Your Desire Is the Egg: The Principle of Incubation

Sermon outline

The Spirit of God brooded over nothing until the Word was spoken, and in the same way a clear, specific, God-given desire held in your heart and imagination is the egg that the Holy Spirit hatches when you speak the Word.

1. First learn to walk with the Holy Spirit

   He reviews the four stages from the earlier message: the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, partnership with the Holy Spirit, the unity of the Holy Spirit and the transportation of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit speaks, gives ideas, comforts in trials and carries your prayers to God and His grace back to you, so a believer is never alone. The task is not to get to know Him but to learn to recognise His voice.

   Illustration: You are driving and suddenly get the thought to take a turn, only to hear later that there was a nasty accident down the road that could have been you.

   “So it's not that you do not know Him. You know Him. I'm teaching you to recognize Him.”

   • Hebrews 13:5
   • Matthew 28:20

2. The Spirit brooded, waiting for the Word

   Before God created, the earth was without form, void and dark. The Spirit of God brooded over the waters: He sat over them, hovered, fluttered and relaxed, waiting to hatch something out of nothing. What He was waiting for was the Word, and when God said "Let there be", the Spirit went into action. In the same way He is waiting for the Word to come from the mouth of a believer.

   Illustration: The Spirit of God was like a hen nesting on the waters, and the formless earth was like an egg. He is careful to say this is an analogy and that he is not calling the Spirit of God a hen.

   “God's waiting for you to speak so He can go into action.”

   • Genesis 1:1-2
   • Genesis 1:3

3. The fourth dimension rules the third

   The realm of the Spirit, which he calls the fourth dimensional realm, is always creating and having dominion over the third dimensional realm, the natural world we live in. We tend to believe what we see and hear more than the realm we cannot see, so we need to learn how that realm works. Because we are made in God's image and likeness, we operate the way our Father operates: He spoke, so we speak; He believed, so we believe. The Bible is where we learn how He operates, so read it for yourself and do what it says.

   Illustration: The "What would Jesus do?" band people wear: we have to do what Jesus would have done.

   “The Holy Spirit incubates the third dimensional realm which is the natural world.”

   • Genesis 1:26-27
   • John 5:19

4. The desire of the righteous is the egg

   Proverbs does not say the desire of the righteous may be granted, or that God will think about it. It shall be granted, and we are the righteous by faith, not by our deeds. He likens that desire from deep within to eggs and asks the church to hold the thought.

   “The desire from deep within can be likened to eggs.”

   • Proverbs 10:24
   • 2 Corinthians 5:21

5. Jacob's rods: what you keep before your eyes, you give birth to

   Laban tried to outdo Jacob by leaving him only the few speckled and spotted animals. By a divine plan from God, Jacob peeled streaks into rods and set them at the watering troughs, so that every time the flocks came to drink they saw speckled and spotted branches. The strong impression on the eye worked through the imagination and the flocks brought forth speckled and spotted young, until Jacob increased exceedingly. He stresses that this was not a natural trick: God's blessing and direction were on Jacob.

   Illustration: Jacob breaking off little branches and peeling them with a penknife until they looked like party sticks, then standing them in the watering troughs.

   “If you can imagine it, you can give birth to it.”

   • Genesis 30:31-43

6. Principle number one: a clear-cut objective or goal

   You cannot incubate something without a desire, and life is not by chance: successful people took hold of principles. The desire must be strong, within the confines of the Word, and it must fill your heart, your mind and your imagination. Be specific with God about what you want, down to the colour, the size and the place, because without a goal your prayers are aimless. Believers do not depend on luck; they are blessed and highly favoured.

   Illustration: He once drove a VW Beetle with a floor so rusted he could see the road. He told the Lord the make and colour of the BMW he wanted, cut a picture out of a magazine and stuck it on his desk, and looked at it every day for a year. He also retells Kenneth Hagin's picture of a man pushing a trolley up and down the aisles who says he is shopping but does not know what for.

   “Be specific with God. Never deal with God in vague terms.”

   • Genesis 1:28
   • Mark 11:24

7. Think in pictures

   He says he struggled for many years to get prayers answered, and that answers now come quickly because he prays with a picture of the thing he desires. God did the same with Abraham, taking him outside to count the stars and saying, "So shall thy seed be." The devil has perverted the imagination, but the imagination itself is good and is meant to be used for big dreams, healing and the things you are believing for. He begins a story from Pastor Yonggi Cho about picturing his son alive before commanding him to rise, and the recording ends there.

   Illustration: A preacher teaching at a prayer convention admitted over tea that his own prayers were not being answered. He told him, "You do not get your prayers answered by works, you get your prayers answered by faith."

   “If you can catch a picture of the thing you desire, God will give it to you.”

   • Genesis 15:5
   • 2 Corinthians 5:7