Where did Jesus get His
power? It was not because He was God. He spent His nights in prayer, hearing
from the Father about how to deal with the issues awaiting Him. Then during the
day, He did exactly as He was told. He said in John 5:19, “‘I
tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he
sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’”
Where did Jesus see what
His father was doing? Can it be that He saw it while He was in heaven? I’m
convinced that He saw His Father in the Spirit while He was praying. God then
illustrated what Jesus was supposed to do during His ministry the following
day. He probably would have heard something like: “Jesus, today you will meet a
blind man. You must spit in the sand, make mud and put it on his eyes. It is
imperative that you tell him to go and wash his face in the Pool of Siloam.”
Had Jesus have done it in a different way, it probably would not have worked.
He also said in John 5:30,
“‘By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is
just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.’” Where did Jesus hear? He
heard through prayer during the night.
How did Jesus pray? We find the
ultimate example in Luke 22:44: “And being in anguish, he prayed
more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” This prayer was in
Gethsemane and certainly was the ultimate of prayers, but I believe it was
typical of all His prayers: earnest and heartfelt.
Jesus could do nothing without
relying on His father. How about us? “‘I am the
vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear
much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’” (John 15:5). As Jesus needed His
Father, so we need Him. As we remain in Him and He in us, what fruit will we
bear? The fruit He bore, the same power He exercised, the same difference He
made. “The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes
tremendous power available [dynamic in its working]” (James 5:16b Amplified
Bible). That is how we should pray.
Some issues can be resolved only
through prayer. We couldn’t physically do much about the falling airplanes.
Concerning certain other issues, though, James said in his epistle that faith
without works is dead. Jesus did not only pray against the deception of the
Pharisees and teachers of the law; He also confronted them, exposing Himself to
persecution and the risk of being killed. These confrontations eventually lead
to His death. If we want to be like Jesus we must also be courageous and
confront the wrongs in life. This means we have to risk unpopularity, even
within the church.
The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17:
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be
thoroughly equipped for every good work.” And in 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach
the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and
encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”
I have lately become increasingly
aware of the words “correct” and “rebuke” in the above passages. How much of
these are still being done within the church? If good works demand holiness,
then people, who are being prepared for good works, need teaching, rebuking,
correcting, and training in righteousness. This will bring them in line with
the Lord who is the author of good works. “For we are
God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared
in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
Correcting and rebuking is not nice
or easy. We fear rejection, but if we don’t rebuke and correct, people tend to
compromise. Many people live in sin and are not confronted any more. This
result is that the church is weakened because of unrighteousness.
The fear of persecution and rejection
causes the church to live in compromise with the world. She became acceptable
to the world and even to the enemy, since she does not make people aware of sin
and holiness anymore and is therefore not a threat to anyone. The Holy Spirit
wants to convict the world concerning sin and righteousness
and judgment
(John 16:8), and needs the church to work with Him.
The same applies if the church does
not correct or rebuke the government. Without correction, the government tends
to be led by the carnal nature and evil forces. Our battle against sin and
corruption must be intense and focused.
As a family, we love watching movies
and have often found great spiritual lessons in them. One day we were watching
an action movie involving spies. My wife commented, “Despite the danger and
against all odds, these heroes just don’t give up.” How many of us resist evil
passionately, against all odds, until we accomplish what we set out to do? The
general approach seems to be “I’ll do something as long as it doesn’t affect me
personally.”
We need always to work with the Lord
under His direction. If we rebuke because the Lord told us to and we do it the
way He directs us, it will bear authority and manifest change. The Lord wants
us to be channels of His power. If we are available, He is more than willing to
teach us how to be different, how to swim against the streams of popularity and
accepted behavior, even of popular Christian beliefs. He would love to raise a
salt army that would make a sick earth whole through his power. During the
storm Jesus told the disciples:
“You of little faith, why
are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it
was completely calm” (Matthew 8:26).
Jesus made two points in this
passage. First, by saying, “You of little faith,” he implied that they should
have spoken to the elements. They should have commanded the storm themselves,
giving Jesus’ power a channel to work through. He expected them to exercise
their faith and the spoken word so that He could solve the problem through
them.
The second thing Jesus did was to
command the wind and waves to calm down. Everything Jesus did was through
commands, from the creation until the end of His ministry. He prayed through
the night to get rhema; the living word or revelation instructions from the
Father, and then He gave His commands. This means that He received the
instructions from the Father, which gave Jesus the faith He needed that the
Father will back His commands with His power, simply because it was the Father
in the first place who told Him what to do. “So then faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17 KJV). If we hear from God what He
wants us to do, we will have the faith that He will back us up and do what we
ask or command, since we do what the Almighty expects of us: His will.
How can we be salt on the earth and
clean out its sepsis? First we need to become aware of God's concern for this
sick earth. We need to focus away from our carnal thoughts, doubts, fear, and
hatred and adopt His compassion and thoughts.
Then we need to have faith. We need to believe that He
can and wants to deal with this sepsis. We need the faith to believe we can be
His channels. Then we need to spend much time in prayer and fasting to bring
every situation before God and hear from Him how he'd like to deal with it.
Last, once we know how to deal with it, we need to command His will into every
situation as Jesus did.
There is no record of Jesus publicly
begging the Father to heal somebody. He rebuked and commanded. So if the sepsis
of this earth becomes a concern to you, isolate yourself to God, get the rhema
solution to the problem, and then command it into the heavens and onto the
earth. “‘What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight;
what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.’” (Matthew 10:27).
What do you think will happen to this
sick earth if all the millions of Christians do this on a daily basis? (To be continued)
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