I'm going to read two passages, one is fairly lengthy but I believe that every part of it is relevant. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and reading from verse 16. Paul says rejoice and be glad at all times, be in prayer continually, be thankful in all circumstances, well this is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus.

Do not put out the fire of the spirit, do not negate the importance of prophesying, test and approve everything, hold on tightly to what is good, stay away from everything that appears to be evil. May the God of peace himself cleanse you completely and may your entire spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can rely completely on the one who is calling you to accomplish this.

The one final small verse in Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23. Keep watch over your heart or inner being greater even than you would in guarding a prisoner for out of it flow the sources of life. The human spirit is the most important part of our being and actually it is the real you.

When your body dies your spirit continues to live. It is your spirit actually that keeps your body alive and it is your spirit that keeps your body well. Out of that inner being flows the sources of life, of every form of life, physical life, psychological life, spiritual life.

It all comes from deep down in that part of our being that we call the spirit. Now the scripture uses the term the heart of man in a kind of a figurative sense and normally the heart is a kind of a combination of the soul and the spirit but the emphasis here is on the spirit. I want to look at the power of your spirit today.

I want to look at how your spirit should function, how you should use it and the problems that occur when your spirit is not functioning the way that it should. Your spirit has latent power built into it. When God made man he formed his body from the dust of the earth and then breathed into him the spirit of life.

Only then did man become, the scripture says, a living soul. See the spirit is the essence of life and when you take away the spirit actually there's no need for a soul anymore because the soul is the mediator between the spirit and the body. So the spirit is the real you.

Your spirit has the power and ability to bring healing to your body. In fact your spirit is what's keeping your body alive because the moment your spirit leaves your body begins to decay. Now the spirit has amazing power.

I've been reading examples and stories of people who died and then returned into their bodies. There's lots of them around. I'm sure you've heard and read of lots of them.

In most cases I found that there's one strange symptom that always occurs. The person may die of a physical illness but when their spirit returns to their bodies that sickness is gone. Somebody may die of an intense heart attack where his heart is virtually destroyed.

Then he comes back into his body again and there's no heart problems. A person may have an incurable disease that eventually takes their life and people like that who have gone through death and somehow miraculously have come back. Suddenly what the doctors couldn't cure is gone.

So all healing ultimately comes from your spirit. Now we've looked at what we can do to help keep the body healthy. We've looked at what we can do to try and keep our soul healthy.

But ultimately true health, true divine health starts in your spirit. So is it not logical then that if we want to maintain full health we should zero in on the spirit first? We don't do it. Just read out there.

Doctors have discovered that eating these three vegetables a day will make you live longer. Cut out these foods and you will live longer. Eat this food, don't eat that food.

You see it all the time. It's all about diet. So what you eat is going to heal you or kill you.

Unfortunately medical practice has followed the pattern in that when there's an illness we want to try and treat it with chemicals. Actually that's the same thing and there's nothing wrong with that because God actually created plants with chemicals in them that assist the body in its healing. So very often all that you're getting when you receive a prescription from a doctor is somebody out there has been able to break down what the plant produces naturally and put it into a pill that we can keep in a bottle and pop when it's convenient.

And ultimately we're producing the same thing. We're just assisting our body to heal itself. But ultimately the healing comes from your spirit.

So if you're sick don't get hung up on what you ate. You know I shouldn't have eaten that second piece of cake last night. Yeah probably it's a good idea to control your diet.

See the reason you're sick is not because of what you ate or didn't eat. You know that old saying what doesn't kill fattens. Well sometimes we don't want to get fattened.

It's not to get hung up on the physical aspects. We did look at them. We saw their importance.

But it's there in what is really important today. Which is the condition of your spirit. Because your spirit carries healing power.

If you can keep your spirit flowing efficiently and functioning the way it should, divine health begins to come up from within. Not from without. Now your spirit outside of Christ is considered as dead.

Scripture uses the term spiritual death. Paul speaks about a person being lifted up in themself and their spirit died. This is what actually happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit.

It stirred up all the powers of the soul and their spirit died. Now that doesn't mean their spirit stopped existing. It means that it became ineffective towards God.

It lost the spiritual power that God was offering to it. But the spirit still has latent power even in an unbeliever. Because the spirit came from God.

It's part of God's very nature. And even an unreborn spirit who is dead to God still has a power. And believers don't die because their spirit's dead.

Their spirit has the same power to keep them alive as believers. But we as believers, when we came through the experience of the rebirth, we were given a new spirit. Our spirit was recreated after the image of God in Christ.

In Adam we inherited spiritual death. But in Christ we inherit spiritual life. Now as a result of the fall and the result of sin of man, the original power that God put into the spirit of man that Adam and Eve both had, it lost some of its power.

