The Power At Work Within Us (Part 2)

Thank all of the men who were able to attend the Men’s Breakfast yesterday (Both from our church and also those from CF!) We want to see this fellowship of the men of Cumberland County grow, until we have to rent out the Shoney’s!!!!!

Today, we’re going to continue the message that I started with you last Sunday. Can anyone tell me the subject from last week’s message?............... ( Let me give you a hint, it has to do with our conversing with the Lord!)...........Right, last week we started looking into the prayer of the believer.

Next question. Can anyone tell me the Bible verse with which I based the message off of for last week’s message, which will also be the main scripture passage for today’s message as well!............(Here’s a hint: I quoted the first part of the passage and then asked if you guys recognized the verse. Then, I asked if anyone could finish the verse. Another hint: It starts off with, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly......”) Right, it is Ephesians 3:20!

WHO CAN FINISH THE PASSAGE THIS MORNING?

Ephesians 3:20 NKJV

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,

Now, of all of the passages that I could have used to talk with you about on the subject of prayer, why would I use Ephesians 3:20?

I mean, it doesn’t have the word “prayer” in the passage, right?

Well, the Apostle Paul says at the beginning of the passage, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think”, right?

Well, how do we “ask” God for anything, (whether verbally, or in our conscious minds)?

Right, we “PRAY” to Him. We go to the Lord God in prayer, right?

So then, my next question to all of you would be, “Is the PRAYER LIFE of a Christian an option? That is, does the Bible tell us to we are to pray, or does it leave it up for the interpretation of the believer?

Well, listen to some of these passages and then we’ll go from there:

“Pray for those who persecute you” -Matthew 5:44

“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” - Romans 12:12

“Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” - Ephesians 6:18

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” - Philippians 4:6

“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” - Colossians 4:2

“Pray without ceasing.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

And of course, as we briefly talked about it last Sunday, there is the model prayer that Jesus gave to us, as an outline of how we could and should pray to our heavenly Father.

And this model prayer is covered in Matthew 6 and also Luke 11.

During His teaching about prayer in Matthew 6, Jesus instructed of us how not to pray, before giving us the model of how we are to pray:

He said, “Don’t be like the hypocrites and stand up in public places to be seen and to be heard when you pray, but when you pray, go into a secret place and shut the door so that only you and the Father are there.”

He also said, “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.”

Then, Jesus said to all of us, “When you pray, pray like this.......” and then He gave the model prayer for us to use as a guide as to how we should come before the Lord God and talk with Him.

But the take away from Jesus’ words here, is that He didn’t say, “if you pray”, but rather He said, “WHEN you pray”, right?

In other words, Jesus Himself, was saying to each one us that we are expected to have an active and continual PRAYER life with the Father.

And then throughout the epistles, as we just read, there are numerous passages that teach us that we are to pray to God.

And Jesus stresses to us, just as we looked at last week in Luke 11 and Luke 18, that our prayers are to be continual and deliberate before the Father, until such a time as He answers the prayer, or until we are released by Him to cease in that petition.

As an example of God releasing someone from what they were praying about, let me share the story of William Still:

William Still pastored a church in Scotland for 52 years. During an early season of his pastorate, he met regularly with a group of pastors to pray for revival. Over the course of three years, they met weekly and offered up prayer to God that he would pour out his Spirit on their land. They went about their days with their eyes open, awaiting God’s answer. Why would he not grant their request? At the end of the third year, they all felt a collective release of their burden, though none of them visibly saw any signs of revival. They had been the persistent widow, approaching God’s throne regularly, and now, it seemed to them, God was saying, “that’s enough.” But he didn’t answer.

Nearly twenty years went by and the pastors continued preaching the gospel and shepherding their churches. A new generation had risen, and many began coming into their churches, longing for the gospel. Older men, too, had been coming in droves—men in their 40s and 50s, with gospel vigor. William Still and his fellow pastors realized something as they heard the stories of these men. Those many years ago, as they met for prayer, God was hearing and answering. Many of these men were born during those years. The older men were converted during those years. It took around twenty years for Still and his fellow pastors to see God’s answer, but he had heard and had responded with a “Yes.” But it was a yes they couldn’t see for a couple of decades.

So, you are to pray until the Lord answers you, or until He releases you from that petition.

Jesus told us to be specific and search for the answers to our prayers from the Father. He used words like: “seek”, “ask” and “knock”, when He described coming to God.

In Luke 11: 9-10, He tells you and I, “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

And of course, Jesus, the Son of God Himself lived His entire life this way: asking, seeking and knocking, until His Father instructed Him what to do.

As Jesus stressed, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.”

So, what was Jesus saying to His disciples and to all of us?

He was simply saying that He moved in every way in accordance with the will of God and under the authority and power of God, and this all came through Holy Spirit in Him.

Remember what Luke 4 tells us about Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry: “Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. (And you know of course of how Jesus resisted the attacks of the enemy during those 40 days of fasting and testing and stood on the words of His Father and was victorious of the devil) and then Luke says at the end of the 40 days of testing), “Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.”

