As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Acts 13:2 KJV
One common phrase you will hear in the confines of the church is fasting and prayer, or read the Bible and pray. But another practice is even more powerful than just fasting and praying. Even though one particular practice will open a dimension of God to you, yet, some are inevitable. Like, of course, studying the Bible, fasting, and praying. Studying the word of God opens us to the deep things of God and established our dominion on earth. How? The word of God illuminates our minds revealing our true identity which equips us for our heritage in Christ. Scripture said in Ephesians chapter 1 from verse 3 to 10 that "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms."
By reading this scripture, you will understand that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing which is in the heavenly. Meaning, we are not now going to seek these blessings, it is already made available. The continuation of the scripture reads; "For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence."
Again, this verse is bringing to us a level of enlightenment; thus God chose us in him at the very beginning when he was creating the whole universe that we should be holy unto him. The next verse said, " in love, God predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One"
So, you see, by the word of God, we are getting a revelation of the will of God concerning us as it is in the scriptures, not only that, but we also come to understand the rich heritage we have in him. If you read the rest of the verse, it will wonder you the great provision God made so that by that we can access the wonderful and rich inheritance he had already predestined is to have. Just take a glance, " In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ."
So to obtain the great and precious promises of God, God offers the blood of his only begotten son, so that by the blood, we will be redeemed from the corruption in this world to be in the position to enjoy his rich inheritance towards us. So you see, by the Word of God, we are getting a revelation of His will towards us. But knowing his will is one thing and walking in his good pleasure, living in His glory is another. What then is the channel through which we see the manifest work of God in our lives? Is it fasting? Is it prayer? The answer is no. It is neither fasting nor prayer. It is simple obedience.
If you fast all the days of your life and pray 24 hours a day but cannot observe simple instruction from the scriptures, your fasting and prayer are in vain. You see, when God instructed King Saul by the prophet Samuel to go and destroy all of the Amalakites, Saul's simple disobedience cost him his kingdom. The kingdom was taken away from him and given to a young Shepherd boy called, David. Fasting is good, praying is powerful, but there is a third dimension: the place of obedience of insights and the revealed will of God.
If we are going to obey God, we must know exactly what we are going to obey God on. See, the scriptures we read are acts of people's obedience and disobedience. The Bible is given so that we can learn from the mistakes of the past for us not to repeat them. For example, if you read the story of King Saul, you will be forced to keep simple instructions of God, but the instruction Saul received does not come from the Bible, it came from the very mouth of God. So if we are going to obey God, we must be able to hear from God, and the principle is that, whatever you hear from God must agree with what he had already said which is written down in the word of God; the Bible. Meaning, you cannot take a Bible verse and begin to appropriate it without inspiration from the Spirit of God. The Bible speaks about a very wide range of fields; from agricultural to politics, from business and commences to the institution of marriage. The Bible is about a very wide range of disciplines; education, medicine, engineering, agro-industry, art and entertainment, religion, family, governance, economics, just to mention a few. So all these areas, where will God be needing your obedience?, it depends on you hearing from God.
This brings us to the third dimension; ministering to the Lord. As I have said earlier, I have heard fasting and prayer, and study the word of God a lot in the Church but I have never heard fasting and worship before. Worship is ministering to the Lord. In Acts chapter 13 verse 2, the scripture said, " As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." So you see, Paul and Barnabas have an assignment from the Lord. But they only got to know when they were fasting and ministering to the Lord. I love fasting and I love playing, I have been prayer 24 hours nonstop and my daily prayer session may not less than 6 hours. I am a man of prayer, but I have discovered the third dimension; ministering to the Lord.
David said I will enter his gates with thanking giving my heart and his court with praise. Psa 100:4. What gives you access to the very presence of God is Thanksgiving, praises, and worship combined. That is ministering to the Lord.
Anytime I ministered to the Lord, tremendous power will be made available. I will arrange powerful worship songs and worship along for hours, yes, I said hours. What establishes your dominion on earth is what you can hear from the God realm, it is not what you just read from the scriptures. Sometimes, you will be reading the scriptures and a volt of energy will be boiling and stirring within you. At that moment, the Lord is brooding upon that word your reading. Meaning there is power available at that moment behind the word you are reading, and that if you deploy that word at that moment, you will see the mighty result. If that kind of spiritual dimension, the brooding upon the word, that is making the scripture live to you is not available at that moment, if you deploy the scripture, you won't see results. It is that brooding upon the scripture that unleashes the power embedded in the scripture. Sometimes, you will there and a scripture verse will jump in your spirit, meaning there is brooding upon that scripture at that moment, yours is to deploy it. Sometimes, when the brooding comes we don't deploy the scripture because we think we are not in the situation that requires the scripture verse which is inspired. See, you are living in the physical realm and the spirit of the Lord is in the spiritual realm and knows things you don't know. Maybe the situation is just about to happen and you are supposed to stop it from happening and you will be there saying I'm not such a situation. And the thing will happen before you will be saying, had I known.
When you pick quickening from the spirit realm, deploy them immediately. Deploring a scripture verse is just decreeing it. For example, if you are sick and you heard in your spirit " by his stripes, we are healed" and you quickly checked from the Bible and found out that it is written in Isaiah 53:5 and 1Peter 2:42, then you start deploying it by decreeing the scripture like this; " it is written, by his stripes we are healed therefore I'm healed in the name of Jesus."
By this, you shall surely see the outcome. You just received a key to an enormous victory. Learn to minister to the Lord. Blessings.
Lord, lead me to the secret place in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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