Paul didn't receive his whole assignment at once. He simply had to take the next step in obedience. And I believe that is often how God works with us: He may not show us the whole journey, but He tells us what to do next.
The Lord's Will be done
Finish the race, complete the task
Acts 20.24 says: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; if only I can finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given to me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
What a powerful statement. Paul considered his own life nothing compared with finishing the race and completing the task God had given him. All the suffering, all the hardship, and all his personal desires were secondary to that one purpose.
Don't be afraid, God is with you
One night, the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision and said, “Don’t be afraid. Keep on speaking. Don’t be silent, for I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city. I was extremely conscious of that in my own ministry. I spent 30 years working in communist countries, and another 30 years afterwards – 60 years in all working throughout the former Soviet Union. And during those years, there were four attempts to assassinate me. Yet I was always conscious that God was protecting me.
Full of faith and the Holy Spirit
Living in the Power of the Holy Spirit
When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive power from God, and that power is meant to be demonstrated. What I sense today is that much of the Church is not living in that power or demonstrating it to the world. So, I would ask: if you have received the Holy Spirit, what difference has it made in your life?
The evidence is in the Power
What is in your hand?
Your potential in Christ
When God deals with you, He does something unique. So often we want what other people have. In my relationship with God, I have never wanted what somebody else has. I want what is in His Word, what God has for me personally! Don’t copy other people. If you want the power of God, that power is not going to come from somebody else. Yes, others can lay their hands on you, but the power is going to come from God. Not from me, nor from someone else. You must get it direct from God and His Word.
God is looking for those He can ise
God had to reduce Gideon’s army to only 300. Why? Because God can only use willing, obedient, committed people who will make His glory the first priority. God needs the right men and women in order to do what He wants, to bring glory to His Name, to bring deliverance to nations, to build His church – He’s looking everywhere, to find those through whom He can direct all His power, and energy into saving sinners.
God has a plan and a strategy in everything He does
God has always had a clear plan and strategy in everything He does. From creation to salvation, nothing has happened in heaven or earth without the foreknowledge of God. An important part of the strategy which God has for today is that He wants to show that His power is not just in heaven, but also demonstrated very powerfully on earth.
God in the middle of the crisis
If you want to meet with God, you don’t have to wait until you have done this or that. I would never have become an evangelist, never seen a miracle of healing if God had waited until I was perfect before He answered my prayers. I call on God, He deals with me where I am. That’s why I was healed, not because I was ‘holy’. What God looks at is the deep desire of your heart.
Step by Step
A God of love and a God of Power
Today it’s time that we began to rise up and recognise the power and authority that we have in Jesus’ Name. Power to preach a life-changing Gospel, power to bring healing miracles in order that He might receive the glory, and so that we as ‘ordinary’ people might have something dynamic to demonstrate in our lives! When Jesus healed the paralytic man (Matthew 9:6) He said, ‘So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth... rise up and walk!’ Today we must become men and women of action to continue the demonstration begun by Jesus, so that non-believers will desire to have what we have!
God has delivered you into a Promised Land
Commanded to do the impossible
The Fire of God in you!
The Power of an Almighty God
I am calling you to do something, which I Myself am going to make absolutely impossible! I will cause him to refuse you, and make him stronger than ever in his anger against you – why? So that I can then demonstrate that I am God by destroying the power of Pharaoh and delivering My people – and this will not be with human power.
God Uses Every Circumstance For His Glory
God Wants To Use The Real You
God wants to use the real you! He knows who you are. Sometimes when I am having problems, and I have to say – like Paul – ‘Lord, I am sorry, I should have done this and I shouldn’t have done that,’ and when I am trying to make excuses and say, ‘I’m not perfect, I can’t do this, and Lord, you know the problems I have in my life,’ God says, ‘Look, I knew you before you were born, I made you and it’s about time you understood I made you, just as you are, for a purpose.’