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Experiencing Gods Power


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Lecture Audios

Lecture 1

Hallelujah. Just have one scripture to share today. Titus chapter 2 and verse 11.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all of mankind. That's my message, experiencing God's power. We saw before that there are three dimensions to the spiritual realm, the kingdom, power and the glory.

When we look at the kingdom, we saw that the kingdom involves an exercise of authority and that for this to work requires faith. The next stage which we come to now is the power. Now, we could teach a lot more on the kingdom.

Eventually, we're probably going to have an entire series just on the kingdom. So, I'm just giving you guys an introduction now. These are just testing the waters, testing the reception, but I'll be giving full courses.

We're going to launch the school of the supernatural in the new year. It's going to be available to everybody, but we're going to study these things in absolute detail. So, you're the guinea pigs.

I'm just testing these things out on you, okay? You get the first taste. First fruits always supposed to be better, they say. Now, the power requires the anointing, but unlike the kingdom, it requires more than faith.

See, now we need all of these to present the good news of salvation, which is by grace, God's favor that we don't deserve is placed upon us, the gospel of salvation. Well, what's the gospel of salvation? The good news that we can be saved from sin, and most people stop there, but there's more to it. Greek with sozo means a lot more than that.

It's the good news that we can be saved from sickness, it's the good news that we can be saved from poverty, it's the good news that we can be saved from loneliness and rejection. If you read this passage of scripture that Jesus claimed as his own, Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach. Starts with the gospel to the poor.

Well, the best news you can give poor is you don't have to be anymore, but there's a whole lot of things in there. You see, the anointing is for us to preach good news, but a broad good news. Unfortunately, most of the church today got hung up on the first one, and all they're preaching is the gospel of salvation.

When it comes to healing our sick bodies, well, you know, God doesn't do that anymore. That's done away with. We're preaching a half a gospel.

Now, the reason people preach a half a gospel, because they never learned to get into the power. Because they don't have the power, they've stopped preaching it. It's a known fact that the leader and the one who probably started one of the largest denominations in this country right now, known as the Dutch Reformed Church, was a man mightily anointed and used by God.

He wrote some powerful books, a man by the name of Andrew Murray. None of us heard much of Andrew Murray because he's before our time, but he was a powerful anointed man of God who believed in the supernatural. He wrote some very powerful books, which, of course, were used in his denomination since he started it.

But after a while, the preachers found that they couldn't do what Andrew Murray was teaching. They started to feel that, I don't have the faith to do that, and, you know, we should stop reading this stuff because it makes us look bad. So they banned his book.

They banned his reading and his books from the Dutch Reformed Church because it was just too supernatural and it interfered with the flow. And the Dutch Reformed Church lost its power. Lost its power.

It's a very huge denomination still in this country. Many of those preachers are born again, and many of them are even spirit-filled and have entered into all that the Lord has us. But because we've cut out the supernatural, lost the whole dimension.

Another large denomination in this country known as the Apostolic Faith Mission, a church that I grew up in, was founded by a man called John G. Lake, who came at the height of the early Pentecostal revival in the fullness of God's power, flowing in real anointing for healing. So much so that he even set up healing rooms where people could come to be prayed for, where miracles were taking place all the time. Apostolic Faith Mission was the first and leading Pentecostal denomination in this country.

Burst in power. But it was a matter of time. They became like the Dutch Reformed Church.

After a while, they felt they wanted to be recognized by the Dutch Reformed Church because the Dutch Reformed Church was the national church. The government at that time were largely Dutch Reformed. The ruling party in government that time, they were all very religious but very oriented to the Dutch Reformed way of thinking.

And so this whole gradual deterioration took place. Now other countries have had their own thing. I speak for this country because that's where we live.

The Apostolic Faith Mission lost so much of its power and began to just fade away and become just a normal denomination, emphasizing just teaching and principles but no more power. Now, there always are exceptions. God is still working in his church.

He's working in all the churches. But more and more, we've seen this trend to move away from the power of God. And the reason for it is people don't know how to tap into the anointing of God.

And they don't know how to move into the power of God. And because they're finding it difficult, they're saying, let's just put it aside. I don't understand it.

I don't know how to do it. I'm not sure. Perhaps it's not for me.

We start changing our doctrine to say it had its time and place at the beginning, but it's no longer needed. Now that the word of God is here, we don't need the miraculous. We don't need the gifts of the Spirit anymore.

And so the church at large has died, moved away from the power of God. Now, I'd like to teach today on the anointing. I've done a lot of teaching on this before.

