LESSONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF POWER
Dr. D. K. Olukoya
A lot of Christians are getting tired of weak Christianity they have and as such they have been asking questions on how they could make progress from their present level. They ask how they could obtain power. Therefore, the focus of this message is to supply answers to these questions, which have been the concern of most believers today, since almost everyone knows full well from the word of God, that Christianity is a religion of power. There is something within the subconscious minds of believers challenging them about whether they possess this power in their lives now. That is why this message is entitled, “Lessons from the school of power” We will look at the lessons in seven perspectives. Therefore I counsel you to read with maximum concentration so that you could get the best from this message.
The first lesson is in the form of question: what is power?
Truly, power is derived from spiritual sources. Before anything could take place in the physical, some actions must have been taken place in the spiritual realm. When this occurs, nobody has any power to change the situation. Sometimes ago, when l was in England, I received a letter from the prison and I wondered who could write to me from there. But when I opened the envelope I was shocked to discover that somebody whom I expected to have been in Nigeria by that time was the writer. In his letter, he said “Dear Daniel, I wish to inform you that I am now in prison. Please pay me a visit and when you are coming buy some apples, toothpaste and other necessary things for me. It is now I know that I should have listened to all the things you used to tell me instead of laughing and making mockery of you” Truly, he used to laugh at me and call me names those days when I preached to him. So I went to see him at the prison. After passing through a rigorous prison protocol, I got to where he was and when he saw me, he broke down in tears lamenting that if he had listened to my words at that time, he would not have been clamped into jail. But funny enough, he had become born again and started preaching to other inmates. What offence did he commit? He issues cheque for the money he did not have, but nemesis caught up with him. I asked him if he was guilty and he said yes and asked the Lord to forgive him. He knelt down and asked for forgiveness. Thereafter, we transferred the case to heaven as he had repented. When he was charged to court, those of us who understood that the real power source is from the spiritual just laughed. On the judgement day, the presiding magistrate said, “As an educated and intelligent person with distinction in Master degree to your credit, I can only come to one conclusion about you, I think you are mad. Therefore, I hereby order that you should be deported”. That was exactly what we had decreed and prayed for. This is to tell you that true power does not belong here, it is from above.
At another instance, a six-year-old girl confessed in a revival programme that she was the one who bewitched her father’s hand. She said the reason he could not stretch the hand was they used it to cut firewood in their witchcraft meetings. Her father almost ran mad. If the six-year-old girl was asked to engage in a physical combat with her father of about forty, he would probably have broken her bones into pieces but the girl was stronger spiritually because that is the power base.
In this light, we can say that power is the process of control given by God through the spoken words that cause things to happen. It is capable of producing an effect that is the spiritual ability to accomplish things. However, one of the problems of Christianity today is that power is fading out and this sad development first started from individual believers.
Lessons No 2 what are the sources of power?
Power emanates from three sources namely: God, Satan and man. The divine power of God is the positive one, satanic power is negative whilst the human power is neutral. It can either be controlled by God’s own divine power or satanic power. We are only able to bind the evil and spoil his works by the power of Christ; otherwise we are no matches for the devil.
Lessons No 3 is the difference between authority and power.
People mix these two things up whereas they are two different things. As far as Christians are concerned, their authority comes from the word of God whilst their power comes from the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Many Christians have given commands to evil spirits by quoting scriptures but lack of good knowledge of where these scriptures are written have spelt defeat for them. This is the reason Bible study must be taken seriously. Many are still joking with their Bibles. If they are asked to open to any book, they will begin to fumble with their Bibles, looking for index, pages, numbers etc. You must be diligent with your Bible study.
