Beloved, one of the characteristics of those who are children of God is power. Anytime you see a child of God, one of those things that will show you that such a person is a child of God is the power of God that he or she carries. John 1:12 says But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. By the grace of God, we are going to focus on an issue that has to do with the secret of having the power of God. It is a correct desire to want power. Power is the right of everyone who is a child of God. God gives power to His people. The power that God wants to give today is one to achieve maximally, to do great exploits and operate supernaturally. The real focus, however, is on what you can do as a child of God. The secret of having power with God is to dwell in the secret place.
Psalm 91:1 says He that dwelleth in the secret place of the highest shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty¨. I know that you might have read this passage many times, but most times when we read this Psalm 91, we run through verse one and jump to the other verses without paying due attention to this first verse, but the truth that I want you to hold on to today is that all the promises that are in this chapter are conditional on the fulfillment of verse one. Many people want the prize but they do not want to pay the price. In order to flow in the power of God, there is the price of the secret place that you and I must pay. One of the problems of the church today is that many are benchwarmers but God does not want you and me to be ordinary Christians. God wants you and me to be greater than what we are now but many potentials are dying in the lives of many of His children. God wants you to become a Christian with power so that when people see you, they must see the power of God in you. As a child of God, you must carry the greatness of God everywhere you go. It is a shame for somebody to see you as a Christian and does not want to be like you.
This message is coming at this strategic time because very soon, people will see you and bow down to your God. They will then ask you what the secret is. It is a secret place. What is the secret of operating in the power of God? It is dwelling in the secret place of God. If you want the power of God in your life, you must dwell in the secret place of God. Do you want the power of God?
The secret of operating in the power of God is the secret place. Beloved, if you find an army succeeding in battles, the secret of that victory is the secret place. The secret place of the army is a room they called the Strategic Room¨. They do not allow everybody into the room but only the officers that are involved in strategy and planning. It is in this room that they plan on how to defeat the enemy.
Visit lecturers at the University and observe the ones that are succeeding. The secret of their success is the secret place of God. Such lecturers have a place in their house that they call the Study. This is where they prepare for lectures ahead of the class, write their projects, etc. Beloved, the same way believers who want to have the power of God, who do not want to be ordinary Christians must also have the secret place.
What is the secret place of believers?
1. It is the place where you receive power from God Almighty. Let me tell you this: No secret place, no power. The more you dwell in the secret place of God the more power you will have as a Christian
2. The secret place is that place you go to and receive secret instructions from the Almighty God. That activity you partake in that makes it easy for God to pass information to your life is the secret place.
3. It is that place where God releases His power into your life. Let me tell you today that God has a secret place and it is only those believers that dwell in the secret place of the Almighty that enjoy His power to the fullest.
Many believers today are not enjoying what they should enjoy as children of God because they do not know how to dwell in the secret place. Some of them visit the secret place but do not dwell there. The Christian life of many of us today is Surface Christianity. I pray today that as you read this message, your Christian life will change for the better in Jesus name.
What are the secret places of the Most High?
I am going to share with you, four secret places that you as a child of God must be dwelling in, in order to have power with God. As soon as you begin to dwell in the secret places, your life can never remain the same again. It is not a matter of visitation but you must be dwelling in these secret places so that your life will become that of power to achieve maximally in life and for your destiny to be fulfilled.
a) The secret place of prayer -
Beloved the first secret place to dwell in is the secret place of prayer. I know many have heard many messages about prayer and many have been told that prayer is communing with God. I know that preachers have told you that for you to open some doors in life, prayer is needed and that you must have been told that prayer is warfare. However, let me submit here today that prayer is also the secret place of power. Your attitude to prayer will determine your strength in God. Beloved, enemies can boast that they will kill you, but if you are a man or woman of prayer, you can disgrace your enemies. Let me tell you, a government can decree-law and can say some things that can affect your life but if you are a man or a woman of prayer, you can change the decree. Many people can be talking about a problem being big but if you are a man or woman of prayer, that thing that they regard as a problem can become your promotion. A man may look at you and say there is no way for you to make it but if you are a man or a woman that does not just visit the place of prayer but you are dwelling there, that thing that they said cannot be, can be reversed. Enemies could try to prevent you from having a child. Consider the story of Racheal in Gen. 30 vs. 1- 2 and vs.22-23, God remembered her. Beloved, if you are a man or woman of prayer, no matter what happened to you in the past, be rest assured that God can never forget you.
