Imagine That

How do you explain receiving an instruction from a God who introduced himself to you in a foreign land and in a strange way but immediately placed a demand on you to carry out a project or an assignment for him?

It was not as if you were not doing okay where you were and on your own, before he came and inserted himself into your life, He came and his coming upset your life as you knew it

You had to leave your father’s house, leave your mother's house, pack all your belongings, and head for a place you do not know but which he would show you

Imagine that!

Or you have to leave your job as a shepherd, leave the family that accommodated you in this strange land, convince your wife of several years who had two children for you that you are going back to the country where you are a wanted fugitive on the instructions of a God whom she had never seen, met or known all her life

You were also going to have to do circumcision for yourself and your sons just so you can convince these strange people whose God you met in the desert to believe in you God did not go to the crowd to tell them about you or introduce you to them as their new Messiah or general manager, he left all that to you

He didn't give you an army

He didn’t give you the funds to buy an army

You argued with him seriously on the matter and He introduced himself to you as "I am that I am" As if you can use the name to withdraw money from the bank

Then he told you to go to the most powerful king in the world and compel him to surrender all his slaves to you so that you can bring them to Him in the desert for the sole purpose of worshipping Him as if He could not be worshipped in Egypt...

Imagine this God appearing to you and asking you to give him your son, the son he gave you in your old age, not give him, the way Hannah gave Samuel but give him the way Abel sacrificed his lamb as an offering

To be fair, God can sometimes make unreasonable demands of us

God always makes unreasonable demands of us and this is because He is aware of the capacity, He gave us that we didn't even know we had and He places demands on us based on those capacities and not based on how we see ourselves

Abraham was the father of Faith, God gave Abraham that gift of faith himself, Abraham didn’t know that gift was powerful enough to prevent him from considering ever disobeying God

When God told him to bring his son to the mountain and kill him, Abraham found faith stirring in him so strongly that he did not have an option but to do it

No father would willingly do what Abraham did without that supernatural capacity of faith which was imputed in Abraham supernaturally

The same applies to Moses, although in Moses' case, it was not the Spirit of Faith but the Spirit of Dominion

God literally empowered this shepherd fugitive with the power to bring a whole nation and its structures to its knees while the King of that nation would suffer and surrender helplessly in the end

It didn't look so at the beginning when Moses stood before Pharoah and did his trick with the rod but as things unfolded Moses realized that God had made him a god indeed unto Pharaoh

No matter how unreasonable his decrees were in Egypt, they came to pass

Pharoah and his magicians had never seen anything like it before

Moses didn't know he had that kind of power and capacity

God knew He did and placed a demand on that capacity which on the surface seemed unreasonable

The same applied to Gideon, David, Peter, Paul, Philip, and many of the glorious examples presented to us throughout the Scriptures

God did not deal with them as they were before he met them

God dealt with them as they will be after He had met them but most of them were not aware of this change in their abilities and circumstances immediately

Some never became aware of it and since they didn't see themselves the way God saw them, they died without fulfilling the demand of God upon their capacity in Him

A man like James, who was killed by Herod had no business dying that early as the church began to unfold the mysteries and power of Jesus Christ to the world

Peter, James, and John were the three most important witnesses of Jesus in the gospels They were entrusted with secrets and mysteries that the other disciples didn’t know but which they must be taught after Jesus had been crucified

They witnessed the transfiguration, they witnessed the raising of Jairus' daughter, and the use of the code Talitha cum, they witnessed the deliverance of Mary Magdalene and were central to the dissemination of information as grape vines of the Lord

They were filled with the Holy Spirit and with power on the day of Pentecost

Peter rode the waves of the Spirit and soon they had the crowd but some of them had been waiting to die with the Lord thinking this was the ultimate goal of the coming of Christ

The disciples were saying in the Book of Acts that it is a privilege to be flogged, be beaten, suffer, and even die for the message they now preach

This thinking led to the death of James- a fatalist approach that diminishes the capacity of any believer and makes him a victim of ordinary men