Our authority as believers is exercised in the name of Jesus and the anointing of the Holy Spirit operates power. That is why you see two different levels of operation between two Christians. One can issue a command to an evil spirit in a person and the evil spirit leaves immediately. Whereas another Christian could use exactly the same words but the spirit would say, “You are not serious” So the difference lies on the power backing up the command. Authority is given to all Christian without measures, but power is given according to your level of self-crucifixion and faith. The moment a person gets born again, authority is automatically conferred on him. For it to move, the power of God must back it up. In other words, authority is the legal right of Christian, which you should claim and exercise. It is power that enforces your right as a Christian. It is possible to have authority without power and that can spell disaster. This is telling us the reason that the Holy Spirit is an indispensable factor in our Christian life. It is certain that no witch whether from the bottom of hell fire can kill you if you have the genuine baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Lesson no 4: What is our matching order from the Lord Jesus?
Knowing full well that we are soldiers of Christ John 14:12 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father”.
Just like the armed forces, Christian soldiers have their own matching order too. Matthew 10:8 “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give”.
Our marching order is clearly spelt out here. It says, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead and cast out the devils. As you continue to grow in your Christian life, if you fail to carry out any of these before you go and meet the Lord, you would have lived a powerless Christian life. What does the Lord expect us to be doing practically? How does the Lord want us to carry out our marching order? Should we just be hiding from our enemies? No. The Lord expects us to be creating headache for our enemies, but it is unfortunate to see that the enemies are oppressing believers instead. I used to have some troublesome friends in those days. I mean troublesome as Christian warriors and not as hooligans. One day at a night vigil, they prayed the following prayer points, “ Let all satanic transport services grind to a halt in the name of Jesus.” As they were praying violently, all of a sudden, a nicely dressed handsome young man landed on the floor and was saying, “What brought me down, what am l doing here?” And they told him without mincing words that he had been brought down by the power of the Holy Spirit backing up their prayers. I know some believers who dare not attend night vigils or pray fire prayer simply because the Christian marching order is not clear to them.
Another troublesome friend of mine came across a magician performing with live snakes in a market place. He stood at he back of the crowd watching his magical feats. As he rained his incantations, expecting things to happen in order to catch his prey amongst the spectators, my Christian friend who was standing at the back nullified the effect of his incantation by saying, “ I trample upon everything you have said, in Jesus name” And nothing really worked for the magician that day. By the time it dawned on him that he could not make any headway, he left the place for another location. This is the kind of headache that God expects us to be causing for the agents of darkness. You should not be crying day and night that something is screaming by your bed or that birds are perching on your pillow. Why should you be under the fear of a strange bird, Lizard and cockroach when you already have a superior power?
There was this other friend of mine who was posted to pastor a church situated in a street where there was practically a herbalist on every house. This brother decided to make it a do or die affair. He made up his mind to wake up everyday at 2 a.m point to every house and say “ I soak this house in the fire of God and I destabilize everything demonic arrangement therein in Jesus name.” He also coupled it with speaking in tongues. After two months of this exercise the herbalist in the streets held an emergency meetings where they sent a delegate to see his General Overseer and requested that he should be removed from their street. But he highly perturbed general Overseer told them that they were free to deal with him for he knew very well that they could not face him. That was how the herbalists lost their clients to the church of this brother and they began to wallow in poverty. Sometimes ago, a herbalist husband of one of our converts traced his wife to our meeting with charms and threatened to deal with us if we did not release his wife. We asked him if he had come to fight us and he said no, but he would use his power on us. We told him that he could go ahead to use whatever power he had on us. But alas he failed woefully. He was enraged because he had lost his wife to Jesus.
I am emphasizing this for us to see that we are falling short of our marching order. Our shadows are supposed to chase demons. In fact, our spiritual level should attain such a height that even an usher in the church ought to be able to attend to any case of demonic attack that is brought to the church. The efficacy of the power should be so real in us that we should be able to say, “Don’t bother to take this one to the General Overseer. Let me take care of it “ We should all be able to carry out the marching order as attested in Matthew 10:8, God wants you to be filled with power to the extent that as you are passing by witches will be running away from you. A witch should not be seen admiring your perfume and asking who did your hair for you. The fact that they were able to move closer to you is evident that you lack power. Even your saliva should carry fire and if an evil person is following you about in bed to collect the sand from underneath your feet, he will be electrocuted.
