Joy made a decision to bring the baby into the world, she decided not to keep her. “We gave her up for adoption. At that time in New Zealand, the law was such that if we gave up our baby (for adoption), we will never be able to see her again. The law restricted all access between the two families.”

Thankfully, God made a way for the young couple to eventually get married, as their parents felt they had been together for so long. Even though Joy felt like a backslidden Christian, there were people who knew about their problems and were praying for them. “And one day I did feel the Lord said he (Connell) has a heart after God and it was okay to marry,” Joy said. “I felt a release.”

To pacify both families, the couple decided on a joint service by a Catholic priest and an Anglican minister. “On the day I got married I gave my life to Jesus; I realized that we will never make our lives work unless Jesus was there. So I made a commitment to Christ at the service just before we got married,” said Connell.

This is the love story of Mike and Joy Connell, now the senior pastors of Bay City Outreach Center in Hastings, New Zealand. Their names are not unfamiliar at City Harvest Church. Connell is an internationally recognized teacher of the Word who moves powerfully in the prophetic, deliverance and inner healing gifts. His ministry has brought great healing to the hurt and broken-hearted.

While he was at CHC to minister over the weekend of Jun. 2 and 3, his family shared with City News the story of how he and Joy came to reconcile with the firstborn they gave up for adoption.

Reconciliation Begins with Healing

“After coming to the Lord, I realized how wrong I was (to give the baby up for adoption). I believed in my heart that the Lord will make a way for her (the baby girl) to come back, even though the law said otherwise. So I came into deep repentance, and made a commitment that when she came back in our lives, whatever I was doing, I would make it public and be completely open with everyone, because the sin was in the hiding, and repentance meant doing the exact opposite.

Eight years after they were married, the Connells were called to start a Christian school in the same year they started pastoring a church. As life moved on, they never talked about how the trauma of what happened affected both of them.

“We were working with a few married couples at one time and decided to have a marriage renewal service, looking at the foundations and helping these couples make a fresh commitment towards each other,” Joy shared. “And that was the first time we look at the foundations of our own lives and we realized how much damage had been done in terms of the grief and pain because of what happened. We resolved our hurts and shortly after, the laws (that restricts parents from meeting their children after giving them up for adoption) changed! God knew that the laws were changing and He got us ready for the change.”

The Connells wrote a letter to the social welfare. Interestingly, the mother who adopted their baby wrote them a letter as well, almost at the same time, to ask for information.

Josephine Brown, Connell’s daughter, was already 18 at that time, and was finishing her first year at university. Normally, the welfare services would not let them make contact until the child was 21 years old, but because there was interest on both sides, they allowed contact to be made.

“When I was born, I had a splint and had to be in bed for 10 weeks,” Josephine shared. “When my parents came to adopt me, the doctors couldn’t tell if I would develop some kind of disability. When they told their parents they wanted to adopt me, their parents were quite resistant.”

Unlike other adopted children, Josephine had always known that she was adopted. “It was not good or bad, just facts I knew. But as a child I always wondered who I was. In New Zealand, there are people who came from so many backgrounds, it’s like people have traveled here from England, Ireland or Wales so people always discussed if they are Irish-half or English-half and I never knew who I was.”

When Josephine found out that her mother had received a letter from the social welfare that her biological parents have six more children, questions started reeling in her mind: who were they? What do they looked like? Do they look like me? “It’s insane, when you don’t have information, you just fill in with your imagination.”

Eventually, Josephine flew up to meet the Connells after her exams that year. She arrived in town on Connell’s birthday.

“The week before she came, we openly told the church our story and everything came to light. After that, many of those who had problems sharing their past brought their secrets into the light as well,” said Joy.

As Connell came clean with his family’s past, God brought a lesson to his mind. “This was what the Lord asked me after we told the church, ‘You know what would happen if you had not shared with your church?’ I said, ‘No, I haven’t thought about that,’ to which God said, ‘If you had kept this in secret, it would have been a betrayal of trust for all under your leadership once they found out the truth.’”

Humility and Giving Honor

Over the years, the Connell family maintained contact with Josephine. She did not grow up in a Christian family but whenever she visited them, she would go to church with them.

While she felt moved by the presence of God at church, becoming a Christian was a struggle with the issue of loyalty for Josephine. “I grew up always wanting to please my parents, and I didn’t want the decision (to believe in God) to please other people; I wanted it to be for myself. So it took a long time to come to that point of not worrying about what my parents thought as well as what Mike and Joy thought.”

The change came when Josephine met her future husband Steve Brown, who shared his testimony with her about being healed at a church service. “I thought to myself, this is a guy who can help me grow spiritually. It was so important to me because if I got together with the wrong guy, it would be harder (to become a Christian).”

Their wedding in October 2008 was the first time Josephine’s biological and adopted family met. “I wanted my dad to walk me down the aisle and Mike to take the service.”

But things did not turn out as well as everyone hoped. Connell could still remember the tension he felt in the air at the initial meeting. “I said to God, ‘Help! You have to help me solve this!’ And I didn’t actually get an answer until the morning of the wedding day itself. The Lord showed me how to approach it with the principle of honor.

“There was the uncertainty of her siblings and her parents, and everyone was thinking: what’s he going to say, and I’m thinking: what am I going to say?

So the Lord showed me to start by placing honor on Josephine and her parents, because when you humble yourself and honor people, their hearts will be softened. I spoke words of value to her parents, her brothers, and to Josephine and Steve. The presence of God came and I felt the tension just lift. Hearts were softened and you could feel the love in the place. It was what I asked God for: all the walls were broke down and people just cried. It was so good.

At the reception, her mother stood up to speak and people just started to weep. She had faced her own conflicts because of her mother’s objection to her adopting Josephine, but deep down in her heart, she knew that this baby would be ok.”

Josephine and Steve were baptized by Connell at their home on Easter Sunday last year. “We are now putting down our roots and learning how to pray and walk with God,” Josephine said with a smile.

It is inevitable that people make mistakes, but as this story has shown, God is always there to turn mourning into dancing and sorrows into joy.

Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

The church needs to have a message of hope. The gospel is a message of hope to people. It's about God's love for us, and his willingness to help us. And so as Christians, no matter what is happening around us, we need to understand we have a message to help people. That Jesus Christ came to help people.

I'm reminded of an important scripture where it says: Jesus did not come to condemn people, but to save them; to rescue people out of the problems created by sin. So Jesus loves people, and he has no condemnation for us. No matter what has happened in your life, the heart of God is to reach into you, and love you, and restore you.

And so as believers, we should not be afraid of the issues in our nation, but should learn and understand them, and learn how to minister to people. We should not have areas we can't talk about. Rather, we should be able to talk about any issue; and come with a spirit of love, a spirit of hope, and with comfort for people.

I want to do this today – I want to share with you something that will be very deeply touching for many people. I haven't shared this message before, but God has spoken into my heart recently about this, and I wrestled somewhat last night and this morning. I really wanted to preach something else! But, I always feel that if you listen to God, he has something in mind for us. And this message may directly affect you, or it may indirectly affect you. And I just hope you will have an open heart and a loving spirit. Because we have prayed for people, and seen God bring tremendous breakthroughs.

Let's just have a look at Psalm 127:3. We've come here many times, and we've shared our story, most of you would know we have a big family with 7 children, and 21 grandchildren, and we've learnt a lot of things on the way. We also have 2 other children, but they're in heaven. So I want to talk today about abortion and miscarriage.

I want to offer hope for you. We want people here who don't know Jesus, to realize God loves you, and desires to help you; wants to break the power of sin in your life. After that I'd like to pray for 3 groups of people together. We'll pray for you together, because we don't want to embarrass you. We just want there to be a spirit of love, and the power of God to help you. I want to pray for people who've had an abortion, or perhaps you've been connected to someone who has. For people who've had a miscarriage; or for people who are barren, and are hoping for a child. We're not going to ask you at all what the nature of your problem is. We just want you to feel free to come and believe that God will help you.

So in Psalm 127:3, it says: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward”. So children are a heritage. It's an inheritance, something God gives to us. There's a part of every person that is a spirit being. The spirit comes from God. The Bible says: God is a Spirit. So when human beings come together, and create a life, they are partnering with God; and God puts a spirit into the child. The child becomes a living being, with an eternal destiny. God's desire is that the child shares his destiny with him. God's desire is for many children. This is the heart of God - many children. So God plans to reach out into this earth to help people - that's God's heart.

So when we're born into this world, we're born separate from God, because of sin. God's desire is to come to us, forgive our sins, put the Spirit in our lives, and give us an eternal destiny with him. This starts by responding to Christ.

I read in the paper just 3 days ago, it's a news story from China. It took place in a province called Weifang city, and there was a young couple. They went to bed one evening, they had one child, and they were expecting a second child. In the early hours of one morning, the police burst into their home. They held down the husband, and they dragged the wife out of the home, and took her to a hospital.

The panic-stricken husband tried every way to find out where his wife had gone. But the authorities refused to tell him. It took him 6 hours to find out where his wife was. They had threatened the wife, because she already 6 months pregnant - threatened to put her husband in prison. Then they injected her, and when he got to his wife, she was in the process of miscarrying.

What touched me very deeply was that both of them suffered great grief. They were grieving over the loss of their child, and there's no one to comfort them. My heart goes out to them, and I'll tell you why in a moment. I feel quite deeply touched by that story. I'll share to you a couple of personal testimonies, and then we'll open up the word of God. I want to offer hope to people today.

Some years ago, my wife went through two miscarriages. As a man, I didn't understand at that time what it meant to a woman, to miscarry. We were involved in ministry; we had many pressures on us - we already had 5 other children. When the two miscarriages came, my wife never complained. She had the miscarriages, went to hospital, and then we carried on with our life, and I didn't think about it much at all.

We had another two children - Peter and Sarah. Some years later, I was in another church ministry, and I was praying for a lady, and asked her: what is the problem? She'd had a miscarriage, and as I prayed, she began to weep; and I felt this incredible grief - I began to cry with her. I thought: that's very strange - I must be feeling the love of God.

Then on the same day, I went to another church; and the second time, the same thing happened. I prayed for a woman who'd suffered a miscarriage, and I had this incredible grief. When you feel something, you need to ask yourself: what am I feeling; and why do I feel it? So I went home and began to pray, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: you are grieving not because of her, but because of your own loss. He said: you've lost two children – a boy and a girl, and you've never stopped to grieve. You've never even admitted you've lost a child.

So I began to grieve, and the Lord showed me what to do. I went home to my wife, and I said to her: God's been speaking to me about our two miscarriages. Joy said: “Well God's been speaking to me too - I've been journaling about this. We had a boy and a girl; and I've given them names: Timothy and Catherine.”

I said: the Lord has shown me something we need to do for our family. So we had a family meal, like we always do, and Joy put two beautiful orchids on the table. Then we had our meal, and we shared with the children. I said: “You know that we have seven children in our family. Well actually, there are nine - there are another two in heaven”.

An interesting thing happened - the two children who came after the miscarriages, both began to weep, and they were really deep sobs. I realised that they had picked up a grief in their spirit; even though in their mind, they did not know we had lost two children. There was grief that my wife carried; and they knew in their spirit that they had lost a brother and a sister, and there was a grief in their heart. The spirit of grief had come around them.

So the grief my wife carried over her loss, was transferred to the next two children. So we laid our hands on them and prayed for them. For the other children, this wasn't an issue at all - it was just the two following the miscarriage. This opened our eyes, that a child in the womb can feel the feelings and the grief of the mother. That when a child is miscarried, and the mother feels the grief - if the grief isn't resolved, then the next children pick up the grief. That was quite a revelation to us.

We did get a tremendous insight: that when you've lost children to a miscarriage, it's important to identify who they are. Not just some ‘thing' we've lost. For me, it was like my wife lost something - like a tooth. Painful; but it's just something that happens. I didn't get a hold in my heart that I've lost a child; that as a father, one of my children had been taken away.

So I realised that when there are miscarriages, and also when there are abortions - there's a real grief left. One of the ways of processing the grief, I'll tell you a bit more about it later, is to identify what each child is; and to give them a name; and to release them to the Lord. Then it's not just some “thing” that happened, some “thing” I lost - some piece of tissue. It's actually a real living spirit being, whose body never developed, whose house did not last, and they had to leave. My wife put it this way, so beautifully: “It's a rose that budded, but never bloomed”. So over the years, we've prayed for many people, and helped them in this area.

Now, here's the second part of the testimony: earlier on this year I was in Singapore, and as I was in Singapore, I was teaching about encounters with God. We had a worship team, and we were ministering just to the worship team, to help them have encounters with God.

Now previously to this, the two children we had who had suffered grief, one day after church, said this to us - each independently. They said: we saw into heaven today in the meeting. We saw our brother and sister - and each of them saw that. It's like God opened heaven for them, and they saw the brother and sister they'd lost. Each of them saw the exact same thing, independently of each other; and they were really excited, and were able to describe them!

I must admit - I was a bit jealous; but this year, I was teaching on how to have encounters with God. So I taught people how to focus on Jesus, allow your imagination to see him as the word of God describes him, and begin to reach out in your heart to him. In other words, I was meditating on Jesus. All these other young people were having encounters with God; and I just felt that instead of leading the meeting, I should press in myself.

So I began to meditate on Jesus - I wasn't thinking about anything else. Suddenly, I became in the Spirit; and instead of seeing Jesus, the Holy Spirit revealed to me two people: a young man, and a young woman. It was a shock to me - I didn't expect to see that. They both spoke to me, and said: “Hello Dad”. I was just shocked! They said: “We've got so many things to tell you, about what happens in heaven”. Then I became aware of Jesus standing next to me - He was carrying a little baby in his arms. I realised that child was the grandchild we miscarried in December. Then suddenly I saw another little child, and he said: “hello Granddad”. I could recognise the facial features, and knew which of my children had lost this child.

My attention came around to my son and daughter, and I began to look at them; Jesus was right next to me. They began to talk to me, and said: we want to show you something. Suddenly my eyes opened up. I could see this huge immense vast area - full of children. They were all of different ages; from babies to a little bit older. There were so many that I couldn't count them – vast numbers. They said: these are children that have been miscarried or aborted; there's a special place in heaven for each of them, where angels look after them, and they're educated and grow up.

I realised then, that the size of my grandchild was about the proper age for the one I'd lost. I realised the age of my children were about the right age for when we lost them. As I looked around, at all of these children who had been miscarried or aborted; I realised that God was showing me something else. The ones He was showing me were all Chinese. I was quite shocked!

Then Jesus spoke to me, He had absolutely no condemnation towards anyone at all, I could just feel His love. This is what He said: “Every one of them has a mother, who is grieving over their child, and I want to bring healing to those mothers.” He didn't say anything about what they'd done. He just said: “I love them, and want to help them, because they're grieving”. He said: I want you to begin to study and prepare in this area. I want you to put some materials on DVD, and speak in China. My heart was deeply touched, not just from seeing all the children, but feeling the grief of the mothers. I could feel the heart of Jesus - His immense grief.

Recently we were up in China, and someone came to me privately. I couldn't believe it - they said they'd had an abortion. “Can you help me”, they said. God dramatically ministered and brought healing to this couple. It was like each place I went to after that, there would always be someone who'd come and ask us if we could pray for them.

So I felt I'd share some things about this here – have to start somewhere. I want to share some things from scripture - some basic keys we've learnt that could help. I want to establish that from God's point of view, a child is a living person, with a destiny - even if they're still in the womb. Sometimes people think that, because the child is in the womb: 1) it doesn't understand anything; and 2) that it's not a person - it's just a ‘thing', and often inconvenient.

I want to show you several scriptures quickly, to show you God's point of view. In Judges 13, you'll find something about Samson. Here is the common thread: that before a child is conceived, God already knows them and their characteristics, and has a destiny for their life. So no matter what stage the child is at in the womb, from God's point of view, it is a living person, with a destiny - a person He knows.

Judges 13:2-5 says: There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. Then the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman, saying: “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Notice these things: before the child is conceived, God already knows it's a son. Secondly, God has a plan that this son will deliver Israel. Thirdly, it's very important how the mother conducted herself while she's pregnant. In other words, God is concerned about negative influences coming in to the unborn child. So you see, in this passage, that before a child is even conceived, God knows the child, and knows its destiny.

1 Kings 13:1-2 says – By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. By the word of the Lord he cried out against the altar: “Altar, altar! This is what the Lord says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.'”

The nation is corrupt and full of idolatry. God sends a prophet to warn them. This is what He said: “I am going to bring a child into this world. His name will be called Josiah, and he is going to be a major mover in bringing restoration to the nation”. Do you know how long after that prophecy was given until Josiah came? 360 years! In other words, 360 years before this man appeared, before he was conceived, before he was born - God named him even! God had a name for him, and had a destiny for him.

360 years later, when these parents had this child, they wouldn't have remembered that prophecy. All they did was have a thought come to them: “Let's name this child Josiah”. They didn't even realise, as they named him Josiah, that they were fulfilling something that God had already planned. God had a destiny for that child. 360 years ago, the parents weren't even alive. God could look through time, and say: in 360 years time, there's going to be a couple. The father would be a very corrupt man, but in spite of that fact - that he's a Satan worshipper - I will bring into that family, a child who will change the nation. His name will be called Josiah. You notice again, God has names for children; has destinies for them; and knows them before they're even conceived.

Let's look at another one in Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” How amazing! God says: He forms the child in the womb. He said: before the embryo or foetus was formed, I knew who was going to be in there. In other words - you're a spirit being, and even though the house you're going to live in isn't formed, I know who you are. I know all about you, and I've already set you apart. I already have a destiny for you. Even before you have formed enough that your mother knows anything, I have formed my spirit into you, and you will be a prophet to the nations.

You notice again that even before the child is properly formed, God knows the child, and has a destiny for them. Isn't this amazing? Isaiah 49:1 tells us the same thing. Isaiah was also known to the Lord before he was formed in the womb.

In Psalm 139:16, David says: “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed; and in your book were written all the days that were fashioned for me, when yet there are none.” What David is saying is this: when I was a tiniest embryo, just conceived, and I wasn't even formed -You saw me. Not only that, it says: ‘in your book, were written all the days of my life, when I hadn't even begun one of them yet'. In other words, what he's saying is that God saw him as a human being, as a spirit being, as a person with a destiny, and ascribed a course for him, before he was even born.

So these scriptures seem to indicate very strongly that before we're even conceived, God knows we're coming; and at the moment we're conceived, the Spirit of God goes into the child. Even though it's unformed, God loves that child. God has a destiny for that child, even if the child's born into difficult family circumstances.

Josiah was born into a family where the father was a Satanist, but God still had a destiny for him. How amazing that God would see an unborn child like this; see the child in the womb as a living being – with a name, with a destiny, with a life planned out. This is truly amazing.

Over and over in the Bible, we find God speaking about children before they're born. Zachariah and Elizabeth – Elizabeth was barren, and God spoke to Zachariah and said: “You know your wife is barren, she can't have any children”. He said: “I know that”. God said: “You're going to have children. You're going to have a child.” He said: “She's too old for that – how is this going to happen?” He argued with God, but God said “No more arguing. You'll have a child – he is going to be a prophet, and will prepare the way of the Lord”. The Bible is very clear – that God sees people before they're conceived and born, and He has a plan for their life, long before they come out of the womb.

Matthew 1:21 – “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Same thing again - before the child is even conceived, God knows the child, knows the name, has a destiny for that child.

How about you? Have a look in Ephesians 2:10, I want you to notice something – “Now you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for a purpose, for good works, that God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them”. So what it tells us is that each person is a unique work of God. Each of us is a unique manufacture of God. There's no one like you - your fingerprints are unique, your DNA is unique, everything about you is unique. Before you were born, God had a path for you to walk. It says: you were created for something - for good works. Before you were begun, God had a plan, that you'd do something useful in your life. Amen.

Have a look at the second thing, in Luke 1:39-44. The first thing we need to look at, is that God knows us before we're born. He knows our name; knows what we will be like; and He's interested in us while we're in the womb; and has a purpose for our life.

Let's have a look at the child in the womb. I was reading a secular book recently, and they have done a lot of research more recently with ultrasonic scans of infants in the womb. Prior to this, for about 100 years, people believed that the identity was in the brain – personality, understanding, awareness. But they found an interesting thing, once they started to do these experiments. If the personality and identity and feelings are in the brain, the conclusion that they came to, is that if the brain is not developed, then it is not really a person, so you can get rid of it.

But in the Bible, it's quite different. Recent research shows quite clearly, that it's the heart that develops before the brain. The Bible tells us, that out of your heart is where life flows. Also recent research has shown that the child in the womb is very aware of what's happening around it, even before the mind is developed. This was a secular book, and the conclusion he came to after lots of research, was that an unborn child in the womb is totally aware of what's happening around them, even if the brain isn't fully formed.

In other words - it's a person. The guy came to the conclusion, that there must be some sixth sense that enables the child to know things, when their brain isn't developed enough, and neither was their hearing. He was talking about their spirit - that the spirit of the child recognises what is happening around them. He discovers they could recognise the voice of the father and the mother; recognise conflict; and could understand what was happening around them. This is partly the reason for the Hebrew culture, that once the woman is pregnant, she would go into hiding for quite some months in a peaceful location, so the child could be at peace and rest during the formation stages in the womb. So this is modern research.

Now let's read what the Bible says. In Luke 1:39, it says: “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.” Now Elizabeth is six months pregnant, and the baby is not yet fully formed. Now look at this - it said: “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Who says the baby in the womb doesn't know what's going on? See, Elizabeth was very pregnant; door opens up and Mary was there; and Mary begins to prophesise and flow with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is listening to all the words, and the baby is picking up the prophetic flow! The baby goes: “yay!” and kicks, huge kick - full of joy, because this is his destiny – to be a prophet for the Messiah. This is his destiny - right from in the womb. He knows there's something for him, and as soon as he feels the Holy Ghost, he leaps; massive kicks.

So this is something they've only discovered, recently: that the child in the womb is aware of spiritual influences; but it's written in the Bible 2000 years ago. So children in the womb are aware of the environment around them. They're aware of the presence of God; they're aware of the mother and what she feels; they're aware of the father; they're aware of the environment.

Now the reason I've taken a bit of time to share these things, is because I want to talk about the impact when an abortion takes place. The Bible's very clear, when we look from one end to the other, that the devil is hostile to children. From the book of Genesis (Genesis 3:15) it says the devil is hostile to children, because of a promise God made: that through children being born out of women, a saviour would be born.

So when we look right through Bible history, we find demonic attacks on the child - either in the womb, or just born. In the days of Exodus, just before there was a great deliverance, all the male children under two were killed. In the days after King David, Athaliah killed all the royal children but one. In the days of Jesus, the spirit of murder came through Herod, and murdered all the children under two.

The devil has constantly been against children. The womb is an area of conflict. When miscarriages take place, something God intended for good is suddenly stopped. When abortion takes place, the life of a child is taken. Something wrong has happened, and there is a huge impact. I want to talk a little bit about the impact, because as we've prayed for people, we have realised that many people are suffering, but they cannot understand why they were suffering.

The Bible describes a number of reasons why miscarriages take place. But it does lay out this – that God's plan is no miscarriages and that the womb would be fruitful. So when we look at scriptures, we find that miscarriages came because of idolatry. Sometimes they came because of a curse in the family line. Sometimes it was because of incest in the family. Sometimes it was because people were involved in evil spirits.

I won't go into all the scriptures regarding that, but the Bible is very clear that God's intention is that we be productive. So when miscarriages happen, there can be a spiritual cause, or there can be just a natural, physical cause. When we enquired about the last miscarriage, one of my daughters got a word from God that the brain had not formed properly, and that my daughter and her husband had been spared years of grief. Sometimes there's a physical problem, because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes there's a spiritual problem; and sometimes it can be because the mother has made inner vows never to have a child.

Whatever the cause, the result is grief. When a mother carries a child in her womb, and loses the child, there is a deep grief and sense of loss. Men can't easily understand it - that a woman's life is wrapped up with the child, who is drawing life from her body. So when there's a loss, there's a great grief.

I want to focus on the impact of an abortion. Sometimes when we're counselling people, if you don't get to the root of the problem, you can never solve the problem. As I researched this area, I began to find that everywhere, they came up with the same conclusions – in order for a woman to have an abortion, she must somehow distance herself that this is a real person. Either the doctor informs her: it's nothing, and it's just a medical procedure; or because of fear, or difficulties in the physical situation, she just doesn't want to acknowledge what's happening.

One of the core issues is the denial this is a human being. Once the mother has denied that it is a human being, then it's just a physical operation like having your tooth pulled. However, that is not the truth.

Here are some of the things that are commonly attributed now, to someone having an abortion. These are widely-known symptoms, known as post-abortion trauma syndrome. Let me list them for you; and then we'll show how people can be set free. Surveys done on people indicated these kind of issues. I'll just list them without explaining them too much.

1) Shame – they'll feel shame and secrecy coupled with low personal-esteem.

2) Deep feelings of guilt – just guilt that would not go away.

3) Depression – often bouts of depression, sadness and crying, but no apparent reason. Because remember, if you've concealed the truth with a lie; if you've refused to accept this was a life that was taken; then you won't understand why you're so sad. If it wasn't anything - how could I be sad about it?

4) Suicidal thinking and attempts.

5) Issues with self-hate.

6) Issues with sleep disorders.

7) Flashbacks - the woman suddenly remembers the trauma, and goes back into shock and grief.

8) A strong desire for replacement babies; unconsciously wanting a baby, to make up for the baby that was lost. What's called “anniversary syndrome” - on the date of the abortion or the date the child was to be born, the mother begins to become depressed and weep, but usually doesn't know why.

9) Another thing is trying to atone, by spoiling the other children.

10) Alcohol or drug problems.

11) Self-punishing behaviour – I deserve to be punished, which could be self-harm (cutting), abusive relationships, or promiscuity.

12) It can be physical problems – constant bleeding, or constant miscarriages.

13) Often there's a deep guilt – I survived, but at the cost of my child. These are terrible feelings that people have.

I had a woman come to me for prayer recently, and I said to her: “What is your problem?” She said: “I have been bleeding for about 12 years. We desperately want children but cannot have any”. I said: “Have you ever had an abortion?” She said: “Yes. I had 4”. I said to the lady, in the spirit of love, “You actually have a family of 4 children, but they're all in heaven - and your actions have brought this about. When they told you this was a simple procedure - they lied. Actually, it's caused you this problem you now have. You and your husband are without a child to hold, because the ones you could've held, you've now lost”.

She just began to weep and weep. We shared with her that God loved her, and would forgive her; so she was restored to the Lord, and her heart was healed. I'll show you exactly how, shortly. My prayer is that the next time I'm there, she'll have a baby. I was at City Harvest this year, and a lady came up with a husband and a little baby. She said: “You must see our little baby - it's a miracle baby. It was 12 months since you were last here. We had a very bad first child, very difficult pregnancy, and I made an inner vow that I'd never have another child. So, every time I get pregnant, I lose the child through miscarriage. I realised when I went through your teaching, that I made an inner vow. I renounced the inner vow, and asked God to bless my womb - 3 months later I'm pregnant, and here's our little baby.” Actually it was short of 3 months, it was around 1 month.

So you see again, the spiritual connection to problems in the life. So, one of the issues that we have found, is that many problems women suffer with - they can't trace it back to the abortion, because they've pretended that nothing really happened. I want to share very quickly the path to get free.

Jeremiah 31:15 says: “Rachel, weeping for her children, unable to be comforted, because they are no more.” So how can we get free? For someone who is in this situation, the first step is to turn to Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” So whatever you're suffering from, Jesus is able to save and heal you.

So we see then, the consequences of abortion are far bigger than we realise. They affect the mother; spirits are imparted to the womb that affect the next children; the family are affected; the man who was the father has lost his child; the grandparents have lost a grandchild; and siblings born after that are affected by the trauma.

I remember one lady brought her child to me. I said: “What's the problem?” She said: “My child will not bond and breast feed. In fact, as soon as I put him on the breast, he begins to scream. What can we do?” I said, “You didn't by any chance, try and abort this child did you?” She said: “Yes.” I said: “Is it surprising that the child is afraid of you? It senses the spirit of murder - it's not going to bond to someone who tried to destroy it”. She was shocked! She asked Jesus to forgive her, I prayed for the mother and child, and the child bonded. As soon as the child was delivered from the spirit of fear and murder, immediately it started to bond - it was a huge impact.

So let's have a look at how to get free. There are three areas: spiritual issues; emotional issues; and relationship issues. The answer is incredibly simple - it's very easy for you to move out of the place of death to life.

1) We need to face the spiritual issues. So the first thing is to face the truth: this is what I did - I took the life of my child. Most mothers only do it because they're under such pressure and stress - pressure from the boyfriend or husband; pressure from the family; pressure from circumstances; but nevertheless - they must take responsibility.

The first key to being set free is to break the lie. Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we cover ourselves up with a lie, we are in covenant with death and hell. So the first step is to face the truth: I had a child, and I've taken the life of my child. Just facing the truth hugely breaks open this problem.

2) You need to repent and confess it to the Lord. You need to actually come with words to the Lord. 1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us”. So God has already forgiven us - all you need to do, is position yourself to receive it.

3) The third area is forgiveness. Firstly the person must receive forgiveness - I am forgiven by God; secondly, they must forgive themselves; and thirdly, they must forgive other people. Often, the woman may be very angry at the man; very angry at the father; or very angry at the parents; or very angry at the people who did the procedures; angry at the friends who encouraged her to do it. There can be a lot of anger and grief - and that needs to be faced, and let go of - by forgiveness. Forgiveness is the way we resolve those things; and then deliverance from the demonic spirits.

Confession; release forgiveness; and deliverance from those spirits. And in a moment we'll pray for people to be set free. There's another area that's also needed. This is what we found to be extremely helpful. I have seen people break and weep when we've just taken this step: Ask the Lord - what is this child? Jesus knows, God knows your child - Is this a boy or a girl? Listen to your heart, and God will tell you; just like that.

The next thing to do is to give it a name and an identity. So we're breaking the lie by giving it an identity. We'll ask them, could you name your child. You know how hard it is to name children. You spend days working out a name for a child; but I found that in this kind of process, I've come to the conclusion that God's already named them - I just need to listen to the name. So ask the Lord: what is the name of my child I've lost? Or just rise up and give your child a name.

This lady that had the four abortions, I said: ask the Lord to show you what they were. And she said quite quickly “girl, boy, boy, girl”. I said: now let's give them names. All were named within the space of a couple of minutes. Now, she began to grieve - she started to be aware of her children.

I said, “Now the next step is to release your children to the Lord. See Jesus standing there, and pass your children to Him. Here's what you know: one day you'll see your children again.” So sometimes we pray a little prayer: Jesus, I release my child to You. I release her into your arms. Please tell her I'm so sorry for what I did, and I'm looking forward to meeting her again - a very simple prayer.

But you notice, all it has done is removed all the lie, and bring it down to the truth. Often there's a lot of grief, pain and emotions. Sometimes there are other broken relationships to repair. The path to freedom is very simple.

Of course, if the person's had a miscarriage, there's no sin to confess usually; unless there's some generational cause. But I have found it helpful, every time, to close your eyes and open your heart to the Lord. Ask Him to show you what the child was, and tell you the name. Now, it's not a thing - it's a person; and you'll see your child again. That is the hope of the gospel – the child is in heaven.

So whenever you speak to Jesus, you're speaking to someone who is speaking to your child. Leave your child is Jesus' hands, because one day you'll see them again. I have seen so many people set free, so many broken hearts healed. What a relief to have the secrecy, shame, and lies broken, and a broken heart healed, by faith in Jesus Christ.

A very simple thing to do, and I believe God wants to touch many. Let's close our eyes. I want you to know how much God loves you. Jesus came into this earth, God in the flesh. He showed us what heaven is like, He showed us the kingdom of God, and he invited us to connect with Him. We're all born in sin, separated from God, we can't even find God's way; but Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the dead; broke the power of sin. Jesus said these words: to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome, believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God.

Healing From Abortion (1 of 4)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Healing From Abortion (2 of 4)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Healing From Abortion (3 of 4)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Healing From Abortion (4 of 4)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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The Silent Scream (Bernard Nathanson)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Dr. Bernard Nathanson's classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child's pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a "silent scream" as her body is torn apart.

A great tool to help people see why abortion is murder. The most important video on abortion ever made. This video changed opinion on abortion to many people.

Introduction by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, host. Describes the technology of ultrasound and how, for the first time ever, we can actually see inside the womb. Dr. Nathanson further describes the ultrasound technique and shows examples of babies in the womb. Three-dimensional depiction of the developing fetus, from 4 weeks through 28 weeks. Display and usage of the abortionists' tools, plus video of an abortionist performing a suction abortion.

Dr. Nathanson discusses the abortionist who agreed to allow this abortion to be filmed with ultrasound. The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.

The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist's suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a "silent scream." The child's heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument. The abortionist's suction tip begins to rip the baby's limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.

In an effort to "dehumanize" the procedure, the abortionist and anesthesiologist refer to the baby's head as "number 1." The abortionist crushes "number 1" with the forceps and removes it from the uterus. Abortion statistics are revealed, as well as who benefits from the enormously lucrative industry that has developed. Clinics are now franchised, and there is ample evidence that many are controlled by organized crime.

Women are victims, too. They haven't been told about the true nature of the unborn child or the facts about abortion procedures. Their wombs have been perforated, infected, destroyed, and sterilized. All as a result of an operation about which they they have had no true knowledge.

Films like this must be made part of "informed consent." NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood are accused of a conspiracy of silence, of keeping women in the dark about the reality of abortion.

Finally, Dr. Nathanson discusses his credentials. He is a former abortionist, having been the director of the largest clinic in the Western world.

Spirit of Divination (1 of 12)  

Fri 4th Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Acts 16:16 tells a story about a woman who was tormented by an evil spirit - a python spirit, or spirit of divination. Many people came to her city, a centre of Arts, wanting to know their future, and she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling. What is the source of this power? How does it gain access to our lives? What does the Bible say about our destiny? How can we be set free?

Let’s open the Bible up to Acts 16. We’ll read from verse 16.

”Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” 18 And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.”

So, the Bible tells us very clearly that Jesus came to set people free. This is a story about a woman tormented by an evil spirit. It was in a particular place in Greece where they worshipped the god Apollo. It was the centre of the creative arts and in that place, there was the practice of divination. Another word for divination means fortune-telling. It means consulting spirits to try and find your future. So, there was a special temple there in this place.

There was what they called the oracle of Delphi. There was a woman who used to prophesy using demonic spiritual power. People would come to her and they would pay money in order to be able to get their fortunes told. This was a very famous city. People came from all around to try and find out what their future held. When there were major decisions to be made in business or in arts or in drama, they would come there. They would pay money in order to discover words about their future.

This is very common today. We want to know what the future holds. We want to know whether our life will be blessed. We want to know about tomorrow. We want to know about things in the future. This hunger for the future, hunger to know what’s ahead is found in all cultures. The Bible tells us our life is in God’s hands.

In Ephesians 2:10 it says: “God has planned works for us to accomplish with our life”. You are not an accident. You were born into this world by God’s design. There may have been difficulties in your family. You may have been born unexpectedly. Maybe you weren’t what your parents expected. The Bible says, God had a destiny, a plan, something for you to do with your life. Long before you were ever thought of, God was thinking of you.

There are many examples in the Bible where God reveals He knew about people before they even turned up in the earth. For example, Jeremiah 1:5 – God says to Jeremiah, “While you were in the womb, I formed you and ordained you to be a prophet to nations.” So while he was still in the womb, barely conceived, God saw a prophet. God had a destiny for him, and called him into that destiny.

In the Old Testament there’s another king by the name of Josiah. Would you realise this, that over 600 years before he was born, a prophet prophesied one day there’ll be a king called Josiah who will be a restorer of the nation and he’ll overcome all of these idols and alters. So, 600 years before he was born, God knew he was coming, knew his name, knew where he’d be born, and had a plan for him.

You go back into Genesis; God prophesied to Adam and Eve that there would be a saviour coming into the world called Jesus Christ. That’s 4000 years before He came. The Bible has many prophesies that were fulfilled in Jesus. In other words, God looks ahead and sees your life. He has a plan for your life and no matter what happens in your life, if you have faith in your heart to Him, He is able to use even the negatives for good in your life.

Now, if we don’t have a relationship with God, then we have no certainty about our future. So, people turn to divination. God hates divination; calls it spiritual prostitution. We are not made to connect with evil spirits, we’re made for relationship with God. So when we go to be involved in divination, we make contact not with God, but with an evil spirit.

That’s what’s happening with this girl. She had a spirit of divination. Today we’d call her a psychic. You would go pay money to have your reading. But, the source of power was an evil spirit. She had a spirit like a python wrapped all around her. Interestingly, the name of the goddess that was the one who prophesied was called Pythia, meaning python. There were lots of people that operated with this spirit. So they would go and pay money to the girl, and she had a spirit wrapped around her.

Evil spirits do not know your future. The devil cannot see ahead and know your future. Only God can do that. Isn’t it much better we trust in God and walk with Him, than we reach out to evil spirits? So, people in the entertainment industry, people in business, people in finance, people in government, would go there before they made any major decisions. When they exchanged money, they were trading with an evil spirit; opening their life for the spirit to now have power over them.

Did the demon know their future? Not at all. But there’s something like a demonic internet. The demons watch people. So, the demon can speak and say things about your life that you already know because they observe people. If you go to a fortune teller, go to a psychic, then you won’t connect just with the person, you’ll connect with an evil spirit. They tell you things about yourself which are true because spirits are watching you. But if you were to begin to believe the words they tell you, you will give them power over your life.

So, this woman, when she saw Paul, begins to follow Him. She began to cry: “These are the servants of the most high God. They’re showing the way of salvation.” She was telling the truth. She was actually speaking what was reality because the demons could see it. But her presence and the spirit around her was incredibly irritating. A python traps people by crushing them. Slowly wrapping itself around people, and then squeezing the life out of them.

So, when people go to be involved in divination, they get addicted to going and they can’t make decisions unless they consult. Steadily, they’re giving up power over their life to an evil spirit. Gradually, it wraps itself around the person and then begins to crush their life, destroy their hopes. This young woman had the spirit and one day, Paul turned, and the Bible says he confronted the spirit. He spoke directly to the spirit, commanded it in the name of Jesus Christ to come out, and the demon unwrapped from the woman, and left her, and she was set free.

Now, notice her life changed. No longer was the spirit wrapped around her squeezing her life. No longer did she have voices speaking into her ears. No longer did she have power to know what was going on in people’s lives. When the presence of the spirit left her, the power to talk to people and tell their fortune went with it. Evil spirits don’t know their future, but if you will consult and listen to them, you’ll open your life up and they’ll begin to influence your future.

God calls us to have relationship with Him. Calls us into a relationship of trust, of walking with God in life. Trusting Him, believing that a loving God who loves us deeply, has only the best plans for us. God doesn’t tell you all His plans, but He does write desires and dreams in your heart. He does speak to you and confirm what He wants, and as you choose to walk by faith, He begins to unravel His plan for your life.

It always starts with the first step – the step to receive Jesus Christ. A step away from sin. A step away from a life without God, and a step towards the living God. God wants some of you here tonight to make that step. A step to respond to God’s kindness. A step to receive His love.

How did this woman come to have the spirit? How do these spirits get into people’s lives? Possibly, it was in her family. Maybe the family worshipped idols. Maybe the family was involved with spiritism. So the spirit came down the family. She was hearing the voices from when she’s very young. Having disturbing dreams. Seeing the spirit at night time.

I was over in a place called Fiji, and we were driving down the road and I saw a group of people in a park. I got interested because I thought I saw snakes. So I said, “Stop the car, let’s have a look.” So we went over, and an area was fenced off, and there were some people there with a mat and they had some snakes. They were playing with the snakes. We don’t have snakes in New Zealand, so this was new to me. I was interested. One of them came up to me and said: “Please don’t pray against us. We just came from Borneo, we want to earn some money. We don’t really want to harm anyone.”

I realised they were not just operating with snakes, they were actually sorcerers. They were diviners. They were using the snakes and they had power over them. They were operating under demonic power. I see them take some water and they got 3 volunteers, and they just threw the water on them and they literally fell down on the ground. Then they put a hood over their head and they did some kind of sorcery. Then, when they took the cover off their head, the person was tremendously frightened because when he looked at the sorcerer, he could see in place of the sorcerer’s head, a serpent. They were absolutely terrified. They had been charmed or come under the influence of an evil spirit. So, these powers are very real.

The Bible says: “It grieves the heart of God when we get involved in those things.” There’ll be some of you and your family have been involved with evil spirits; have been involved with divination or fortune-telling of some kind. They’ve opened the door for spirits to come and torment your lives. There’ll be some of you, and you’ve been involved in fortune-telling yourself. Maybe you’ve had a Ouija board with letters on it and a glass called up spirits. You have connected with the evil spirits. God wants to set you free. Or perhaps you’ve done other forms, or gone to a psychic, or gone to a medium. A medium is a person who has a familiar spirit, and the spirit speaks through them. Maybe in your life, you’ve sought out these fortune-tellers, and it grieves God.

God loves you, has a plan for your life, and it makes Him sad, it breaks His heart when we turn to evil spirits and becomes entangled with them. So, maybe the spirit came down the family line. Maybe she was dedicated to this idol. Or maybe she just opened her life to the spirit, invited it to come in. Perhaps she was involved in spiritism. Whatever it is, she opened her life to the spirit, and Jesus set her free.

The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12)  

Sat 5 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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In Numbers 21, the children of Israel became bitter in their heart and started complaining against Moses. Their sin released fiery serpents which bit the people and released poison into their system. Their was only one remedy for the bite of the serpent - fixing their eyes, with faith in their heart, on God's provision.The same power is available to you today -the power of the cross for curses.

I want to read from the gospel of John. So the Bible reveals to us God’s plan to help us. It’s made up of two books – the Old Testament and the New Testament, who would set all people free. Now, we’ll read in verse 14 of John chapter 3, these wonderful verses. It starts with a picture and we’re going to look at the picture in a moment.

It says: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” So Jesus is speaking about a situation that happened hundreds of years before, with Moses in the wilderness with the people of Israel. He says it’s like a prophetic picture of his death on the cross.

So He says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man – that’s Jesus, be lifted up so whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

You notice the heart of God. God doesn’t want you to perish, He wants you to be saved. The Bible’s very clear – the nature of God is love. God is a loving God. People have many different pictures of God. The picture you have of Him, what you believe about Him, will affect how you relate to Him. So, if you have distorted or wrong pictures of God, you won’t relate to Him properly.

The Bible says God loved the world. He loved the world this much, that He sent His son from heaven to come into the world to reveal what the kingdom of heaven is like, and to invite us to become part of that; to invite us back into relationship with God.

Jesus demonstrated God’s love in a number of ways. One, in His teaching. Two, in how He related to people. Three, in the miracles, the way He helped people overcome problems. But number four, most of all, by dying on the cross and then rising again from the dead. The fundamental problem that people have, is we are separated in our heart from God.

The Bible says – the consequences of that separation is death. So, Jesus came into this world to break the power of sin and to put His spirit or life into us again. We were designed to live in relationship with God. But separated from God, we just live out of our natural senses. God wants to change your life. Change your heart. Put His spirit inside you so you can live a different kind of life. God has no desire to judge you. He desires to set you free.

So whatever problem you have in your life, whatever bondage you have in your life, God does not blame you, does not condemn you. His desire is to help you. Jesus said – “I didn’t come to condemn people. I didn’t come to point out what is wrong. I came to save people.”

I want to show you a story in the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains many stories of people and their encounters with God. Sometimes we don’t understand spiritual matters easily. Sometimes we don’t understand things that are spiritual. So God gives many examples, many pictures in the Old Testament to help us understand spiritual things. So we’re going to look at a picture. We’re going to look at a story. We’re going to look at a real event. We’re going to show God’s love touching people. What God did to help them and what was required of people.

So, we look in Numbers chapter 21. We start in verse 4 and read through to verse 9.

“Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” 6 So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.

7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”

Now God’s intention always, is great blessing. The people of Israel had been bondaged for 400 years. They served as slaves and the task masters were very hard on them. As a result of their difficult life, the people became very bitter and very weak. God sent Moses to deliver them. He heard their voice cry and He sent Moses to deliver them. God demonstrated His power in a great way and the people of God left Egypt and began a journey to receive an inheritance in Canaan. They had a season or a journey with some challenges.

This is very like us. Before we come to know Jesus Christ, we live in bondage to sin. We are a slave to sin. We just can’t help sinning. We also live under the influence of evil spirits. They afflict people with fears and torments and sickness. They torment people with addictions. They break people’s hearts. They cause all manner of problems to people.

When we come to receive Jesus Christ, God puts His spirit in our heart and He breaks the power. Breaks the power of sin. Breaks the power of the devil. But then, we have to choose how we will live our life.

In this story we just read, the people of God have had a major victory. God has helped them against their enemies. Every day God provides for them. Every day God protects them. In fact, every day they are living under the blessing of God.

But it said – the people complained. They complained because they were bitter in their heart. Whatever is in your heart will flow out into your life. What happened when the people came under pressure, is they began to complain bitterly. When bitterness gets in your heart, it will always come out under pressure. Complaining, criticising, negative speaking. The people complained against Moses. Moses has only tried to help them. They complained against God. They began to say – well, we’d be better off back there in bondage and we hate what God is providing.

So the people’s hearts were corrupt. The people did not see that God is a loving God. They could not see that God was with them. Their eyes were blinded to the goodness of God because of the bitterness and anger and unforgiveness in their heart. They had been deeply abused and hurt in Egypt.

God was showing them how to depend on Him. God was wanting to change them from being slaves into sons. God was wanting to change them from being victims into conquerors. But when the people bitterly complained, complaining releases demonic spirits. When they complained, serpents came and bit them.

Here’s the thing to understand – the serpents were always there in the wilderness. It’s just they had been protected by God from them. In the Bible, serpents are a picture of evil spirits. Jesus said – “I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the earth.” Jesus wants us to have authority over evil spirits.

But when the people complained, when they rebelled, when their heart turned from God, and they began to do things that were wrong, the serpents were no longer restrained. The serpents now began to come into the camp. Suddenly they’d bite people. A person would go to lie down, suddenly a searing pain and he’s bit by a serpent. They go to pick up sticks, suddenly a hand is bitten by a serpent. Many many people, the Bible says, were bitten by serpents, and they died.

When you get bitten by a snake, there are two kinds of venom that they inject. They are different in the way they work. One kind of venom paralyses the system – all the nerves and muscles go into spasm and the person eventually goes into shock and dies. It’s a painful way to die. The other kind of venom begins to eat away the flesh. The body becomes toxic. The person goes into shock and dies. So the serpents bite was always fatal.

In the New Testament, Jesus encountered many people and they had demonic spirits living in their lives because they had broken the laws of God – idolatry and spiritism and sexual sin. Alcoholism, drugs. Demonic spirits were tormenting their lives. Jesus came to set them free.

So, the people had been bitten by the serpents. Then they began to figure it out –“We were doing fine, no serpents. Then we complained against God and Moses. Now we’re all getting bitten. We’ve obviously sinned.” So in this picture in this story here, you see the connection between sin, serpents, and death.

Whenever we sin, we give the devil access to our life, and the consequence of that sin is death. In the long term –physical death. In the short term – isolation, disconnection, problems in our lives. When people are wrestling with anger, it’s like a poison in their heart. When people are wrestling with lust, it’s like a poison in their heart. When people are wrestling with hatred, it’s like a poison inside them. They realise there was no remedy. Can you imagine how frightening it would be to live with serpents surround you, biting you, and there’s no remedy? Can you imagine how scary it would be to know that there are serpents waiting there to bite you and that there’s no remedy whatsoever.

The Bible is very clear – there is only one remedy for sin. There is only one remedy for demonic spirits. But most people don’t realise this. So what happened, is when the people connected, they had sin, and this is why they had a problem. They began to cry out. They said – “Moses help us. Moses, pray God will take the serpents away.” God heard Moses’ prayer.

I think Moses was very gracious. They’re complaining bitterly against him every day – then they come and say “Hey, the serpents are biting us. We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry we complained against you master. The serpent bites.” Moses could’ve said – “Well you got what you deserved.” But he prayed, he interceded. He had God’s heart for people.

God gave him an interesting instruction. He said – “Make a brass serpent, and put it up on a pole very high. Every time anyone’s bitten, this is what you’re going to do. You’ll have to, from wherever you are, you need to know you’re going to die unless you do one thing. You’re going to die. The poison is already working and there’s only one remedy – that’s to locate that brass serpent.

Can you imagine now, the panic someone had when they were bitten? “Ah! Maybe it will go away.” It’s not going to go away. There’s only one thing they can do. They had to find where the brass serpent was and look at it. Now, I want you to understand, it wasn’t kind of – “Oh yeah, there it is.” When the person is bitten, there’s only a short time before he dies. “Ahh! Where’s that serpent. Ah! There it is.” They’d be looking hard! They’d be giving it a good hard look. The Bible says – if you look on it, fix your attention on it with faith in your heart, the power of God will be released to you.

Now, it would’ve taken them no doubt, sometime of standing with their eyes fixed on the serpent, and then the power of God will be released. Now, can you imagine this – if you had been bitten by a serpent, and you’re starting to feel the pain. Now, what would you have done? If you don’t do something, you’re going to die.

There’s only one thing you can do – that’s to locate that serpent on that brass serpent. You would’ve fixed your gaze on that serpent. You would’ve fixed it in your gaze – “Don’t get in my way. Don’t get in my way! Don’t block my view!” I think it was probably up fairly high, so wherever you were, you could see it; and they would stand there looking. Just check and hold my hand up and see if it’s fixed. They would stand looking until they feel all the poison is gone. They feel the pain and the tingling go. “Thank You God. Your power has been released.”

Now, you understand this, the brass serpent had no power. It was just a focal point for their faith. Here’s what God wanted them to understand – that sin came into the world because of the serpent, and one day Jesus would come and He would be put up on a cross. You have to remember – this is hundreds of years before they ever invented crucifixion. The serpent was up on a pole.

God knew ahead of time that one day Jesus would come into this earth, and He would die a death on a cross which no one had ever heard of before, and when He died on the cross, the power of sin would be broken. The power of the serpent would be broken. The power of curses would be broken.

Colossians 2:14-15 – “When Jesus died on that cross, took the list of sins against us, cancelled it all, and disarmed the devil, broke the serpent’s power.” So God wanted them to understand that just as Moses lifted up the brass serpent, one day Jesus would go on a cross; and that every person who understood that sin was causing death in their life, if they looked to Jesus Christ with faith in their heart, the power of God would be released and they would be saved.

God so loved the world, He gave His only Son to die on the cross, that if we would believe in Him, that He died for my sins and rose again and conquered the power of sin, then the power of God would be released. Hallelujah. Come on, let’s give the Lord a clap, shall we? Thank You Lord. Thank You Jesus.

Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12)  

Sat 5 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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In Exodus 15, we follow the journey of God's people who came out of the slavery of Egypt to the promised land. When they met difficult circumstances we see what was in their heart - all the "fruit" of bitterness. If the fruit is there, the root is there. Test yourself. Do you think like a slave or a son? We can focus on injustice and choose to be bitter, or respond to God's provision and embrace grace.

We’re going to look in Exodus chapter 15. We did a story out of the Old Testament just last session, it was a different one. A different one, but it’ll point to the same person – Jesus Christ. So, we’re going to read in Exodus 15: 22-26.

“22So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water.” A desert, no water – that’s a big problem.

23 Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, 26 and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”

So, this story is the story of bitter waters made sweet. I want to speak about the root of bitterness. I was in Singapore one time, and a young man came up on an alter call and he had a very severe pain in one shoulder. He came up on a word of knowledge – God show me a particular pain. As he came up, I felt the Lord showed me he had bitterness in his heart towards his father. The problem was not just a physical pain, it was a spirit of infirmity.