In fact, the very first seminar we had, this ministry, when we first arrived in this country, was called the Bringing the Power Seminar. And there I taught what I knew. And my knowledge was pretty good, but still limited.

So God's been teaching me some new things. The wonderful thing about the realm of the Spirit and the Bible and the word of God is there's always something new that God has for us. So I'm in a learning process right now myself, and I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to share the answers with you as I get them.

So I'm going to start from the ground upwards, and some of what I'm going to share with you, you may be familiar with some of it, because something you've never heard before. And some of it you may say, well, you never thought of that way before. Is that true? Are you sure? No, I'm not sure, but I do feel God has taught me and is teaching me.

We're going to learn this together. We're going to move in the power. We're going to bring the power back to the body of Christ.

Amen. Let's first look at the Holy Spirit and the anointing. Now the Holy Spirit enters our lives the day we are born again, when we first experience that first stage of salvation known as the rebirth.

The term born again is not strictly correct. It actually means born from above. We kind of get hung up on born again.

We're born from above. Something new comes upon us from above. Now, when you are born again and receive the Lord as your Savior, the Holy Spirit then comes to live inside of you.

And he's there to lead you and to guide you. Now God has made you to have three parts to your being, a spirit, a soul, and a body. The real deep inner you is your spirit.

The outer you is your body. And lying between the two is your soul. God's order originally was that the spirit would be in control and via the soul would bring the body into subjection.

And that's what's called living in the spirit. But as a result of sin, man's spirit lost its power. See, God made man's spirit in his image.

He put a piece of himself into us. But when sin came, the scripture says, your iniquities are separated between you and your God. The Lord's ear is not heavy that he cannot hear, but your iniquities are separated between you and your God that he can't hear you anymore.

So our communication with God was broken. Now through the cross of Calvary and the gospel of salvation, we can restore our fellowship with God. And now the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us.

Now here's where some of the confusion exists. And quite honestly, I didn't fully understand this until now. I've always been a believer that the Holy Spirit dwells within your spirit.

And that's true. Because you see, we made a bit like the early tabernacle where you had the big outer court, which is the body that everybody can see. Then the inner court, which was the holy place where only the priests could go.

And then the very innermost part called the Holy of Holies. And that's where the Ark of the Covenant was put, where the presence of God dwelt. And that's a picture of your spirit, you see.

So the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within our spirit. Now some have taught, and I have believed previously, that the Holy Spirit and our spirit becomes so one that you cannot tell the difference. And the word spirit is used in the scriptures.

The translators have put the word capital S in. But we don't always know whether that refers to God's spirit or to our spirit. It's difficult to tell the difference.

Now I've been of the opinion that our spirit now is fully immersed in God's spirit. And that our spirit now carries the full power of the Holy Spirit. I've taught that we can take that power, which is manifest in three forces, faith, love, and hope, and we release it outwards by the soul into the body.

And therefore, in order for it to be released, we need to make a pathway in the soul. We need to change our thinking. We need to submit our will.

We need to make our soul subservient to the spirit. And all of that is true when it comes to living the spiritual life, and much even of the ministry that we carry out. But as I began to look now at this dimension of the ministry that involves the power, and specifically what the scripture calls the power gifts of faith, healing, and miracles, something doesn't gel.

Something doesn't fit anymore. I found as I tried to move more into the manifestation of these gifts, that the principles I've been using until now don't work anymore. So there's something more that needs to be taken into account.

And that's what I'd like to add today, correct, and change in much of the teaching that I've given until now. So if you've seen my previous teachings, you say, I've heard all of this before. No, you haven't.

This is the first time I'm teaching this. Now, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, He can empower you. You see, your spirit alone has limited power.

God gave you a certain amount of creative ability, as God is the creator. He gave you a certain amount of authority, as God is the ultimate authority. And He placed man in this earth, and gave him the ability and the authority to actually do things in this earth.

You see, God's power is far greater than that. Bear in mind, you lost that power as a result of sin. God had to bring that power back again.

And when He brought that power back again, He brought it by the Holy Spirit. Now, your spirit may have the nature of God, but your spirit cannot do what the Holy Spirit can do. You've got two spirits living in you, not just one.

Which one are you tapping into? Unbelievers have learned to tap into their human spirit, and they've done amazing things. People have accomplished amazing things in this world without God, because they have a piece of God in them. People have learned to take the power that's inherent in their spirit and accomplish amazing things.

And even Satan takes the power that's in a human spirit and uses it for himself. As I taught you earlier, Satan has no power except what's in you. So, we need to have a look at this afresh.

