Stop Cranking the Engine: The Power Is Already Inside You

Sermon outline

Every Spirit-filled believer already has within them all the power they will ever need, so stop begging God for what He has given and start exercising it with your hands and your mouth.

1. The central truth: you have all the power you will ever need

   The devil robs Christians by making them think they must keep looking to God for power every time they pray. When you received Christ you received the Holy Spirit, and with Him dunamis, dynamite power, the rivers of living water. It has been transferred into you and it is inside you now.

   “Every spirit-filled believer has within him all the power he or she will ever need to put him over in this life.”

   • Ephesians 1:18
   • Acts 1:8
   • John 7:38

2. After receiving, don't go looking

   There is a difference between God wanting to heal you and God having healed you: it was finished at the cross two thousand years ago, so receive it rather than beg for it. You do not receive the Holy Spirit, lose Him and find Him again. Your job is to stay filled by singing in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, reading the Word, fellowship and worship.

   Illustration: When he lays hands on someone a healing anointing is transferred. If they go home unchanged it is not that nothing was given; the anointing is waiting for the believing.

   “You didn't get the manifestation because you didn't have the perception.”

   • John 19:30
   • Hebrews 10:25

3. Unbelieving believers: you will never know until you exercise yourself

   Casting out demons is not a special gift; every believer is commissioned, and these signs follow those who believe. Do not run to call the pastor, who has no more authority than you: lay hands and command, a second and a third time if need be, and your faith will grow. The reason you cannot do it is not that you do not have it but that you do not believe it.

   Illustration: It takes faith to take the ten rand you need for a loaf of bread and put it in the offering basket, and on your way out someone gives you twenty.

   “But you will never know until you exercise yourself.”

   • Mark 16:15-18
   • Luke 6:38

4. The dynamo: once it is started it needs no outside help

   A dynamo is cranked once and then runs on its own. Once God has given you the Holy Spirit your motor has been started, and you have it for ever. Praying for more power is asking for what you already have. Being more humble does not add to it and nothing takes it back; in the morning simply get up, pray and speak.

   Illustration: When he was a boy a cartage contractor nearby had a very old Bedford truck. Every morning he cranked it with an iron shaft until it started, and after that all he needed to do was press the pedal.

   “So if you're looking for something you already have, it amounts to unbelief.”

   • 2 Corinthians 5:17
   • John 7:38
   • Philippians 4:13
   • 1 John 4:4

5. There is power in your hands: prove your God

   Inside a believer, not only inside a pastor, is great power, and the hands of a Spirit-filled driver, mechanic, teacher, policeman or clerk are anointed hands: what they bind is bound and what they touch prospers. We have more faith in doctors, medicine and the bank than in the Word. Prove God by giving and by tithing first, and trust Him unashamedly for the money to come.

   Illustration: A citizen pays taxes to stay within the law. In the same way he teaches that a believer who does not tithe becomes an illegal citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

   “If you're afraid of giving into the kingdom of God, you express your faithlessness in God.”

   • Matthew 18:18
   • Luke 6:38
   • Romans 8:31
   • Psalm 118:6
   • Matthew 22:21
   • 2 Kings 13:21

6. God is with us, for us and in us

   In the Old Testament God was with Israel and for them. In the New Testament He is with us, for us and in us, which is a guarantee of success and a higher way of living: calling things that are not seen. When God says yes nobody can say no, and His Word performs every time it is spoken from your mouth. Prayer is an intimate relationship with God, not begging Him all the time.

   Illustration: At a conference in Zambia he prophesied over a small, travel-worn man that he was a pastor and an apostle who would plant many churches. The host pastor stopped him to say every word was true and that this man had raised five people from the dead. He sat with the man for three hours and heard how a soldier, dead two days, got up after 45 minutes of prayer and asked for food.

   “God is with us. God is for us. And God is in us. How can you lose?”

   • Romans 8:31
   • 1 John 4:4
   • Romans 4:17
   • 1 Corinthians 3:21
   • Isaiah 55:11
   • Psalm 107:20
   • Mark 11:23

7. You are the temple: let God who is inside look outside

   We have a better covenant built on better promises, and the church, together and individually, is God's temple with His Spirit permanently at home in it. Calling the building the house of God is correct in one sense, but scripturally your body is the temple, which makes you a priest and a king who can change things. Do not look at something and curse it, because death and life are in the tongue.

   Illustration: A Christian woman in Newlands East kept cursing her dog for breaking the bin and one day said she wished it would die. The next day a green mamba bit it and it died.

   “The reason why we don't get the results we ought to get is because we don't let God who is inside look outside.”

   • Hebrews 8:6
   • 1 Peter 1:12
   • 1 Corinthians 3:14-16
   • 1 Corinthians 6:19
   • Proverbs 18:21
   • Ezekiel 37:1-10

8. Why must God make a way when He is the way?

   He says that 'God will make a way' can be unbelief, because God is the way and He is in you. So stand up and prophesy: speak life to your finances, call your children back, and bind the situation at work rather than resigning just before your miracle. If God says you will make it, nobody can tell you that you will not.

   Illustration: A man under pressure from someone at work wants to leave. Instead he binds the situation in Jesus' name, the other person resigns two weeks later, and the boss offers him the vacant position.

   “Why must God make a way when He is the way?”

   • John 14:6
   • 1 Peter 5:7
   • Ezekiel 37:1-10
   • Romans 8:31
   • Genesis 37:5-11
   • Genesis 41:39-41