Volume 2007/6
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"He will throughly purge his
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner”
Mat.3:12
(From a sermon of Bro. Julius Adewumi at GMI Church, Phoenix Arizona,
Sunday Morning, June 10,2007)
…continuation
from part 2……
From
the story in 2 Chronicles 20, let’s see the actions of king Jehoshaphat with
all of
In verse 12 he says, “O our
God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company
that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”
That was the final part of his prayer. And
they have taken the first step to pray unto God. Now verse 14, the Holy Ghost
spoke through one of the Levites, Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, and he spoke
and said in verse 15, “Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of
Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat, thus saith the Lord unto you, Be not
afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not
yours, but God’s.” Amen.
What I want to point out to you is this in
the next verse: God is always going to require an action. What did God tell
them? He said the battle is not yours but you have to go out and face the
enemy. Praise the Lord. He said, Tomorrow, go ye down against them. So you
can’t think, Gee, I can’t go against them. They are 40 million soldiers and we
are just three thousand. God is saying, Yes, don’t be afraid, but go ye out
against them. There must be action on your part. Jehoshaphat still had to take
the steps of going out against them, but God told him what to do: You are not
going to fight, just stand still, but you are going to have to go out against
them.
Verse 17, “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand still,
and see the salvation of the Lord”. So they rejoiced and praised the Lord,
and the second day, (remember, sometimes people forget their faith overnight,
but not these people) they rose. Verse 22, “early in the morning, and went
forth into the wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood
and said…” Now what he is going to say here is an action of faith.
Every step of the way, sometimes your action may be just saying or declaring
something. If you don’t declare or express something when the Holy Ghost puts
it in your heart to express it, then maybe you don’t really believe. Expressing your faith when the Holy Ghost wants you to
express it may be the action that He wants to see in that last minute. This is
the second day, they’re going out, they’ve called all these people, and they
can still be afraid. But he is the captain and leader and he said, “Hear
me, O
Let me give another testimony. A long
time ago we were in our old house, and when we decided to move to the north
side, we decided to sell the house on Shea blvd. But it was around summer, and
the grass in front of the house was dried up. So when we decided we were going
to sell the house, I needed to make the grass green so that at least it would
look good before we put ‘For sale by Owner in front’. So we started watering
the grass. All of July, the grass seemed to be dead. Every night we watered it, hoping it would
turn green, and one night I just got frustrated and said, “Lord, what I need is
not sprinkling—we’re wasting water. I need rain, Lord. Three days in a row.”
And after the prayer, the Lord said, “Decree something.” So I just decreed in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that I wanted rain three days in a row, three
inches of rain, starting from the next morning. I prayed and decreed it that night in my
backyard. Now, that is not the action of faith, that is just praying (anybody
can pray). But I came inside the house and the Holy Ghost put it in my heart to
tell my wife that no more watering of the grass. So I told my wife, “You don’t
need to sprinkle water on the grass anymore. There is going to be rain
tomorrow.” I just said it, expressing
what I prayed. I remember she said there
is no rain in the forecast for days. But I said “I have prayed for rain and
there shall be rain by the morning light.” I just spoke it expressing faith. I
just spoke it because that is what the Holy Ghost put in my heart. We went to
bed and we were awaken by a heavy rain that morning, and it rained three days
in a row. So where is the action of faith there? The action of faith is in expressing
to my wife on that day that there shall be rain by the morning light. You may
think, Gee, don’t say it to your wife until it happened. Then you just doubted.
Because that could be what God wanted to see. The voice of reason will tell you
to not say it until it happened tomorrow. Then after it happened, say, “I
prayed for rain yesterday.” But God wanted you to say it before it happened.
Now the action may look foolish—“say it right now” and God is looking to see if
you will say it before it happens. Faith with action is believing. When we act
on what we say we believe, that is when God moves for us.
Let’s talk about the story of Gideon in the
bible. All these men of faith, with every one of them, there are little, little
steps. This man’s actions may be different from that man’s action, may be different
from my own action of faith. But with every situation that you’re believing God
for something, there may be a particular step you need to take. That step may be words, may be deeds, but
there will be some steps to take. God is looking for that step. When you take
the step, God will act.