The power is still there, but it's become limited. It needs a boost. It needs some additional power to be added for it to become more effective.

In other words, your human spirit needs to be enhanced from its natural state to accomplish everything that God designed for it. Well, there's two sources that can be used to enhance the power of your spirit. Scientists say because the world knows not God, most of them turn to the first one, which is Satan and his demons.

You see, it takes another spirit to enhance a spirit. Satan and his demon powers are more than happy to offer a person an enhancement of those spiritual powers in return for control of their lives, to keep them away from the kingdom of God. So how does this happen? It happens when a person opens their heart to the demonic realm, and the most common way is to dabble into the occult, into witchcraft, into everything that's not of God.

They start getting into a spiritual realm that is totally demonic. And when you do that, you invite a demon power to come and live with you and continually add to the power of your spirit to give you abilities that you don't normally have. You'll be amazed what a demon can do to help you, but there's always a price to pay.

You don't realize that. People who are weak and insecure will open their hearts to a demon power to give them courage and strength and boldness. People that are considered stupid can tap into the demon power to give them brilliant intelligence.

People who want to have abilities and talents, like in the musical realm, can tap into a demon power to enhance that power and ability. After all, Satan was the leader of the choir in heaven. He's an expert in music.

So, I don't, you know, I'm serving the Lord. I don't give rise to demons. You'd be surprised what's sitting there helping you in those little things, helping you in your vulnerabilities and in your weaknesses and the little areas of your life that you struggled and then suddenly you broke through and overcame.

Now, God can do that for you, but very often we don't realize that we have unwittingly shielded ourselves to demon powers who are now resident with us and are assisting us to gain those strengths. Most difficult thing in ministering to somebody who's in demonic bondage is to get them to realize that what they thought was a gift from God was actually not from God at all. But I've got this gift.

God has given me this gift. I dream and I see things that happen and I can tell people who's going to die and what is going to be an accident. It's not a gift from God.

God doesn't work that way, but it sounds like God. Be very careful even as believers. Unbelievers, they don't know the difference.

They'll always gravitate. You'll see every culture out there eventually. They have their cultural norms and principles that they live by, but eventually they gravitate towards Eastern mysticism to get that extra power.

All the success philosophies out there, they come with these are the principles of success and then they start tapping into some additional spiritual power without realizing it. Without knowing that they're actually shielding themselves to demon powers. I wasn't planning to emphasize that, but I feel God leading me today to warn you, even as believers, be careful.

You say, but I'm serving the Lord. I'm filled with the Spirit. Heck, I'm even in ministry.

I preach and I pray with people. Yeah, I was doing that for years. Even teaching people and God uncovered a few things in my life that I didn't realize were demonic.

Did you say you were demon possessed? Now, let's not get hung up in terms. The point is there was a demon power sitting there living with me, helping me in a certain area of my life and giving me a strength and an ability. And I didn't realize it was coming from Satan, not from God, because it's so subtle.

Because Satan is the counterfeiter. He tries to deceive. He brings what you think is God.

So many out there are calling themselves prophets and getting revelation. Well, I can see. I know all about you.

This is your husband's name. That's your street address. This is the kind of car you drive.

What a man of God! Satan knows all those things. He knows all those things. Don't you ever fall for somebody who told you things like that and say, he must be a prophet of God.

No, he actually may be an ex-Sangoma. Still got the same powers. Be very careful.

Very careful. Particularly when that ability is used to make me look good, to help me overcome my insecurities. The Bible tells us about Simon the sorcerer who used these powers and everybody thought he was the great power of God.

You know, he enjoyed that acclaim. And he got saved and suddenly realized he lost it all. And he saw Peter and John praying for people and the power of God coming.

He said, oh, I never had one of those. Come on guys. How much money do you want? So I can get that power as well.

So everybody can look at me and say, look at the power he has. No, he just blows on people and they fall under the power. Wouldn't you like that power? Don't you ever go looking for those things.

It's not about you. It's about him. And you can enhance the power the right way, which is through the spirit of God.

You get that from the moment you're born again. When you enter into that experience of the anointing of God coming upon you, and we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that power is greatly enhanced. And actually, God's power is far greater than what Satan can bring.

But Satan can do some pretty impressive things. I remember some years ago, reading of of Yonggi Cho, who was supposed to have built one of the biggest churches in the world, great man of God. And he said, what really puzzled him is he read accounts of a Buddhist priest taking somebody up to his grotto and praying for them and they got healed.

And he said, Lord, what's the difference between me praying for somebody who gets healed and the Buddhist priest prays for them and they get healed? And the Lord said, Satan can't heal. But here's the difference. What I've given you is far greater.