And we need to say, okay, how do I work with the Holy Spirit in me now? How do I relate to Him? How do I interact with Him? And what do I need to do to live the kind of life that God intends me to live? To overcome and to be victorious. Now, only your spirit has direct access to the Holy Spirit, because God is the spirit, and He must be communicated with by spirit. So, your spirit is the only part of your being, actually, that has direct access immediately to the Holy Spirit.

Your spirit is able to communicate with the Holy Spirit and receive from the Holy Spirit at all times. Now, your soul, your soul then receives from your spirit. So, whatever's in your spirit is now communicated out into your soul.

And your soul, in turn, can communicate out to your body. Okay? In other words, your spirit must go receive from the Holy Spirit and then pass what it receives into your soul and into your body. And that's how it's expressed in this world.

Okay? Not too complicated, pretty straightforward. Now, how does your body receive from your spirit? Firstly, it receives via the mind, which is where? In the soul. We call this revelation.

When your spirit communicates via your mind, you get revelation. Now, this is how the revelation gifts are communicated. Word of wisdom, word of knowledge, discerning of spirits.

They're communicated via your human spirit outwards by your soul and into your body. Okay? Your spirit can communicate to your body via speech. We call that utterance.

Now, sometimes that can happen, and usually it happens, without the soul being much involved except making a choice. When you speak, you don't premeditate what you're going to say. You're almost listening to yourself as an outsider and hearing yourself say things.

You sometimes said something and thought, where did that come from? What made me say that? You're almost like listening to yourself. What did I say that for? See, that wasn't coming through your mind. Your mind was standing on the side having a look and saying, wow, that sounds interesting.

Tell me some more. You see, this is how the vocal gifts are communicated. Now, speaking in tongues is when your spirit communicates directly to your body through speech.

So, when you are speaking words, your spirit actually is very active. Every word that you speak actually comes from your spirit. Animals do not have a spirit, so that's why they can't speak.

They can only make noises. But words that we express in speech, we're actually tapping into our spirit. So, in actual fact, the revelation gifts actually are the easiest ones because they come by our mind.

The vocal gifts take a little bit more because we've now got to learn to come directly from our spirit to our bodies. Now, your spirit receives from the Holy Spirit, but it's not automatic. You have to invite and allow the Holy Spirit to influence your spirit.

The Bible calls that walking in the spirit. You've got to make a choice to submit your spirit to God's spirit. It's not automatic.

One day when all sin has been taken out of us and we receive new bodies and we are restored to God's original order, it will become automatic. But right now, it's not. It's not automatic.

Your spirit can still actually produce things which don't necessarily come from God. You can come up with brilliant creative ideas. That's why an unbeliever can do this as well.

You don't have to have the Holy Spirit to do that. However, if you add the power of the Holy Spirit, you can do it with far greater measure and far greater power. Now, your spirit can heal.

People are performing healing without God. Oh, well, it's the demon powers that do it. Yeah, the demon powers use the power of your spirit.

See, the power of your spirit that is used to perform all of these things. Now, how does your body receive directly from the Holy Spirit? See, speech is your spirit communicating direct to your body. Revelation is your spirit communicating via your soul.

You can speak in tongues without the Holy Spirit. You can speak in tongues in the flesh. It's your spirit that is controlling your body.

Paul says, if I pray in tongues, my spirit prays, but my mind, my understanding is unfruitful. Okay, so the fact that you are speaking in tongues does not mean that the Holy Spirit is controlling you. Not at that moment.

It can only happen when the Holy Spirit is influencing your spirit and your spirit then communicates that outwards. Can you see that? Your spirit communicates through the mind, giving you revelation. Your spirit communicates through your body via speech.

This is where the gifts of revelation and the vocal gifts operate. Okay, now for you to get revelation from God, your spirit has to receive from the Holy Spirit and then communicate that out to you. For you to get a vocal utterance, whether it be tongues, interpretation or prophecy as a message from God, that message has to be received from the Holy Spirit to your spirit and then your spirit passes it on.

All clear? What happens when we get to the power gifts? Power gifts don't come through your mind. And they don't come through speech either. So how do they get there? See, for the power of God to be manifest, the Holy Spirit has to have a direct influence on your body without going through your spirit or your soul.

Very different. I used to call this the external anointing. You can still use that term if you wish.

Your body can receive directly from the Holy Spirit and that is how God's power is released. So before you can move in power, you got to learn how to let your body receive direct from God's Holy Spirit that is dwelling within you. Now, this is temporary and it's limited.