Did you catch that? He was filled with the Holy Spirit of God and led (God was leading Him into the wilderness to fast and to be tested by the enemy), BUT He was brought out of the wilderness operating in the POWER of the Spirit!

Jesus was full of the power (dunamis - power, might, strength) of Holy Spirit!

And what did Paul say to us in Ephesians 3:20?

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power (dunamis) that works in us.”

Jesus walked in the authority and the power of Holy Spirit, as He listened to and followed the will of His Father.

Now, it’s very important that we hang out here and make sure that everyone sees and understands the importance of this!

Who was Jesus? (SON OF GOD) And who was Jesus filled with the power of? (Holy Spirit of almighty God). And the hows and the whys of everything that leads up to Jesus, the Son of God and His being full of the power and authority of God the Father, as a human man walking this earth, is very important for us to understand, because it explains who we are and why we are to operate the way that we do. And because this understanding will serve to strengthen your prayer life, as you begin to believe in who and what you are!

So, all of that said and done, I’m going to talk with you for a few minutes, about something that I have shared before, and it has to do with our power and authority in the Lord and where it came from and why we operate the way that we do. Is that OK with you guys, if we go back a little and retrace this real quick?

When God created Adam and Eve (mankind) and placed them in the garden, He did so with the intended purpose of their ruling in authority over this earth.

Isn’t that what Genesis 1 tells us, that God said to the man and the woman, that they were to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth and RULE over it?!

And when God says something is to be a certain way, He means for it to be that way! AMEN!

So, God took the dirt from the earth and created mankind in His image and then gave mankind ruling authority over this earth.

So, the will of God was that He (a spiritual being), created the earth and placed man (a physical being) on the earth, to rule for Him, correct?

And so, as I have shared with you before, these dirt bodies that we operate in (remember I called everyone a “dirt bag”), are the only LEGAL authority on the earth, because God made it so!

So, spirits cannot operate in any authority on this earth outside of mankind. (They need a body to operate from, if they want to “do business” here on earth.)

This is why the devil had to use the serpent’s body to operate from, because as a spirit, he had no legal authority or legal access on this earth. (Spirits do not have legal rights to operate freely on this earth, outside of man’s authority. That’s how God created it.)

This is why when someone dies, their body goes back to the ground (to the dirt) and their spirit MUST leave this earth, because it no longer has legal authority here anymore.

If you look back throughout the Bible God always uses mankind to operate through and carry out His will through. God NEVER goes against His word and His will!

So, if He wants something done here on earth, He goes through mankind and He informs mankind of what is going to happen and allows them to decide how they will respond.

Now, that doesn’t mean that God has no power over us, because He and He alone is omnipotent (all powerful). BUT, He still operates according to His own word and His will!

So, the devil used the serpent’s body and deceives mankind into going against God and His will and thus they hand over their authority over this earth to the enemy!

(You see, God gave man free will and all authority on this earth. And the devil, who knows God very well, was probably ecstatic that God chose to do so.

Because, if he could manipulate and lie and deceive mankind into going against God and His will, then he could gain legal access and title to the authority over this earth.)

And that is what you witness in the garden account. The handing over of our authority as God’s agents on earth, to a spirit being, the enemy!

BUT, look at what God says right there in the garden to the devil, in Genesis 3, right after the deception and the fall of mankind, the Lord says, “devil, I see what you did, you gained access through the serpent and then deceived my creation into sinning and handing over the authority of this earth to you.

God said, “So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take that woman, the very one that you deceived, and through her, I’m going to gain legal access to walk in a human body on this earth and through that human body, I’m going to crush your head under my foot!”

And we know that through the prophets, God declared exactly how and what He was going to do.

God said through the prophet Isaiah, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.”

A child (human body made of dirt) was going to be born, but it’s what God says next that is so important.

“The child (the body is born), but the Son that I am going to place inside of that child, is given of Me!

“The child (the human body that is born) is the legal access for My Son to walk and operate on this earth.”

God was going to walk this earth and operate according to His own design and His own will in full authority and legally take back what the devil had gained through deceit!

This is why God said through the prophet, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

And what does Immanuel mean? [God with us!]

Hallelujah! Somebody aught to shout and give God praise right now!

Mary was told that she would have give birth to a child and would call Him, Jesus (Yeshua). That was the child’s name (the body’s name) the Son that was placed inside already had a name, Immanuel; Elohim in a human body! The Christ!

God was now able to legally walk this earth and deal with the issue of our sin and buy us back and TAKE back for us, what was ours to begin with!

Jesus, the man, who was also Elohim inside the man, was able to redeem us from captivity and reestablish us as the legal authority over this earth!

Immanuel became our kinsman redeemer!

If you go to the book of Jeremiah 32, you read of the account of Jeremiah being told by the Lord that Jeremiah’s cousin, Hanamel the son of Shallum, was going to come and visit him while he was in prison. (He was in prison because of his prophesying what God had told him to say about the coming of the Babylonian army and because of this, the king of Judah, Zedekiah, put Jeremiah in prison.)