He said, therefore, you must rise up in my power and you must perform far greater miracles than what Satan can do. You must expose that and show that the Holy Spirit is far greater. Of course, when Satan does something, there's always a hitch.

There's always a price to pay because he's not doing it because he cares for you. And here's one big difference between the two. The Holy Spirit and God will never, ever, ever impose themselves on you or push you or make demands.

Human powers are very different. It's always a power of demand. Do it now or else.

When you feel pressured to do something that you thought came from God, chances are it didn't come from God. Although it may look very much like it came from God. Holy Spirit and Jesus, shepherds, they go before and say, come on, follow me.

Come on, follow me. They don't stand behind and kick your butt and say, you're useless, good for nothing, get moving. What kind of Christian are you? You're a third-rate Christian.

Come on. Sitting there on your backside doing nothing. You should be out there working.

Oh, I feel so guilty. I should have been working for the Lord. I should have been witnessing.

I should have been doing things, but I didn't. And the Lord has convicted me. Now the Lord didn't convict you.

Satan accused you. We're going to look at that more as we go on. So how does God enhance that power in us? Let's look at this in more details.

Firstly, when you are born again, the Holy Spirit comes and unites together with your spirit so that they can become as one, spirit to spirit, joining together, flowing together in perfectly fellowship and harmony. And he does this in two ways. He does it by what we call the inner anointing, where the Holy Spirit in you begins to produce a power and an ability to live the way God intended us to live, which the Bible calls the food of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.

Now the inner anointing sometimes stirs our emotions from within positively. God by his spirit creates good desires and ambitions in us if we fellowship with his spirit deep within. And then sometimes God will ignite and bring his fire upon you.

He'll light your fire, we say. Okay? That's quite exciting when that happens. It has very powerful effects in your soul.

It stirs your emotions. It gets you going. And then God has got something else which works with that.

And that is, again, the source is the Holy Spirit. But it is what the Holy Spirit did when he moved upon men of God in years gone by and got them to write down the words of God. It's what we have in the scriptures, the word of God.

The word of God helps to prepare our soul by renewing our mind, creating the right thoughts. The word of God challenges our will, which is also in the soul, to obey and live the way God intended. Now if we'll use these tools that God has given us, allow his Holy Spirit to move within us, allow him to come upon us.

If we'll fill ourselves with his words and fill our mind with his words, your spirit will become enhanced by the power that only God can give and your spiritual abilities will be highly increased. And that's wonderful. And you may think you've arrived at that place.

But here's the bad news. You can lose it. Your spirit can lose all of its power and ability.

The spirit can be quenched. And the word quench there, I looked it up, the pictures of pouring water on the fire. To put it out.

God by his spirit can inspire you and light your fire and you can pour water on that fire and it will die. You have a choice to let that fire burn, to let yourself become an instrument so that fire can burn and reach out and touch others. Or you can choose to pour water on it and say, I don't feel like doing it now.

I load, I know, I know you somebody else. I'd rather not. I would rather not do this right now.

Or why would you do that? Probably because you have other problems in your life stemming from the soul, stemming from psychological problems and many other things. It's actually a huge subject. The healing of the soul is a subject so large that we could spend months and months on it.

Now, Lord willing, we are going to try and teach you over one weekend all the main principles you need to know about the healing of the soul. Okay, the end of March we're having our annual conference and the graduation of our students. If you have hurts from the past, if you have hang-ups from the things that have happened to you in life and if you're human, anybody here don't have those? Okay, we have all humans here today.

See, we all have those needs. We're going to show you by the word how to overcome those. We're going to make ourselves available personally to pray with you and to get revelation and to minister to you.

God's going to set you free of all of those hang-ups of the past. Now, we've seen this happen so often that we don't say, well, we hope God will be there and it will happen. We know God will be there and we know it will happen.

We've seen it happen in so many people that it's become almost a regular practice with us. It's the main thrust of our ministry is to pray with people, to minister to them, get revelation. And most of the time we have to get revelation of their past experiences and some of the conflicts that are taking place in their soul.

And God can set them free just like that, very miraculously. In fact, I find it easier to bring miraculous healing to the soul than to the body. But sometimes the one follows on from the other.

Sometimes you have to heal the soul before the body can experience healing. Why is that? Because the true healing power comes from the spirit, you see. But the spirit has to reach the body through the soul.

Now, if there's a blockage in the soul, the spirit can't get through and your body remains sick. So that's why the soul is our control tower and we need to zero in on that. I gave the preach previously on that and a lot of folk responded very positively to that, but I only just scratched the surface.