So, I spoke with him – said, “How do you get on with your father?” He said – “Well I love my father.” Then I listened to the Lord again, I said “Isn’t it true that your father is away a lot of the time? He’s been away for all the important events in your life, and that actually, you’ve become angry and bitter at him.” He bowed his head, and said “That’s true.” I said: “What’s happened, is your bitterness has opened a door in your life for a spirit of infirmity. You are sick in your body because you are sick in your heart, and you have power to make a decision over the sickness in your heart. You can choose to forgive. You can bring grace into the situation instead of judgement.”

So, he prayed a simple prayer and forgave his father. I commanded the spirit of infirmity to come out, and immediately, he was set free. Then he told me, “Actually, I had pain not only in my shoulder, I had pain all over my body.” He said: “All of the pain is gone. The doctor had just told me last week my back in stiffening and by the age of 40, I can never bend.” Then he bent over, and he was quite free.

Here was a young man who had a life-threatening disease. The cause was a spirit of infirmity, and what lay at the root of it was bitterness living in his heart. When he dealt with the bitterness, came to the cross of Jesus Christ, and forgave, he himself was delivered and set free.

Now, we’re going to have a look at this story here in Exodus 15. This is a story from the Old Testament, and it’s a picture for us about spiritual truth. Sometimes spiritual things aren’t easy to understand or see. It’s hard to get words for it. So, all through the Old Testament, there are stories of God interacting with people, and when God interacts with people, there’s something we can learn from the interaction.

So, this is a story of the people of Israel, and they had been in bondage in Egypt for 400 years. They lived as slaves. Their life was very hard. They were beaten, they were abused. Their young male children at one point were put to death. They were forced into slave labour. They lived a very hard, difficult life, and it had been like that for 400 years. As long as anyone remembered, they had been in bondage, serving the Egyptians. The Egyptians were very hard taskmasters, and they beat them and whipped them, and abused them. So, their life was incredibly difficult until God delivered them.

God had made a promise that He would deliver them out of Egypt, and He delivered them with great power, delivered them out of the bondage of the Egyptians so He could bring them to promises He had for them. He wanted to take them out of the land of Egypt, of slavery, and bring them into a land of promise, of inheritance, of great provision and blessing. There was just this short journey through the wilderness.

Now, this story of God’s people in Egypt is also our story. It’s our life. Before we come to know God, we are born into this world in slavery to sin. We can’t get out of sin. We have no power to stop it. Like a disease working in our life, we have bitterness and anger and resentment. We have lusts burning, we have desires for things that harm us. So, every person born into this world is born separated from God, a slave to sin.

The Bible tells us that these Egyptians are like demonic spirits. Whenever there is sin, there are evil spirits. So, many people here today have lived a life bound in sin, tormented by evil spirits – spirits that torment the mind, the emotions, the life, the body. This was our life before we come to Christ, and if you’re still in that place, God wants to set you free. He wants to forgive your sin, break its power, and loose you from evil spirits. It’s just a simple choice to believe.

Now, I want you to have a look in this story. Here is what the problem was – the people had lived in slavery for so many years that they thought like slaves. When they came out of Egypt, God wanted them to know and be established that they are sons. They’re no longer slaves, but they are a son. They have a loving father, a father who provides. When they were in Egypt, they lived like a slave and thought like a slave.

Now they’ve set free, they are free people, but they have to choose to think like a free person. They have to choose to understand who they now are. They had spent so many years as a slave, they thought they were still a slave. They thought like a slave, they reacted like a slave, even though they’re free. This is true of many Christians. We live in slavery to sin, Jesus comes and sets us free, Spirit of God comes into our life, we become a child of God, but we still think and live like a slave. It all has to do with what goes on in your heart.

Here’s what the problem was – these people were bitter in their heart. They were very bitter; and God wanted to reveal Himself as the God not only who delivers, but also heals. So, if you watch people for long enough, they will reveal how they think. So let’s have a look at these people. Let’s see what they did.

It said – “They went through the wilderness 3 days, and there was no water.” No water. So they were quite thirsty, wondering where their next provision would come from. Now, if you read in verse 27, when all of this is over, they came to Elim where there were 12 wells of water and 70 palm trees and camped by the waters. So let’s have a look at the picture and then we’re going to talk about bitterness.

God has got them delivered out of Egypt, and over here He’s provided for them, and there’s a place where there’s wells, there’s water, there’s palm trees. So, when God is looking, He’s a loving Father, and He’s provided for them. There’s water, there’s wells, there’s trees – wonderful place. But from the people of Israel, they can’t yet see the provision. They can’t see God has promised to provide for them. They can’t see that there is water, and there is a place to rest. They can only see their circumstances.

The journey of walking with God is a journey of faith. It’s a journey of believing God is good. God is good all the time. Always, God is good. No matter what I’m experiencing, God is good. He loves me, He’s provided for me. So as they journey, no water – what to think of this? What does this mean? We’re still slaves. We’re suffering. God doesn’t care about us. Then they get to some water, they taste – “Woah, bitter. It’s horrible water.” So, they’re very disappointed.

Now, they don’t realise God’s provision is just down the road. They’re about to reach God’s provision, but just before they get there, it looks very hard. Looking at the circumstances, it’d look like God had forgotten them. What does this mean? I know what it means – I’m all alone. God’s forgotten us. It’s just like it was in Egypt – we suffer, we die. What happened was, the bitterness in their heart came up.

You don’t see life through your eyes, you see life through your heart. What is it? Whatever that’s in your heart will influence the way you view life. They had 400 years of slavery and they still were bitter in their heart about their slavery. When they were in slavery, they lived in lack, they lived in suffering. They lived in torment. They lived without hope. Now they’ve been set free, they have a loving father who will meet all of their needs.

But he also has a plan – not just to meet their needs, but He also wants to heal them. If they’re going to possess the land, they need to change their thinking. They need to stop thinking like a slave. A slave feels powerless. When a person goes through difficult situations and feels powerless, they get angry. They become resentful, and then they become bitter because they make judgements – it’s no use, I’m powerless. When a person concludes they’re powerless, they become bitter. Angry and bitter in what’s happening to them.

Now, when we’re set free to follow Christ, we have the power of choice. We can choose how we respond to life. Look what they did – how you respond in difficulty reveals what is in your heart. What comes out of your mouth reveals what’s in your heart. So let’s have a look at what came out. Let’s have a look at what they did.

It said – they complained against Moses. They were angry and resentful and bitter and they complained. Now, when people are bitter, when people have got bitterness in their heart, they are bitter because they feel powerless. Bad things have happened – hurt and angry and resentful. They become bitter – which is a sour feeling in the heart because they’re powerless.

When they were in Egypt, they were in slavery. But now they’re following the Lord, they have a power to choose. They can choose to believe God is good and will provide, or they can choose to believe they’re powerless and God is against them. They can choose to believe God is good and generous, they can choose to believe God is mean and causes them to suffer. When faced with a difficult situation, it will bring up to you what is in your heart.

So what does bitterness look like? Let me show you some of the signs of bitterness. Every tree has got some fruit on them. Bitterness is a root that goes into the heart. It feeds off anger and resentment and judgement. It feeds off unbelief.

Here are some of the signs:

1. Complaining. When a person is complaining, they’re speaking that there’s lack. They don’t believe that God is big enough to provide for them. They complain because something is being withheld from them. Or they believe so.

2. Blaming – when people are bitter, they blame others.

3. Bitterness can be seen on the face. Especially as people get older. If there’s joy in the heart, joy on the countenance. Bitterness in the heart, sour countenance. They get frowny and all sort of puckered up in the mouth. You’ve met some people who are like that. It affects the whole body. People who have bitterness kind of shrivel up. We’re not made for bitterness, so bitterness shows up in our life. Shows in the words we speak, shows on our countenance. Here’re some other evidence of bitterness.

4. Lack of gratitude. Instead of saying: “Thank You God. You got us out of here. You can provide!” “Why’s this happening to me?” So, lack of gratitude. A person who’s bitter never says thank you. They demand more. They want more and more.

5. Here’s another thing a bitter person can’t do – they can’t celebrate someone else having a victory. So he comes up to me and says: “Hey, I just go promoted. I got a big bonus. Big wage increase!” So if my heart is free, I’d say: “That’s fantastic!” If my heart is in bitterness, “How come he got that? I don’t like him. Why do they not think about me?” Or he comes and says: “Hey, I just bought a new BMW.” If my heart is free, “Hey, that’s great. Can we go for a drive?” If my heart is not free, “How come he has that car? He doesn’t deserve that car.” That’s what a bitter heart is like. You’ve heard people say that?

You notice in the story of the prodigal son, the elder brother could not come in and celebrate. He was bitter. He was not grateful for what he had. He was bitter. He couldn’t celebrate with his lost brother being saved. He was bitter – it showed on his face. He was angry. Bitter people get angry very easily.

I had one person I spoke with the other day, and I said: “Why have you come up on the alter call?” They said: “I’m angry.” OK. It’s showing. I said: “Who are you angry at?” “Everyone.” Wow. Everyone. I remembered that verse – “Don’t hang out with an angry man or you’ll become angry too.” Angry person has demands on people. So I said: “Who did you start being angry with? You got angry with one person and you never stopped being angry because you didn’t deal with one anger, it’s become a root of bitterness, now it’s spreading against everyone.”

So I asked a few questions. Get this, the Holy Spirit must’ve guided the questions because I didn’t have time to talk with him for a long period of time. I said: “Who’re you angry with?” He said he didn’t know; everyone. I said: “It started somewhere? Are you angry with your parents?” He said: “Yes I am.” I said: “Alright. Are you the eldest in the family?” He said: “Yes I am.” I said: “Were you born out of wedlock?” “Yes I am.”

I said: “Alright then. Now we know what the problem is. You are struggling with a deep rejection because of your birth situation and you’re bitter against your parents. The bitterness has flowed out of your life as anger towards them. A demand on them. Lack of gratitude. Lack of appreciation. This is what has gone on through your life till now, you’ve forgotten who you’re angry at. You’re angry at everyone. You’ll get sick, and your life is going to be a mess.” I said: “You need to repent and deal with the root of bitterness.”

So, bitterness has a fruit in people’s lives. You notice another thing about bitter – is that people make judgements. The prodigal son – he said to his father – “Hey, you never gave me a party.” Bitter people make judgements and this gets into their heart and into their life. Bitter people struggle for power. Bitter people continually go through cycles of defeat. You notice all of these people are bitter, and it shows up in their life. They’re bitter; they’ve been like that for years.

They were saved out of Egypt, but anger and resentment and bitterness lay in their heart. All it took was one setback to bring it up. When they suffered some lack, when they went through difficulty, instead of believing God is good and will help me, instead of choosing to believe God, they chose to be bitter and complain.

This is the same for us. God wants your heart to be free of bitterness. Bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gracious person. He is a forgiving person. So the Bible tells us – don’t grieve Him. Don’t cause grief to the Spirit of God by harbouring bitterness and resentment and anger and unforgiveness. Rather, be kind and tender hearted and forgiving. That’s who God has made you to be.

So notice what happened – when the people complained, they revealed their bitterness. Notice this – how to respond when you have a difficult situation. Moses did not try to appeal to them, didn’t try to fix it, he said – “Show me God, what is the answer to this problem of bitterness?” Notice this – God showed him something. God revealed something to him. God wants to reveal things to you. We’re going to ask Him to do that shortly. God had a provision to heal the bitterness. Not only had He provided water and a resting place, He wanted to heal them of the deep roots of bitterness. He had already provided an answer to heal them.

When Moses cried out, God showed him a tree. The tree was always there. The tree had been growing there a long time. What he didn’t know, was that tree could heal bitter waters. When he cast the tree into the waters, the bitter waters becomes sweet. God revealed Himself as a hero. Now listen, this is a picture for us. It’s a picture of the cross of Jesus Christ. Hundreds and Hundreds of years later, Jesus would die on a cross; and on the cross, He didn’t die angry and resentful and bitter. He showed what a man filled with the Holy Spirit does – He forgave.

So, this is what God wants you to understand. When we face difficult situations in our life, when we begin to discover we’re angry and bitter, come to the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross breaks that power of sin. Jesus broke the power of sin on the cross. He broke the curses on the cross. He broke demonic powers’ hold; and when He rose again from the dead, He manifested victory live.

Listen, when you come to Jesus Christ, you come to the same cross. To become a Christian is to trust what Jesus did on the cross is enough for me. That He died in my place, represented me. When He died, I died with Him. When He was buried, I was buried with Him. When He rose, I rose with Him. I need to take my bitterness, resentment, and anger and bring it to death on the cross. Bring it to death on the cross involves these things: Confessing the sin of my heart. Turning from it, and believing God can set me free.

In turning from the bitterness, I need to turn from holding things against people. I need to release grace and forgiveness. When people are bitter, they make a judgement that they are powerless, that they are victims, and they have a demand – you owe me something. God wants us to learn to handle it differently. Bring it to the cross, confess it, release forgiveness. You say: “Wow, this is the cross.” You see, Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but He also modelled how you deal with sin and bitterness. Forgive. Forgive.

So, if something bad happens and you find the feelings coming up, let them go, forgive. You either bring grace or judgement. You either become a sweet person or a bitter person. Your life is sour or sweet. See, sweet people are forgiving and gracious and loving and kind and tender-hearted. Now, that is the new person you are in Christ. Just got to stop living the old way, living out of the old mind-set that when someone upsets me, I get angry and resentful. No, I’m a new person. I bring the cross into this. That means – I let go. I forgive. I bless. I release.

God showed him a tree and when he brought the tree – the cross –into the bitter waters, the bitter waters were made sweet. Listen, every one of us has to make a decision – how we’ll respond to difficult situations in life. Some of you are resentful, angry, and bitter about what has happened to you. It will flow like a river through your life, grieving and limiting the activity of the Holy Spirit, and creating bitter fruit in your relationships.

You can make a choice to believe: “I’m now a new person – I am no longer slave to bitterness. I do not need to have bitterness rule my life. I do not let anger rule my life. I do not let hatred rule my life. I am a new person. I am a forgiving person. I release grace into the situation and I choose to love people rather than hate them; forgive them rather than judge them; show grace rather than bitterness. This is how I’m going to live my life”. Every time you choose to do that, you are bringing the cross into the bitter water.

Listen, all of us are going to have some tough situations in life. All of us will face painful situations. People let you down. People do bad things. Life deals up some difficulties. Happens to everyone. Think about Jesus. He’s the model. He was betrayed, He was rejected, He was despised, and He was abandoned by all His friends. Yet, He never reacted. He brought grace into it rather than bitterness.

Imagine what He could’ve said – He could’ve become angry and bitter. He could’ve said something like this: “Well I’ve had it with all these people on earth. I mean, I’ve given up heaven to come here and be among them. I was just born in a lousy manger. I’ve got animals all around me. My parents are so poor they can’t even have a decent house, and I’ve only got just shepherds and sheep around me. Then the government tries to kill me and we have to run away and live in another country. Then I come back, and all my life, people hate me. They don’t like me at all. I heal the sick, I cast out their demons, and then they yell out they want to crucify me. And my friend – I sleep with him, I share with him, I even trust him with the money, and he steals my money. Steals it! And he sells me out to my enemies. And then my friends all leave me. And then they whip me. I think I’ve had enough of all of this. I think I’ll just leave you all to it.”

But Jesus did not do that. You see, He taught us how to handle injustice. He taught us how to handle betrayal, unkindness, harshness, false accusations. You choose to judge, or release forgiveness? Become bitter? Or become sweet? You have to choose. The choices we make have consequences.

I want you to notice this before I finish. Those people never let go of their bitterness and never embraced grace, and they never received what God intended them to have. Bitterness will steal your future. Bitterness will steal God’s blessing from your life. You don’t have to be bitter. You choose to be. I’ll say that again – you don’t have to be bitter, you choose to be. You don’t have to be bitter – if you’re bitter it’s because you’ve chosen to be. That bitterness will extract a price – it will affect your relationships, your marriage, your children. It will go from generation to generation, it will steal away from you the blessings of God. The Bible says – Don’t fall from God’s grace and allow bitterness to come into your life.

Some of you sitting here, and you have been through some very painful situations. Home situations, abusive situations. You don’t have to remain bitter or angry; tormented by unforgiveness. You can make a decision to forgive and let it go and to show graciousness. You can choose to live as a son of your Father in heaven or live like a powerless slave. A powerless slave is bitter. A child of God is sweet. You choose how you live.

God has already made you one of His children. He’s already provided everything for you but if you don’t believe that, you’ll still think you’re a slave and be bitter. See, it’s how we think – what we believe in our heart. I believe God wants to set many people free today who are struggling with resentment, bitterness, anger, grief, and you’re harbouring it in your heart. God says – Let it go. Let it go. Take the tree and put it into the bitter waters and come out sweet and healed. Come to the cross with the issue, and let the power of God change you. Then you become like Joseph.

Joseph is a man who turned the bitter waters into sweet. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold as a slave, falsely accused, suffered in prison. When he came out the other end, God raised him up. He was like Nelson Mandela.

You know Nelson Mandela? He had 25 years in prison. When he came out, he chose to forgive. All those years. He chose to forgiven. When he came out, he hadn’t done a thing for 25 years except live in a prison. He was raised up to become the leader of the nation. Because of his achievements? No. Because of his character. When it was in his power to be bitter and angry and judge and pay-back his aggressors, he said - we need to walk together; we need to forgive. He set up a process of reconciliation in his nation and he will be recognised as South Africa’s greatest leader because he’s like Joseph.

When Joseph came out of the prison and was in a place of power and he saw his brothers, he said – don’t be angry; don’t blame yourselves. It was not you who sent me here. I see the hand of God making me into a great person. I see God used all of this to make me into a great person. So please don’t be angry with yourselves. I’m not angry with you. God has blessed me.

There’s story after story in the Bible of people who made choices – some became bitter and lost their destiny, some chose to embrace the cross, forgive, and experience God’s favour. I have just one question for you – what would you do with what’s in your heart? Bitter? Sweet? Judge? Forgive? What would you do? Whatever you do will show up in your life.

Want to make a decision tonight? You will remove the root of bitterness; forgive; and let God deliver you. You’re no longer a slave. You’re going to live like a son does – kind to people who don’t deserve it, who loves people and forgives them because their father’s like that. You choose that. Some people choose to give because they want to get something back. Even unsaved people do that.

I like to give because I’m a generous person now. Like my Father. It’s not about getting something back, it’s just who I am. I like to forgive. That’s who I am – living out of the new person and experiencing the blessing. Amen.

Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12)  

Sun 6 Oct 2013 PM « Back to Top

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In Malachi 4 God prophetically declared the condition on the earth in our time - breakdown in family relationships, destruction and broken-hearts. The problem lies in our heart. We don't have to live out of disappointment and pain. God wants to heal the broken-hearted and TURN our hearts. We can resolve issues of the heart. King David and his wife Michal both suffered injustice from King Saul, but their heart response determined their destiny. Discover powerful keys for accessing God's promises and blessing. It's not automatic, it requires a response.

Open your Bible with me to Malachi 4. We’ve just been having a wonderful few days of meetings; God moving and touching so many lives. I was weighing up and praying on what to do today and I want to share with you a message called ‘Honour your father and your mother’.

We’re going to start here in Malachi – which is the very last closing of the Old Testament. There’s about 400 years of silence before God begins to move and Jesus enters this world. So God makes a promise to them – verse 5 and 6: “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest they come and strike the earth with a curse.

So God expresses His concern and prophetically, He reveals a condition that will be in the earth in the last days. Prophetically, He reveals – in the last days before Jesus returns, that one of the chief problems in the earth will be the break-down of family relationships. Families are foundational to our society. Society’s built on strong families; strong marriages; strong relationships and God’s intention is that families should be healthy. God’s intention is that our parents will reveal something of the heart of God to the world.

So he describes here, a break-down in families. It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, this is what you find – immense problems in families. Breaches in relationship between husband and wife, and breakdown between parents and children. What should be a place where there’s great joy and love and it’s a wonderful place to be, in many cases, there’s many issues and problems and pain and destruction. This affects the children when they grow, so problems just multiply generationally.

Notice where God reveals the heart of the problem is – the root of the problem is in the heart. The heart determines what happens in your life. We think we run our life from our mind, and many people try to. But the Bible says – out of the heart flow the issues or rivers of your life.

It tells us in Proverbs 4:23 – “Guard your heart or out of it flows the boundaries of your life.” So when it’s talking about the heart, it’s talking about the connection point between your soul and your spirit. It’s not talking about your mind. It’s talking about the belief systems in the inner man. God says that there will be a need to turn the heart. In other words, the heart is directed in the wrong direction and needs to be converted and turned around.

If we don’t turn the hearts, there’s no flow of love and there’s no flow of healing. It becomes awkward and difficult and people try to behave right but there’s no life flow. God is always concerned not about your performance or external appearance, but your heart. So things can look good on the outside, but be wrong in the heart.

Notice what he says that he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and then children to their fathers. So it’s a twofold turning – towards the children and then from the children towards their parents. He said – if this doesn’t happen, the consequence is destruction, cursing in the face of the earth.

When families are broken down, marriage is divorce, children are abused, the hearts and lives are twisted with bitterness and anger, this is not blessing, this is a curse. Wherever there’s a curse, demonic spirits are operating. So, God wants to bring us into blessing and it always begins with the heart. If God can change your heart, He can change what you believe, then your life will change. Out of your heart flow the issues of your life, or literally the boundaries, the borders, and limitations.

In our counselling of people concerning marriage issues and problems, we found that there was a common feature in so many – that is unresolved conflicts with their parents. In other words, in entering into their marriage, they started off with great intentions –eyes full of love and romance. But over a period of time, what they hoped for did not happen because the unresolved conflicts from family are brought into the marriage. So before anyone gets married, they need to resolve issues in their heart concerning their parents. I’ll show you why in a moment.

If we have a look in Ephesians chapter 6 – this is talking about once we’re believers, how we need to live our life. Notice it says in verse 2 and verse 3 – “Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

So we’re going to focus on verse 2 and 3. Notice here, there’s a principle and a promise. God says honour, place honour and value on your parents because there’s a promise goes with that. It says it’s the first commandment with a promise. In other words, it’s so important in God’s eyes that He attaches promises to it.

Here’s what the promise is: if I will honour my father and mother, I will live long and life will go well for me. Or putting it another way: if I honour my parents, it will affect my physical health, and will affect my life and relationships. The opposite is also true. If you dishonour your mother and father, the outworking of that in your life will show up as problems in your health and breakdowns and conflicts and problems in your life. And if you don’t see what the root is, you’ll never understand why you have the problems.

I talked with one young man and prayed for him; he was in great pain in his body – he was in pain in all his joints, his spine was stiffening up, and in a few years, he would be unable to bend. Or in other words, he had a major health issue. I inquired of the Lord and the Lord said he has a spirit of infirmity – a demonic spirit in his life producing sickness, and that the root or the cause of the problem is bitterness against his father.

When the young man repented and forgave his father, we prayed and he was delivered of the evil spirit, and immediately he was healed. He was able to move and free of pain. A demonic spirit was stealing away his health because he held bitterness in his heart towards his father. Did he love his father? Yes he did. The problem is, he had unresolved conflicts. He had developed reaction in his heart to what he perceived or judged was a failure in his father.

I can remember another person and they were having trouble with miscarriages. Each time they had a miscarriage, they prayed that God would heal and the next child would carry right through. Now they were having their fifth miscarriage. They asked me to pray for her. When I inquired, the Lord said – each of the children is a boy. She has an issue with her father. I talk with her and inquire, and sure enough, each child that she’d miscarried was a boy.

This is what I said – “How do you get on with your father?” Initially, she said she loved him. So, in her conscious mind, she’s thinking “I love my dad”. But as we asked a few questions, I found she had a deep bitterness against her father and she’d made an inner vow – “I’ll never carry a male child” and that’s true. She didn’t. There was literally a curse operating in her body and her body would not hold a male child – it rejected it. In other words, what was in her heart was determining the limitations on her life. In her heart was a vow – I will never carry a male child and her body had limitations that were determined by her heart. Quite extraordinary really.

So, God says very clearly in His word – There is blessing attached to honouring, and particularly honouring your parents. So, what does it mean to honour? And what would that look like? And what would be the reasons or consequence of me not honouring? The word honour in the Bible, in the Old Testament, is the word ‘weight’, ‘to place weight upon’. It’s the same word as the word for glory. When we say God has great glory, He has great weight. Or He is substantial – there’s something to Him.

So the word ‘honour’ in the Old Testament means to place value or weight upon your parents. To place value upon them. In the New Testament it’s a different word, and it means to fix a price on someone. It means to choose to put a value on them. So when we put it together, we understand from the Bible perspective what honour might look like. It means to consider your parents as being of great value and to put importance on your relationship with them and your communication with them. To put value on them.

Now, how do we honour or value people? We value people for a number of different reasons. Everywhere in our culture we see honour. So, people are honoured number 1 because of their achievements. Someone does something great, we honour them. Someone has a great achievement, we honour them. We place a high value on them because they’ve had an achievement. In other words, they did something we think was very important. So we honour people because something they did was very valuable.

The second reason we honour people is because of their character. It’s who they are. They’ve demonstrated courage or integrity. So we honour them because that’s a great person, showed great courage, great bravery, great endurance. They’ve earned it. So we honour them because they deserve it.

The third reason we honour people is because of the role they play. The president – we give honour to his office. Because the office is the highest government rank in the nation, we give honour to that office. The Bible says to honour those in authority. In fact, the Bible has got a lot about honouring.

So you notice then, three primary reasons why people give honour. One, because of the achievement – what they did. Two, their character. Three, their position. But God honours people for a different reason. Quite different to all of those reasons. It’s an important reason. God honours people because they are made in His image and likeness. Every person you meet is a value to God. Every person you meet, God places a high value upon them and He demonstrated it.

You see, I have a watch here. Is it valuable or is it not valuable? It really depends what someone will pay for it. They may look and say: “Ooh. $1000”. Put a value on it. Or they may look and say: “Oh. Market. $10”. So they put a value on it depending on what it means. So we place a value on people according to how we see them.

But God sees us as great value. So the price He paid, is He sent His only Son Jesus Christ into the world to give His life for us. Even though we’re in sin, we have all these wrong things going on in our life, even though there’s many bad things going on, God says: “You’re a value to me. I can look past the things that are wrong and I see in the core you are made in my image, and I value you.” So, honour is what God gives to us. It’s a value He placed on us by Jesus coming into the world, walking among people, laying His life down, showing us what real love is like. So, God values people just because they’re people made in His image.

Now, we tend to value people differently. If we think they’ve done good things, we think that’s good. If they disappoint us, we tend to judge them – “I don’t like.” If they fail in their character, we judge them – “I don’t like”. If we think that they’re not fulfilling their office or role well, “I don’t like”. So, we have opinions about people and we judge people according to how they behave.

So let’s have a look then at dishonour. One of the reasons people dishonour their parents is because of familiarity. We’re so close to them, that we see not only the good, we see the bad. We not only see the good qualities, we see their brokenness. We see their impatience or their anger. We see everything. So, because of what we see, we make judgements against our parents. “He didn’t do what I expected. He did what I didn’t expect”. And we become hurt in the heart. When people are hurt, they harbour anger. Anger is a demand – “You owe me.”

Now, in many families, there are real problems. Some of you will come from a family where your father betrayed your mother, betrayed his marriage vows, betrayed all of the family and he left his wife. So, you are left with this huge emotional turmoil and anger because of the break-up of the family.

One of your parents may be very angry – may have beaten you; may have abused you; may have abandoned you; may have rejected you. Many of you will have very painful experiences. Here’s the lesson to learn – you’re not responsible for what someone else did, but you have power to choose how you will respond. You have power to choose what you will do. You can choose to judge and despise and dishonour. Or you can choose to forgive and honour. This is your choice. You have power to make that choice.

All of you have made that choice, and will continue to do so depending on what is in your heart. If there’s anger and grief and bitterness and disappointment, you will despise one or other of your parents, judge them, and then you’ll dishonour them in various ways. Honour is an issue of the heart.

It helps if you understand this – God doesn’t ask you to honour your parents because they’re great parents. He asks you to honour them as a gift to them. They gave you the gift of life, and your response is to give honour and value to them.

So God makes this particular promise – if you give honour to your parents, regardless of how they conduct themselves, regardless whether they were good or not good parents, if you’ll make a decision to keep a heart of honour and honour them, you’ll live long and life will go well. If because you’ve been hurt by them, because they’ve done things that were very hurtful to you, and you harbour anger and resentment and bitterness, you harbour judgements against them, then life will not go well for you.

I have heard many young people say something like this: “I’ll never be like my father.” That tells us they’re bitter and they’ve judged their father. You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve found they’re doing the same thing their father did. They’ve literally become like them. It’s like he’s been recreated again.

Or someone says: “I’ll never be like my mother.” I hear someone say that, I said: “Give it time, you’ll be just like her. One day, you’ll hear yourself shouting like she shouted, yelling and scolding like she scolded, and all the things you hated so much, all the things you said you’d never do that – “When I’m a mother I will never do that!” One day you’ll find yourself doing just that. “How did I get here? How did I get to this place? I remember it hurt me so much, I think “I’ll never do that.” Now, I look in the mirror, I’ve just become like her. How did that happen?” Because you never resolved the issues of the heart. The judgements you formed against your parents led to despising of them, and this has led to a cycle of problems in your life.

I remember one man came and he’s having a conflict with his boss. I said: “Tell me about the last place you worked.” “Oh, I had conflict with him too. I left him.” I said: “How are getting on with your cell leader?” “Oh, that’s why we’re here having this meeting. I’m having conflict with him too.” I said: “Well, did you ever have any job where you were happy?” He said: “Oh, I was really happy in the army.” I said: “How did you get on with the officers?” “Oh, they didn’t like me. They picked on me. No, no, no. I didn’t like them either.”

I said: “Wow, we’re looking at a pattern here. How’d you get on at school?” He said: “Not so good.” I said: “How did you get on with the teachers?” “Oh, they always picked on me. Ah, I didn’t like the teachers.” I said: “Wow. Ok. How did you get on with your parents?” He said: “My father kicked me out of home.” I said: “Really.” He said: “They’re not my real parents, they’re adoptive parents. I said: “Really.”

I said: “Let me tell you what the problem is, and then you tell me about your future because the pattern is very clear. Your problem is this: You felt rejected when you were adopted. You harboured anger and resentment and bitterness towards your natural father and mother. This couple that have laid their lives down to love you and to raise you, you have rejected them and poured your anger out upon them. This dishonouring of both your natural parents and your adoptive parents is showing up with conflicts in your life. These conflicts will pursue you until you deal with what’s in your heart. You need to recognise what’s in your heart and repent.”

Let’s have a look at another story in the Bible just quickly. It’s found in 2 Samuel 6. Problems in life always follow dishonour of the parents. So, 2 Samuel 6 – let me just give you a little bit of background. It’s the story of a great revival. The nation has now got a new king – King David is now being positioned as king, his wife Michal has been restored to him, and now he is bringing the presence of God, the arc of the covenant into the city. It’s a national celebration day. Everyone is there. There’s shouting and music and dancing and partying. It is a wonderful day. God’s presence is wonderfully there. So we read that David is dancing and leaping and rejoicing. He’s so happy – the presence of God is here.

So, verse 14: “David danced before the Lord with all his might.” So David’s dancing. Now let’s have a look at his wife. “And as the arc of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.”

Two people, one event, two different responses. Let’s have a look at why. Michal was very attracted to David when he was a young man. Michal was the daughter of King Saul, and King Saul hated David. He was envious of him, wanted to kill him. So, after they were married, and David now became the son-in-law to the king. Saul’s jealousy got stronger and he began to plan how he can kill David. Finally he sends an assassination squad to kill him in his bed.

Can you imagine that? His own daughter’s husband and he sends a squad in, a hit squad to kill him. But she got word of it and lowered David out the window, he got out of town. Then David became the most wanted man. Saul began to pursue him and if he found anyone making David a friend, he’d kill them. So David was treated like a fugitive. He had years out in the wilderness, suffered greatly, always afraid. He becomes a friend of someone, they might betray him, or they might get killed. So he lived very very troubled.

His wife Michal – her own father gave her away to another man. It’s David who she loves, David’s her hero, David she dreams about, and her father gives her to some other man. So she has to marry someone, live with someone. But her heart is not for him. So both David and Michal were badly treated by the same person. When someone treats you badly, you can either operate in a Godly way and take God’s way of dealing with it – to bring grace into it, to release forgiveness, and to remain in a place of freedom in your heart. Or you can become angry and bitter – despise and dishonour.

Michal – Saul’s daughter – despised her father and as we’ll see, she also despised her husband. David in contrast, was a man who loved God. So he forgave Saul – he never raised his hand against him, he always sought to honour him. Now the day which should’ve been the greatest day in their life – they’ve come together, and now the arc of the covenant is coming in, David is experiencing God, his wife is looking in. “Oh, who are you? What are you doing this? You make a fool of yourself.” So she despised him in her heart.

Then when David came home, verse 20 – He returns to bless his household. So he’s full of joy and love, comes home to his wife, wants to bless his household. This is what she said: “Oh, how glorious is the king of Israel today. You uncover yourself like one of the servants, as one of the base fellas shamelessly uncovers herself.”

In other words, she gave him a real scolding. “How come you carry on like that? Why do you do that? You’re a king. Why do you dance like that? Geh geh geh.” Some of you know that? Yeah, we all know that one. This is what David said: “I did this to the Lord. I’ll do even more.” He refused to be intimidated by her bitterness and dishonour. He refused to let someone put him down. He refused to let someone take away his freedom.

Now look at what happens now. It says in verse 23 – Therefore, because of this, Michal the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. Now you notice what’s happened here. David chose the path of honour – he honoured God, he honoured Saul, he valued people. Saul did not deserve to be honoured, but David gave him the gift of honour in respect. Michal became bitter, despised her father, despised her husband, and these are the consequences.

1.) She was unable to experience what God was doing. Unable to enter into God’s blessing because of what was in her heart.

2.) Her marriage became barren. There was no joy, no love, no life in that marriage. All the love she had was overcome by the bitterness and judging and dishonour.

3.) She had no children. Notice for a person, or a Hebrew person, that was a huge reproach. It was like she failed in her identity as a woman. Later on in the Bible, in scenes where she picked up and adopted the children of someone else, that those children were put to death.

Notice the consequences. One was a man of honour, one was a woman who dishonoured. Let me just read you a couple of scriptures in Deuteronomy 27:16 – “Cursed is the person who treats his father and mother with contempt.” Here’s another one: Proverbs 30:17 – “The eye that mocks his father and despises to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out.”

So notice what it’s saying: that when there’s dishonour to our parents, demonic spirits are empowered to trouble and strip our lives. Now just in that second verse, when it says the “ravens of the valley” – that means demonic spirits. It says they pick out your eyes. That’s what they used to do to people who had fallen and failed and were defeated in a battle of life. So what he’s saying here is, when there’s dishonour in our heart to our parents, we will lose our capacity to see because demonic spirits will cloud us with blindness. These are quite horrendous scriptures aren’t they?

Here’s another one – Proverbs 20:20 – “Whoever curses his father and mother, his lamp shall be put in obscure darkness.” What it’s meaning is this – when it’s talking about the lamp, it’s talking about your spirit, your inner life. It says: when you’re cursing or speaking evil about your parents, it said ‘there’s a darkness that will fill your life and you won’t be able to see clearly’. These are quite serious scriptures.

So, what can we do about that? Here’s the first thing – God wants you to live differently. He offers you life. God understands the issue of broken families. He understands the pain and the sorrows that people go through and Jesus came with the intention of healing the broken-hearted.

So the first thing God offers is this: He says if you will turn to Him, and recognise the problem is not your parents or your family and all the things that have happened. The problem lies in your heart. He promises – I’ll give you a new heart. I’ll put my spirit inside you. He said: You’ll be born into a new family where God is your Father and you’ll lack nothing.

So God wants us to understand – natural families have limitations. But because people are sinful, pain and destruction is inevitable. Grief and disappointments are part of life. But we don’t have to live that way. You don’t have to live out of disappointment and pain. Jesus offers something better.

He says: Get your eyes off your natural family, get your eyes off your natural circumstances, and lift your eyes up – there is a God who loves you. There is a Father in Heaven who loves you perfectly. There is a God in heaven who will welcome and embrace you and love you. He will provide for you. He will never leave you, and He’s reaching out to you. In fact He’s been reaching out all your life.

Jesus said this: To everyone who receives Him, everyone who believed on Him, that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again victorious. He said: To everyone who believed in Christ, He gives power to become a child of God. In other words, no matter what our family has been like, God wants to put you in His family. He wants to give you a new start. He wants to give you a new identity. A child of the living God.

Yes, we’ll always have come from a natural family, but now we’re part of a bigger family with God as our Father, our needs provided for. He will always love us. He’s always kind. He’s always tender-hearted. He knows how to heal your heart. Our first step is to come into the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

Here’s the next thing – God wants you to change how you live. It’s not just about coming to the front and receiving Jesus, it’s more than that. It’s about a changed heart, a changed life. Changed in the way you relate to people. See?

So this is what God says: “Now that I’ve changed you and put my nature in you, you don’t have to live like you used to live – angry, bitter and twisted. Here’s how you live – just be kind because I’m kind. I’m kind to everyone.” “Oh, I thought you were only kind if we were good people and did the right things.” He says: “No, that’s not how it works. That’s the old family. This is the new family. I’m always kind.” “You mean, even if I really do something bad and goofy?” “Yeah. I don’t change. I don’t change because you had a bad day. I’m always kind.”

He says: “Be kind. Be tender-hearted. Tender-hearted, not hard. Why? Because that’s what I’m like. Very tender-hearted.” “You mean if I really goof up and really blow it and do bad, you’re not going to shout at me? You’re not going to scold me? You’re not going to punish me?” He says: “No I’m not into punishment. I’m tender-hearted. I want to find a way to get you back. See? Be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. I want you to learn to forgive people instead of dishonouring them and judging them. Just like I forgave you.”

He said: “Now, I want you to relook at your family, relook at your mum and your dad. If you’ve got anger and bitterness in your heart because you felt they let you down, you felt they failed you. Or maybe they did fail you, maybe what they did was terrible. It does happen. But you don’t really know how broken they were and why they did that. Anyway, you’re in a new family now; and in the new family, we honour people.” “You mean…? But what they did hurt me.” He said: “I know that, and what you did hurt me too. But I’ve forgiven you; and just as I’ve forgiven you, you need to forgive them.”

So He says: “Now, I want you to have a change of heart. I want you to see them as people and without them, you’d never have had life. Without them, you’d have never entered into this world and have an eternal life ahead of you. So, even if they failed and everything else, I want you to give them honour and value because they brought you into this world. I want you to value them because I value them. They’re special to me as well. I want you to honour them and give them the gift of honour.”

“But they don’t deserve it! My father left me. He did this, he did this. He was unfaithful, he did these things.” God says: “I know that. But you’re a very angry person. You need to forgive like I forgave you because I valued you. What I want you to do, is when you’ve forgiven, would you begin to pray for them? Because when you pray for people, your heart begins to bond with them and you begin to see God’s best for them, and they begin to change. It’s impossible to pray for them and stay angry. So I want you to first of all forgive, let go of all the judgements and start to pray for them. Then, if you have really caused them pain, I think it’d be good to go and apologise.”

“What?! But you don’t understand what my father did. You don’t understand what my mother did.” “Yeah I understand. But I see you’re still so angry and the things you did really hurt them. When you judged them and rejected them, they may have said nothing, but they felt the pain because they’re parents. There’s still a part of them that fears for you.”

“Well, but my parents gave me up. But, my family broke up.” “Nevertheless, this is the new way of living. It’s called loving like I loved you. Forgiving like I forgive you. You remember when you shouted and yelled at your mother and you were very tough and abusive and critical and ignored her? She may have yelled back, you may have had a shouting match, but she was hurt. You hurt her.”

You could go and say something like this: “Mum, God has been talking to me and He’s shown me that I’ve held anger and hurt in my heart for many years. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me? I love you.” You can only do that if you first came to the Lord and did it. Then after you’ve put things right, start to find ways to show kindness. It’s your gift to them. I’ll tell you something, love always wins.

Can I just share with you now a little story. Then I’ll finish up. You’re going to like this one. I’m still amazed. We had many difficulties before I became a Christian. We had a daughter who we adopted out and we were in conflict and ashamed and we hid this thing, and it was a cause of great pain. When I came to Christ, I really repented and believed that God would restore our daughter.

One day, He did. Years later, after we’d built relationship with her, she said: “I want you to take my wedding. I want you to be the one who takes the wedding. I’ve been to the weddings of my sisters, they’re so wonderful. I want to have a wonderful wedding just like that.”

Of course, part of the wonderful wedding was that the presence of God came. It was her and the kids were grown up Christians and the presence of God came. But she didn’t understand any of that – she said: “I just want that for my wedding.”

So, we went to the wedding, and we had the night of the practice. It was very difficult. There was huge tension. Her adoptive father and mother were there, other members of her family were there, each of them were adopted; and there was this tension. There’s 1, 2, 3 families there. It was tense. The father, it was difficult for him I think. It was difficult for the mother.

I remember going out of that and going home thinking “Oh Jesus. This is so difficult.” I remember going to the beach and just weeping and saying: “Jesus, please help. What can I do? What can I say?” The Lord dropped something into my heart the next morning when I woke up. Sometimes God doesn’t answer straight away.

So I woke up in the morning, and God dropped an answer into my heart. We came into the wedding, she came down the aisle, she has her adoptive father with her and other family sitting here, and other family sitting there, and our family scattered in there among them, and you could feel tension in the air.

I can hear things sometimes in the Spirit. This is what I could hear: “What’s he going to say?” I could hear it – “What’s he going to say?” Her parents had tried to discourage her having me to do the service. They were not Christians and they did not really want me to take the service. But part of her journey was to stand up for herself and say what she wanted.

This is what I did – I thought through. They’re right in front of me, it was very tense. This was the day, her special day. So they’re all waiting for me to speak. This is what God said to me – “Honour her parents.”

So before we started the service, I spoke to the parents. I said: “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for Josephine. I want to thank you for the way you’ve cared for her and given her an education and a family. I want to thank you for the way you’ve picked her up and looked after her. I want to honour you for the role you’ve filled in her life. So we have no right to make any claims, but we appreciate that you have made room for us on this day.”

The atmosphere changed immediately. The presence of God came. You see people weeping. Just weeping. God moved in that service is probably the best of all weddings we’ve had. Because when grace is flowing, you feel God the most.

So then, we had the time of the reception and I remember thinking – “I wonder how the reception’s going to go. I wonder where we’ll all be sitting.” You know the tables, where you’re sitting tells you something. We went in there to see where we’re sitting. Now, get this – I had told my daughter – “You need to honour your parents on this day. You need to speak words to appreciate them just like you’ve seen in all the other weddings.”

When we got there, they had the main table where the wedding party were, and they had different tables around the room, and there were two tables right at the front. Not one higher than the other, both in equal places. One for her family, and one for us. I saw immediately what she was doing. She stood up and spoke. She honoured her father and mother for raising her, and then she honoured us.

God came. God always comes on honour. God always comes when there’s honour. And Joy stood up and spoke. She began to express appreciation to Jo’s mother. She was never going to stand up and speak, but she stood up and spoke. Then she told an interesting thing which we’d never known – that her own mother had pressured her not to take Josephine. She’d had to rise up against her own mother’s wishes and choose this child. She said every time she had a birthday, I gave thanks for the mother who brought you into the world.

The presence of God came, and people just began to weep. I’ve never been in a reception like that. It’s amazing. Some just broke out sobbing. The love of God flowed in that place. Here’s the thing I want you to understand – it could never have happened unless we decided to honour. The decision to give honour brings blessing. She chose to honour her mother and father and to honour us. We chose to honour them; and God was able to move freely.

It’s a gift you give people. It’s because that’s who we are now. We’re people of honour. We’re part of a great family – the family of God; and honour is what we give to people.

Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12)  

Sun 6 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Jn 1:29 "Behold - the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" has little meaning for people today, but for the Israelites who applied the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Ex.12) it was tremendously significant. When the destroyer saw the blood, they were protected, and 430 years of slavery finished. Jesus is God's provision for our sinfulness, and His blood still speaks. Get a fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Jesus for your freedom.

I’m going to start first of all on John 1:29. We’re going to look in about two or three places in the Bible. The Bible is God’s word. It explains to us God’s plan. It’s made up into two parts – what’s called the Old Testament and then the New Testament. So, I’m going to read to you just one verse. Then we’re going to look in the Old Testament.

“The next day, John the Baptist saw Jesus Christ coming towards him and said: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”” John was especially prepared and commissioned by God to prepare the nation for the arrival of Jesus Christ. His message was – repent from sin and people came from all over the nation. He was preparing them to receive the blessings that God had for them.

One day as he’s baptising, he saw Jesus Christ walking towards him. God spoke into his heart and spoke and revealed who Jesus is; that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. John, who was a prophet, says this: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Now, to most of us, that has very little meaning whatsoever. But to the people he was speaking to, this had immense significance.

The problem mankind has wrestled with has been the issue of sin. Sin is transgressing or breaking the laws of God. Sin is running our life independent of God. Sin is finding ways to get ourselves ahead without God. Sin is being turned away from God to our own way. Sin brings destruction and death. The Bible says – the wages or consequences of sin is always separation, isolation, death.

God never intended our world to be like it is – with wars and violence and poverty and crime. He created the world a beautiful place. When he created it, he said it was good. But when sin entered the world, when the man God had created turned away from Him, the whole dynamic of this creation changed. Demonic spirits were empowered into the earth. Demonic spirits began to oppress people. When Adam sinned, sickness and death and sorrows entered the world.

But God promised one day, He would send someone who would redeem them. Someone who would deal with the issue of sin. Now in all the religions of the world, the challenge is: how do you deal with sin? In all the religions of the world, are aware of the issue of sin. They all have a similar way of dealing with it – you have to do something. We’ll show you very shortly that Christianity is completely different; that the core foundation for becoming right with God is not what I do, it’s not what you do, it’s what Jesus Christ did for us.

So we’re going to look at the Old Testament – we’ll go into the book of Exodus. So if you’ll just follow me, we won’t look at too many verses. We just want to lay a story for you. So we’ll look in Exodus and we’ll first of all look in Exodus chapter 1, so we get the picture. Exodus 1 –So it’s talking about the people of God and they’re in Egypt.

It says in verse 11: “The Egyptians set taskmasters over them to afflict them with burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was very hard.” They even sent them to kill their firstborn children.

So what is happening is, the people of God are trapped in a foreign nation. They’re living in slavery. None of us is made to be slave to anything. God has made us for freedom. We long for freedom. But these people were in bondage. They were in bondage to the Egyptians and the Egyptians put hard taskmasters over them. They beat them, they abused them, they made them serve. Their life was very bitter, very difficult. They suffered, they were beaten, they were abused, they worked hard, very little return. They had no freedom to run their own life. They were held in slavery. They were trafficked. Their lives were very miserable.

This is a picture for us. It’s a picture of the invisible reality of sin. When people are born into this world, we’re born in slavery to sin. Whatever conquers you, you are subject to it. Sins are bitterness, hatred, anger, fear. Sin afflicts every person. Behind sin and empowering it, are demonic spirits. So people born into this world are born in slavery to sin, and life is hard. There are disappointments, betrayals, difficulties, setbacks.

In the midst of it, people try to find relief of the pain. They become addicted to various things. Then their addiction is a bondage. Addictions to drugs, then the drugs steal their health and their finance. Addicted to pornography. Addicted to alcohol and nicotine. So this is slavery – people were made very bitter. The Bible tells us that behind Egypt, there was an invisible spiritual world. The Egyptians worshipped many different gods. They had gods for all kinds of manners of things.

So the reality is this – the people were in slavery and the power behind that slavery were demonic spirits working through the Egyptians. The people began to cry and ask God to help them. So God sent Moses to help them; and when Moses came in, said to the Pharaoh – “Let my people go. The Lord says – let my people go.” Pharaoh says: “Who is this Lord? He’s not my God. I will not let them go.” So God began to bring plagues on the nation of Israel.

Let’s come and have a look at it now. We’re going come right to the very last one and we’ll look at this in Exodus chapter 12. Here in verse 3 – “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.”

Verse 5 – “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.” He said: “Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.”

Notice here in verse 7: “And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.”

Verse 12: “‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment, for I am the Lord.”

Verse 14: “‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.”

Verse 22 and 23: “And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.”

Verse 29 - 31: “And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead. Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the Lord as you have said.”

So the first thing we need to see is that God spoke, He was going to bring judgement on the gods of Egypt. Now, the Egyptians worship many gods. They worship the Nile river, so God brought a plague on the Nile. So, everything that they worshipped, everything that they said was God, God brought a judgement against it.

God demonstrated that His power was greater than these god, that these gods were false gods, and that He was the one true God. Each time He brought a plague, He was showing the powerlessness of their gods. He was demonstrating what they worshipped had no power and that the Lord God of Israel is the real God.

Each time that Moses came to the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh hardened his heart – “I will not let go.” So they brought another plague. “Ok, now you let go?” “No I will not.” Each time they bring another plague. “Will you let the people go?” “I will not! Who is this Lord?” Then, another plague!” “Will you let them go?” “Ok. Maybe just a little bit. But no money, no cattle, no children.” “Ok, you haven’t got the message.” On more plague. “Ok. You can go. But leave the cattle and the children.” Ok, one more plague.

So each time, one more plague came. Pharaoh’s heart became very bitter and hard. Finally it came to the last plague of all. Now you have to understand this – that the Pharaoh was worshipped as the living god. His son was also worshipped as the living god. So from the Egyptian point of view, the Pharaoh was one of the great gods of their nation and so was his son.

So notice what God says - he gives a very careful instruction to the people of Israel. So, Moses gathers all the leaders up, and he said: “Listen carefully. One more plague. God is going to break the power of Egypt. God is going to break the demonic powers. God is going to deliver us as He said. But there’s one more thing that will happen. I want you to listen really carefully. This is very important, what I’m going to tell you. This is what we do – it’s going to happen on the 14th day. What day? 14th day. You better get this one right. It’s not good if you have it on the 13th or 15th. 14thday. On the 14th day, I want you to do this. I want you to choose from your flocks, a lamb.”

The Egyptians despised the shepherds. They despised the sheep. So, God says ‘I want you to take a lamb, and I want you to check it carefully. No spot, no blemish, perfect lamb. Can’t be a blind lamb, limping lamb. Perfect lamb.’

He said: “On the evening of the 14th day – that’s about 3 o’clock – I want you to do this. You gather all your family to your household, and then you slay the lamb, and you get the blood from the lamb in a basin. Then you get some hyssop and you must do this. You must take the blood, put some blood on the lintel, then over on the doorpost, then over on the other doorpost. Then, you go in, and you eat the lamb together. At midnight, you will leave because the destroyer is going to come through the nation. He’s going to kill the firstborn of every family, every animal, unless he sees the blood. If he sees the blood of the lamb, you will be spared. When God sees the blood, He will say – ‘They’re my people. They’re protected by the blood. Nothing shall happen to them. Nothing shall come into their homes.’”

So the days went by, and the 14th day came. Now, if you were the eldest son, you would be very keen to make sure this is done. You’d be hanging out with your father. “Hey dad, let me check the lamb is well. Let’s give it a good look. Oh, maybe that’s a little spot. Get another one. I want to get this right. You know, my life is hanging in the balance here. Ok. Alright. Let’s get the blood in the bowel. Don’t spill any. Ok. That looks like it. Alright then. Now, take the hyssop. Ok, put it on the lintel. More! Just in case the angel doesn’t have good eyesight. Put it all over! Ok. Don’t forget this one. The doorposts. More! Over this one here. More! Let me have a look. Put some more. Just in case. Can I take any chances? There’s only one chance to get this right. You get it wrong, I’m finished.”

