January 24th, 2024
Topic: SEVEN HARD THINGS
Text: 2 Kings 2:9–10a, Exodus 1:13–14, Proverbs 13:15, 29:1, Daniel 5:20, Acts 26:14, Proverbs 28:14, Ezekiel 33:30–32.
Minister: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O. MFM Worldwide)
I am believing God that by the time you will leave here tonight, you will not go home the same way you came here.
2 Kings 2:9 (KJV) says: “And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
The man wanted power, a double portion of his master’s power. He knew that his master was going away, Jezebel was still around, Ahab was still alive, and there were still problems to be solved. So he asked for raw power.
2 Kings 2:10 (KJV) says: “And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: “
Why was it hard? Elijah was not the manufacturer of the power. Elijah, too, was a beneficiary of power from above. He had just one portion, and somebody was asking him for a double portion of the power. So he looked at the fellow and said, “You have asked for a hard thing.”
The Seven Hard Things.
- The first hard thing is dominion power. More than at any other time, beloveth, in this generation in which we have found ourselves, we need the raw power of God in our lives. We, as Christians, should be able to demonstrate the power of God anywhere we go.
It is time for unbelievers to see the stuff from which we are made. It is time for unbelievers to stop disrespecting Christians. There is power, and there is power.
The Bible agrees that there is the power of darkness because it says in Luke 10:19 (KJV) “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
So the enemy agrees that there is power of the enemy. But there is dominion power that can dominate the power of man, the power of the enemy, and the power of any other spirit. If you require that kind of power, you are requesting a hard thing because you have a price to pay.
There is no short cut to that power. There is no accidental receiving of that power. You must pay the price of that power. I do not want to deceive anyone. You are asking for a hard thing, and it will require a price to pay.
The price will include consecration. The power of God cannot be sharing you with masturbation, lies, alcohol, boyfriend or girlfriend. It is an insult for that power to be sharing you with fornication. You can make noise and shout, but that is not power. You can run around, but that is not power.
The power of God considers it insulting to be sharing you with malice. So it will cost you consecration. It will require holiness, addiction to prayer, addiction to fasting, addiction to reading your Bible, and addiction to meditation of the word of God.
It will require that your flesh die. It will require that that your bad temper go. It will require that you stop stealing your tithe. It will require that you padlock your mouth if you talk too much.
That is why Elijah said, “You have asked for a hard thing.” So the first hard thing there is the dominion power.
Unfortunately, without receiving that dominion power, many people will suffer from the cradle to the grave. You need dominion power to control those witches in your household.
You need that dominion power to enlarge your coast. You need that dominion power to capture back what the enemy has stolen.
I prophesy upon somebody in this meeting today that power that cannot be insulted, power that the enemy will see you and run, power that will make your prayers become hot coals of fire; receive it now in the name of Jesus.
- Exodus 1:13–14 (KJV) “And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage,”
The second hard thing is hard bondage. The bondage that Israel was made to suffer for 400 years is what is called hard bondage.
Hard bondage makes people’s lives bitter. Hard bondage is when you say, “Get out in the name of Jesus” and the Spirit says, “No, I will not go out.”
Hard bondage is when you are saying, “Receive your deliverance now, in the name of Jesus,” and the spirit is saying, “No, no, no!”
Hard bondage is when the more a man struggles to get out of bondage, the more he ropes himself into more bondage.
Hard bondage is when somebody is an unconscious witch, wizard, or familiar spirit. You are being taken to a meeting you do not belong to, but you cannot do anything about it.
This is a very serious matter, and it is very sad. A lot of people are going through some hard bondages that are so difficult to break now because they have used many, many padlocks to padlock the same thing.
This is a very, very serious matter. Raise your right hand and shout:
Hard bondage, sponsored from the covens, my life is not your candidate; die in the name of Jesus.
- Proverbs 13:15 (KJV) says: “Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard.”
Those who break God’s law will surely find things very, very hard in life. They may think they are enjoying themselves, but at the end of the day, they will realise that they have not lived life. They have served idols, and things are very hard for them.
My heart goes out tonight to those of you who are listening to me right now and God has a call upon your life, and you are running away. Or you are here, and your parents handed you over to Jesus when you were born.