Now, our conference at the end of March, we're going to be addressing that subject in some detail and who knows how it'll go on from there. Those of you who are privileged to attend our pastoral school, which is the first Saturday of every month, we've just started dealing with the subject of counseling. I'm going to be expanding this subject in even more detail.

We're going to cover every aspect of how to minister to people as pastors and ministers of God. And how to bring healing to them. You don't have to have special gifts, but you certainly can tap into the gifts of God and they are available to you and God can impart and release those to you and we can minister those things to you as well.

So, if you have a pastor's heart, our pastoral school is going to move to a whole new level. We're going to see some amazing shepherds come out. We're going to know how to handle every problem.

Today, you will hear the shepherd say, well, your problem is outside of the field of my expertise. So, I will send you to the expert. We'll send you to the doctor first and if the medicine doesn't work, come back and we'll give prayer back.

So, you say that you are schizophrenic and bipolar and you suffer with bouts of depression. I don't even know where to start with that one. Tell you what, I'll recommend a good psychologist to you.

It's a Christian psychologist. It's okay. No, it's not okay because Christian psychologists don't use the Bible at all.

They just use what they've been taught by the world. This is all the realm of the pastor, folks. The pastor should be the healer.

The shepherd is the one who binds up the wounds of the sheep and brings healing to them. So, we're going to be teaching our pastors in some detail how to become true healers and shepherds the way God intended. Yeah, I know that's not going to sit very good in the world.

I could be taken to court for preaching this. So, don't publish it in the world. It's for the church.

Your spirit, as I said, can be quenched. The fire can be put out. You could lose your passion and you could lose all desire to function.

The quickest way to do that is to disobey the Lord when he inspires you, when his spirit moves upon you and God says, I want you to go and do this. Oh, but Lord, what will people think of me? Oh, Lord, I don't know if I can do that. Lord, I feel insecure.

I feel embarrassed. I'm afraid. What will people think? You do that long enough, God's going to find somebody else who will say, yes, Lord, I'll do it.

So, be very careful. When God moves upon you by his spirit, you obey that prompting. You wake up three o'clock in the morning.

It's been a long day. You're tired. The Holy Spirit says, I want you to go and pray.

There's somebody out there in need. Oh, Lord, give me a break. You know, I took a sleeping pill and I just woke up to go to the bathroom and I just want to go back to bed again.

Lord, do you mind? In there? Jesus used to pray all night after he'd worked all day. That's why he could do what he did. The spirit can be resisted or blocked sometimes by our religious thinking even.

The deacon Stephen who stoned to death for what he said. These are the words he used against all of these great leaders. He said, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears.

Do you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did? Which of the prophets have your fathers not persecuted? And they've slain them which showed before the coming of the just one of whom you've been now the betrayers and the murderers. You resisted the Spirit of God. Scripture says, God says, my spirit will not always strive with man.

When God moves upon you, obey that prompting. It might go away, never come back again. You could lose an opportunity, a golden opportunity to be used by the Lord.

Your spirit can become contaminated. How does that happen? Well, how was your spirit boosted? Firstly, it was boosted by the right words. Filling your mind and your heart with scriptures, with the word of God, gives your spirit spiritual food to grow and to get strong.

What happens if you allow your mind to be fed with the wrong words? Oh, you know, it was just a fun movie. Yeah, I know they killed each other and slept with each other and did all sorts of things, but it was just a movie. Oh, what effect did it have on you in the end? What was in your mind? What were the pictures that were painted in your mind? As you go to sleep that night, what are you thinking of? I tell you what, a week from now, if somebody asks you, oh, did you see that movie? You can say, oh, yes.

And they'll tell you, you can tell them the whole story because the pictures are still so clearly in your mind. So tell me, what scripture did you read yesterday? Well, actually, I haven't had a chance to get much into the word, but I did read the Bible the other day, I remember. And what scripture did you read? Somewhere in the Old Testament, I think.

And what was it about? By the truth, I can't even remember. Come on, isn't that our experience? I'm not trying to put a guilt trip on you. I'm just saying you want spiritual power.

You're not going to find it by filling your mind with the words that the world offers. You're going to have to make the time to get into the word of God and let your mind be reprogrammed by the word. Sometimes all you need to do is read it.

Take the time. Now, how else can you block your spirit? How else can you contaminate it? By being associated with other people who have contaminated spirits. See, every person you meet's got a spirit, and you've got a spirit, and there's a function of the spirit called communion, which we've discussed quite often before.

And when you meet somebody else and you open your heart to them, you hold a conversation with them, what happens is your spirit reaches out, begins to touch the spirit of that person. Now, what does that person have in their spirit? You probably don't know. You may find that night and you go to sleep, you feel restless, you feel uncomfortable, you just, something's wrong.