So, they put the blood. The Egyptians looked - “What are you doing?” Some of them listened. Some of them said – “What are these Hebrews up to?” So they asked the Hebrews: “Hey what are you doing?” “Oh, secret. But I’ll tell you – there’s one more plague. It’s coming through every house. Only way you can be protected – this is what it is: perfect lamb, check it out – no spots. Then on the 14th day, kill a lamb, take the blood in the basin – lintel, doorposts. Ok. Then, stay inside. Don’t go out for a little walk at night.”

Some Egyptians believed. They said – “Man, we better do what they’re doing because it looks like God’s on their side. You guys are scary guys, your God’s a scary God.” So some of the Egyptians did this as well. Then the night came. 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock. Nothing much, I don’t see anything. Have a look outside. “No. Don’t look, don’t go outside! We don’t know when!” 10 o’clock. No sign of the angel. 11 o’clock. Finally, it’s midnight. They start to hear the crying. They realise something’s happening.

Screams went up in house after house after house. Hundreds and hundreds of households. Demonic spirit went in and killed the children – eldest sons in households. Right down even in the prison. If you’re the eldest son in the prison, you’re in big trouble. You can’t get out! So, everywhere through the land, God brought judgement on the Pharaoh’s gods; and He broke the spiritual power. Notice this – He broke the power behind the nation.

Do you realise, Egypt never recovered after this? It has never recovered to become the nation it once was. It lost everything through this. So, the angel of death went right through the nation, but those who had applied the blood, they were spared. God said to them: “You must eat the lamb, and then be ready to take your journey because you’re coming out of bondage. You’re coming out of bondage! 430 years of slavery finishes tonight! Have your bag packed. Get ready to take the journey because tonight the slavery finishes.”

This is what the Bible says – it says: “Not one of them that came out of Egypt was weak.” That night, when they shed the blood, and they waited in faith, not only did the angel of death come through and kill the Egyptians, God’s spirit moved through the people of God, and their sicknesses were healed, the broken bones were healed. It says – “Not one of them were weak.”

They lived in slavery. They lived in poverty. But not one was weak and feeble. They were all strengthened by the power of God. The Bible says – God’s armies rose and left Egypt that night. Before they left, the Egyptians gave them silver and gold; they plundered Egypt, and they left on their journey to enter the promised land.

God said this – “I want you, every year, on the 14th day of this first month, to remember this. You will offer a Passover lamb, shed the blood, and you will remember what I did for you.” They did that year after year. So when John the Baptist rose up, and said: “Behold, the lamb of God”, they knew exactly what he’s talking about. It’s the Passover lamb. That lamb’s blood saved us, delivered us, healed us. This is the lamb of God. This is God’s choice. God’s choice – Jesus Christ. He takes away the sins of the world, He prophesied. Everything you’ve seen for 1500 years was a picture of this. This is the reality.

Now, I want you to see the crucifixion of Jesus. I want you to notice something. We’re going to look in Matthew chapter 27. We saw before that blood is important because the life is in the blood. So everywhere, in every culture in the world, people understand a little bit about that. In Matthew 27, we’re going to read about the death of Jesus Christ.

Matthew 27:45-46 –“Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.”

Verse 50-53: “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

Notice from the 6th hour to the 9th hour, Jesus has come to the end of His ministry. His life is not taken from Him, He gives up His life. The 6th hour to the 9th hour is between 12 midday and 3pm in the afternoon. It says – “God brought a great darkness over the land”, just as the Egyptians had darkness over their land.

It says – “The 9th hour, Jesus cried out.” Why does the Bible tells us – “the 9th hour”? The 9th hour is 3pm. At this time, in Israel, it was the feast of Passover. So, people had come from all over the nation for this feast. At the 9th hour, or 3 o’clock, the high priest was taking the Passover lamb and shedding its blood. What no one realised was that God’s Passover lamb was now giving up its life on the cross. “At the 9th hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up His spirit.”

Now, if you’ve ever been around people who are dying, people don’t die with a loud voice. They don’t. They kind of fade away. Gone. They don’t have a loud voice. When Jesus died, the Bible says He gave a triumphant shout. The word ‘loud’ is ‘mega’. A ‘mega’ shout. He gave a triumphant shout. It’s finished. The work of atoning for sin for the world. Finished. He shed His blood.

Now, notice what happens. When God accepts the sacrifice, power is released. I want you to notice some things that happened. The first thing that happened – it say the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Now the veil in the temple was a very thick veil. It stopped people going into the holiest part where God was dwelling. But suddenly, angelic hands tore it from top to bottom, and people were shocked. For the first time, they could see and have access right into the presence of God. God was wanting them to know – I have made a way for every person to come into the presence of God.

The second thing that happened was a mighty earthquake. Huge earthquake. A massive earthquake. I don’t know what scale it was, but it must have been very big because notice what it says – it shattered the rocks. Look what else it did – it broke open all the graves. Now that’s a big earthquake to break open the grave. Why did such a thing happen? See? The consequences of sin is death. And God opened up the graves. That is scary stuff! Dead people. Graves opened. Granddad, you just buried him and there he is. Woah. So all the graves open up, bodies in different stages of decay. Woah. Bones and skull. Dreadful. That’s scary!

People couldn’t leave it like that. So they had to go and camp out, look after the graves. But they had to wait till the Passover was over before they could do any work and fill them in. So, this is a traumatic scene. Massive earthquake, graves opened, and Jesus Himself descended into the deepest part of the Earth, declared to the demonic spirits and principalities – I have conquered you.

After 3 days, there was another massive earthquake, and Jesus rose from the dead. Look what it says in Matthew 27. It said: “Many of the bodies of the saints rose, went into Jerusalem, and appeared to many.” People think that death is the end. It’s not the end. Did you realise that when Jesus rose from the dead, many of the people in those graves, God supernaturally reconstructed the bodies, and they rose from the dead, they began to walk through the city of God. Maybe Moses and Abraham, some of the great saints and kings. That is scary.

You know, we have Easter and we have Easter eggs. Celebration, nice meal. They had ghosts walking through the city. Moses, come on! Appearing to many people! This is a traumatic event. This is not some secret event. God is demonstrating to everyone – His power released through the blood of Jesus can forgive your sins, break demonic holds, set you free from the power of sin, and raise you up, and put resurrection life in you. Resurrection life. God was demonstrating that no matter what the devil has brought upon us, by believing and faith in the blood that Jesus shed, God’s power is released to change your life. What an amazing thing.

The Bible tells us in Colossians 2:14-15 that when Jesus died on the cross, when He shed His blood, He said He took away every sin against you, and disarmed principalities and power. He took away the power of the devil to hold you in bondage; and it all comes down to this – it’s not what I have done, it’s what Christ did for me and whether I will believe it. This is what the Bible says – that God has made Jesus to be a mercy seat by faith in His blood. Romans 3:25 – God has made Jesus a mercy seat for us by faith in His blood.

If you have sinned, the blood of Jesus paid the price. If you have failed, the blood of Jesus has paid the price. If you have wrestled with something, the blood of Jesus has redeemed you. The word ‘redeemed’, we say – I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb. Know that song? “I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb, I am redeemed.” That’s the one. It’s a great song. The word ‘redeem’ means to pay the full price to ransom.

When Jesus shed His blood, He did the full price to set you free, to save you, to forgive your sins. He just requires that you turn from things and believe. If you sin and fall, turn and believe. The blood has paid the price already. You may be wrestling with sin, wrestling with struggles in your life, turn and believe that Jesus has died for that sin. Turn away from it. It just brings sorrow and destruction and condemnation. Believe what Jesus has done. What an amazing truth.

In every religion in the world you have to do something. Christianity – Jesus did it all. If I will respond to Jesus, if I will identify with Him by faith in my heart, then, all that He did for me becomes mine. Do you know what the meaning of water baptism is? I don’t know how they do it here, but in the New Testament they would take them down to the river, they put them under the water and bring them back up.

When a person gets water baptised, it’s not some little ritual. It’s a statement of faith in your heart –My old life finished when I came to Christ. When He died on the cross, I died with Him. I identify with Him. My old way of living is dead. Jesus was buried in the ground, we go under in the water of baptism, I believe that my life is now buried. The old sinful life, selfish life, it is finished. Come up out of the water baptism – it represents a new life has begun.

It’s not a matter of the water and getting wet. It’s understanding and believing in your heart – My old life finished, it died with Christ. It’s buried. From God’s point of view now, and I choose to believe it, I’m a new person and I’m now living a new life. It’s the life of a believer, a life following Jesus. Will I fail? Yes I will. That’s because I keep forgetting who I am, go back to thinking I’m that old person and doing those old things. But I don’t have to do them anymore because their power’s broken. So I can just repent quickly, the blood of Jesus will cleanse me, and I can begin to walk with God afresh.

If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us, and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. Amen. If we walk in the light, it means we’re open with God, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Christ cleanses us. The blood is always available to cleanse you of sin and failure. We just need to believe. We need to believe in our heart that what Jesus did is enough. Enough.

Now, just one last thing. When you come to enter the presence of God, if you believe that what Jesus did is enough, you can come boldly. If you don’t believe it’s enough, you’ll come like this – “Oh, God I’m such a bad person. I’m so sorry.” That’s not how God wants you to come. He wants you to believe that blood is enough to cleanse your sins; and to arise and walk in the power of a new life.

Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12)  

Mon 7 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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In 1 Kings 19 we find Elijah had yielded to fear and intimidation, and drawn back from his God-given assignment. We then get one of those "God Questions". He knows the answer, but wanted Elijah to think about where he was at, to recognize his distorted thinking, and to get back to his assignment, which included raising up others to fulfill the ministry. What are you doing here? Elijah had chosen to yield to fear, withdraw from his assignment, sit down, become passive and isolate at the crucial point when he needed to press forward. Sound familiar? Learn to recognize the signs of pressure.

Let’s open our Bible to 1 Kings 19. I just want to share briefly with you, then we want to have a time to pray for you. We want to see God touch your life. Leaders need to be refreshed, need a fresh touch of God on their life. So we need to learn how to step up.

So, I want to take just a couple of verses and I’ll just open it up a little bit. We read in 1 Kings 19:9, and it says: “Elijah went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Verse 13: "Then came a still small voice - when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. The voice came to him again and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

This is a very serious problem for Elijah. Elijah had a call on his life to stand up in the nation that was corrupt to represent and speak on behalf of God and to confront the spiritual powers of his days. He was called to bring revival to his nation. He was anointed to bring revival to his nation and he emerged out of a season where he was hidden – no one saw him.

You remember the story of how he brought a famine on the land, and then how he called fire down from heaven. A fire came on the alter. Then they destroyed the prophets of Baal. So Elijah was in a move of God. The nation was ready for God to move. But all movements of God require leadership. Nothing happens without leadership.

When God wants to make something happen, He needs a man or a woman to stand up. He needs something anointed with the Holy Spirit who will stand up and represent Him. This has always been the challenge God has had – to have a man or a woman who will represent Him. Represent what He’s like and carry His power to pull down the things that intimidate lives.

The nation lived under witchcraft. It lived in a place of idolatry, of temple prostitution, of all kinds of witchcraft in the nation. There was an oppressive atmosphere set over the nation. Most people were intimidated by it. They lived in fear of it. But God looked for a man to raise up who could stand up in that environment, who was not afraid of the spiritual atmosphere, not afraid of the idols, not afraid of the temples, not afraid of the witchcraft, able to stand up and live a life differently.

So, Elijah began very very well. Then, there came a point where he came under spiritual attack. A spiritual counter-attack. He had made great progress – torn down the alters, built an alter to the Lord, destroyed the prophets of Baal. He was having a move of God. If he could’ve just kept the move of God going, it would’ve reached and touched the whole nation.

But there came a strong spiritual backlash. There came a strong spiritual pressure against him. The Bible says that Jezebel rose up, she said – ‘I intend to kill you. I intend to take your life. I’ll take your life like you took the life of the prophets.’ So she began to intimidate him.

This is always one of the big problems in ministry – is it’s easy to start well, but you need to stand in the face of the battle. You need to stand when pressure comes on you. You need to be able to stand when the spirit world pushes back on you. Usually pushes back on you through people –people accusing you; people threatening you; people intimidating you. You have to choose how you’ll respond.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6-7 – He says: “stir up the gift of God which is in you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” So Timothy also had a problem. He had a powerful anointing, a powerful gift in his life, but he became intimidated by older people. He became intimidated by the religious culture. As a result of being intimidated, the gift in his life began to close down.

If you become intimidated, if you let fear get a hold of your life, the gift in your life will begin to shut down. The anointing will stop flowing. You’ll be concerned about how to protect yourself and save yourself rather than advancing the kingdom of God.

Paul wrote 2 letters to Timothy and in both of them he addressed this gift. In 1 Timothy – he said “Don’t neglect the gift.” Now, God has given to each one of us, a powerful gift. He’s given you the gift of the Holy Spirit – same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. That same spirit comes to live in you to empower you, to strengthen you. We all get the same Holy Ghost. We all get that same anointing comes into us.

But we have to choose whether we’ll stir up the gift of God, cause that anointing to flow, or whether we’ll become intimidated and withdraw, and hide in a cave. I wonder how many are hiding in a cave. There’s lots of Christians hiding in a cave, right down in the back of the cave – “I’m not coming out.”

What had happened to Elijah? I want to show you very quickly what happened to him, and I want to show you the mistake he made and how it outworked in his life. I’ll show it to you very simply. It may well be that some of you here tonight recognise you’re also under spiritual pressure and that in the heat of the battle, you’ve made the same mistake Elijah made, and ended up in pretty well the same place he ended up.

I had a pastor ring me up one day. I said: “How are you?” He said: “Can you help me? I am so depressed. I’m almost suicidal, and I don’t really know what to do. I have never been like that in my life before, but since I’ve come to this city, I’ve had these problems come.” I said: “I know exactly what the trouble is, and I know exactly what you need to do. You are under spiritual attack. You are under pressure on your mind and soul. It’s caused you to lose your perspective, to become intimidated, and to draw back inside, just like Elijah did.”

I want you to notice some things Elijah did. What happened was, Jezebel threatened him. In other words, a spiritual attack was launched upon him, threatening to take his life. Now, there is something in all of us that wants to survive, so anything that causes us pain, we draw back from. When you draw back from pain, you are trying to save yourself. If you draw back and try to save yourself, life will get very difficult. There’s no neutral ground when you’re in ministry. You have to stay in a place of strength and fire.

Sometimes it’s very difficult. Sometimes it’s very overwhelming. You see me ministering on the stage, the power of God flowing. There are times I come under immense spiritual pressure. Sometimes it’s like my head is so dark I wonder whether I can see again. I’ve had to learn how to stand up in these things. Every time you stand up, you grow stronger in the Lord.

Look what it says here in verse 3-4: “When Elijah saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which is in Judah, and left his servant there. And he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life. Please be kind to me. Take me to heaven right now, or kill me.””

So what happened to the mighty man of God, who one day is calling fire from heaven and killing the prophets, the next day is sitting down depressed – “I think I need to die.” How did this great mighty man of God go from there to here? And then end up in a cave? “I’m not coming out. You can’t make me come out. I won’t come out.” He was hiding.

So what happened? The Bible says that he was threatened. It says – “When he saw that, he ran for his life.” Now, if you just read the scripture there, it says – “She spoke to him.” Now, the message is spoke to him. But it says – “He saw something.” What you see will affect what you do. What you see will determine you approach things. Instead of seeing ‘God is with me!’ Instead of seeing the coming revival, he looked and he saw imminent death. He saw himself being attacked.

Whatever fills your mind and heart, whatever you set your eyes on, whatever you make the focus of your life will affect your emotions, will affect your spirit, and will determine what happens to you. You can’t afford to let your focus become negative. You have to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. You have to keep your eyes fixed on what God has said. You have to keep your eyes fixed on God’s power, on His love for you.

How could it be that the God who brought fire from heaven and brought drought and then released rain, would now abandon him? How could it be that the God that commissioned him would then leave him alone? He lost his vision. He lost his view of the future. When the pressure came on him, he took his eyes off his vision. He took his eyes off what he’s called to do, he got his eyes fixed on his circumstances, he got his eyes fixed on himself. He said – “I’m the only prophet left. It’s only me! I can’t handle the pressure.” So he began to run.

When he got his eyes off God and his purpose, when he began to focus on the threats, his heart melted, his faith diminished, fear took over, and he ran as fast as he could. The Bible says – he ran. He literally ran for his life, ran away. What did he run away from? He ran away from his assignment. He drew back from what he was called to do.

It is very easy when pressures come to get your eyes off your vision, off what you’re called to do, to begin to look at the problems, become intimidated, and lose perspective. Instead of seeing it from God’s point of view, you begin to see the problems, the difficulties, and then you draw back from the place God wants you to be. You draw back from the position of faith. You draw back from your boldness. You start to shrink on the inside. Instead of there being strong prayer, now you can barely get up and pray. So he ran. He drew back from his assignment.

When a person draws back, they have no authority in their life. When the person draws back, there’s no anointing flow. God says – “I have no pleasure in him that draws back.” It’s staying in the battle, staying in the place of faith, staying in the place of believing God, that’s what pleases Him. I want to show you a couple of things he did. The first thing is he lost his perspective by focusing on the negatives. The second thing – he drew baack form his assignment.

The third things was – he isolated. He left his servant. He isolated himself. Isolation means you disconnect, means you stop connecting to people, stop connecting to God. Isolation and disconnection is the place of death.

It’s an interesting thing about sheep. You probably don’t see many sheep here, but we see lots in New Zealand. Sheep are very interesting. One night I should preach on sheep, that’d be a good idea. Funny creatures. This is what happens – when they get sick, they isolate. They draw away from the flock. It’s always easier to tell a sick sheep – they draw away from the flock. They draw away from fellowship. They draw back from the cell group. They draw away from the leaders’ meeting. They draw away from connecting.

They don’t want to connect because they don’t want you to ask question because they’re in a cave. “I don’t want you to look at me. So I won’t come near you.” See. There’s a fear that comes. Isn’t it interesting that when Adam and Eve sinned and fell, they felt fear and hid. Every time Israel was defeated, they hid in caves. A cave is a deep dark place with no exit.

What else did he do? The next thing he did was this – he sat down. Instead of standing up in his spirit and fighting, instead of rising in his spirit and beginning to pray, let the gift of tongues flow, he sat down. You can tell people sitting down – they may be standing up on the outside, but they’re sitting down on the inside. They’ve given up in the fight. They become passive. The fight is gone. They’re being knocked down. They need help.

Once he sat down, once he became passive and did nothing, then he became depressed. A terrible depression came over him and all he could think of then – “I just wish I could die.” Now, he didn’t suddenly arrive at that place. He progressed to that place. Firstly, when he got his eyes focused on the problems rather than on the solution, when he shifted his focus from his vision and got his eye on the problems. Secondly, when he let fear distort his thinking and he tried to preserve himself rather than giving himself to the assignment. Then he drew back from his assignment. He isolated himself. Then he sat down, became very depressed and very suicidal, and fell asleep. His last prayer before he fell asleep – “Lord, take me. I don’t want to wake up.”

Now God had mercy on him. God sent an angel to touch him and give him food. When you’re in a battle you need rest and you need food. But then, he carried on running. Another 40 days – that’s a lot of running. 40 days running is a lot of running. Finally, he found a cave and he went and he hid in the cave. “I’m not coming out.” God spoke to him and it’s interesting how God speaks. God asked a question. In the Bible, when God asks a question, He knows the answer.

Like, “What’s going on here?” He knows the answer. Like, the first question in the Bible – “Adam, where are you?” Hello? Like, God didn’t know where he was? “Come on Adam, you’re hiding behind those trees over there. I know where you are.” He said: “Adam, where are you?” That’s a relationship question. God knew where he was. God wanted him to face the question and face where he was and start to talk. There’s no record apart from saying – please kill me, that’s talking to God.

So, God looking at Elijah: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. What are you doing there? I had this big revival going on and you’re my key player in the revival. Why’re you in the cave? What are you doing here?”

I remember I was out one night with a group of people at a restaurant and as we were coming out of the restaurant, there’s another part of the hotel and it was the bar, and it was packed. People were all drinking and having a great time and there’s a DJ disco thing going, and it was pumping. Just like tonight. Wow. I heard the music and I like music. I thought: “That sounds like good music. I think I’ll go in.” You know the people, the leaders with me, thought: “Oh, pastor going in there. Why’s the pastor going in there?”

I said: “Just come in here and have a look. I guarantee I will find a backslidden Christian here because if you’re not filled with the spirit, you’ll get filled with something else. You don’t let God comfort you, you’ll try and buy a bottle and drink from that instead. You have to fix the pain somehow. So either come to God, or go down to the pub and buy a drink and then you’ll feel better.”

So, we went in there and I stood at the door. I looked around. They had people dancing. They even had the staff dancing on the bar. Oh, it was wild. I thought – “This is great.” I look over, and I see one straight away. So I went over. He went up to the bar, and he’s ordering all the drinks. There was a girl dancing on the bar, and I went and just stood behind him and waited. He turned around, and he was shocked.

He said – “What are you doing here?” I said: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is not what you were called to be. What are you doing here?” He’s got his back to the bar, arm full of drinks. I’m saying: “What are you doing here?” I said to him in a different way: “What happened to you that caused you to lose your confidence in God and come and try and find confidence in a bottle? What happened to you? What went wrong?”

He stood there holding the drinks, all the music’s going around, and he began to weep. He shared how his heart had been broken because a relationship he’d had broke-up. I said: “This is not going to help you. You need to come back to the Lord. You need to come back to the place you were called.”

So when God says: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” He’s really saying, “Elijah, how on earth did you get yourself here? We were having a revival. Where did you go? I turn my head to talk to the angels, and the next minute, you’re in a cave. I’ve been telling the angels about all the work my servant Elijah’s doing. ‘Woah. Did you see him? Fire from heaven! Killed all the prophets! Woah. Got that old ugly queen really worried. Man, look at my servant Elijah!’ What are you doing here in this cave?”

Elijah starts a story – “You don’t understand. I’m the only one faithful and they all want to kill me. I’m only trying to serve you. They just want to kill me, it’s not really fair. You never told me it was going to be this hard.”

“I become a cell leader – I never knew it was going to be this hard, that people would be not nice to me, and after I’m kind to them, then they walk away. They say bad things about me. So, I don’t like.”

“It’s only me who’s been faithful.” How can hiding in a cave be faithful? You see, he’s a very confused man because he let a spiritual pressure confuse him. God says: “Well actually Elijah, there’re 7000 others who haven’t been involved in this stuff.” “Really? I didn’t see that. I didn’t know about that.”

So God spoke to him twice – “Elijah, what are you doing here? Elijah, what are you doing here?” In other words, He’s saying – “You don’t belong here. You need to return to your assignment.” So He spoke to Him – “Go back to your assignment.”

Notice what He tells him to do. Get this – “I want you to raise-up some disciples. I want you to anoint others. I want you to multiply your ministry. I want you to multiply the ministry. You’ve been doing this all alone too long. You need to think strategically. You need to raise-up others who’ll carry the ministry. I’ll even tell you who they are so you don’t have to think – “Oh, there’re no one. Not him. Not him. There’s no one.”

God said: “I’ll tell you who they are. Elisha, and Hazael, and Jehu. You invest in those people. You release what’s in your life on them, and then you watch. The job you couldn’t finish, they’ll finish it up.” God reveals his intention – that he should raise up disciples, that he should multiply his ministry. But it started by returning to his post.

Now in this passage here tonight, you see the result of spiritual pressure. This pastor that called me, he was incredibly discouraged. I said to him – “It’s just spiritual pressure. It’s just a spiritual attack and you’re sitting under the tree like Elijah. I’ll stand with you. I’ll pray for you. But you need to stand up again, come out of that cave, go back to your assignment, go back to praying, go back to ministering, go back to doing what you need to do. You need to rise up again.” I told him how to stand up in prayer, how to recognise it was just a spiritual attack.

I said: “You need to stand up and pray in the Spirit until you feel your spirit raise up. Then you need to begin to speak into the spirit world and declare that enemy defeated. Go back again, begin to minister. If you will do this – pray in tongues, rise in your spirit, speak the word of God over your life, confront the devil, confront the spirits that are troubling you, and speak God’s word over your life, you will break through.”

That man has got a very thriving church in that area now. See? Because he stood up. Now, he didn’t ring me once, he rang me on several occasions. Each time, I told him the same thing – come out of your cave, go back to your assignment, stand up again in prayer, and speak God’s word over your situation. Get your eyes back on the Lord again; and he was a changed person. We’ll finish just at that point.

I’m sharing this with you tonight because I feel there are a number of people, and you are in a cave. Outside, you look like you’re doing everything ok, but in your heart, you’ve been hurt. In your heart, you’ve taken a knock. In your heart, you’ve drawn back, you’ve lost your vision. There’s even some of you here who’ve sat down. You’ve been contemplating giving up. God says – “What are you doing here? You don’t belong in that cave. You’re a mighty man of God. You’re a might woman of God.”

The same Spirit that overcome the devil and raised Christ from the dead is within you to help you. Don’t isolate, don’t draw back, don’t focus on the problem, stand up, refocus your vision, and then begin start to pursue. God says you’ll breakthrough.

You follow the story through, the wicked queen was torn down, her kingdom was overthrown, and God’s kingdom was established. But the key was a change, and the focus on discipling new people.

Hope After Loss (7 of 12)  

Wed 9 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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The widow of Nain ( Luke 7 ) was in a place of great grief and without hope for her future, no-one could comfort her. Maybe you too are locked into grief feeling numb and disconnected. Our God is a God of comfort, and a God of all hope. Set-backs are not the end. Let Christ in - He is able to breathe into a place of death, and bring life and fresh vision. Jesus still works miracles, and restores a broken heart.

Once you’ve opened your Bible with me in the book of Luke, and we’re going to look in chapter 7. Just a few verses, and look at the gospel message.

Verse 11-16 from Luke 7: “Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise. So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother. Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”.

So, Jesus has a large crowd of disciples with Him. Wherever Jesus went there were people following Him to see what He would do. In another place, Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life.” God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with power. Wherever He went, He interacted with people and revealed the kindness and the heart of God to people.

So, in this story, there’s a city called Nain. The name literally means ‘to be a beautiful place, a pleasant place, or a lovely pasture’. So all the appearances of this place was that it was a beautiful place. Or in other words, it looked very very good. It was an attractive place to come to, but hidden within that attractive place, there was great sorrow and there was great distress.

It’s true also with people. They can look very good, very attractive on the outside, but in the heart carry great sorrow, great grief, great disappointment. So, you may be here tonight and on the outside you look very good. The Bible says – God looks on the heart. So He can see the sadness, He can see what is happening in your life.

I want you to see what happened in this particular story. The story opens with a young man who is dead. The young man represents the next generation. The young man represents the future. The young man represents hope. The young man represents a great future for this woman. The Bible said – His mother was a widow. That means she had lost her husband. She’d suffered a tremendous loss. Lost the one who’d protect her. Lost the one who’d provide for her.

But she had one hope left – and that hope was her son. She’s very proud of her son. She looked forward to watching him grow. She had her hopes set that in the future he would protect her, he would provide for her. She had dreams in her heart, dreams of what he would become, dreams of him marrying, dreams of grandchildren. So she was looking forward to the future. This man, this younger generation represented her hope, her future, her legacy, her provision, her protection. Her life was wrapped up in this young man.

One day, the unthinkable happened. It was one thing to lose her husband, but it’s another thing entirely to lose a child, to lose a son. It sounds from the story like he was a grown young man. Something happened to him, something completely unexpected. He grew sick and then he died.

The day came when all her hopes of the future were taken away. She went into shock. “What will happen to me?” There appears to be no future. There appears to be no hope. She will grow old with no one to care for her. Not only has she lost her son, but she lost her dreams of the future. So the woman went into deep grief. No one could console her. She was grieving over her loss.

Grief is a very interesting thing. Grief is the process by which we come to terms with loss. You don’t grieve unless you have an attachment. We don’t grieve over a stranger we don’t know. We don’t grieve over someone we’re not connected to. We grieve when we lose something we’re attached to.

So, grief is quite interesting. It goes through several stages. The first stage is just shock – “I can’t believe this has happened.” The first thing she experienced was tremendous shock. She would look at her boy – “I can’t believe that this is happening.”

Following on after shock, the next sensation or emotion that people feel is great anger. Something’s been taken from me and people often feel very angry. They don’t know who to be angry at. So the next phase of grief often consists of blaming, or bargaining. Trying to find a way through it all.

So when people are in grief, they can be in shock, they can’t really admit something’s happened, or they may be very angry, or they may be blaming someone, or trying to find a way they can work their way out of the situation. The next stage of grief is depression or sadness. A lot of weeping. Finally, the person comes to a place of acceptance, and they adjust their life to the change. So that is the process of grief.

People can feel many of those emotions all in the couple of hours. To some people, they never let go of their grief. They never deal with grief properly. So they get locked into grief. Some of you here tonight are locked into grief. There’s a deep grief sitting in your heart, and it’s caused for different ones, by different things.

Perhaps some of you are grieving because someone you were very close to has died. Maybe a mother or maybe a father. They meant so much to you. So there’s a deep grief because they’re no longer in your life.

People grieve when there’s a divorce. Children who’ve been through a divorce carry immense grief because they’ve literally lost a parent, or lost both parents. They’re caught in a battle between the two. They become very angry, angry at everyone, not realising they’re suffering grief.

When people lose a hope or a dream, something they planned for, and suddenly it’s taken away. They’ve been looking forward to this promotion – suddenly, someone else gets it, and grief comes. They’re looking forward to some dream being fulfilled, and it’s totally taken away.

The grief can be immense. If grief is not dealt with, we can grieve all our life, and remain angry all our life, and continue to blame people all our life. But the real root of the problem is unresolved grief.

I remember I prayed for a woman recently and she was very angry. I said: “Well, what are you angry at?” She really didn’t know. She had no idea what she was angry at, she’s angry at everything. I said: “Well, you started being angry somewhere.” I tracked back, and I found out that her father had abandoned the family when she was quite young. She became deeply attached to her mother and then her mother died unexpectedly.

I said: “You’re still grieving over the loss of your mother. You became deeply attached to your mother, and she literally became an idol in your life – a substitute for God. When what was an idol in your life was taken away, you’re left very angry.” When things we depend on, things which are idols in our life are removed, or they fail, people grieve and become very angry. They grieve because they were attached, and something’s been taken away.

So it could be a person. It could be a dream. It could be someone you were attached to. It could be a loss in an accident or death. Could’ve been a divorce. People grieve when they’ve been abused. One of the problems you find with people who’ve been abused, whether sexually or physically or even verbally and emotionally, is they suffer great grief.

Unless the grief is addressed, the person can remain angry and in a state of shock, and soul-tied to what happened in the past. In other words, death has come. So in a place like that, it’s very easy for evil spirits to gain access to our life.

Spirits of grief – Grief is just an emotion and a process, but when we don’t deal with it, a spirit of grief can sit on our life and we just feel continually sad. Even when you’re in a happy situation, it’s not very happy. It’s like within a moment, sadness comes back again. The spirit of grief is there.

Sometimes, a spirit of death sits on people. When a spirit of death sits on a person, they feel numb, they feel disconnected – disconnected from people, disconnected from themselves. They just feel numbed on the inside. Surrounding that is this deep grief and a sense of hopelessness about the future.

Now the Bible tells us something about God. In 2 Corinthians 1 – it says He’s the God of all comfort. So when we’re in distress, God’s desire is to comfort us. Now the God of all comfort comforts us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort others. So God reveals Himself as a God who comforts people. Comes near to them, walks with them through their distress, walks with them through their sorrows, and says – “You’re not alone”. When people are in grief, loneliness becomes a big problem.

So this dear lady in this story was walking behind the coffin, clothed in black, spirit of grief over her, and even though there was a large crowd, she was the loneliest person in that place. The crowd of friends could not comfort her. No one could comfort her. She needed Jesus to come into her life, into her situation. So the Bible says – God is the God of all comfort. He heals the broken-hearted.

In Romans 15 it tells us in verse 13 that “God is the God of all hope. He fills us with joy and peace through believing that we might abound in hope.” So notice these two things – God comforts us, and God brings hope to us. God comforts us in the current pain. God brings hope for a better future. God comes alongside us in our pain, and God lifts our vision to see the future’s better. God is a God who works miracles.

The testimony tonight, when I first met that young girl, there was deep pain in her heart. I remember when I sitting there listening to her give her testimony, God spoke to me and says “I want to heal her. I want to comfort her.” I asked her to come up on the stage, and I took her hand, and as I prayed for her, the Spirit of God came and brought great healing; and now, great hope. Restored her mother to her.

It’s amazing what God can do. Something that was full of death comes abounding in life when God comes in. This is the great thing about our God. He is a God of resurrection. He can come into a situation and make the dead live, and give hope again. You may have suffered loss. You may have suffered a setback. But it’s not the end of your life.

If you will let Christ come in and walk with you through your grief, and lift your vision again, He can give hope for a great future. Your future looks good when you’re in God. It may look painful now. You may be in a valley of sorrow now, but there’s a miracle waiting for you. There’s a change waiting for you. There’s a better future awaiting you. You don’t have to live in despair.

So Jesus looked at the woman, and this is what the Bible said – “He felt deep compassion.” That’s what God is like. He saw her loneliness, her brokenness, saw the desperation, the grief, and He was moved to do something. See, she never did anything. The young man never did anything. Jesus initiated it all. This is what he did – He went to the woman, this is what He said: “Stop your weeping.”

Notice this, she had no reason to stop her weeping – her son is dead. But Jesus said: “Stop your weeping. Because I’m about to do something.” In other words, He’s saying – the weeping is finished. I’m about to change the situation around. The grieving is ended. I’m about to do a miracle. You don’t need to stay in that place anymore.

Notice He addressed her heart. He addressed her pain. “Stop weeping.” Then He touched the casket. No one touches the dead man’s casket. It would make you defiled. Then He spoke: “Young man, arise.” Then the dead man sat up and was restored to his mother.

You see, what is impossible for man is possible for God. If you can believe, God can turn your valley, and it becomes a well of life. Jesus loves to come into hopeless situations. What could be more hopeless than a dead person? Jesus comes in and restores them to life.

I just have to tell you this story, and then we finish up. My son David went to Pakistan. They had invited me there but I was too busy and I said: “Can I send my son?” He took a team with him twice. The second time he went there, he was on the stage and there was about 15000 people. His interpreter was interpreting. Then he began to cough. He fell down. So they put him back on his feet again, and he began to speak again. The interpreter coughed and fell down, and he was dead! It’s not good if your interpreter dies. It’s very difficult.

So, my son immediately stood over him and commanded the spirit of death to go, and the man woke up and within half an hour, was preaching again. My son thought – “Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just lying down.” And his friend who was with him, went with him, and he said: “I’m a policeman. I have seen many dead men. I checked that man. That man was dead, and now he’s alive. God has raised him up.” The hopeless situation. Hallelujah.

God is able to come into your situation and breathe comfort and hope. When Jesus comes into your situation, you’re no longer alone. God is with you. Not only that, He begins to work to give you hope for the future. He doesn’t want you to stay weeping. He wants you to look ahead and say – “It’s a great day tomorrow.”

That day started with grief, it started with sorrow, it was a sorrow that spread over the whole city. The day ended with a party. Everyone celebrating. I guess if I was there, I’d want to say “What did you see when you were dead? Did you see heaven? What did you see?” That young man would have many testimonies of what God had done in his life.

When I heard the testimony tonight, I was just so moved in my heart. That God breathed into a place of death and brought life and hope. Hope to a mother who had given up her child, had lived in pain and regret for years, reunited with her daughter, fearful her daughter wouldn’t forgive her. But God had already met her daughter, and she was no longer dead. She was alive. She was no longer dead. She’s alive.

We know what it’s like to adopt a daughter out. This is something that we did also. All your life you grieve over that decision. No matter what the pain that caused you to do it, there is a grief and a death, and you suffer loss. When this happened to us, I came and opened my heart to Jesus Christ, I believed that one day He could bring her back.

So I was so deeply touched that this mother had given up a child, and Jesus met her child, took away the bitterness, took away the anger, took away the death, made her live. I saw her first before this happened, and then I saw her after Jesus healed her, and I hardly recognised her. She was alive because Jesus dealt with her grief. What a joy for us to meet her mother last Sunday.

The woman, abandoned by her husband, a widow, who had to give up her child; and years later, God visited her and the child is restored. This is exactly like the story we were just sharing. The Bible’s story I’ve read, happened 2000 years ago. It was a real mother, a real son, a real bad situation. The testimony you heard tonight is a real mother, a lost daughter, a dead daughter raised to life, and restored to her mother. Jesus still works miracles, restores people, and heals the broken-hearted.

I want you to close your eyes right now.

Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12)  

Thu 10 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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In John 5 , Jesus likens us to sheep - this message gives several ways this is true! One similarity is that sometimes sheep are "cast", lying down, unable to move, unable to function. If we are lying down we may have many excuses, feel a victim, and be waiting for something to happen. However, like the man in this story, who had been waiting 38 years for help, we need to answer this same question Jesus asked: Do you want to be made whole? We have the power of choice - to receive Jesus and have the power of sin broken.

I want you to have a look at this story here – “After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, there was in Jerusalem a sheep gate”. It’s where the sheep came in and out of the city. Actually, maybe they only came in. For some kind of lamb stew or something like that.

Anyway, “there was a pool which called in Hebrew Bethesda – having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people – blind, lame and paralysed, waiting for moving of the water, for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water and whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well, whatever disease he had. There was a man who had an infirmity 38 years.” That’s a long time.

“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him: “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered: “Sir, I have no man to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him: “Rise, take up your bed, walk.” Immediately, the man was made well, took up his bed and walked, and that was a Sabbath day.”

So here is a story of a man in desperate need. Before we look at the man, I want to just look at the situation there. The Bible describes it – there was a sheep gate at the side of the city where the sheep would come into the city. There were several porches there and it was called Bethesda, the place or house of mercy. There were multitudes of people who were needing healing.

Just in a moment, we’re just going to focus on the sheep gate. The Bible says that Jesus is the shepherd. He said: “I am the good shepherd.” In another part it says “We all like sheep, have gone astray.” So, God uses many natural pictures to help us understand spiritual things. So, God uses many pictures to describe what people are like; and many pictures to describe what He is like.

So the Bible describes people as being like sheep. Of course, if you haven’t’ seen sheep or know much about them, that doesn’t mean anything. If we said they’re like people on a motor scooter, now you know what they’re talking about because you see heaps of those. They’re all wild, all going their own way.

There’s no place like Taiwan for these motor scooters. I’ve never seen so many. You get there, and they’re all at the lights, all crowded around you. Motor scooters everywhere, surrounding you. Where did they come from? They all line up. Lights change, woah they’re gone, weaving in and out of the cars. First couple of visits here, I get quite frightened. All these motor scooters. Then, when it’s wet, there’s this big long coat that they wear. Our daughter had a motor scooter. We thought she’d like one of those. She’s laughed, “I’d never wear anything like that.”

So, the motor scooters. We talk about motor scooters, then you know what I’m talking about. If I talk about sheep, “Bah, I don’t know.” So I’ll tell you a little bit about sheep. Years ago, when we went to a small country town, we were in a place with many farms, lots of sheep. So I decided we would get a pet lamb. So cute. They’re lovely. But they grow to be big sheep. They don’t stay cute very long. I had to learn a lot of things about sheep. So I share with you a few things about sheep. Here are a few characteristics of sheep.

The first thing, sheep have got absolutely no sense of direction. None whatsoever. The moment they get out of sight of the other sheep, they’re lost. They have no sense of direction. You get a cat, you can take it across the city, it’ll come home and find you. You take a sheep, just move it round the corner, it’s lost. That’s why the Bible says in Isaiah 53:6 – “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.” We just got lost. Sheep get lost. Once they’re lost, they’ve no idea where home is. They need a shepherd.

It’s just like people. People who walk in sin are like sheep who are lost. We don’t even know we’re lost, we just don’t know our way. Look for all sorts of things, but cannot find a way. We need a shepherd, someone to show us the way. So, one thing about sheep is they easily get lost.

The second thing about sheep is they get easily scared. They get very easily frightened. So you get a sheep, slightest noise, then they’re off. They run. It’s like that with people. They get so scared so easily. They read the news – “Oh” – they get frightened and scared of all kinds of things. That’s why through the Bible, it keeps saying – “Don’t be afraid.” I think it says that more than anything. “Don’t fear. Don’t be afraid”. Because people get scared. Fear stops us following God. Fear is the opposite to faith. So the moment you startle a sheep, it’s gone, runs away, and then gets lost.

Here’s another thing about sheep – they follow one another. They like to get in a group. Ever seen teenagers all get in a group? Sheep like to be together. But once one goes, it doesn’t matter if they don’t know where they’re going, the other sheep just follow. “Where’s everyone going?” “That way.” “What’s that way?” “I don’t know, we’re all going that way.” “Is there any good way?” “I don’t know, we’re all going that way. Follow quickly.” So they all follow.

It’s like the crowd; like people. Follow the fashion. Fashion goes this way – everyone goes this way. Fashion goes that way, everyone goes that way. You follow the crowd. So, sheep just follow the crowd. So if you startle one and it starts to run, the others all run too. Bible says – Don’t follow the fashion of this world. It’s changing. So, there’s some things about sheep.

Here’s another thing about sheep – when they get sick, they isolate. So you find a sheep on its own, it’s probably sick, got something wrong with it. So, it’s the same with people. When they get sick, when something’s wrong, they stop talking, they stop phoning and texting. They don’t come to church anymore, don’t come to the small group anymore. That’s why you have to keep ringing them up – “Hey where are you? What’s happening?” They’re sheep. They go astray. When they get sick, they just go away on their own.

So, here’s another thing about sheep – they get parasites in them. They get bugs in the ground from what they eat, and they cannot get rid of the parasites. They need the shepherd to come. They get parasites inside them from what they eat. It’s the same with people. We open our lives to many different things and then demonic spirits come in, and we can’t get them out. We need the shepherd to come and get them out.

So, in New Zealand, the shepherd will come and what they do is they drench the sheep. They have something – a chemical – they put in their mouth. So they grab the sheep, the sheep doesn’t like this. They squirt this thing inside, the liquid goes inside them. Then, you know what happens? All night – they’re coughing. Coughing out the bugs which have been killed by the drench.

It’s like that when I come to some meetings. I pray for people, I speak to the demons. Coughing. We were praying for someone just the other day, and they’d been coughing all week. The drench is working. The medicine is working. So, these are some things with sheep.

There’s another thing about sheep. We have a particular fly called a blowfly. It’s quite big. Horrible things really. What they do, is they come out at certain times of the year and they lay eggs on the sheep. On the back or on the head or around the ears. What happens is, the little eggs hatch and they become what’s called maggots - little wriggly things; and they will feed off the sheep. They’ll either eat right through the skin into the flesh, or they’ll go into the ear and into the brain and drive the sheep crazy.

It’s just like the devil - sows his lies into our life, and when you believe the lie, gets into your head. Then you act stupid. Do crazy things. “Why do you do that?” “I don’t know, I just want to do that.” So the sheep need to be helped.

Here’s another thing about sheep. There’re lots of interesting things about sheep. Here’s another thing about sheep – they have no defence against the predator. No defence. They got no sharp horns, they’ve got no sharp teeth. They really don’t have much defence against anything. It’s very like people.

The Bible likens us to sheep, likens the devil to a wolf or a predator – come to steal and destroy. When the predators chase the sheep, the sheep get highly distressed because they’re being hunted and they get into a panic.

So sometimes we have a problem in New Zealand where a dog will begin to chase the sheep, they begin to bite at them, tear at them. It’s incredibly distressful because once the dogs get a taste for the blood, they don’t eat the sheep, they just kill them. Something happens to some dogs when they get the taste of the sheep blood. They become extremely dangerous and they chase the sheep and then they’ll leave the sheep bleeding and dying across the paddock.

This is exactly like the devil – like a wild dog with a taste for blood pursuing people, destroying their lives, and leaving them bleeding, leaving them injured and wounded. Guilt and shame, grief and sorrow, damaged. If you look at a paddock where a wild dog has gone, you’ll see sheep lying on the ground and they’re bleeding, and because there’s no remedy, you have to put them out of their misery and kill them.

So in the same way, if you have spiritual lives to see, you’ll see people with broken hearts, broken lives, hearts full of grief, desperately needing help because they can’t help themselves. So the image of a sheep is an amazingly accurate image of what people are like spiritually, and our need for a shepherd. So Jesus describes Himself as the good shepherd, willing to give His life for the sheep.

If you read Psalm 23, you’ll see what a shepherd does. We haven’t got time to do that, I want to just stay on this story. There’s one more interesting thing about sheep. There’re lots of interesting things, I’ll give you one more thing.

Sometimes, the sheep when they’ve been well-fed and they lie down, if they lie down too long, they get an unusual condition. They become, we use the word ‘cast’. It probably can’t be described here so I’ll describe what they look like. They’re lying on the ground and they can’t get up, and if they get up, they’re all giddy and they fall over again. So when the sheep is cast, when it’s lying down like that, it can’t get up. It actually can’t get up of its own accord. It needs the shepherd to get it back on its feet again, hold it steady until it gets back going again. If it’s like that too long, it affects its whole balance.

See, we’re not made to lie down like that. We’re not made to be cast on the ground, unable to get up, unable to move, unable to serve God. We’re not made for that. Whatever has cast you down, whatever’s caused you to lie down and give up, if you stay there too long, it’ll get harder and harder to stand up. There’re many things that can cause us to lie down, many things that cause us to give up. We get offended, we have a disappointment, someone betrays us, someone hurts us, things we had hoped for don’t happen, and we start to draw back from God.

Instead of being alive and standing spiritually; instead of being in a place of faith and trust; instead of moving forward with God’s plan for our life; we quit and we give up. I see many people like that. They’re not lying on the ground, but they’re lying down inside. The fight is gone. The faith is gone. They’ve drawn back inside.

Last night, we used a different picture. We used the picture of a person hiding in a cave. Today, the picture’s of a sheep cast on the ground, unable to get up, and the shepherd goes to the sheep, never to condemn the sheep. The shepherd doesn’t go like this: “Hey, why’re you lying down? Why’re you lying down like that? Don’t you understand? If you stay like that, you never get anywhere, you’ll never be able to get up again. Stupid sheep. Get up on your feet!” See, they don’t do that. Doesn’t work. Sheep goes: “Bah.” The shepherd helps the sheep get up.

Now let’s have a look in the story – And Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda, which means the place or house of mercy. And there were lots of people there, and they were sick and they were blind and they were lame and paralysed. People who had infirmity – no strength. People with no vision. People unable to walk. People who were crippled, not functioning properly. They were waiting, hoping something would change. There was one man there who had an infirmity for 38 years. He was lying. Everyday someone would carry him to the pool and he was lying there.

38 years is a long time to be sick. That’s more than half of a person’s life. That’s a long time to be sick. Jesus saw the man, just as He sees you, and He asked him an interesting question. Remember the man is on the ground. He’s like the sheep, he cannot get up, he has no power to stand up. What he needs is a miracle. He needs the power of God to change him. Something is wrong.

The Bible says he had an infirmity. The word infirmity means to be without strength. Maybe he had what’s called ‘palsy’ or he’s paralysed. But he had no strength of his own to stand up again. So he’s hoping somehow God will do something. But he has his own idea about what would happen. God has to do it a certain way. God’s got many ways of helping us, getting us back up on our feet.

Jesus saw him and asked him an interesting question – “Do you want to be made whole?” Now that’s a strange question to ask. When God asks a question, it’s not because He doesn’t know the answer, He wants you to think and He wants you to see something about your life.

This man was so used to being like this, he developed a whole lifestyle around being a victim. A whole lifestyle around being powerless. A whole lifestyle around being helpless. When Jesus said – “Do you want to be whole?” You know what the answer to that is? There’s only one answer to that. The answer is – Yes. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t answer that at all. But what came out of this mouth was what God wanted to have out there. God wanted to draw out of him what was really going on in his heart.

“Do you want to be made whole?” “Yes!” So Jesus asked the question – “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh, I have no one to help me. No one to look after me. There’re so many people here and when the angel comes, by the time I get there, it’s too late. This is so terrible. It’s not my fault. Too many people. No one to help me.”

See, he is thinking as a victim. He is thinking like a victim thinks. Victims blame everyone else. Victims find excuses. “Oh, well my family were very poor you know. My father left us. My parents broke up. Oh, the teachers didn’t like me.” “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh, you don’t understand. I come from such a poor family.” “Oh, you don’t understand, I don’t have any opportunities.” “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh well, you know, it’s been a long time that I’ve been like this you know. And I’ve been getting a benefit from the government. You know, I would lose my benefit. What would I do?”

You understand, his whole thinking is like a victim. There’s nothing there except blame and excuse. Jesus said – “Do you want your life to be different? Will you make a choice?” You see, our life, God has given us a free will. He’s given us the power to make choices. And the life you are living now is the result of the choices you’ve made. It’s not all the bad things that happened to you, it’s how you chose to respond. So God gives you the power to choose what you’ll do with your life.

When Jesus died on the cross, He died to break the power of sin. When He rose from the dead, He defeated the devil, He totally broke the power of sin. He made it possible for every person to be free from the power of sin, to be free from evil spirits. “Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be free?”

See, the issue now lies with us. God has done on the cross for us, all that needs to be done. Do you want to be made whole? Will you make a choice? A choice to respond to God. A choice to believe His word. Do you want to be made whole? Do you want it to be different? If you want a different future, you need to start by making different choices.

“Well, I haven’t had much education.” “Well why don’t you choose to get some?” “Well, I was terribly treated. I’m so angry about that.” “Well, would you choose to forgive?” “Well I can’t get over what happened to me.” “Would you choose to let it go? Would you choose to go to counselling? Would you choose to get some help? Do you want to be made whole?! Do you want to be different?!” “Oh well, it’s my husband. You don’t understand what he’s like. He drinks so badly. He’s so bad to me. That’s why I’m always depressed.” “Do you want to be made whole?! It’s a choice whether you let that happen to you. We have the power of choice.”

So when Jesus died on the cross, He broke the power of sin and made it possible for you to make a choice; a choice to receive Him and have the power of sin broken; a choice to follow Him and live a different life. Every day you wake up, you have the power of choice. Every day when you wake up you can choose to walk with God. You choose your attitude for the day. You can choose a positive attitude, a negative attitude. You can choose to believe God, you can choose to remain in defeat.

“Do you want to be made whole?” That’s what Jesus said, and it drew out of him the condition of his heart. Then Jesus spoke to him “Rise and be healed.” The man snapped out of it and stood up. “Woah, I’m standing.” Then He said to him a little later, He said: “Don’t continue sinning or a worse thing will happen.” In other words, Jesus connected the condition of his life to sin in his life, and Jesus came not just to deal with sickness, not just to deal with demons, but to deal with the root issue in our life – the power of sin that separates us from God.

Do you want to be made whole? Wholeness begins with a decision and it’s also a journey. The journey to be made whole in your spirit begins with the decision to receive Christ. God puts the spirit in you, and you become connected and alive to God. The journey to wholeness involves many decisions – decisions daily on giving God access to your life and choosing to agree with Him about life, and to let go of your old ways and old opinions. When you begin to walk with Jesus, it’s a journey of wholeness. As we rise each day and connect with Him, and we begin to let His words get in our heart, we begin to change.

You can stop at any point. You can lie down at any point. So I find many people – some don’t know Christ, and they’re lying down on the inside. Defeated by life. Dependent on others. Living like a victim. A sad thing is to see Christians lying down, who came to Christ and stood up again to walk with God, and something happened – someone offended you, someone let you down, something negative happened. And instead of standing and believing God and asking God to show you how to handle it, you lay down on the inside and then couldn’t get up.

