Transcription
There is a power that once flowed through ordinary men and women. A power that healed the sick, broke the chains of the addicted, turned entire cities to God in a single day, and made the kingdom of darkness tremble at the approach of a single believer.
It was not reserved for apostles. It was not limited to a golden age that has passed. It was the normal inheritance of the early church. And, according to the word of God, it is still available to every soul who will pay the price to lay hold of it.
And yet, most Christians today live their entire lives having never tasted a single drop of it. They have knowledge without power. They have doctrine without demonstration. They have a form of godliness while denying the very thing that makes godliness alive. They can explain the Holy Spirit theologically, but they have never been filled with him experientially. They can quote the book of Acts, but they have never lived a single page of it.
Why? What happened? Why does the same spirit who fell at Pentecost seem so absent from the modern church? Why do we have more resources, more buildings, more education, more technology than any generation of Christians in history, and less power than the humblest believer of the first century?
Tonight, Leonard Ravenhill, the prophet who spent his life pleading for the return of God's power to a powerless church, is going to reveal the secret that the modern believer has lost. And by the end of this hour, you will understand not only why the power is missing, but exactly what must happen in your own life for it to return.
This is not a sermon of condemnation. This is a sermon of hope. Because the same God who poured out his spirit on a praying church 2,000 years ago is ready to pour out his spirit again on any soul, in any city, in any generation that will meet his conditions and pay his price.
Before we begin, do two things for me. First, tell me in the comments below what city you are watching from tonight. From Seattle to Singapore, from Nairobi to Nashville, from a small village to a sprawling metropolis, God is searching for vessels he can fill in every corner of the earth. Tell me where you are. I want to pray that the power of God would fall on the place where you stand.
Second, share this video with one believer who is hungry for more. Someone you know who is tired of powerless Christianity and longs for the real thing.
And before the prophet speaks, one final word for the soldier ready to pursue the power of God. If what you hear tonight awakens a holy hunger that nothing in this world can satisfy, there is a path waiting for you: The War Room Manual, 30 Days of Spiritual Strategy. This is not a devotional. This is not light reading. This is a tactical bootcamp drawn from the uncompromising fire of Ravenhill himself, alongside Tozer and Bounds.
30 days, three missions:
Days 1 through 10: Purification and repentance, the killing of the ego.
Days 11 through 20: Worship and mystery, the Holy of Holies.
Days 21 through 30: Intercession and authority, the War Room itself.
Every day ends with a tactical mission because this manual is not meant to be read. It is meant to be done. The link is in the description below. The War Room is open. Report for duty.
Now, listen.
>> I want to talk to you tonight about the most desperately needed and most tragically neglected reality in the entire Christian life. I want to talk to you about the power of God. Not power as the world understands it; not the power of money or position or influence or charisma, but the power of God: the divine energy of the Holy Ghost descending upon a human vessel, transforming an an through whom the living God accomplishes things that no human ability could ever produce.
This is the power that the Lord Jesus promised his disciples before he ascended into heaven. Hear his words in the first chapter of the book of Acts, verse 8: "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
"Ye shall receive power." Mark the word: Power. The Greek word is *dunamis*, the word from which we derive our word "dynamite." It is explosive power. It is world-altering power.
It is the power that took a frightened band of fishermen hiding behind locked doors and turned them into men who shook the Roman Empire to its foundations. It is the power that turned Peter, who had denied his Lord three times before a servant girl, into the man who preached one sermon and saw 3,000 souls converted in a single day.
What made the difference in Peter? It was not education; he remained an unlearned and ignorant man, as the rulers themselves observed. It was not natural ability; he was the same impulsive, fearful man he had always been. It was not a new strategy or a better method. The difference was power. The Holy Ghost had come upon him. The *dunamis* of heaven had filled the vessel. And the same man who had cowered before a servant girl now stood before the rulers of Israel and declared the gospel with such boldness that they marveled.
This is the inheritance of the church, beloved. This is what the Lord Jesus purchased and the Holy Ghost delivers: not a powerless religion of forms and rituals, but a living demonstration of the power of God through ordinary human vessels.
And yet, look at the church today. Where is the power? Where is the *dunamis*? Where are the men and women through whom the living God is shaking cities and transforming lives and demonstrating that he is alive?
I will tell you what I see. I see a church that has substituted education for unction, programs for power, technique for the Holy Ghost. I see preachers who have studied homiletics, but have never been baptized in fire. I see congregations who can analyze the scripture, but have never been gripped by the author of the scripture. I see a vast religious machinery running on human energy, producing human results, and wondering why the world is not impressed.
The world is not impressed because there is nothing to be impressed by. A powerless church produces a yawning world. The early church did not have to beg people to come. The power of God was so evident that, as the book of Acts records in the fifth chapter, the people held the believers in such awe that no one dared to join them lightly. And yet, multitudes were added daily because the presence and power of God among them was undeniable.
When was the last time the world looked at the church and was filled with awe? When was the last time an unbeliever walked into a gathering of God's people and fell on his face, declaring that God was truly among them, as the Apostle Paul described in the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians? It does not happen because the power is not there. And the power is not there because we have lost the secret of how to receive it.