Where did that come from? I mean, everything was going great. I had the Lord in my mind, but now suddenly, just, it's like there's a block. There's like a restlessness, there's like a blah.

You know, you hear that blah feeling? Have you ever had the blah feeling? I hate the blah feeling. Sometimes you don't know where it comes from. Sometimes you need to sit and think about who you communicated with that day, about which websites you visited, what you listened to, what you read.

Because you see, words come from the spirit. When you speak words, you're speaking from your spirit. The words you are hearing from me now are Rhema words.

They are spoken words coming out of my spirit and they contain something. If my spirit is contaminated, you got a good chance of picking up that contamination. That's why as a preacher, it's very important that I deal with myself and all my own contaminations, get rid of them.

Otherwise, you just by listening to me and opening your heart to me, you'll start to pick up some of my weaknesses. You wonder why suddenly you're being tempted in certain areas of your life you were never tempted before. That great man of God came to visit our church.

He was a prophet. Wow, man, he just called things out and told people their life stories. What a great man of God.

He spoke to me, told me things about myself. Oh, my hero. Be very, very careful.

You don't know what is in the spirit of that person. You don't know their background. Be very careful who you open your heart to.

As you see, your spirit can be blocked. Not only by being contaminated, but you may open the door to a curse. What is a curse? A curse can come in many different ways.

This is a big subject, which we've covered in a lot of detail elsewhere. A curse can come through family generations. It can come through the sins of your forefathers.

It can come where parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. have been involved in the occult or in sinful practices, and that can be cut passed down to you. A curse can come from opening your heart to somebody else who is under a curse, admiring that person, and being ready and open to receive from them.

And bam, you pick up the curse in that person. A curse can come by idolatry. We don't have that one anymore, do we? We don't worship idols.

That's the old heathen out there. The primitive people, they're the ones who worship idols. What do you own that is of such sentimental value that you would hate to lose it? Bing! Here's your number one idol.

But you know, that was given to me by my grandmother. It has very special things. It helps me think of her and remember her.

She was such a wonderful woman of God. It's an idol. It's an object that is used to communicate with the spiritual world, and you're using it to communicate with the spirit of your grandmother.

We've got idols in our life we don't realize. Be very careful of objects. Okay, and a big subject, I'm not going to go into details.

Sometimes objects are made to be an idol. I will never ever buy these nice cute little carvings from some of the vendors. They've carved out very nicely an old man standing there with his stick.

There's probably some demon he'd been worshiping that he got in his mind, he carved a picture of it. Particularly if he's been into ancestral worship, things like that, he's expressed that in his carving. He may have, he may have not.

He may just be a very talented artist. But I would be very careful because sometimes those idols are made specifically to communicate with the spiritual world. Sometimes an idol is an idol because it's been with a person who is contaminated and under a spiritual bondage.

It may be a perfectly innocent object. See, somebody gave me this iPad. It's a really nice iPad, really works well.

But that person used this iPad and kept it with them. Their spirit is totally contaminated. Do you know that this iPad has become contaminated with what is in that person's spirit? Oh no, now you're preaching heresy.

Objects can contain spiritual power. They can contain positive spiritual power. The scripture says that aprons and cloths were taken from Paul's body after he was an owner of the Holy Spirit and laid on the sick and they got healed.

People still do that practice today. They try to make money out of it by praying over healing water and bottles of olive oil and it's pretty good business. I don't subscribe to that at all.

The point is spiritual power can be contained in physical things. So be very careful of idols. Now your spirit can only be affected by other spirits.

Usually the greatest involvement is involvement in the akal, where you are getting involved with demons. Your spirit can be affected by association with other people because you link with their spirit. Now what kind of people can affect you? Firstly, people who are bitter with you.

They're angry with you. They hate you. They despise you.

They've judged you. You think, well, you know, why should they do that? It's not fair. Why should they pick on me? I will just ignore them and it'll go away.

They are releasing a spiritual power towards you by their anger and their bitterness. So of course that only happens with unbelievers, right? No, actually it happens more with Christians. Christians who are jealous of you.

Christians who are angry with you. Christians who feel they're called by God to pray prayers against you. Do you know that you can be under a curse from the prayers of somebody else? And they probably did it thinking that they were obeying God.

Lord, judge her. Sort her out. Deal with her, Lord.

Deal with her. Some years ago when I first experienced this, I came under a bit of a heaviness that I couldn't seem to break through in the spirit. That time I had an elder brother who also knew the Lord and we didn't have that good a relationship.

