This is from today's Elijah List so some of you may have already seen it.
Some of you are familiar with the ministry of Mahesh Chavda.
He held a series of meetings at the Springdale Vineyard back in the nineteen nineties
and some of you have been to NC to hear him.
Notice that he refers to a verse in
Matthew 17:21 (found also in
Mark 9:29) that mentions "fasting."
You need the King James or New King James for that.
These verses are either not in the NIV, NASB, NLT, Jerusalem Bible and The Message or, if there, are modified to omit the word "fasting."
Jim Ellis
Mahesh Chavda:
"Moving From Infilling to the Power of the Spirit"
The Secret of Jesus' Power
Jesus upended the lives of His disciples the day He appeared to them shortly after His resurrection as they huddled in fear behind locked doors. He said, "As the Father has sent Me, I also send you" (
John 20:21b). We would like to think that this is a nice Scripture passage to read instead of what it really is—a timeless call to follow Him into the world with the good news.
"As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."
John 20:21b
This is the Lord's word to every disciple who hears His voice. Are you His disciple? Do you want to be His disciple? Then say with me right where you are, "As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus is sending me!" Jesus is our ultimate model in life, in faith, and in ministry. According to Him, you and I are called and anointed to follow in His footsteps as "sent ones" into the world.
How could Jesus do these things and accomplish the astounding miracles we see throughout the four Gospels? The secret of His power is found in
Luke 4:14: "Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region."
Look carefully at the difference between verses 1 and 14 of Luke chapter 4: Before the temptation in the wilderness, the Bible says that Jesus was filled with the Spirit. That is a good thing, but look at verse 14. At the end of the wilderness temptation and 40 days of fasting, Jesus had totally defeated satan and came out of that experience in the power of the Spirit! He was led of the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tested. As He obeyed, under the unction of the Holy Spirit, He became empowered to pull down satanic strongholds. So there is a clear difference between being filled with the Spirit and operating in the power of the Spirit!
Something transformed Jesus from being a "Spirit-filled" man into a man who walked in the "power" of the Spirit. Remember that Christ was fully God and fully man. His example in fasting provides God's insight into dealing with obstacles of both flesh and spirit. We need to make the secret of Jesus' power the secret of our power, because He is, after all, our ultimate model.
Many of us function at the level of being filled with the Spirit, and I firmly believe that the in-filling of the Holy Spirit is wonderful. But it is only the first stage of progression beyond salvation. We need to go on.
Move Beyond the In-filling Into
the Power of the Spirit
Jesus Christ showed us the way and personally modeled it for us. Being filled with the Spirit does not make you ready to move into the fullness of your calling in power. We need to submit to the discipline of the Holy Spirit, and during that time frame God will disciple us in the crucial works of prayer, fasting, and the skillful use of His Word as a weapon. Then we will go forth in the power of the Spirit to do God's will.
We have majored on the Word of God for centuries and have learned some things along the way. We are just beginning to step into obedience regarding the discipline of prayer today, but fasting remains a rarely practiced mystery to the modern Church. It is here that we find the principal key to going beyond the in-filling of the Spirit to tap the power of the Spirit.
Jesus fully completed the process in only 40 days, but it would probably take you and me much longer. The important point here is to begin. The disciples were with Jesus for three years, during which time they were discipled under the anointing of Jesus Christ. Yet it was only after the wilderness of the crucifixion and the time of fasting and prayer in the upper room that they pressed through and received both the in-filling of the Holy Spirit and the dunamis or "power" of the Spirit to boldly proclaim the Gospel in the face of opposition.
I want you to see that fasting helps release the power of the Spirit in our lives. It doesn't necessarily help you "earn" more grace from God, but it facilitates the freer flow of the Holy Spirit through you by dissolving and removing all the junk in your life. This can only be accomplished through times of fasting and prayer.
If you give yourself to the Lord in a life that's committed to prayer and to fasting, His anointing will begin to flow through you in greater and greater power. These things are the "first works" we are called to do if we want to do the works of Jesus Christ. The initial or first work of Jesus before He went into His ministry in the power of the Spirit was to fast and wage spiritual warfare in prayer and the Word.
I don't believe in accidents in the Kingdom. It is no accident that you are reading these words. I believe that you were led to this point by the Holy Spirit because you are one of the people He has chosen to serve in His end-time army—you are called and anointed to do the works of Jesus Christ, and even greater works!
You don't have to go on dramatically long fasts to get the benefits of fasting and spiritual warfare. The critical element is not the length of the fast, but that you yield to His leading. I've noticed that God always raises up certain men and women to personally live out certain truths to extreme depths so they can speak and teach them to others with proven authority. That is what happened to me. God released me to teach authoritatively about prayer and fasting, but only after I had quietly conducted many lengthy fasts over a period of two decades at a certain cost to myself and my family.
God is not interested in teaching "theory," but in imparting spiritual truths backed up by solid personal experience and application of His Word. God gives us such people as examples to encourage us to press into Him in certain areas of importance to His plans and purposes for our lives. He wants you to measure up to His purpose for your life.
The difference between the anointing of the Spirit and the power of the Spirit is dramatically illustrated in the incident described in chapter 17 of the Gospel of Matthew following Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain:
"And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, 'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.'
"Then Jesus answered and said, 'O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.' And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
"Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, 'Why could we not cast it out?' So Jesus said to them, 'Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."
Matthew 17:14-21
to be continued in part 2
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