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July 24 - August 14, 2016
It’s not about accomplishing what we want to see or about our version of success; it’s about saying, “I’m willing to be used by God in this moment, and the results are up to Him, not me.”
One way to think about it is that we are meant to be nickels in God’s pocket, like loose change He can spend any which way He chooses. He can spend us on big things or small things.
All through the New Testament, Jesus told us to go heal the sick without any qualifications. I think waiting on direct orders with the kind of thinking that says, I have to have a word or a directive to go, is slavery mentality. Jesus made us joint heirs with Him. Break the chains of slavery thinking and just go do the things He did!
When we walk with the expectation that God wants to break in, we’re walking in agreement with the spiritual reality that Jesus declared when He said the fields are white for the harvest
(see John 4:35 NKJV). His promise to us is that we will reap where we did not sow. God is the one in pursuit of His people, and we simply walk in the expectation that He is present with us and is at work. In that moment, in that time, expecting that God will show up, we have no idea what the results will be. We expect God to show up because He wants to. He is in pursuit of people through us.
It doesn’t matter how hurting or broken a person seems. God put His image into every single person on earth, so every person you meet uniquely expresses something about Him. There’s hidden treasure there.
If something is really from God, the power will be in what He’s actually saying and in His Spirit confirming it, not in the way we phrase it.
Listen for what God is calling a person to, not just
where the person is at in the moment. Words are powerful, and your role may be to declare the blessing that God wants to bring as a way of releasing it to happen.
you’re simply loving people by praying for them and loving God by obeying Him. That’s the powerful part, and it never changes.
We want to make the experience of being prayed for and receiving from God as accessible to people as possible.
If we think they might suddenly be feeling weird, it’s okay to stop and ask, “Is this making you feel uncomfortable?” Don’t make assumptions, but ask questions and let people be a part of the process and go at their own pace. It’s a way of showing love, and it helps alleviate some of the fears people have.
Words from God never push us or dominate us, but rather, they lovingly invite us toward Him.
we don’t have control over the results.
Wherever Jesus went proclaiming the Kingdom of heaven, people were healed. When we pray for the sick to be healed, we’re agreeing with heaven.
Our simple acts of faith praying for healing in the environment of the world are like a weapon of mass destruction against the kingdom of darkness.
Too many times, we miss out on healing and blame a lack of faith on our part or on the part of the person being prayed for.
But no matter how long you’ve been praying for people to be healed and what kind of results you’ve seen, a helpful tip is to
focus on what God is doing, not on what He isn’t doing.
Healing is not a measure of success, nor is it an end in itself—it’s simply a part of His goodness and reign.
The problem is not the lack of a power supply in heaven, but the supply of faithful workers willing to go out and speak out in risk.
Healing isn’t at the center of what we do—God’s love is. We take authority over sickness, but what we’re ministering to people is the presence of God.
There’s power in the presence of God for healing and deliverance, but our goal in everything is for people to encounter the reality of God’s presence and to experience His love for themselves.
How do we destroy the devil’s works? Every time we share the Gospel and lead a lost person to Christ, every time we heal, every time we forgive, every time we bring freedom through deliverance, every time we encourage people or speak truth and freedom and God’s love to them, we’re destroying the works and lies of the enemy. When we step out in Kingdom work, we’re reclaiming what was stolen from humankind after the Fall and extending the Kingdom of heaven.
When doing deliverance, we want to clearly establish lines of authority, with one person in leadership and the others only in supporting roles.
Authority comes from God. When we recognize and honor God’s delegated authority, we’re aligning ourselves with the order of His Kingdom.
setting people free from demonic oppression is a natural overflow of the Great Commission. As we preach the Good News and invite people to Christ, not only can they receive new life in Christ, but they can receive full salvation—they can be set free from the oppression of fear, sickness and evil spirits.
We need to realize the huge importance of resisting the spirit of fear in our lives, which keeps us battling accusation, anxiety and a sense of disqualification. That power in His love is there to help us resist fear and to give us the confidence to do the stuff Jesus did.
But I stepped out to take a risk based more on what I believe than on what I had seen in the past.
This authority only works properly when we use it to benefit others and to accomplish the will of the Father to draw people into relationship with Himself. Jesus said that He “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). That always has to stay at the heart of what we do in His name if we’re to see the authority and power He has given us at work.
Being a Kingdom people means that like Him, we live our lives in agreement with heaven, speaking and acting to accomplish what God wants to do here on earth (see Colossians 3:1–2). This life of ministry powerfully affirms our true identity in Christ, and it’s extremely offensive to the “religious” and to the kingdom of darkness.
Authority in the world is fear based. Authority in God is love based.
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. It’s about identity.
all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, and that we have access to this power because He has transferred His ministry to us
we have access to God because Jesus has transferred His relationship to us.
In the love of the Father and Son, we see that the oneness of God is the relationship of God, and all of life stems from it. In Jesus, God has drawn so near to man and drawn man so near to Himself that they are perfectly one. This is what the incarnation means.
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.
Through the Spirit, each of us has the potential to measure up to the full and complete standard of Christ—in purity, gentleness, power and wisdom. The risen Christ is now glorified beyond measure, but His Spirit lives in us to perfect in us His life here on earth in His suffering, in His miracles, in His love.
The love of the Father isn’t simply a flawless attribute to be imperfectly imitated; it’s a relationship of perfect intimacy that you’re invited to fully experience.
God wants absolutely nothing less than to fill you with Himself and make you shine with His presence through the Holy Spirit.
“kingdom of God is the sovereign rule of God, manifested in the person and work of Christ, creating a people over whom he reigns, and issuing in a realm or realms in which the power of his reign is realized.”
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. He made us the bearers of heaven. By renouncing sin and declaring Christ as Lord, we receive the gift of His Spirit and His Kingdom reign within us. He has called us as co-heirs to the Kingdom and has thus granted us full authority to choose, just as He freely chose.
walk in authority is to be a carrier of this transforming presence. As we abide in Him and He abides in us, we should expect nothing less than the reordering of ourselves and our world according to this perfect love relationship. This is what it means to declare the Kingdom of God.
To do the things that Jesus did is to walk in the authority of His name, “God with us.”
when we walk into a situation as carriers of His presence and authority, God is there because we are there. He shows up because we’ve shown up and He’s in us—Christ in us, the hope of the world. This doesn’t mean that we never doubt, but where we let our actions exceed our doubts, that’s faith.
Our ability to walk in authority hinges on our ability to recognize and walk under the Father’s authority.
Spending time with the Father, we can follow the stirring that’s in our hearts to do something, because we’ve been with Him and we’re operating with His heart and within His will.
Those who recognized and submitted to the authority Jesus walked in were able to receive great miracles through Him.
Recognized authority and mutual submission flow from the inner workings of the Trinity and are integral to our spiritual growth and sonship.
