Hi all,
Today I’ll share part of a visitation I had with the Lord decades ago, but it changed my life. I rarely share it because it is personal and some of the questions I asked of Him were due to events in my family and in the families of people close to me. But I will share part.
I had been thinking on Matthew 28: 18:
“All power (authority) has been given Me in heaven and earth, therefore you go…”
The Greek word translated in some versions as ‘power’ is actually ‘authority’, or exousia. Jesus said;
“All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth, you go therefore and teach all nations..”
The difference between power and authority can be seen in a police officer. The gun they carry is power, but traffic stops or goes when they hold up their hand by authority. When they give directions to traffic it is not anything within themselves that stops traffic, it is that they have the authority of the government to cause people to obey.
All authority was given to Jesus by the Father, therefore we are to make disciples. Why ‘therefore’? Because we are in Him and He in us, we are the ones who are charged with exercising His authority in the earth.
Like a police officer who has authority to use power, so too we have authority to use the power of God. And in the same way that both authority and power must be in place within an officer of the law, so too we Christians should be living in both the authority of the Lord and able to use the Father’s power (by His Spirit) where He wills.
It is the power of the Father by His Holy Spirit that authority is teamed with. The Word and Spirit agree, so though you may have authority to use His name, you must be doing that in teamwork with the Holy Spirit, who is the power. Jesus said He cast demons out by the Spirit – the Holy Spirit is the power that actually does the work.
You can speak the name of Jesus as many times as you want, and you have the authority to do so, but unless the Holy Spirit joins with that use, nothing will happen. When the Spirit is joined with the Name, all it takes is one mention of that Name to release the power of God into the situation.
That’s why I take time to linger as I pray for someone. It’s why in our conferences we break up into small circles of 6 or 8 people so each person can be prayed for with time to linger so all can know the mind of the Father and therefore how His Spirit will minister to the one receiving prayer.
I train people to first determine the will of the Father by where the Holy Spirit is moving, before we use the name of Jesus in prayer for the person. You can also tell how little faith in the Name a person has or how dull they are to the Spirit if they just jump right in with many words that sound all powerful and full of declaration. And if they pray and use His name multiple times and/or use various religious formula’s as if they can add to the power. It’s very simple: If you know by the Spirit what the Lord wants to do, simply command using that Name of Jesus and it will be done. Short, simple, powerful, because the Holy Spirit does the work.
My question earlier in the visitation about Jesus having all authority as He said in Matthew 28: 18, was why the Father allows children to be abused, neglected, even injured or worse in horrible families. If He has all authority, where is He when children suffer like that?
He immediately answered: “The Father created the family and delegated family to mankind. The intent was that family would be the main way the knowledge of His ways would be spread throughout the earth. (There are many OT and NT verses that demonstrate this) Because family is delegated authority, we are shut out of many families because they do not want us nor the ways of the Father.”
“The Father often has to wait until that child begins growing up and outside of the family authority structure, which is why many come to me when they are approaching and in their teen or college years. Even if they come to know Me as a young child in the midst of such a family, I am limited by the authority of the family. Sometimes their faith is just between us because no one else in the family walks with Me. In other situations, as soon as a child starts to become independent, it becomes legally possible and right for the Father to seek those children to comfort and begin to heal them, and draw them to Himself. We will not be blamed. On that day all will see that everything we do is just and right that no one may bring an accusation against us.”
After some discussion about this, how He must respect the very authority structure He delegated to mankind and related things, He then commented further:
“I do have all authority in heaven and earth, and you are in Me, therefore you have authority in the earth. Satan has no authority. He gets people to give him their authority, then he uses their authority against them. What you see in the world, and even in my people, is the accumulation and culmination of years and often decades of people giving him their authority, which he has used against them, to the enslavement of even whole nations.” In many cases multiple generations have grown up giving Satan their authority thinking that is just how life is, to the enslavement of whole families, generations, and nations. When a person is born again, life becomes a journey to take back the authority they had previously (ignorantly) given to Satan.”)
Suddenly I saw it. Every person’s will is sovereign. In Christ we are in Him and He in us, and we live within His authority. Jesus has all authority. But free will supersedes everything. Being free-willed beings, we can give our authority to whomever we choose – God or the devil. God uses our will and our authority in Him to better us, but the devil uses our authority against us to harass and destroy us.
A person’s free will is greater than God and the devil. Neither God nor the devil can make a person do anything. I have often used the illustration of millions of people who don’t know God, overcome their addictions simply be their will. Christians have lost sight of the fact they merely need to grow a backbone, a strong will, to overcome the devil. Your will is stronger than any demon. Knowing yourself and determining your will first, before you ever become tempted, is key to living a victorious life. When you know yourself well enough and know the Father well enough that you hate breaking the sweet Presence of His Spirit by the grievance of sin, when protecting that Presence becomes all-important to you; When sin tempts you will be able to say ‘That’s not me, that’s not who I am.’, and it goes away.
Anything we have in Christ certainly adds power to the firmness of our decision to break the devil’s stronghold in our lives, but the core is that we must decide we won’t do ___ anymore. You can’t try to resist temptation if secretly in your heart you know you want it. The flesh is always capable of sin, but we are to control the flesh and tell it what it may and may not do.
It is often said of addiction
No one can help the addict until and unless they decide they want help. To put it as Paul did in Ephesians 2:3, sinners sin because by their nature they are ‘children of wrath’. That means sinners sin because it is their nature; Christians sin because it’s their choice.
Once we set our will, then heaven or hell respond accordingly. When we set our will, and when we know that greater is He in us than he that is in the world. And we know we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ. And we know we are part of a royal priesthood first adopted into and then born into the family of the king – you won’t think you have to search out some formula to overcome your sins or the sins of your forefathers.
You’ll realize Christ really does live in you, and you really can go directly to the Father to seek mercy and grace to help in time of need. You will realize you have been given the authority backed up by the power of the Father to command demons away from your life.
Formulas become obsolete. When we spiritually wrestle against authorities and principalities, we do so from the perspective of having already won – we have all authority over them because Christ in us has all authority. Our lives build in momentum: From the first efforts to take back authority we had ignorantly given to the devil, to closing openings for the devil, because all our authority is now directed to the things of the Kingdom of God.
Can demons bring temptation? Yes. Can demons provoke people to attack you? Yes. But if your will is set, and those demons who know you and have watched you over time know your will is set and you have no interest in sinning, when you exert your authority and use that Name above all names, the power of the Father will back you up and vanquish those demons, making any attacks just for a short season.
Godliness becomes dominant, and life though filled with challenges, is lived victoriously….
New subject next week….hope these insights have been helpful. Blessings,
John Fenn
