The House
Of The Lord
Messenger
Revs. Bob & Charlotte Torango
202 Old
(615)
446-9955
April & May, 1996 Vol.
N, Article 23
Empowerment
(Part 2)
Eph
6:10-18
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the
Lord, and in the power of his might.
11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye
may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
13 Wherefore take unto you the whole
armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having
done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt
about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation
of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith,
wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18 Praying always with all prayer and
supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and
supplication for all saints;
(KJV)
In
this, the second part of our study on “Empowerment”, we want to try to shine a
light on some of the shadowy areas of our concepts of power. 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.
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. As we studied last month, 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, i.e. (subjectively) force, capacity,
competency, freedom, or (objectively) mastery (concretely, magistrate,
superhuman, potentate, token of control), delegated influence”. Simply put,
dunamis is the ability to do something, 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,
the delegated influence to do something always wins out over dunamis.
The question for us to ponder then, is what rights do
we have in God 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. I have related this story
a number of times while preaching. God showed me in a vision how I was
thwarting His process of death in me and making it a painful and laboring
ordeal. I saw the sword of God positioning itself over my heart and I heard God
quote this verse to me.
John
10:17-18
17 Therefore doth my Father love me,
because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it
down of myself. I have power (exousia) to lay it down, and I have power
(exousia) to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
(KJV)
Notice that 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, freedom to do this. When God spoke this verse
to me in the vision, I steeled myself for the sword to pierce my heart and end
my life. However, a terrible thing was happening to me! Every time the sword
would start it’s thrust, I would anticipate it and jerk to the side away from
it, causing it to wound me instead of killing me. This happened over and over
again.
I will now humble myself to you, my dear readers, and
confess that I am a true coward when it comes to pain. A trip to the dentist
turns me into a sniveling baby. The very thought of a needle being jabbed into
my mouth, or a drill whirring away at my poor teeth makes me queasy and light
headed. Recently, while getting my teeth worked on, my body did things in that
dentists chair that was entirely humiliating, and involuntary on my part. I
squirmed all over that chair like a worm on a hot skillet. It got so bad, the
dentist had his wife come into the room and hold my hand. She ended up holding
me by my shoulders just to keep me off the floor. The dear dentist, noticing my
discomfort, asked me to just signal him when I was in pain. This resulted in a
pitiful display of desperate actions by me to stop the pain as soon as
possible. A typical signal when I started feeling the slightest pain was both
feet flying straight up in the air accompanied with a wild flailing of my arms
followed by a high, almost girlish squeal coming from my throat that had a
sickening pleading tone to it. It shames me, but I take comfort in the
knowledge that many of you are even now rubbing your mouth while reading this
and getting sweaty hands over the thought of your next visit to the dentist.
We all flinch in some area of our
life. This comes from believing those preachers who tell you, “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, just like our next dentists appointment. His sword of truth
is poised over our heart and He is wanting to bring to an end our limited,
suffering life, so that we can have true life, His life. Glory to God! 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 throught 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. Whew!
I told you this was going to be complicated. 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 ar3e
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. This lack of understanding of this complex situation is why the church
is living powerless! Power is enriched by knowledge and understanding. This is
why that 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! Oh
hear me sweet ones, 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
latching onto 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 nust 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, 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 battleground, 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 death, not just His life.
Heb
2:14-15
14 Forasmuch then as the children are
partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same;
that through death he might destroy him that had the power (kratos) of death,
that is, the devil;
15 And deliver them who through fear of
death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
(KJV)
Notice that the Greek word for power
in this verse is “Kratos”. Strong’s lists the definition for this word as
“vigor”. The American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition of the word
“vigor”.
1. Physical or
mental strength; energy or force.
2. Strong
feeling; Enthusiasm or intensity.
3. 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”.
As you can read, Jesus delivers them who are subject
to bondage all of their lifetime because of a fear of
death by going “through” death and as a result He
destroys 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) 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. Let us take care, lest we find ourselves fighting against God and not
the devil. We all want life, but are we ready to get rid of death? Help us O
God!
I
received much mail over the last few articles and I enjoy reading the many
letters that are so graciously sent to us. One letter of note that I received
this month was from Fran Heitz who resides in
HIDDEN
Somewhere in us, beneath the dust,
A hidden sceptre lies,
And all the power of its strength
Must yet in God arise.
Let heavens shake and earth be still,
Though night full-cycle runs,
The Daystar comes, and all fulfills
In those forenamed as sons.
Awake, O Strength! Behold, He lives
Whose rulership anoints;
And when He speaks, authority
Shines forth like lightning-points,
And shadows shrink away in shame,
And healing bathes all things,
And deep in us, hid now in dust,
His sceptre makes us kings.
I
truly sense a new heart beat in God’s people. We are no longer threatening God
and telling Him to bless us, or else. There is a unifying cry sounding forth
from the Body of the Lord. 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. Shake yourself, free
yourself, quit the game and grab the prize of the high calling. 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 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.
I pray that the Lord will give you true
exousia, 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. 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 the earth. Rise up O Mighty Men of
Valor and take the land! (To Be
Continued)
By Bob Torango