The Power of the Force

Chapter 11

What is power? Who has it? How can I get more of it? Our hope and prayer is that we will all be able to gain an authority in our life that will free us from the ghosts of our past and give us a clear vision of the world of powers and dominions that are operating in us and around us. The fact that they are operating even now in our world is something that most people have never been able to bring themselves to believe. The present church system has mostly preached of two powers, God and the devil. If you were under bondage to something, it was either God’s power or the devil’s power.

We learned last week that there are two main Greek words used for the word "power" in the King James version of the bible. They are, "dunamis" and "exousia". Dunamis means "miraculous force; might; ability" and exousia means "authority; privilege to act on someone’s behalf. Simply put, dunamis is the ability to do something, and exousia is the right to do something. What is so important for us to grasp is that ability does not always win out in the realm of powers and dominions. The privilege, the freedom, the authority, and the delegated influence to do something always wins out over dunamis.

An important question for us then is, what rights or authority do we have in God, which was purchased for us through the Lord Jesus Christ? Let me warn you, some of these rights may surprise and shock you. They are not just the rights that allow you to live, but you also have the right to die. In deed, you have a commandment to die. But the commandment is not enough. Given a commandment we will keep dodging death through an instinct to live.

Jesus said in John 10:17-18,

“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life— only to take it up again. ¹⁸No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

The Greek word for power in this verse is the word, "exousia". Life is not taken from us, it is offered by us. God has not only commanded this of us, but He has given us the right, privilege, authority, competency, and freedom to do this.

We take comfort in preachers who tell us, "God is wanting to bless you and give you your hearts desire". What they didn’t tell you is that before He does that, He is going to kill you. God must kill us. We have an appointment to die and every one of us must experience this.

His sword of truth is poised over our heart and He wants to bring to an end our limited, suffering life, so that we can have true life, His life. Do you see the complexity involved here? We want to live. God wants us to live, however, the life that we identify with, this life in the flesh, is in the eyes of God a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. To God, we are already dead. So, in order for us to live, we must die to our dead life.

Let us look at this closer. We are born dead. We were alive in God before we took on flesh. When we did take on flesh through our conception and birth, we were actually buried in sinful flesh. Our birth, that we call life, was in actuality, a burial into death. We existed in a death-life. Later, when Christ Jesus awakened in us a consciousness of His salvation and we entered into a relationship with Him, we became part dead, and part alive. By this I mean that before our re-acquaintance with God, we walked solely under the influence of our deadness. When we confessed Him by faith to be our Savior and King we started walking under the influence of His liveliness, being mixed, however, with our deadness. In this complex state of being that we find ourselves in, coming alive does not mean we are no longer dead.

This is the most dangerous stage of our passing from death unto life, and is found in the segment of society that calls themselves "religious". The majority of Christianity today exists in this half-dead, half-alive state. They are the living-dead. Sounds like a horror movie doesn’t it? It is. The living-dead are the most dangerous people on this planet. They have a mixture of life and death, having come alive but still living primarily under the dunamis of their dead nature. The living-dead are those that crucified the Lord Jesus. The dead (un-regenerated sinners) didn’t bother Jesus. He ate with them, healed them, and was at ease with them. He did, however, spend most of His ministry being persecuted by the living-dead (the Pharisees and Sadducees).

What the church calls "saved" and "born again" is put forth as meaning the same thing, that is, by our confession of faith that we are both saved and born again. This is not true. Neither term is an accomplished term. We are both being saved and being born again, or, as the Greek says, being born from those things above.

The lack of understanding of this complex situation is why the church is living powerless! Power is enriched by knowledge and understanding. This is why the verse that I listed above is so important. Why didn’t Jesus just have power (exousia) to take His life back again? Why did He need the authority to lay it down? Because that is where the real effort is needed. One doesn’t take place completely without the other. Something must be laid down before it can be taken up again.

For every door that is opened to us, there must be the shutting of a door behind us. Otherwise, we just have a bunch of doors opened but no entrance made for us. We need an entrance into this great day of God! Revelation just opens a door, but the walking out of that revelation means that we close out the old and walk into the new. So many are coming into this "new and living way" but are failing to close out the former glory. As a result, we have a lot of mixture in this word and it will get worse as we go along. Me must become EMPOWERED, clothed upon by a clothing of authority. We cannot become empowered without a process of becoming naked first. A stripping of old grave clothes precedes the clothing of priesthood garments.

It is not enough to deny death, denounce death, rail against death and so on. We must DIE to death. That is what brings it under our feet, the posture of having true exousia over something. Certain things dictate by their language the order of the events involved. You can’t have resurrection without having a burial, you can’t have life without having a death, and you can’t start something unless you finish something. If we leave one part of this equation out, the result is an awful mutation of mixed life. That kind of life spawns like kinds of life. Mixture begets mixture.

I want to restate this thought. We must die to death. We must quit thinking as dead people think. Quit thinking dead, quit acting dead, quit living dead. You are alive in God! He has become your life. Any other kind of life is death. There is only one true life, and that is in the Father. We are being empowered with His life, and we are taking authority over our death process. Get your minds off what you see with your eyes. Your body is not the battle ground, your inner being is where the battle lies. We will lose this mortal body one way or another. It must be swallowed up, either through the grave or through a death to death while on this side of the river. Jesus saved us through His death, not just His life.

Heb 2:14-15 says,

"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—¹⁵and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

The Greek word for power in this verse is "Kratos". Strong lists the definition for this word as "vigor". The American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition of the word "vigor". Physical or mental strength; energy or force. Strong feeling; Enthusiasm or intensity. Legal effectiveness or validity. From the Latin word, vigere, meaning "to be lively". Synonyms: Vigor; Dash; Punch; Verve; Vim; Vitality. The central meaning shared by these nouns is "a quality of spirited force or energy". The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus delivered those who are subject to bondage all of their lifetime because of a fear of death by going "through" death and as a result He destroyed the one that has the "vigor" or legal effectiveness and validity of death. Power in life means we have power over death. We have power (exousia)(authority) to lay our life down, we have power (exousia) to take it back again.

This certainly is not a normal Christian walk, but if you want to be in the company of sons that will walk this earth in the image and likeness of their Father, then you will begin to understand how much we have wearied ourselves fighting against the wrong things. We better be careful that we don’t find ourselves fighting against God and not the devil. We all want life, but are we ready to get rid of death

There is a cry going through out the body of Christ among those who are coming into the Feast of Tabernacles. There is a unifying cry sounding forth from the Body of the Lord saying, “Change us!!” At any cost, in any way, give us life today! Nothing else matters. All is lost without His life. We are sick to our stomachs at a false, religious, masquerade that the church is displaying to the world. We want power, exousia, the freedom and the right to pursue God and to be led by Him into the narrow, hard to find, path of life.

It’s time to shake yourself free and quit the game that most of the Church is playing and grab the take hold of the prize of the high calling of God. We may look like something the cat drug in right now, but our aim and purpose is to die to death and live unto life. Before we gain His life, we must lose our death-life. If we lose it, we gain it, but if we try to save it we lose not only that death-life we have now, but we delay our gaining of the life to come.

My prayer for us today is that the Lord will give us the true authority and power through the invested power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Darkness of night take notice, forces of evil take heed. There is a new thing happening in the hearts of this people. We will walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness, and we will fear no evil. He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world. No weapon formed against us shall prosper. The gates of hell will not prevail against us. All things are in our hands! Within us reigns a King that will not be denied, and we are His hands and His feet in this earth. It’s time to Rise up O Mighty Men of Valor rise up and take the land!