And we kind of had some needs and I believe he was capable of helping us meet those needs, but he had judged me and condemned me. And one day as I was praying, struggling, thinking, Lord, what is going on? I saw like I was sitting inside of a black, you know, one of these big black garbage bags, except it wasn't a black bag. It was totally transparent and clear so that you could see through.

And the Lord said to me, somebody's put you in that bag. And because it's transparent, the person who put you in it is a Christian. Because it looks like something good.

It's not black. It's transparent. It's white.

And the Lord showed me that it actually was my brother that was putting it. He put me out of that just by judging me and being anti me. And we struggled and we prayed and we broke free of it.

Later, God dealt with him and he came to me and he and he blessed us. He said, you know, I was praying and waiting for God to deal with you. Change your attitude before I help you.

And I'm going to show you a scripture which describes this just in case you think this is just fantasy and you may have never fully understood the scripture. I'm going to explain it to you now. It's in Matthew chapter five and verse 25.

And Jesus said, make peace speedily with someone who is against you while you are interacting with them so that your opponent does not hand you over to the judge and the judge does not hand you over to the law enforcement officer and you are thrown into prison. You see, there's two situations can occur. You've offended somebody and made them angry and you are aware of it.

Somebody's angry with you and it's not your fault. You find out they're angry with you, you think, what the? What's going on? You know, we feel kind of obligated when I did it wrong. We say, you know, I need to go and make right.

I did say and do something I shouldn't have. So yeah, I feel guilty. I feel convicted.

I must go and speak to them and say, look, I'm sorry. See, but what if they were angry with you and you did nothing as far as you're concerned? Jesus says, when you come to offer your gift and know that your brother has something against you, don't bring your gift to the Lord. Just leave it there.

Go make right with your brother first. When you come to pray and you know you've got something against your brother, same thing. Just leave it right there.

Go and make right first before you come and offer your gift to the Lord. So it doesn't matter whether you were the cause of the problem or they were the cause of the problem. You are still obligated to fix it up.

And if you don't, here's what's going to happen to you. Sooner or later, that person is going to bring you into spiritual bondage. They're going to bring you into spiritual bondage and your spirit is going to be imprisoned.

And this is the greatest, greatest attempt of the enemy. You see, he can't destroy what's in your spirit because your spirit has been reborn because the Holy Spirit is there and he can't get in there. So what he tries to do is he tries to lock it in.

Have you had this experience where things were going great spiritually, things were on top, when you prayed you could feel the presence of the Lord. When you came and you heard the ministry of the Word or you're in worship, you could feel God's presence. And then suddenly it disappears.

And you think, where did the Lord go? Where did the Lord go? And you pray and you pray, you pray, nothing happens. You try so hard, but nothing happens. Your spirit's being locked in.

You're in spiritual prison. Now, very often that happens in a more permanent and more dangerous situation as a result of the problems of life, where because of the conflicts and the oppositions and the rejections we had from people, we build a little wall around ourselves. You know, we become like the princess in the high tower, you know, where nobody can get to us.

But it's a protection because we don't want to open our hearts anymore to that hurt. You've actually put yourself in a spiritual prison. Very often when we minister with people, God will show us a picture of a child sitting in a dark room, crying all by themselves.

Very often these things start even in childhood. And right from there, you shut yourself out. You shut yourself out from the world.

You shut your heart off from other people because you just couldn't take the pain anymore. And you put yourself in a spiritual prison. Sometimes it's like a cage.

The Lord showed me a picture once of me standing in a cage. And he said, you're asking me for blessings. And he said, I've got great big blessings for you.

He said, but all I can fit through the cage right now is like a little banana, you know. He says, not that I don't have blessings. It's not that I don't want to give it.

He said, but you have put yourself in a cage that I cannot get to you. And you know, some of us, we struggle against that cage and we struggle and we beat our head. And the Lord said to me, my child, there's no lock on the cage.

The door's open. Why don't you just come on out? And you feel a fool. But it's the truth.

We built the cages ourselves because of our experiences in life. And we put ourselves in a spiritual prison. Very often when we pray with somebody like that, we see the Lord Jesus coming into that dark room and switching on the light and picking them up and taking them in his arms out into the open and saying, go and play with the kids and have fun and enjoy life.

He locks that door. You can't go back in there again. Spiritual imprisonment.

Very common thing. I think wrong with your spirit. You've just allowed it to become blocked in prison.

One of the biggest tools Satan uses against us is guilt and condemnation. He will bring temptation to you. He will send people across your path who will tempt you and lead you astray.

And when you fail, then he changes sides. Before he's really encouraging you saying, oh, there's nothing wrong. Give it a bash.

It's just a little bit here. I mean, it's not that bad. Everybody does it.

