The real issue is not whether or not we want the power of God, but do we really want the presence of God in our lives? God is seeking to build character in us, the character of His Son! This is not instead of His power, but because of His power. The anointing of the Holy Spirit is not just a one time touch, it is a transformed life a life that is yielded daily to the Holy Spirit’s control. As the apostle said in Galatians 2:20:
This is our calling, that we not just live for ourselves, but that the Lord might live His life through us. Moses knew the only thing that would make us different and unique from anyone else in the world would be the manifest presence of God revealed in our midst, as he stated in Exodus 33:14-16:
It is not just knowing about Jesus, but having Him present with us that is essential. The presence of the Lord is not an occasional touch from Him, with which so many Christians become satisfied—it is the presence and power of Almighty God in our daily lives—it is a continual filling of the Holy Spirit so that we abide in Him each day. This is the only way that true Christians can be distinguished from all of the other religions on the face of the earth. Christianity is not just knowing or trying to live by certain doctrines—it is becoming the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is revealed again in the example of Peter and John standing before the council in Acts 4:13:
It was not Peter’s and John’s intellectual ability that caught the attention of these men—it was that they had been with Jesus. There is a noticeable quality in those who have been in fellowship with the Lord. Being Filled With The Spirit Ephesians 5:17-18 states, "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." The Greek word for "filled" is pleroo, which literally means to be "continually filled." This is not a one time experience. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit daily. Each day we need to submit to the Spirit’s control and guidance. What Is The Anointing? The anointing is the manifested power of God’s Holy Spirit to accomplish and perform the works of God. Psalm 92:10 states, "But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil." One translation reads, "But my authority shall thou exalt like the strength of a wild ox." In those days the ox was considered a personification of strength— this Scripture speaks of our having God’s strength to do God’s will. How do we transfer the power from Heaven to earth—from God to man? The apostle Paul said "For the word of the cross ... is the power of God" (I Corinthians 1:18). Matthew 28:18 states, "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth’." We must never forget Jesus Christ is Lord of all and He possesses all power, in heaven and earth. When we receive Him we receive the power of God. The same Christ that we read about in the Gospels lives in us, with the same power that He demonstrated in the Scriptures. Christ has power to stop and still the storms in your life, today! He has the power to heal the sickness in your life, or to reach through you to heal the sickness in others. His power was not limited with His resurrection—it was expanded! He is not less today than He was then, but even more! As Psalm 115:3 states, "But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." The Holy Spirit is the power agent of God active in the earth today. Power and the Holy Spirit are inseparable. We cannot have "spiritual power" without the Holy Spirit, and we cannot have the Holy Spirit without having His power, as is stated in Acts 1:8, "But you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." Notice that this is a personal promise, "but you shall receive power." And it does not say that maybe you will receive it! The Lord would never mislead us—Christ gives us a promise of the impartation of His mighty power. The Book of Acts is the testimony of what life is supposed to be like for Christians. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter rose up to preach the first gospel message of the new church, he quoted Joel 2:28-29, "And it shall come to pass afterward (Literal "in the last days"), that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit." Here he is stating that prophecies, dreams and visions, which are supernatural revelations of God’s purposes, will be common in the last days when the Lord pours out His Spirit. Why do we need the power of God’s Spirit in our daily lives? When the Lord prayed for His people on the night before His crucifixion, He explained, "As Thou (Father) hast send Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (John 17:18). In Acts 10:38 we are given a brief statement of just how Jesus was in the world, ". . . God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." He has sent us just as He was sent, to do good and heal all who are oppressed of the devil. In John 14:12 the Lord declares, "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to My Father." If anyone else except Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had said these words I would never have believed them. Yet, He stated emphatically: "He who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also." Now let us be sure that we understand that Jesus is speaking of the works of miracles, signs and wonders, and not redemption. There is only one holy, true Redeemer—Jesus Christ. Never could a man make atonement for another man’s sin. The Son of God alone is our Redeemer. Only the blood of Christ saves. But Jesus declares, these works which He did we will be given power through His holy name, by His Holy Spirit, to do. The works Jesus did yesterday, He still does today. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Let us review some of the works of Jesus. Matthew 4:23-24 says, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them." 1. Jesus went about all Galilee. Jesus was mobile—he went about. We must be ready to serve Him anywhere, anyplace, anytime. 2. Jesus taught. To be "the light of the world" means to give enlightenment. We must always be willing to share the light that we have been given. 3. Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom. He proclaimed the authority of God. 4. Jesus healed all types of diseases. He did not condemn the sick; he had compassion on them. 5. Jesus set the demon-possessed people free. Jesus looked every day for a way to destroy the works of Satan. As we have already read, He sent us out to do the same things that He did, and He gave us His same power with which to do these works. II Corinthians 5:20 says, "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ." The Greek word translated "ambassador" here is presbeuo, which could have been literally translated "representative with senior authority." The Lord has given us His authority to represent Him. This is the most sacred and honored trust that any human being could ever receive. Should this not be given the very highest devotion in our lives? Luke 10:19 records the Lord’s exhortation, "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." It is contrary to Scripture for us to fear Satan. The Lord knew that if we feared him we would not be able to destroy his works. Therefore, He gives us His personal promise, that when we are sent by Him, as these were that He was addressing in Luke, nothing will be able to hurt us! When we are sent by Him, as His ambassadors, we are given power over all the power of the devil! This should be enough to compel every Christian to be utterly devoted to doing His will. Authority And Ability In the passage quoted above, Jesus uses two different Greek words for "power." In the first He says, "I give unto you power," which is the Greek word exousia, which literally means authority. He gives us authority "to tread on serpents and scorpions." "Serpents" speak of the crafty, devious ways of the enemy; "scorpions" speak of the things that pierce us. Then He continues, "and over all the power of the enemy." Here He uses the Greek word dunamis, which speaks more of the dynamic power, or ability. In this He is saying that we have been given both the authority and the ability to tread upon and over all of the power of the enemy. Let’s look at a few more Scriptures that encourage us to overcome the enemy and live above the evil powers of this age.
