The Almighty God has many names that people use from time to time to adore, admire, worship and praise Him. However, God Himself has names by which He wants to be called. Many men of God had one form of description or the other of God in the Bible. The Bible also tells us that there are many gods and lords but to us, there is only one God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes when you are calling God, you need to identify the particular one you are talking about. God is known as one who knows no impossibility. God is known as one who is more than enough, that is what we call the Elshadai. When you have enough, that is when He starts to add more to you. God is described as one who shuts a door and no one can open, and when He opens it, no one can close it. When God says He is opening a door for you, anybody quarrelling or fighting with you is wasting his time. For instance, it will be foolish of a person to ask the sun why it is shining. That would be a useless exercise.
God is the one who calls the visible out of the invisible. He is known as the one who is able to do all things, the one who is able to rescue you from any problem, the God that answereth by fire. 1 Kings 18:19-27 says, “Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the grooves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel’s table. So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto the people, I even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, it is well spoken. And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first, for ye are many, and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us, but there was no voice nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.” Verses 31-32; “And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying Israel, shall be thy name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two measures of seed.” Verses 38-39; “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood, and the stones, and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.”
The contest between Elijah and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal was with a condition which was agreed upon by the two parties. This was a contest between the living God and smaller gods. When it was the turn of the prophets of Baal to call upon their god, Elijah mocked them when there was no response from their god, but when it got to his turn, he called the people near and repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down by Baal worshippers. He used twelve stones to represent the twelve tribes of Israel and built an altar. He put the stones upon mount Carmel, laid the wood in order, cut the bull and put it upon the altar, then he instructed them to pour twelve barrels of water on it, so there would be no room for disbelief. Then he prayed for fire from above. His prayer was answered and fire consumed the sacrifice. What is this telling us? It tells us about the consuming fire. The Bible says the Lord God is a consuming fire. The fire can consume large stones, dust, water, etc. There is nothing that God’s fire cannot consume. His own fire is unquenchable, the God who answers by fire is the unchanging God. When God answers you by fire, your problems are in trouble, for that is an end to their existence. Elijah called down fire to destroy God’s enemies.
Several years back, there was a crusade some where in Lagos. As the man of God was preaching, suddenly out of no where, thunder struck directly where he was standing and the microphone caught fire, and light went off. The man got angry in the spirit and said everybody should stand up. “Did you see what has just happened?” He asked, and they answered yes. The man of God asked everybody to close their eyes and send back the thunder wherever it came from. The whole of that place was full of dust as people prayed with holy anger. Suddenly, light came back and about twenty minutes after, a man was rushed to the crusade ground. When they brought him in, it was as if they put him inside boiling oil and then brought him out. His skin was peeled. He was angry that the Christians had come to disturb his customers, so he sent thunder to the crusade. Even though he sent the thunder, he did not have enough capacity to cope in case the thunder came back. So when the believers prayed a prayer of “Back to the sender,” the angels must have gathered the thunder wherever it was, and sent it back to the man. He screamed and people came to his assistance. They wanted to take him to the hospital, but he said, “No, don’t take me to the hospital, take me to that crusade ground, I know what I have done.” So, they rushed him to the crusade ground. It didn’t take him long to give his life to Christ. It did not take him long to believe that there is a greater power than his own power. Nothing would have changed if that man of God had not adopted the back to sender approach. It is like Saul, the persecutor of the Christians in the Bible; if you tried to convince him, you would be wasting your time, if you worked a miracle before him, he would ascribe the power to a demon, but when God dealt with him, it did not take too long for him to submit to Jesus.
In Abuja, there was a pregnant woman living in the middle floor of a building. But unfortunately for her, the person living on top was a witch, the one leaving below was a witch, so she was sandwiched. But the woman was a believer. Things would have been going on smoothly if these witches had not started harassing her. She would see them in the dream trying to puncture her pregnancy. She prayed that God should show her their faces and God did. She attended a prayer meeting and there was a word of knowledge that there was a pregnant woman who was being attacked spiritually but she would see her attackers no more, and she said, Amen. By the next morning, she met the first one by the gate, stone dead, nobody knew what happened. How she got there and when it happened, nobody knew. The second one was not at home, she travelled. On her way, there was an accident involving the vehicle she was travelling in, the person sitting beside her in that vehicle came out neat, but this witch died. She was the only one who died in the accident. So, in one day God dealt with her enemies leaving the pregnant woman alone in the house. You may say this is wicked, but if they had punctured the woman’s pregnancy with their knives, that would have been it. So, you fight with what you have. The Bible says right from the time of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent people take it by force.
God is still in the business of fighting for His people. The way He will fight may be too much for us to bear when He starts. He has the only true fire, so we shall challenge our enemies and situations by that fire. The true fire comes from the Lord and when it descends, it begins to work. It is an instrument of divine vengeance. If you are a good reader of the word of God, you will discover that during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, fire came. Exodus too tells us about the burning bush. In the desert, while the children of God were going to the promised land the pillar of fire was going with them. This divine fire can protect us, it can act as a judge and can destroy God’s enemy.