Hannah went into the secret place of prayer. Though she had been praying before by visiting the place of prayer, it got to a day that Hannah dwelt in the secret place of prayer, and her story changed. By the power of God, your own story too will change for the better in the name of Jesus. You may be reading this message and a curse might have been placed upon your life, if only you can dwell in the place of prayer, that curse will be broken. Today, by the power of God, I command every curse of failure that anybody had placed upon your life to break in the name of Jesus. Every curse of marital failure, break now in the name of Jesus.
I heard the testimony of a woman some weeks ago. She had been married for twenty-seven years without a child and at age fifty-one; she became pregnant and had a baby. Beloved, if only you can dwell in the secret place of prayer, you will fulfill your destiny. Pray this prayer loud and clear. Today, I paralyze my enemies and collect my breakthroughs in the name of Jesus. I know that somebody may say "but we pray in my church" but I tell you, you have only been visiting the place of prayer, it is now time to dwell there.
A man of God decided to pray. He did not want to be disturbed by anybody hence, he went to his friend to ask for a room to pray in his house. He said he only required a meal per day. So, he locked himself up for twenty-one days of prayer and left afterward. A man who was said to have HIV/AIDS visited the same family and slept on the bed where the man prayed for twenty-one days. As soon as he laid on the bed, the sickness disappeared. Beloved, have you got to the point where you decided that you would lock yourself in for prayers? Are you dwelling in the secret place of the Most High? That is the challenge of this time. God is asking me to tell you that it is not enough visiting the secret place of prayer, you have to dwell there. There are however some hindrances to overcome in order to dwell in the secret place of prayer.
Hindrances to overcome to dwell in the secret place of prayer
1. Hindrances of your heart: - Your heart must be right with God. If your heart is not right with God and you are praying one thousand prayer points, you have only wasted your time. Your heart refers to your purpose of praying hence, it must be right with God. Many times, we pray only to defeat our enemies but we do not pray for our hearts to be right with God. Your first purpose of going to God in prayer is to please God with your life; to make your life right with God but unfortunately, when you consider the purposes why many people pray, they are wrong ones. Many people pray only when they have problems, others pray only when they are being pursued by the enemy. Both your purpose and your heart must be right with God.
2. Hindrance of Sin: Sin in your life will not even allow you to enter into the secret place. Whatever will not make you be righteous with God is sin. That thing that does not allow you to do the good that you ought to do is sin. Every disobedience to the word of God is again sin in your life. Deal with these hindrances and you will be able to dwell in the secret place of the Most High God. I don’t know how long you have been a Christian but God is asking me to challenge you today that there is the need for more of the secret place of prayer in your life. It is time for you to increase the tempo of your prayers. If you have only been praying for ten minutes, you are just wasting your time on the battlefield of life.
When you dwell in the secret place of prayer, power will come naturally and enemies of your lives will be defeated. Those things considered impossible will become possible. Beloved, I want you to be angry and dissatisfied with the type of prayer that you pray. Anything that is disturbing you from dwelling in the secret place of prayer is depriving you of your benefits as a Christian.
b) The secret place of fasting -
I wish God would have asked all of us here whether you observe weekly prayer and fasting program. The disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus Christ and asked why His disciples were not fasting. Jesus Christ replied that they did not fast because He was still physically present with them. His disciples did not need to fast because Jesus Christ was available to open blind eyes; He was available to heal the sick physically. However, Jesus Christ was absent one day and they brought somebody, a challenge to the disciples and the disciples who were not fasting were not able to cast out the demon. They went to Jesus and asked why they could not, Jesus told them that this kind cannot come but by prayer and fasting.
Beloved, we are living at dangerous times. We are living at a time when men still challenge you and say "prove the power of your God in your life". The secret beloved is the secret place of prayer. As a person, I have been challenging myself with the story of other men of God. I have been examining great examples in the kingdom of God that I must emulate. I read about a man of God who fasted for three hundred and sixty-five (365) days. He would fast and break his fast on the evening of every day. You have been a Christian for many years and you are afraid of fasting yet a young boy did it for three days and a man of God fasted for three hundred and sixty-five days! What is your own attitude to fasting and you want to be a great man or woman of God?