The Lord delights in showing his power through His people, as He declares in II Chronicles 16:9: "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him..." The Real Church The biblical pattern is for the church of Jesus Christ to be a powerful prophetic force in the world, not a puny, pathetic one. The Lord has sent us to do the same things with the same power that He did, as it says in Mark 16:20: "And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." We must be doers of the word, and not just hearers who may love to listen to the stories of the way it used to be, but have none of the reality in our own lives. Hebrews 2:3-4 warns: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" If we do not walk in the Word of God we are neglecting His great salvation. In I Samuel 15:22-23 we are again warned, "And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry." The Lord did not call us to just go to church, or to even give big offerings—He called us to be His temple on earth through which He could live His life. He is not looking for those who will just make sacrifices, but those who will believe Him and obey Him. As James 1:22 & 2:18 exhorts, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. .. But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works."’ Christianity is not just believing certain facts in our minds—true Christianity is living by our beliefs. If we really believe, we will do the works. If we do not have the works to go with our faith, we do not really believe. However, if we do really believe, the Lord promises to do the same works through us that He did when He walked this earth. We do not have to just yearn for the old days, and how wonderful it must have been to witness the great works of Jesus and His apostles. He is the same "yesterday, today and forever" and He is still, today, doing the same works through those who believe in Him. How Do We Get The New Testament Anointing? The FIRST step to receiving the anointing is to humble ourselves and confess that we have fallen far short of His New Testament example of Christianity. This begins with humility because He "gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). We must begin by humbling ourselves and realizing how inadequate we are and how greatly we need Him. As David wrote in Psalm 42:1-2, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." We must become discontented with our dry, dead, empty form of religion, and get desperate for a move of God in our lives. We must confess that if our church life is not like that which is described in the New Testament, then we have that far yet to go, and we must determine that we will settle for nothing less than this as a reflection of true Christianity. The SECOND step to receiving the anointing is to live a clean and holy life before Him. This is not righteousness by works, it is the fruit of the true righteousness that is imparted to us by faith. If we really do believe in Him we will obey Him and live properly in His sight. As the Psalmist declared, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully" (Psalm 24:3-4). Isaiah also exhorts, "Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord" (Isaiah 52:11). Someone might say, "Those are Old Covenant Scriptures when they were under the law, but we are now under grace." Well, the New Testament is even more forthright.
There are many more, some of which should be even more disconcerting for those who are prone to justify their continuing flirtations with sin. It is true that many, in pursuit of holiness have swung to the extreme of legalism, but many others in overreaction to this, have swung back to the tolerance and license of sin. As the writer of Hebrews exhorted, "Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). Let us never forget that our God is a holy God, and if we are going to serve Him we too must be holy. There is a difference between pursuing holiness in an effort to establish our own righteousness, and pursuing it because we so love the Lord and want to please Him in all things. True holiness is the result of a bride that is so passionately in love with her Bridegroom that she gives her whole heart to being ready for Him in body, soul and spirit. The THIRD step to receiving the anointing is simply to ask our Heavenly Father for the anointing to boldly testify of His Son with His power and Spirit. This is what the apostles themselves did, with spectacular results as recorded in Acts 4:29-31:
We too need this kind of shaking! They asked for boldness and for signs and wonders. Many have been fooled, and robbed, by the accuser, because they were told by him that to seek such things was prideful. This is not prideful, it is humility, declaring that we know we cannot accomplish anything without the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit. We do not need to know some special secret formula, but rather to seek a greater intimacy with, and obedience to, God. He is the One who does the works; we are only seeking to make ourselves more open and responsive to Him. Jesus promised in Luke 11:9-13:
As Paul said in I Corinthians 2:4-5, "And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" People must witness the power of God to build their faith in it. We cannot do this work without a manifestation of His power. This is not something that the Lord will begrudgingly give us if we lift ourselves up to a certain level of faith and holiness. Remember, that the apostles were cowering in the upper room when they were first given the Holy Spirit, and they were obviously recognizing their fears when they prayed the prayer above for another filling of His Spirit and boldness. We are exhorted in Hebrews 4:16 to: "Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need." We come to the throne of grace because we realize that we have need.
The "wicked way" that many of us have been treading is to try to accomplish the work of the Spirit without the Spirit. This is a most terrible presumption, but if we confess our sins He will forgive us, and delight to give us His Spirit in fullness, as He promised in Isaiah 58:11: "And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." The Lord promised that those who believed in Him would have rivers of living waters flowing from their innermost beings which would be endless. If we have not had this continuous flow of living water, it is because we have not really believed Him. However, as the text in Isaiah promised, He will satisfy our souls in drought and make us like watered gardens with waters that do not fail. Let us humble ourselves and seek Him until this is a present reality. As He promised in Psalm 107:9, "For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness."
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