Jesus wants to help you today. He wants to speak into your life and get you back up again into the place of serving and functioning like you ought to be, walking with God again in a place of life.

Why don’t we close our eyes right now.

Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12)  

Fri 11 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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Sometimes an area of our life has become "withered", or without life, just like the man in Mark 3, who had a withered hand. We tend to conceal, or hide in shame, when we feel like this. To restore the man in the story, Jesus required 2 "action steps": 1) Bring the problem right out into the open 2) A stretch of faith - doing what Jesus asks us to do. The healing is "in the stretch"!

Transcription 9 of 12

If you have your Bible with you, let’s open our Bible in the book of Mark. Wow, we’ve had so many stories of people’s lives changed. It’s amazing. We’re going to read from Mark chapter 3 – The man with the withered hand.

Verse 1 - “Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand.” In another part of the Bible, it says it was his right hand.

Verses 2-6: “So they watched Jesus closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” Then He asked the religious leaders, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent. And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Jesus, how they might destroy Him.”

This is a story of a powerful encounter a man had with Jesus Christ. It’s also the only time that you hear in the Bible, Jesus got angry. So it’s good to look into the story, see what we can learn – what makes God angry. It’s not what you think. It’s usually something else.

So in the story, there’s a man who has a problem in his life. This man is a believer, he’s in a church. The Bible says – Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. In other words, God wanted to restore to us, spiritual life and vitality. God designed us for relationship, designed us to be connected to Him so his like would flow through us.

God who is the spirit, desired His spirit would be united to our spirit, and His life would flow through us, His nature flow through us – love and joy and peace, that His life and creativity would flow through us. So Jesus said – I come so that you might have life, and have it much more abundantly. When man sinned, the life of God ceased within him. There was a breach in his relationship with God. Spiritually, he disconnected and so instead of being able to live with the flow of life from his spirit, man had to live out of his soul and body. Sin and sickness entered the earth.

Jesus was speaking in one of the feasts, and He said – out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. And He was speaking about the Holy Spirit who’d be given to people. So, God’s desire is to put His Spirit in you, to fill you with His life, and that that life will flow out creatively, with love, with the nature of God, that you would extend the kingdom of God in every arena of society.

The church is the group of people God has raised up to empower believers to get us filled with the Holy Spirit and mobilised to serve God. So Jesus came into the synagogue, there’s all these people there worshipping. There’s one man Jesus notices and this man has a withered hand. Something has gone wrong. Possibly he had a brain aneurysm because often that leads to a part of the body drying up. So the problem may have started in his mind – his brain. But it manifested in his hand and it was withered. That words means literally to lose life, to dry up. It means to shrivel up.

Have you ever had a piece of fruit and it slipped under the cupboard or under the bed; and then a long time later you find it. “Oh no. Look at that. All the juice, all the life is gone. It’s all dried up and withered. It’s just horrible. It looks so different when all the life is taken out of it. We use the term ‘withered’. No life. It’s all dried up.

So this man, his hand had withered. Often is the case when a man’s hand withers up, it begins to withdraw and turn inward. So when you find someone like this, often the hand is dried and turned in, and it turns right in – the man tried to hide it. No one wants to walk around like this. That’s awful. If someone’s got a problem like that, there are a number of problems that come with it.

First, is incredible shame. You know, no one wants to hold. You got to hide it. So there’s a shame and a tendency to conceal what is withered. Whatever we’re ashamed of, we have no power with. Whatever we have no power with, we feel ashamed of. When Adam and Eve sinned and they were ashamed, they covered over.

So any area of our life which has become withered, when something has gone wrong, we withdraw and hide it. This is true of people everywhere. When things have gone wrong in our life, when something is not working right, we tend to cover it and hide it. We tend to conceal it. The last thing you want is someone to point it out to you.

So this man had a withered hand and notice first of all, he’s got a physical condition. In the Bible, when the Bible speaks about the right hand, always in the Bible these things are symbolic of something. So, the right hand in the Bible was the hand of blessing. The right hand was the hand of power. The right hand is the hand you work with .

So when it says his right hand was withered, it means no blessing flowing around his life, no power in his life. So the right hand being withered is a picture for a person whose life is withered. If there’s no life, there’s no blessing. It’s actually cursed. Demonic spirits are operating and that person can’t work. He can’t produce in life what he could do. His potential is greatly limited. So when the man had the withered hand, there’s no blessing, no life, and he’s unable to fulfil his potential. There is a limit on what he can accomplish with his life.

When you think of the hand, you think of work. Imagine trying to work with only one hand. How do you manage your computer? It’s very hard if you’ve got a withered hand. It doesn’t operate. So his life was greatly restricted and limited because of the problem he had.

Not only that, the right hand in the Bible is often a picture of ministry – the ministry to people. So this picture of the withered hand is also a picture of people’s ministry withered away. So we see three different aspects:

Firstly a man with a physical problem – he’s in a condition that needs healing and restoration. In the story, we see the heart of God to heal him.

Secondly, it’s a picture of a life that’s not blessed – a life that is withered, a life that is cursed. It’s a picture of a life that’s covered in shame, whose potential is limited.

It’s also a picture of a believer whose ministry has become withered. Once they may have worked very well. Once they served God passionately. Once they were seeing fruit. Once they were accomplishing great things for God. But something happened and now the arm has become withered. No longer are you ministering like you once did. You’ve withdrawn – no life and vibrancy, and have drawn back inside, and is somewhat ashamed of your condition.

Jesus saw this man. His heart went out to him. There are a number of things that can cause our life to become withered. There are many things that cause us to shrivel up and draw back.

Disappointment can cause you to become withered. The Bible says – Sorrow dries the bones. If our heart is broken, there is a withering in our life – no joy, no vibrancy, you tend to draw back. So there are many people from broken homes whose soul is withered. They don’t carry the life and joy. There are problems in their life. So, grief can wither our soul.

Unforgiveness and bitterness can wither your soul. You can become withered and drawn back because you’re angry at what someone has done, angry at some bad treatment – mistreatment by a father, mistreatment by a mother, mistreatment by some other person. When people are angry and hurt and hold unforgiveness and bitterness, it causes the heart to wither. When people begin to hate someone, begin to harbour resentment and hatred, it withers the soul. We’re not made to carry these things in our heart. Our life becomes withered.

You don’t see it in the beginning because it’s concealed but over a period of time, the effect of bitterness, unforgiveness, hatred. It affects the person, causes them to draw back.

Another thing withers the soul is fear. Fear causes people to draw back. When we become afraid, when fear grips our life, we draw back from facing things. We close up on the inside. Like the man with the withered hand, we draw back within ourselves. Remember we saw the story of Elijah when he came under pressure and became afraid, shrivelled up and drew back and hid in the cave. Many people do that. When intimidating circumstances come, if we don’t respond with boldness and faith, we become intimidated and draw back and our ministry becomes withered.

In 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul wrote to Timothy. Timothy’s ministry had become withered. He had a powerful gift in his life. He had a powerful gift of the Spirit that could change lives, that could bring the life of God. But it was dormant, it was withered, it was not operating because of fear. He was intimidated by older people, and fear gripped his heart. Instead of rising boldly, he drew back, began to play it safe. He looked the same, but inside, his ministry was withering. It was drawing back because of fear.

Fear and intimidation will cause you to draw back from bold action – boldly following the Lord, bolding serving the Lord. Disappointment can cause you to wither. Disappointment can cause you to draw back. Listen, this is one of the things I know – that once you start drawing back, you feel ashamed of your condition. You know you’re not doing your best. You know that you’re defeated.

Maybe there’s sexual sin. Something’s going on in your life. You can’t seem to break free of it. The condemnation of it causes you to lose your authority. You begin to draw back in your ministry. There are so many different ways that our ministry can become withered, or our life can become withered.

I met many withered people desperately needing the touch of God – people from broken homes, people who’ve been abused, people who’ve suffered in relationships, whose soul has shattered, and they’ve literally draw back from life, grieving and hurt and lonely; sometimes suicidal, sometimes depressed.

In this situation in this particular meeting, Jesus saw the man and He did something interesting. He identified the man but the last thing the man would have wanted is to be pointed out. Jesus said – “Stand up.” And the man stood up. Now, everyone is looking at him. Tries to conceal his hand. Everyone can see him. The Bible says – Jesus looked around and He became very angry, became stirred inside. Isn’t it interesting, Jesus became angry?

This is the thing that angered Him. It says – He was grieving inside. When we feel grief, it’s because something has been robbed or taken away. We feel something has been lost, and you can feel grief over the loss of a person, grief over the loss of an animal, grief over the loss of a job. But Jesus grieved over something else.

He grieved that the church of the living God had lost its love for people and lost its desire to see people whole. Surrounded by people in need, they then becomes legalistic, judgemental, burdened with laws. Instead of the life of God flowing like a river, people were oppressed – laws to keep, condemned at left, right and centre. Jesus was grieved because the religious system of the day was more concerned about judging and accusing than about loving and healing.

The religious system did not represent God. It claimed to represent God. They said – we see, but they were blind. They were fixed in their opinions. They were of no help to people. God forbid that our life becomes useless for Him, that we become no longer any help because we’ve become rigid, judgemental, finding fault in others rather than seeing a person made in the image of God. The leaders were more interested in finding fault than in healing the broken-hearted, in healing those who were sick. They had lost their way, yet they said – we know the way.

When Jesus looked around, He saw the church, He saw the bondage that was there. He grieved. He was very angry at the religious leaders and He challenged them. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? They wouldn’t answer. The Sabbath was made for man – a place of rest and healing. So He spoke to the man with the withered hand. You notice, there are two things He told him to do.

The first thing He told him to do – stand up, come out of your place of hiding. Come out of your place of concealment. Come out of the place of shame where you cover what’s going on. Bring this problem right out into the open, where everyone can see it. Of course, he was ashamed. Of course he wanted to hide it. Of course he was embarrassed.

But God was embarrassed about the condition of the religious leaders. He said to the man – “Stand up. Don’t hide in the crowd.” I’m sure he wasn’t at the front row – He’s probably somewhere in the back, in the corner. Jesus said – “I see you there with that withered hand. Stand up.” The man stands up.

First step, becoming right again with God – you recognise your condition. Stop hiding. Stop concealing it and stand up, make a decision – you’ll respond to Jesus. Make a decision – you’ll say yes when Jesus speaks to you. He stood up, and he brought into the open this terrible dreadful condition. He did what he could do – he stood up and overcame his fear of people.

Then Jesus asked him to do something else. He gave a command, He said: “Stretch out your hand.” Physically impossible to do. The man made the stretch of faith. He began to respond to what Jesus said. When you obey what Jesus says, you are demonstrating faith. True faith is always seen in obedience.

He began to stretch and the most unusual sensation happens. His hand which should be withered, his hand which should have been dried up, as he began to stretch, he felt life flowing into his hand. The dead hand began to come alive. The flesh started to be restored and he stretched his hand out. It’s alive again! That which was dead has come alive. What was dead and shameful is alive! He’s excited. He’s not hiding anymore. He’s telling everyone.

The power of God had set him free. If your life has become withered, God wants to heal you and put His life back into you. If your life or ministry has become withered, God wants to restore you. But it does require something. You notice in the story 2 things – stand up – don’t hide this condition any longer. Bring it to the light. Bring it to Jesus Christ. Secondly, do what you haven’t been able to do – stretch out. As you stretch out believing, God could work with you. It’s always in the stretch that God moves.

So often in the Bible, Jesus commanded people to do something – told the blind man – “Wash in the pool”, and he could see. He told the lepers – “Go walk back and show yourselves to the priest”, and as they walked, they were healed. Many times, Jesus asks people to do something. Said to the blind man – “Look up, what do you see”, and he could see. God always asks us to do something and I’m going to ask you to do something.

I want you to close your eyes right now.

Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12)  

Sat 12 Oct 2013 PM « Back to Top

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The Bible describes 2 kingdoms - the kingdom of "light" (Jesus), and the kingdom of darkness (devil). The Bible also describes several spiritual problems in the heart which cause spiritual blindness - hatred, pride, bitter offences. Blindness speaks of limitations and captivity. In Mark 10, a blind man called Bartimaeus obtained his healing. What did he do that caused Jesus to stop and respond to him? What did he believe about Jesus? How did he demonstrate faith? His encounter can be a doorway to your encounter!

Transcription 10 of 12 – Spiritual Blindness

Let’s open up our Bible and we’re going to look in the gospel of Mark. We’re going to read in verse 46-52.

Mark 10:46 –

“Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. Then they called the blind man, saying to him, “Be of good cheer. Rise, He is calling you.” And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus. So Jesus answered and said to him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man said to Him, “Rabbi, that I may receive my sight.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you whole.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way.”

So the story begins as Jesus comes into Jericho. Jericho was a city that was cursed. Many years before it had been cursed. There was a man in the city, his name was Bartimaeus. That means – son of Timaeus. This man had an unusual problem – he was blind. He was unable to see. So he lived in a world of darkness. The Bible says – he was the son of Timaeus – which means to be secret, or to be covered over. There’s something in that family, there were secrets.

The Bible says – this man was blind, couldn’t see, so he sat on the side of the road, and he would just beg. He would ask for people to help him. The blindness affected his life. The blindness changed what he did. Instead of being able to pursue his dreams, instead of being able to do what he had in his heart to do, he was now sitting by the edge of the road, dependent on other people to help him survive in life. He was a beggar and he had the official garment of a beggar on. The garment he was wearing was the evidence of being a beggar.

This day, he did something that caused Jesus to stand still. So we’re going to look into this story and what caused Jesus to stop. This is Jesus’ last visit through Jericho. He is on His way to Jerusalem; He is on His way to the cross. On this day, the man’s life changed. It changed because he encountered Jesus.

Now, I want us to first of all, have a look at the man’s condition. The man was blind – no vision, no ability to see. This was a natural blindness - blindness caused by some physical problem. But there are other forms of blindness – there can be also a spiritual blindness. The Bible says of Jesus – that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to bring recovery of sight to the blind. In other words, to help people see what they couldn’t see. The story is more than just a blind man being healed. It’s the story of Jesus opening a man’s eyes, moving him out of a world of darkness into a world of light.

I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. As you close your eyes, mostly you’re in darkness. If you were to put your hand on your eyes, it becomes quite dark. Now, with your hand over your eyes, try to imagine how you’re going to walk out of this place. Consider how you’ll find your way home. You have some memory but you don’t know what lies in the way. You can’t see the obstacles. You can’t see what’s in your way. You can’t see the stairs. You can’t see the dangers.

Can you imagine now, living in that world of darkness, how you will find your way home. Can you imagine now, how you would live your life if that darkness was permanent – no colour, no sun, nothing to see. Just darkness, and no way out of it. Can you imagine what that would be like? Now, open your eyes again. Look around – how beautiful everything looks. Your sight is very important to you.

The Bible tells us that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of light. It’s a kingdom which we can see clearly. It’s a kingdom where its nature is love. The Bible also describes the kingdom of the devil – calls it a ‘kingdom of darkness’. When you’re in that kingdom, you are spiritually blind, you are in a spiritual darkness, and you can’t see. You can’t see where you’re going, you can’t see what is in the way, you can’t see the dangers.

The Bible tells us – Jesus came to bring us out of the kingdom of darkness, a kingdom of spiritual blindness, and into the kingdom of light, into a kingdom where we can see. We see life differently. We see people differently. We understand about eternity. Everything changes as you come into the kingdom of God. You come out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light.

Now, there are many things that cause spiritual blindness. I’m going to just give you a couple of them. If we look in 1 John chapter 2, and it says in verse 9-11: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

So, you notice the Bible talks about hatred. Hatred is an issue of the heart. When people get hurt, they harbour unforgiveness, it can grow to bitterness and hate. We don’t always feel hate, but hate is a spiritual problem in the heart. You can’t always see hatred, but it will often manifest in a person’s life.

If there’s hatred in a person’s heart, they’re literally unable to be loving. They can pretend to be nice, but the love is never authentic or genuine. Love can never flow from a heart where there is hatred. If there’s hatred in your heart, then love cannot flow to touch people. What is worse, if there’s hatred in your heart, it blinds you. You cannot see your way in relationships. Hatred creates a darkness around your life and it’s not surprising, because hatred comes from the devil and his kingdom is a kingdom of darkness.

So when people have hate in their heart, they literally become blinded by their hate. They can’t see clearly to make good decisions. So they make bad decisions in relationships. Literally because they can’t see clearly.

When you grow up in a family where there’s turmoil and trouble – perhaps the family breaks up, perhaps there’s grief and hurt in the family, you are not responsible for what your parents do. You are responsible for what you let get in your heart. If anger and hatred sit in your heart, this is your responsibility.

What you have to understand is this – that if you leave a family with hatred in your heart, hatred towards your father, hatred towards your mother, or even in some cases, hatred towards yourself, it will blind you. You’ll be unable to form good relationships. You will always see others through the filter of your hate and it will affect you.

The Bible says – He that has hatred in his heart walks in darkness, cannot see, because the hatred blinds the eyes. People who hate their parents will express that hatred towards their children. For some of you, the anger and hate you have experienced is generational – that children growing up hating their parents, express the same thing to their own children. This is a serious problem – that generationally, hatred can flow like a river; and generation after generation is in darkness. There’s a lack of love.

Love touches hearts. Love bonds people together. Love causes us to feel connected. So when there’s a lack of love, then we feel it deeply. Hatred can manifest in more than one way. You may not have realised this. The Bible says that hatred is the cause of murder. So if you read that a murder has taken place, there’s one thing you can be sure of, that underneath it was hatred; and all it took was a provocation. The person becomes provoked, their anger flares up, their hatred flows out and expresses as murder.

Let’s see if I can find the verse on that. In 1 John 3 – it tells us that he that hates his brother is a murderer. What an incredible thing that is. See, we’ve already read that he who hates his brother is in darkness. But the Bible tells us also that the person who hates his brother is a murderer – verse 15 of chapter 3. Let’s read it from verse 14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

So we need to see here in this passage, a murderer takes life from someone. A murderer takes a person’s life. So, if someone is murdered, the motivation was hatred and the life was taken away. So, the first expression of hatred is violent or angry acts against another person. That can be physical violence, or it can be angry words. That’s why when someone is really angry, you will feel frightened because behind it there’ll be a spirit of murder. You can literally feel afraid because this could get out of control.

We’re not designed to hate people. We’re not designed to live with hate in our heart. We’re designed to be loving. When hatred is in our heart, we can’t see clearly, we react against people and then attempt to hurt them. People can really hurt you with their words and you walk away, and you feel your life has been drained away, end up in pain. It can take you some time to recover.

Another form of hatred – what I’ll call ‘cold love’. The love that God has is alive and warm and vibrant. It touches us. Cold love – the person’s heart is closed up against you. They are polite, they don’t do anything that’s really bad, but there’s no flow of love. It’s like a coldness in their heart. So their behaviour is ok, but you don’t feel the love at all. You look and you think, what’s wrong with this? But the heart is closed up. I have found whenever there’s cold love, underneath there’ll be hate. It’s just the person’s learned to manage it and not to learn how to express the love of God.

So you see, the Bible’s very clear – hatred in your heart causes blindness. You can’t see clearly in relationships; causes you to live in darkness; and it affects your relationships with people. The Bible tells us – demonic spirits can cause blindness. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 – “Now, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, lest the light of the gospel would shine in.”

So another cause of spiritual blindness is the activity of demonic spirits. The Bible says – the god of this world – it’s talking about evil spirits. It says – it blinds the mind so they can’t see, they can’t understand. You share about Jesus with them, and they don’t understand. They might even say something like this: “I can’t see that.” They’re actually spiritually blind.

This is why we need to pray for the unsaved. All our efforts to reach people, we need to pray for them. We’re praying for the blindness to go. We’re praying for demonic influence to lift off them so that their mind becomes clear and they can see the truth and embrace the truth.

Another thing that causes us to become spiritually blind is pride. Let me give you a verse – Revelations 3:7 – the Bible’s talking about people in church and it says – “You say you have no need, but it says you’re wretched and poor and blind.”

Pride means – I’m excessively interested in myself. Pride has two faces – very arrogant and projecting myself, and I’m so in love with me I can’t see anything about you. Pride causes people to be very self-centred. The person who’s proud has this kind of view – “It’s all about me. Tell me more about me.” So, a person’s who’s proud, when you are with them, you would feel of no value whatsoever because they’re too busy thinking about themselves. When you start to talk with them, you don’t talk much, they do all the talking. It’s all about them. So that’s one face of pride.

The other face of pride is exactly the opposite. “I’m of no value whatsoever.” The person is introverted. They’re focused on themselves. They’re always thinking – what are people thinking about me. I wonder what they’re thinking. I want people to like me. So this again, is the face of pride. All of these things create a spiritual darkness around us. They make us blind – we can’t see.

Here’s another thing that creates blindness – and that is bitter offenses. When people are offended, when they harbour unforgiveness in the heart, it’s very hard to see clearly because you constantly see your offense. The young woman offended with her father, is easily offended by men. Young man offended by his mother, easily offended by women. These things blind us. We can’t see clearly.

You notice with blind Bartimaeus, he was begging. See, he was begging. What does it mean to beg? That means you’re reaching out to someone to come through for you. You’re reaching out to someone to meet your needs. Many people do this.

When you can’t see clearly what God says about you, you will try and get people to affirm who you are. When you can’t see clearly what God says about you – your values, your giftings and your purpose – you will want other people to tell you. So you will use relationships to help you feel better and your relationships will always have a hidden demand. “Please tell me you like me. Please tell me I’m ok.” So, dependent relationships are built, which become very unhealthy.

If we have judgements in our heart, this also blinds us. In Matthews chapter 7 verse 5 – Jesus talked about judging. When you judge people, it says – you can’t see them clearly and we judge people all kinds of different ways. We may judge people according to their gender. “All women are like this.” Or “all men are like this.” We may judge people according to their race. So people who have judgements in the heart can’t see clearly and it affects how we live our life.

Here’s the thing we need to see about this man –this man wanted to be different. He heard that Jesus was passing by and to him, this was significant. He heard that Jesus would soon be there and he’d heard many things about Jesus. He heard Jesus was the coming Saviour, he heard Jesus did miracles, he heard Jesus helped people, he heard Jesus never turned anyone down.

When he heard Jesus helped people – set people free of demons, set people free of sicknesses, faith rose in his heart. He wanted to be different. He wanted the power of God to come into his life to change him. “I don’t want to be blind. I don’t want to sit in darkness.”

In Isaiah 42 – I think about verse 7 or verse 9 – it says that people who are blind, were sitting in darkness in a prison. Spiritual darkness is like a prison limiting your life, stopping you from seeing, holding you captive. If you have pride, it’s holding you captive. Bitterness is holding you captive. Hatred is holding you captive. If you have something spiritually holding you captive, you’re sitting in darkness, in a prison, looking for someone to help you.

This man decided – “I’ve had enough. I want Jesus to change me. I don’t want to stay here in this place.” Most people will stay like they are and will not change until the pain of staying as they are is greater than the pain of change. This man believed Jesus could change him, he believed Jesus could change his life. So when he heard Jesus was coming by, he began to cry out.

You have had enough of living in spiritual darkness, enough of being in a spiritual prison, enough of reaching out to people to try and come through for you. Reach out to Jesus. This is how he did it – he raised his voice – “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” He used the term ‘Son of David’. This was the name given to the coming saviour of the world. So what he’s saying is this – “Jesus I know you save people. I know you can break the power of sin. I know you can break the power of the devil. I know you can change me. Jesus!”

Now, notice what the crowd did – many of them: “Shh be quiet. Don’t do that. Just stay like you are. Be quiet, don’t cause a fuss.” A crowd of people often is not interested in your welfare. They were objecting to being interrupted. They were objecting to the noise. Listen, they were objecting to his faith. There’s no record anyone else was healed. He had faith. Faith is not silent. When you have faith in your heart, it always shows up. It shows up in three ways for this man.

Number 1, he cried out to Jesus. Number 2, he persisted when people resisted. I love this next statement – they said: “Be quiet, stop this noise. This is a national day. Don’t cry out on the national day.” It says – he cried out even louder. When people tried to stop him, he’s more determined. “Wait, Jesus!” They go: “Quiet, quiet. We get the police on you! You’re causing trouble you know.” He cried louder.

Then Jesus stopped. Now, when you have a big crowd of people, there’s a lot of noise. Ever been in a big crowd? There’s a lot of noise. But in the midst of the noise, Jesus heard something that stopped Him. “I hear someone.” “Hey, of course you hear people, there’s hundreds here.” “No, no. I hear someone.” He stopped because He heard the cry of faith. He stopped because there was someone different out there. You see, Jesus didn’t just hear the crowd, His ear singled out one person who believed enough to keep crying out when everyone was against him, resisted him.

Sometimes we don’t get answers straight away from God. There’re a number of stories in the Bible when people didn’t get an answer straight away. Maybe you haven’t gotten an answer straight away when you’ve cried out to God. Maybe if people have tried to discourage you. But faith is never discouraged. Faith never gives up. You cry even louder, even stronger. The more the resistance, the more he cries out!

So number 1, he cried out to Jesus. Number 2, he persisted when everyone resisted him. He was determined! “I will have a miracle today!” Jesus heard him. He said – “Stop, someone’s calling out. Bring him to me.”

Notice how the crowd changes – one moment they said “Quiet. Too noisy. Disturbing us. Be quiet.” Next thing, “Oh, He’s calling for you. Not for me, for you.” Jesus doesn’t call for the person who’s complaining. He reaches out to the person with faith. “Hey, how come He’s calling to you? Why not me? Because I’m complaining and trying to shut down faith.”

So, notice it says – this is what he did – he threw off his garment and he rose and he came to Jesus. Now that garment was very significant. See, it was the official beggar’s garment so you needed that to do the begging. Probably had to pay a license fee for it. So when he threw it off, he’s saying – “my life is about to change.” He said – “I’m as good as got that miracle because Jesus is calling me to Him.”

So what does the garment represent? Number 1, the garment represents his old way of life. When he throws off the garment, he’s saying – I’m changing. The Bible calls that ‘repentance’. My whole life is about to change right now because I’m coming to Jesus; He’s been calling me to Him. So he throws off the garment – “first thing, my life is about to change. The old life in darkness, the old life in poverty, the old life depending on people, it’s all about to change.” So, he throws off the garments.

There’s a second thing about the garments. He’s thrown aside the garment. The garment represents limitations. He was limited in his life, limited because of the darkness, limited because of what he believed. Many people are limited because of what they believe about themselves. Many people are limited – not by God, but because of what you believe in your heart about yourself.

The Bible says – Proverbs 23:7 – “As you think in your heart, so you are.” So if you believe – “I’m of no value”, then you’re living in darkness and limitation. If you believe you can’t, you’re living in limitation. If you believe you can’t get anything right, you’re living in limitation. Whatever’s limiting you, throw it off! Repentance is another word for ‘throwing off’. How I think, how I look at life, it’s changed.

There’s a third thing that garment represents. It represents grief and pain in his life. Every time he puts on the garment, he’s reminded of his hurt: people abusing him and hurting him; making fun of him; ignoring him; sometimes stealing from him. Many people carry hurts, grieves, and sorrows, and they wear them like a garment. You ask them: “how are you doing?” “Oh, not good. You should see what’s happening to me. Oh, so many people hurt me: my father, my mother, my friends, and the teachers; then the pastors. Oh, so hurt.” “Oh, well you’re wearing a beggar’s garment.” “I wear my hurt. Please feel sorry for me. Oh, please feel sorry for me.” Many people are like that. They want someone to feel sorry for them. They’re wearing a garment of hurt, and they’re reaching out, begging – “Please, feel sorry for me.”

See, when the beggar put his hand out, I put some people in. But someone who’s wearing self pity, then they come and tell you how hurt they are. “Oh, so hurt, I’m so sorry to hear that. This is dreadful! Oh, the way they treat you is not good. You’re a good person!” Keep giving to me. Lot’s of people are like that.

So, the garment represented his hurts and pains, the limitations in his life, and his old lifestyle. In coming to Jesus, he’s determined he’s going to make a change. Not only that, the garment is his false security. Just in case. You see, he could’ve kept it, “I’ll go to Jesus, but just in case it doesn’t work, I’ll hold on to it. Just in case Jesus doesn’t work out, I’ll have a second plan.” A lot of people approach Jesus like that – “well, I’ll see, but just in case. I’ll have my escape plan.” But he had no escape plan, throws it off.

He came to Jesus, and Jesus said to him: “Hey, what do you want?” Woah, ask a blind man what he wants. “What do you want?” “I want to see!” He gave the right answer. Remember we saw the other story, the man who’s crippled, and he was asked: “What do you want? Do you want to be healed?” “Oh, you don’t understand, there’re so many problems I have.” He gave the wrong answer.

Jesus asked this man another question: “What do you want?” He knows straight away what he wants. “I want to see! I want to see!” That’s the way to come to Jesus. Don’t come to Him with excuses. Don’t come to Him with: “Oh, whatever you want.” That’s silly nonsense. “I want to see!” Jesus said: “Because of your faith, be healed!” Eyes open, darkness gone. Then he became a disciple of Jesus, he followed Jesus. The man who was in darkness is released out of his prison.

Now he sees. He’s got rid of the beggar’s garment, his life is changed, he’s got rid of the hurts. “I can see!” He got rid of the limitations, “I can see!” He got rid of his old insecurities, “I can see! I see!” What’s the first thing he saw? Jesus. And he followed Jesus. Jesus came to get us out of spiritual darkness. He came to change our life, remove the limitations, heal the broken heart. He came to give us a real security and bring us into a place of life.

In that story there, that was the last time Jesus walked through that city and one man stopped Him and got a miracle. Think about that. Hundreds of people, but one man stopped Jesus. Hundreds of people who were just looking with no faith. One man. One man – “I believe you’ll change me.” He threw off his garment, rose up, and Jesus changed him, just as he believed. I want you to close your eyes right now.

Freedom from Divination (11 of 12)  

Sat 12 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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God promises to direct our steps, as we trust Him and listen to His voice. Many people, fearful about the future, pay money to a fortune-teller to receive information (divination). They prostitute themselves with evil spirits - they pay money for information and receive a spirit into their body. Lev 20:6 warns of the dangers of this. We are not made for evil spirits. If you have opened your life up, you can be set free - like the girl in Acts 16:16

Transcription 11 of 12 – Freedom from Divination

I want you to open your Bible with me and we’re going to go into John chapter 9. Thank you again musicians, you are amazing: just play for hours and hours. We must give them a clap and appreciate them. Wonderful.

Ok. We’re going to pick up in the sheepy passage where we were the other day. We’re going to pick up in John chapter 10. We’re going to pick it up at verse 27 and 28. Now, when we were looking in this passage, we saw that Jesus represented Himself as the shepherd, and people are like sheep. So I hope a number of you heard that, and now I’m going to just take up this next part of it.

Jesus said in verse 27: “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me. And I give to them eternal life, they shall never perish neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.”

So notice what Jesus says – 3 things. “My sheep know my voice. They know my voice.” One thing I found when we had a pet sheep, it quickly recognised my voice. Something unique about sheep is they can recognise the voice. So what Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” He says: “And I know them.” Notice what He’s saying here about relationship. He says: “I know them, and they follow me.”

Everyone is following something in life. You’re either following the fashion, following the crowd, following the TV, following the media. People are following something. We often don’t even realise it, that there can be pressures on our life that cause us to follow. We tend to want to be with the crowd, just like sheep, they like their social, they like to be together.

Notice what Jesus said: “My sheep can hear my voice.” In other words, He said – if we’re following Christ, one of the keys of following the Lord is the ability to hear His voice. Now, there are many voices in the world, many voices pressing on you, wanting your attention, wanting your money, wanting your heart. Many many voices. God has designed us that we live out of relationship with Him. We are spiritual beings, we have a part of us which is spiritual. We need God to fill that.

So in the absence of that, we’ll find something else. We can listen to the voice of people, or we can be listening to the voice of evil spirits. If you’ve been listening to the voice of people or evil spirits, God wants you today to listen to His voice, and to respond to His voice. He makes a promise that if we follow Him, we won’t live in darkness, we’ll have life, His life in us.

So Jesus extends an invitation to every person to follow Him, to make a decision at some point in their life: that we’ll stop being led by sin, stop being led by the crowd, stop being led by demonic spirits, we’ll make a decision to follow Him. Jesus says: “Follow Me. Whoever follows Me won’t be in darkness, but they’ll have the light of eternal life.”

In many people today, there is a darkness in their life – a darkness of bitterness and hatred; a darkness of anger and unforgiveness; a darkness of sin of all kinds. The Bible says God’s kingdom is a kingdom of light. The kingdom of the devil is the kingdom of darkness. So, Jesus makes this promise – if we follow Him, our lives will become full of light, we begin to shine, we begin to look different, speak different, live different. He says: You won’t walk in darkness.

In other words, God says, as you walk with Him, as you follow His leading, the Spirit of God will help you address and get rid of the darkness in your life. The darkness of hurts and angers, of grief and bitterness and disappointment.

We have to make a decision of who will lead us. People are looking for direction. Unfortunately, we often look in the wrong place. We’re going to look in a story in the Bible of a particular woman and she was being led or spoken to; she was listening to voices. She wasn’t listening to the voice of God, she was listening to the voice of an evil spirit. We’re going to find as we see this story, that many people paid her money to tell their future. So let’s have a look at the story: it’s found in Acts chapter 16 verse 16.

“Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divi nation met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.”

So Paul was in the city of Philippi, and Philippi was a very famous city. There was a region in Philippi, the region called Putho. There was what’s called an oracle there. It was the centre of fortune-telling. They worshipped the god Apollo, who’s the god of fine arts: music and public speaking, and drama. In legend, he’d conquered a serpent there, a python. So they worshipped this python and it was the centre of divination or fortune-telling.

People would come from all over the world: people are wanting to conduct new business, people wanting to get into some kind of career; people in government. Wherever people had to make decisions, they would come to have their fortune told, and they would pay money. They would pay money to the person, and we’d call that person a ‘psychic’. So, the whole city was full of psychics, and they had one major psychic there.

There was a spirit of fortune-telling or divination sat over the whole region. It was like this oppressive spirit, this demonic power rested over the region. So, there was a lot of fortune-telling going on, much spiritual activity, and like a heaviness over the whole area. People would pay their money, and the psychic would talk to them, the psychic would speak to them about their future, about their life and their future.

But the Bible says of this woman – that she had a spirit wrapped around her. It was in the shape of a python. You couldn’t see the spirit, but it was in the form of a snake, a big python wrapped around her. It’s head was right up by her ear, and it was a demonic spirit, it would speak into her life. She could hear its voice speaking. She would hear a voice from the spirit world speaking to her, and it would talk and give her information. While she had that spirit, it would give her information she couldn’t know any other way.

Divination is reaching into the spirit world to obtain knowledge and information from evil spirits rather than God. God has created us for relationship with Him. God is a Spirit and He’s made us spiritual beings, and God wants to talk to us. The Bible says He has a plan for your life, He has purposes for your life, and He wants to direct your life.

Notice what Jesus said: “I’m the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice.” That means God talks with us. He says – “They follow me. They follow my leading or direction.” He says: “I lead them into good places.” But there is another voice. The voice of demonic spirits; and the Bible tells us in this story, that the woman made a lot of money from people who wanted to know about their future.

Does the devil know about your future? No he does not. Only the one who created you can see ahead and know what your life is for. Only the one who created you can know your purpose. Only the one who created you fully understands you. So God’s desire is that we would connect with Him and that we would receive revelation or guidance from Him.

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 3, it says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t lean on your understanding. In all your ways be intimate with Him, and He will direct your paths.” So, many places God promises to direct us and guide us. Now, people are fearful for their future. They wonder – “What will happen to me? Will I be successful? Will I prosper? Will I get married or have relationships? Will I get money?” These are questions everyone has.

God wants us to join to Him, and live a life of trust, of faith, learning to walk with Him day by day. He doesn’t tell us everything about our life, but He encourages us in a journey with Him, a journey of trust: listening to his voice, and also listening to our heart – what God has written in our heart. So if you begin to walk with God, you’ll be guided by your heart and by the word of God, and by the Spirit of God and you will prosper.

So notice what it says – it says in the verse I read, it talks about trusting the Lord with all your heart, and He will direct your way. So our relationship with God is one of trust. It has to do with the heart – trusting God with your heart, with your life; and not trying to figure it all out or work it all out. God has got your life figured out – He wants us to learn to trust Him, listen to our own heart, and make plans for our future: believing He will walk with us and bless our plan. The promise of God is to direct us. So one of the greatest things that you can do is to become connected to God and learn to hear His voice.

Now, if we don’t have a God who loves us leading us, we’re left rather frightened and uncertain about our future. If I know God is a good shepherd who loves me, who believes in me, who’s created me, has a wonderful plan for me, I can trust my life to follow Him. When I learn that Jesus died on the cross for me, I can trust my life to follow Him because someone who loved me enough to die for me, is someone I can trust.

But if I don’t trust God, then I’m left alone in life, and I’m frightened about my future. Some of you are frightened about your future – you feel anxious, insecure, fearful about what will happen. Of course, when you look in the news media, it fills you with more fear: tsunamis and earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, terrorism and war. The media is full of bad news. People become fearful, and so in this day, people would turn to the fortune-tellers; and this girl as a psychic, earned a lot of money. People would come and they would pay her money. Did the demon know their future? Not at all.

Evil spirits have limited knowledge and limited power. They don’t know your future, but they do know what you’ve been doing. They observe you so they know what’s happening in your life. It’s like a demonic internet. Type up your name, google you – wow, all the information, woah, yeah. All the other demons get on board – “yeah, we’ve been watching, we know this person. Yeah, we know that person. Know their father, mother, grandfather, grandmother. We know the whole family line – we’ve been watching them a long time. We’ve been having a lot of fun messing them up.”

Jesus said that devils come only to steal, kill and destroy. “So, what do you want to know?” And they tell the demon, and the demon whispers in her ear – “This is what about this person.” So, this lady, she’ll go “Ohh”. She’s not that smart, you know. She’s only listening – listening to a devil. “Oh”; and still to say something. The person will say – “That’s true! Very true. Wow this must be right. So what’s my future?” “Oh, I’m glad you asked. Pay some more money.” Ok, they got the money, “Ok, now I tell.”

The demon doesn’t know your future. It just would lay out a path. If you agree with it, then the demon can start to work in your life to gain control. Now, listen what it says in the Old Testament – I want to show you something, something you may not have seen before. It’s in the book of Leviticus – chapter 20 verse 6. It says: “The person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute themselves with them, I will set my face against that person and cut him off from my people.” So, God is warning people about the dangers of engaging with evil spirits.

A medium is a person that an evil spirit works through to speak to people. A psychic is a person who a demon speaks to them, and they talk to you about your life. So, divination then, involves reaching out into the spirit world to make connection with evil spirits, and ask them to give you direction.

There are many ways or many forms this takes. A common one teenagers often play, is they put letters or words on a table in a circle and they put a glass, and they put their fingers on the glass. “Ooh, who is out there. Oh, speak to me. Oh, tell me this question. Wow.” What they don’t realise, is you are connecting with an evil spirit. There is someone out there; there are lots of things out there. But the Bible says, if I want to come to God, Jesus said – “I am the way, I am the truth, no one comes to God but by me.” So when you reach out to the spirit world with any kind of these methods of fortune-telling, you contact evil spirits.

Notice what it says in here – I want you to have a look. “The person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, prostitutes himself with them.” Now, I want you think about this. Just think about this. If you think about what a prostitute is: a prostitute is a person who gives their body in exchange for money. So, a trade takes place. Person receives money, and they give over their body. The person that they receive the money from, uses their body.

Now, what the Bible is saying, is that when you get involved in divination, you are acting like a prostitute. You are receiving information, but you’re giving the demon a right to your body. You receive information, like the prostitute receives the money, and you receive the spirit into your body, like the prostitute opens her life to the man. So the Bible uses certain language, it says: “Don’t prostitute yourself with evil spirits.” Don’t be defiled by evil spirits because it will cut you off from connection with God.

This is an immense source of grief to God. He has designed you, He has a plan for your life, He loves you, He wants to help you, He wants to walk with you, He wants to come into your life, and for you to turn away from and turn instead to His enemies – evil spirits – and open your life and let the spirit come in, in exchange for what? Little bit of information.

You know what would happen with these people that would come to these things? They become addicted. They can’t make any decisions now unless they keep going back. They have to keep going back: pay more money, receive more information, pay more money, receive more information. When it doesn’t work out, they go back again. So their lives become controlled by the evil spirit. Whenever you get involved in divination, you enter agreement with an evil spirit and you give it right of access to your life. Then, you have many problems. You have many many problems.

Now, there are many kinds of different operations people get involved in. The media today are so full of these things – Harry Potter movies, many other different kind of movies; and they glamorise divination. They glamorise magic and sorcery. They make it to look really interesting. But what they never tell you is this, they will never tell you this – what is the source of the power. If there is real spiritual power, there is a real spiritual source. In the kingdom of God, the source of power is always the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ is honoured. In the kingdom of the devil, the source is an evil spirit, but you never know what it comes from, and you never really know that.

Some of you have been experimenting with divination. It seemed like it was harmless – “Well, everyone else is doing it. why don’t we, let’s do this eh?” So people sometimes do this in school, sometimes in their homes, sometimes on the weekend; and there’s a fascination that comes. Did you realise, serpents, the python, when it rears up, looks at the animal, often the animals become paralysed. They become fascinated, they cannot seem to move away from the gaze of the serpent.

When you get involved with evil spirits, there is a fascination because the power is real. There’s an attraction, there’s a spiritual draw; but you are opening your life to increase the bondage of spirits in your life. Some of you, your families have been involved in fortune-telling. This has allowed that kind of spirit to come into your life as well.

Some of you, your families have been involved with sorcery or magic, all kinds and forms of that – reaching out for spiritual power. Idolatry is one form of that. When people are involved in idolatry, they make a sacrifice, they make an exchange – they give the idol something in return for something. What are they getting in return? They’re getting an evil spirit. It’s the same kind of thing – it’s a prostituting.

We are not made for evil spirits. Our life is not made to be demonised. We are made for the loving spirit of God to be in us. God’s desire is His spirit flows out of our heart like a wonderful river. But when we’re involved in idolatry or in divination, fortune-telling of any kind, or in sorcery, magic, when we open our life to those things, we are opening our life to an evil spirit and then the trouble starts; and it’s progressive trouble.

When people are involved in these things, they often have nightmares, they have struggles spiritually, there can be heaviness and depression, they have premonitions, sometimes they have things begin to move in their rooms, or they hear voices speaking to them, they can’t shut the voices out. Sometimes people are tormented at night with nightmares, horrendous nightmares. Or they’re tormented, they wake up and like someone’s trying to kill them. Or they feel themselves being sexually molested but no one is there. Once evil spirits have a doorway, they will seek to increase the bondage. They seek to advance their hold. They seek to bring total defeat in your life. Jesus said: the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came to give us life.

Let’s go back and have a look at the story again. Let’s look back now, and we read in Acts chapter 16. In Acts 16, we find the girl with the spirit of divination, and it says: “She cried out, she was following Paul and crying out saying – these men are servants of the most high God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation.” Now what she was saying was absolutely true. A lot of people wouldn’t know that. They’d just see another couple of people. But what she was saying was real. So, these spirits do have knowledge.

When Jesus confronted people with evil spirits, they would cry out, they knew who He was. So evil spirits recognised Jesus, and they recognise those who follow Him. They know who you are.

I can remember I was in Bali and we were driving past this park and I saw some people there and some snakes. I stopped to go and talk and find out what’s going on. New Zealand’s wonderful, we have no snakes. No snakes. Very good. So, you want snakes, you have to stay here. So I haven’t see snakes very close up, so I went over to have a look. They had a big mat on the ground and these people are handling these snakes. Very scary stuff. I think I stay away, I don’t get too close to the snakes.

So I’m standing just watching, and then someone said – I think they’re sorcerers from Borneo. I said: “Oh, interesting.” Then one of them came up to me, and I thought, “Oh this is interesting, what’s going to happen?” See, people who operate demonic spirits, recognise servants of God. How did they recognise me? Because when you follow Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you. God’s spirit dwells in you. You are marked by the spirit of God. You literally radiate light. Maybe no one can see it, but it’s evident in the fruit in your life, and in the spirit world, they can recognise these things. I’ll give you a couple of stories on this.

Anyway, one of these guys came up, and he spoke to me. This is what he said. Now, he’s never met me, I’ve never spoken to him, and this is what he said: “Please don’t pray against us to stop us. We’re just here to earn some money. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” Now, what would cause him to say a thing like that? The spirits that were working with them recognised the servant of God and responded by appealing to me not to stop them. In other words, they recognised I had the power to stop it. Jesus said – “I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you.”

So, in the spirit world, they recognise who you are. See, we look at people, we just see people. We can’t see if they’ve got demonic spirits wrapped around them. We can’t see those things unless God shows it to us. We can’t even see who are the Christians, except often you can see the fruit of it in their life. But from the spirit world, they see exactly who you are and what you’re like. They know you and recognise you.

I was in a meeting in Taiwan not so long ago, September last year, and there were many people. There was a great move of the Spirit, there was joy and laughter, a lot of things happening. I felt God speak to me to begin to move in deliverance. So we had an alter call, and then God began to move in many many people were delivered, just like here. I had my youngest daughter with me, and this is what she said.

She said: “Because it was such a powerful meeting, I was having an encounter with the Lord.” She said: “I realise deliverance is taking place. I said: “Lord, show me what’s happening.”” And she said: “I thought I would just get a mental picture, it’s what I normally get.” The Lord said: “Turn around, face the people.” She said: “I don’t want to do that. My eyes, my mascara is running.” The Lord said: “Turn around, face the people. “ And He said: “Now open your eyes.” So she said: “I stood and I looked and opened my eyes.” And she said: “I got a shock. I could see with my eyes open, all of the people.” But she said: “I could see, imposed on it all, the spiritual world.”

In other words, she could see into the two worlds at the same time. You can only do this is God has opened your eyes to see these things. I said: “What did you see?” She said: “Well, I could see the demons.” I said: “What were they like?” And she said: “They were terrified. I could see them all in the meeting, and they were all terrified. They were full of fear and terror.”

I said: “What were they doing?” She said: “They were holding on to people and they were trying to keep hold on people.” I said: “Where were they holding them?” She said: “Well, some of them had their hands over their eyes, trying to stop the people seeing. Some of them had their hands over their ears, trying to stop them listening, stop them hearing. Some of them had their hands over the mouth, trying to stop them speaking, and all of them were trying to hold on desperately.”

I said: “What else did you see?” She said: “Well I couldn’t see you. I heard you speaking. I could just see this person who looks like Jesus, and there’s just light flowing out everywhere, and every demon is looking at this person and they’re terrified. Every time you began to speak, it was like a river of God flowed and the demons were just swept away.” I said: “What else did you see?” She said: “It was all too much for me, I couldn’t manage seeing into two worlds at once. I just closed my eyes again.” I said: “Oh I’d like to know more.”

But there’s the thing – the spirit world sees us as we really are. Demonic spirits recognise Jesus, they know He’s the Son of God; they are terrified of them. He defeated them at Calvary. The Bible says when Jesus died and gave up His life on Calvary, He legally broke the power of the devil over every person. Jesus extends an invitation to us to turn away from sin, turn away from these occult practices, and turn to Him, the living God. He loves us. We’re not made for evil spirits.

There are some of you here who have opened your life up to evil spirits. Maybe it’s come through your family. Maybe you were dedicated to some idol or temple. Maybe your family are involved in idolatry, fortune-telling. Or maybe you have done this: opened your life to spirits through fortune-telling of some kind. Perhaps you’ve opened your eyes to the occult world by invitations to demons. Maybe you’ve opened your life in these ways. God wants to set you free.

One way I’ve noticed some people have come into bondage is through computer games – role-playing computer games; playing the role of a sorcerer. I’ve prayed for a number of people, about 400+, who were involved with computer games, who became addicted and demonised when they used these role-playing imagination games, and began to engage in the spirit world. Others have got demonised through martial arts, from meditation, from various kinds of occult things. Jesus came to set us free.

Let’s finish our story now and see what happened. It says: “She did this for many days, and Paul was greatly annoyed. He was grieved.” The word literally means – he was struggling to break through. When there’s a lot of demonic activity, we can feel spiritual pressure and struggle to break through. He was struggling in getting breakthroughs, and then he began to realise the demonic spirit around this girl.

So he spoke to her, notice what he said – he came in the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the devil conqueror; and when we align our life with Him, we become devil conquerors too. “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out!” Spoke to the spirit, and the spirit manifested, and then came out of her. It was a python. Came out of her, and she was set free.

I remember when I was in Hastings many years ago, and we had our first move of God in deliverance. I remember it very clearly – it was very spectacular. We had a meeting one night, and people came up for ministry, and I laid my hands on one man. He was from the Pacific Islands, and his family are involved in fortune-telling. He fell on the ground. It’s quite common.

But then he did this, and I had never seen this before – He imitated a snake and he slithered all this way under the chairs, all the way to the back of the room. I’d never seen anything like it! How do you do that trick? That’s a good trick to do at a party. The chairs were just popping like this, and he just slithered his way on the ground.

We came and spoke over him, commanded the spirit of divination to go. The spirit left him. It was a spirit in the form of a python, and it manifested just like it. I’ve had that happen on several occasions. People slither, very fast. I’ve seen all kinds of things like that. And here’s the point: they’re all bad. They’re all bad. And they seek to hurt you.

Paul confronted the spirit and the young girl was set free. She was a slave girl to people and she was a slave girl to demons, and that day she came to Christ and became a free person. Free in her heart from sin, free in her heart from the evil spirit. God wants the same to happen to you.

So, we’re going to extend two invitations – the first is for people to become a follower to Jesus. This is what Jesus said: Whoever received Him, made Him welcome, and believed on His name, Jesus is the Saviour who saves us from sin. To any person who received Him and believed on Him, He gave power to become a child of God; to be born into the family of God. This is what God wants to do for you today. He wants to change your life. He wants room in your heart, if you will let Him.

It doesn’t matter what has been happening in your life, how bad your life seems to be. God loves you. He loves you. He understands you. No matter what you’ve been involved in, it can never change that God loves you. Your behaviour, no matter how bad, cannot change that God loves you. While you were in sin, God sent His Son to die on the cross for you.

I want to tell you today, God loves you. God loves you. Jesus said – Those who follow Him, will hear His voice; and He will give them eternal life. I want to invite you today to take the first step. To follow Jesus – it’s to invite Him into your life, to ask Him to forgive your sins, to receive Him into your life.

Later on, we’ll have a second alter call, and I want to specially pray for people who have trouble with evil spirits. If you’ve been involved in divination or fortune-telling, been involved in occult activities to any kind: idolatry or spiritism, or you’re tormented by spirits. Maybe your family’s been involved in spirits. We want to have a second alter call to pray for deliverance, and the power of God will come on you and set you free from those spirits.

You can make a decision today to become connected with God. You can make a decision today to go home without your demons. By asking Jesus Christ to set you free. Let’s just close our eyes right now.

Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12)  

Sun 13 Oct 2013 « Back to Top

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The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and demonic bondage which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day! Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

The church needs to have a message of hope. The gospel is a message of hope to people. It's about God's love for us, and his willingness to help us. And so as Christians, no matter what is happening around us, we need to understand we have a message to help people. That Jesus Christ came to help people.

I'm reminded of an important scripture where it says: Jesus did not come to condemn people, but to save them; to rescue people out of the problems created by sin. So Jesus loves people, and he has no condemnation for us. No matter what has happened in your life, the heart of God is to reach into you, and love you, and restore you.