The reason your body can only handle a small degree of that power. Your body is not capable of taking that power. It's like grabbing hold of the mains.

You know, you can go for a little while and then that's enough. You know, can we just stop this? Hmm? Some people get a kick out of taking these little devices like they give you an electric shock, you know. Yee! Let's have a kick.

Let's get high on electricity. You can only do it for a while. It's got to stop.

You cannot live in this condition. You can't. Now, the first time you experience this is when you go through an experience we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit has a tangible effect on your body. Until then, you may have had an effect from the Holy Spirit giving you revelation. You may find yourself speaking words that were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes you spoke and when you were finished you thought, wow, where did all that come from? I just, as I was speaking, it just started to bubble out of me and scriptures came back to my mind and see, that was the Holy Spirit manifesting through you. You never felt anything physically in your body to do that. See? Now, many people have learned to move into their prayer language without their body being affected in the sense of feeling tangibly the power of God.

Because that is possible via the human spirit. You see that? Now, one of the first manifestations and the main manifestation that always came when people received the baptism of the Holy Spirit was that they all spoke in tongues. But they didn't always speak in tongues.

Sometimes they prophesied according to the New Testament. And people came to the conclusion that until you've spoken in tongues, you haven't received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And so people, instead of seeking God's power, were seeking tongues.

Now, I know many people who can speak in tongues, they've never felt God's power. They've never felt the power. And I hear testimonies of people who received this tremendous power of God when they got the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I wish that happened to me. But I didn't get it. You've never yet allowed the Holy Spirit to directly affect your body.

You've been getting it via your spirit and your soul and your speech center. Can you see that? If your baptism had no tangible physical feeling, you ain't got it yet. You ain't got it yet.

This is new. Now, I want you to see how the members of the Godhead are involved. I'm covering a lot of ground here.

I'm trying to bring some pieces together. I'd like to speak now about the Holy Spirit and the Godhead. What's the Godhead? Most churches, what is known as the doctrine of the Trinity, teaches that God is three in one.

Most people don't understand the Trinity. But effectively, God is a Father, God is a Son, and God is the Holy Spirit. But there are not three Gods.

There's only one. The Holy Spirit is Lord. The Father is Lord.

The Son is Lord. But there are not three Lords. There's only one.

Well, that blows the human mind. So the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be explained by thinking or by philosophy. There is a distinction, and yet there isn't.

Now, I'm going to share with you a lot of my experiences with these as God manifested and showed these things to me. I might not get to it today, but we'll get to it next week if I don't. Okay.

But God manifests himself to us in three different ways. And we never have all three at the same time. The Holy Spirit was given firstly to take Jesus' place.

Jesus said, I'm going to ask the Father to give you another comforter. By that, he meant another one of me. When I leave, the Father's going to give you somebody to take my place.

Okay. The comforter, also known as the Holy Spirit. Now, he's there to help you.

He's the teacher, so he's there to teach you, and he's there to guide you. So when you receive Jesus as your Savior, the Holy Spirit came, the comforter, came to live inside of you, and he's there now to help you and to teach you and to guide you. Now, one of the first things he'll do, and his main task, Jesus said he won't speak about himself, but he'll speak about me, and he'll take what is mine and reveal it to you.

So the Holy Spirit's going to reveal Jesus to you. You know, people think that they must just bypass Jesus and go direct to the Father. Yes, he's going to reveal the Father to you, too.

We'll look at that shortly. But firstly, the Holy Spirit's going to reveal Jesus to you. And actually, it's only once he's revealed Jesus to you that you can get access to the Father, because Jesus said no man comes to the Father except through me.

You see that? Now, he will firstly reveal to you the unconditional love of the Lord Jesus, and then he'll reveal to you the power of the risen Christ. You'll reveal Jesus as the tender, loving one who walked this earth and gave himself for us, whose love is totally unconditional. I'll be sharing with you some of my own experiences with this so that you can press into it and experience the fullness of it.

Now, he will also reveal the Father to you. He will teach you the steps, like a staircase, that lead up to the throne room of the Father. And he'll prepare you, and when the time's right, he will introduce you to the Father.

See, that's his role. We need these three aspects of God, all of them, in our lives, if we want to move in the fullness of what God has for us. So, we need the Comforter.

We need him to teach us and to guide us and to lead us step by step into getting to know Jesus in his resurrected glory and power, and then to be able to come into the presence of the Father himself. Now, most people actually never really experienced any of these. They say, well, I know the Lord.