Fasting is not a way to bend God but to bend you. There are many things that God wants to tell you but flesh does not allow. When you fast; it will remove that thing hindering your relationship with God. Somebody made a statement and said, that those who fast do not eat breakfast. I wondered why this person said this and I saw the secret in Ecclesiastes 10:16 Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning¨ (NKJV). That church where its pastor eats in the morning has a problem. It means that you are a baby Christian if you cannot keep your breakfast to fast in the day. Beloved, do you want to abide in the power of God? Dwell in the secret place of fasting. Do not wait for the church to declare a particular day of the week for fasting, have your personal day of prayer and fasting every week. Are you ready to pay the price? This is the challenge of this time because we cannot afford to remain stagnant. God must start to move your life to a higher level.
(c)The secret place of the word of God.
God instructed Joshua in Joshua 1:8 that, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shall meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success¨. Let us fill our lives with the word of God so that the devil will not have a place to occupy us. Let us fill our lives with the word of God so that it will poison the word of the devil in our lives. As a leader in the church, if church members are reading three chapters of the Bible in a day, you should conveniently read six chapters. Somebody was reading the Bible and said he read thirty chapters in a day. I asked myself where I am. Baby Christians only read two to four chapters. Burial ground Christians only read two verses a day and have meditation on it. To dwell in the secret place of the Most High, dwell in the secret place of His word. Let your study of the word of God change because the Bible is our constitution. Beloved, if you want to be great in life, soak yourself in the Bible; follow the principles of the Bible. If the word of God is in your life, you cannot be stopped by the devil or any satanic power.
What to do to dwell in the secret place of God’s word
The following tips will help you to dwell in the secret place of the word God
1. Plan your Bible study. Part of the plan is to decide that you are not going to read less than five or ten chapters of the Bible every day and plan the chapters you want to read every day.
2. Discipline yourself to read: To succeed in life, you must discipline yourself,
3. Meditate on the word of God that you are reading every day.
4. Pray, live and speak the word of God.
(d) The secret place of faith
Faith is the factor that separates true believers from those who are not true believers. The Bible says, "The just shall live by faith" Rom 1:17). Faith means you believe God without a doubt. Faith is an inner assurance that what God has said about you is going to be. It is to believe that God can cause to happen in your life what His word has said. I always remember the passage of the Bible which says we walk by faith, not by sight. I also discovered a new translation of that passage which says if you are a man or woman of faith, you talk by faith, and not by sight. You are not talking about what you are seeing or feeling, you are talking about what the word of God says it should be. Pray for yourself like this: "Power to live by faith, come upon my life in the name of Jesus."
There was a witchcraft meeting reported by one witch. She said there was a woman whose dressing was extraordinary. She reported that whenever this woman dressed, she would be walking like someone without problems. The witch took the case of that woman to witchcraft meeting; reporting her dressing to her colleagues and expressing her dissatisfaction with her. So, beloved, just being happy with yourself is enough for them to attack you. The witches now mandated two other members to join the accuser to deal with the woman. They planned to afflict her with a problem.
On the first day of their visit to the woman, she was found praying. They thought the prayer would not last ten minutes so that they could unleash their havoc. This woman was on the prayer for one and a half hours and the witches could not attack her. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit changed the prayer point and she prayed "I send the fire of God to all evil influences around me." As soon as she uttered this prayer, the witch reported that arrows of fire came out from the mouth of this praying woman and landed on them. The problem they planned to put on this woman turned upon their heads. Beloved, if that woman had spent ten minutes, visiting the place of prayer; if she is not dwelling in the place of prayer, she would have been destroyed. I pray for you today that anybody reporting you for evil, let the person be paralyzed in the name of Jesus. Any agent of darkness in the house where you live, reporting your life for evil shall be paralyzed in the name of Jesus. When you read Psalm 91 and you have fulfilled verse one of it and you are dwelling in the secret place of the Most-High, that is when you will enjoy the benefits of those who dwell there. Verse two says "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortressing: my God; in him will I trust" It means that anybody that attacks you shall fall because of you. Anybody that makes the mistake of locating you with a view to attacking you shall carry problems
Verse three of the same chapter says "Surely, he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence”. Traps that enemies have set for your life and problems that they are awaiting you to enter into and so, make noise about your life, God will deliver you from them now, in the name of Jesus.