So, what is the secret, beloved? What is the secret to walking in the power of God? I will give it to you tonight, plainly and without compromise. But I warn you, it is not a secret of technique. It is not a formula you can apply in five easy steps. It is a secret of the heart, and it will cost you everything you have.
The first part of the secret is this: The power of God flows only through the clean vessel. Hear the words of the Apostle Paul in the second Epistle to Timothy, the second chapter, verse 21: "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work."
"Purge himself." The vessel that God uses is the vessel that has been cleansed. The Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit, and he will not fill an unholy vessel. He will not flow through channels clogged with sin. He will not pour his power into a heart that is divided between God and the world. The first condition of power is purity.
This is where the modern believer stumbles. We want the power without the purity. We want the *dunamis* without the death to self. We want to be filled with the Spirit while still cherishing our secret sins, our worldly attachments, our unsurrendered ambitions. And it cannot be. It has never been. It will never be. The Spirit of God flows through clean channels, and the man who wants the power of God must first submit to the purifying work of God.
How many in our day have truly allowed God to purge them? How many have brought every secret sin into the light and forsaken it? How many have torn down the idols of the heart and cast them away? How many have said to the Lord, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting"?
This is the prayer that precedes power. This is the cleansing that precedes the anointing. Before the fire fell at Pentecost, the disciples spent 10 days in the upper room, and you may be sure that those 10 days were days of searching, of repentance, of the putting away of every hindrance, of the unifying of hearts that had been divided by ambition and rivalry. They came to one accord. They emptied themselves. They cleansed the vessel. And then, and only then, the fire fell.
The second part of the secret is this: The power of God comes upon the surrendered vessel. It is not enough to be cleansed. The vessel must also be yielded. It must be placed entirely in the hands of the Master, available for his use, surrendered to his purposes, abandoned to his will. The power of God does not come upon the man who wants to use it for his own ends. It comes upon the man who has given himself wholly to the ends of God.
Hear the words of the Apostle Paul in the 12th chapter of Romans, verse 1: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
"Present your bodies a living sacrifice." The whole self laid upon the altar. Not part, not most; all. The hands, the feet, the eyes, the tongue, the mind, the will, the affections, the ambitions—all of it placed upon the altar of God, available for whatever the Master may require. This is the surrender that precedes power.
The man who has held something back has not truly surrendered. The man who has reserved some corner of his life for himself has not presented a whole sacrifice, and the power of God does not rest upon partial sacrifices. It falls upon the altar where the whole offering has been laid.
I have known believers who wanted the power of God for the wrong reasons. They wanted to be admired. They wanted to be used in spectacular ways. They wanted the gifts without the giver, the power without the person, the demonstration without the death. And God, in his mercy, withheld the power from them because power in the hands of an unsurrendered soul is the most dangerous thing in the universe. It produces the religious showman, the spiritual manipulator, the man who uses the things of God to build his own kingdom. God will not give his power to such men. He gives his power to the surrendered. He gives his power to those who have died to their own ambition. He gives his power to those who can be trusted to use it for his glory and not their own.
The third part of the secret is this: The power of God is received by the praying vessel. I have said it many times, and I will say it until I die: The men who walked in the greatest power were the men who prayed the most. There are no exceptions to this rule. There has never been a man mightily used of God in power who was not first a man mightily given to prayer.
The power flows from the prayer closet. The *dunamis* is received in the secret place. The anointing that breaks the yoke is the fruit of long hours alone with God.
The apostles understood this. In the sixth chapter of the book of Acts, when the practical needs of the church threatened to consume their time, they made a decision that revealed their priorities. They said in the fourth verse, "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."
"We will give ourselves continually to prayer." Continually, not occasionally, not when convenient; continually. The men through whom the power of God flowed most freely were the men who guarded the prayer closet most jealously. They understood that the public power was the fruit of the private prayer and that no amount of activity could substitute for the time spent waiting on God.
The modern church has reversed this. We give ourselves continually to activity and we pray occasionally, if at all, and the result is a church full of activity and empty of power. We are busy. We are organized. We are efficient, and we are powerless because the power does not come from the activity. The power comes from the prayer.
If you want to walk in the power of God, beloved, you must become a person of prayer—not a person who says prayers, a person who prays, a person who waits on God, a person who lingers in the presence of the Lord until something is transacted in the heavenly places, a person who has learned that the secret of power is the secret of the closet and that the man who will not pay the price of prayer will never know the reality of power.
The fourth part of the secret is this: The power of God rests upon the hungry vessel. The Lord Jesus said in the fifth chapter of Matthew, verse six: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."
"They shall be filled." Who? The hungry, the thirsty. Those whose desire for God has become a consuming passion, an aching need, a desperate longing that nothing in this world can satisfy. God fills the hungry. He does not fill the satisfied. He does not fill the indifferent. He does not fill the casual seeker who would like a little more of God if it does not cost too much. He fills the hungry, those who want him more than they want anything else in the universe.
This is perhaps the greatest deficiency of the modern church. We are not hungry. We are full—full of the world, full of entertainment, full of activity, full of everything except God. And the full soul, the satisfied soul, the comfortable soul, will never be filled with the power of God because there is no room. The vessel is already occupied.
