It is not enough to know that the power of God is mighty, it is not enough to know that the power of God is working, we should also come to the place where we are desirous to see the power of God at work in our life.
One profound scripture is Psalms 63:1-2 (KJV)
[1] O God, thou art My God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsts for thee, my flesh longs for thee In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; [2] To see thy power and thy glory, So as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.
There is something we have seen, there is something we are yet to see and we are seeing in the sanctuary. The “Sanctuary” connotes the church, your closet or with God and the power of God is demonstrated. The Psalmist said he doesn’t just want to see in the sanctuary, he wants to see thy power and glory as he has seen in the sanctuary. There is a sanctuary encounter and a wilderness experience of life.
What do we do when we find ourselves in the jungle of life? We take what we have seen, we trust God that such be experienced. We also need to experience the power of God.
James 5:13-18 KJV
[13] Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.
[14] Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
[15] and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
[16] Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
[17] Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
[18] And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
Issues raised from the above scripture are:
The prayer of faith – It shall save the sick. On this platform, there won’t be any ground why healing won’t take place.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth
Things that will help us manifest God’s power;
There is a prayer of faith and prayer of persistent prayer also known as extended prayer.
It is not prayer that creates or provides power. Power is a person. Prayer does not give us power, God has given us power. The Holy Ghost is power. Prayer is given and we have received power. We receive power as a by-product of redemption. The power we have received is the exceeding greatness of his power towards us that is at work in us. It is not prayer that makes it work for us. This has been made available on the premise of what the Father has done in Christ Jesus.
Prayer is not the reason why power is in you. The saying, “ A prayer less Christian is a powerless christian” is like you putting away what Christ has done. A prayer less Christian is not a powerless Christian, he is a Christian that will not see the effectual working of His power in his life, not that he is powerless.
PLATFORM WHY PEOPLE MANIFEST POWER
1. When God finds out they have a genuine heart. The genuineness of our heart becomes a basis for God to allow his power to flow through us. The word “flow through” is the manifestation of God’s power, it is not the production of God’s power.
In the story of the woman with the issue of blood, the virtue that went out of Jesus is power. Not everyone that touched him got healed. The flow of virtue was as a result of the heart of the woman to receive. Her heart was able to draw power from Jesus.
God wants to see the genuineness of our heart for the power of God to flow through us, he is interested to know who will take the glory.
Acts 3:12 KJV
[12] And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?
In the story of the healing of the lame man, when the ovation was getting much, Peter stopped them and stepped aside. They made it known to the people that it is not their power or holiness that brought about the healing.
As much as holiness is important, it is not the basis for the flow of God’s power.
Peter and John had to point the attention of the people back to God. They had to point their attention to God. If we want the power of God to be made manifest through us we have to check the posture of our heart in sending the glory back to Him. There is a little line between faith, confession and boasting. It must not be presented as if it were in our hands.
Peter and John said they should not look at them but their focus should be on God. They said it was not done by their own power or holiness.
Peter and John disclaimed they were not the healer. He heals. This is why our hands are the hands of God. We lay hands on the sick and they recover. The reason why most believers do not walk in this is because of the posture of their heart, even though they carry power. They are power houses. The power of God is trapped on our inside.
A typical example of this is Moses at the river of Meribah.
Numbers 20:8-12 Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.
And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.
And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?
And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.
And the LORD spoke unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them (KJV).
Moses struck the rock thrice. The Lord asked why he did not sanctify Him, with holy reference.
God wants glory. He does not want to compete and strife with His glory.
Elijah prayed that it should not rain. He prayed vigorously that the rain should fall again. He asked his servant to go outside and check up to seven times. This shows it is not by man but by God.
1 Kings 18:42-44 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,
And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.
And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not (KJV).
Before we walk in the miraculous we must, however, settle the condition of our hearts that the Lord takes all the glory. We must come to a point that it is not about us. Sometimes we desire a miracle and it is already in our heart how we are going to position our heart when we have received and seen the manifestation of what they have prayed for.
We must get our hearts right. Hannah prayed and attended Shiloh. The scriptures made us know that she was mocked by other wives of Elkanah. Regardless of this, she sensed that God is a need of a prophet in Israel. She told God she would give him to the Lord.
This is why the miraculous happens when there is a convergence between the need of a man and the need of God. Her need collided with the need of God.
As a believer we should not be in dire expectation of people’s peril when they do not help us. We must not be in that phase. Therefore, when we are blessed, it is important to understand that they will also be blessed by the same Lord.
If our attempt is for showmanship, we will become broke for too long. This is as a result of the posture of our heart. This is why in manifesting His power, He wants to take His glory.