In a fellowship we attended long time ago, our prayer was so aggressive that unbelievers could not dare pass by the church building. They knew that if they attempted to cross our bridge, they would be shocked. But why is it that evil people who are supposed to be running about seeking for our help are the very people giving us problems? Are they not the ones who ought to be running helter-skelter? Did not our Lord and Master, Jesus say, “Greater works than these shall ye do” Our lives should be a terror to evil people. If they lock up Christians, we expect the angels of God to come and open door. The reason we don’t see angels is that a lot of consecration is required, which many people cannot cope with. Every believer is meant to be a power generator. It is not for Pastors, apostles or evangelists and ministers alone.
The fifth lesson to learn is anointing.
Like I said earlier on all Christians should be power generators. But then, this cannot be possible without the anointing. As you read through the New Testament, you will understand that anointing means the power that will enable you to function supernaturally. It is supernatural power for supernatural assignment. The question then is, how could you be anointed? How could you be spiritually equipped so that instead of running away from your marching order, you will stay and cause power to change hands. The anointing is a kind of power that comes upon you to enable you to operate as Christian. Without it there is little you can achieve for God. Something would definitely happen when the anointing comes upon you. It is the anointing that breaks the yoke of poverty, sicknesses and problems. Isaiah 10:27 Confirms this “And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing”.
The anointing can crush all attacks launched against you. No matter the resistance force of your attackers, the anointing would scatter their strongholds. It is the anointing that stands between the believers and the power of darkness. It is what makes the believer to shine. Even if the enemy has locked up your potentials when the anointing comes upon you, they would be released. This anointing makes you to operate in the supernatural and increases your level of understanding.
Your first contact with the anointing is when you become born again because nobody can get born again except by the spirit of God. The book of John3:3 tells us that except a man is born of water and spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. But believers need to be anointed from heaven to exhibit power Acts 1:8 “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth”. It means that without the power of the Holy Spirit, there cannot be anointing. Jesus was careful enough to warn His disciples not to venture to preach without this power. He charged them to wait at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high. Of a truth, when they received the power, they were accused of turning Jerusalem upside down. The manifestation of the power made them VIPs in Jerusalem. When they locked them up in prison, the angel of God went there and got them out and charged them to go forth to minister the word. They went back to inform the chief priests and scribes that the men they put in custody were found preaching in the temples and market places.
When the power of God comes upon you, you will know. If I ask you whether you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit or not, and your answer is “l am not sure” then what you are saying in effect is no because when the power of God comes upon a person, he will know. Because many things will happen. You will pray in tongues, your prayer life will be changed, strange dreams will disappear and it will be as if heaven has come down. Also, it is one thing to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and it is another thing to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. If the apostles needed more of the in-filling of the Holy Spirit, then we need it much more in this dispensation. We should realise that the last days are here. One blind man was brought to Jesus for healing. Jesus held his hands and took him outside the town where He touched him. Then He asked him, if he could see and the man said that he could see men walking like trees. Jesus touched him a second time before he could see clearly. In the same way, most of the modern believers need the second touch of God. It is when the power of God comes upon your life that things will begin to happen in your life.
Many believers have never seen any vision or divine revelation or prophesied before. All they do is just to come to fellowship to allow others to do things in the fellowship. When the Lord comes and brings out the record of our services, what will you tell Him?
Lesson 6 is “The double portion anointing.
