Some people would say about operating in Holy Ghost power, “Well, those were just the original apostles, the disciples that were chosen, so they had a special unction upon them.”  But the Scripture says, “And he sent another 70.”  Amen?  And then the book ends in Mark that says, “And these signs shall follow everybody that believes in my name, they shall.”  Do you believe that tonight?  Is that Bible?  It’s not been something that’s been prominent, here in our midst, but we have times as individuals that we think pretty highly of ourselves and our Bible knowledge.  Most of us do not ever run into people that know the Bible as well as we do.  It’s not about knowing the Bible, it’s about being doers of the Word.  Because if we’re hearers and not doers, we’ve deceived ourselves.  If we’re walking and living outside the covenant of divine healing and thinking we’re in good relationships and in the proper place at this point of our lives, we are deceiving ourselves.  This doctrine should be as effective, it should be as evident, as any other and every other doctrine that is biblically sound as this is.

As we’re looking at these particular passages, these signs are to be following the believer.  Jesus healed them all; amen?  What has to happen for some of us?  What keeps some of us from stepping out and walking in what’s available to us is our pride and fear.  “What if I pray and nothing happens?”  What if you pray and it does?  You can’t heal anybody.  We can only obey and pray in faith and believe that God stretches forth His hand, as the disciples prayed in Acts, Chapter 4, and brings the manifestation of these signs, these wonders, these healings into our present lives and ministry.  I believe that we can stir up the gift that’s in us; amen?  We don’t have to stay here.  This is not what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to look like.

Will we, as believers, have adversities?  Of course we will.  All that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecutions. We, in this walk, as the church, are not free from all of the cataclysmic events that happen on the earth.  We’ve got this whole thing going, right now, of, “Oh, these storms and climate change.”  I don’t believe it’s climate change, I believe it’s the beginning of the judgment of God.  I believe that we’re living at the last days to where the world is reeling like a drunk man.  Did our carbon deposits affect some of this?  I don’t think so.  It’s very interesting to me.  “This is the effect of carbon, you know, blah blah blah.  The last time we had something this devastating was 1902!”   So, everything’s warming up, that’s what’s causing it, but in 1902 it was just as bad or worse than this one.  That doesn’t track.  God, I believe, is coming for a church, that as His wrath is getting ready to be poured out, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.  A church triumphant, a church that is holding Antichrist at bay, and “he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7).  We are victorious, we will be sustained, and we are restraining.  That power is available to us, so let’s do our job.  And part of that restraining is also in manifesting these gifts that show the preeminence and the power of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

Father, we thank You for Your Word, and we ask that You would strengthen us, would give us wisdom.  That we would stop fearing failure and go in faith and step out.  It’s not something we have to pray about, it’s Your commandment.  If it wasn’t so, You wouldn’t have said, “Is any sick among you?  Let them call for the eldership.”  It’s the order of the church.  The church is in place that we could come to those that are the representatives and be healed, praise God.   “So, the elders are healing?”  No.  “The oil’s healing?”  No.  God.  The stripes of Jesus that He bore on the cross.  Matthew, Chapter 8, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet Isaiah saying, with his stripes we are healed,” praise God.  Make it real, Father, and we’ll give you all the praise in Jesus’ name, amen.