The hungry soul is the empty soul. It has emptied itself of the world. It has emptied itself of self-satisfaction. It has emptied itself of every false comfort and every substitute for God. And into that emptiness, the Spirit of God pours himself in fullness until the once empty vessel overflows with the power and presence of the living God.
Are you hungry, beloved? Are you truly hungry? Not for a better life, not for blessings, not for the gifts, but for God himself—for his power, his presence, his fullness, his glory. Because the measure of your hunger is the measure of your capacity to receive. The man who is desperate for God will be filled. The man who is merely curious will go away empty.
Let me tell you about the men who walked in power that you may see these principles incarnated in flesh and blood. Consider the Apostle Paul, who could say, in the second chapter of 1 Corinthians, verses 4 and 5: "And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
"In demonstration of the spirit and of power." Paul, the most educated man of his generation, the scholar trained at the feet of Gamaliel, deliberately set aside the wisdom of words and relied instead upon the power of God. Why? Because he understood that human eloquence produces human results, but the power of God produces eternal transformation. He had learned the secret. He had paid the price, and the power of God flowed through him until the gospel spread across the entire Roman world.
Consider the testimony of revival history. The great awakenings, the mighty outpourings, the seasons when the power of God fell upon nations and transformed the spiritual landscape of entire continents. Trace each one back to its source, and you will find the same thing every time: A praying remnant, a hungry people, a cleansed and surrendered company of believers who paid the price in the secret place and upon whom the power of God descended in answer to their cries.
The power has never been the problem. The power is always available. God is always willing to pour out his Spirit. The bottleneck has never been on the side of heaven. The bottleneck has always been on the side of earth: in the unwillingness of God's people to meet the conditions, to pay the price, to cleanse the vessel, to surrender the life, to pray the prayers, to hunger with the hunger that moves the hand of God.
Will you meet the conditions, beloved? Will you pay the price? I cannot promise you it will be easy. It will not be easy. The path to power runs through the valley of death: death to self, death to ambition, death to the love of the world, death to the desire for the approval of men. It runs through long nights in the prayer closet. It runs through seasons of searching and repentance and the painful putting away of every hindrance. It runs through a hunger so consuming that you would rather die than continue living without the fullness of God.
But I can promise you this: it is worth it. There is nothing in all the earth that compares to walking in the power of God. There is no pleasure, no possession, no achievement, no human glory that can be set beside it. To be a vessel through whom the living God flows, to see him work through your weakness, to watch him transform lives and break chains and reveal his glory through an ordinary person who has simply met his conditions.
This is the highest privilege available to any human being on this side of eternity, and it is offered to you—not to a special class of super saints, not to the professional clergy, not to a gifted elite—to you, to every believer who will pay the price.
The same Spirit who fell at Pentecost is ready to fall on you. The same power that flowed through Peter and Paul is available to flow through you. The same God who shook the first century is ready to shake your generation through any vessel that will make itself available to him.
Will you be that vessel? Will you go to the secret place tonight and begin the journey? Will you ask God to search you, to cleanse you, to purge every hindrance from your life? Will you present yourself as a living sacrifice, holding nothing back? Will you commit to becoming a person of prayer, a person who waits on God until the power comes? Will you stir up the hunger in your soul until it becomes a consuming passion for the fullness of God?
The decision is before you. The conditions are clear, the price is high, but the reward is beyond calculation. And the same God who has poured out his Spirit in every generation that sought him is ready to pour out his Spirit upon you if you will only meet him in the place of cleansing, surrender, prayer, and hunger.
I plead with you, beloved, do not settle for a powerless Christianity. Do not resign yourself to a religion of forms and rituals and human effort. Do not spend your one and only life as a spectator in the kingdom of God when you were called to be a participant, a vessel, an instrument, a channel through whom the power of the living God flows to a dying world.
The church does not need more programs. The church needs power. The world does not need more religion. The world needs a demonstration of the living God. And God is searching, even now, for the vessels through whom that demonstration can come.
Be one of them. Pay the price. Seek the fullness. Walk in the power.
And when the power comes, when the Spirit of God descends upon a cleansed and surrendered and praying and hungry vessel, you will understand what the early church understood, what every revivalist understood, what every mighty man and woman of God throughout history has understood: that there is nothing on earth so glorious, so satisfying, so eternally significant as being a vessel through whom the living God displays his power to a watching world.
This is your inheritance. This is your calling. This is the secret the modern church has lost and that you can recover tonight.
Go to the secret place. Cleanse the vessel. Surrender the life. Pray the prayers. Stir up the hunger. And wait. Wait on the God who has promised that those who wait upon him shall renew their strength, who has promised to fill the hungry with good things, who has promised power to the witnesses who tarry until the Spirit comes.
The power of God is real. The fullness of the Spirit is available. And the same fire that fell on the upper room is ready to fall on any soul that will pay the price to receive it. Pay it. Believe it. Pay it now. And walk at last in the power of God.
In the matchless and mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire, and whose kingdom shall have no end. Amen.