They say, do you know the Father? Yes, Father, in the name of your Son, Jesus. They don't even know who they're talking to. How many people have felt and experienced God's power for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but which person's involved in this? Well, I just love the Spirit.

Many people say, I love the Spirit. Well, they say, I love the good feeling that comes with the anointing. That's all they're saying.

They don't know who the Spirit is. They don't know him as a person, even though he's there. Lord willing, we're going to teach you how to get to know each one of them and to experience them and to move into the fullness that the Lord has.

That's a big subject on its own. I've just given you an introduction, so you know what to expect. How do we get to flow in the gifts? This is where it all starts, doesn't it? This is where the power comes.

Well, firstly, the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the gifts, so you better get to know the Holy Spirit if you want to flow in the gifts of the Spirit. I've already explained it to you. The Holy Spirit will communicate to your spirit, and that will be communicated outwards down through your mind, and the gifts of revelation will come.

Your spirit will then communicate outwards to your body, and the vocal gifts will come. Then as the Holy Spirit communicates direct with your body, the power gifts will come. Now, the first gifts to be manifested will always be the gifts of revelation.

That's why everybody wants to be a prophet. It's easier. Now, all believers can hear the voice of God.

How often does God speak? He's speaking 24 hours a day. He's speaking all the time, but you need to get that from your spirit and have it communicated down to your mind. How do we hear the voice of God? We've got a whole series on that.

It's part of our prophetic school training, but let's simplify it now for everybody else who is struggling to get into this. The most common way is through the sense of sight. Yankee Cho, who's one of the biggest churches in the world, I guess the biggest church in the world, he shares some very good principles there, and I really enjoyed reading some of his materials.

Okay. And he said, dreams and visions are the language of the spirit. You see, God speaks through dreams and visions.

He speaks through pictures. Okay. So many people are crying out and saying, Oh Lord, I would love to see a vision.

Would you like to see a vision? Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Now, tell me what picture comes to your mind.

That's a vision. You're not seeing it with your physical eyes, are you? You're seeing it with your mind. That's a vision.

Visions are actually built into us. Everybody has visions, even unbelievers. A vision from God is another story.

See, so we all have visions. We don't have to pray to get visions. We just need to pray, God, give me a vision that's a message from you.

See, to do that, we must allow our spirit to receive from the Holy Spirit, and then we must listen to the voice of our spirit, and let our spirit communicate outwards into our mind a picture. That is what God's trying to say. That's how you get revelation.

Now, God can communicate via the other senses as well. You might hear, you might feel, you might taste, you might smell. All of these can be senses of revelation.

Now, what's our most common sense? It's always sight, isn't it? I never really smelt anything in the spirit. Or do you smell things in the natural? I know women are more capable of this. Women have got such powerful senses of smell.

They really do. A man is turned on by how beautiful a woman looks, but a woman's often turned on by smell, or turned off. That's just by the by.

Some people, they get revelation by some of these other senses. But most of the time, we get it by sight, because that's the main one, and the second main sense that we have is hearing. Those are the two main ways that we usually hear from God.

Now, the vocal gifts, they require a little bit more effort. Your spirit has to receive a message from the Holy Spirit, and your spirit must then pass that message to your body. Now, you need to know the voice of your spirit, because how do you know what's coming to you? It's from your spirit.

Well, here's a hint. If it's speech, it's coming from your spirit. It doesn't mean it's coming from God's spirit.

It's coming from your spirit. Have you ever noticed you're busy talking to somebody, and while you're talking, an idea pops into your mind? You think, oh, yes, I never thought about that. Now that I'm speaking about it, I've suddenly got an idea.

Where did that come from? It came from your spirit. See? Now, if you're sensitive enough to listen to your spirit, you will sense that nudge and that change, and you can develop that to the point where you follow that inner leading, where you think, oh, I shouldn't be doing that. Yeah, I feel a go ahead.

That's clear. We call that the Urim and Thummim. We've got all those teachings on it.

How do we develop the voice of our spirit? By listening to our spirit a lot, and how do we do that? By speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues, your spirit is praying. Now, it can also be developed by a process which we call meditation.

That's not TM. It's not going um. How do we meditate? We read the word, we speak the word, and we change the word into pictures.

Sometimes we mutter to ourselves and say it over and over again, and I've shared with you a little bit of that as well. These are ways that we can develop, that we can hear the voice of the spirit better, and then all you do is you communicate verbally what you receive from your spirit. Now, that takes a step of faith, because you're sitting in a meeting, and something starts to bubble up, and you feel an urge to open your mouth and speak with it.