In the story of Gideon, Judges chapter 7,
you may say this man is a different case because he actually doubted and
doubted and God kept helping him. But after the last doubt where God said, If
you are still afraid, go and listen to what the enemy is saying. He went and listened to them and they were
telling dreams. The dream confirmed that
God had given this battle to Gideon—he was going to win. He heard his name
being mentioned in the enemy’s camp. That
gave him confidence. He has to now act. He could say, Praise God, we believe we
are going to win, but he still has to go to battle. Praise the Lord. After he
has heard this in verse 16 of Judges 7, what did Gideon do? Now, “he
divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in
every man’s hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers. And he
said unto them, ‘Look on me, and do likewise: and, behold, when I come to the
outside of the camp, it shall be that, as I do so shall ye do.” Now
they have to act. So faith with the action, that is when you say I believe. Now
he said I believe, I am strong now, then go act. God still wants to see that
action. If he doesn’t take the step and go after them these people won’t run.
But after he took the steps, he saw the success. The enemy started running. We
can go on and on.
I won’t do much justice if I don’t give
you this other testimony. Many of you could have read it in some of my
magazines. One that I’ve written was the time when we were having our first
baby. My wife was in labor for many hours, and then almost the second day, the
doctors said, “this is getting too long, we need to go into operation right
now.” They said this has to be C-section for the health of the baby. I remember
on that night that I knelt down and prayed and prayed. We had been praying for
nine months, and all through to the delivery time, and the doctor said the uterus was still not dilated, she had to
go through operation right now. God was
waiting ‘till the last minute, that’s what I want to point out. The faith that
is not proven to God is still not proven. So we need to be proved and tested.
That is one of the reasons why God waits until the last minute. Around 4am, the
doctor said we had to go through C-section and told the nurses to go and prepare
the operation table. I remember something made me say, “Doctor, can you give us
30 more minutes?” And the doctor said, “Go ahead. It takes more than 30 minutes
to prepare.” So after he said that, I knelt down and prayed, “Lord, this is the
last chance. You have 30 more minutes to perform wonders for us. We don’t want
to go through C-section.” We had been praying for months that we want
everything smooth and normal. When the Lord was going to answer, I was kneeling
down by the chair and talking to the Lord in prayer, and I felt the hand of the
Lord patting me on the back that it was going to be alright. I had felt that
before—somebody patting me on the back. And He put something in my heart that
when the doctors come back, I should tell them to check it one more time. Well,
that takes boldness, especially when the doctors, the specialists know what
they are doing. So I was waiting for them to come back because the man said
they should go set up the operation table and he went out. He called another
doctor so that they could be a team for the operation. Then the nurse came with
this disclaimer paper that they were not liable in case of problem. I read the
paper and did not sign it. The nurse came to collect the paper and I said, “I
can’t sign it right now. I would like the doctor to come back first.” I did not
want to sign something that I was believing God it was not going to happen. And
somehow, maybe the devil put it in the mouth of this nurse to say “nothing will
take this baby out except surgery.” Almost like what happened to Elisha the
prophet. I didn’t think about it, the words just came out of my mouth, “that’s
what you think, but God is bigger than you.” It just came out of my mouth, not that
I was in anger. So she left and we waited, then the doctors came and explained
to us that this was the right thing to do. I waited for the new doctor to
finish, then I said, “Please, doctor, can you check it one more time?” Kind of
sarcastically he laughed and said, “Alright.” I was expecting to hear a
different news. Then he said, “wait a minute here, it’s different.” Praise the
Lord. So what is the action of faith? It takes some boldness to say check it
one more time when he’s telling you the diagnosis. It’s almost like when the
doctor sees something on the x-ray and says they have to cut it out and you
say, can you take another x-ray? So when God tells you to say it, you better
say it. That is the action of faith when you speak, express, ask or do some thing
that God puts in your heart, don’t shy away from it. When we don’t shy away
from it, then the Lord will do what He wanted to do. Because the Lord sometimes
is waiting for that last step. And when we do that, the miracles happen. Faith with action is believing! We are all men of faith. All of us are men
of faith and women of faith, but God is the one that is going to do these
things and He wants to see that this our faith acts. Faith without works is
dead.
We need to remember all of those little, little
steps and take the action of faith so the Lord can be glorified. When we do our part and do it to the end, I
believe God will do His part. God
bless you.
