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APOSTOLIC FAITH CHURCH
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Behold I give Unto You Power -Rev.
Paul Akazue
Our Saviour, Jesus Christ declared to His disciples: “Behold, I give unto you power” (Luke 10:19). Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Jesus is going to give you Power right
now! But sometimes
people don’t realize what we mean when we talk of power. Power
is very desirable. If I don’t have physical power as well as spiritual
power, I will not be able to address you. If you have a good car, and
there is no fuel or battery to supply power, that vehicle is good for
nothing. Many other appliances for these modern days, need one
form of power or the other to work. An animal, in fact, all
creatures of God, need one form of power or the other to operate. But when we
talk of physical power, that is a small thing. Somebody may be
endowed with physical power but if he has no spiritual power, he is
nothing. Goliath had a lot of physical power, but small David had
a lot of spiritual power. Goliath approached David with physical
power, but David faced Goliath with spiritual power. Who won the
battle? David won, with one small stone, without even striking a blow! Spiritual
power is indispensable for any Christian. If you are a Christian
and you are not a spiritual powerhouse, you are a civilian in God’s
army, you just endanger yourself for nothing, you are a hypocrite.
Spiritual power from God is what makes you a Christian. Who gives
this power? Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the Giver of the
power. That is why the theme of this camp meeting is: “Behold,
I give unto you power”. The problem of mankind today is
faithlessness. If the whole world would believe today, we will
have a foretaste of the millennial reign. It is wonderful that
this place is filled to capacity with human beings; but it will be more
wonderful if everybody here would believe. Then God will generate
unprecedented power among us. I said earlier
that Jesus is the Giver of power. If my face is dry and I need to
apply some oil on it, I may say to my brother whose face is shining
because he has some oil: “My dear Brother, give me some oil”.
But if his face is dry, I will not ask him for oil, because you cannot
give what you don’t have. If somebody owes you some money and you go
there to say: “I must collect my money today, you must pay me this
debt today”; if he doesn’t have, the man will simply tell you,
“Well, if you beat me from this moment till night, you cannot beat out
one kobo, because I don’t have it”. But when you go to
somebody who has, before you are through, he will say, “Oh, have you
come for your money?” He will put his hands into his pocket and pay
your money. But in the case of Christ, it is not as if you have gone to
retrieve a debt. He doesn’t owe anybody anything. We are the people
who are indebted to Him. He is the Giver of power. He is
overflowing with power. He is actually waiting for you to come and
receive the power. That is why He came to earth. That is why this camp
meeting has been organized. Who is this
Jesus we are talking about? Let us see Isaiah 9:6. This prophecy
was made about Jesus Christ seven hundred years before He was born.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government
shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of
Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Because Jesus
has all these qualities and attributes, He is an embodiment of all we
have read. He is able to give you power to be a wonderful person. He
would give you wisdom to be a counsellor because He is the mighty God.
He is the Controller, the Maker of everything. All power belongs to Him.
He is the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. If your life is in
turmoil, our Saviour Jesus Christ is able to give you power to be
peaceful. He will bring peace into your life. There is
nothing, I say, nothing you ask from our Saviour, Jesus Christ, that He
will not supply today. There
is nothing you need from Jesus that you will not get, but when you
withdraw yourself from Jesus, you are a loser. Sometimes, people
come to Jesus, they just taste a little of His goodness and draw
back. They are not wise. When you taste Jesus and find Jesus to be
sweet, you should come closer, walk closely with Him, and tell Him to
bind you to Himself. Then you will realize more the power of our Saviour,
Jesus Christ. This is the testimony the Son of God, the Holy One
of God, the Second Person in the Trinity made about Himself. The
One that cannot lie, the One whose testimony is true. He
declared in Matthew 28:18: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth”. “Jesus
has all power in His mighty hands divine”. When you come to
Jesus, He picks up your problem just like a small pebble and throws it
away. He is the one that you should go to for power. When we were
young, we heard about the Indians and Egyptians. We used to write
letters to them to send us talisman and other charms. But it was all
fake. When we came to Jesus, we realized that the real source of power
is from Jesus. Some people because they fall sick often, or some
parents because they suffer infant mortality, run from pillar to post,
looking for power so that they or their children may live. But they
waste their time by going to the wrong place. The right thing to do is
to come to Jesus. If you come to Jesus without delay, all your
problems will be over. Jesus has
power over death. He carried the offensive into the territory of
death three times in His three and half years’ ministry. He went
actually to the realms of death aggressively and rescued people who were
held captive by death. Do you remember Jairus’ daughter? Death killed
