We have always thought that it was easy for Jesus to receive the voice of God after His Baptism was because He is the Son of God.
Luke 3:21-22 says, “Now, when all the people were baptised it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized and praying the heavens was opened. And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from Heaven, which said, “Thou Art My Beloved Son; In Thee I Am Well Pleased.”
The practice of Jesus praying for the heavens to be opened is a basic principle in the scriptures that God wants us to apply everyday in our lives.
Imagine coming to church on a Sunday Service, and the heaven isn’t opened for you to receive an encounter with God in the way that you should.
So, as a Christian, coming to church shouldn’t just be a regular thing for you. You ought to come praying to God for an open heaven, and a manifestation of the divine grace of God.
The reason I’m sharing this is because we are about to start our collective prayers towards the West Africa Believers Conference, WAFBEC. I want us all to be in faith, concerning it so that when we begin to exercise faith for God to do certain things, we are united.
This principle is to be applied everyday by exercising your faith to God for the manifestation of certain things in your own life.
At the conference, revelation knowledge will come into your heart. Then we will go on the fast till the end of the month of January for the manifestation of those things.
However, the structure of the conference has changed. Instead of starting in the third week of January, like we’ve been doing in the last 6 years, we are bringing it to the first week because we believe that before we go into the fast, we should first have some understanding, like Daniel understood by books what the word of the Lord was for that season and then he entered into the fast for the fulfillment of it.
So, what’s this principle that God wants us to understand?
Jesus to be baptized, the bible says, “He being baptized and praying the heavens was opened.” So, Jesus received glory and honour by hearing the voice of God.
So, God said of Jesus, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased”. In other words, there were things that Jesus was doing, the way in which he lived, the way in which he approached things.
Everybody just went for the baptism, but Jesus didn’t go just as something social. He went to the place praying, and that’s why He had an encounter there with the voice of God.
So, you shouldn’t approach spiritual things from a social standpoint. The scripture tells us that when we ask of anything according to His will or if we ask for anything, we will receive those things because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. ~ 1 Cor. 10:1-5
The story in 1st Corinthians 10, teaches that God was pleased with only few of them even though they all were baptised, were under the clouds, all ate spiritual meat. In other words, they all did the same things but no lasting effect was produced within the lives of many of them.
When you read Romans 10 from verse 1, you start to understand the process of getting into the practice of this principle.
It says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”
The word knowledge is in definite article, and so it is “not according to THE knowledge”. What knowledge?
Romans 10: 3 says, “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
The knowledge was the knowledge of this system of God’s righteousness. So, we are looking at this revelation of righteousness.
Romans 10:5-6 says, “For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)”
The emphasis of the righteousness is revealed in the gospel (Rom. 1:16). It starts with what you are saying. In other words, a man who has the revelation of this righteousness, says certain words out of his mouth.
For example, when someone says about his business, “Terrible things are just going on. Business is just down, nothing seems to be working.” If he keeps saying these words without any restriction know that he doesn’t have the knowledge of God’s righteousness.
But when someone else who’s experiencing the same challenge says, “When men say there’s a casting down, I am saying there is a lifting up.”, this person’s conversation reflects the promises that God has made to him.
In other words, what Paul said we are preaching (in verse 7 and 8 of Romans 8), is “…the word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and inside thy heart.” Paul said whatever we preach must get on your lips and inside your heart so there will be the performance of the same in your life.
According to Romans 10:11, you cannot call the name of the Lord except you first of all believe the word that is preached. It also says that you cannot believe unless you’ve heard. Now let’s look at the power of having heard.
In Galatians chapter 3, 1 to 3, Paul also said, all those things you suffered, did you suffer them in vain? Didn’t you draw a conclusion. Didn’t you see that when you got saved, it was by what you heard?
In verses 4 to 6, Paul taught that Abraham heard something, and what he heard caused him to believe and it was counted into him for righteousness.
“The only way you will hear is that you have a preacher sent to you.”
Cornelius was in prayer, and the angel said “go, send for one Simon, he shall tell thee words by which thou shall be saved.” So, they (preachers) must be sent to you.
So, it comes by hearing and the people who hear are those that have people sent to them. The way people are sent for you to hear God’s voice, is that you go to God in prayer. You make a demand in prayer before God concerning this. When an anointed is sent towards you, he comes in and begins to minister to you in very deep areas of your life.
Just like the story of Naaman. He was told by Elisha’s servant, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.”
So, the Holy Ghost wants to produce the experience of something inside of you, and once He has produced it, no effort is required on your part to make it happen. It’s just like when you eat food once you digest it, no effort is needed to make it happen. Once the Word enters your system, the Holy Ghost is the one that will make it happen.
You can listen to the entire here The Simple Steps To Making The Spiritual Real