And so as believers, we should not be afraid of the issues in our nation, but should learn and understand them, and learn how to minister to people. We should not have areas we can't talk about. Rather, we should be able to talk about any issue; and come with a spirit of love, a spirit of hope, and with comfort for people.

I want to do this today – I want to share with you something that will be very deeply touching for many people. I haven't shared this message before, but God has spoken into my heart recently about this, and I wrestled somewhat last night and this morning. I really wanted to preach something else! But, I always feel that if you listen to God, he has something in mind for us. And this message may directly affect you, or it may indirectly affect you. And I just hope you will have an open heart and a loving spirit. Because we have prayed for people, and seen God bring tremendous breakthroughs.

Let's just have a look at Psalm 127:3. We've come here many times, and we've shared our story, most of you would know we have a big family with 7 children, and 21 grandchildren, and we've learnt a lot of things on the way. We also have 2 other children, but they're in heaven. So I want to talk today about abortion and miscarriage.

I want to offer hope for you. We want people here who don't know Jesus, to realize God loves you, and desires to help you; wants to break the power of sin in your life. After that I'd like to pray for 3 groups of people together. We'll pray for you together, because we don't want to embarrass you. We just want there to be a spirit of love, and the power of God to help you. I want to pray for people who've had an abortion, or perhaps you've been connected to someone who has. For people who've had a miscarriage; or for people who are barren, and are hoping for a child. We're not going to ask you at all what the nature of your problem is. We just want you to feel free to come and believe that God will help you.

So in Psalm 127:3, it says: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward”. So children are a heritage. It's an inheritance, something God gives to us. There's a part of every person that is a spirit being. The spirit comes from God. The Bible says: God is a Spirit. So when human beings come together, and create a life, they are partnering with God; and God puts a spirit into the child. The child becomes a living being, with an eternal destiny. God's desire is that the child shares his destiny with him. God's desire is for many children. This is the heart of God - many children. So God plans to reach out into this earth to help people - that's God's heart.

So when we're born into this world, we're born separate from God, because of sin. God's desire is to come to us, forgive our sins, put the Spirit in our lives, and give us an eternal destiny with him. This starts by responding to Christ.

I read in the paper just 3 days ago, it's a news story from China. It took place in a province called Weifang city, and there was a young couple. They went to bed one evening, they had one child, and they were expecting a second child. In the early hours of one morning, the police burst into their home. They held down the husband, and they dragged the wife out of the home, and took her to a hospital.

The panic-stricken husband tried every way to find out where his wife had gone. But the authorities refused to tell him. It took him 6 hours to find out where his wife was. They had threatened the wife, because she already 6 months pregnant - threatened to put her husband in prison. Then they injected her, and when he got to his wife, she was in the process of miscarrying.

What touched me very deeply was that both of them suffered great grief. They were grieving over the loss of their child, and there's no one to comfort them. My heart goes out to them, and I'll tell you why in a moment. I feel quite deeply touched by that story. I'll share to you a couple of personal testimonies, and then we'll open up the word of God. I want to offer hope to people today.

Some years ago, my wife went through two miscarriages. As a man, I didn't understand at that time what it meant to a woman, to miscarry. We were involved in ministry; we had many pressures on us - we already had 5 other children. When the two miscarriages came, my wife never complained. She had the miscarriages, went to hospital, and then we carried on with our life, and I didn't think about it much at all.

We had another two children - Peter and Sarah. Some years later, I was in another church ministry, and I was praying for a lady, and asked her: what is the problem? She'd had a miscarriage, and as I prayed, she began to weep; and I felt this incredible grief - I began to cry with her. I thought: that's very strange - I must be feeling the love of God.

Then on the same day, I went to another church; and the second time, the same thing happened. I prayed for a woman who'd suffered a miscarriage, and I had this incredible grief. When you feel something, you need to ask yourself: what am I feeling; and why do I feel it? So I went home and began to pray, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: you are grieving not because of her, but because of your own loss. He said: you've lost two children – a boy and a girl, and you've never stopped to grieve. You've never even admitted you've lost a child.

So I began to grieve, and the Lord showed me what to do. I went home to my wife, and I said to her: God's been speaking to me about our two miscarriages. Joy said: “Well God's been speaking to me too - I've been journaling about this. We had a boy and a girl; and I've given them names: Timothy and Catherine.”

I said: the Lord has shown me something we need to do for our family. So we had a family meal, like we always do, and Joy put two beautiful orchids on the table. Then we had our meal, and we shared with the children. I said: “You know that we have seven children in our family. Well actually, there are nine - there are another two in heaven”.

An interesting thing happened - the two children who came after the miscarriages, both began to weep, and they were really deep sobs. I realised that they had picked up a grief in their spirit; even though in their mind, they did not know we had lost two children. There was grief that my wife carried; and they knew in their spirit that they had lost a brother and a sister, and there was a grief in their heart. The spirit of grief had come around them.

So the grief my wife carried over her loss, was transferred to the next two children. So we laid our hands on them and prayed for them. For the other children, this wasn't an issue at all - it was just the two following the miscarriage. This opened our eyes, that a child in the womb can feel the feelings and the grief of the mother. That when a child is miscarried, and the mother feels the grief - if the grief isn't resolved, then the next children pick up the grief. That was quite a revelation to us.

We did get a tremendous insight: that when you've lost children to a miscarriage, it's important to identify who they are. Not just some ‘thing' we've lost. For me, it was like my wife lost something - like a tooth. Painful; but it's just something that happens. I didn't get a hold in my heart that I've lost a child; that as a father, one of my children had been taken away.

So I realised that when there are miscarriages, and also when there are abortions - there's a real grief left. One of the ways of processing the grief, I'll tell you a bit more about it later, is to identify what each child is; and to give them a name; and to release them to the Lord. Then it's not just some “thing” that happened, some “thing” I lost - some piece of tissue. It's actually a real living spirit being, whose body never developed, whose house did not last, and they had to leave. My wife put it this way, so beautifully: “It's a rose that budded, but never bloomed”. So over the years, we've prayed for many people, and helped them in this area.

Now, here's the second part of the testimony: earlier on this year I was in Singapore, and as I was in Singapore, I was teaching about encounters with God. We had a worship team, and we were ministering just to the worship team, to help them have encounters with God.

Now previously to this, the two children we had who had suffered grief, one day after church, said this to us - each independently. They said: we saw into heaven today in the meeting. We saw our brother and sister - and each of them saw that. It's like God opened heaven for them, and they saw the brother and sister they'd lost. Each of them saw the exact same thing, independently of each other; and they were really excited, and were able to describe them!

I must admit - I was a bit jealous; but this year, I was teaching on how to have encounters with God. So I taught people how to focus on Jesus, allow your imagination to see him as the word of God describes him, and begin to reach out in your heart to him. In other words, I was meditating on Jesus. All these other young people were having encounters with God; and I just felt that instead of leading the meeting, I should press in myself.

So I began to meditate on Jesus - I wasn't thinking about anything else. Suddenly, I became in the Spirit; and instead of seeing Jesus, the Holy Spirit revealed to me two people: a young man, and a young woman. It was a shock to me - I didn't expect to see that. They both spoke to me, and said: “Hello Dad”. I was just shocked! They said: “We've got so many things to tell you, about what happens in heaven”. Then I became aware of Jesus standing next to me - He was carrying a little baby in his arms. I realised that child was the grandchild we miscarried in December. Then suddenly I saw another little child, and he said: “hello Granddad”. I could recognise the facial features, and knew which of my children had lost this child.

My attention came around to my son and daughter, and I began to look at them; Jesus was right next to me. They began to talk to me, and said: we want to show you something. Suddenly my eyes opened up. I could see this huge immense vast area - full of children. They were all of different ages; from babies to a little bit older. There were so many that I couldn't count them – vast numbers. They said: these are children that have been miscarried or aborted; there's a special place in heaven for each of them, where angels look after them, and they're educated and grow up.

I realised then, that the size of my grandchild was about the proper age for the one I'd lost. I realised the age of my children were about the right age for when we lost them. As I looked around, at all of these children who had been miscarried or aborted; I realised that God was showing me something else. The ones He was showing me were all Chinese. I was quite shocked!

Then Jesus spoke to me, He had absolutely no condemnation towards anyone at all, I could just feel His love. This is what He said: “Every one of them has a mother, who is grieving over their child, and I want to bring healing to those mothers.” He didn't say anything about what they'd done. He just said: “I love them, and want to help them, because they're grieving”. He said: I want you to begin to study and prepare in this area. I want you to put some materials on DVD, and speak in China. My heart was deeply touched, not just from seeing all the children, but feeling the grief of the mothers. I could feel the heart of Jesus - His immense grief.

Recently we were up in China, and someone came to me privately. I couldn't believe it - they said they'd had an abortion. “Can you help me”, they said. God dramatically ministered and brought healing to this couple. It was like each place I went to after that, there would always be someone who'd come and ask us if we could pray for them.

So I felt I'd share some things about this here – have to start somewhere. I want to share some things from scripture - some basic keys we've learnt that could help. I want to establish that from God's point of view, a child is a living person, with a destiny - even if they're still in the womb. Sometimes people think that, because the child is in the womb: 1) it doesn't understand anything; and 2) that it's not a person - it's just a ‘thing', and often inconvenient.

I want to show you several scriptures quickly, to show you God's point of view. In Judges 13, you'll find something about Samson. Here is the common thread: that before a child is conceived, God already knows them and their characteristics, and has a destiny for their life. So no matter what stage the child is at in the womb, from God's point of view, it is a living person, with a destiny - a person He knows.

Judges 13:2-5 says: There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. Then the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman, saying: “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Notice these things: before the child is conceived, God already knows it's a son. Secondly, God has a plan that this son will deliver Israel. Thirdly, it's very important how the mother conducted herself while she's pregnant. In other words, God is concerned about negative influences coming in to the unborn child. So you see, in this passage, that before a child is even conceived, God knows the child, and knows its destiny.

1 Kings 13:1-2 says – By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. By the word of the Lord he cried out against the altar: “Altar, altar! This is what the Lord says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.'”

The nation is corrupt and full of idolatry. God sends a prophet to warn them. This is what He said: “I am going to bring a child into this world. His name will be called Josiah, and he is going to be a major mover in bringing restoration to the nation”. Do you know how long after that prophecy was given until Josiah came? 360 years! In other words, 360 years before this man appeared, before he was conceived, before he was born - God named him even! God had a name for him, and had a destiny for him.

360 years later, when these parents had this child, they wouldn't have remembered that prophecy. All they did was have a thought come to them: “Let's name this child Josiah”. They didn't even realise, as they named him Josiah, that they were fulfilling something that God had already planned. God had a destiny for that child. 360 years ago, the parents weren't even alive. God could look through time, and say: in 360 years time, there's going to be a couple. The father would be a very corrupt man, but in spite of that fact - that he's a Satan worshipper - I will bring into that family, a child who will change the nation. His name will be called Josiah. You notice again, God has names for children; has destinies for them; and knows them before they're even conceived.

Let's look at another one in Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” How amazing! God says: He forms the child in the womb. He said: before the embryo or foetus was formed, I knew who was going to be in there. In other words - you're a spirit being, and even though the house you're going to live in isn't formed, I know who you are. I know all about you, and I've already set you apart. I already have a destiny for you. Even before you have formed enough that your mother knows anything, I have formed my spirit into you, and you will be a prophet to the nations.

You notice again that even before the child is properly formed, God knows the child, and has a destiny for them. Isn't this amazing? Isaiah 49:1 tells us the same thing. Isaiah was also known to the Lord before he was formed in the womb.

In Psalm 139:16, David says: “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed; and in your book were written all the days that were fashioned for me, when yet there are none.” What David is saying is this: when I was a tiniest embryo, just conceived, and I wasn't even formed -You saw me. Not only that, it says: ‘in your book, were written all the days of my life, when I hadn't even begun one of them yet'. In other words, what he's saying is that God saw him as a human being, as a spirit being, as a person with a destiny, and ascribed a course for him, before he was even born.

So these scriptures seem to indicate very strongly that before we're even conceived, God knows we're coming; and at the moment we're conceived, the Spirit of God goes into the child. Even though it's unformed, God loves that child. God has a destiny for that child, even if the child's born into difficult family circumstances.

Josiah was born into a family where the father was a Satanist, but God still had a destiny for him. How amazing that God would see an unborn child like this; see the child in the womb as a living being – with a name, with a destiny, with a life planned out. This is truly amazing.

Over and over in the Bible, we find God speaking about children before they're born. Zachariah and Elizabeth – Elizabeth was barren, and God spoke to Zachariah and said: “You know your wife is barren, she can't have any children”. He said: “I know that”. God said: “You're going to have children. You're going to have a child.” He said: “She's too old for that – how is this going to happen?” He argued with God, but God said “No more arguing. You'll have a child – he is going to be a prophet, and will prepare the way of the Lord”. The Bible is very clear – that God sees people before they're conceived and born, and He has a plan for their life, long before they come out of the womb.

Matthew 1:21 – “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Same thing again - before the child is even conceived, God knows the child, knows the name, has a destiny for that child.

How about you? Have a look in Ephesians 2:10, I want you to notice something – “Now you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for a purpose, for good works, that God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them”. So what it tells us is that each person is a unique work of God. Each of us is a unique manufacture of God. There's no one like you - your fingerprints are unique, your DNA is unique, everything about you is unique. Before you were born, God had a path for you to walk. It says: you were created for something - for good works. Before you were begun, God had a plan, that you'd do something useful in your life. Amen.

Have a look at the second thing, in Luke 1:39-44. The first thing we need to look at, is that God knows us before we're born. He knows our name; knows what we will be like; and He's interested in us while we're in the womb; and has a purpose for our life.

Let's have a look at the child in the womb. I was reading a secular book recently, and they have done a lot of research more recently with ultrasonic scans of infants in the womb. Prior to this, for about 100 years, people believed that the identity was in the brain – personality, understanding, awareness. But they found an interesting thing, once they started to do these experiments. If the personality and identity and feelings are in the brain, the conclusion that they came to, is that if the brain is not developed, then it is not really a person, so you can get rid of it.

But in the Bible, it's quite different. Recent research shows quite clearly, that it's the heart that develops before the brain. The Bible tells us, that out of your heart is where life flows. Also recent research has shown that the child in the womb is very aware of what's happening around it, even before the mind is developed. This was a secular book, and the conclusion he came to after lots of research, was that an unborn child in the womb is totally aware of what's happening around them, even if the brain isn't fully formed.

In other words - it's a person. The guy came to the conclusion, that there must be some sixth sense that enables the child to know things, when their brain isn't developed enough, and neither was their hearing. He was talking about their spirit - that the spirit of the child recognises what is happening around them. He discovers they could recognise the voice of the father and the mother; recognise conflict; and could understand what was happening around them. This is partly the reason for the Hebrew culture, that once the woman is pregnant, she would go into hiding for quite some months in a peaceful location, so the child could be at peace and rest during the formation stages in the womb. So this is modern research.

Now let's read what the Bible says. In Luke 1:39, it says: “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.” Now Elizabeth is six months pregnant, and the baby is not yet fully formed. Now look at this - it said: “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Who says the baby in the womb doesn't know what's going on? See, Elizabeth was very pregnant; door opens up and Mary was there; and Mary begins to prophesise and flow with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is listening to all the words, and the baby is picking up the prophetic flow! The baby goes: “yay!” and kicks, huge kick - full of joy, because this is his destiny – to be a prophet for the Messiah. This is his destiny - right from in the womb. He knows there's something for him, and as soon as he feels the Holy Ghost, he leaps; massive kicks.

So this is something they've only discovered, recently: that the child in the womb is aware of spiritual influences; but it's written in the Bible 2000 years ago. So children in the womb are aware of the environment around them. They're aware of the presence of God; they're aware of the mother and what she feels; they're aware of the father; they're aware of the environment.

Now the reason I've taken a bit of time to share these things, is because I want to talk about the impact when an abortion takes place. The Bible's very clear, when we look from one end to the other, that the devil is hostile to children. From the book of Genesis (Genesis 3:15) it says the devil is hostile to children, because of a promise God made: that through children being born out of women, a saviour would be born.

So when we look right through Bible history, we find demonic attacks on the child - either in the womb, or just born. In the days of Exodus, just before there was a great deliverance, all the male children under two were killed. In the days after King David, Athaliah killed all the royal children but one. In the days of Jesus, the spirit of murder came through Herod, and murdered all the children under two.

The devil has constantly been against children. The womb is an area of conflict. When miscarriages take place, something God intended for good is suddenly stopped. When abortion takes place, the life of a child is taken. Something wrong has happened, and there is a huge impact. I want to talk a little bit about the impact, because as we've prayed for people, we have realised that many people are suffering, but they cannot understand why they were suffering.

The Bible describes a number of reasons why miscarriages take place. But it does lay out this – that God's plan is no miscarriages and that the womb would be fruitful. So when we look at scriptures, we find that miscarriages came because of idolatry. Sometimes they came because of a curse in the family line. Sometimes it was because of incest in the family. Sometimes it was because people were involved in evil spirits.

I won't go into all the scriptures regarding that, but the Bible is very clear that God's intention is that we be productive. So when miscarriages happen, there can be a spiritual cause, or there can be just a natural, physical cause. When we enquired about the last miscarriage, one of my daughters got a word from God that the brain had not formed properly, and that my daughter and her husband had been spared years of grief. Sometimes there's a physical problem, because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes there's a spiritual problem; and sometimes it can be because the mother has made inner vows never to have a child.

Whatever the cause, the result is grief. When a mother carries a child in her womb, and loses the child, there is a deep grief and sense of loss. Men can't easily understand it - that a woman's life is wrapped up with the child, who is drawing life from her body. So when there's a loss, there's a great grief.

I want to focus on the impact of an abortion. Sometimes when we're counselling people, if you don't get to the root of the problem, you can never solve the problem. As I researched this area, I began to find that everywhere, they came up with the same conclusions – in order for a woman to have an abortion, she must somehow distance herself that this is a real person. Either the doctor informs her: it's nothing, and it's just a medical procedure; or because of fear, or difficulties in the physical situation, she just doesn't want to acknowledge what's happening.

One of the core issues is the denial this is a human being. Once the mother has denied that it is a human being, then it's just a physical operation like having your tooth pulled. However, that is not the truth.

Here are some of the things that are commonly attributed now, to someone having an abortion. These are widely-known symptoms, known as post-abortion trauma syndrome. Let me list them for you; and then we'll show how people can be set free. Surveys done on people indicated these kind of issues. I'll just list them without explaining them too much.

1) Shame – they'll feel shame and secrecy coupled with low personal-esteem.

2) Deep feelings of guilt – just guilt that would not go away.

3) Depression – often bouts of depression, sadness and crying, but no apparent reason. Because remember, if you've concealed the truth with a lie; if you've refused to accept this was a life that was taken; then you won't understand why you're so sad. If it wasn't anything - how could I be sad about it?

4) Suicidal thinking and attempts.

5) Issues with self-hate.

6) Issues with sleep disorders.

7) Flashbacks - the woman suddenly remembers the trauma, and goes back into shock and grief.

8) A strong desire for replacement babies; unconsciously wanting a baby, to make up for the baby that was lost. What's called “anniversary syndrome” - on the date of the abortion or the date the child was to be born, the mother begins to become depressed and weep, but usually doesn't know why.

9) Another thing is trying to atone, by spoiling the other children.

10) Alcohol or drug problems.

11) Self-punishing behaviour – I deserve to be punished, which could be self-harm (cutting), abusive relationships, or promiscuity.

12) It can be physical problems – constant bleeding, or constant miscarriages.

13) Often there's a deep guilt – I survived, but at the cost of my child. These are terrible feelings that people have.

I had a woman come to me for prayer recently, and I said to her: “What is your problem?” She said: “I have been bleeding for about 12 years. We desperately want children but cannot have any”. I said: “Have you ever had an abortion?” She said: “Yes. I had 4”. I said to the lady, in the spirit of love, “You actually have a family of 4 children, but they're all in heaven - and your actions have brought this about. When they told you this was a simple procedure - they lied. Actually, it's caused you this problem you now have. You and your husband are without a child to hold, because the ones you could've held, you've now lost”.

She just began to weep and weep. We shared with her that God loved her, and would forgive her; so she was restored to the Lord, and her heart was healed. I'll show you exactly how, shortly. My prayer is that the next time I'm there, she'll have a baby. I was at City Harvest this year, and a lady came up with a husband and a little baby. She said: “You must see our little baby - it's a miracle baby. It was 12 months since you were last here. We had a very bad first child, very difficult pregnancy, and I made an inner vow that I'd never have another child. So, every time I get pregnant, I lose the child through miscarriage. I realised when I went through your teaching, that I made an inner vow. I renounced the inner vow, and asked God to bless my womb - 3 months later I'm pregnant, and here's our little baby.” Actually it was short of 3 months, it was around 1 month.

So you see again, the spiritual connection to problems in the life. So, one of the issues that we have found, is that many problems women suffer with - they can't trace it back to the abortion, because they've pretended that nothing really happened. I want to share very quickly the path to get free.

Jeremiah 31:15 says: “Rachel, weeping for her children, unable to be comforted, because they are no more.” So how can we get free? For someone who is in this situation, the first step is to turn to Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” So whatever you're suffering from, Jesus is able to save and heal you.

So we see then, the consequences of abortion are far bigger than we realise. They affect the mother; spirits are imparted to the womb that affect the next children; the family are affected; the man who was the father has lost his child; the grandparents have lost a grandchild; and siblings born after that are affected by the trauma.

I remember one lady brought her child to me. I said: “What's the problem?” She said: “My child will not bond and breast feed. In fact, as soon as I put him on the breast, he begins to scream. What can we do?” I said, “You didn't by any chance, try and abort this child did you?” She said: “Yes.” I said: “Is it surprising that the child is afraid of you? It senses the spirit of murder - it's not going to bond to someone who tried to destroy it”. She was shocked! She asked Jesus to forgive her, I prayed for the mother and child, and the child bonded. As soon as the child was delivered from the spirit of fear and murder, immediately it started to bond - it was a huge impact.

So let's have a look at how to get free. There are three areas: spiritual issues; emotional issues; and relationship issues. The answer is incredibly simple - it's very easy for you to move out of the place of death to life.

1) We need to face the spiritual issues. So the first thing is to face the truth: this is what I did - I took the life of my child. Most mothers only do it because they're under such pressure and stress - pressure from the boyfriend or husband; pressure from the family; pressure from circumstances; but nevertheless - they must take responsibility.

The first key to being set free is to break the lie. Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we cover ourselves up with a lie, we are in covenant with death and hell. So the first step is to face the truth: I had a child, and I've taken the life of my child. Just facing the truth hugely breaks open this problem.

2) You need to repent and confess it to the Lord. You need to actually come with words to the Lord. 1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us”. So God has already forgiven us - all you need to do, is position yourself to receive it.

3) The third area is forgiveness. Firstly the person must receive forgiveness - I am forgiven by God; secondly, they must forgive themselves; and thirdly, they must forgive other people. Often, the woman may be very angry at the man; very angry at the father; or very angry at the parents; or very angry at the people who did the procedures; angry at the friends who encouraged her to do it. There can be a lot of anger and grief - and that needs to be faced, and let go of - by forgiveness. Forgiveness is the way we resolve those things; and then deliverance from the demonic spirits.

Confession; release forgiveness; and deliverance from those spirits. And in a moment we'll pray for people to be set free. There's another area that's also needed. This is what we found to be extremely helpful. I have seen people break and weep when we've just taken this step: Ask the Lord - what is this child? Jesus knows, God knows your child - Is this a boy or a girl? Listen to your heart, and God will tell you; just like that.

The next thing to do is to give it a name and an identity. So we're breaking the lie by giving it an identity. We'll ask them, could you name your child. You know how hard it is to name children. You spend days working out a name for a child; but I found that in this kind of process, I've come to the conclusion that God's already named them - I just need to listen to the name. So ask the Lord: what is the name of my child I've lost? Or just rise up and give your child a name.

This lady that had the four abortions, I said: ask the Lord to show you what they were. And she said quite quickly “girl, boy, boy, girl”. I said: now let's give them names. All were named within the space of a couple of minutes. Now, she began to grieve - she started to be aware of her children.

I said, “Now the next step is to release your children to the Lord. See Jesus standing there, and pass your children to Him. Here's what you know: one day you'll see your children again.” So sometimes we pray a little prayer: Jesus, I release my child to You. I release her into your arms. Please tell her I'm so sorry for what I did, and I'm looking forward to meeting her again - a very simple prayer.

But you notice, all it has done is removed all the lie, and bring it down to the truth. Often there's a lot of grief, pain and emotions. Sometimes there are other broken relationships to repair. The path to freedom is very simple.

Of course, if the person's had a miscarriage, there's no sin to confess usually; unless there's some generational cause. But I have found it helpful, every time, to close your eyes and open your heart to the Lord. Ask Him to show you what the child was, and tell you the name. Now, it's not a thing - it's a person; and you'll see your child again. That is the hope of the gospel – the child is in heaven.

So whenever you speak to Jesus, you're speaking to someone who is speaking to your child. Leave your child is Jesus' hands, because one day you'll see them again. I have seen so many people set free, so many broken hearts healed. What a relief to have the secrecy, shame, and lies broken, and a broken heart healed, by faith in Jesus Christ.

A very simple thing to do, and I believe God wants to touch many. Let's close our eyes. I want you to know how much God loves you. Jesus came into this earth, God in the flesh. He showed us what heaven is like, He showed us the kingdom of God, and he invited us to connect with Him. We're all born in sin, separated from God, we can't even find God's way; but Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the dead; broke the power of sin. Jesus said these words: to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome, believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God.

Slumber of Jezebel (1 of 3)  

Sun 25 Oct 2009 AM « Back to Top

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The Bible is very clear: there is an invisible spirit world, in which spiritual powers operate (Eph 6:12).

The nation of Israel got into an alliance with another nation, the Sidonians, by marriage. He married Jezebel, and immediately opened his life to the influence of the spirit power behind her. Her father was a priest of Baal, and so she introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth.

I want to share something with you that the Lord has just put on my heart. I've been in a season, Joy and I both are in a season of fasting, can't remember how long it's been now, probably a couple of weeks or something like that. You just lose track after a while, but we're just having a sense it's a new season, new season in our lives, new season in the church.

When it's like that, you have to stir yourself up, you have to get near to God so you're listening to God. The Lord has been downloading a number of things to me. He spoke to me just over a whole number of areas recently, and He spoke to me on one thing particularly, and I want to read this scripture here, then show what He showed me.

Isaiah 52:1: “Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall come no longer to you. Shake yourself from the dust, rise up; Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!”

God is speaking through the prophet, telling the church of the day: Wake up! Wake up to what's happening. Wake up spiritually, wake up on the inside, wake up - begin to arise back to become the people of God! Shake off the things that have held you down. Arise and begin to take your rightful role and positioning.

God is speaking strongly to a church, which was in a place of defeat, to awaken the church.

I recently received an article showing how the Islamic faith was spreading like wildfire through the world, and how it's emerging in Europe all over the place. The call for the church was: wake up! Wake up! Don't you see what is going on all around you?

God spoke to me, not directly, but through this verse. He spoke a personal word around a whole lot of other things, speaking to me and to the church. He said: “awake, awake from the slumber of Jezebel. Put on your strength O Zion”.

I thought - I know that verse, but that doesn't sound like the way I read it. I remember that many times, Jesus and the apostles quoted verses; and then they would alter them a bit, to actually just expand what was going on, or to give an additional insight. I thought: ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ - I'd never heard of such a term, never read it anywhere. I got my concordance out and looked it up - couldn't find it anywhere! Well, I don't know about that. Where can I find it in the word?

I began to look, and then the Lord just began to open up, just story after story, illustration after illustration. I encourage us to just be open to what God wants to say, particularly if it relates to you.

He's saying: awake, awake, awake! Awake church! Rise up. I believe it's a word to the church in our own nation; it's a word to us as a people - it's time to awaken, and to arise with much greater strength in God, strength in prayer.

I want to open up what this term ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ is, and some Bible examples. I don't want you to get hung up on what you may know about that particular demonic power. Just be open to what I feel the Lord's unravelling to me.

First of all, 1 Kings 16. The word ‘awaken’ means: to open your eyes; wake up out of sleep; rise into your proper place of operation. When the Bible is talking about awakening, it's referring to a sleepy condition, where people are not operating or functioning as they ought to.

In 1 Kings 16:30, you'll find the first reference to this person called ‘Jezebel’. I don't want you to label any woman, or anything like that - I want you think in terms of spirit powers, unseen spirit powers, which operate in the spirit world.

“Ahab, the son of Omri, did more evil in the sight of the Lord than all the kings that came before him. And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took as a wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which was built in Samaria. And he made a wooden image. Ahab did provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger more than the kings of Israel that came before him.”

So this is the first mention of this name Jezebel, and the name means literally, if you look at the roots of it, it means ‘Baal’, or ‘Baal exalts’. It means: one who has the favour of Baal upon her. It means: one who is un-husbanded; or operates independently. That's the meaning of the name.

The nation of Israel got into an alliance with another nation, the Sidonians - they came into alliance by marriage. The king of Israel, who should have stood up and led the nation of Israel to walk with God, and trusted God for prosperity - instead he entered into an unholy or ungodly alliance. He married this woman Jezebel, and immediately opened his life to the influence of the spirit power behind her. Her father was a priest of Baal, so she introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth.

Baal means literally ‘husband’ or ‘lord’ - so if you said the word ‘Lord’, it's the word ‘Baal’. Baal means: Lord, husband, one who provides.

Baal worship was a problem right through the Bible. Baal was a god of war; and Baal was a god of fertility. Whenever you see the god Baal, there was an introduction of violence, of war, of the slaying of innocent children, of sexual promiscuity, temple worship, temple prostitution. All of those things lay behind that spirit of Baal, so wherever Baal was worshipped or lifted up, the nation became corrupted with the spirit of idolatry, and a spiritual heaviness settled over the nation.

Jezebel was the daughter, and she introduced worship of Baal (worship of Ashtaroth) into the nation. Instead of the nation having an open spiritual heaven, miraculous provision, miracles of God, there was a brass heaven over the nation - no prophetic flow.

Jezebel set out to destroy all messengers of the Lord, so she came against the prophet. She destroyed prophets wherever she could find them, and raised up instead her own prophetic messengers. They brought a message which they called prophecy, but it was actually speaking words that were demonically empowered and seduced the nation. The nation came under it, literally fell asleep spiritually.

In the New Testament, the name Jezebel turns up in Revelations 2:21 - another era in history, another generation, another people - a different person, but the same spirit. It talks in there about that spirit operating prophetically within the church: seducing, causing an influence that drew people away from God, and drew them into sexual sin, and all kinds of independence of God.

God has spoken in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, of same spirit power, the same kind of operation - literally to lead people astray, so they don't walk in the destiny that God had for them. They don't fulfil the plan God had for them. That spirit power is operating, to cause the people of God to be drawn from what they should be doing.

The Bible is very clear - there are spiritual powers. Ephesians 6:2 - there is an invisible spirit world, in which spiritual powers operate. I think anyone who's got any sense or sensitivity, recognises spiritual atmospheres when you go to different places. Some places are very heavy, oppressed, cold; some places you can literally feel the corruption there.

There is a resident atmosphere or spiritual power operating; but they don't just operate from the spirit realm - they find expression through the lives of people. When you look at the woman Jezebel, there was an invisible spiritual power - but it found an expression through a person who had yielded to that.

2 Corinthians 10:4 it tells us that there are ‘strongholds’. Strongholds are positions in our life that allow demonic powers to influence how we think, how we behave, how we act, even how we view life. They gain access if your life is broken and damaged. That's why people need deliverance - to get your life cleaned up of demonic influence. Why do you need restoration and healing? To close the doors in your heart and soul, so they don't operate any more.

Spiritual powers gain their influence by seducing people to believe a lie, and begin to yield to them. In this particular nation, at this time, there was like a spiritual heaviness, a lack of the flow of the prophetic, a lack of the miraculous, a lack of the supernatural. A spiritual power was resident, operating in the nation, through people.

God hates that spirit operating. He hates it because it destroys the identity of His people, it destroys who the people of God are - it shuts down the church from being supernatural. It comes as heaviness, an oppression; that causes loss of destiny, purpose, identity, and strength.

I want to show you three portions of the Bible - three distinct, separate, situations - where this spirit gained access to a man of God, or a group of people, and it shut them down from operating supernaturally, and began to draw them away from what God had called them to do. I want you to learn from it. In each of these situations the same thing happened - there was a different doorway of entry; but in each of these situations, God intervened - to help that person step back up into the place of identity, positioning that God wanted them to flow in.

What a wonderful thing! It may be, as we read this, that you discover – I’ve opened my life, I've opened my inner man; I've allowed control to operate around my life, and shut down the anointing, shut down the flow of the spirit of God. In that case, I've got good news - God gets you out of it, if you respond to Him.

I didn't finish explaining what I meant by the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’, so let me explain it...

Jezebel was a person who introduced a spiritual power into a nation. The word ‘slumber’ means: to be dormant; to be in a state of inactivity; or passive. When you're slumbering, you're sleeping - you're unaware of what's happening around you. You're not doing anything, so a spiritual slumber means spiritually you're just unaware. You haven't got a clue what spiritual influences are operating. You can't see what's happening, you can't hear what is going on, you can't understand. You're living in a state of confusion, and lack of awareness of the spiritual powers afflicting your situation.

Because you're unaware of it, you can't do anything about it. It's like what I'd call living in a trance. You think you're living life, but actually this stuff has shut you down, and you don't even know it. You're not operating like you ought to operate, so ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny. So that's slumber - a spirit of slumber is a spiritual fall.

The ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ is simply a spiritual power of witchcraft operating, that causes you to become unaware of spiritual operations, to shut down prophetically - shut down in the flow of the Holy Ghost - and not see what God is doing, or hear what God is saying. You actually shut down. You're no longer standing where God wanted you to stand, functioning like God wanted you to function. You no longer have strength, you become quite weak.

Now let's have a look at the condition across our nation. Across much of the western world, church is like that. It's like the church is slumbering. It's like something put everyone to sleep, and you sort of feel the apathy, the indifference and passivity, the shut-down-ness.

I find it over groups of pastors, when I go to talk with them. About a decade ago, about 12 or 13 years ago, God spoke to me to go through the nation speaking about this spiritual power, so we arranged meetings in about six different cities. We called men together, and we had something like 300, 400, 500 men in different cities in the nation. One of the things I did was expose this power, and how it operates, and get men to stand up, begin to pray strongly, begin to throw that heavy thing off their lives, begin to arise back into their position. Oh, we had some deliverance! My goodness, we had deliverance like you can hardly believe. There wasn't a single time where there wasn't an outpouring of deliverance, and then a fresh releasing of anointing.

The last city we were going to go into was Auckland, and the year that we were going to go into Auckland, there was a parade in that city. Now our conference was called ‘Heroes of the Nation’. The year we planned to go into Auckland, there was a gay or homosexual parade called ‘Hero Parade’. After that it was in the news, it was everywhere - you just could not run a conference called Heroes of the Nation. It literally shut us down - just like that - just taking, stealing what we wanted to do I've come into this spirit before - anyway, I felt God saying: stir up again - it's time to rise up.

We looked in 1 Kings 16 - now I want you to go with me to Judges. I want to show you three stories of people who come under the influence of that spirit.

1) Judges, Chapter 16:19. You know the story of this man - a mighty deliverer, born supernaturally by the spirit and power of God. In Judges 16, we find this man in a very bad position...

“Delilah lulled him to sleep on her knees (notice: he fell asleep) then she called for a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. She began to torment him - and his strength left him. She said: Samson, the Philistines are upon you! And he awoke from his sleep, I'll go out as before as at other times, I will shake myself free! Be he did not know the Lord had departed from him. So the Philistines took him, put out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. He became a grinder in the prison”.

Samson forgot his identity. He was born to be a deliverer in the nation. He was called of God, supernaturally, to be a deliverer - to arise as one who would bring deliverance to the nation from the Philistines. His purpose was to break the yoke of the Philistines - to deliver the nation from that wicked bondage, that evil spirit power - and yet here it was, he opened his soul to the demonic power of Jezebel - or that spirit, that witchcraft spirit.

He opened his soul through finding comfort in the arms of Delilah. Her name means the one who ‘empties you out’, the one who ‘creates emptiness in your life’. He exposed his soul. He was drawn into sexual sin. He found comfort apart from the living God, and as he found comfort in her arms, he progressively opened himself to her influence.

Verse 9 - What he didn't realise: there were men lying in wait, staying in her room. What he didn't realise is - the five lords of the Philistines, the demonic power that had ruled the nation - had bribed her, and were waiting there. They were using her to draw him away from his calling, from his identity, from what God called him to do, and she drew him into sin.

When he fell into sin, he fell asleep - and then his strength left him. He was spiritually unaware of the danger in his life that his sin presented to him - so very soon he lost his crown of dominion. He lost his anointing, and strength to rule, he lost his power to destroy the enemy's yokes - and instead ended up in slavery. He lost his vision, he lost his destiny, he lost his hope, his freedom. He ended up enslaved - that is what that spirit power does to people.

When that spirit of witchcraft operates unchecked, it takes away vision, your hope, your destiny, your identity, any kind of strength that God would give you - and you end up in bondage, instead of living the life God called you to live.

Believe me, if you want to fulfil the destiny God has for you, you will have to rise against that spirit; and not let that spirit have access to your life, to shut down the anointing, control how you think, and steal the dreams.

It doesn't just steal your dreams - it steals your inheritance, and the legacy of the next generation. You cannot compromise with that spirit power. There is a war that must be engaged in, if any person's going to win over that.

When control powers come against you, the goal is to control - it's a fight for your freedom. You have to recognise it. It's not people, although it operates in and around people - it can even operate in your own life.

It is a spirit power, and so it requires spiritual weapons. Recognise the enemy, and how it comes.

In this case, it entered the door of his soul (through sexual sin); but here's the very, very positive news... When Samson repented - I guess when he found himself in that ‘low place’, he did the one thing that will get you out of that hole. If that thing's got a grip around you, there's one thing you need to do, and that is: turn to God! Turn to the living God, who's gracious and merciful!

He turned and he said: “oh God, remember me and restore my strength”. He felt the power of God come around him again. His life became to change. The Bible says: “in his last day he took down more than he'd taken in all his life”. Your ‘last days’ can be better than anything that went before, if you can connect with the living God, and His strength gets into your life! Oh Holy Ghost!

Here's the wonderful thing about Samson - in the New Testament, there's no record of his failure. There's just a record he was ‘a mighty man of faith’ - and we may fail, and fall over, but God wipes away the record when we repent. It just says: mighty man of faith, mighty woman of faith - you broke out of it, and finally ended well!

2) Turn to 1 Kings 19:1-5 - we find here another prophet, another mighty man of God.

1 Kings 19:1 - “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how Elijah had executed all the prophets with the sword”.

Oh I wish I could have seen all of that. My mind imagines it sometimes. There's a ruling power in the nation, all hope seems to be gone, but there's some people there who are crying out to God, some people who are in prayer and intimacy - and finally Elijah emerges out of the darkness, out of obscurity. There he is - and he shuts up the heaven, and then hides for three years. Then when they're getting desperate - he comes out, says to the prophets of Baal: come on out, let's see what you guys have got.

They set up an altar, and he sets up an altar. He says: let's see which God is the real God, by calling fire down from heaven - so they had this challenge. At the end of the day, he calls fire down from heaven - what a glorious thing to see.

Then he rises up, and with the sword he slays 450 prophets of Baal. Oh, that's men of God, men of God! Men of God! Using the sword of the spirit to destroy spirit powers, tear down ungodly beliefs, bringing the truth to the nation. What a great day! Then he brings rain. In fact he's had a wonderful time. He went home happy that night - but look what happens the next day...

1 Kings 19:2 – “Then Ahab told Jezebel - and Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah”.

It doesn't really tell us exactly what that was, but it says he “saw it”. Normally if someone sends a message, if they tell you something, you “hear it”. Instead it says he “saw it” - so undoubtedly someone was sent in, but I believe demonic powers and cursings were sent against him. When people curse you, they release spirits against you.

When they falsely accuse you, they release spirits against you - and she still had 450 prophets of her own, who ate at her own table and did what she said, so she sent a messenger. I believe she sent a demonic spirit - a spirit of hate, a spirit of murder, a spirit of death - to destroy the voice of God in the generation; to shut down the only thing that could threaten her kingdom. She sent the messenger.

Now here's the problem - he opened his heart to that message. He got wounded. He received that message of fear - he allowed it to get into his heart.

I believe it was a demonic messenger, and so he felt his heart gripped by fear and panic, his mind froze. He forgot he's the man of God who called fire from heaven. He forgot he's God's man to save the nation; he forgot what he was called to do. His strength sapped out of him, as he came under attack from that spirit.

Some of you may have had a similar kind of thing come - it sits around and over you - and you feel shut down with fear. You can't function, you can't even think clearly. This is what happened to him - and when he saw it, he ran for his life - left his servant, and he ran to Bathsheba, which is he ran right clear out of the nation. I'm getting out of here! He panicked.

Finally it says, he sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed he might die; saying: “that's enough Lord, take my life, I'm no better than my father. Then he lay and he slept”.

Look at the big picture. He stood up against that power - and it retaliated (important to notice that). When you stand up - it pushes back on you.

I talked to one man about how to stand up in his spiritual governance, and prayer in his home. I came in a week later and said: how are you getting on? He said: oh, I've stopped. I said: why is that? He said: well it didn't work. Oh really, it didn't work? What happened? He said: it got worse - everything got far worse when I started to pray - so I stopped praying. I said: everything got worse, because you're stirring up resident spirits, which are controlling what is happening. Keep up the prayer; and get ready to engage the people.

Notice what happened is: attacks come against him – fear. He's listened to words of accusation, murder and death - they get into his heart and shut him down. He comes under the control, filled with fear - and he runs.

Notice that: he forgot who he was, forgot his calling. His strength left him, and he fled from his position, that God had assigned him in the nation. He ran, he got isolated, then he sat down with discouragement, and loss of perspective.

This is what happens when this spirit comes around you. Fear, you withdraw, shut down, want to isolate, want to be on your own, feel hurt, feel discouraged, want to sit down.

Interesting - the tree he sat down under - a juniper tree, means: ‘to bind’, or ‘put under a yoke’. So he's sitting there, and this mighty man of God, who's got a move of God going, is now sitting under a tree, shut down, wanting to die - and he's sleeping. A spirit power had shut him down.

It doesn't finish there, fortunately. He lost his courage in the face of that attack - but his strength returned when God touched him supernaturally. The angel came and touched him, spoke a word to him, gave him nourishment.

When we get the touch of God again around our life, when we get the word of God prophetically flowing into our hearts - the Bible says “he got up, and he ran for 40 days and 40 nights”! He's still hiding though – he hid in a cave until God spoke to him: “Elijah, what are you doing here? You're a man of God! You're a man called to change a nation. Why are you in the cave?”

“Leave me alone!” He was shut down by that power - but God speaks to him, calls him out, and in a gentle voice encourages him, and sends him back. He says: anoint this man, and anoint that man, release them - and they're going to tear that wicked spirit power down.

What a shame that Elijah didn't do that - but he did impart to a next generation - and they did it. They finished what he couldn't finish. God wants a new generation, and Jehu finished the job. He had an apostolic, militant, governing, confronting spirit around his life, and he shut that thing down in the nation.

3) I want you to have a look at another one with me, in Luke 22, and here's the third situation I want to draw your attention to.

Here's the wonderful thing - that even if that spirit has entered in, through compromise, lukewarmness, sexual sin, false comforts or whatever - when we repent, God restores us, and wipes away the record.

We may have drawn back in fear, drawn back and felt pressured, overwhelmed and isolated and alone; but when God touches our life and speaks - our spirit comes again.

Luke 22, these are the apostles, the mighty men of God, called to change a nation – “Come, follow me - I'll make you fishers of men”. “Lord, we're with you right until the end!” That sounds good doesn't it aye, but look what happens when pressure comes on...

Luke 22:40 – “Jesus came to the place (Gethsemane), and he said to them: pray that you enter not into temptation”. This is where we're going to - Prayer.

Luke 22:41-46 – “and He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw. He knelt down and prayed and said: Father, if it's Your will, take this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done. And an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. He rose from prayer, he came to His disciples, and He found them sleeping from sorrow. He said: why do sleep? Rise and pray - lest you enter into temptation.”

These are the mighty men of God, apostles of the Lamb, called to change the world, called to be history makers, called to make a difference. They flowed in the Gifts of the Spirit. They'd seen miracles and healings. They'd boldly declared: “Lord, we're with You” - and now Jesus faces His greatest hour of spiritual pressure and attack.

It's the threat of imminent death - and we know it had to be a spiritual conflict, because it says that “He prayed earnestly, being in agony”. There was a tremendous turmoil, as all the powers of hell unleashed on Him in the garden. He was under immense spiritual pressure, and He stood and prayed.

The pressure was to control Him. The pressure was to shut Him down. The pressure was to knock Him out. The pressure was to get Him off course, and He prayed: “Father, not My will. Father, let Your will be done” - that's what He was wrestling for.

Why was He wrestling for that? Why is that so significant? Because witchcraft attempts to impose a different will. Witchcraft attempts to impose a different governance. Witchcraft tends to impose its own kingdom. Witchcraft tries to shut down the will of God, and impose another will upon you - so you feel rejected, shut down and you feel in despair.

Jesus wrestled against that pressure. He did it in prayer. I'll show you in another session what you have to do, to stand against that demonic power, and ensure you come out the other side on top. He prayed.

I want you to notice what the disciples did. The disciples forgot who they were. They forgot their commitment to the Lord. They forgot their bold statements they'd be “with Him until death”. They forgot their destiny, forgot the purpose. Under the face of that spirit, they lost all strength - and they fell asleep.

It's not a coincidence that in three cases in the Bible, mighty men of God fell asleep. That's what that slumber is. It's actually a sleepy, lethargic, passive state - created by yielding to a spiritual power that you can't see - until the church becomes passive, half-hearted, and lukewarm; instead of having the fiery presence and power of God, a spirit that's alive, hearing from God.

They shut down, and they went to sleep. What was the doorway into their heart? The Bible tells us that too, it says: sorrow, emotional pain, hurt.

We've now seen at least three doorways this spirit uses to get access to people's life: false comforts, turning to things which are not of God, turning to addictive things, turning to things which comfort you, turning to sexual sin, turning to all kinds of things that provide a comfort, apart from the comfort God provides.

We saw that fear - listening to the wrong words, and letting them get into your heart, and allowing fear to arise and not conquering it - allowed this control to come. Whatever you're afraid of will control you.

Finally, the sorrows, hurts that have never been fixed, areas of the soul with: bitterness, grief, disappointments, and setbacks that were never addressed properly. Demons come into there, and use them as an open door. They shut you down when at the very point of time you should be standing strong in prayer.

Jesus words tell it all. He said” rise, pray, ARISE, PRAY, ARISE, PRAY, ARISE, ARISE, ARISE O daughter of Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O daughter of Jerusalem. Shake the dust off you. Arise, sit down in the realm of the spirit; break off your captivity. Become the mighty people of God.

Here's the thing that rose them out of their sleep - Jesus touched them, spoke to them: rise up and pray!

Every time that people fell asleep, under the influence of a spiritual power - it was a prophetic word from God - a call to change, repent, step up, re-engage.

Sure enough, on the day of Pentecost, we find the disciples there. Jesus said: Peter, I've prayed for you, that your faith won't fail. I've been praying for you, I've been praying for you that your faith won't let go - that whatever you go through, you won't fail in your faith. You'll still believe.

Peter failed massively. He wept over his failure - but Jesus was praying that his faith wouldn't fail - just like He's praying right now, that your faith won't fail when you're under pressure. When we're under pressure, He's our intercessor, He's the apostle of our faith - He's praying that our faith won't fail. He's praying we'll stand up. He's praying for us! He's praying!

A few days later, 50 days later - those same men that had been asleep and fled - spent 10 days in intense prayer, and the mighty power of God was on them, and they broke out, began to change nations, and become history makers. Whoa! They had to break through; in the very same city that thing shut them down and got them to sleep. Elijah had to go back to the very same spirit that had shut him down, and raise up people to confront it. Samson stood up again.

Here's a very simple key: just repentance, leaning on God, and rising up into strong prayer.

I'll share with you other things related to this. I've got such an immense amount of download on it right now, I'll share the other half of this message, because there's at least another three very, very vital situations that I want to draw your attention to, which give keys how this thing has been beaten.

Two of them are in the New Testament church, yet that power comes to shut it down, and it comes under it, but God shows them how to get out of it. Even in the Old Testament when we look in the story of Jehu - go reading about Jehu, find what he did, and look for the keys. Look beyond the story, to the spiritual insights of how he dealt that thing, and you'll see how we can deal with it too. God's calling us to arise.

Closing Prayer

Let's just stand right now, and just lift our hands to worship the Lord. Wonderful Jesus.

Maybe already as I've prayed, and as I've been preaching, perhaps you've felt: whoa, I'm like Samson - I've gone to sleep. I never had much strength, and what I had is gone! I don't want to be like that - I want to finish well. I don't want to finish weak, I want to finish well!

Is that in your heart? Is there compromise, sin? Just repent of it quickly right now. What's been filling your time? What's been filling your heart? What have you been using to just fill yourself up?

There can be all kinds of things that comfort you and make you feel better, but at the end it's all the same. We become asleep and don't realise demons have come into our life - then they ruin us. They ruin our legacy, they ruin our lives. I've seen it over the years, never quite understood why it happened - it's a spirit power.

Stand up. Just come back to the Lord. Why don't you say (like Samson): “oh Lord, remember me - REMEMBER ME!”

God remembered him. Or like Elijah - you go back and face that situation.

Perhaps you've yielded to fear - yielded to words of accusation, murder, hate, death. They've come around your soul and life and shut you down. Lord, you need to break the power of those words, need to cancel those words, need to rise up and forgive those people, get that hurt out of your heart.

Maybe it's more like the disciples - you've had a lot of sadness, and various things have disappointed you, and you've just shut down inside. That thing's have got control of you - you're no longer the person you used to be, because something wounded you.

I've got good news: Jesus died and carried our sorrows on the cross.

