[Jesus Christ] declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. (Romans 1:4, NKJV)
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17, NKJV)
I like to boast about the Power of my God because He is a God of miracles! Yes, God is a God of love, of compassion. But the God I know and serve, the God of the Bible, is not passive, but active on our behalf. A God of love, but also a God of Power.
Today it’s time that we began to rise up and recognise the power and authority that we have in Jesus’ Name. Power to preach a life-changing Gospel, power to bring healing miracles in order that He might receive the glory, and so that we as ‘ordinary’ people might have something dynamic to demonstrate in our lives! When Jesus healed the paralytic man (Matthew 9.6) He said, ‘So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth... rise up and walk!’ Today we must become men and women of action to continue the demonstration begun by Jesus, to see signs and wonders.
I have Christ IN me and I have the Holy Spirit IN me! That is the secret of 70 years of miracle ministry. I do not want any new Gospel – I want the Bible-believing, miracle-working, powerful Gospel according to God’s Word! You can pray for an easy life, ask Him to prevent the problems, ask for a quiet time... but that means where there are no problems, there are no miracles!
We must go by faith, in obedience to what God is telling us to do. And God always makes a way. I have learned that everything God does is a miracle! If it’s not a miracle, then you or I could do it! In my life I know that it is God working when the totally impossible happens! Whatever the problem, God never, ever fails – it’s impossible! The day God fails, He’s no longer God. It’s in God’s Word, it’s His character. He’s the God of miracles! Yes, I have problems – these mean I spend much time in prayer and fasting. Why? Because you cannot have miracles without first having problems! Every problem drives me to prayer which then brings another miracle! But people aren’t prepared to pay the price. And because they don’t want the problems, they don’t see the miracles. The Bible says that ‘the things that are impossible with men are possible with God’.
For one year I spent much time in prayer and fasting, seeking an answer to a desperate need. Twice I said to the Lord that I would fast until the answer came, I was so desperate, but I know that my God is a prayer-answering God! The first time I had to cease fasting before the answer came, only because I had to go to Ukraine for three weeks of intensive evangelism. The second time was after my return: tired and exhausted from the travelling and preaching and the effects of food poisoning, I re-commenced my fast, determined to continue until the answer came. After ten days, as I was praying and worshipping Him, I felt a tremendous sense of the Lord’s presence and I began to say, ‘Yours is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.’ Suddenly it was as if this was the answer, and I began to say it again, ‘Yours is the Kingdom, Yours is the Power, these are Yours by right, but the GLORY is what we give You as the answer comes and You receive the Glory from us!’ I felt confident at that moment that without question I would receive from Him exactly what I was asking, so that then I could give Him all the Glory!
We need to recognise who we are and what we are in Christ. It is important to understand the blessings which God has given us. When I first realised that the promises of both the Old and New Testaments were not just for the Jews in the past and for the first disciples, but also for me as an inheritor of the same promises as a ‘son of God’, it opened up a whole new experience for me. Whilst receiving my healing from throat cancer many years ago began to lead me into a more positive experience, it was the miracle which finally brought me out of a communist prison which confirmed this. It challenged my own faith, that God could actually physically open my prison doors in Czechoslovakia. It happened to Paul and Silas in Philippi 2000 years ago (Acts 16), why could it not literally happen for me today? – And it did, God even used British Prime Minister Harold Wilson to make it more dramatic and provide unquestionable proof.
I came into a totally new experience of faith, the realisation that if God says it – then He will always do it! This is what faith is, not faith in a promise or a healing, but faith in God as a person, that my God is a God of His Word, who will always keep a given promise! This means that you have to make a conscious decision, either to continue to live ‘normally’ or to live in a faith-experience of letting God’s Word govern your decisions.
It is a command of God that we must possess and receive all that God has for us. It is not an option – obey!