Herod was an ordinary man with a title, he had no right to kill a supernatural being like James but James didn't see himself as supernatural, neither did he understand the enormity of the assignment given to him by Jesus Christ and how much he was needed alive for the course of the gospel

James didn't know angels could come to his rescue and all sorts of supernatural things could keep him alive and useful for the church

He was put to the sword like a criminal

His death motivated the church to pray and then the supernatural broke out among them

Wow! It is not a good thing to be ignorant of the capacity one has in Christ

You will not be able to place a demand on the full riches that are yours in Christ Jesus as long as you keep acting, thinking, talking, and behaving like an ordinary man especially after you have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit

I have a litmus test with which I know if a believer is being transformed daily by the consciousness of the Supernatural or not

I listen to the believer as he or she interacts with unbelievers, if they can understand one another easily without the believer coming off as arrogant or unrealistic or being full of himself then the believer is not being transformed

The first thing that changes in a believer after he or she has become born again and filled with the Holy Spirit is the mindset and the evidence of this is in the language and tone employed while speaking

Imagine being in Pharaoh's court when Moses came there- an ordinary shepherd without gold, silver, an army, or any form of influence

He naturally should fall on his knees before Pharaoh and beg for a favour

He stood there and told the King that the God he served had issued an instruction which Pharaoh must comply with and that this instruction was for Pharaoh to "Let My People Go"

I would have laughed at the audacity Yeah, that word "Audacity" Abraham had it too David, Daniel, Esther, Joshua, Caleb,

Jesus had plenty of Audacity

Paul had audacity

Why don’t you have audacity? It is because you are not aware of who you are in Christ yet.

No one walked in the consciousness of this new life in Christ who was not audacious Daniel said but the people who do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits. Daniel 11:32

It is a pity that many believers are not doing exploits today, they are merely praying for exploits, like the priests of Baal

The instruction was directly from Jesus to those who believe to do as He has instructed In fact, Jesus told the disciples that they must not be hearers of the word but doers of it Many of us interpreted that to mean that when they ask for an offering and I give an offering or when they call for seed and I give a seed or when they tell me not to wear trousers as a lady and I don't wear it, I am doing the Word

No, please!

Jesus is not a morality or ethics instructor

The Holy Spirit was not given to you so that you can dress up in a culturally acceptable manner or behave in a societally acceptable manner

You are equipped for supernatural exploits in Christ

These signs will follow those who do believe: they will drive out evil spirits in my name; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous it will do them no harm; they will lay their hands upon the sick and they will recover.”

Unfortunately, due to religion and all sorts of narratives and stories of devilish and occultic exploits being shared on the altar by many pastors, the average believer believes so much in the power of darkness and its ability to finish or cripple them that all they do now is defend themselves from the attack of the enemy (seen and unseen), (Known and Unknown), which leads them to pray irrelevant prayers and being fearful of everything and everyone

Some carry anointing oil in their bags, some carry mantles (handkerchiefs blessed by their pastor) some wear hand bands, bracelets, t-shirts etc.  Some wear prayer shawls from Turkey or Israel

Material mediums are a thing of the Old Testament introduced to the church by many who are looking to make some money off the faith people put in things rather than in the Spirit of God that has been given to them

In this New Testament, the believer is the one filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to do exploits in Christ.

As long as you see yourself as a victim and ordinary, nothing extraordinary will be done by you

This is why we have many who pray in tongues and only a few who walk in the supernatural

This year you must change that mindset and make it conform with the reality of the Spirit at work in you

You must be audacious as you do the exploits of the Spirit

You cannot focus on your life’s challenges and act as if this was why you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit

If you don't do it the way Jesus did it, you will never have his results or even the results we refer to as greater works! Remember this

PS: This year opened with a plethora of good things House dedications, supernatural pregnancies, miracle babies and all

All these were being done right in the middle of a massive multi-billion naira project we are doing for the Lord

When the Lord told me to build him a city, I was like "What? A city? Not a church?" We started building and we all somehow became richer and richer individually and as a ministry, I cannot explain it but it is true

The sort of things God does that you cannot explain but can only see and wonder

Glory be to God

 

-GSW-