Let's just pray together. I believe this is a fresh word. I never read about this anywhere. I felt it's something God just showed to me, and I believe it's spiritually present across our nation, and it's affected us as a church. It definitely affected me, probably for about a decade. I can see it now, and I'm after it. I'm going to rise up - God will help.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:
· Isaiah 52:1-2 - “Awake, awake, put on your strength oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments oh Jerusalem, the Holy City”
- Call to the church to awaken from sleep and to arise into its’ proper place of operation
- Awake = 5782 = to open the eyes, stir self up, arouse from place of sleep
- Prophetic call to the church that requires a faith action – response
- Personal Word: “Awake, awake from your slumber of Jezebel…”

What is the Slumber of Jezebel?
a) Jezebel: 1 Kings 16:31-32
· Jezebel = Baal exalts, under the favour of Baal, not cohabiting with
· The 1st portrayal in the bible as a wicked queen who killed prophets and established idolatry
· Next portrayed in the Bible – Revelation 2:20 – as a person with the same evil character and intent
· Two different eras – same spiritual power exercising a destructive influence on the people of God
· Operates to seduce = 4105 = to wander away from safety, from truth, go astray
· Operates to intimidate and control
i) External Spiritual Pressure – ‘Outer Space’ Ephesians 6:12
ii) Internal Spiritual Pressure – ‘Inner Space’ entering through personal
strongholds 2 Corinthians 10:4
- How we think and behave
- Spiritual powers seducing people, and the people beginning to yield to them

b) Slumber Romans 11:8
· Slumber = to sleep, be in a state of in activity
· Spiritual Slumber
- Spiritual sensitivity dull
- Cannot see or hear spiritually
- Unaware of spiritual influences at work, can’t do anything about it
- Living in a ‘trance’ – unaware what is happening
- Ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny

c) Slumber of Jezebel – spiritual power that shuts you down, no strength, become weak:
· State of spiritual dullness and the lack of awareness brought on by yielding to the invisible activity of the Jezebel power
· One of the major causes of this is spiritual laziness
· Proverbs 19:15 - “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep”

3. Bible Examples:
· There are several examples of people who came under the influence of this invisible activity of the Jezebel power

i) Judges 16:19-21 - Samson: “she made him sleep on her knees”
· Samson forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through sexual sin, false comforts
· He was spiritually unaware of the danger, focused comfort on Delilah – v 5,9 – 5 lords of the Philistines waiting there
· He lost his crown of dominion, and he did not know it v20
· He lost his vision, his strength, his destiny and was brought into bondage
· The Jezebel spirit strips people of strength, vision, hope => bondage
· When Samson repented his strength was restored. The power of God came around him again
· Arise to this spirit, don’t let it steal your dreams, inheritance and legacy of the next generation
· Spirit power requires spiritual weapons
· If you get connected with the living God you will be stronger than ever

ii) 1 Kings 19:1-5 - Elijah: “he lay and slept under a broom tree”
· A mighty man of faith
· Elijah forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit when he received Jezebels messenger v2,3
· The messenger (demonic) wounded him, stripped him of confidence and fear entered
· Fear = abandoning position, isolate, discourage, loss of perspective, desire to die
· Juniper tree = to bind or put in a yoke
· He lost his courage that came from the anointing flowing, he forgot who he was, loss of perspective, withdraw, hurt and discourage
· When people curse and accuse you a spirit is send out to destroy you
· v7,15 His strength returned through the touch of God and the prophetic word

iii) Luke 22:45-46 - The Disciples: “…he found them sleeping for sorrow”
· The disciples forgot their identity, forgot their calling as mighty Apostles of God
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel Spirit through sorrow – emotional grief and pain
· Sorrow = grief, heaviness, pain, sadness
· They lost their confidence that came from the anointing flowing
· Matthew 26:40-46 “They were awakened from their sleep by Prophetic Confrontation from Jesus”

iv) Galatians 2:11-13 - Peter: “…he separated himself fearing those who were of circumcision”
· Peter forgot his identity, his calling, he forgot his personal revelation he had received
· He let go the personal revelation he had received from the Lord re the Gentiles Acts 10:15
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through fear
· Fearing = 5399 = to frighten, put to flight, score away, shrink back, conceal self
· The Jewish Christians kept the law and introduced the pressure of legalism
· Disemble = 4942 = to act a stage player, pretend to act out of one motive when another motive inspired the action
· The church came into great conflict as Peter withdrew, out of fear
· v11 Paul confronted Peter – Apostolic Confrontation with truth

v) Galatians 3:1-2 - Galatian Church: “did you receive the spirit by works of law or hearing by faith”
· The Galatian Church forgot their identity, the calling as Gentiles, they forgot the liberty of the Holy Spirit
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit through wrong belief and performance beliefs
· Foolish = 453 = lacking spiritual understanding, mind not being exercised
· Bewitched = 940 = to fascinate, charm, cast spell over, captivate, place under power rt = wicca - sorcerer
· The Galatians had opened their soul to spiritual influence of the Jezebel spirit by allowing legalism – religion based on performance not faith
· They began in the spirit with miracles and ended in flesh striving
· Galatians 3:1 - Paul confronted the church – Apostolic Confrontation with the truth

vi) 2 Kings 9:11-13 - Captains of Army: “Jehu is King”
· The Soldiers (captains v5) had forgotten their identity, they forgotten their calling
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit over the nation by ‘need for security’
· The Spirit of Jezebel had cast influence over the whole nation of Israel
· The King of Israel: Jehoram = ‘The exalted One’ = Pride
· They were spiritually asleep and could not recognize what was happening v11
· v12,13 Apostolic declaration of Prophetic Word broke the demonic influence

4. Awake, Awake!
· Mark 13:33-37 - “Watch … lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping”
· Doorkeeper = watcher, sentry, guardian of door, portal, gate to Kingdom
· Watch = 1127 = to keep awake, rouse from sleep, proactive, diligent attention
· Watching is connected to:
i) Strong Prayer Mark 14:38
ii) Be sober 1 Peter 4:7
iii) Repentance and Strengthening self Revelation 3:3
iv) Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit Habakkuk 2:1

Spiritual Slumber (2 of 3)  

Sun 8 Nov 2009 AM « Back to Top

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The church in the West, on the most, is in a state of spiritual slumber - unaware of the powers at work in the nation, to destroy the legacy that's been built over years. God is speaking to us, to 'wake up' out of that spiritual slumber.

Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament, and also a woman in the New Testament, but I want to get your eyes off 'woman'. I want you to get your eyes on 'spiritual power' - entering and oppressing a nation.

Review Isaiah 52, the prophet is speaking to the church, speaking to the Israel of his day. He says: wake up, wake up! If he's telling them to wake up they must have been... asleep!

You're not aware what goes on when you're asleep. That's when thieves come into your house, if you've left the door open. When you're asleep, things can be happening, that can be affecting you; but you don't know, because you are asleep.

There's a natural sleep: when you fall asleep naturally, you're unaware of what's going on around you. But you can also fall into a spiritual slumber, and clearly here God is speaking to the church: “Wake up! Wake up!” He's speaking and stirring the church to wake up.

God is speaking to the church of New Zealand: wake up! Wake up! Look what's happening! Look what's going on in the nation! Look what's happening in families - look what's happening to the next generation. Wake up church! I've called you to do something! I've called you to make a difference.

He says: wake up! Wake up! “Put on your strength” - the strength that a believer has is the anointing power and life of the spirit of God. Put on the Holy Ghost! Get fresh anointing around your life. Wake up out of this slumber, and get back into a life flow of God.

Then He says: “Put on your beautiful garments” - garments of praise, garments of righteousness. Jerusalem - you're a holy city, a holy people - that's who you are.

Then He said: “the uncircumcised and unclean shall no longer come to you”. Let purity come round your life. Become focussed - you're called to do something.

Then He challenges them: “Shake yourself out of the dust”. Many times, you want someone to pray for us; but God says: shake yourself - shake yourself out of living at such a low level. Begin to live a life of purpose, passion and commitment to Jesus Christ.

He says: “Sit down, O Jerusalem!”. Take your positioning, that God has given to you - a positioning where you can exercise spiritual authority; and then loose the restrictions that you've lived with.

We read that, and it's as relevant for today as it was 2000 or 3000 years ago when it was first written. God's speaking to us to wake up out of unawareness, to wake up and begin to shake ourselves, begin to rise up in a new strength of God.

This is a great new season. I love this season we're in. It's a challenging season; but God wants us to strengthen the personal foundations of our life. It’s a time to awaken inside, to what is happening around us. Clearly the church there was asleep. Another part of the Bible says: “wake up the mighty men!”. They're mighty men - but they're asleep, unaware.

Spiritual slumber can come on people. How would you know if you were in a spiritual slumber? There'd probably be a number of signs - your disconnection from God, lack of life in the spirit; increasing problems you can't get dominion over or deal with, a lack of revelation, compromise. There'd be a whole number of ways that you could recognise spiritual sleep in your life.

Usually though, you're unaware of it - someone has to wake you up. Ever had someone come and wake you up? Grumble... Ever had your alarm go off in the early, early hours; or someone rang you at a very early hour of the morning - you hang up the phone, grumble... You can hardly even talk straight - waking up; but there's such a thing as a ‘spiritual slumber’.

When spiritual influences push down on your life, you actually stop becoming, or being, what God called you to be. You accept something much less than what God has - and you actually think it's normal.

Church in the west, on the most, is in a state of spiritual slumber - unaware of the powers at work in the nation, to destroy the legacy that's been built over years. God is speaking to us: wake up out of that spiritual slumber.

I talked about the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’. Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament - also a woman in the New Testament - but I want to get your eyes off 'woman'. I want you to get your eyes on 'spiritual power’ - entering and oppressing a nation.

In the Old Testament, Jezebel was a queen, who worshipped the gods of Baal and Ashtaroth - and she came into an alliance with Ahab, who was a king. You and I are called to be kings, but we have to be careful what alliances we form in our life, and what spiritual influences we allow to come over our life. This man married this woman, and through her, spiritual influences came around his life - the worship of Baal, the worship of Ashtaroth. They were gods of sex and fertility; they were the gods of war.

They introduced new value systems into the nation. They abandoned the ways that God wanted the nation to be built. The whole nation came under that spirit, under that influence: sexual sin; promiscuity; prostitution; pornography. Those kinds of things abounded under the spiritual influences in the nation - and they thought it was quite normal. They didn't realise they were spiritually, and financially, and in every way impoverished, and oppressed. God's word was to wake up out of that sleep.

I began to speak about a spiritual atmosphere that puts people to sleep. When people are spiritually put to sleep, they become very passive. Everywhere I go in New Zealand, I find it: an incredible passivity sits over people.

The Bible says that, to take hold of the promises of God – why the violent press in and take hold - by persistent, energetic, fervent, passionate prayer. That's how you get hold of the things of God; but when there's passivity - we're under a spiritual influence, and there's very little passion, very little fervency.

You can see it at a football match; but when people come into a spiritual environment - suddenly they shut down. There's something sits over them. It's something that you and I have to fight to push off - to push it off! I don't want to be shut down! I don't want to be passive! I don't want to be asleep and unaware - I want to be awake and hearing God and moving in what He's doing!

I shared with you three situations, of people who fell asleep; and what it was in their life, that opened the door for that spiritual power to put him to sleep.

1) Samson had a great call to change a nation, a call to go and to bring deliverance, freedom, salvation - to represent the living God, and to open up the nation, to bring freedom from its enemies. Instead he got sidetracked with sexual sin. He got sidetracked with Delilah, and the result: “he fell asleep on her knees”. While he was asleep, he was unaware of the danger he was in. He lost the anointing on his life, and the strength of God on his life. He lost his eyesight, he lost his freedom, he lost his character and dignity, and he ended up a slave. They took him down there into the Philistine camp, and they just mocked him and belittled him.

That's the condition of many Christians: no vision, no strength in anointing, in bondage, being mocked and ridiculed by the enemy through people, because they're not fulfilling the destiny that God called us to.

But here's the great news... When he repented, God heard his prayer - and that mighty Holy Ghost came on him again. The most wonderful thing, when we repent, is: God does restore us.

2) Elijah was a great prophet of God. We saw in 1 Kings 18 - he'd called fire down from heaven, he challenged the prophets of Baal. There'd been a mighty slaughter of the prophets of Baal. The old religion of Baal was beginning to be challenged and shake. The Fire of God fell out of heaven!

Then Jezebel came against him, sent messengers against him. He became afraid, he ran away. Fear opened his life for this oppression to come around him; he isolated; then he sat down under a tree and just wanted to die. The Bible says “he fell asleep”.

When you come under, and yield, to spiritual oppression because of fear - you go into a state of sleep. You don't really see what's going on - what it costs you to give way to fear, what it costs you to give way to sin. Neither Elijah nor Samson realised what it was costing them.

For Elijah, he lost the momentum of revival. God had to reposition him back again; and entrust revival to the next generation. “A little bit of sleep, a little bit of slumber, a little bit of folding of the hands to the rest - and then poverty comes upon us like an armed man”. Through laziness, spiritual laziness - sleep comes (Proverbs tells us).

If we don't keep ourselves vibrant, alive, energised, vitally connected to God - listening to Him, responding to Him, flowing with Him; then we slumber - can't be bothered, tired, weary.

3) The disciples, in Luke 22. Jesus was facing one of the greatest challenges of His life. He knew He was about to go to the cross; all the powers of death and hell were pushing against Him, and He said to His friends: I am sorrowful - exceedingly sorrowful under death. Please come and pray with me in the garden.

They came into the garden, and that power and that pressure came on Jesus - and He stood firmly in the place of prayer. He broke through, yielding to the will of God. He brought salvation for you and for me; but the disciples fell asleep for sorrow, under the same spiritual pressure. They yielded, and fell asleep. They were unable to be a part of what Jesus was doing, because they fell asleep.

Sin - sexual sin in the case of Samson; fear on the case of Elijah; sorrows and hurts and grief in the case of the disciples - all of them allowed that spiritual power to shut them down and put them to sleep, where they could not be of any use.

It cost them something. Fortunately, Jesus came and restored them. The mighty Holy Ghost came upon them - they woke up; and when they woke up - my, what a difference it made! Timid, fearful men became bold men!

[Main Message]

Peter came back under a spiritual influence again. He didn't literally ‘fall asleep’; he became ‘unaware of what was happening’. He lost something God had given to him.

Galatians 2:11 (Paul opposes Peter) – “Now Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.”

Galatians 2:12-13 - “For before ‘certain men’ came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came - he withdrew. He separated himself. He feared those who were ‘of the circumcision’. And the rest of the Jews, also played the hypocrite with him - and even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy” (taken in by it, came under the influence of it).

Galatians 2:14-15 - But when I saw they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all...” (He confronts Peter).

Peter was raised in the Jewish culture. They had a paradigm, a mindset, that the Jewish people were ‘the people’ - God has entrusted everything to us. Wisdom starts and ends with us - we're the people of God. They had a mindset: we're the people of God. It was an exclusive mindset, it excluded the Gentiles. They considered the Gentiles to be unclean.

One day Peter is praying, and he receives a personal revelation of the heart of God for lost people. As he's in this time of prayer, he receives a vision - he sees these unclean animals descending from heaven; and he hears God speak to him, saying: rise and eat. He says: no, no, no, no, no. Three times it comes, and the word says “rise”; and he says: no, no, no, no, I don't eat unclean stuff.

Then the word comes to him – “What God has called clean, no man should call unclean”. He realised then, that the vision he had received was the heart of God - to reach all men, not just the Jews. That God's original plan was: the gospel would go every nation of the earth - that the good news of Jesus Christ would go to every person - that there was a breakdown of the war between Jews and the Gentiles, between men and women, Greeks and Jews.

God broke the wall down with the death of Christ, and the gospel was to go to the whole world. He received it by revelation - the heart of God is to go to the Gentiles; but when they invited him to come... When he got there, he made this kind of speech: you know - us Jews aren't supposed to eat with you Gentiles. That's not a very polite way to address people is it?

Just think about it. Cornelius has got the whole household there waiting to hear him: God appeared to us! He said: he's going to send you to us. We've been all waiting for you to come! Then he says: it's not lawful for us Jews to mix with you Gentiles. Can you see how steeped he is, in a paradigm, that causes him to be separate from the Gentiles - unable to connect with them; causing him to avoid them, and distance himself from them?

But as he began to preach the word of God, God just interrupted the preaching. The Holy Spirit fell on them, they spoke in tongues, prophesied, magnified God; and his conclusion: since they got the Holy Spirit, like us - we should water baptise them.

Can you see the reluctance, in his mentality, to shift out of a narrow world-view? It's very true in the church, that there's a problem of shifting out of a narrow world-view – to one that can encompass, and love, and reach people at every level of society - and celebrate them as wonderful, valuable people to God.

The tendency is to separate, to exclude, to keep apart - in case something bad might happen to me; but Jesus never did that. The biggest complaint His enemies had was: He mixed with the sinners and the prostitutes. He mixed with everyone! He mixed with them - He was never defiled by them, He just loved them. He was able to love the unlovely, He was able to open His heart and celebrate people.

Now notice what Peter did.... Peter was now walking with the Gentiles, he was relating with them, fellowshipping, sharing with them; but then these Jews come down from Jerusalem. They are legalists. They have no heart for the Gentiles, they're just legalists - and everyone must keep the laws: you've got to do this, you've got to do this, got to do this, this, can't do that, can't do that, dress like this, go here, do this, do that. They had a whole list of laws, and they came with all of that legalism.

Peter the apostle, it says: “he withdrew and separated himself”. He was afraid of them, because he was still so steeped in that old paradigm, that when they came, he was torn between what God had revealed to him, and the old culture, the old behaviours, the old ways. When they came, he was caught - he became afraid, fearful of them.

He come under spiritual pressure, and instead of holding true to his revelation, he began to yield to the pressure, to please the people who'd come. He began to withdraw from the Gentiles that he'd been fellow-shipping with.

When this controlling spirit comes, it causes people to fragment and separate. We become caught up in what's right and wrong, judgemental, accusing and divisive - that's what that spirit does. He came under its influence. Even Barnabas came under its influence - and there's this whole turmoil going on.

The one thing that broke it was when an apostolic voice rose up and said: “stop, that's wrong!” Peter was confronted before everyone.

A spiritual influence was about to create division, and separation - and he couldn't even see it. He was asleep to what was going on.

Imagine if had continued in that course of action, and separated from the Gentiles. Legalism would have come around the Gentiles. They would‘ve had to submit to the Old Testament laws. Instead of the liberty that Christ had brought them into, they'd have come under religious legalism. They'd come under the shadow of something God was trying to remove, to bring people into freedom.

That's what a spiritual influence can do to people. It causes you to separate from the people God wants you to connect to, to divide from the very people that you should love and be united with. Where God has brought people together in the spirit - that spirit pressure, when it comes, causes you to be unaware. You start to separate and divide, and haven't got a clue why you're dividing. When you sense division taking place, when you sense that separating is taking place - there's no real reason for it, it’s just some spiritual influence at work, but you just can't see it.

God calls us to walk in that unity; so Paul confronted him, to stop that spiritual influence working through his fear, to divide the church.

It was a spiritual influence, but it found root in a man's fear. Fear is a gateway for control in our lives. What you fear, you will surrender to - and it will control you, stealing the liberty that God has.

So he changed. It doesn't say it here, but he must have repented. He must have come to the acknowledgement of the truth; repented - and that whole thing broke when he repented.

Now look at Galatians 3:1 - Paul is writing to the Galatians Church. The whole book is a book of Paul, an apostle - “not of men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God our Father - to the churches in Galatia’.

So he's writing, not just to one church, he's writing to a whole lot of churches. They had become ‘shut down’ in the spirit. The New Testament church was birthed in the spirit. It was birthed with a move of God. It was birthed with the Holy Ghost moving; and now he's writing to these Galatians Churches, which once were birthed in the spirit - now something's happened to them. Lovely apostolic writing - it's not at all pastoral, you notice. “Let us come alongside you, and comfort you, with all your hurts” - he didn't say that!

He said: “You foolish Galatians! (means: lacking understanding, being ignorant of what's going on, or virtually spiritually asleep). “Wake up! Wake up!” He said: “Something has bewitched you!”

That word ‘bewitched’ means to ‘cast a spell’ over, to ‘bring sorcery’ over, to bring a ‘spiritual influence’ over. He says: something has come over you, and brought a spiritual influence over you.

He said: Tell me now - how did you get saved? Did you get saved by trying hard to be a good person? Did you get saved by working hard to keep this rule - don't do that; do this? Is that how you got saved? Is that how you get to heaven? Clearly not!

It's by the ‘Hearing of Faith’. You heard the word of God - you believed - and because of your faith in Christ, and resting solely on the work of Jesus, you became acceptable to God, and entitled to the blessings of heaven. Is that not true?

I know lots of Christians - they start off that way; but pretty soon it's all about a struggle to be ‘good enough for God’. That's foolish! That's moved away from the gospel.

Have you moved away from the gospel that: you're made right with God - by faith in Jesus Christ?

Then he placed a second question, in Galatians 3:5 - “How does He work miracles, and how does He minister the spirit among you - by working hard, doing the works of the law?”

In other words: how do miracles happen? Is it because you really work hard at it? Is it because you try - you do this, you don't do that - you keep this law, don't keep that law? Is it that way?

He said: no way – “by the Hearing of Faith. So he said: “You foolish Galatians” - something got over you. There's a spiritual atmosphere got over you. What got over you? Legalism, performing, trying to work hard to get God's pleasure in your life - trying to work hard, do it right, don't do this, don't do that. It's a whole thing about performance.

Religion worldwide is about doing something to please God, and get right with Him.

In Christianity - Jesus did the work, and the Father was pleased. We trust in what He did, and we're free to enjoy the benefits – relationship; and to walk by faith, motivated by love for God – it’s totally different.

How easy it is to move from: that position; to now it becomes: all of these things I have to do - and if you do them, you feel proud; if you don't do them, you're condemned.

When that spirit is operating - liberty, freedom, joy, love, vitality goes out. What comes in is a heaviness and oppression; and mental thoughts of: I’m not good enough, there's something wrong with me. I need to try harder. I'll never make it. That is a demonic accusation!

Romans 8:1 – “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ, and who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.”

Set your mind towards the word of God, and the spirit of God. With legalism, your thoughts are on your behaviours; rather than on the promises - the blessings that God has promised to give us.

Galatians 5:1 - Something came in, so he said: “Stand fast in the liberty, where Christ has set us free”.

Liberty, unrestrained freedom! When you get used to living like a slave - it's hard to know what that freedom is like. You've got to learn to express it - the freedom to laugh, freedom to love, freedom to enjoy life, freedom from condemnation, freedom from the guilt of the past, freedom from demonic powers, freedom to be myself! Freedom to walk with God, freedom to follow the calling of God in my life, freedom to explore what God has called me to do. Free!

He says: “stand fast in that freedom”. There is a spiritual contention, to remain in a place of freedom that God has given you; and not get wrapped up and tangled in “the yoke of bondage”, that rule-keeping gives.

It's an issue everywhere. I go to churches all over the place, and I see in so many places, particularly New Zealand, where heaviness settles over people. Underneath, it's a rejection root - I'm not good enough. If I just do enough things, I'll be good enough - but that's not righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ.

I can “come boldly to the throne of God” - so I watch how people come. I watched a group of men, 200 or 300 men come to get the Holy Ghost, and this is what they did: (solemn, head bowed). I don't know where they got that from - they didn't get that from the Bible.

The Bible says: “Come into His presence with thanksgiving, into His gates with praise!”

It says: “Come boldly to the throne of grace.”

That’s biblical protocol; so where did you get this other stuff? Where did that come from? It didn't come from the Bible, but it looks good. I'm not saying there's any reason we shouldn't put our head down, or bow. The Bible says: after we've entered His gates, after we've praised Him, then we bow and worship – but it’s not some kind of ‘been condemned’, ‘not good enough’, ‘unworthy’ kind of deal.

God has made us worthy! You need to stand on what the word of God says: I am made righteous! That means: I am right with God - I can walk into His presence. The only thing to keep you out is if you've got sin. Quickly repent of it, stand again in righteousness of Christ - rise into that liberty.

Liberty needs to be expressed - the liberty to dance, to be yourself, to break out. Can you see what happens when we accept bondage, as though it's normal, when it isn't?

People go to the pub and drink, so they can get free. They take drugs so they can feel better. It's all about feeling better.

God says: I've put something in you that'll make you buzz - but you have to believe, and express that life. Stand fast in the liberty! What came over you, that took your freedom? Whatever you let take it – that is the issue.

Everyone's responsible for our freedom - and holding our freedom – individually and corporately. We have to maintain our freedom - freedom to express, freedom to be alive; instead of being passive and shut down.

There's nothing in heaven that responds to passivity. Passivity is of the devil. Passivity means: there's a heavy thing has come over you; and now instead of taking ownership and responsibility, persevering and pushing to get what God has said is yours - you shut down, become passive, and actually get soulish and melancholic, and you're not in the spirit. People get so used to living that way, they think it's normal - think it's just ‘good Christian’ - but it isn't!

When David got the Ark of God - he danced and rejoiced before the Lord. There was great joy in the city, in the presence of God. The Bible says: “Rejoice! Rejoice!” That's liberty - you have to be free to do that. What thing has been allowed to take your freedom? That's a spiritual power that’s got a hold of your life.

People go into a spiritual slump - and they don't even know. I was with this group of men, and it was the first night of a men's conference. We got in there, and they did their singing, and the guys got up and did their stuff. I said to the man who was helping me organise it all: I don't know whether the saddest thing is - that they haven't got any freedom; or that they actually don't know it - and they think this is really good. They were as shut-down as you could imagine - I've never seen a group of men so shut-down. I said: that's a spirit power. If we don't address that, and get these men free, so they stand up and be what they're called to be, then this thing is going to be just a fizzer, all weekend. So we revved it up, and had a great deliverance session - got the demons out of them, set people free, and away they went. It was much happier after that!

Mark 13:33 - Jesus is talking to His disciples. He's talking about the end time, the time of His coming, and He says: “now take heed - watch and pray”. Watch, keep awake, keep awake - don't fall asleep! Watch, watch, watch, watch! Keep alive, keep alert. What are the spiritual influences around your life?

“Watch and pray. You don't know when the time is for the man, it's like a man going to a far country”. That's Jesus who left His house (the church), gave authority to his servants - that's us – every believer his work, and commanded the doorkeeper. You and I are doorkeepers of our life - doorkeepers of the spiritual atmosphere we're in - watch!

Mark 13:36 - “Watch - lest, coming suddenly, he finds you sleeping.”

He says: what I say to you disciples, I'm telling everyone who's a follower of Me, Watch! Watch! Don't fall asleep spiritually!

Watching is always connected with being alive, and aware of what spiritual and relational influences are operating. Watching is always connected to being sober. Be sober! Don't let some kind of addictive things get around your life, or you become unaware how much bondage you have. It says to be sober!

1 Thessalonians – “be sober; watch”.

What relationships are confusing me? What compromise is confusing me? What kind of fears am I yielding to, that's causing me to come under bondage? What kinds of things are coming around, that is shutting me down from being what I could be?

If you could do whatever you wanted to do - if you could break free, and fulfil a dream of your heart - what would the dream be? What is it stopping that? Aah - that's what's got you asleep. That's the thing you'll have to face!

Stand fast in the liberty! Liberty doesn't mean you do anything. The Bible says: “by love, serve one another” - we get liberty so we can: serve the Lord; love people; fulfil our destiny.

He says: you've got to watch; you've got to pray; you've got to keep alive - sensitive to the Holy Ghost.

Matthew 25: you know the thief comes - he takes everything out of the man's house, because the man didn't watch. The devil can come and steal what God has entrusted, and given to you - if you don't watch.

Peter had a revelation from God - but he nearly lost it, because he didn't watch what was happening. You can go to a seminar and learn how to flow in the Holy Spirit - and two months later, have lost it. It was stolen from you, because you came under a spiritual influence. They're very real. That's why the Bible says: wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up the mighty men!

In order to wake up, you've got to recognise: I've been asleep! I need to come out of that sleep, begin to pray, fast - begin to push into God. Begin to express hunger and passion towards God. Begin to let the word of God come out of your mouth. Begin to start to let the dreams come alive in your heart again. Begin to stir yourself, so you're energised.

Don't measure yourself by the person next to you; measure yourself by the word of God. Are you in a place of fervent, passionate prayer - or has your life shut down?

Just ask these questions:

1) Do I have a strong and a passionate prayer life?

2) Am I in compromise with some issue in my life?

3) Am I hearing God speak clearly? When did you last hear Him? What did He say? Did you do it?

Think about that, because heaven goes silent when you don't do what God says. You go into a slumber.

4) Is there any negative influence around my life? Is it some fear; some pressure; some relationship; some compromise; some ungodly soul-draw? Is there something pushing me; that if I stop, and listen to God - I'd become aware: actually I don't feel too comfortable about what's happening there.

5) Is there something I'm avoiding? Inevitably there's a fear - and that's bringing control over your life. Is there some person I'm avoiding; some situation I'm avoiding; some situation I don't want to face?

There's a spiritual atmosphere come around you, and you're yielding to the fear. Paul wrote to Timothy: “God hasn't given you a spirit of fear”. It shut down your gift, when you yielded to it. Fear allows control; it shuts your gifts down.

You have to war against those things. You have to break out. That's why God says: awake! Awake! Shake yourself! Rise up out of the dust, and begin to put on the beautiful garments: praise; worship; and the authority Christ has given us.

Are you passionately doing what God told you, or is it a long time since God spoke? Think about that; then ask yourself: I wonder what spirit has pushed against me - and I've allowed it to do so. Like Samson, it's taken my vision and my destiny, and I need to repent.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You Lord that You are challenging us to become spirit people - aware of the spiritual atmosphere around us; sensitive to the Holy Spirit; and strongly rising up to take dominion.

I was just reading an email from Andy Mason this week, and he was talking to me about people we sent out. He said: people have gone out to nations from this house. He went to Bethel, and within a year and a half he's risen up, he's now having influence at a top leadership level at Bethel. We sent someone else, now they're a top influence in IHOP (International House of Prayer). We sent people to Hillsong in Australia, who rose right up the top. I got one of them back, and I said: why is it you rose to the top? What was different about you that caused you to be chosen out from everyone else? They said: I've got some grunt - I've got some horsepower in me. I've got some life inside of me. I said: exactly, how did you get it? He said I got it here. How did you get it?

He said: we had to learn how to stand up and push against heavy atmospheres. Learn how to stand up, and push back what comes around us, to depress, defeat us, and make us negative. We had to learn to STAND UP in the spirit, and stay awake! I said: exactly. That was the training ground God used to launch you, to now where you have great influence.

Always appreciate where God brought you from. Always appreciate how God got you there, and then teach others to do the same; but we're here now, and you and I need to rise and stand up!

Are there any people here today, and you're living under heaviness, living under oppression, living under fear, living under compromise?

Like Samson there's something gone on in your life, and it's blinded your eyes. You need to say: “God, forgive me” - I want out, and I want to get back into my place of strength again.

Perhaps you're like Elijah (and Peter) - fear got around your life; you've yielded to things; and you've let go. You say: “God, I want to get back into that place of freedom again”.

Maybe like the disciples - you're full of sorrow; and you've just fallen asleep. Your prayer life's stopped, you're not even aware that you've entered into that pressure, that you've surrendered to it. Say: “God, I want out - I want to get up out of this thing. I want to rise up, become a man of prayer, woman of prayer.”

Maybe there are others, and for different reasons - there's oppression, heaviness come around you. We can pray with you, and help you, and stand with you. You'll get a momentary and a brief release - but you must decide to fight.

“The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent (those who are assertive - those who know what God's word says), and will hold onto heaven until it comes about”.

There was a woman did that - Jesus ignored her, but she held on and a miracle came. Jesus said: that's what faith looks like!

There was a blind man - he shouted out, and they tried to stop him; but he said: “no way, I'm not stopping”. He shouted louder - He got a miracle! He knew what it was to press into the things of God.

There's a woman who had a flow of blood. Everyone would’ve held her back and rejected her; but she said: “I know what I want” - she pressed in and got a miracle.

Are there any others today, and that heaviness sits over you – you’re feeling the isolation come around your life? Perhaps you're shutting down, and gone down into a hole (like Elijah did); or into a place of weakness (like Samson did); or into a place of sleepiness (like the disciples did); or into a place of confusion (like Peter did) - or perhaps you're just flat as a pancake?

Listen - you don't have to tolerate that; but you do have to decide to be different. Today's choice, will make tomorrow different. Yesterday's choice brought you where you are. Make a choice today. Make a decision today: I will stand, I will not sleep, I will get into God. I will break out of what's around my life!

Summary Notes

Formatted » Back to Top »

Introduction:
· Isaiah 52:1-2 - “Awake, awake, put on your strength oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments oh Jerusalem, the Holy City”
- Call to the church to awaken from sleep and to arise into its’ proper place of operation
- Awake = 5782 = to open the eyes, stir self up, arouse from place of sleep
- Prophetic call to the church that requires a faith action – response
- Personal Word: “Awake, awake from your slumber of Jezebel…”

What is the Slumber of Jezebel?
a) Jezebel: 1 Kings 16:31-32
· Jezebel = Baal exalts, under the favour of Baal, not cohabiting with
· The 1st portrayal in the bible as a wicked queen who killed prophets and established idolatry
· Next portrayed in the Bible – Revelation 2:20 – as a person with the same evil character and intent
· Two different eras – same spiritual power exercising a destructive influence on the people of God
· Operates to seduce = 4105 = to wander away from safety, from truth, go astray
· Operates to intimidate and control
i) External Spiritual Pressure – ‘Outer Space’ Ephesians 6:12
ii) Internal Spiritual Pressure – ‘Inner Space’ entering through personal
strongholds 2 Corinthians 10:4
- How we think and behave
- Spiritual powers seducing people, and the people beginning to yield to them

b) Slumber Romans 11:8
· Slumber = to sleep, be in a state of in activity
· Spiritual Slumber
- Spiritual sensitivity dull
- Cannot see or hear spiritually
- Unaware of spiritual influences at work, can’t do anything about it
- Living in a ‘trance’ – unaware what is happening
- Ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny

c) Slumber of Jezebel – spiritual power that shuts you down, no strength, become weak:
· State of spiritual dullness and the lack of awareness brought on by yielding to the invisible activity of the Jezebel power
· One of the major causes of this is spiritual laziness
· Proverbs 19:15 - “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep”

3. Bible Examples:
· There are several examples of people who came under the influence of this invisible activity of the Jezebel power

i) Judges 16:19-21 - Samson: “she made him sleep on her knees”
· Samson forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through sexual sin, false comforts
· He was spiritually unaware of the danger, focused comfort on Delilah – v 5,9 – 5 lords of the Philistines waiting there
· He lost his crown of dominion, and he did not know it v20
· He lost his vision, his strength, his destiny and was brought into bondage
· The Jezebel spirit strips people of strength, vision, hope => bondage
· When Samson repented his strength was restored. The power of God came around him again
· Arise to this spirit, don’t let it steal your dreams, inheritance and legacy of the next generation
· Spirit power requires spiritual weapons
· If you get connected with the living God you will be stronger than ever

ii) 1 Kings 19:1-5 - Elijah: “he lay and slept under a broom tree”
· A mighty man of faith
· Elijah forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit when he received Jezebels messenger v2,3
· The messenger (demonic) wounded him, stripped him of confidence and fear entered
· Fear = abandoning position, isolate, discourage, loss of perspective, desire to die
· Juniper tree = to bind or put in a yoke
· He lost his courage that came from the anointing flowing, he forgot who he was, loss of perspective, withdraw, hurt and discourage
· When people curse and accuse you a spirit is send out to destroy you
· v7,15 His strength returned through the touch of God and the prophetic word

iii) Luke 22:45-46 - The Disciples: “…he found them sleeping for sorrow”
· The disciples forgot their identity, forgot their calling as mighty Apostles of God
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel Spirit through sorrow – emotional grief and pain
· Sorrow = grief, heaviness, pain, sadness
· They lost their confidence that came from the anointing flowing
· Matthew 26:40-46 “They were awakened from their sleep by Prophetic Confrontation from Jesus”

iv) Galatians 2:11-13 - Peter: “…he separated himself fearing those who were of circumcision”
· Peter forgot his identity, his calling, he forgot his personal revelation he had received
· He let go the personal revelation he had received from the Lord re the Gentiles Acts 10:15
· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through fear
· Fearing = 5399 = to frighten, put to flight, score away, shrink back, conceal self
· The Jewish Christians kept the law and introduced the pressure of legalism
· Disemble = 4942 = to act a stage player, pretend to act out of one motive when another motive inspired the action
· The church came into great conflict as Peter withdrew, out of fear
· v11 Paul confronted Peter – Apostolic Confrontation with truth

v) Galatians 3:1-2 - Galatian Church: “did you receive the spirit by works of law or hearing by faith”
· The Galatian Church forgot their identity, the calling as Gentiles, they forgot the liberty of the Holy Spirit
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit through wrong belief and performance beliefs
· Foolish = 453 = lacking spiritual understanding, mind not being exercised
· Bewitched = 940 = to fascinate, charm, cast spell over, captivate, place under power rt = wicca - sorcerer
· The Galatians had opened their soul to spiritual influence of the Jezebel spirit by allowing legalism – religion based on performance not faith
· They began in the spirit with miracles and ended in flesh striving
· Galatians 3:1 - Paul confronted the church – Apostolic Confrontation with the truth

vi) 2 Kings 9:11-13 - Captains of Army: “Jehu is King”
· The Soldiers (captains v5) had forgotten their identity, they forgotten their calling
· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit over the nation by ‘need for security’
· The Spirit of Jezebel had cast influence over the whole nation of Israel
· The King of Israel: Jehoram = ‘The exalted One’ = Pride
· They were spiritually asleep and could not recognize what was happening v11
· v12,13 Apostolic declaration of Prophetic Word broke the demonic influence

4. Awake, Awake!
· Mark 13:33-37 - “Watch … lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping”
· Doorkeeper = watcher, sentry, guardian of door, portal, gate to Kingdom
· Watch = 1127 = to keep awake, rouse from sleep, proactive, diligent attention
· Watching is connected to:
i) Strong Prayer Mark 14:38
ii) Be sober 1 Peter 4:7
iii) Repentance and Strengthening self Revelation 3:3
iv) Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit Habakkuk 2:1

Recognising and Withstanding Jezebel's attack (3 of 3)  

Sun 15 Nov 2009 PM « Back to Top

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This kind of spiritual attack seeks to shut down the prophetic flow; and remove any Godly authority out of their position. You become fearful, isolate, or lose perspective.

God just got Elijah to have a good long sleep and rest, gave him a bit of food, took him into a place of relationship and connection - started to put anointing back into him, re-fired him and commissioned him. Elijah was a loner, and God got him out of being a loner, made him connect, and actually get into a team flow.

Review We talked about a particular power, a spiritual power, that impacts people, impacts believers, impacts us - by shutting down our gifts and operations. It's a very real power, a very real presence. The Bible says that there are spiritual powers in the atmosphere that are arrayed against the church of Jesus Christ. We'd be silly not to actually realise that's a great reality. The Bible also tells us that there are strongholds, holds inside our life, places of brokenness, sin or other kinds of things - where spiritual powers work through our lives, to manipulate us.

I shared about a particular phenomenon called the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’, where a spiritual power puts people to sleep - they can't see what's going on all around them; they don't see what's really taking place.

Main Message

Ecclesiastes 4 - Today I want to share with you about recognising and withstanding Jezebel's attack.

Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament, but we need to understand that there was actually a spirit power that operated behind her. So it's not about women; it's about this spiritual power - call it a ‘spirit of witchcraft’.

Witchcraft is a spiritual power that seeks to do a number of things:

1) It attacks your identity - who you are - to try and shut you down, so you become passive. When a person experiences a witchcraft attack over them, they may not see what's going on naturally. You may be uncertain where it's coming from, but inside you feel a number of sensations. You feel knotted in your stomach, with no apparent reason; a feeling of dread; a feeling of pressure coming on you; or feelings and thoughts coming in your mind you don't belong (get out of here – go - you don't belong, you're not wanted).

Those kinds of pressures come out of the spirit realm, and into our mind and heart. We can feel turmoil and confusion, where you can't think clearly. Your mind just doesn't think clearly; or you don't even hear things, or see things - you just become unaware.

When spiritual witchcraft works against us, it has several goals. When we look into the Old Testament, and look at how this particular spirit power operated, there are a number of things it did, which it still does.

The first thing is - it seeks to shut down the prophetic flow - the flow of hearing God, the flow of the spirit in your life. When Jezebel ascended into the throne, she immediately set out to kill all the prophets of the Lord - to actually come against, and shut down, the prophetic gifting. I have seen prophetic gifting shut down on men and women of God; I've seen it shut down in churches; I've seen it shut down even in whole movements - the prophetic flow, literally stripped out, by witchcraft attack. We should have no doubt about it - this is a very real power.

God is calling the church to rise up and become apostolic. That means to take a missionary mindset - the mindset that you and I are called to be kings - to go and bring influence around us: spiritual influence; natural influence; finance/economics; in the family area; in the political area. In every area of the community, God is calling the church: “rise up and go forth”.

You have to be aware, when you do that - all apostolic advance faced spiritual resistance. You find in Acts 13, when the apostles advanced, they ran into sorcerers and witchcraft, all kinds of things. We saw how Paul had to confront a spirit of witchcraft - which had come, not only over the apostles, to actually confuse them - but over whole churches, to shut down the supernatural and miraculous power.

The apostles, or the apostolic movement, will always confront, and end up in conflict with, spiritual power. When witchcraft attacks, it shuts down the prophetic flow of hearing from God; and if you don't hear from God (and see), you become blind spiritually.

2) It seeks to do is to remove any Godly authority out of their position, out of their place of governance - by diminishing their influence. or literally overthrowing and displacing them.

A spirit of witchcraft will try and cause a man to feel inadequate for the role of headship in his home - to withdraw, and become shut down and passive. A spirit of witchcraft operating in a business will disempower the business leader, the boss, and will cause him to feel shut down, unable to operate.

3) Witchcraft operating in your life will seek to disconnect you from God; to shut down the gifts of the spirit; shut down the flow of God - and push you out from what God called you to be in (a spiritual positioning).

That's why we have to recognise it - because when witchcraft comes against us, if you don't understand what it is, and how to stand up and push against it – then it will push back on you, down on you, until in the end you become stripped of the life, the glory, the goodness that God has for you.

When Jezebel ruled in the nation of Israel, when she had influence over it - there was: ungodly authority, confusion, financial turmoil, drought, spiritual poverty – in every kind of way, the nation became stripped. It began to serve other gods; so God raised a man called Elijah.

We're going to look at two people, and both of them came under witchcraft attack. One of them was incredibly sad - he blew it. He made strategic mistakes, which cost him his positioning in the spirit, and nearly cost him his life. The Bible also tells us of someone else, who recognised and understood what he was up against - and actually positioned himself to win!

Ecclesiastes 4:9 – “Two are better than one, they have a good reward for their labour. If one falls (or they fall), one can lift up his companion. Woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.”

Ecclesiastes 4:12 - “Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not easily broken.”

There is strength in unity - when you stand together with other people; when you have relationships, where you are in agreement, and flow and walk together - there is great power and strength in that. If something happens that knocks you down - if you're in relationship with someone else, they can lift you up - together you get a breakthrough. There is tremendous power in unity.

When God designed us, He designed us to walk in unity. When sin entered, separation and isolation took place. If you're in a place of isolation, sin will be there somewhere.

Proverbs 18:1 – “Whoever isolated himself, is consumed with his own desires” - has his own agendas, his own plans. When people isolate, they become separated - you know that something has come in; there's something going on that's not right.

Look at Elijah, in 1 Kings 19. This is an amazing story, because Elijah was a great prophet from God, a powerfully anointed prophet from God - yet he nearly got totally taken out by this particular spirit.

Elijah was called by God to confront witchcraft in the nation. The nation was full of idolatry and witchcraft, which had been brought in when Jezebel married the king. The king was seduced out of his role and positioning, he came under her influence, and the whole nation fell over. The whole nation became passive, the whole nation became shut down, and confusion was everywhere. A spirit of witchcraft was operating. The characteristics of that spirit are: confusion; passivity; and ungodliness and unlawfulness abounds.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah had stood up to the spirits. He called for a drought on the nation; then after three years, he challenged all the prophets of Baal and Jezebel to come out - as many as he could - 450. He also got all the nation of Israel out; and he said: you sacrificed a sacrifice, and if your god's a real god - call fire from heaven; but if the Lord is the real God - He'll bring fire from heaven.

All day, the prophets of Baal worked hard, and worked up a sweat – they jumped and cut themselves, because Baal is a god of performance; they tried hard, struggled, but nothing happened. At the end of the day, Elijah set up the altar of the Lord; prayed, came to God, confessed the sin of the nation - WOOSH! Fire from heaven! With that, the mind of the people became clear - the Lord is God! Then Elijah killed 450 of prophets of Baal - so from a ministry perspective, that was highly successful! Fire from heaven - a glorious day; but there was a little problem in there...

There was one part that wasn't quite right: the king never really repented. I think Elijah may have got discouraged, but certainly there was an opening in his heart - and then he comes under tremendous retaliation and spiritual attack.

1 Kings 19:1 – Ahab told Jezebel all Elijah had done; how he'd executed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying: “let the gods do to me - and more also - if I don't make your life like one of them, by tomorrow, about this time.”

She said: I'm going to get you! I'm going to kill you - just like you killed those prophets! You're a dead man! You're as good as dead - so she came with a murderous spirit, sent a messenger.

“When he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, went to Beersheba which is Judah, left his servant there and he himself went a day's journey to the wilderness, sat down under a broom tree or a juniper tree, prayed that he might die, saying: it's enough now Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers! Then as he lay he slept, he fell into a deep sleep” - characteristic of people under spiritual pressure - who can't see anything, and are unaware what's going on.

When Jezebel saw that her kingdom was under attack; that God was about to restore the nation; revival was about to take place - she arises immediately, with murderous intent. This spirit - murderous intent - came against him, with hatred and murder. She got her prophets together, and they did some witchcraft - they launched demonic spirits against this man Elijah to terrorise him. He literally had a major spiritual attack, a major challenge - threats of death - quite a big deal really.

She sent a messenger - and there's many ways that messenger comes. It can come through criticism, gossip, people blaming you or falsely accusing you - all kinds of ways; but behind it is a hate spirit - and when that thing came against him, it affected him very deeply. When witchcraft comes against you - you feel things very deeply.

He felt fear, gripping fear. He felt confused. He'd just done this great thing; and now he's in the face of a tremendous attack. He became indecisive about what he should really do. The Bible said: “when our heart is set on the Lord, and we trust in the Lord, then we dwell safe from all evil” - so he became indecisive, overwhelmed, by looking at what was there. He'd done his best, but it looked as though that hadn't worked. He became overwhelmed, he got quite disoriented and disheartened - and very lonely in the middle of it all.

When a major spiritual attack comes, you feel very alone, disheartened, overwhelmed - like it's all too big, and you're afraid of what may happen – a fear of death. It starts off with the fear of death, and threats of death; but it ends up with him agreeing with it, saying: “I want to die”. He was threatened with death - and he ends up in agreement, wanting to die!

The spirit that came against him was a spirit of hatred and murder, wanting to kill him. He came into agreement, and his whole ministry was shut down. He ends up under a tree – suicidal - that is the power of the spirit! Notice the steps of progression, how he behaved - he had many of these feelings.

You can recognise when spiritual attack or witchcraft is operating - you feel these feelings of dread, but there's nothing there to see, or anything that you can come up against, you just feel it. You feel overwhelmed, confused, pressure, loneliness - all these kinds of things. It's a spiritual pressure - something from the spirit realm pushing against you - to reject you out of where God wants you to be.

He actually made some bad choices. The first choice he made was: he yielded to the fear of death. He yielded to that messenger. He gave in to the feelings of fear, to the spirit of fear - and he drew back from the role God had called him into. He drew back from the place of the revival that he was supposed to bring. He drew back from the place of spiritual authority. He began to shut down, under the spirit of fear.

The second thing he did was: he ran for his life. He took flight to save himself. He ran away, avoided the problem, withdrew from the challenge, withdrew from the situation, withdrew from the assignment God had given him. When you're under pressure - never withdraw from what God called you to do; stay in the place God called you to stay, hold your ground - let God clarify what He wants you to do.

The next thing he did was: he isolated. He left his servant (verse 3). Under spiritual pressure, there is a tendency, for us to draw back inside ourselves, to shut down, and begin to isolate. We cut off connection from people, we draw away into a cave. In fact he ends up in a cave. Where he ended up physically, is exactly what was going on emotionally and spiritually inside him - he was in a cave, cut off from God. He'd let go of God in the face of this spiritual attack.

The next thing was: he lost perspective. He couldn't see the big picture. 1 Kings 19:14 –“I've been very zealous. I alone am left. They want to kill me”. He comes up with this thing constantly: I'm the only one left. I'm the only one on the Lord's side; the only one who's serving God; the only one who sees it right. God has to tell him: I've got 7,000 on my side - you're not the only one at all; but his perspective is totally distorted. When you come under spiritual attack, your perspective gets distorted. You think you're the only one, you think you're very alone, and you begin to start to shut down.

Next, he went a day's journey into the wilderness. He actually left the region, the place he was supposed to be - he was trying to flee out of Israel. He fled completely, and he was actually leaving the place of his assignment. Left the land, left Israel altogether, left the country; ran as far away as he could get. Having yielded to fear, yielded to the spirit, yielded to the confusion, losing perspective, becoming isolated... He sat down - sat down under a tree.

The other place you find someone sitting under a tree is Saul, in a place of defeat; sitting down under the tree, a place of defeat. The spirit tends to make people passive - shut down on the inside. A passive person feels they've got no options left except to just: withdraw; sit down; do nothing.

Passivity is a major problem in our nation. Passivity is across many men in our nation. Passivity sits in many churches in our nation. I go around to many places, there's no vibrant energy and life of the Holy Ghost. There's just people that are passive, shut down; not alive, dynamic and forceful in their spirit.

Matthew 11:12 – “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence”. You've got to be fervent in pressing in - fervent in prayer, fervent in praise. You've got to have something inside you; but when this spirit gets around you, you shut down, withdraw, and you're just going through the motions. You look like you're alive, but you're dead. You're shut down inside by the spirit – it’s a horrendous thing when this happens. I've had it happen to me a few times, made some mistakes...

He ‘sat down under the tree’ - one of the major feelings associated with this, is a deep feeling of being rejected - pushed out, rejected, unwanted. It comes against you, and you feel rejected. It says that he's “overwhelmed with hopelessness” - no sense of hope for the future. When he comes to that place, all he wants to do is die. He's now in agreement with the spirit of death.

Isn't that amazing - that a man of God like Elijah, who could: bring fire from heaven; hold the rain; start the rain going; outrun a chariot - a man of prayer, a man who walked with God - now he is sitting under a tree, in agreement with the spirit of death, wanting to die. How on earth did that happen? How did he get there?

A spirit of witchcraft attacked him - and he didn't adopt the right strategy to win the victory over it. I've seen that happen to individual ministers. I've seen some ministers literally driven out of the country, but flourishing in other countries, because witchcraft came against them, to shut their gift down in our own nation.

I've seen churches shut down in our own nation, they once moved in the spirit of God and now... I can think of one major church in our nation - absolutely gone. At one time, it touched the whole nation - then it's gone; no sign of it, nothing left - just a history. I've enquired into it, and I know some of the things that went on: a witchcraft attack divided people up; it separated people that God had covenanted to stand together, and caused the whole thing to collapse. Next thing you know, the whole thing was gone!

I've been working alongside some movements in the nation, and we found that a major supernatural dimension of one whole movement of churches had been stripped out - and we could actually identify what it was, and when it was - and it's a spiritual witchcraft attack, that took out the flow of revelation. This is a very real thing - and it happened to Elijah.

I want to show you the really good news. God never abandoned him because he was under it. God just got him to have a good long sleep and rest; gave him a bit of food; then took him into a place, and started to put anointing back into him, re-fired him and commissioned him.

Notice the interesting thing that He commissioned him to do: Elijah was a loner, and God got him out of being a loner; made him connect, and actually get into a team flow. He raised up Elisha, and he began to flow differently from that point on.

I want to show you how this same pressure came against Jesus, and Jesus handled it completely differently. I've been under that spirit, it’s attacked me on a number of occasions, attacked us both on a number of occasions. It's a horrendous thing when it happens, and I've done exactly what Elijah did. I guess there'd be a few people who've done what Elijah did; felt knocked in the spirit, felt a blow in the spirit; couldn't work out where it came from, struggling to stay out, to stay free; mixed feelings of fear, insecurity and uncertainty, under tremendous pressure. You just begin to withdraw and shut down.

I've had my gift shut down at one season of my life, and it’s a terrible thing when your gift gets shut down. Your gift are shuts down because you are shut down. You are the one who's the subject of the attack; and when you surrender to that thing, you can't flourish and flow.

God is raising the church to become powerful, and to flow in the supernatural, so you've got to be able to withstand this kind of stuff. You've got to get the kind of grunt inside you, to step up, stand up, and be what God has called you to be. We're not to be afraid of this, because Jesus has gone ahead, and shown us how to beat the thing - so we can beat it!

He said: I have overcome! The same spirit that is in me - is in you! Be of good cheer! I've overcome the world, and I can show you what to do - so it pays to have a look...