Verse four says "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler." Beloved, one of the best lives you can live is a life of dwelling in the secret place of the Most High.
Verse six says, "Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasted at noonday." Don¡¦t be surprised because of many things happening around you without your knowing, arrows that are set against you without your knowledge are going back to the sender even before you pray. Why? You are dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. So, I am challenging you today, "How are you living your Christian life? Are you the burial ground Christian, the surface Christian, the occasional visitor, when there is a problem in your life, is that when you run to the secret place?" They that dwell in the secret place of the Most-High are those that will abide under the shadow of the Almighty." God is monitoring your life. There is a radar controlling your life now and whenever they want to perpetrate any evil against you, that radar will flash against them. There are angels that are following you now.
I watched a Christian program recently and the man of God gave a testimony that saddened me. The Pastor had a wife and they have been married for many years without a child. The wife went to the Pastor and asked him to accost her to a herbalist who would prepare concoction for them to have a child now will it be said that a Pastor visited a herbalist because of the fruit of the womb?¨. The wife kept on troubling her husband. It got to a time that the wife told her husband that she would go if her husband declined to follow her. The wife eventually went to the herbalist.
To make matters worse, the herbalist asked the wife to bring her husband before he could help her. The woman got home and started to cry, urging her husband to escort her to the herbalist. Lo and behold, the Pastor followed the wife to the herbalist and as soon as the Pastor got to the house of the herbalist, the herbalist cried out Pastor, Pastor tell those following you to go back¨ The Pastor looked back and could not see anybody following him. Beloved, the angels of God were following Pastor. You may consider yourself as ordinary but there are angels of God following your life. The herbalist insisted that the Pastor could not come in unless he sends back those following him. The Pastor himself was blind because he replied. "There is nobody following me but since you have insisted, anybody following me, go back." The angels obeyed the Pastor. I will not tell you what they did to the Pastor but do you know that your life must dwell in the secret place of the Most High?
God is expecting you and me to be dwelling in the secret place. There is no problem that your life is facing now that you cannot overcome by the power of God.
This message is not an ordinary beloved because there are angels of God around to give some people miracle babies. Angels of God are around to empower you to succeed in life. There are angels around you now, to make possible what the enemies said it is impossible in your life.
What to do to dwell in the Secret Place of the Most-High.
The following three important things should be done if you want to dwell in the secret place of the Most-High.
1. Let the old man in you die and become born again;- Put in another way, let God kill you and raise you up a new person. Let God kill sin- lies, anger, immorality, worldliness etc. in your life. When He kills all these and you are born again by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you will then be able to dwell in the secret place.
2. Determine to walk with God. Determine to move to a higher height in your prayer life, in your fasting life, in your walk of faith, in your study of the Bible. Beloved, any great man or woman that you see in life is so as a result of the determination.
3. Action: You have heard of somebody who fasted for three hundred and sixty-five days. What action are you going to take with your life? You have heard of a young man whom God mandated to observe dry fast for three days. Beloved, it is time for action in your life. You have heard of somebody who read thirty chapters in the Bible in a day and in your case you read only two or three verses daily. God had sent me to challenge your Christian life. What action are you taking? Close your eyes and think about your prayer life, your fasting life, your studying of the Bible, your faith in God. Is your faith shaking? Or you are like that Pastor following his wife to a herbalist¡¦s home? What action would you take? God is asking for a higher walk with Him, He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most -High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty God.
I am praying for you now that anybody that is reading this message now that had been tied down by the enemies, be released now, in the name of Jesus.
Prayer Points
1. Every evil load that the enemies have placed upon my life, be destroyed by fire, in the name of Jesus.
2. Any good door that had been closed against me, open by fire, in the name of Jesus.
3. The womb that has been closed, open by fire, in the name of Jesus.
4. The door of my goodness that has been closed break open now, in the name of Jesus.
5. I decree that my virtues that have been stolen or arrested, be released now, in the name of Jesus.
6. I paralyze every witchcraft attack against my life .in the name of Jesus.
