God is in Control 3
(week 20, 2007)
Olubi Johnson
In our article last week we saw that God is in control in the affairs of men, because He loves us and wants His plans and purposes for us not to be aborted by Satan, who is trying to get us to destroy ourselves through the sin nature in us and our natural weaknesses and limitations.
This week we will see how God stays in control in the affairs of men.
God stays in control in the affairs of men by exercising His sovereignty, through the interceding end-time church that is praying in the spirit with all kinds of prayer.
Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV): Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us
Ephesians 6:18 NKJV: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
1 Timothy 2:1 (NKJV): Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men
When God does what we ask or think He does so in response to our faith: this is what we live by daily:
Habakkuk. 2:4 (NKJV): “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.
However, when God does more than what we ask or think, then He does it sovereignly by the collective, corporate power generated and released into the earth by the church that is praying with all types of prayer in the spirit: the collective power that is working in us (plural not singular).
In fact, whenever a collective body of saints are praying in the spirit, in love (1Corintians. 13.1) the power they generate and release is 10x10x10x10x(up to the total no. that are present praying together) x the power each saint is generating and releasing on the average. For example if 100 saints are praying together then they are generating and releasing power of the order of magnitude of 10100 x what each saint is releasing on the average: this is an astronomically large amount of power and is the pool of power from which God exercises His sovereignty: fulfilling the scripture that says God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above what we ask or think according to the power at work in us (Ephesians. 3.20). This is so because the scripture says:
Deuteronomy 32:30 (NKJV): How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight…
Remember that when we pray in the spirit the utterance comes from God not us: so it is God who is in control and so He reserves a certain amount of our prayers in the spirit for His sovereignty, while using some of it to answer our own prayer requests in response to our faith.
In the Old Testament before Jesus came, died and rose again giving birth to the New Testament church, all the power God used sovereignly created, as it were, a ‘prayer debt’.
This is just like all the sins that God forgave sovereignly in the Old Testament created a ‘sin debt’. This ‘sin debt’ was paid for by the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus on the cross and in hell:
Hebrews 9:15 (NIV): For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance-now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Now the ‘prayer debt’ is to be paid by the end-time New Testament church, by dying to self, so consistently engage in praying in the spirit with fasting.
So Jesus pays for the sins of world by dying for us and we pay for the life of world by dying to self.
So God stays in control by sovereignly intervening in human affairs at the personal, church and national levels, not all the time, but at critical points in time to ultimately cause His kingdom or dominion to come and His will to be done in the earth as it is in heaven!