Matthew 26, and also Luke 22 - we're going to have a look how Jesus handled the same thing.

Matthew 26:36 – “Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples: sit here while I go and pray. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them: My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me. He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Then He came to His disciples and found them sleeping, and said what? Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. A second time He prayed; O My Father, if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done. Then He came and He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.”

They're under a spiritual attack. They slept, when they should have watched and prayed. Then He left them and went away again, prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Jesus faced an immense spiritual attack, by spiritual powers seeking to remove Him. He faced in His mind the prospect of death the following day - the most horrible death that is known or devised by man: death on the cross - a long, lingering pain.

He went to the garden. Luke 22 says it was His habit. He'd formed a habit of prayer; so when He's under pressure, His first response is: go back to the place of prayer. You need a habit of prayer, or you'll never survive spiritual pressure. You'll remain weak and ineffective - loving God, but not being able to bring forth fruit, that abounds to the glory of God. God wants fruit in our lives.

I want you to see how Jesus responded:

1) He refused to draw back from what was in front of Him. He refused to draw back in fear, to yield to fear. You have to face what it is that's there, and not run from it.

2) He refused to isolate. “He called His disciples to come with Him into the place of prayer” - not all of them, but three of them. He refused to isolate.

Elijah isolated, when he needed to have men standing with him.

Jesus knew that these disciples were immature. He knew that they would run away, He knew they would not be ‘up to the task’. Nevertheless, He still drew them in at this moment - He needed them.

That means it's a principle: when under spiritual pressure, under spiritual attack, don't isolate. Engage close relationships to stand with you.

3) He opened His heart. He refused to isolate, and He opened His heart.

Matthew 26:38 – “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. I am troubled”.

My emotions are in turmoil. Death is gripping Me - all the fears of it are around Me. I'm feeling the sorrows and the pains of what I'm about to face; what I'm in the middle of, and starting to engage.

He shared His feelings and emotions. He shared His struggles with them. How difficult it is, for men to share. How difficult it is to open our heart, and tell others the struggles and pains we're having - and to draw them to stand with us.

Men live in a world that's highly competitive. In a man's world, to show any sign of weakness or vulnerability is to be declared weak and unmanly - so men tend to want to go it alone. You can't go it alone in this kind of battle. You have to walk in unity; walk with someone else; you have to walk with friends.

There are some things we stand in (and we've got to grow up in) - and even with friends, there's a limit to what friends can do - as you see in this story. Nevertheless, Jesus is a man of principle; so he brought James, Peter, James and John (his closer disciples), and He invited them to come with Him, and He shared His heart with them.

A major strategy, when you're in a tremendous spiritual attack, is to: refuse to back down with fear, refuse to isolate; but engage your friends (close friends), and then share your heart with them. Let them know you're strong!

4) He didn't just share - He asked for their support and prayer: I want you to be with Me, I want you to watch and pray - and this is the saviour, knowing the disciples will run eventually, knowing they're going to fall asleep. Even though all those things, He drew them in, shared His heart, and then He asked them and invited them to stand with Him. These are key strategies to beat that spirit.

Don't back down! Don't isolate! Don't give in to fear! Engage support from close friends, share your heart, pains, struggles, grief, concerns - and show them how they can stand with you, and be supportive of you. That’s the key strategy that Elijah failed to do - when Elijah isolated, he left himself open to the spirit of death, and came into agreement with it.

Jesus did not isolate - He overcame the spirit of death; and the fear of death. He poured out His heart – it’s a real difficulty for men to pour out their heart, and to open up their lives, because of fear. Fear keeps everything secret. What's secret is in a place of darkness, and the devil can come in around the things which are secret. Pride is a big issue. We want to look good, want to have our appearance. We don't want anyone to see us weak and vulnerable, yet true humility is quite vulnerable, quite open.

Shame - when Adam and Eve felt shame about their condition, they withdrew and hid from God. Shame will cause you to hide and run away as well, but God's remedy is not to do any of those things. It's to say to close people - I need you to help me, and stand with me at this time.

What did Jesus do? He didn't back down, He didn't isolate, He didn't retreat. Instead, He gathered friends, shared His heart, asked them to stand with Him - and showed them how He wanted them to do that.

5) Then He got into prayer. He did not lean totally on the friends - He got into prayer. Everyone else did a little bit of praying; but He went further, because this is His life, and He needed to personally break through, so He went further.

As He prayed, He “was wrestling”, because everything in Him wanted to back off, to quit, to draw back from dying - so it was a wrestle to stand His ground, and do the will of God, to fulfil His destiny.

Luke 22 says that as He prayed, it's like He prayed in agony; or literally, He was contending with a spiritual adversary so strongly, that sweat came off Him - and it was a huge emotional spiritual ordeal. He literally contended with what was against Him - fervent, strong, believing prayer.

Hebrews 5:7 - “With strong crying tears, He pushed into God, to bring an answer to earth”.

In Luke 22, an angel strengthened Him. Then He came to the place: “Father, not My will, but Your will be done”. He broke through to the place of rest, and confidence in the will of God.

6) One last thing He did, which is not mentioned here, but it's mentioned elsewhere in Hebrews 12:2 – “For the joy that was set before Him, He despised not the cross and all the shame it brought”.

He kept His eyes set on what lay the other side of the battle. He kept His eyes set on the victory; on vision; on multitudes of men and women - every nation redeemed.

The divine strategy to beat witchcraft is very simple. Don't back down - like Winston Churchill, never, never quit. Don't back down. Don't back down to your fears. Don't isolate and withdraw. Don't shut down and become passive, but do draw friends into your life and share your heart and struggles with them, and share how they can stand with you. Invite them to stand with you. Even if it's not perfect, and it's not complete - it's still a divine strategy. They may not fully understand; they may not fully help - but at least you've drawn them in, and done what God said to do.

Then stand in prayer. The Bible says: “having done all, stand”. Sometimes you're not going forward, but at least you're not going back. At least you're standing there - that word stand is like a couple of WWF wrestlers, and they're in the ring. They put them in the corners, and then they rush into the centre; then they lock like that, and no one's moving. They're waiting for who's going to get the first hold. That's the kind of thing - stand!

If you're facing pressure, make a decision not to go the path Elijah did by isolating; a decision not to ‘go it alone’. Make the decision: that's not going to be my future.

I've looked and had a great privilege this last two or three months, while I've been fasting. Joy's been standing with me, we've been fasting, and we've seen a lot of things. We’ve had the privilege of being able to see what's happened in our lives (and the church here); seen what's happened in churches around us, and in our nation. It’s been a great privilege, a great insight into what's happening.

I see how spiritual witchcraft in our nation shut down the move of God about a decade ago, so churches are passive and struggling and weak. Now there's some great churches in the nation - ask what supernatural is happening around them, have a look for the miracles, the power, the deliverance, the gifts of the spirit. Have a look for ordinary people flowing in power.

That's what God wants to do - to raise up a great people, strong; but it's no go-it-alone, one-man ministry thing. It's about us; us rising; us standing together, being together, being a family; US agreeing together, being able to be open; US standing up and saying: GOD, WE BELIEVE FOR BREAKTHROUGHS over these kinds of things.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:
· Ecc 4:9-12
“…9 Two are better than one…because they have a good reward for their labor….10 For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. …11 Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? …12 Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord cannot be broken.”
· There is multiplied strength when we stand together
· There is multiplied problems when we isolate and go it alone
· Gods’ blessing and power flows when we walk together
· One consequence of the fall is isolation in relationships
· Prov 18:1 “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, he rages against all wise judgment”

Elijah in the Face of Spiritual Pressure:
1 Kings 19:1-5 “And when he saw that, he ran for his life”
a) Elijah was poised for national transformation:
· Jezebel ruled and influenced the nation
· Jezebel attacked and killed prophets and replaced them with her own prophets
· There was spiritual and relational drought
· Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal and killed them
· Jezebel reacted against him and attacked him

b) Jezebels’ Messenger:
…v2 “She sent a massager to Elijah saying…”
· Evil massages can come in many forms
· Criticism, murderous words, threats, manipulation
· Behind the massager are evil spirits that attack
· Their goal was to remove Elijah from his position of influence

c) Elijah’s Response to Witchcraft Attacks:
i. Elijah’s Feelings:
· Fear •Indecisiveness •Discouraged •Retaliate
· Confusion •Overwhelmed •Loneliness •Rejection
ii. Elijah’s Responses:
· Fear of death – he yielded to it, gave in to it. He shut down
· Flight - “ran for his live” v3
- self preservation
- withdraw from challenge, issue, and the assignment God
gave him
· Isolation – “left his servant” v3
· Loss of perspective v14 “I alone am left”
· “Sat down” = Passivity v4
· Overcame by rejection
· Despair and hopelessness
· Desire to die – overwhelmed by a spirit of death
· Elijah’s key mistake was yielding to fear and isolating himself
· Prov 18:1 “He that isolates himself seeks his own desire”

3. Jesus Response to Spiritual Pressure:
· Matt 26:36-41
· Jesus faced immense spiritual pressure and attacks upon him
· Jesus faced the immanent prospect of a horrible death, spiritual powers wanted to remove him
· How did Jesus Respond?
i. He refused to draw back in Fear v36
ii. He refused to Isolate, he invited good friends to be with him v36
iii. He opened his heart to the v38
Ø He shared openly his feelings and struggles
Ø He became vulnerable to them
Ø People struggle in this area to be vulnerable
a. Fear: Keeps people from being open, keeps issues in the dark
b. Pride: Keeps a front up, a covering to maintain appearance
c. Shame: causes people to hide and avoid relationships
iv. He asked for their support in prayer v38
Ø Indicated to them how they could help him
v. He poured out his heart to his Father v38
Ø Draw into a place of intimacy
vi. He wrestled in prayer to come to a place of rest v39
Ø Luke 22:44 “pray more earnestly” Heb 5:7 “strong crying and tears”
Ø He contended in prayer to overcome spiritual pressure and the human tendency is to preserve or save self
vii. He draw strength from the Father by faith and persevering in prayer
Ø Luke 22:44 “Angel”
Ø Jesus formed a habit of prayer to survive spiritual pressure
viii. He set his eyes firmly on the hope before him Heb 12:2
Ø He kept his eyes set on the end result, he kept his eyes set on the Victory
· What to do when you are facing pressure?
Ø Don’t isolate and go it alone, include trusted friends
i. Inform them: Let them know what happened or what is happening
ii. Council: Seek council and help
iii. Question: Ask them for input. What you are not seeing?

Signs of the Coming of Jesus (1 of 3)  

Sun 21 Jun 2020 AM « Back to Top

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How many know that there are global shifts are taking place? Something is changing in the nations of the world. People felt they lived in peace and security; but now there was the realisation that sudden change can take place.

We want to be anchored to the word of God, in this time. God is in total control, and nothing can stop His purpose being outworked. God knows the end. He's got the plan - so get connected and listen to the plan!

I want you to open your Bible with me; we’re going to look at Matthew 24. I want to share today on the Signs of the Coming of Jesus - the Signs of the End Times.

How many know that there are global shifts are taking place? There's a lot of changes taking place in the world; you can see the massive changes. When 9/11 happened, I remember thinking then: Lord, this is not just about an event that happened in America; this is about a global shift. Something is changing in the nations of the world. People felt they lived in peace and security; but now there was the realisation that sudden change can take place.

Then there's been two waves of pandemic - there was the SARS virus, which perhaps for many didn't have such an impact; but this with latest one, Covid-19, suddenly, within a few days, you find yourself shut up in your home and you can't go out - can't do this; can't do that. Life as you knew it stopped.

These are kind of beginning signs. They're kind of evidence to us, of a time of change in the world; and we want to be anchored to the word of God, in this time. I think the first thing we need to know, if I look on the signs of the times, the first thing I want you to look at, or to just be aware of, is this:

God is in total control, and nothing can stop His purpose being outworked. God is in total control.

That doesn't mean that everything is operating the way He wants. In fact, it's not operating the way He wants, but it will come to a point where it does, and it really helps us to see a Bible perspective.

Isaiah 46:9-10 – “Remember the former things, those of long ago;

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.

I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’”

God knows the end. He understands exactly how the whole thing ends.

We're just on the journey. We're caught in time. If you're in eternity, then you can see the start, and the end, and what's beyond; but when you're in time, then you only see what you've got now. When you're in time, then you often live out of the moment, or out of the experience you're in now, rather than out of an eternal biblical perspective. God always draws us back to Himself, and to the fact He's got your back. He's got the plan - so get connected and listen to the plan!

For example, in the Book of Daniel, there was a king there. The people of God were in a time and season where they were in bondage. Imagine that all the promises of God have gone; and everything they treasured was gone. They're in captivity; they're in slavery; and there's this false prophet, saying that it's not going to happen; but all kinds of things have been happening. In the middle of it, the king of Babylon, which was the greatest world empire of its day… it would be the ‘America’ of its day - it was the greatest empire.

The king had a vision in that; and in the vision, he sees an image - he sees the head of gold, and various parts of silver and bronze, right down to feet of clay and iron. Then he sees in that picture, that suddenly a rock comes, and the rock smites this image, on its feet. Then the image begins to crumble, and collapse, and fall to the ground - and the rock, that smote the feet of the image, now grows, and becomes a mountain that fills the whole earth!

The king is very troubled by this, very troubled indeed; and he says to all the wise men, the astrologers: I want to know the meaning of the dream; but no one could tell him - so he was going to kill everyone! You guys say you're smart, but you can't interpret my dream? Daniel said: give me a bit of time to seek the Lord - He knows dreams; and then Daniel comes back and says: I've got it!

God has shown him not only the dream, and its details; but also, the meaning.

Daniel 2:34 – “While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them”

He's talking of something supernaturally formed, “without hands” - meaning it's happened from God. It struck the image, on the feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.

Daniel 2:44 – ““In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever”

He said: in as much as you saw the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and broke in pieces - the iron and the bronze and the clay and the silver and the gold – “the great God has made it known to the king what shall come to pass in the future”.

In fact, that prophesy is a prophesy of all the world kingdoms that would come to pass; and it says that in the very End Time, there is a kingdom that will come, and it will be a rock taken out of a mountain, made without hands, that will smash that kingdom down, and then expand and fill the whole earth.

He's talking about the kingdom of God.

Daniel 7:27 – “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him”

He's had a vision of the coming kingdom of God, in all its glory. He's seen what will happen. He's seen the disruption of the powers of heaven; the transformation of the earth; and the kingdom of God established. That kingdom starts in your heart. The kingdom is within you.

When God puts His spirit in you, you are joined to the King. You become part of a kingdom. However, you've got to decide whether you'll grow. You must decide - will you let the spirit of God bring transformation? You must decide whether you'll let the Lord prepare you, so that at the time of His coming…

#1 - You're ready

#2 - You qualify for all the things He has prepared, for those who love Him.

The Bible is God's book - His story; and in His story, there are many prophesies through the Bible. The prophesies in the Bible all refer to, and carry a revelation of, Jesus and His work.

For example, when Jesus was born, in Jesus' life and ministry, there were at least 18 prophesies - specific details about His life, that were prophesied through the Bible, by different prophets - and all of those were fulfilled. Then there's another 16 prophesies about Israel, and what would happen to Israel - and all of those have become true. If you've got prophesies or foretelling of the future - firstly about the coming of Jesus; and secondly, about the nation of Israel - and all those ones have been fulfilled… that's a pretty good record!

So then, what other prophesies are there? There's a whole heap of prophesies about Jesus coming, about His return, of which the church remains ignorant; and if you're ignorant of what is coming, then you live in fear of what is now. Across the world, everyone is scared. I mean, to act rationally, and reasonably, and safely - that's one thing; but to be in fear - that's another. That's another.

God knows the beginning from the end. God has a plan that He's outworking; and the prophesies in the Bible are accurate. The Bible can be relied upon, because God knows the end from the beginning. If we were to read today some prophesies of things to come… you better know they're going to come - they will unravel as certainly as you're sitting here. The only question is whether you recognise them – that they're unravelling before your very eyes. We're living in the hour when these things are unravelling now. What a great hour to be alive! Glory to God!

Let's read in Matthew 24. I'll read about 14 verses, and Jesus brings revelation of the End Times. In other words, He acts as a prophet. Jesus not only was a great apostle, He's also a great prophet. That was prophesied by Moses - another prophet will come. He's the Great Prophet. He's now standing in His office as a prophet, saying: I'm going to tell you things are going to happen at the End Times. I'm going to prophesy for you the next 2000 years.

Matthew 24:1 – “Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple…”.

The buildings were massive. They were a massive sight - it was glorious; one of the wonders of the world really, just tremendous building. And Jesus said…

“…Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another that shall not be thrown down”.

That's a staggering claim to make. He's now prophesying. They're all saying: look at this awesome building, wow! Look, the gold, all the beauty of it – massive! He says: the whole lot is going to be thrown down. There won't be two stones left on top of one another. That's a whole study of its own, to find out what happened in there.

Then He sits down, and so they ask Him some questions. They just admired this big building, but Jesus said: don't put your hopes in the building. That building is coming down, and so of course, once they got alone, they sat and talked, and they asked Him some questions. As they sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. That's what disciples do - they ask questions privately. They said: tell us, when will these things be? What will be the sign of Your coming; and the end of the age?

So, there's two key questions that are asked here. 1) The destruction of the temple - what will indicate it's happening? 2) What will be the signs that indicate Your return is imminent? Jesus then answers that, and His answers are spread, as they often are in the Bible, in more than one place. You've got to read the different places to find them, but Matthew 24 and 25 is a good place to start. You could also go into Mark 13, and Luke 21, but we'll just mostly look in Matthew, and then a little bit in Luke.

Matthew 24:4 - “He answered them and said, take heed that no one deceives you”.

His first thing is to warn them of the possibility of being deceived. To be deceived means that you think something's true, when it's not true. He repeats this warning: Take care, in case you be deceived. That you start to believe things that are not true, as though they were true - and that affects how you live your life.

Matthew 24:5 - “For many will come in My name, saying I'm the Christ, and deceive many. You'll hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you're not troubled.”

Don't be anxious when you hear all these reports or read the news. All these things must come to pass, but that's not the end.

Matthew 24:6 - “For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There'll be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows”.

He says: then they'll deliver you up to the tribulation and kill you; and you'll be hated by all nations for My name's sake. Then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will arise and deceive many.

Notice the “then… then… then”. He's talking about a sequence of steps or actions that will take place, one after the other.

“…but he who endures to the end shall be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom of God will be preached in all the world, as a witness to the nations, then the end will come”.

Now you have an idea of what must come before the end, and we're not waiting for anyone or anything… God is waiting for us. This gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout the whole world - then the end will come! So, don't wait around for Jesus to come. Pray… and get busy!

He's now asked two questions. The first question (in verse 3) was: what will these things be? They're asking about the temple. What about the temple? Tell us about the temple?

In Luke, it's described a little differently...

Luke 21:20 - “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near”.

He's now giving them a sign. He's saying: when you see this, you know. This is what you can absolutely be certain to know, that its desolation, or its total ruin, is very close. That's the sign that He's given them; and this is a consequence - it's about to be destroyed. Then He tells them what to do.

So always in the Bible, God gives a hint, or an indication, of what will come; and then He tells us how to prepare. Next week, I will talk about preparing for the second coming of the Lord, because you need to know how to prepare; but if you don't believe that He's coming soon, then of course you won't want to prepare. You'll just do your own thing.

Luke 21:21 - “Let those who are in Judea flea to the mountains. Let those who are in the midst of her, depart”.

He tells them: get out of the city when you see the sign; and it says:

Luke 21:22 - “Let not those in the country enter her, for these are the days of vengeance, that all the things which are written, may be fulfilled”.

Luke 21:23-24 – “And woe to those who are pregnant, those with babies in those days, for there'll be great distress in the land, great wrath upon the people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, be lead away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles, until the time of the gentiles are fulfilled”.

Here's the sign: “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies”. Now when I was in Rome, we did a visit to Rome one time, and we went around the Colossium... I loved it - the history is just stunning! We went through what's called the Arch of Titus, it’s a phenomenal structure. It's a memorial arch, that was built in honour of Titus.

Titus was a Roman general, and when you look on the inside of the arch, you see something interesting. You see inscriptions on the sides of the arc. On one side, it has a Roman general in a chariot, and then behind it's got people in chains, who are captive; and then behind that, it's got loads of treasure, and in particular, one item of treasure is the candlestick (or the menorah) from the temple in Jerusalem.

Now Jesus said: when you see this sign, that's what's going to happen. When you go to Rome now, you can see the picture - that it did happen!

There was a rebellion in Judea, around about the period of about 66AD. They began to revolt against the Romans, and so the Romans sent an emperor - a military commander called Vespasian, who surrounded Jerusalem, set up a siege around Jerusalem… the sign! “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies” - There it is, right there!

What do you think the believers, who remembered Jesus' words, all thought, when they saw the armies encamped around them? Jesus told us this would happen! We need to get out! Of course, they can't get out, because they're surrounded. Then suddenly, there's a death of a Roman emperor; and Vespasian is going to replace him. He's going to become the new emperor - so they call him to come back to Rome, to take over his new role as the emperor. He withdraws all his armies from Jerusalem, and goes back for a short period to Rome, in order to receive his positioning as emperor, to take over the running of the empire. Of course, now that he's running the empire, he's not going back to Jerusalem… so he sends Titus. There is a gap! The armies surround the city; then the armies withdraw from the city; then the armies return, and surround the city - so there was a window of time, and in that window of time, everyone who remembered Jesus' words…

“when you see Jerusalem surrounded, flee. Don't come into the city.”

History records that every Christian in that city left the city, and they went to a town, I think it's called Bella, somewhere in East Judea (or West Judea? Somewhere in another place) - so all the Christians left. They just left! It must have been amazing to watch them all leaving the city. Thousands upon thousands of Christians left the city. They're leaving - just leaving everything; giving up their jobs, everything they have built. They leave with whatever they can carry, and just go - because they've heard Jesus' words: when you see this, it's all about to be destroyed.

You can imagine the difficulty that people would have, and the act of faith it requires to let everything go, because you've heard the word of Jesus, and yet everything looks so comfortable. The enemies have all retired... We're doing okay now, we're all right... But very soon, Titus came; he encamped around it, he besieged it, he cut off all supplies to the city. He starved the occupants, and then breached the city; there were 3 million people, and I think he put two million to death.

A lot of people died trying to escape, but no one was able to escape. People tried to get out, but they couldn't escape, because they built literally a wall right around it. There was no escaping! The people that did come out - a rumour went around that they had swallowed jewels and diamonds, so they killed them, and gutted them. There was just no way they could escape - because they weren't ready, and responsive, to the word of God. About a million people were carried away as slaves, which is what was represented on the Arch of Titus in Rome. What you read in history is, there were so many slaves, they just went for almost nothing. They were sold cheaply.

What's called ‘The Time of the Gentiles’ began. The ‘Gentiles’ refers to people outside of Israel, outside the covenant of God. They ruled over, and had dominion over, the land of Israel; and that went on, and on, and on, until…. There's going to be a change, because of the promises of God! Let's read on - this is exciting!

When did all that change? Well, it changed in my lifetime! You see, the Times of the Gentiles ceased 1948. Israel got rid of all the British, and took over that place, which is now a source of conflict.

If I were to ask: what city, in the whole world, is the source of conflict… you know what it is. It's Jerusalem! That's where Jesus is returning again. It's like it's going to be the governmental centre of the earth; so of course, it's the source of all conflict.

So the Jews took over, and then in 1967, for the first time, apart from being a nation, now they took over the temple area, or the area there in the old city; so now they had access to Jerusalem, and of course there has still been a battle, because there's still a mosque there, that the Muslims have, claiming that this is their ground. But it is not their ground. This is the land promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - and Israel will possess the land.

So, you've got to think, when you hear all these arguments about the Middle East - where do you stand? Will you stand on God's side, agreeing with what He says is going to happen; or will you take the world view, or the secular media view, and take the view of all the people who are so critical of what's happening in the Middle East? I'm not saying it's not all right or wrong; it's just you've got to get God's perspective, amen?

Here's another thing... Last year, Donald Trump moved the embassy, and called Jerusalem the capital. That is historic! It's historic! When you see it in the bigger picture of what God is doing, you see that it's totally historic; and we'll see some things on this, that actually in the scripture, He tells about that!

So now… we want to look at just the End Times. What are the signs then, of the End Times? What are the signs that we are approaching the End Times? Jesus made it very clear: you won't know the day, or the hour; so, if anyone says they know the day, and give a date - they've got it wrong. He said: “no man knows the hour, nor the day, only the Father” - even Jesus doesn't know the day.

What you can know, is the seasons; it's the seasons, we've got to know. Jesus warns about it. The first thing He did was He warned about deception.

Mathew 24:4 – “Jesus answered and said: take heed no one deceives you”.

There's only one remedy for deception. It's found in the Book of Thessalonians. Receive a love for the truth, be passionate about truth. Be passionate about the word of God. Learn the word of God, find out what God has to say. If you don't know what God says, then you're a prime candidate to believe something wrong. You just won't know.

We should be students of the word of God. We need to have a love for the word, and even more so in the days we live now. When you turn on the news, or look at social media, you've got to understand that it’s all being manipulated to present a narrative, depending on who's saying the thing; so whatever you read is distorted, with an agenda behind it. That leaves you open to deception, and of course I see people that spend all their time on news media… but where's your Bible? Why aren't you learning the word of God? You're just a prime candidate for deception, because you're going to follow what the world is saying.

You're going to follow people who hate you, who have an agenda, presenting a case that's not true - deliberately presenting a false narrative, that’s not the news. You've got to see these things - that's the hour we're living in. We have never lived in an hour quite like this one; and it's one of the things that Jesus warned about - End Time deception! You will find that most of these things provide a narrative that is contrary, and contradictory, and hostile to, the values of the kingdom of God. So, you need to know the values of the kingdom of God; and God's order for relationships. If you don't know God's kingdom order, then you'll take it all onboard, and just come into agreement with it. Tolerance soon leads to agreement.

The narrative that is presented in the world, is hostile to the kingdom of God. It has another spirit arising, the spirit of antichrist, rising to oppose the kingdom of God, and eternal values. If you're not aware of that, then you will just draw into it, and then tolerate it, and become part of it. You will build that way, and we've already got a whole generation of families that are destroyed, because they bought into all this stuff. So, build your life on the word of God; not on the social media - or even the news.

Here's the second thing… Jesus warned about the “beginning of sorrows”.

Matthew 24:8 – “All these things are the beginning of sorrows”.

The word ‘beginning’ means the commencement of a series of things happening. The word ‘sorrows’ is a word meaning ‘childbirth’. Literally, to bring a child to birth.

Any woman here understands what that's like! Most men haven't got a clue! Oh, a child's born, yay! But women all understand… Once those pains start, you're on the journey to a child being born. There’s no stopping that journey. You can't say: oh, no, I've decided no. I've changed my mind! I don't want to! No, it's going to happen; and every day, you've got a reminder of it. Every day, your body is showing the fatigue, and then the pains start! The pains come, and they come, and they ask: how far apart are the pains? Oh, quite a long way, quite a long way... Then they start getting closer and closer... How close are the pains now? Ooh, you better get in a car and get to hospital, you are about to have a baby!

That's what He's saying. If you understand about babies being born, then you will understand this is what happens in the End Times. There is a painful situation; then it's followed by another painful situation; then another… then another… then another… getting closer and closer together. Then, what God has decided to do, will suddenly birth into the earth - and surprise everyone!

But it won't surprise you, if you know that it's a spiritual childbirth, and that there's a sequence to look for, that will happen. The beginning of sorrows! The beginning of sorrows is simply this… It's worldwide conflicts! He says: what are the birth pains?

Matthew 24:6 – “You will hear of wars, and rumours of wars; but see that you're not upset or troubled. These things will come to pass, but that's not the end yet. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines and diseases and earthquakes in diverse places”.

So, wars, and natural disasters, are the first sign.

“Kingdom against kingdom” refers to ‘political’ wars. They're wars by one government, against another government, to gain dominion and power; so, World War I & II are political wars. They're wars to expand territory, to take the territory that belongs to someone else; and of course, there's been millions of lives lost.

The second type of war are what you call ‘ethnic’ wars, where it says: “nation against nation”. That word ‘nation’ is the word ‘ethnos’, meaning ‘ethnic’. Ethnic speaks of a certain culture, a certain language often, certain ways of doing things, certain history that they have - that's an ethnic group. The Bible tells us that ethnic groups will rise against ethnic groups.

Let me just have a talk about some of the ethnic wars. In 1913, the Armenians were killed by the Turks. They're still in denial about it - more than a million people, and they were crucified! They were tortured! They were sold into slavery! They were put to death! That was all ethnic and religious. It was radical Islam against Christians.

In 1941 the Nazis and the Jews - millions killed, an ethnic war. In 1947, in Kashmir - Indians, Pakistanis, ethnic war. In 1978 in Afghanistan, ethnic war; 1991 in Somalia, still going on; 1997 Rwanda, some of you would remember the Hutu and the Tutsi, and the millions that were slaughtered. What was it all about? It's tribal ethnic wars. Millions killed, slain. Iraq, 2003. Sudan is still in turmoil right now, in poverty and turmoil, and it's religious and ethnic wars.

In Nigeria, most people don't know what's going on in Nigeria, but you may have heard of Boko Haram? Boko Haram is a word meaning literally, against western education. It's radical Islamists, and they're against Christians. They're against people of other tribes and groups - and they're killing them, every week. Every week, people are being killed. If you get the right access to the right news and find out what's happening in the globe, you'll find out what's going on - and so this is happening.

In North Korea, people were shot just for having a Bible, and so it goes on. China has got the greatest wave of persecution against religious freedom right now, and against ethnic minorities. They've literally got internment camps, with more than a million people, Uighurs from the northern area. They say it's ‘re-education’, but it's a prison camp.

Right now, the persecution against the church has increased, right across China, right now. Even the organised church, the Three-Self Church, even that is suffering right now. They want the 10 Commandments taken down, and they want their doctrine of the Chinese Communist Party up there instead. They want the Chinese Communist Party to be God in the nation, so no other God is acceptable.

This is like in Nebuchadnezzar's day, when they put up the big image, and said: everyone must worship it; but three men stood up and said: “we won't”; and God redeemed them, and saved them, and promoted them.

In Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and right across the Middle East… Look at what's happened there - all the ethnic wars that have been going on, in our time - millions killed and displaced. This is in our day, that this is happening. This is happening now.

In Hebrews 13, it tells us not to ignore the suffering that's going on in other nations, among the family of God. Amen!

Currently, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the whole world right now. There are more people killed for faith in Christ now, than at any time in history. In China, they are paying people to report the ones they know are Christians. You understand? This is not to just shock you. It's just to make you aware, this is a sign of the times - just one of the signs!

The next sign I want to share is, a worldwide hatred against Christians.

There are ethnic wars, and pandemics. There are earthquakes; and the frequency of earthquakes seems to me, to be bigger, and we're far more aware of earthquakes - major earthquakes now, shaking up nations all over the earth. The issue of the Covid is something we've never seen in our lifetime, of a whole world pretty much being shut down. These are all signs leading to something. They're all the ‘birth pains’, and these are all these natural signs.

Jesus said: that's only the beginning! If you can't handle the footmen, how are you going to handle the horses? If you're upset by little stuff now, how are you going to handle the big stuff, when it comes?

The reason that God brings our attention to all of this, is so we can prepare. It's all to prepare the church. I love it! So, there's a spirit of hatred being released, right across the world, to all who follow Christ - and it's horrendous! If you make a stand for Christ, for Christian values, for godly marriage, for purity - if you build your life around those things, you are now a target. There is a spirit of hatred released, right through the world, against Christians and followers of Christ. It's the rise of an antichrist spirit. I read an article, and it said there were relentless persecutions against Christians, in over 140 countries in the world - imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, raped, sold into slavery, sold into forced marriages, all kinds of things. It's happening now!

What about in the west? Well, in the west, it's a little bit different, but it’s here. In the west, increasing hatred is being shown towards anyone who has either a conservative, or a Christian, or a Bible perspective of life - increasing hatred. If you hold an opinion that is different from the progressive left, you will be vilified. It's not like, oh well, I disagree - I've got my opinion, and you've got yours. No! If you hold a different opinion, there will literally be a whole range of things happening. They will name you, blame you, shame you, and just attack and destroy you, in every way possible.

A person holding a Christian view, in much of the western world now, is likely to be bullied - publicly and privately. Two forces are coming together - religion and politics. You see the political system (the far left particularly), and the religious system (Islam) coming together, and forming friendships. What do they have in common? They've got nothing in common! If you go to any of the countries where there's radical Islam, you'll find they kill homosexuals! They don't promote them; but the left is promoting them - so how can they come together? It's because they have a common enemy.

The common enemy is Christ!

Mark 3:6 – “The Pharisees went out, and plotted with the Herodians, on how they could kill Jesus”.

The Pharisees were religious; Herodians were political. They had nothing to do with one another. What brought them together was a common hatred. This is what's emerging in the world now. Once your eyes are opened, you can see; and Jesus taught people how to respond. He said: when it happens… when you get hated by all men, for My sake - then rejoice, and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

He said: don't get all ‘oh no, it's all bad’. No! He said: listen, when this comes, they realise you've got something, and that you're a danger, and a threat, and they're pushing back on you - and it's because you identify with Jesus Christ! Man, stand up, hold your ground, rejoice - because God's says He will reward those who will stand their ground, and faithfully serve Him. Hallelujah!

He said: love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you, and spitefully use you, and persecute you.

The next sign will be… offences and hatred - among Christians.

Matthew 24:10 – “Many will be offended, and will betray one another, and hate one another”.

Many! Many! Many Christians are carrying offences in their heart. The question is, are you carrying offences in your heart? Offences inevitably are about relationships with people who are in authority over us. Offences - the word literally means ‘to be scandalised’. It refers to the bait in a trap. Literally, when you set a trap for a bird, you put the bait in, and the thing you attached it to was called the ‘skandalon’ - that's the offence. That's the trap-stick; and the bird would see that, and come and eat the food, and then the trap closes.

It's very easy to want to be offended by people. People get offended everywhere. You know, they happen to have, in some places, a thing called ‘safe-spaces’. Some of you may not have heard of that. A “safe-space” means that I'm not allowed to say certain things, in case I might offend you. It's happening in the American education system now, right through up to tertiary. I've got to be careful about “trigger-words”, in case I upset you, and hurt you with the words I say, because my opinion might be different to yours. That's because people are growing up with an “offended spirit”, so little things offend them.

Little things offend them, and then it becomes “hate speech”, if you've offended them. They've taken having a different opinion to mean that you hate them. How wrong is that? We need a love for the truth; but offence is a horrendous thing. Offences lead to betrayal in relationships, and then to open hatred - and it's far easier to get into this state, than you realise.

Why do people get offended? To be offended means ‘to be tripped up’. So, you're running well, then you trip up, and fall on your face. Splat! A lot of Christians are in that state. They've tripped up and fallen on their face. Maybe you're like that now?

It happens for two reasons; one, you were treated unfairly, some injustice took place. That happens. Welcome to the world! It happens everywhere. Racial things happen everywhere. They've been happening all through history, everywhere. It's just that in the west, you hear about it in the media, because they're making a big show of it right now. It doesn't mean that something didn't happen – something is wrong. There is injustice. But the problem is not that there's injustice - the bigger thing is what does it do to you.

Are you a carrier of injustice, and offence; or are you a carrier of healing, and restoration, in life?

You've got to understand - you can't be both! If you're carrying injustice, and offence, then you will be angry, and hate, and then you'll destroy. We tend to think - oh, that's America! That's not us! No, no, no - it happens here too. Come on!

The two reasons that people get offended… One is, they've been treated badly, or unjustly, or unfairly. They've got a genuine grievance to get over (or they think they have). That's where Christians get stuck. They think - oh, it wasn't fair, I wasn't treated right, and they get upset. Usually it comes out of unmet expectations - I thought you were going to do that, and you didn't! I'm upset! No, you're offended. Get over it. Deal with it.

Address it in a godly way, otherwise it's going to stumble you, and you'll end up breaching the relationship. When people get offended, they get so focussed on themselves, they don't realise they're trapped in a snare.

Their focus is not on Jesus. Their focus is not on being like Him. Their focus is not on being able to love people, and bless people, and restore relationships. Their focus is on me, and my, and mine. Their focus is on the injustice, and the hurt; and while they're focussing on injustice and hurt, they're not aware - I've got an offended heart, and I'm operating under pride. The pride blinds my hearts condition. I can't see, because I'm so full of myself.

Proverbs 18:19 – “A brother offended is harder to win back than a strong city; contentions separate friends like a gate locked with bars”.

An offended person will build a wall around their heart. Now get this... They build a wall around their heart, but they will let in one kind of person. Who will they open their heart to? Oh, another offended person! Oh, you're offended too? Oh, let me tell you about my offence… and they let them in! And now, they're not sharing the life of Christ; they're not sharing blessing… they're sharing offence! The spirit of offence, and bitterness, and hatred, begins to grow. This goes on, all the time! They just want someone who will agree with me!

If I think that you agree with me, I'll share, and I'll welcome you in. The problem is, when people are offended like that, they misinterpret the actions of people. So, if you've got an offence in your heart, you'll misinterpret everything - especially if it's an offence against your father or your mother. You will have issues with authority your whole life.

One of the biggest issues of offences that come is when we have expectations that are not met – oh, but I thought... We maybe didn't even realise there was an expectation, we just get offended; or when pastors or leaders try to help you grow up, and talk into your life something you can't see, because you're blinded by your offence. And then, instead of welcoming the truth, and loving the truth, even though it hurts… people get more offended. The wall goes up.

What Jesus said is: many will become offended, and betray one another, and hate one another. It's going to progress. They're not going to stay static, if the offence is in your heart. You're going to sell the person out to their enemies. You will go to someone who also hates them, and share your story with them, and give them more fuel for the fire. You're betraying the relationship you had.

You will withdraw from a relationship that was important. Maybe God had ordained that relationship, but you've withdrawn, because of your pride and offence, and now you've walked away. Now you've betrayed the relationship. You've sold them out, by sharing confidences; or you've sold them out, by withdrawing, when you were most needed. That goes on all the time. It's evidence of pride, and immaturity. It's time to grow up! We cannot stay in that state. We can't remain like that.

We must have a love for the truth. Who could speak into your life, in a way that you won't get offended and upset, and take a hike? When someone last tried to say something to you, how did you respond? Are you a lover of the truth, and welcome the truth? Or is your pain, and your hurt, so driving you, and preoccupying you, that all you can do is react?

Jesus said: in the last days many will be offended – multitudes; and they will betray one another, and then hate one another. How do you hate people? Lots of ways… It can be active, by hostility coming against them; or it can be just in this way… The word ‘hatred’ in the Bible means ‘to love less’, or ‘withhold love’. You may not think you hate people, but when you withhold love - is something wrong? Yep. Nah. Nothing is wrong. Won't talk about it. Build a wall. Just walk away, further and further...

You're not walking away from that person. You're walking away from God. He's trying to help you, to grow you, because He needs you mature, in the End Times. He needs you to grow, in the End Times. He needs you to be in a good place, spiritually and relationally. He needs you locked into a community of people that can help you grow, and support you, and help you in your journey. He wants you connected, and offences are the main stumbling block of the devil, to take people out of God-given relationships, that were designed to help them, and bless them.

The four things that I notice, comes whenever there's offences...

Number one is distance - relational distance; because now you're preoccupied, not with love and building together - you've now got another agenda: preserving yourself.

Prov. 18:1 – “a man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, and rages against all wise judgement”.

The second one is demons. When you allow offences to get in your heart, you will become demonised. You will. Jesus said that will happen. That's a prophesy!

Matthew 18:34-35 – “If you will not from your heart forgive your brother every one of his trespasses, then you will be handed over to the tormentors”.

Unforgiveness, and offence in our heart, leaves an open door for demonic spirits to wreak havoc; to torment you, with remembering all the things that were done against you, causing you to be angry and upset. They torment you!

Someone shares something, or you read something, or see something on the news, and now you're angry, and you don't even know why you're even angry. Why are you angry? We're just lost in some dots on a screen. No, there was something tapped into the spirit that was there, and it stirred up your anger, stirred up your issue.

The third one is deception. Deception comes when you're offended, because you become blinded, and you can't see why your life's going the way it is. You can't see the truth, when you've got offence in your heart.

1 John 2:11 – “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness”.

When there's hatred in our heart, when we've withdrawn love, because of offence, it says we ‘walk in darkness’, and we can't work out what we're stumbling over.

When you're offended, you have a lot of things go wrong in your life, and you can't work out why these things are happening, because you can't see. If you can't see, then it's like you keep tripping up all the time, and you can't work out why you're having these setbacks. It's because your heart is offended, there's anger and hate in the heart, and now you can't see.

The hatred blinds your eyes. It causes you to be in a spiritual darkness, where you have no perception. Then when the word of God is preached, you don't even pick anything up. These are important things. In the last days, many, many, many will be like that - so deception is another one.

The last one is defilement. Defilement will come.

Hebrews 12:15 - "See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Make sure that everyone guards their heart, to keep themselves in the grace of God, lest a root of bitterness spring up and defile many. Injustices, hurts, offences, and anger - they breach all our relationships. They cause you to have walls, become demonically empowered; then they cause an isolation, and then they overflow with defilement. You start to poison your marriage, poison your children, poison your friendships and relationships, and everywhere the bitterness just flows like a river.

That's not what we're called to be. We're called to be in the house of God, where the river of life flows out of, and that river of life can only flow out of a pure heart, a heart that's free of offence. You've got to keep yourself free of offence. If someone offends you, forgive them. Just forgive them! If it's breached the relationship, go have a talk. Pray. Get your heart right, get all the anger out of it, or you'll end up with a bigger row than you had before.

You can't fix a relationship if you're angry. Get over your anger. Get over your injustice. Grow some meekness in your heart, because meekness, in the eyes of God, is very high price! Offences get you out, but meekness gets you in. You could nut-off, but you don't, because you've surrendered to the Lord, and you understand that He permits offences, in order to grow your character of meekness, like He had. He was reviled and offended, but He didn't react.

He could have called down angels, and burned them up, but He didn't do that. It's His meekness, and His humility, that caused Him to be separated to the purpose of God. He had a joy ahead of Him, seeing people like you and me coming out of darkness, coming out of the dark place, coming into a place of life, coming into the things God has for us - free of offence, free of these things! He did it for us!

Luke 21:16 – “You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death”

We must understand then, the signs of the times we're in. Wars, rumours of war, ethnic conflicts, famines in diverse places, pestilences or viruses that no one can do anything about - that's the hour we're living in now. That's the hour you and I are in right now.

And He says: these are just the beginning of all kinds of things that will come on the earth, and they're leading up to the return of Jesus Christ, the overthrow of the kingdoms of the world, and the establishment of His kingdom.

He has got you in a preparation process, so He gives you a heads-up: guys, when you see these things coming, what do you need to do? He says: watch and pray! Watch and pray! He says a whole number of things we're called to do, to prepare ourselves.

If you have a look right now, you can see right now, how difficult the issue of offences is, and how widespread, the opposition and hatred for the things of God are. You see and feel in the world, a gathering momentum of the antichrist spirit, against everything that's good and right. It's not about left versus right. On the right, there's people just as bad as well. On the extreme right, you've got fanatical people. On the extreme left, you've got fanatical people. In religion, you've got fanatical people. God is looking for kingdom people, that are not caught up in political games.

They say: I want to stand for the kingdom of God! I want to be a part of that rock that brings down the kingdoms of the world and fills the whole earth and makes Jesus Christ Lord!

Matthew 24:30 – “when the last sign comes, then they shall see the Son of Man coming in the glory, His own glory and the glory of His Father, and the glory of all the angels”

Rev 22:12 - "Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

Listen, our greatest day is ahead of us! There is a global revival, there's a global moving of the spirit of God in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ. Right now, we need to in our heart say: God, I see! I've been asleep. My prayer life has been slack. Lord, I've been compromising, I've been offended, I've been in my heart Lord, turned against people.

Today I repent! Today I come back! I want to watch and pray. I want to be and man, a woman of prayer. I want to be a child of God. I want to be right at the forefront of what You're doing. Holy Ghost come upon me, I need a fresh encounter, even today, Holy Spirit. Come on church, let's stand, let's stand right now. Come on, let's begin to worship Him…

Closing Prayer

Lord, we honour You. We worship You. You are coming in majesty. You are coming in glory. You are coming with great power. We honour You Jesus. What a privilege to be a part of Your kingdom. What an honour to be a child of God. What a privilege to have such a destiny and calling.

Father, we love You. Jesus, we love You. We honour You Jesus. Come on, let's worship Him. Lift your hands and worship Him. Perhaps there's some of you today, you're saying God, I need to repent. I've become lukewarm. My prayer life is gone. I'm in the news more than I'm in the word of God. Lord, I've got offences in my heart. Lord, help me today. I see I'm living in an important hour. Lord, put a fresh vision in my heart. I need a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, I need You to come. Come. Come. I present my life. I build an altar to Jesus Christ.

I will live my life in these difficult times. I will endure. I will persevere. I will be on the Lord's side. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We will serve that eternal kingdom. Lord, we honour You. Father, we pray Your kingdom come, Your kingdom come, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Let heaven come, let heaven come to earth. Come to me! Cause fire to come in me. Yours is the glory. Yours is the kingdom.

God wants to put a spirit of prayer on you, wants to put a spirit of faith on you. When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Will He find persevering prayer? Will He find purity? Will He find people who love Him? Will He find true worshippers? Will He find in you a heart set on the kingdom?

Yours is the kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever! Come Lord, let Your kingdom come, let Your kingdom come, come in power, come in majesty!

Every eye shall see Him. Every knee shall bow to Him. Everyone shall declare He is King of Kings, He is Lord of Lords. God is speaking to us in this hour. Prepare for His coming. Prepare yourself. Grow. Change. Don’t just carry on. Set your heart: God, I need a personal revival. I want to have a deep intimacy with You. I want a deep intimacy with You, opening my heart, hearing Your heart, communing with You.

Lord, I want You to transform my life. Heal the broken places. Come to the places my life is imprisoned with fear and bitterness and disappointment and grief and injustice and defilements. Uncover all those places. I invite You to come. I want to change. I can't do it by myself. I need You to come with healing, deliverance, revelation. I want to become like Jesus Christ. Lord, help me to be faithful, faithful in the small assignment You have given me, have entrusted me.

Let me see every assignment I have as an act of worship and bring Your presence into it, just the little things at home, the little things that are insignificant that You're interested in. Let me do them to You as an act of worship.

Lord, I see the signs of the End Times and I commit to Your word and Your spirit to be changed and ready for Your coming. Just let the spirit of God rest on you right now. He's speaking to some of you. There's things to let go of. They're not necessarily bad things, they're just distractions. There's things He's wanting to build in your life, in your marriage, with your children and your finances. This is an hour of change. Whenever God calls us to change, He will provide the power to do it. He just wants you to be available.

Jesus, You have captured my heart. I hear the cry of the bridegroom. You are coming. I want my lamp to be filled with oil and to burn with a passion for You. I sense the spirit of God is touching many people.

From the first time I heard about things of the spirit, the thing I cried for almost more than any was the spirit of prophesy, the revelation of Jesus. Today Lord, in Jesus' name, I decree new beginnings for the members, the families, the friends of this church. I release now upon your life the spirit of prayer. I release upon your lives a spirit of faith. A door of opportunity is opened to you. If you will step into it, your prayer life will accelerate. The miracles will begin to accelerate. Your life will begin to change.

A new day is coming for the church! When it gets darker and darker in the world, our light shall shine! Today Lord, we arise, we arise, we shine! Our light is coming! Our light is here! The glory of the Lord upon our lives and hearts! Yours is the kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever, amen.

Summary Notes

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Signs of The End Times (Part 1)

I.The Bible Reveals Many Global Events
 
1.Global Shifts
- We are living in a time of Global upheaval and change…
Many people feel fearful and anxious about the future
- Two events recent have introduced immense change to the world…
The 911 attacks and war on Terror, and Two Pandemics…Sars & Covid-19
- In such short space of time nations have changed
- The coming Economic Impact on the nations of the latest pandemic is yet to be seen `
 
2.God is in Control…He Knows the Future
- Isaiah Declared God Foresees the Future
Isa 46:9  Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me,
Isa 46:10  Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, 'My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,'
- God knows the end from the beginning…no one can stop His purposes being fulfilled
- His Counsel, His plans shall stand…nothing can stop them.
- Because He knows the end of the plan he is able to reveal what lies ahead and warn us
“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” ( Amos3:7).
- "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”(Deut.29:29)
- God keeps some things secret….other things He reveals, not only for our benefit but also for the next generation
 
3.Daniel Interprets Nebuchadnezzars Dream of Coming Kingdoms
Dan 2:34  You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.
Dan 2:44  And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
Dan 2:45  Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."
- Nebuchadnezzar was King over the greatest world military and economic empire of his day
- God revealed to the King a dream in which each of the successive major World Kingdoms that would come, were revealed in the form of an image
- Daniel interpreted the Kings dream…prophesied of the coming world Kingdoms and the EndTime
- He revealed a Kingdom which would start very small and would overcome and replace all the world Kingdoms, in the end times ( “in the days of these kings”…the final world empire)
- Daniel also himself saw in a vision the Kingdom of Jesus Christ coming in great Power and Glory
- Dan 7:27  Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'
 
4.The Bible is a Reliable Source of Prophecy of World Events
- Jesus First Coming ……at least 18 specific prophecies were accurately fulfilled
There are many more prophecies regarding His Second coming that are yet to be fulfilled
- The Nation of Israel …. At least 16 specific prophecies regarding Israel and its land have been fulfilled
There are more prophecies regarding Jerusalem and Israel yet to be fulfilled
- Because God sees “the end from the beginning” He is able to declare things that are to come
- The Bible has a proven track record of accurately foretelling events affecting nations
- Some things are revealed….somethings are not
- Mat 24:36  "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
 
5.Jesus Prophesied The End Times
- Jesus was a Prophet…
- Moses foretold hundreds of years earlier of a Prophet like him that would come ….referring to Jesus
- Deu 18:15  "The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear,
- Mat 21:11  So the multitudes said, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee."
- Jesus gave gave revelation of the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and of the End Times
- His endtime prophetic revelation are found in Matt.24-25, Luke 21, and Mark 13 and other places
 
 
II.Jesus Revelation of the End Times
 
1.Key Passage
Mat 24:1  Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.
Mat 24:2  And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."
Signs of the End of the Age
Mat 24:3  Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"
Mat 24:4  And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.
Mat 24:5  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
Mat 24:6  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
Mat 24:7  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
Mat 24:8  All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Mat 24:9  "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.
Mat 24:10  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.
Mat 24:11  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.
Mat 24:12  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
Mat 24:13  But he who endures to the end shall be saved.
Mat 24:14  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
 
2.Two Questions Came From the Disciples
Mat 24:3  Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"
- The disciples had been overwhelmed by the size and magnificence of the temple built by Herod, and which which compared to some of the seven wonders of the world.
- It seemed impossible that such a great structure could be destroyed as jesus described
- The Disciple privately asked Jesus about the destruction of the Temple and also about His Coming and The EndTimes
 
 
III.The Temple: When will it be destroyed?
 