What am I going to say? Well, some people don't have to wait for that. They just open their mouths and pour out whatever comes out. So, some people find this easy.

Other people are more withdrawn and quiet. They don't speak a lot, and so it takes a lot more courage and a lot more faith to open your mouth and to start to speak, because you don't normally do that. You see, we Expressives, we get into the vocal gifts very easy.

It just becomes part of our normal thing. So, it's going to take a step of faith, and when you take that step of faith, you create the bridge, but nothing's automatic, and nothing comes full-blown. We've got to develop these things.

We've got to develop them. We've got to learn to interpret the pictures that come to our mind and learn the revelation that God's given us. We're going to learn how to use our mouths to speak out what God's trying to say, but the vocal gifts require a little bit more effort than the revelation gifts, because they don't come via the mind.

They come directly to the body, and the mind's kind of involved there, but not completely. Now, when we get to the power gifts, we jump a step higher. This is the most difficult one of all, which requires the most effort of all.

See, that's why most people find it easier to start out as a prophet, and a lot of people start out as prophets, and they say, I prophesied, but what they really said is, I got a revelation, and I told everybody what God revealed to me. That's not prophesying. Prophesying is vocal.

Prophesying is speaking under inspiration, and so we have to teach people, when they come for prophetic training, to move beyond revelation and get into the vocal gifts, because throwing in the vocal gift is a little bit more difficult. Now, the same thing happens when it comes to the power gifts. They require even more effort, because now the Holy Spirit must take full control of your body, and that means you've now got to be submitted completely to the Holy Spirit.

Now, this takes more than faith. It takes faith, but it takes more. 1 Corinthians 13 verse 13 says, So now there continues to exist faith, hope, agape love, these three, but the greatest of these is agape love.

Now, God gives you faith for each of the gifts. There's a scripture that shows that. I'm not going to read it now.

It says God's given to each one a measure of faith, and it's speaking about the operation of the gifts. So, as you learn to develop these gifts, God gives you the faith. You don't have to strain to get the faith to operate them, but you need to develop the gifts and have confidence in them.

See, that doesn't come full blown. It takes time to get good at it. The first time you got a revelation, you got a picture, but you didn't understand it.

It takes a while to develop it. The first time you got an utterance, maybe a word of prophecy, the Republic comes out, the Lord says, I'm with you today, and that's about all that could come out. You see, because you haven't developed it.

You exercise it, you develop it, it gets better, but God gives you the faith. You don't have to develop the faith like you do in order to exercise authority. Now, the Holy Spirit has to influence your body directly for the power gifts to function.

What comes is what is known as a mantle of anointing. A lot of the time, probably most of the time, you will feel the effects of the Holy Spirit on your body, and a lot of people feel it like a mantle. Well, we don't have mantles these days.

Feel it like a jacket. I usually get it like a hoodie. It kind of comes over my head here, and I just feel all the way down here.

I feel the presence of God coming on me. See, that's a mantle. It means the Holy Spirit is now acting directly on my body, and I can tangibly, physically feel His presence.

Now, can you see how different it is to flow into these gifts? People are praying and saying, well, you know, I wish the Lord would give me the gifts. Actually, you probably have all the gifts because you have the Holy Spirit, and all the gifts are resident in Him. See, but you must firstly want to flow in these gifts.

We're going to get to that next, and you've got to develop the gifts. They don't come full blown. Most people who've moved in a ministry of healing didn't get it full blown.

Some people are lucky. We use that term. They just seem to move into it very quickly, but some of the greatest men and women of God had a struggle to get to that place.

Many of the people from yesteryear who were used madly by God, it took them years before they began to flow in there. I remember reading about John Wimber, who started the Vineyard Movement, and he said he was convinced from the Word of God that God heals, and he would fervently preach it and pray for people, and nobody got healed. Eventually, people started to get embarrassed.

They say, how can you preach this and it doesn't work? Aren't you feeling a bit embarrassed and ashamed? He said, I believe God's Word. The fact that it doesn't happen doesn't change. I will continue.

Then one day, he prayed with somebody, and as usual, he was waiting for nothing to happen, and he was about to say to the person, well, you know, this might take a bit of time. You may not feel anything right away. He was about to make an excuse, and suddenly the person jumped up and said, I'm healed, and he got more of a shock than what they did.

