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Kindle Notes & Highlights
To walk in godly authority means to walk under godly authority. The two are inseparable. Authority is not a matter of doing, it’s a matter of being.
Jesus has His Being by being one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. His oneness with God is the same oneness He extends to us through faith in Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Being born again means being born into God.
The more I’ve stepped out boldly on behalf of others in the name of Jesus, the more my ability to walk in His authority has grown.
Comparing Christ’s ministry with our ministry creates a false separation. All of it is His ministry in us.
Jesus came to set the standard of what’s possible for a full-fleshed human being living in dependent relationship with God.
“Some of you—the apostles, prophets and pastors among you—have been given special gifts to be like Jesus and continue His ministry on earth. The rest of you, your job is just to concentrate on being nice.” Actually, come to think of it, that’s not what Paul says at all.
“Christians trying to be like God” are not the hope of the world. It’s Christ in us that’s the hope of glory.
What He did through His perfect life and death on the cross was to restore back to humanity the original authority over the earth that God gave us in the Garden.
Jesus died not only because of our sins, but because we fell short of the glory of God.
As I said earlier, when we walk into a situation as carriers of His presence and authority, God is there because we are there.
The man who simply recognizes the authority of God’s Word as lived out in the life of the righteous man receives the same reward!
Insecurity and pride are two things that set themselves up against walking in godly authority. One worships our lack as the defining thing about us; the other exalts God’s goodness in our lives as being our own goodness.
We can be set free from defending ourselves or fighting our own battles by knowing God’s gentleness and fierce love.
God longs for us to recognize His loyalty to us in every situation we encounter. Our long journeys in the “wilderness” or into seasons of “captivity” are often lengthened until we recognize God’s loving provision over our lives.
When we don’t recognize His love, we remain stuck in a slavery mentality and obstinately become not only the greatest hazard to ourselves, but the greatest obstacle to the good that God intends.
Grace is the power of God to do the will of God.
We still go out and give words when we need words ourselves. We’re still used by God to bring healing, comfort, wholeness and restoration to others when we’re sick, weak and weary ourselves.
Using wounded healers like Canah to heal others is one way God gets revenge against the kingdom of darkness. A highly dysfunctional boy who was never supposed to speak prayed for someone else. He spoke out, breaking the power of sickness and suffering, and a girl found healing and freedom from pain.
Discouragement is not a natural emotion we simply cycle through. It’s one of the only ones Scripture consistently commands us to resist:
Declare, “I’m going to pray, but I’m not going to get discouraged. I’m not going to get disillusioned and think that God doesn’t love me.” As a Kingdom people, we have to determine that that will be our resolution.
You and I don’t have any right to think, Why didn’t God hear me when I prayed?
When we’re in that place of suffering, we need to take after the woman who bled for twelve years. She put herself right in the middle of where Jesus was, and I believe she had to fight for it,
All of us will face issues in our lives that will make us want to hit the eject button and isolate ourselves in our pain. Then off by ourselves, we build our theology around our disappointment to console ourselves. Somehow we have to resolve that when that happens, we will not stop clinging to Jesus.
Instead of turning to Him, however, it’s easy to allow anger, bitterness or unforgiveness to become our shelter. Those create a thick wall of defense against the outside world, but they also become our private prisons where we can live in the regret of our past mistakes, rehearsing them over and over again and letting them bring us to a halt.
Jesus is the horn of our salvation. Because of Him, we can stop grieving over our past and walking in the shame of our mistakes and failures. We can be on our way about the business of living for the Kingdom.
Receive the prophetic word that came to Samuel: Stop grieving over the past, fill your horn with oil and go.
We can live by what our experiences say is true about us, or we can live by what God says is true about us.
Don’t look to your past to determine your future. Look to what God is calling you to do.
Introspection can sometimes be a trap. Satan will try to keep your focus on you and keep your thoughts focused on justifying your unbelief about why you can’t do things or how you aren’t qualified.
In the Vineyard, we say that faith is spelled R-I-S-K. If you want to lose weight, you have to go through a little hunger. If you want to do the things Jesus did, you have to go through a little R-I-S-K.
God increases what we have as we give it away. We’re always saying, “Increase it first, and I’ll give it.” That wasn’t how it worked when Jesus fed the five thousand, and that’s not how it works with us.
What strikes me was that in all of His miracles, Jesus didn’t make something from nothing. He made wine from dirty water. He multiplied food from someone’s small lunch. He borrowed someone’s pet colt. He told Peter to go catch a fish and then take a coin out of its mouth. He even made mud from the dust of the ground to heal a blind man’s eyes.
Satan almost always tempts us with something that we already have in God.
Just as he did with Jesus, Satan first tries to talk us out of what God has already said is true about us. His goal is to convince us that we can’t do what God has told us to do.
Truth activates faith; lies destroy faith.
People aren’t great in the Kingdom because they have great willpower or are full of unusual goodness. People are great in the Kingdom because they’re learning to put their faith in Christ instead of in themselves.
Everything changes when we realize that discouragement is not a state that we must endure, like sadness or suffering.
Jesus left behind His supernatural powers and became fully human, receiving the Holy Spirit the same way we do and becoming an example to us all of what a life of obedience to the Father looks like.
Our bodies and sicknesses are just temporary. As we follow Jesus, the transformation that takes place within us is eternal, and our job is to bring as many people as possible with us.
Do you know where the hope for your city is? It’s sitting in your chair right now.
As the disciples continued to follow Christ and stepped out in doing the things He did, they were strengthened. As they went out to do what they knew they couldn’t do, they came into the Kingdom of heaven.
To win big, we’ve got to risk big. If we’re not “failing” in what we do on a regular basis, I have a hard time believing we’re really going after it.
When you hit failure, the most muscle growth occurs.
When we delight ourselves in obedience, we don’t get discouraged in the process.
Jesus says it’s more about our identity than the miraculous. God’s idea of success is our obedience. The results are for Him, not us.
If our ministry is based on “results,” there’s a danger that the ministry can become about us. When the disciples went out doing the things that Jesus did, the results were most often riots, stoning, beating and incarceration.
Pursue the way of love and don’t be afraid to just go for it. Who knows? You might change someone’s life forever.
God says, “You go, and I’ll show.”
Those people were all affected because of a complete and total failure. Two of them had their lives forever changed—out of pushing to failure. When it seems as if nothing’s working, we have no idea how God is at work.
Every time we pray, something is happening, whether we can observe it immediately or not.