Luk 21:20  "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.
Luk 21:21  Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her.
Luk 21:22  For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
Luk 21:23  But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.
Luk 21:24  And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
- Jesus Gave the Key Sign: “ when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies”
- In AD 66-70 Jerusalem was besieged by Roman armies led by Vespasian
- When he received word from Rome that he was being made the new emperor he lifted the siege temporarily and returned to Rome to receive his new position.
- Jewish believers remembered Jesus words and fled Jerusalem to a town of Pella
- Vespasian’s successor Titus returned and laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed it.
- Many people had died from famine, many were killed by the Roman soldiers until blood ran in the streets
- Over one million Jews were killed and a 67,000 taken into captivity
- Titus Gate in Rome…..There remains a Mural display of his triumphant return to Rome
- Jewish Believers escaped because they believed Jesus warning about the destruction of the Temple
- We also are to recognize the signs of our times, believe what Jesus says and respond
 
- Jesus also gave a Sign of the EndTimes
- “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”
- Times of the Gentiles refers to Jerusalem being under the control of foreign nations…..2000 years
- 1948: Jews returned to Israel….Israel birthed as a nation
- 1967: Israel regained control of most of the old city, except the Temple Mount ( Mosque still there)
- 2019: Jerusalem is recognized as the Capital City of Israel by America
- Because Jesus will return to Jerusalem and rule from Jerusalem, the city continues to be the centre of conflict and world news.
- No peace plan proposed by nations will work apart from the promise to Abraham being fulfilled
 
 
IV.The EndTimes and Return of Christ: What will be the Signs?
 
1.Jesus Warns about EndTime Deception
Mat 24:4  And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.
- The only guarantee against deception is having a love for the truth (2Thes.1:10)
- We must have a passionate love for truth and commit to living the Word of God
- Social Media and the News are widely manipulated to promote a narrative, not truth
- Most of what you see and hear in media comes with an agenda …..contrary to Kingdom values
- We must build our lives upon the Word of God …not on current social media or media narratives.
 
2.Jesus Warns about the Beginning of Sorrows
Mat 24:8  “All these are the beginning of sorrows.“
- Beginning”….the commencement, the emergence the first is a series of events
- “Sorrows”…..birth pains, the pains accompanying childbirth, labor pains
- Once labor pains start they cannot be stopped …they are leading to an event ..the birth of a child
- The nearer the birth the more frequent and intense the birth pains
- What are the Birth Pains Jesus described…….. …The Signs of the End?
Mat 24:6  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
Mat 24:7  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
 
3.First Sign: Wars and Natural Disasters
- There are two kinds of wars…Political and Ethnic
- Political…. “ Kingdom against Kingdom”
World Wars 1&2 were political wars for domination and control ….Millions of people were killed
- Ethnic…….“Nation against nation”…. Greek.”ethnos”
- The majority of wars now are ethnic wars….millions have been and are being killed currently
- Eg 1913 Armenians, 1941 Jews, 1947 Kashmir, 1978 Afghanistan, 1991 Somalia, 1997 Rwanda, 2001 Iraq, 2003 Sudan, 2009 Nigeria, 2014 Libya,
- Ethnic and Religious differences are the single greatest cause of conflicts today
 
4.Second Sign: Worldwide Hatred Against Christians
Mat 24:9  "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.
- “Then”….means there is a progression of events occurring that follow one another
- The persecution of Christians today are at near genocide levels all around the world
- The greatest persecution of Christians currently is from Radical Islam
- Middle East, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, North Korea’s, China, Somalia, Libya, Iraq,
- Relentless persecutions against Christians is occurring in over 140 countries around the world….daily
- Christians are the worlds most persecuted religious group in 21st century
- They are being imprisoned, tortured, assaulted, raped, sold as slaves, crucified, discriminated against
- Eg. China……today…massive persecution of Christians…people paid to dob them in to authorities
 
- There is a spirit of Hatred being unleashed towards people who follow Christ and stand for Christian principles …eg Marriage, Family, Gender, Purity
- In the West increasing hatred is being openly manifested against any one who holds a view that differs from Progressive Left Ideology
- Hate speech… defined by Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".
Hate Speech has become commonly redefined as having and expressing a different, usually conservative opinion, from the favored left ideology
The common strategy is to …Name, Blame, Shame, and then attack and destroy in every way possible
A person holding a Christian or differing view is labelled and attacked and bullied publicly
- Holding a Christian or Conservative view is considered “hateful”by many because it opposes their views
- Operating together are the Religious (Islam) and Political (Radical Left)
- Mar 3:6  Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.
- The Pharisees were religious legalists, the Herodians were a political lobby group…. They hated each other but were joined as partners in their opposition to Jesus Christ
Jesus taught His Disciples how to Respond…
Luk 6:22  Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man's sake.
Luk 6:23  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.
Mat 5:44  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
- Rejection, reviling, exclusion and even persecution is inevitable for a genuine follower of Christ
- Persecution is a spiritual issue…it is Jesus Himself who is being opposed
- God promises eternal reward for those who endure persecution for His names sake
( Not for stupid religious behavior or attitudes that people reject and react to)
- We are challenged to fix our eyes on the honor and reward and rejoice not be miserable and negative
- We are to Love, Bless, Do good to and Pray for those who treat us badly for the name of Christ
 
 
5.Third Sign: Offenses and Hatred among Christians
- Mat 24:10  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.
- “ Many”…..A major issue and Key sign among Christians of the EndTimes will be offenses!
- “Offended”….to trip or stumble….Root: Skandalon …. The bait in a trap for birds
- There are daily opportunities to become offended by people
- Offenses lead to betrayal and to open hatred
- Why do people become offended?
They have been treated unjustly, wronged against in some way or
They believe they have been treated unjustly
This is usually because of unmet and unspoken Expectations of people
 
- People who become offended don’t realize that they are trapped in a snare
- They are so focussed on injustice and hurt that they are unaware of having an offended heart
- They are blinded by pride to their true heart condition
Pro 18:19  A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, And contentions are like the bars of a castle.
- Offended people build walls around their heart to protect themselves from further hurt
- They allow in only those who will agree with their hurt and offense…ie. other offended people
- They share their offense over and over and feed on the demonic spirit behind it
- They constantly misinterpret the actions of others because of heart offense, and this becomes a further cause for offense
Responses People Make when Offended
- Distance:………They distance and withdraw from godly relationships that could help them
Pro 18:1  A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment.
- Demons: ……..They open the doors to demons to torment
And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers (Mat.18:34-35)
- Deception:…. .They become blinded and unable to see why life is going badly
But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eye (1Jn.2:11)
- Defilement:….They become bitter and defile others by criticism, gossip, destructive talk
“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled” (Heb12:15)
- Betray One Another
“Betray”….to deliver over to enemies, walk away from relationship, give up confidences
Luk 21:16  You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.
- Hate One Another
“Hate”…….miseo….to detest, pursue with hostile intent, love less…withhold love and honor due
- People withdraw from relationships and withhold love and honor
- People actively hate and resent, and attack the person and their reputation
- People who are offended are easily stirred up to anger by any form of injustice they see or hear.
- They join other offended people and feed off their offenses. They defile and become defiled
- Their love for God grows cold and they either become religious or abandon church
 
 
V.Response: Prepare for His Coming
 
- Mat 16:27  For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.
- Jesus will return in great Glory and Power and Majesty to establish His Kingdom on earth
- He will reward each man according to his works….how he has lived out his life following Christ
- Today is the time to prepare for His return….signs are clear of His imminent return
 
Jas 1:12  Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
 
For Personal Consideration
1.What has the Holy Spirit spoken to you about through this study?
2.What issues does He want you address and make changes?
3.Are you living in fear and anxiety about issues and challenges you are facing in life ?
4.What could you do to come to a place of peace and joy?
5.How easily are you offended?
6.Can you receive feedback and correction without becoming offended?
7.Are you carrying offenses that you need to address?

The Signs of the End Times (2 of 3)  

Sat 27 Jun 2020 AM « Back to Top

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Of all the people, Christians should be the most positive. Man, we're supposed to be filled with hope! Hope has to do with a great, amazing future ahead of us. We have an insight into what's coming. We just need to search the word of God and find it. We're not to be ignorant of the signs, nor to be afraid of them.

Of all the people, Christians should be the most positive. Man, we're supposed to be filled with hope! Hope has to do with a great, amazing future ahead of us.

If you look at the media, and look at the world, look at all the things going on, you have every reason to feel a bit depressed, discouraged, cynical, or disheartened.

But if you look at the word of God, and what God has to say to us about what lays ahead for us… wow! We should be the most positive people of all, because we have an insight into what's coming. We just need to search the word of God and find it.

Matthew 24:1 – “Jesus went out and departed into the temple, His disciples came to show Him the magnificent buildings of the temple (they were just amazing). And Jesus said to them, do you see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another. Everything will be thrown down”.

He goes on, and He begins to talk… The disciples come to Him, as He sat on the Mouth of Olives.

Matthew 24:3 – “As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Two questions: when will the temple be overthrown; and what will be the signs of the End Times?

Matthew 24:4 – “Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.”

The first thing He warns about, is the possibility of deception.

Matthew 24:5-13 – You will hear of wars, and rumours of wars. See you're not troubled. These things must come to pass, the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There'll be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places. These are just the beginning of the sorrows. (This is the beginning of like a childbirth). They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you. You'll be hated of all nations for My name's sake. Many will be offended, and betray one another, and will hate one another. False prophets will rise and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved”.

He's warning about deception; and His encouragement of the need to persevere in our faith, and our journey.

Matthew 24:14 – “For the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, then the end will come”.

As we start, I just want to just go back to a couple of the things that we touched on last week. We talked a little bit about the massive global shifts that are taking place. We're living in a time when there's massive global change is occurring. America has been a massive power in the earth, for as long as I've been alive, and now you find now its power is weakening. All kinds of turmoils are going on, and people get a bit anxious when they see what's happening in the world. We see the impact of the 9/11 attack, that caused a change in the world.

There were other things have happened since then. Now there's Covid, and the SARs that went before it, which have caused an upheaval, that we can't be so sure everything's going to carry on like we expect. Mostly we carry on, and expect everything to be unchanged, and then when something like this comes, your whole world is shaken, and many people become fearful and anxious. There's also an economic issue that’s going to come…

After I preached this message last week, I opened up one of my news feeds to look at, and ‘Rumours of Wars’ was the title, and it talked about what's the looming war between Pakistan and China, and then other wars, in other places, that are happening around the world. So, if you look at the headlines, you'll start to see many of things that we've talked about.

How many read about the, for example, the plague of locusts that's going around, and it's of a size that’s unprecedented. These plagues of locusts are so big, they cover 100 square miles. That's just full of billions of locusts, and they're in Africa, and then also up into some parts of Asia as well. When you have that kind of plague come, then you have after it, famine.

We see those things in Jesus' statements. So anyway, the things we looked at was that:

1) Global shifts taking place - and were more to come.

2) God is in control. God has the beginning, and the end, worked out.

He has all things under control. That doesn't mean events in the earth are under control. It means in the bigger plan, God knows, and nothing is taking Him by surprise.

We saw then that Jesus revealed signs to watch out for. We read in one place for example, how He rebuked the religious leaders. In Matthew 16:1-3, He said: you guys are religious leaders – you’re supposed to know the Bible. You can tell the signs of the weather. You know that ‘red sky in the morning is the shepherd's warning’. It's the same here - we all go by seasons here. You can tell that it's winter; you can read the signs - trees are bare. He said: you can read all these natural seasons, but you can't read the signs of the times. You had the Bible, with all the prophesies of My coming; but when I come… you don't even know where I am! He's giving us a heads-up, that it will also be like that in the last days.

In Luke 9, it tells us that He wept over the city of Jerusalem. He grieved over it. He grieved, because He said: you didn't know the time of your visitation. You didn't recognise in the season of history - what God was just doing in your midst; and because you didn't recognise it, now your enemies will come against you, and will destroy you - which happened about 70 years later.

Notice in those contexts, He's saying: it is important that we be aware of what's happening in the world - and relate it to what the word of God says, not to opinions of people. The first sign was: wars, and natural disasters. There would be wars, and rumours of wars; nation against nation, ethnic wars; kingdom against kingdom, global wars, or conflicts. There would also be famines, pestilences, earthquakes… He said all those things.

Have a look! You will see Covid-19, and you see the riots that are taking place, that are in every nation of the earth - all kinds of issues that are happening, that are kind of almost unprecedented. There's a looming global depression. They're just printing money, like it's just going out of style. You can't print money without a consequence. The consequence is that there's going to be an economic upheaval in the world.

The low interest rates, for example, have affected the ability of pension plans in the United States to be able to provide for the future. A few years ago, they said they'll all expire in 2045; now they're saying 2030. Suddenly it's decreased, because the amount of money they can gain by investing is so low, it's not keeping up with the demand that's coming. So before, it was known that by 2030, the American pension plans will all collapse. What happens then when there's no money to provide for elderly?

We're living in a season of unprecedented change, and we're not to be ignorant of the signs, nor to be afraid of them. The Bible says to ‘look up’ when you see these things coming - fix your eyes on Jesus, not on the circumstances, or carry on like nothing's happening.

He said the second sign would be: widespread hated towards Christians. If you have a look through the world, and start to read some of the material, and watch what's really happening, you'll find there's unprecedented persecution of Christians across the world. Just look up ‘persecution of Christians’ on Google. You can find it - it's very easy to find. Look for statistics - you'll find there's more Christians being killed now, than at any time in history, around the world. Become informed about what's happening - look for the signs.

The third sign that He mentioned was the sign of offences - ‘many would become offended’, many!

Right now, one of the big issues is people get offended. You just have a differing opinion, and now they suddenly get wound up, and angry, and offended, and they walk away. You try to talk to people about issues, and they get offended, and rise up. That's what Jesus said - many will be offended! Many, many!

There's going to be a big problem of people being offended very easily. Are you offended very easily? Wait until your next offence comes… and we'll see! I've found that Christians get very upset, very easily - over little things! Mostly, when you try to give them a bit of feedback, on how they could grow, or how they could change, or how they could do something better. Then they get huffy…

The fourth sign is… many false prophets.

Matthew 24:11 – “Many false prophets will arise and deceive many”.

Three times, in Matthew 24, Jesus warns the disciples about deception. Three times He says: look out, don't be deceived. Here's the thing about being deceived… you don't know you're deceived! You just think - I'm right; they're wrong.

If Jesus tells you something once, it's good to listen to it. Twice, He's really getting your attention. Three times - He's saying this is a big issue. Deception - believing that you're right, when you're wrong.

There will be lots of false prophets; and false prophets essentially draw people to themselves, and not to God. If I just take away the word ‘false prophet’ and instead just use… people that are very spiritual, but draw people to themselves, rather than building them to the kingdom of God, and Jesus - that would be a false prophet, see? They appear very ‘spiritual’, and they have encounters - all kinds of things. But what are they drawing people to?

There are some distinct signs… A false prophet will draw people to themselves, not to God, and His word. The message that they have will lack the essence of the gospel, repentance, and a changed life.

If ‘prophetic’ messages are all about all the great things that will happen, but don't call you to repent, and to transformation, then something is essentially missing, at the core of it. Prophetic messages always have a change - admit you were wrong, and turn to what's right, so God can bless you. That's what repentance means. I was wrong, but I turn around now, because this is what God says - this is right. I'll follow that.

Repentance is called a ‘foundation’ for your faith. It's not something you just do once. You continue to do it, all your life - every time you realise, from the word of God, that you're wrong… “God, I'm wrong. I ask You to forgive me. I turn around and now I embrace Your truth and walk in Your truth”. That's what repentance is - it's a change of heart, a change in your way of thinking.

The false prophet will lack a call to repentance, and to transformation; and often draw people by fancy words, or experiences, or things like that. This is not my opinion - this is exactly what God says in His word, that characterises people, who move in a false prophetic.

Remember, it doesn't mean that they don't talk about God. It just means they draw people to themselves; and they do certain things, it's quite easy to see…

Jeremiah 6:14 – “They dress the wound of my people, as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

They fail to address the real hurts, and issues of people. They ‘heal My people lightly’, meaning that they talk about external things, but don't address the real need for heart change. This is one thing we've been very passionate about - your need (and our need) for heart transformation.

They fail to call people to repentance and transformation. The message is one of: you will be okay, God loves you, God's going to bless you, everything will be fine! Listen, that's a false hope! What you really need, is change!

It also says (in that same verse), that they prophesy peace, when there is no peace. They flatter people, and tell them what they want to hear, instead of warning them what's about to come.

When did you last hear a message on the fear of God? When did you last hear a message on Eternal Judgements? When did you last hear one on standing before the Judgement seat of Christ, and giving account for your life?

The western world has moved from the essence and core of the gospel, which is transformation, walking with God, repentance and acting in faith - to a message which makes you feel good, by promising you blessing after blessing. It's all on the blessings - what God can give to you, and how you can benefit - which is not requiring you to have a transformed life. That's why we've got churches in the west that are full of people who attend, but during the rest of the week, they're not really doing anything to build the kingdom of God.

That's a deceptive message - it's plausible, and it gathers a crowd, because it appeals to people. In other words… tell me how I can get ahead, but don't talk to me about changing my life. That's very widespread - and don't talk to me about deliverance, especially! You'd be amazed how many churches are totally resistant to the deliverance ministry.

Deliverance has to do with transformation of the heart, transformation of your character, transformation of your life - about freedom. If there's no message that Jesus paid the price for you to be delivered from demons, then that means you're going to just continue with them. That's a false peace! It's a false peace!

Here's another way of saying it… Let’s say that I had rust in the car, and I say: we can just sand it a bit, and paint over it. That's what they're talking about here - healing the people's needs lightly, instead of… Everyone knows that if there's rust in a car, you have to cut out the rust, put in some fresh metal, paint it over - and then you've got something that'll last. If you just paint over it, then it does look good, but the rust is continuing, and soon the problem will be severe, to the point the car may be off the road.

Jeremiah 23:16-17 – ““Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts, they say: ‘No harm will come to you.’”

It says that false prophets will “speak visions from their own heart and not from the Lord”.

They're speaking what's come out of their own heart; but they are saying it like “oh, God is saying this, God is saying that, I believe… blah blah blah”. But they're failing to address the real issues of people - that people live a life that says, by the way they live, that they deny or despise God, and despise His word.

If you're a follower of Christ, you follow Him - you keep His commands. You take the word, and you apply it into your life. Simply saying that you're following Jesus means nothing, unless you actually follow Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we're serving Him and letting Him change us – that His word is very important in our life. It's very important to see these things.

He's talking about the false prophetic - a message that promises much, but doesn't end with transformation, and doesn't warn people about things that are to come.

For example, what if you knew that only had 24 hours – that you were going to finish your life on earth, and stand before God; and every detail of your life would be before Him, to see what you qualified for in eternity. What would you go home and change? That tells you where you're living! We are to live with eternity in mind, all the time; and then it's not whether anyone's watching me. I'm always under the eye of the Lord, and I'm always living to please Him.

How I do marriage, family, finances; how I treat people, relate to people, build my life, and priorities has all got one fundamental thing... I've got an audience of One, that I'm trying to please, every day of my life, in every moment. Why am I trying to please Him? Because He's sacrificed so much for me, and I love Him. There's a big outcome for me, for eternity, in this. How I respond to Him will affect me for all eternity - my destination, not just heaven and hell, but the realm that I will live in, for eternity.

False prophets speak a vision of their own heart. In Matthew 7, Jesus said they present as sheep, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. What does that mean?

They present a sheep means - they look like Christians. They come and praise the Lord, brother! They come in with their stuff, but inwardly they have an agenda. A wolf wants to devour, to take something from you.

The true prophetic will have Jesus as the focus, and lead people to experience Him, and they will confront anything that's in the way. That's why deliverance always takes place around the true prophetic ministries, because there's a real need for the demonic to be shifted off your life, in order to encounter they greater atmospheres of God.

2 Peter 2:1 – “They bring teachings that cause disunity and division”.

Whenever you find that people are divided, not by the truth, but by teachings that flatter - that make you feel good about yourself, make you very important… “oh brother, you're going to have a great, wonderful ministry”. Well, here's the thing… God calls everyone to greatness, but there is a path you take, and it's called humility in serving. So, if all the words are always great - wonderful things about the future, then you've got to ask: what are the conditions, entailed in all of this? What's my part?

The tendency that false prophets have is to move, and the agenda is often to make money, exploit people, or to draw a gathering to themselves. There are true prophets, of course, but here's what Paul's warning was… Paul's warning to Timothy: “preach the word, be ready in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, exhort, with all suffering”.

He's saying: this is what the remedy is - preach the word of God. Not a hang a scripture in on your own ideas, but rather, see what God has to say, and proclaim it.

Then it says: convince! Persuade people to follow the truth.

It says: rebuke! Confront people, when they're missing the mark.

You don't get a lot of that these days, because people are too afraid that they will upset someone; but if they're wrong, they're wrong. Tell them they're wrong! You're doing them a favour. You're showing that you love them.

2 Timothy 4:3 – “For the time will come…”

Which time do you think he's talking about? He's talking about the End Times. The time will come, and something is going to happen!

“…when they will not endure sound doctrine”.

A time will come, in the church, where people don't want good, sound teaching. They don't want sound doctrine. Sound doctrine means sound teaching, and it has a purpose. Sound teaching is Bible teaching that establishes you in your faith, and in maturity.

Many young people, when they walk out of church, go into the cities, and they get into an environment where there's another spirit operating, very strongly - and they haven't got sound doctrine. They've had a great experience. “Oh, it was great - someone prophesied, I got a touch from God!” I love all of that, it's wonderful, but you need sound doctrine.

Sound doctrine (teaching) shapes the way you think, and what you believe; so that when someone comes up with some weird thing, you don't believe them, because you know the word of God. You've got a reference to the word of God. If you're not in the word of God, how will you know the truth?

The time will come (the end of the times) when people will want messages that make them feel good. They won't want things that change them. There are some truths, but here's the thing about truth - it's incredibly uncomfortable! We are in an age where there's this thing of ‘tolerance’ - just include everyone; and accept everything. It's fine to include, to accept; but tolerance is another thing. Tolerance is we go along with what they're saying and believing, rather than standing up and saying: that's actually wrong!

Fornication is wrong - it keeps you out of the kingdom of God. Homosexual acts are wrong – they will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Pride is wrong – it will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Gluttony is wrong – it will keep you out of the kingdom of God. There are many things the Bible says will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Do you know what they are? They're in the word. They're spelt out in two or three places, in the word, very clearly.

They won't endure sound doctrine. He says: they will have “itching ears”. He describes a condition where people ears are itching – meaning that you want someone to scratch it. You want people to tell you the messages that you like to hear - you'll be great, marvellous, wonderful, fabulous! Now listen, there's a place for encouragement, and exhortation… but not for flattery!

Having itching ears means you're looking for the things that are nice to hear, but don't challenge you to change. I had a friend of mine, a pastor, who brought a message which was truth, at a very significant world conference; and was told afterwards - don't preach that. It was about the rightful role of men and women, working together, in partnership, under God. How about that!

They will have “itching ears” - so they're looking for messages that make them feel good, but don't require Godly living.

Here's the next thing... It says: “they will turn away their ears from the truth”. If you're not going to incline your ears to the truth, then you will turn your ears away to something else.

The only thing that keeps you from deception, is having a love for truth. I love the truth! If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Tell me the truth. See, that’s what keeps you from being deceived!

You all know people, you look at, and think - you're not in touch with what's going on, you know; someone needs to tell you something. Maybe you're that person? Have you got anyone that can tell you things? That's why we have a body of people, to be part of - because maybe you can hide in a big crowd, but in a small group… you can't pull off your junk in that small group! They all see who you are. They say: “come on, cut that out”! That's why small groups are a great chance to grow. You're connected relationally, and you can't pull the wool over everyone in a small group. If you're dominant and bossy, either you go, or the group just breaks up, because of your bad influence. Someone in leadership needs to tell you: listen, don't do that - it's not all about you!

It says: “they will turn to fables”. Here's the thing… If you haven't got a heart that's turned towards truth - God teach me; God I'm hungry for the truth; I want Your word; I want revelation; I want the spirit of revelation on me; I want sound doctrine; I want to grow; I want to be established; I want to live my life by the word of God - it says you'll be “turned to fables”.

Fables are fiction stories! Christian fiction stories - mythology, all kinds of weird and wonderful things, and there's a huge draw of people, away from serving God, and advancing the kingdom, and attracted to experiential things, that make them feel good, and give a sense of having all this knowledge of great things… but actually, when you look on the ground, it doesn't lead to sacrificial love, serving ministry.

That's why Paul said: “sound doctrine”, and “endure hardship” - endure difficulty! Do the work of an evangelist and fulfil your ministry. He's saying to Timothy, don't just send around any experiences; you've got a work to do, so “endure hardship” - because sometimes, serving God has got a lot of hardship. There are difficulties in it, because it doesn't always go well. You've got demonic opposition; you've got people opposition; you've got setbacks and difficulties.

He said: just endure hardness; toughen up; be a strong believer; not someone who's dropped over quickly. He says: you're called to be an evangelist, so do the work you're called to do. At the end of it, you want to end your life knowing: I did what God called me to do, I fulfilled my ministry. What has God called you to do? What is the ministry that He's called you to? Are you preparing, and developing?

The fifth sign is Lawlessness. The love of many will grow cold, because of lawlessness.

Matthew 24:12 – “Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold”.

Many means many - lots of people. Their love will grow cold. Their passion for God will grow cold. They will be lukewarm, half-hearted believers. They're no longer loving, and serving, people. If you love, you show kindness - you serve people, you have a great attitude to people. You have a focus on making life better, investing in people. And it says what will happen in these days - that the love of many will grow cold, no longer passionate for the Lord. In Revelations 3, the Laodicean Church, Jesus said: you've done lots of things, but there's no passion, no love, no fire. Where's the fire? Where's the love for God?

The love for God is shown by willingness to do what He says. If you love Me, keep My commandments. Keeping your passion for God alive requires that I respond to Him, and not just have great worship experiences. You've got to ask yourself: am I just coming along, and someone else is providing an atmosphere for me to be charged up; or am I living a life where I'm constantly being recharged, because of my own work with God, my personal intimacy with Him? You can't live off someone else's experience. They encourage you, they bless you, they help you, they keep you going - but you can't live off it.

The reason the passion will go is because “iniquity will abound”. What do they mean by iniquity? It comes from the word ‘anomia’ – ‘a’ means ‘without’, and ‘nomia’ means ‘law’. Unrestrained, no boundaries, no restraint of the laws of God - and that expands to having no restraint of the laws of the nation either. It's a deep-seated attitude of wanting to do your own thing, to act independently of any boundaries. So, iniquity means to act without restraint - doing what pleases you, without any respect for boundaries or laws.

Have a look what's going on in America right now. Firstly, there is real, authentic injustice, and deep-seated wounding in the core of the nation, among many people. There's no doubt that there is a very deep and true injustice. However, demonic spirits exploit unresolved injustice, and turn it into iniquity, and lawlessness, so that it becomes destructive. It's one thing to raise a voice, to challenge the system; but it's another thing to enter wanton disruption. It's a spirit! It's a spirit that gets on people, and they don't even know what's going on. They violate the laws of God! They show contempt for the law, and contempt for boundaries.

Where are you at, in all of this? Often the spirit of lawlessness just shows up in the attitude towards authorities, when you encounter them. All authority comes from God, so even if an authority on earth misrepresents Him, and doesn't act well, I still need to keep my heart of respect for God, and His authority; and not try to justify rebelling against what is in front of me.

The Bible says that if you love God, it's demonstrated by how you treat people. His authority, His Lordship - you see it by how you respond, when an authority person comes in front of you. We're not to be afraid of them, and we're not to disrespect, or despise them; we're just to recognise that's what it is.

Commonly, lawlessness is shown by independence; disrespect for authority; abusive names to people in authority - criticising them, running them down. It's shown by passive rebellion, or defiance.

If you have a look at the methods of raising children in the last 50 years, their whole philosophy of parenting is never saying ‘no’ to the child. When the heck will they learn that ‘no’ is a part of life? What they learn is that my will is more important than anyone else. You've trained them in lawlessness.

The End Times spread of lawlessness will be deeply connected to what's happening in families, and the raising of children, so that they get used to living with no restraints. You can't say no to them. You can't point out things that are wrong and get them to change. All of that has a rational thinking behind it, but it endorses the spirit of lawlessness. There are such things as boundaries, and if you teach people healthy boundaries, they learn respect for authority, and a fear of God. If you don't have healthy boundaries, then people learn that nothing can stop me. I will have what I want, when I want, how I want, and I get what I want - so they throw tantrums, and parents give in.

If you're a parent that gives in to your child's tantrums, and lets them have everything they want, when they want it, then you are training them in lawlessness. You are literally ruining them. They won't respect you, when they grow up. You will have problems later on.

We've got a great family. I'm proud of my children. I have seven children, with seven wonderful spouses, and 24 grandchildren - and there's honour and respect that flows through the family. There's a reason for that. It doesn't just happen. There are principles that you put into family life, into raising children, building family culture, and it has to do with the fear of God, and respect.

If there's disrespect in family for those who are older, then you're going to have the spirit of lawlessness unleashed. This is a huge problem, and a lot of parents need to have a re-think of what you're doing. Where did you get these ideas from? Did you get them from the word of God? Some of the stuff that's been current - I've been around long enough to see when they changed it, from this to that; and years later they had to change it back again, because they got it all wrong. I was in confrontation back here, because I said: this is the right way to do it. I thought later, when I went to one of the schools, and they're making this big announcement about the change, I thought: who will stand up and say “we got it wrong, for a whole generation of children, about their reading”?

Spirit of lawlessness - are you getting the idea what lawlessness is? Where does it come from? Lawlessness originated in Lucifer. That's why he got kicked out of heaven! If he got kicked out of heaven for lawlessness, then what's going to happen to your expectation of a great thing ahead of you, if you embrace lawlessness? We can't embrace lawlessness!

Ezekiel 28:15 - why he fell from heaven: iniquity was found in him. Whenever you allow lawlessness to come around you, you become rebellious, and independent. You either actively rebel against authority; or quietly resist it. You say yes, but actually its no! You smile, and say ‘yes; but inside, you’re saying ‘no way’, and what outworks is a passive resistance - their will against someone else's will.

I mean, you've all seen that as a parent, with a child. You tell them to do something, and it's just a fight all the way, because there's no willingness to do it, and it's a passive resisting. Here's the thing… When you don't understand this principle, around the kingdom of God being a kingdom with order, and authority, then you embrace lawlessness - independence, doing my own thing.

Guess what kingdom you become influenced by? The demonic realm of lawlessness starts to come around your life! You can be in church, but under another spirit in all your life, and how you run it; and so, what you're seeing in America now, is a spirit of lawlessness that has come on people, and the end is always the same. It's destructive!

Matthew 7:23 – “In the last days, many (many, many, many) will say to Me ‘Lord, Lord’ (He's talking about Christians) we did miracles in Your name, we cast out demons, we prophesied in Your name. And I will say to them, I didn't know you…”

There's no deep intimacy, and surrender to be transformed, and your work is of iniquity. You did your own thing. You used My name, My gifts, everything I had, in order to advance yourself. The core of iniquity is an independence - I'll do what I want to do. That's why Jesus died for our iniquity.

Isaiah 53:6 – “We all like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way, and He laid on Him the iniquity of us all”

Iniquity - going my way. The only way to be free of iniquity, is through repentance, and understanding the principles of the kingdom - of surrender from my way; and we have His way.

Here's a sixth sign… He says: “As it was in the days of Noah”. The sixth sign is seeing in the earth things that were in existence in the days of Noah.

The seventh sign is… seeing things in the earth, that were in existence, in the days of Lot.

Luke 17:26-27 – “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”

Look in Genesis 6:1-11, to find out what was happening, in the days of Noah. The first thing was, there was a population explosion…

Genesis 6:1 – “It came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth”.

Firstly, people started to multiply, and fill the earth - there was a population explosion. Secondly, there was widespread engagement with the occult.

Genesis 6:4 – “There were giants in the earth, in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and bore children to them, these were the mighty men of old, men of renown”.

There were some angels, called ‘watchers’, who were given an assignment by God, to watch over men and to progressively instruct them, so that there be revelation of technology, and various other things, so that man would gradually grow in their capacity to fill and take dominion over the earth.

However, the watcher angels saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and it says then they left their position and rank, and they were involved forcibly in having sexual relationships with women, and the offspring of those are what's called Nephilim. The Nephilim were giants. When you read in mythology, of the great giants that they talk about, these are the Nephilim.

Not only that, the giants in the land, these Nephilim (they're also called Fallen Ones) were very brutal, very violent, and they were taking control. Their whole goal was to destroy the seed of the woman, to corrupt mankind. That's why God had to wipe it all out.

Then there was another eruption that took place, and some of the giants ended up in the Land of Canaan, that Abraham went into. When Joshua came, these are the giants they had to overcome. They're not natural. They're a mixture of angelic and human. They're the result of a complete defilement of occult into the earth.

The next thing is, there was widespread corruption of the imagination and thoughts of the heart.

Genesis 6:5 – “The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great, every intent of the thoughts of heart and man was evil continually”.

There was a constant corruption in the heart, and what people wanted. Here's the next one - there was widespread lawlessness and violence.

Some of these things you're seeing in the earth now, are exactly what was in the earth in Noah's day.

Genesis 6:11 – “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence”

Genesis 6:13 – “God said to Noah, the end of all flesh is come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them”.

Violence means injustice; use of force to injure people, and abuse people, and kill people.

Proverbs 4:17 – “They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence”

The “wine of violence” speaks of how violence becomes intoxicating, and addictive to people. The earth was filled with violence, injustice. Have a look what's happening in the earth now… Violence is increasing. In the 20th Century, over 200 million people were killed in two World Wars. That's violence on a massive scale. Up to 300 million have been killed in the ethnic, and other armed conflicts – more than the Great Wars! 44 million in a year are killed by abortion - that's violence against a child. New Zealand (per capita) is in the top four in the world, and will grow higher, because of the recent law change, while you weren't looking, during Covid. There are things changing rapidly in the world, and we need to be aware of that, so we're prepared for the coming of the Lord.

Genesis 6:11 – “the earth was corrupt and filled with violence”.

Now one of the most widespread forms of corruption today is sexual slavery. It's estimated that over 40 million people today across the world are in slavery of some kind or another. Forced to do things that they would not do, if they had the choice - forced marriages, and child slavery. The estimate I picked up yesterday was 25 million people, in sexual slavery. Human trafficking is a big, big business today. Violence is filling the earth. It's in every country. It's a global issue.

Violence filled the earth… and the Lord saw it. The things that we're seeing are symptomatic of a movement - birth pains, getting closer and closer, until we get to the end time, to the coming of the Lord.

In the days of Noah, there was widespread resistance to the word of God…

Hebrews 11:7 – “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith."

Noah was warned by God, of things not yet seen. By faith, he built an ark. God spoke to Noah, because Noah was upright, and walked with Him. He spoke to him: prepare!

God said: I'm going to do something you've never seen before. I'm going to cause rain to come, and floods to come. The whole earth will be covered with water. He said: rain? What's rain? He was speaking of something he had never seen before. It had never happened! The Bible says that there was a mist that went up, from the face of the earth, that watered the land. The whole of the earth was covered with a canopy, right around the whole earth.

He said: it's going to rain, and every place you can see will be covered with water, and the only way that you will escape, is if you build an ark. I'll tell you exactly how to build, and what to build, and it will be for the saving of your family. So, for 120 years, He did something very, very crazy. He was the crazy man! He was the real crazy prophet man, who had this idea that life would not continue the way everyone expected - that something was about to go down. He was the crazy man that laid down his life, to build something, so that his family would survive.

He was the crazy man that preached for 120 years about righteousness and getting right with God; and they mocked at him and ridiculed him. In other words, there was no love for truth. There was resistance to the word of God.

His message would have been repentance - if you don't repent, then you can't be saved. Get this. If they had repented, they would have come and joined him, in building the ark. Now no one knew what was coming, until it came; and when it came, what were they doing? It says they were eating, drinking, laughing, working. They were having marriages, giving and receiving in marriage; doing everything normal. Life was just going on, and then suddenly, one day, something came out of the air, that they had never seen before - spots of rain!

It says that the whole of the depths of the earth were opened. Something they'd never seen before, subterranean reservoirs of water, came up out of the earth; and the earth, with the heavy rain, and the subterranean waters, and the gradual, progressive, loss of all of that canopy over the earth… gradually came to a point where the whole earth was flooded, and everything perished - except those who believed God, and prepared the ark. It says: he did it, by faith.

What if we were to tell you there's something coming, you've never seen, that no one has ever seen? It's described in the word of God, in many different places. I've got no time to give it all to you now, but…

“as it was in the days of Noah…” - widespread demonic occult activity, corruption, violence, injustice, slavery, trafficking; resistance to the word of God… That in those days, God had been planning something he would do. He's promised that He will never ever destroy the earth by water, so you don't have to worry about the world being flooded… He's got something different in mind!

Here's the thing... Many Christians, their biggest thing is, we want to judge all the sinners, and we're going to be right. You really want to get out of that mindset! It's not the heart of God that any man perishes, but that all will be saved.

So, one of the signs of the End Times, will be that the gospel, the preaching of the kingdom of God, in power, will spread through the whole earth. God so desires that people not perish. He's longsuffering, waiting, wanting no one to perish. God is not willing any perish, but all be saved; so before the very End Time, when judgements start to come on the earth, there will be the preaching of the gospel throughout the whole earth. The gospel of the kingdom, in the power of God, bringing healing, deliverance, and supernatural transformation.

For that to happen, God must raise up the church, with a passion to spread the gospel, in the power of God. That's going to happen! Why? A lot of people think it's just going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and they will all get what they deserve. No, that's not the heart of God! God paid a huge price for everyone to be saved, but not everyone's saved, if they don't hear the message; and not everyone's saved, because when they hear it, they don't respond.

God wants to raise up a company of people, throughout the earth, like Noah, that believed: yes, something is coming on the earth! Yes, I see the sign of it! Yes, I will give my life to build the kingdom of God! I will lay my life down, because God has given me a vision for what I must do with my life! I have a vision to build!

It could be in teaching, education, finance, somewhere in the community; or could just be your family. What God calls you to build is not so important. It's that you do get into it, and build - build your life, your marriage, your finances, the local church. Build a place where God's presence is. Come, prepare to worship! Come with a heart that desires God! Come with a heart that knows things are uncertain in the earth, but God is our answer! God gives us the breakthrough! Come with a spirit of faith, saying: God, I can't settle for what I have. I want more of You!

Now we're just about to go into another season of fasting again. I need more of God! I want to know Him. I want to touch His power and see people's lives transformed. Noah warned of God, of things that were not yet seen; by faith he committed his whole life to building an ark, and the result was all his family, the next generation, were part of what God did.

The next generation of your family… maybe you've made mistakes, but it's not too late to start to pray for them, and start to put things right, start to sow again, and build. That's in your own natural family, but the family of God is bigger than our natural family. It involves other people. We need to be committed to build the local church. We need to be committed to build small groups, to be built places where God can come because we're praying and believing.

It's not the how of it, it's just the function of it - that we gather, and build up one another, and encourage one another, exhort one another. When you come… come with the truth! Spend time in the word of God, bring something God is speaking to you about. Come, not with an empty life, but a full life.

I'm passionate for God, I'm hungry for His kingdom, I'm seeking the Lord with all my heart! I'm in the word of God! God is speaking to me and changing me, oh I have something to give. That's for everyone. It's for everyone.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we stand to our feet right now... Come on, I want us to give honour to Jesus. He is warning us of things to come. He's saying: lift your eyes - look! You can read the signs of the seasons. Look at the sign of the times, look at the time you're living in. Look at the time we're living in! How exciting to be alive when the greatest things that God has planned will come into the earth! How glorious! God's glory will be seen in the whole earth and we're called to be a part of it. Oh, we want to arise, come on, let's worship Him. Lift your hands to Him right now! Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! We give You the honour. We give You the glory! Come upon us, glory of God! Come upon our nation. We commit to prayer. We seek revival. Awaken Your people. Awaken our hearts. Awaken the city.

Jesus said: beware, take heed, lest you be deceived, lest you think you're doing okay and you're not. Get a love for the truth, and then as He goes through the parables He says this: I tell you, watch, pray, watch, pray, watch, pray. Build your prayer life. Build your prayer life. Build intimacy with God. Spend time with Him.

He begins to tell of the parables of the Servant and the House, who begins to abuse the other servants - speaking of having a bad attitude to the body of Christ. He talks about the virgins who were prepared, who had paid the price of intimacy with Jesus. He talks about the faithful servants who had served faithfully. God is telling us - wake up, wake up church, wake up! Wake up!

Thank You Lord! Awaken us! Thank You Lord! We honour You Jesus. Come in strength! Come in glory! Come in power! We reach out to You Lord. We hunger for You Lord. Come in revival! Thank You Lord. Come awaken us Lord! We honour You Jesus. We cry out, pour out the spirit of revival. Have mercy on Your people. Let the glory of God be seen upon us. We honour You. We praise You. We bless You. We give You thanks. Our hearts are filled with joy and expectation for the things You're bringing in being. Amen.

I want you to consider your own prayer life, your own walk with God. Take the message, go back over it again, and ask yourself: what is the Holy Spirit speaking to me about. Read Matthew 24 & 25. Start to think about it. The days of Lot, what was going on? What was happening? You will find that it's happening in the world today. Read 2 Timothy 3 - in the last days, perilous times, what will people be like? Look around, you can see it now.

Church, prepare. Prepare. Say God, awaken my heart. I want to be like Noah, who being warned of God, of things not yet seen, built an ark. Amen. There's a great presence of God here. Carry that presence out into the community. Our prayer as a corporate body is for revival in our city, revival in our region, revival in our nation. Amen. God bless you.

Summary Notes

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I. The Signs of the End Times (Part 2)

1. Global Shifts
· We are living in a time of Global upheaval and change
· Many people feel fearful and anxious about the future
· Two events recent have introduced immense change to the world:
· The 911 attacks and war on Terror, and Two Pandemics: Sars & Covid-19
· In such short space of time nations have changed
· The coming Economic Impact on the nations of the latest pandemic is yet to be seen `


2. God is in Control and Know The Future: The End is Glorious


3. Jesus Revealed Signs to Observe Indicating the End Times
· Jesus rebuked the Religious leaders for knowing the weather signs but not knowing the signs that He was the promised Messiah (Mat.16:1-3)
· Jesus grieved and wept over Jerusalem because they did not recognise and respond to the Day of their Visitation (Lk.19:41-44), and the suffering they would experience as a consequence
· Jesus revealed to his Disciples the Signs to look for: The Temple destruction, and the End Times
· When we look at 2020 we can see many events like Jesus describes in Matt. 24
· Eg. COVID-19, Global Riots, Looming Global Economic Depression, Swarms of Locusts (East Africa and Middle East), Rumours of Wars



4. We Need to be Aware of The Signs of The End times and Prepare
· First Sign: Wars and Natural Disasters
Matt 24:6 - "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places".

· Ethnic wars, political wars, famines, contagious diseases, earthquakes


Second Sign: Widespread Hatred towards Christians
· Matt 24:9 - "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake".


Third Sign: Widespread Offences among Christians
· Matt 24:10 - "And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another".




II. Signs of the End Times (Cont)


1. Fourth Sign: Many False Prophets
Matt 24:11 - "Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many".
· Three times Jesus warns His disciples against the danger of deception in (Matt.24:5, 11, 24)
· A False Prophet draws people to themselves and not to God and His Word
· Their message will lack the call to Repentance and transformation
· Frequently they draw people by promises that flatter people and are in fact a false hope
· Characteristics of False Prophets

(i) Fail to address the real hurts and issues of people (Jer.16:14)
“Heal lightly” address only external issues instead of addressing the real issues of the heart
Fail to call people to repentance and transformation

(ii) Prophesy “Peace” when there is no peace (Jer.16:14)
Flatter people giving them what they want to hear instead of warning them what lay ahead

(iii) Speak visions from their own heart and not from the Lord (Jer.23:16-17)
Fail to address the issue of people despising the lord and His Word
Refuse to confront sin, and instead promise false hopes for future peace and prosperity

(iv) They present themselves as sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves (Mat.7:15)
They appear to be genuine believers but have an agenda to take advantage of others
They are identified not by their messages, but by their fruits, & influence on others (Mat.7:19)

(v) They bring in destructive teachings that cause disunity and division (2 Pet.2:1)
Paul’s Warning to Timothy
“Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

2Ti 4:3 - "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry". (2Tim.4:2-5)

“The time will come” refers to the End Times and the condition of believers and widespread deception
· They will want messages that “feel good” but do not challenge them to change.
· Truth is uncomfortable

(i) “Not endure sound doctrine” - Sound Bible teaching establishes believers in their faith and maturity

(ii) “Have itching ears” - Desiring something pleasant, something that they want to hear, and not something that challenges them to godly living and personal change

(iii) “Turn away their ears from the truth” - Only a having a love for truth keeps us from deception

If we do not cultivate a love for truth, we will turn away from hearing and responding to truth
Itching ears become deaf ears - no transformation

(iv) Turn to fables - Fiction, plausible stories that turn us away from sound Bible truth

· Notice Paul’s Words to Timothy: Watch, Endure, Do the Work, Fulfill your Ministry


2. Fifth Sign: Lawlessness, The Love of Many will Grow Cold

Mat 24:12 - "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold".

· “Many”…… this means a multitude of Christians
· “Love”…..refers to the agape Love for God and selfless love for people
· “Lawlessness”……iniquity….from word anomia….without law or restraint, acting independently of laws

· What is Iniquity?
To act without restraint, doing whatever pleases you with no respect for laws/boundaries
To go your own way, doing whatever seems or feels right to you without restraint
To violate the laws of God, to show contempt for the law and for healthy boundaries

· It expresses itself commonly by independence, disrespect for authority, resistance to boundaries, instruction or correction, active or passive rebellion and defiance
· The recent riots, looting, fighting, and destruction, hatred and anger against authorities in USA are examples of the spirit of lawlessness at work

What is the Root Source of Iniquity?
· The root source of all iniquity was Lucifer himself…this was why he fell from heaven (Ezekiel.28:15)
· Iniquity causes people to come under the influence of the spirit realm of darkness and to be manipulated by demons…it is the nature of that kingdom
· When iniquity abounds, the spiritual atmosphere changes.
· Iniquity, people being self-centered and doing their own thing, causes the love of others to grow cold
· What are The Personal Consequence of Iniquity?
· The Revelation of the Kingdom of God is also a revelation of His Authority and Right to Rule
· Iniquity Excludes believers from The Millennial Kingdom Rewards (Mat.7:23)

Mat 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'
· When people are unrestrained they cannot fulfill their destiny, and authentic love grows cold


3. Sixth Sign: As it was in The Days of Noah
Luk 17:26 - "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man"
Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

· The account of Noah and his family is found in Gen.6:1-14

What were the conditions that prevailed in the Days of Noah?
(i) Population Explosion
Gen 6:1 - "Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them"

(ii) Widespread Engagement with the Occult realm
Gen 6:4 - "There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

The Watchers, fallen angels left their God given position and had sexual relations with women, to corrupt and destroy humanity
The Nephilim, “fallen ones” were the offspring of these relationships.
They were giants, distorted creatures who became the Giants of Greek Mythology
A second irruption after the flood caused the giants that occupied the land promised to Abraham

(iii) Widespread Corruption of the Imagination and the Thoughts of the Heart
Gen 6:5 - "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
“Continually” - every day, non stop corruption and desire for evil
The heart is the seat of motivation in life…they were totally corrupt

(iii) Widespread Lawlessness and Violence
Gen 6:11 - "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."
Gen 6:13 - "And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth."
"Violence" - Injustice, use of force to injure, oppress, abuse, and kill people
Prov.4:17 - "Violence is like wine - it is attractive, intoxicating and removes judgment."

Violence in the earth is increasing….Global Terrorism, Abortion, ethnic and religious wars
Eg. Up to 203 million people killed by wars in 20th Century
Eg. Up to 300 million killed in armed conflicts
Eg. Up to 44 Million Killed by abortion. NZ is one of the 4 top nations in the world per 1000 people

(iv) Widespread Corruption, Sexual Perversion, and Sexual Abuse
Gen 6:11 - "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."
Eg. Today one of the most widespread forms of corruption is sexual slavery
Eg. The estimated number of people in some form of slavery across the world is over 40 million
About 25 million of these people are in some form of sex slavery


(v) Widespread resistance to the Word of God
Heb 11:7 - "By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith."

2Pe 2:4 - "For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly"

Noah preached righteousness for 120 years but people were resistant to his message of impending judgment and the need to repent and walk with God
Only 8 people believed the Word of God and were saved
Noah was warned by God of things never before seen, and commanded to prepare an Ark
No doubt Noah was subject to ridicule for his building an Ark in obedience to the command to prepare

(vi). Total Unawareness of the Impending Global Crisis
Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."
They continued in their daily activities completely unaware of the impending danger to them
Gen.7:16 - When the rain came it was too late to enter the Ark - The Lord shut him in


4. Seventh Sign: As it was in The Days of Lot
Luk 17:28 - "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
· The account of Lot and his family are found in Gen.19:1-13 and Ezekiel.16:49
· What were the conditions that prevailed in the Days of Lot?

Lot dwelt in the City of Sodom. He was daily troubled by the conditions in the city
(i) Brazen open homosexuality
(ii) Aggressive sexual violence
(iii) Hospitality and covenant relationships ignored
(iv) Intergenerational sexual perversion - Old and Young given over to sexual sin
(v) Pride
(vi) Materialism - Fullness of bread, Self-indulgence
(vii) Lack of concern for the poor and needy

· Jesus mentions 8 common activities that occurred both in the days of Noah and the days of Lot
Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."
Luk 17:28 - "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;"

· They were so immersed in these activities that they failed to recognize what was about to happen
· Materialism and the cares of life blinded them to eternal realities and they suffered consequences
· Jesus Warning:

Luk 21:34 - "But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."


5. Eighth Sign: The Fig Tree and All the Trees
Luk 21:29 - "Then He spoke to them a parable: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near."

Luk 21:32 - "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."
· “The Fig Tree” refers to the nation of Israel
· “and all the trees” refers to the other nations of the world
· The change in nations will begin with the fig tree…Israel first and then the other nations


Israel Becomes a Nation
· In 1948 Israel became a nation……” it began to bud and form leaves”
· They became free of rule by the British, and established their own history culture and language
· In 1967 Israel took control of Jerusalem. In 2019 Jerusalem was acknowledged as their Capital

The Rise of Nationalism
Across the globe now the nations are beginning to put for the leaves of their own identity
There is an upsurge of nations wanting to establish their own identity, history and culture

Mat. 24:30-32 - "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place."

· Jesus specifically taught that these are the signs of the End Times, and His imminent return
· It is near - at the doors - this generation


6. Ninth Sign: Great Change in the Culture - Selfishness
2Ti 3:1 - "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!"
· “Perilous times” - fierce, dangerous, reducing strength, hard to bear


7. Tenth Sign: Cosmic Upheaval and Great Global Fear
Luk 21:25 - "And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring"
Luk 21:26 - "men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken."
Luk 21:27 - "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."
· There will be great Fear as a result of increasing upheavals in nature


8. Eleventh Sign: Increase in Travel and Knowledge
· Dan 12:4 - "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."


9. Twelfth Sign: The Gospel of the Kingdom Preached
· Mat 24:14 - "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
· End time revival …….the Gospel will be preached in all the world….this is the Key Sign
· Gospel of the Kingdom….The message of the Kingdom of God
· Gospel of the Kingdom…..With demonstration of the Supernatural Power of God (1Cor.4:20)
· 2Pe 3:9 - "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."



III. Prepare for Jesus Return!
1. Jesus will return in great Glory and Power and Majesty
· Mat 16:27 - "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."
· Luk 21:27 - "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."


2. The Day of the Lord will be a Great and Terrible Day (Joel2:11)
· It will be Great for those who have prepared for Jesus return
· It will be Terrible for those who live unprepared


3. We Must Personally Prepare for the Second Coming of The Lord
· Mar 13:32 - "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
· Mar 13:33 - "Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is."
· Luk 18:7 - "And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?"
· Luk 18:8 - "I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes"

Will He really find faith on the earth?"