However, there are still some Christians who are suffering from spiritual diabetes. Those who prefer comfortable life to the cross. They want a life of ease than the cross. That is what we call spiritual diabetes, too much sugar. Such people need fire. When fire enters into their lives, the zeal to serve the Lord will enter, and they will be able to do extra for the Lord. Many are in that category. They need to challenge their lives with the fire of the Holy Ghost. There are some brothers who want to lay their heads on Delila’s laps and wake up in the bosom of Abraham. It is not possible. It is from the lap of Delila to hell fire, they need the fire of God. Such people would say, “I don’t know what is happening, I just can’t resist this woman. When I see her, my resistance melts away.” It is not your resistance that is melting away, it is your bondage that is becoming stronger.
Many Christians also suffer from spiritual madness. They know that a particular thing is not God’s will, they read the Bible to understand the messages, yet they go ahead to do it. A lot of Christians are suffering from spiritual blindness, they hear nothing, see nothing and prophesy nothing. They are experts at falling in and out of the pit, they need fire. A lot of people suffer from spiritual diahorrea. Frequent stooling is the inability of the intestine to retain food. A lot of Christians cannot retain the word of the Lord in their minds. Evil birds are always coming to pick it away like in the parable of the sower. The problem is not that many do not receive blessings, but the enemy punctures a hole and leaks them away. Others receive outstanding miracle, but the candidate of spiritual diahorrea will not receive any. Many are scrambling for breakthroughs, whereas the first prayer they should pray is that the leaking holes should be sealed up. When they come to the stream to fetch water, many come with a basket, the enemy has stolen their buckets and replaced them with baskets which cannot hold water. God will not pour water into baskets. Until those spiritual holes, making goodness and blessings to leak away are blocked, many people will not have their blessings. It is like the story of a fisherman whose fish jumped back into the river before being pulled out and by then he had lost his worm.
The bucket of the finances of many are leaking. A lady graduate got a job in a pharmacy shop where she was selling drugs to people. Her salary was N5,000.00, while others were receiving N2, 000.00 and N3, 000.00. Her first month, when her boss brought their salary, he said, “I want to congratulate you for another month’s salary but when we looked at our account and the inventory of our drugs, we found out that drugs worth N15, 000 have been stolen this month and since you people are unable to explain what happened to the drugs, our policy is that you will use your salary to replace the drugs.” He said, “Since we still take care of your transportation, Madam, you are supposed to have N5, 000, I will give you N1, 000 and the rest people N500.” The sister broke down and cried, saying, “First month at work, what kind of a place is this? I have been believing God that at the end of the month there would be salary.” That month went. The next month’s pay day came, the boss was back with the salary with the same scenario and the sister was paid N500. She came crying to me and I told her, “You better leave that place. You haven’t gotten a job yet because the place is leaking with holes.
When somebody earns money and he does not know how it goes, he needs to challenge the situation with fire. When you work hard, but little or no gain comes in, fruitless effort, good jobs slip out of your hands, you need to challenge the situation with fire. Customers are avoiding your shops, the old customers are looking for another place instead of your shop, you need to challenge it by fire.
There is a brother who sells motor tyres and was doing well. After sometime, he noticed that sales were dropping. He also noticed that when buyers come, they would by-pass his shop and he was not selling at all. One day, he found his own customers by-passing his shop, then with boldness, he challenged one of them; “I thought you are my customer, why do you suddenly change your mind?” and the man said, “I don’t know, I just don’t feel like coming to your shop.” There were demonic spirits at the front of his shop controlling the traffic and diverting his customers away. We need to command these demonic spirits to leave our businesses alone and also roast them with fire.
Perhaps you noticed that problems are mounting up and swallowing all the financial gain that you are making, you also find that debt just surrounds you like the sea, or you cannot keep a regular job, you have a problematic health, and buying very expensive drugs or there is financial handicap in your life, or thieves are always duping you, then you need to challenge the situation by fire.
The spiritual life of some people have holes in it, they used to speak in tongues but now they no longer speak in tongues, they once prophesied but no more prophecy again, they once saw visions, but no vision any more, they were once preaching in the buses but now they do not preach again. Today, they are on fire for God, tomorrow, they are cold. All the bad dreams are coming back, they cannot memorise scriptures. During fasting, they are busy consuming food in the dream. They are still in the same level they were many years back. They need to challenge these things by the fire of God. The ministry of Elijah is needed in these last days to confront these forces that are confronting Christians. Christians have to be more aggressive than they are now to get things to work.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Oh Lord, give me the necessary aggression for battle, in the name of Jesus.
2. I invite the fire of God and judgement upon every stubborn adversity, in the name of Jesus.
3. Let the rod of unrepentant opposition be destroyed, in the name of Jesus.
4. Every power eating up God’s people like meat, be disgraced, in the name of Jesus.
5. Every stubborn and demonic follower, go back into the pit, in the name of Jesus.
6. I posses my possessions by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, in Jesus’ name.
7. Every evil power militating against my life, I summon you to appear by the fire of God, in Jesus’ name.
8. Receive the fire of judgment, in the name of Jesus.