After that, God began to use him. Charles and Francis Hunter, who had such a powerful ministry in healing, they said they prayed for hundreds, maybe even thousands of people before they began to see the manifestation of healing in the ministry. A man who's really used by God today by the name of Todd White.

You may have seen Todd on videos, walks with this long hair, looks like a bum, but he goes where angels fear to tread and reaches the last, and he just walks up and says, God shows me you've got a headache, can I pray for you? Apparently, Todd prayed for over 700 people before he saw healing. So, don't feel discouraged if you've tried to move into this and it didn't happen yet. Okay.

But don't even try until you've learned to let the Holy Spirit bring that mantle of anointing on you, until you tangibly feel his anointing. You can pray the prayer of faith, and people can reach out in faith and still receive things from the Lord. But for gifts of power to operate, they have to operate via a specific anointing that comes upon you.

Now, there are two main doors to the power, and I'm going to end very briefly on this today, and I think we'll probably pick up these pieces next week and take them further into more detail. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 1 says this, Pursue agape love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts, rather that you may prophesy. It's two things.

It's two main doors to entering into the power of God. And those two doors are love and desire. Why love? Because your motives should be pure.

Your motive should be pure. Natural love is not enough. Now, you're going to have to develop love by fellowship with the Holy Spirit, because love doesn't come to you naturally.

The Bible says, The love of God is shared abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given to us. So if you want to be filled with love, it's not coming automatically. You're going to have to chase after it.

Okay. Edward, the original King James said, Follow after. I've translated it as pursue.

The Greek word, some of the meanings are to run swiftly in order to catch a personal thing, to run after them, or to seek after eagerly, earnestly endeavor to acquire. And without love, you will not realize the full blessing. Power without love is pointless.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 verse 2, And though I have prophetic insight and understand all the hidden things and all the known things, and though I have absolute faith, so that I can remove mountains and do not have agape love, I am nothing. You know what it's going to do? It's going to meet your need for recognition. And you're going to say, Wow, isn't he awesome? Wow, isn't she anointed? Look at me.

Without love, you're a noisy gong. Scripture says. The second one is desire.

Now, this is the main door. You can actually get these things without love. It's just as pointless.

Not going to really benefit you. Except maybe make you look good. But desire is the main door.

And desire is the key to flowing in the power of God. Okay, why? Because firstly, the Lord never imposes his will. He only gives us what we ask for.

And desire produces an expectation. Desire gives you an incentive to build your faith. Is what the Greek word means there.

To burn with zeal. To be heated or to boil with pursuit of good. To desire earnestly to pursue.

Now, what are the effects? When you've got strong desire. And we're speaking now specifically for the gifts of the Spirit. But we need desire for all things.

I've taught on what I call core desire. And a core desire is where that desire is white hot and so strong in you. This is what core desire does.

You can see nothing else. So, you know, if you're single and you're earnestly wanting to get married. It's what you think about all the time.

It's what you talk about all the time. You're not going to rest until you get what you want. See, if you have another desire in life, whether it be for a promotion.

Or for making wealth, whatever it is. If that's your consuming passion and desire. It's all you can think about.

You close your eyes. What do you see? You see yourself. Fulfilling that.

You're ready to do whatever it takes. You're ready to pay any price to get. The thing that you desire.

And so, you know, I wish the Lord would use me. I'd love to pray for people and they get healed. How often do you think about this? Well, every time I see other people praying get used.

That's not a core desire, is it? You're just saying, I don't want to be left out. I want to have what everybody else is at. I'm tired of being in the background, you know.

The Lord's really using this person and me. I'm just a little nobody sitting there in obscurity. That is not a core desire, folks.

It's got to be burning white hot passion. So, if you thought, I wonder why God doesn't use me? There's your answer. You know, some time ago when I started this.

And I'm just jumping the gun, but I'm just going to share very quickly. I began to desire to be used by God. You know, I was a little nobody.

I was a nobody in church. I used to play the guitar. It's about as far as I got.

Oh, I wanted to be used by God. I wanted to be anointed. I wanted to stand up and preach the word.

But what chance did I have getting behind the pulpit? It burned in me. It burned in me and I cried out to the Lord for it. I said, oh Lord, if you could just use me.

And he said to me, I'm going to use you more than you could ever imagine. But at that time, my greatest imagination was just to become a pastor and be in ministry. That would have been the ultimate.

But when I finally got there, I thought, that's not enough. I want more. You know, over a period of time, God fulfilled every one of my desires.

I would walk up and down praying in the spirit. And I'd see myself praying with people. I'd see myself prophesying over people.