her. Christ went there and rescued her. The son of the woman of Nain
died and was put in a coffin. Christ got there and said, “Young
man…arise” and He pulled the boy up. Lazarus too died and
was buried for four days. Christ came there and said, “Lazarus, come
forth”. Lazarus came out. He has power over death. There was a
time he sent seventy of His disciples out in pairs. They went, preached
and were amazed. "And the seventy returned again with joy, saying,
Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven”
(Luke 10:17, 18). Do you know
why Satan fell? Satan enthrones himself in the hearts of the sons
of men. But when a soul is rescued, he tumbles and falls. If you know
that Satan has maltreated you too much, this is the right time to tarry
and say: “It will be settled today, Satan, go away, I will serve you
no longer. Jesus wash me with your Blood”. When you mention the Blood
of Jesus, Satan will tumble. He will run away. When Jesus
heard all these wonderful testimonies and saw that the disciples were
faithful in carrying out the assignment He gave them, He declared:
“Behold, I give unto you power”. It makes my heart glad that
we are on the right way. God will give us power and we will work
with it. He said: “I
give unto you power” power to do what? “ to tread on serpents and
scorpions and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any
means hurt you”. If you realize your worth you will be floating
in the air. The power Jesus gives us is power over all the
enemy— enemies of the Gospel and of your soul. You will trample them
under your feet. And He says that nothing, I repeat nothing shall
by any means hurt you. The spiritual
power from Jesus makes you inviolable, invincible and unconquerable. It
is an offensive power, to carry out offenses against the enemy. It
is a defensive power; It is a protecting power and it is an upholding
power. It beats my
imagination when people talk of witches and wizards. Who is a witch? Who
is a wizard? Miserable people, crying to be rescued, crying to be
delivered. How then can a child of God with spiritual power, as well as
physical power from our Saviour Jesus Christ, begin to fear these things
which he should trample under his feet? What kind of a Christian
are you? What kind of a soldier of Christ are you? The trouble with some
children of God is that they don’t realize what they have and
so, they don’t make use of their power. Some of them also, who have
this power, out of carelessness, through prayerlessness, not reading the
Word of God and not assembling with the people of God have lost out. You
should realize that once you kneel down, even when you have not started
praying, Satan begins to shake. Why ? He knows you have gone to get
power from God, and by the time you begin to pray, the devil and his
agents are in real trouble. That is why when you begin to pray, the
people whom Satan has captured and put in his pocket and whom he uses as
his agents get worried; your prayer burns them like fire. If you say
that witches or wizards are worrying you, you are not a Christian
at all. Stop pitying yourself, get down on your knees and ask
Jesus: “Where am I? Where is my power? Why is this happening to me?”
Pour out your heart and free yourself. Witches and wizards should
run from you, it is not for you to run from them. If there are
witches and wizards that want to come to Church, let them come. But make
the place hot with prayers. They will soon confess their sins, and there
is power in the Blood to set them free. If they don’t want to confess,
can a fly remain in the face of fire? No. Can a maggot remain in the
midst of salt? No. Let us
understand what we are doing. If you are already in the net of the
enemy, and you are neither hot nor cold, Satan will try everything
possible to discourage you when you want to pray. You must work out your
own salvation, you must free yourself. If all these workers of
darkness have any power over you, it is your fault. Jesus gives us the
power to trample them under our feet but what did you do with the power
given you? Christ told
His disciples in verse 20. “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you;
but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven”. Jesus is the
Owner of the Lamb’s Book of Life, and anybody whose name is entering
in there, He knows. So, He told His disciples to rejoice because their
names were already in the Book of Life. They were not to rejoice
because Satan and his emissaries were subject unto them. All
that happens in the course of the spiritual battle. A Christian warrior
is a soldier of Christ. As he does exploits, Satan and his emissaries
will be falling left and right. That is not what we are rejoicing
mostly about, this is just the victory God gives us on our
pilgrimage towards Heavenly Canaan. But we rejoice because our names are
written in the Book of Life. In John
chapter 1 verse 12, Jesus says: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of
God, even to them that believe on his name”. “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I John 3:9). When you
believe Jesus, exercise faith, confess and forsake your sins, and your
sins are gone, your name is written in the Book of Life. He gives
you power to become the son of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Christ gives the power to live above sins. Remember the woman who was an
adulteress. When Christ forgave her, He said: “Go and sin no
more”. He gave her power to sin no more. He is the Son of
God that will reveal the Father to us. When we know Him, we will
know the power of God. We will have the power to go and sin no more. We
will have this power to trample over sin and Satan. “Behold, I give unto you power”. |