But once you fail, then he becomes the judge and he says, you miserable, rotten Christian. And you called yourself a believer. Can you imagine if the rest of the church knew what you did? You start living in fear.

You start living in guilt. And you start feeling, how can I even have the audacity to come to the Lord now and ask him for anything when I failed him miserably? And I pray. You need to find out that his love is not conditional, that it doesn't change, that there's no sin that you can perform in this world that will separate you from his love.

And it's in the words. He will continue to love you, nurture you. Your spirit has become blocked by that guilt.

You know the strange thing that happens when you're under a curse? The things that happen normally stop working. See, I walk with the spirit of God and I hear his voice. And I hear from him daily.

And if I need to know something, I ask him. Lord, what should I do here? Lord, should we take that route? Lord, what is your plan and purpose for the future? And usually when there's danger around the corner, he'll warn me. But when a curse is in operation, suddenly, out of the blue, BAM! Something goes horribly wrong.

Three elements of a curse. Theft, strife, destruction. Car breaks down suddenly.

People start opposing you. You lose things that are valuable. All of these are signs of a curse.

And so often it has happened that a curse manifests itself and we'll say, but Lord, why didn't you warn me? Lord, I know your voice. Lord, you could have just whispered it in my ear. Why didn't you warn me, Lord, that this was coming? And as I looked to the Lord, he said, I was warning you.

But the curse blocked it. Locked it in. That's why you need to get rid of these things in your lives.

That's why you cannot afford the luxury of being contaminated by the spirits of other people, by being contaminated with the spirit of the world. I want to close now on looking very quickly at how to keep and increase your spiritual power. Firstly, learn to not be dependent on other people.

You must never ever need anybody in this world except the Lord Jesus. It's a hard way to live. It doesn't mean that you're so selfish and self-oriented that you're not ready to accept help from others.

Some people kind of pride themselves in the fact I don't need anybody. I can sort it out myself. That's called the spirit of independence.

Don't be in the place where you're always looking to somebody else to meet your need. Look to the Lord first. God will often use other people, but don't look to people as your source, okay? Learn to deal with anger and bitterness, or you'll end up in a spiritual prison.

You can't afford that luxury. But you know what they did to me? I don't care what they did to you. You cannot afford that luxury.

You gotta let it go. But you know the Lord must judge them. The Lord must vindicate me.

That's his choice, not yours. Very often God will vindicate you in some of the most amazing ways, but he'll usually do it when you finally die to it and let it go. You finally let it go, and you finally say, okay, I was wrong what they did to me.

They stole from me. They cheated. They hurt me.

They damaged me. They spoke behind my back. It's affected my life.

Jesus hung on the cross and said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they did. Well, if you want to live the Christ life and take up your cross and follow him, you're going to have to learn to do the same.

Sometimes it takes something radical, as radical as cutting off one of your own limbs. What? Well, he showed you in the word. Hmm.

Jesus said, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away. For it is better for you that one of your bodily members are lost than for your whole body be thrown into the fire of judgment. Radical amputation.

What is it that's causing you to stumble? It might be your best friend. It might be the person who's helped you the most in life. The person who means the most to you.

It could be your husband or wife. Could be one of your children. Could be that bad.

Oh, surely the Lord doesn't require of that. Well, why should I pull out my eye when God made me to see? Sometimes what is causing you to stumble is something that you want to keep. You're going to have to learn to give it up.

You have to pay the price to enter into the fullness of what the Lord has for you. We use a principle called breaking spiritual links. See, the moment you unite your spirit with somebody else, you picked up from their spirit.

And so when things go wrong in our lives, one of the first things we do is to look at our own sin and our own failure. And then we begin to look at who we've been associated with and who we've opened our hearts to and who we've been involved with. And usually as a matter of course, I will break spiritual links with everybody and his dog.

Now, you don't have to break links with the dogs. Dogs don't have spirits. They can have demons, but their spirit cannot affect you, okay? You'll sometimes hear me praying, Lord, I break spiritual links with you.

Could be with any one of you. I've probably done it sometimes. Just as a matter of course.

Who have I been associated with? Who have I met? Who have I spoken to in this last week? Well, you know, sometimes God will give me a revelation. I'll know who it is. Until I do, I'm breaking links with everybody I met.

Well, how do you do that? Simple. Lord, I break spiritual links with so-and-so. I disassociate myself from any curse that is in their life.

I renounce it. I have nothing to do with it. In the name of Jesus, I break it.

You'd be amazed. Bam, just like that. Something goes, whoo, I can feel him again.

Whoo, something happened. I feel like a cloud just lifted off. Your spirit just got free of the contamination.

So, you need to break links with families of generations of the past. My great-grandfather who did something sinful. You need to deal with family members who are close by.