I'd see myself preaching. I was living it in my mind and in the spirit. But it was all just a fantasy.

But it never left me. The passion remained. It only got stronger as time went on.

And you know, there was nothing in this world that could stop me from reaching that. What's your passion? What's your core desire? Well, I don't really know. How do I get a core desire? If I have to tell you that, you're a hopeless case.

Because everybody's got some core desire. When it comes to the work of the Lord, God's not going to force it on you. Do you know what? I nagged him.

I nagged him to death. I nagged him and nagged him and pushed him. And I said, what do you want me to do next? I'll do it.

I don't care what it costs. And you know, there's something about that kind of commitment. It just does something to the Lord.

You know, when people came to Jesus and said, oh Lord, please, will you heal me? He said, of course I will. He didn't go around healing everybody. Is anybody sick? Let me heal, let me come and heal all you guys.

No, no, no. See, he always said that. What do you want me to do for you? What's your desire? God is moved by our desires, folks.

I don't care what it is you want from God. Even on finances, I find that, you know, if I'm quite happy with my financial situation, it doesn't change. Well, you know, we've got enough to get by this month.

The bills are paid. We eat. Then I see something I want.

This nice new laptop. Maybe it goes bigger and you see this nice car. I don't know, whatever it is.

You know, depending on your faith. When I get that desire, I think about it, I dream about it. I look it up on the internet.

I check the prices. I check my budget. I see what we can do without.

I'm going to find a way to get what I want. And you know, when I come to God with that kind of faith, it's like he steps forward and says, what do you want? How much can I give you? I've got to reach that kind of core desire. You want God to use you.

You want to move into God's power. You want to see signs and wonders taking place. You want to see God lifting you up and helping you to make an impact on this world and to leave your mark and to leave a legacy.

It's not going to happen automatically. Some people are born with deformities that hold them back. They still rise up and succeed.

So it's all right for you. You know, it all fell in your lap. I remember sitting there in Mexico where we couldn't even speak the language of the people and we made an effort to get on the internet to finally try and build a ministry.

Somebody came to visit us the one day and he says, right for you, you've got an outlet for your ministry. But do you think it fell on me? No, but you know, I wanted it. I desired it.

I pushed and I paid the price. Oh, you know, I attained every goal that I ever set. I rose up eventually to the highest ministry office.

And although God kind of used me a little bit in some of the power gifts, although I sensed his anointing, it was never a big thing in my life. Until recently, God began to say to me, it's time you move into that. And I realized that the big expert, the apostolic father, who now to teach people how to do everything else.

I was lacking a bit of knowledge there. So I'm doing what I've always done. I live it.

I desire it. I read every book. I read the word.

I listen to the Holy Spirit. Until it happens. You know what? There's nothing in this world is going to stop it from happening.

What do you desire from the Lord? You want to become wealthy? You want to be able to heal the sick? You want to be able to set the captives free? You want to be able to help a certain kind of person? Well, it starts with love. Because you know, God's going to give you what you need to love people with. And that's your greatest motivation.

That's the greatest core desire is when love burns in your heart. But you know what? Some people, they just want to make a show and show everybody how wonderful they are. We should start with love.

Now next week, I'm going to teach you how to enter into love. And how to experience the love of the Lord. I'm going to share with you some of my own experiences of how desire and how learning to get to know the members of the Godhead has helped me stage by stage to move to where I have been.

And Lord willing is going to move me to where I'm going next. To where I earnestly desire to go next. I've preached once or twice on revival and on the external.

But it hasn't been a core desire in me. But that's burning red, hot, white, hot right now. And I'm not going to rest until it's there.

And I hope I can just impart some of that fire to you. I hope I can excite you and get you stirred up enough. You say, I want it too.

I want it. I'm with you. Let's follow through.

Amen. Father, I thank you for your word. Thank you for each one that's listened today and received your word.

And those that are listening to it now via the recording. I ask Lord that you'll challenge and stir up. Oh, that you will put in each one that deep desire to be used by you, Lord.

To not accept status quo, the mediocre. But to be, to want to be more. To have more.

Because there is so much more that's available for each one of us. I ask you to take your word and bring it to life. I ask you to switch on the lights.

Everybody see and understand. And let your love be manifest. And let that strong desire begin to rise up in your people.

That they may rise up militant in your power and in your glory. To turn this world upside down. To bring in the lost.

To bring your kingdom to this earth. As you said, we should pray. Thank you, Father, for giving me the opportunity to be a small part of that.

Bless you and I thank you for that in Jesus' name.

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