This is why when we pray we are not meant to condemn others. Jesus gave a parable of two men – a sinner and a Pharisee.
Luke 18:9-14 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted (KJV).
We must not do showmanship with prayer. This is why we must not be at the edge of using camera to capture ourselves while praying.
Our hearts should be about God’s glory. Why does God want to put money in our hands? Why do we want to be blessed? It should be about His glory and nothing. We must be satisfied just to see Him glorified.
God did not have any issue with the building of the tower of Babel. However, he had to scatter Nimrod and his fellows because of the name they want to make for themselves. It was a good idea on their parts but a bad motive. God knows nothing could be restrained from them.
2) The necessity of consecration
It’s not consecration that produces power but it aids power. Consecration means to separate yourself, living a life of consecration. Holiness means to separate a thing for the use of God. A life of consecration and separation is still rewarding. Such a life can easily manifest the power of God.
Some vessels are separated for special assignments. If God will use you for a higher and special purpose, there is a need for you to separate yourself to be sanctified unto him, such that God can use you to deliver his purpose and his agenda. You need to be sanctified so that God can depend on you to bring him glory.
2 Timothy 2:21
Our heart posture is important, totally dedicated to God.
3) Walk in love
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 reveals some activities that people do that are good, but without love, it is nothing. When God sees that we genuinely love people, his power flows in that direction, it creates an atmosphere for miracles. A prayer of faith is not constantly constant and presently present in every prayer. Sometimes it is a prayer of fear, anxiety, worry. It is fear that coordinates our prayers sometimes.
A prayer of faith that the devil cannot raise a contention why a life cannot be delivered, healed. A prayer of faith is when there is no basis why a miracle won’t happen.
Where God is taking us to is not that he silent the storm for us to have peace, our peace capacity will work even through the storm. Do you think it was when Peter stepped on the sea that the storm showed up? Jesus has been walking on sea and a storm has been blowing him. So the one Peter saw was one of the storms.
They should not be asking Jesus if he wants them to rather die in this storm if they actually know who was in the ship with them. They should know that Jesus is sleeping, which means they are safe. If Jesus can sleep in the storm, we can sleep in the storm.
The things we have said before and after prayer is how we know you have prayed in faith. So why are we now seeing the move/power of God in our life? We have been taught, heard, written revelation about power but we need to experience power. We also need to demonstrate power, not wait for the Pastor or anybody. We need to demonstrate or manifest power.
We must come to a place where we are not led by fear but we have a bold faith. At times after we have prayed, we still use our mouth to uproot the seed of prayer by the words of fear. When we pay by faith we don’t get worked up and worried about the matter again. There are prayers we do not need to pray again, we just give thanks. Praying about it is showing unbelief.
We don’t give up in the place of prayer. We give up too soon in the place of prayer. The level of intensity, consistency, and persistence of the prayer is also important for us to see the working mighty power of God being demonstrated/ manifested through us in our life.
We will pray exceedingly to see the exceedingly powerful power of God. It is not our prayer that is creating it, it is our prayers that is releasing it. When we pray extensively it means we are building an atmosphere of possibilities.
James 5:18 TPT “Then he prayed again and the skies opened up over the land so that the rain came again and produced the harvest.”
There are dimensions that we will walk in as we stay with God in the place of prayer and we are not going to give up praying, we are going to pray continually and intensively, what we are doing is that we are actually allowing the cloud to gather. “When the clouds are full of water, they pour rain upon the earth. Ecclesiastes 11:3”.
We should not just know about the working power of God, we should experience it, and if we have experienced it we should demonstrate it. So that anywhere we find ourselves and there is a need for power to be demonstrated, we should not be looking for a superior Pastor, we are a believer. And the only qualification is that “…these signs shall follow them that believe”.
Believers should not be a miracle seeking person, a believer should be a miracle working/performing person. So when as a believer overtime we are still looking for someone to perform miracles, what it means is that we are not fulfilling scripture.
It means the prayers Elijah was praying was a means to gather the cloud for it to rain.
If the clouds are full, they empty themselves. It therefore means that the prayers the Prophet was uttering were to accumulate till it is ready to perform.
When you pray consistently, intensively and persistently it means your cloud is gathering. Just wait till when it starts emptying itself. This year we pray consistently. When the cloud got filled even Elijah had to run. He outran the chariots of Ahab. The rain brought speed, it brought supernatural strength. We keep praying till we fill up the clouds.
One prayer we should pray is that our hearts be constantly wired about him. That we be sold out to him, a higher purpose where we are available for a higher task the Lord demands a vessel for, it shouldn’t be about us. Tell him that you do not want a name but he should take his place in the affairs of your life. That the glory became his in all.