I don't want the curses that were in my father or in my mother. I renounce them when I break spiritual links with them. I don't want the curses that are in my kids.

I break spiritual links with them. I break links with my aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces and the whole jolly lot. I don't want no contamination.

Come in. I break links with that good friend that I met the other day. You know, we haven't seen each other in years.

We had a good conversation, had a good cup of coffee together. You know, since then somehow something started to go wrong. Break the links.

Bam, set your spirit free. And then charge up your spirit in his presence. Fill yourself daily with his word.

Spend time in his presence. Exercise your spirit daily. How? Well, firstly through praying in the spirit.

Can you speak in tongues? It gets a good going. Keep going. See if you can pray for five minutes.

Then go to 10 minutes. Then head for 15. Then try a half an hour.

See if you can make it for an hour. It takes quite some effort, let me tell you. Start small and work up.

Why should we do that? Because the scripture says when you pray in tongues, you build up yourself. When you pray in tongues, you actually, it says your spirit is praying. Your spirit is actually exercising itself under the influence of the Holy Spirit and that is charging your spirit up.

I've really been struggling spiritually, okay. How much time did you spend praying in tongues this week? I don't have time to go around praying in tongues, don't you? How many hours are there in the day? You ever go to the bathroom? How long do you spend in the bathroom? You know, I like to sit there and meditate on the toilet. Pray in tongues.

Pray in tongues. You can pray in tongues under your breath even while you're at work. Nobody needs to even hear you.

You just bring it to yourself. You're building your spirit all the time. Sometimes you need to wait on God in prayer.

That means you come at his presence and you shut up. You just wait. Meditate on him and think of him.

Sometimes when you do that is when the greatest power comes. When you just stop what you're doing and shut off the world round about you and you think of him. You'll be amazed what begins to come upon you and in you.

You could try journaling. You can do it on a computer instrument. You can do it on paper.

You can do whichever way you like. Write down the words that the Lord is speaking to you. Ask him questions on paper and then write down his answer to the questions.

All of that requires the power of your spirit. And the more you do that, the more you strengthen and exercise your spirit. And then learn to prophesy.

Paul said, despise not prophesying. You say, well, you know, I don't get out to meet many people or pray with people. So where do they get a chance to prophesy? Have you ever prayed alone? Oh, I can't prophesy then, can't you? There's a person present, isn't there? You could prophesy over the person that's present.

But am I allowed to do that? Well, who says you can't? Paul says, if you pray in tongues, pray that you can interpret your own tongues. Well, what's interpretation of tongues? The same as prophecy. Is the last time you had a good prayer time and God gave you a word just for you? Well, I can tell you the last time God gave me a word for me was the last time I prayed.

Because most of the time when I pray, he gives me a word. I can play some of them for you on my phone. So I record them.

I want to remember what he said. I'll walk up and down and then I'll feel the tongues rising up into me. Oh, I know there's a word coming.

I'm immediately getting the recording app there on my phone ready. And then out it comes, a beautiful prophetic word from the Lord. Powerful stuff.

When do you think I learned to prophesy over other people? I never had the courage to do that in the beginning because they didn't like what I was saying. I practiced over me. Do it.

Develop the power of your spirit. Strengthen your spirit. Block all these things that are contaminating your spirit.

And you know what? The true healing power is going to be there and you're going to walk in the fullness of what God has for you. Your spirit in conclusion is the most important part of your being. It's the source of all blessing from the Lord.

When it's allowed to release its power, it'll bring healing to the whole person. When it's blocked from growing and releasing its power, all of you is going to suffer. That's when sickness of the body and the soul become more prevalent.

Your spirit is blocked. If you make it a priority to keep your spirit healthy, this will automatically overflow into your soul and into your body. And then you're going to walk in the fullness of divine health.

You're going to walk in the fullness of efficiency. You're going to be an efficient machine in your body and your soul and your spirit. And you know what God can do with an efficient machine? You know what kind of life you're going to live if you are an efficient machine, if you have divine health permeating every part of your being, if everything you say and do, your actions, if your very presence is permeated with the power of God coming up out of your spirit.

Perhaps then, like Peter, you'll be able to walk down the street and people try and get in your shadow just to get you. I don't know about you, but I'd like a bit of that. But there's a price to pay.

Are you prepared to pay the price? Or are you just going to make excuses? Father, I thank you for your word. I gave it as you gave it to me. I leave it with your people now and I ask you to challenge them with it.

I ask you to motivate and inspire them with it. And they will apply the principles, Lord, and live the life that you planned for us. That each of us will rise up into our full potential and be the marvelous creation that you've made us to be.

Thank you for that, Lord, in Jesus' name.

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