SID: Here’s another secret. It’s so simple and it’s so important. Remember the word “instant” I talked about in forgiveness? Here’s another instant. Live in instant repentance. Do you know why? The devil is like a door-to-door salesman. What he does is he puts his foot in the door and then you can’t close the door, so you don’t want to even open the door. The minute that you have a thought that is not good and pure, and holy, and of good report, you know the source, and close the door. Don’t you let that devil get a foothold because he doesn’t play fair. As some people say, well once you repent you never have to repent again, well this was written to believers. Let me read this to you. 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Is that good? But if we don’t confess our sins he’s faithful and righteous to not cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Who wants to see God without righteousness? Not me. Okay. I think I made my point. And by the way, I have found the power of proclaiming God’s word out loud. When I was a young believer all of a sudden, I had like a spirit, I’m going to be real with you, I had like a spirit of lust and I’m thinking, I’m a believer, I shouldn’t have this, where is this coming from? Oh, I know where it’s coming from. Not from me. It’s a demonic spirit. So I found a scripture about it, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” And I found that every time I have that spirit whisper in my ears, I would say, “Blessed” out loud, “Blessed are the pure in spirit.” And you know what? What does it say in the Bible? Resist the devil and he will flee. And in the Greek, he will flee as in terror. So like taking the sword, the Word of God, say it: Here, take this devil, take this devil. You got it? Okay. And that works for everything. You got to find a promise, learn it and say it out loud. Now, and speaking of demons, did you know that not all sickness is sickness? A third of Jesus’ ministry was casting demons out of people. Do you realize what our young people are exposing themselves to today? We’re going to have a great move of God’s spirit, and one of the major jobs of the church will be setting these young people free from the demonic whose doors they’ve opened. So you have to recognize whether if you’re praying for a healing or you’re praying for a deliverance. The third most important thing that I wrote down, I love this, it’s practicing the presence of God. You see, there was a fellow by the name of Brother Lawrence and he wrote a book on this subject, and he was a lowly monk. You know what his job was? Washing dishes. But he was so happy. He wasn’t on grumble street. He was so happy because he practiced the presence of God. The presence of God was in washing those dishes. I can do this. You can do this. Psalm 16:8 in the Amplified, “I have set the Lord continually before me.” No, it wasn’t the Lord is continually before me. I have set the Lord. I am conscious that the Lord, I am aware that the Lord, I have willfully said, Lord, you are before me continually. “Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” And when you’re in this presence of God, there is healing. Let me explain this to you. Isaiah 53:5, in the Hebrew, I’m sorry, in the English, it’s translated from the Hebrew in most Bibles, “By his stripes we are healed.” You’ve heard that. Another word for “stripes,” if you look this up in the Hebrew, it’s “By his fellowship I am healed.” You see how important the presence of God is. Now the Holy Spirit and the spoken Word of God work together. Let me show you the first mention of that. It’s found in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1. That’s a pretty good first mention. “In the beginning was God.” And then the second verse, “And the Spirit of God hovered over the water.” And then the third verse, “God spoke.” So where you miss it is you have to be in the Spirit before you speak the Word of God. Are you with me? This is such an important principle that you have to understand. I heard someone say this once, they said, “If you just have the Word of God, you’ll dry up. It you just have the Spirit of God, you’ll blow up. But if you have the Word of God and the Spirit of God you’ll grow up.” It’s time to grow up.
