True Success

Now, one of the marvelous things about the Bible for me is that it wasn’t written, mostly, as a theological treatise. Paul didn’t write his letters to write theology. He wrote them in strange places: people’s homes, jails. He wrote to certain situations in certain churches or individuals’ lives.

But the Holy Spirit so inspired him that the final result is perfect. And I’ve seen this over the last two years in Galatians. Galatians unfolds the problem, which is witchcraft. But Galatians also gives us God’s answer to witchcraft.

And that’s what I’m going to be dealing with tonight and tomorrow night. The provision that God has made to protect us from witchcraft. You see, as a man with a ministry, I tremble for my own spiritual condition. I have seen so many men with powerful, successful ministries corrupted by their power and their success.

And I have sincerely sought God. God, is there a protection? How can we keep from these disasters? I mean, I’ve been associated with the Pentecostal movement, as I’ve said, for well over 40 years. I can remember all the days of the Voice of Healing evangelists.

Out of 50 internationally known evangelists, I doubt whether 10 have survived with their character and their ministry intact. A certain politician once said this, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And that is really true.

Is there any way that we can avoid being corrupted by the power that God commits to us? So, I’m going to try to speak to you tonight and tomorrow night about the safeguards. And the safeguards all come through applying the work of the cross in our own lives.

You see, there’s two aspects to the work of the cross. There’s what Jesus did for us. He provided everything we’ll ever need. He defeated our enemy. That’s for us. Lots of people who get excited about that have never begun to understand what the cross is intended to do in us.

But if the cross doesn’t have its work in us, we will not really be able to benefit from what the cross has done for us because our subtle, deceptive enemy will get the better of us and corrupt us.

So, I’m going to speak about five operations of the cross in the life of the believer. What I’m going to say, in a sense, is not popular preaching. I’m not going to tell you how to get rich quick. I’m not going to tell you how to solve all your problems or get all your prayers answered in the next six months.

I’ve preached prosperity before there was a prosperity movement because the Bible teaches it. Concerning the man who meditates in the law of God day and night, and doesn’t walk in the way of the ungodly, it says,

“Whatsoever he does prospers.”

But the problem is that people have taken the contemporary American concept of prosperity and tried to put it into the Bible.

The word prosperity, properly translated, means success. And for a believer, the greatest success is to accomplish the will of God. That was Jesus’ motivation. He said,

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.”

Where did he finish the work? On the cross. Was that prosperity? Not by American standards.

People say, “I believe in victory.” Let me tell you, Jesus was never more victorious than when he was on the cross. Could you believe, now this is just a thought, that God will take the church home the same way he took his son home? By way of the cross.

If you know what’s going on in Communist China today, that’s a very probable thesis. And I suppose the church in Communist China, with all its weaknesses and its lack of equipment, is probably the most wonderful thing that’s happened in church history since the book of Acts.

It’s estimated there are between 50 and 100 million new believers in Communist China in the last two decades, in the face of intense opposition, persecution. And the supernatural there is just accepted as normal Christianity.

I read an account in Brother Andrew’s publication, Open Doors, so some of you may have seen it, of a Chinese wife who came to the Lord, and her daughter came to the Lord, and the husband and father was terribly angry. He forbid them to go to church or to have anything to do with the gospel.

One night, the mother and the daughter went out to the church meeting. The father discovered they weren’t there, asked his son where they were. The son said they’d gone to the meeting. And the man went absolutely mad with rage. He seized an axe, and when his wife opened the door to come in, he began to strike her and the daughter with the axe. And he literally chopped them in pieces with his axe.

And the people in the village heard what was going on and gathered. And as they were looking at these bodies writhing in their death throes on the ground, the bodies were slowly lifted up into the night air and disappeared. That’s what we call translation power. Because I wouldn’t want to ask how many of you would be willing to go that way. But we may not get any options.