God came to Jeremiah in prison and told him that his cousin, Hanamel, was coming to him and was going to ask him to buy some land from him and that when he did, Jeremiah was to buy it back.

Turn with me to Jeremiah 32: 6-12.

Jeremiah 32:6–12 NKJV

And Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Behold, Hanamel the son of Shallum your uncle will come to you, saying, “Buy my field which is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it.” ’ Then Hanamel my uncle’s son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the Lord, and said to me, ‘Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption yours; buy it for yourself.’ Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. So I bought the field from Hanamel, the son of my uncle who was in Anathoth, and weighed out to him the money—seventeen shekels of silver. And I signed the deed and sealed it, took witnesses, and weighed the money on the scales. So I took the purchase deed, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open; and I gave the purchase deed to Baruch the son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanamel my uncle’s son, and in the presence of the witnesses who signed the purchase deed, before all the Jews who sat in the court of the prison.

Now note that Hanamel says to Jeremiah that he had the “right of inheritance” and “the redemption” was Jeremiah’s.

This is what Hanamel meant in a nutshell.

According to the Levitical Law that God gave to Moses, in Leviticus 25, all of the land that the Israelites were going to receive, belonged to God and He was simply allocating portions of it to them.

Whatever land a family was given, was to stay in that family. Even if the family came into hard times and had to sell the land off, or give it to someone as a debt, that land was to NEVER permanently leave that families blood line.

The first born, would eventually get it back, or could buy it back.

If something happened and the first born wasn’t able to buy it, then the next of kin, the “kinsman redeemer” was to buy it back and thus keep it in the family!

So, Jeremiah was the both the first born and the next of kin, so he had all legal rights to buy back this land, since it must have thus belonged to his family at some point.

Also note that the passage says in verse 11 that Jeremiah took the purchased deed that he had just bought, both the open deed as well as the sealed deed.

There were two copies of a land deed back then. The open deed was one that could be passed around and looked upon and if the land needed to be sold off for debt, or some other reason, then the open deed would be used to sign and pass across to the other person.

BUT, the sealed deed, was kept in the family and showed that ultimate right to the land always belonged to that family!

So, God was using this account to say to the children of Israel that they were going to be taken into captivity in Babylon for 70 years and then they would be able to come back to their land and buy back the land and dwell in in it again.

The Messianic principle that we find in this account is that God gave man, in the garden, the open deed to the earth.

Mankind sinned and last the open deed to the devil.

Remember that Satan said to Jesus in Luke 4:6, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.”

Satan had been given the open deed to this earth and the authority with it.

So, like Jeremiah, Jesus was the firstborn and true heir to the land and He was also the kinsman redeemer!

So, when Jesus walked this earth, He exercised His right as firstborn and as the redeemer and He bought back the open deed from the devil FOR ALL TIME!

As to the sealed deed........it is still in heaven, under the hand of the one who ultimately owns it all and who has all authority over it!

This is why I like to think that Revelation 5 shows us this deed.

In Revelation 5, John records, “Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

I like to think that we are seeing the sealed deed for the earth in the hands of the Lord!

What does all of this have to with “PRAYER”? What does the fall of man and our losing our authority and the Son of God having to come take it back, or the open deed and the sealed deed have to do with our prayer life? Nothing directly related to “prayer” itself, but everything to do with what Paul is talking about when he says, “according to the POWER at work within us!”

The power at work within us, is none other than Holy Spirit, right?

And the only way that you and I would ever be able to operate with the Holy Spirit of God within us, was because of what God did for us, through His Son, Yeshua!

All praise be to the Lamb, who bought back the deed for us and then covered our sins with His blood and poured the Holy Spirit of God into us!

Thus, giving to us all authority over this earth and over the enemy.

The Bible says that, like a deed, you and I, as Christians, are sealed with Holy Spirit and thus marked as God’s property!

Ephesians 1:13, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.”

So, we need to be walking in that authority and power, as Holy Spirit is there within us!

This is a little story about our power in prayer:

I heard about a small town that had two Churches & one Distillery. Members of both Churches complained that the distillery gave the Community a bad image! To make matters worse, the owner of the Distillery was an out spoken Atheist!

One Saturday-night the two Churches decided to hold a “joint” prayer meeting to ask God to intervene and settle the matter once & for all! The Church folks gathered on a designated evening, and began to Pray.

All through the prayer meeting, a terrible electric storm raged! To the delight of the Church members, lighting struck that old distillery & burned it to the ground! The next day, the sermon in both Churches was on the POWER of Prayer!

Insurance adjusters “promptly” notified the Distillery that they wouldn’t pay for the damages! Because the fire was caused by, “an act of God,” and that was excluded from their policy! The Distillery owner was furious, so he decided to sue both the Churches, claiming they had conspired with God to "destroy" his business! The Churches denied that they had anything to do with the cause of the fire!!

The Judge in the case opened the trial with these words: "I find one thing in this case most perplexing,…We have a situation here where the plaintiff, an Atheist, is professing his belief in the Power of Prayer, and the defendants, All Faithful Church members, are denying the very same Power"!