In 2kings 2, we see an important thing. We know that the Old Testament is a shadow of the New Testament. And whatsoever has been laid down for us in the old testament, has its substance in the New Testament. There we read about two men, one is known as Elijah. His name means God is God. And we have Elisha, who had double portion and his name means God is salvation. These two people were men of God who gave us a pattern on how we might move if we really want power. Elisha was a very important and wonderful prophet in the Old Testament. He was very important for several reasons. For example, we don’t know anything about the parents of Elijah, meaning that, your parents do not have to be important for God to use you. In fact, in some places in the Bible, some parents were downright demonic but their children were men of God. For example; Jehoshaphat, the king of Israel. His father was demon-possessed and the Bible did not hide it at all. We don’t know anything about Elijah’s parents but he was the first prophet to announce punishment against God’s enemies. He decreed that there would be neither rain nor dew except by his word. And for three and half years he closed the windows of heaven and put the key in his pocket. That was in the old Testament, and the Bible says that we have to do better than that. That is why the book of James says that Elijah was a man of like passion as us. He was the first prophet to multiply food. Although our Lord Jesus Christ did a lot of it later He was the first prophet to raise the dead, he was the first prophet to call down fire. Before Elijah, nobody ever did. Now, Elijah was going away and a replacement had to be made.
So, the first qualification for somebody who wants the double portion of God’s power is that he must receive a call. The reason you are a child of God now is because God has called you. You did not become that by your own design. In fact, many people would not have come to the Lord at all if not for the fact that He drew them with a powerful hand. Some would have still been dancing away at the parties of the world. But the Lord organized situations for them to drag them to the gospel and now they are there and have seen that there is no life better than that. The church as a whole is a constitution of people who were called out from the world. The Bible says, “Come out of them and be ye separate” God called you out by unseen ordination, not by anybody’s brain. God calls out His people. You don’t become a member of the church by somebody writing your name in his or her register. You don’t become the member of the church just because on your fortieth day, you were taken to the church. No. It is something only God can do.
Elisha now received his call, it was unexpected. He did not question the call. He just accepted it. He did not struggle with God 1 Kings 19:16-21 “And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. [17] And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. [18] Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. [19] So he departed thence, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, (normally a person ploughs with just one but he was ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen) and he with the twelfth: and Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him.(he did not say anything to him, he just cast his mantle upon him) [20] And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee?( I did not say anything to you now) [21] And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people,( and gave them bye-bye party) and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him”.
The call was unexpected but the man understood it. He did not question it. They did not force it upon him. It was unconditionally accepted. The Bible says that many are called but few are chosen. God has called you and that is the reason you are a Christian. Elisha was already a warrior. These days, some people just come and they say, “I am not doing my work again. God has called me” The person that says God has called him has done nothing for two years. He is just sleeping and waking up. Occasionally, he would go to the business to make some noise in the name of Preaching. He tried carpentry, it did not work. He tried bricklaying, it did not work, he tried to be a bus conductor and that did not work, so he stayed at home now and said that God has called him. It is a big lie. Those that God called in the scriptures beginning from Abraham to the last person were busy doing their thing and God called them for what they were. They were busy men working. We still have to pray for a lot of people to be delivered from the spirit of laziness. Elisha was not lazy. He was busy working when God took him. We have another man in the bible called Amos who was preaching his message and the chief priest came unto him saying, “O seer, don’t prophecy here, we don’t want that kind of message here. How could you be saying that Israel shall go into captivity. Go back to Judah and eat the bread there” So, the work of God was described as eating of bread. But Amos said, “Once I was a herdsman and a keeper of sycamore trees and the Lord took me from doing that work saying go unto my people tell them about the transition, but you high priest because you said don’t preach here, don’t say what God wants you to say, hear the word of the Lord”, then he issued curses on him. He knew who called him and what he was doing. So think about it. Some people who say they want to work for God wake up by 2.00 a.m. Certainly, God has not called them.
To be continued.
Prayer points
1. Holy Ghost, ignite my fire, in Jesus name.
2. Let the flood of God’s power soak me, in the name of Jesus.
3. O Lord, make this week a week of power for me in the Name of Jesus.
4. I refused to fail, in the name of Jesus.
5. Every stranger in my life, depart by fire in Jesus name.