Bro. Julius Adewumi
When does
miracle happen?
.
Let's look at some
examples of miracles and really differentiate the acts. When God performs
miracles, I want to point out that some of the miracles are done by God himself
without the faith of the minister involved at all. It will be God himself
initiating the miracle. I will list three examples of miracles which happened
in my ministry and I will try to differentiate between them. The first One: God
initiated it, and did the miracle himself. The Second: I was invited by men to
come help them and I simply took authority upon the situation as a servant of
the Almighty God. The Third One: I was involved in the situation and had to
wrestle with the enemy for long before the victory was won.
I was coming
from
"O, that men
will praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the
children of men". (Psa. 107:15 ).
What I'm pointing
out here is that the above miracle was God-initiated -- being led of the
Spirit.
The next testimony
is a little different.
I went to a
village to preach one evening. As I was preaching Jesus and his power to save,
to heal and to deliver, a crowd gathered. While talking to the crowd, one man
tapped me on the shoulder and invited me to "please come and help us after
you are done preaching." I said okay. At the end of the preaching, while I
was still answering someone's question, the man called me up and said
"please hurry!" So I followed the man to a house where he took me to
a room. Now this case is what we will call "authority of the believer in
Christ." I came into the town, the people had problem in trying to cure a
man. They saw a preacher came to town who was boasting about Jesus can heal and
deliver, they had some faith in what the preacher was saying, so they said to
themselves "let's call this man to help us." Inside the room, a man was laid down on a
mat with one of his thighs swollen, almost twice as large as the other thigh.
As I began to pray for the man that the swollen thigh should subside, a voice
came to me from the opposite room where some folks were gathered. It was a
female voice, and she opposed the prayer by saying "No, that thigh has got
to be cut!" I heard the voice in the spirit, just as clear as if it was
audible to everyone. I repeated my prayer and command that "I AM SAYING,
IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, THIS THIGH MUST SUBSIDE AND BE
HEALED!" Physically now, a woman from the opposite room jumped out and
yelled "AMEN!" The Lord must have smitten her in the spirit for
resisting my authority. So I left the house. The man was healed and delivered.
I believe the woman was behind the evil which was happening to the man, as I
was shown in a vision later. God might have led me to that village, but it was
indirect leading since the men called me to come and help them. If they had not
called, I would have preached and gone out of the village not aware of a sick
man in a room. The faith of those men helped their friend.
The third miracle, is when we are
personally involved, like when we are praying for ourselves or for our family
members, or for someone close to us. This demands our own faith, because we are
wrestling with the devil. If the devil does not give up, we need help from the
Lord. In this testimony, I visited a Christian family in their house. The
son of this family, who was then about 2 year-old, was sick. (The boy is by now
grown up and gone to college). The father told me they were just coming from
the doctor's office when I arrived. I was entertained with food on the dinner
table, while the father was carrying the child in his arms. While I was eating,
the brother called on me "Bro Julius come quick!" He was arresting
the child's mouth who was convulsing, about to give up the ghost. We held the
boy, praying, rebuking the devil. Myself, the father and the mother of the
child were the only adults in the house. We were praying and speaking in
tongues, while the father held the boy's mouth. We held on, just praying over
the boy. It looked like he was going to give up but we hung in there calling
upon the Lord.
I could remember
I cried up "J e s u s !" That was a tug of war between saints and the
devil. It now depends upon "will you give up easily?" In this
testimony, while we were praying, the mother of the child, the lady of the
house, was also there praying along. But after we prayed for a while and the
child has not recovered yet, the woman started crying. Now that was
"giving up!" She bursted into tears and we had to say "Sister,
stop it!" i.e Don't give up yet. When I looked up and cried "J-EEE-S-UU-S!",
I felt the hand of the Lord upon my shoulder, and the child recovered. Now that is the type of faith we are commanded to
have in the bible. The faith that knocks and keep on knocking.
Yea, the Lord will hear thee in the day
of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob
defend thee. Send thee help from his
sanctuary and strengthen thee out of
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I want to thank those that send offering to this
ministry. That is one sure way we can send our money ahead of us to
heaven. The Lord said: "Lay not up
for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Mat. 6: 19-21). "For we brought nothing into this world
and it is certain we can carry nothing out." (1Tim. 6: 7).