They gave you dedicated names like Isaac, Samuel, and so on when you were born, but now you have turned your back to the dedication your parents made with the Lord when you were born.
Let me give you one assurance: the heavens will pursue you, not witches. In God’s case, there is no appeal. If witches are pursuing you, you can go for deliverance, bind them, and cast them out, but when it is the King of kings and the Lord of lords pursuing you, you have a problem indeed.
- Proverbs 29:1 (KJV) says: “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”
One key to sudden destruction is a hardened neck. Like a horse that will not answer its driver and goes into the fire, is the way it happens to those who harden their necks.
Are you in this place and you hear the word of God but keep hardening your neck? It is a terrible thing, indeed.
- Daniel 5:20 (KJV): “But when his heart was lifted up and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:
I am praying for somebody here that any power that wants to take away your glory shall not succeed, in the name of Jesus.
So there is the hardened mind, and it is pride that makes the mind hardened. Some people have this hard mind, it is what they want to do, they will do. Even if the Bible is against it, they will still do it. Even if others are doing it and having problems, they will still do it. It is a hardened mind.
I pray for such people today that the Lord will give you a heart of flesh, in the name of Jesus.
- Acts 26:14 (KJV): “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”
There is “hard pricks.” There are things you should not go against. There are battles you should not fight. One battle you should not fight is the battle against the Holy Spirit. Paul tried to fight against the Holy Spirit and against God. He was kicking against thorns, and such will injure that sinner.
- The seventh and most serious one is the hard heart. Proverbs 28:14 (KJV) says: “Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.”
Such a hard heart is a sermon-proof heart. I have heard so many sermons in my life. I have heard plenty of men of God preaching. But only a few could move me, like the one I heard as a little boy in 1964.
This preacher was preaching a message from Genesis 6:6, which says:
“And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
His message was “God’s grief over His creatures.” He said God cried in His heart. Why? Because He spoke words to them, and His words did not change them. They stubbornly stuck to their opinions and ways. Their hearts were hard, and by the time the Almighty looked at it, the decision He took was to wipe them away. It is always the same.
Anytime there is a generation that does not fulfil the divine agenda, God wipes them away and starts another generation.
Imagine how sad parents are when they speak to their children and the children refuse to listen, yet they know that the result of that disobedience will be disastrous.
The man told us that the words of God did not change them. The word of God did not change Adam and Eve, so we are all in trouble now. The words of God did not change Cain, and so he became a vagabond.
The word of God did not change Lot’s wife or his daughters. Though they received angelic visitation, they still perished under the hands that were to save them.
What kind of tragedy is that, that somebody will perish right under the angelic assistance that was to come and save them? It was simply because the words of God did not change them. The words of God did not change Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The words of God did not change Ananias and Sapphira.
God lamented so many times in the scriptures. He will say, “I sent many prophets to you; I have spoken to you, but you have refused to listen. Why did you do this?” Hard hearts. Do you know that there are still people who come here and are not properly married?
They just went, grabbed the woman, and put her in their house with no dowry, no engagement, no church blessing, nothing. You are a thief. You have stolen a wife.
Because of that, we created correction marriage. No, they do not want to correct that marriage. Hard hearts. They refuse to understand. They receive miracles, but their hearts are not moved.
They have refused the word of God, transforming their lives. They allow satanic birds to pick up what the Lord is sowing in their hearts. They regard church as a social gathering.
During Sunday school, they are chatting away or reading newspapers. When you get to a gathering, it is easy to know those who are interested in their destinies. They will come with their writing materials and Bibles.
Some people will come to church without a notebook, Bible, biro, or even a hymnbook. One Sunday here, I will just ask those without hymn books to just clear out and sit elsewhere. We are not performing magic here. This is the church of the living God. Those are your weapons. There are a lot of hard hearts in the Church of God.
They listen, but they harden their hearts because they are unwilling to depart from their sin, and they do not have a divine encounter. Their hearts are sermon-proof.
We are about to pray now.
Ezekiel 33:30–32 (KJV) tells us: “Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the LORD.
And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.”
PRAYER POINTS.
- Power of death and hell over my life; die in the name of Jesus.
- Powers at the root of my problems, you are liars; die in the name of Jesus.
- Household witchcraft, you are liars; die in the name of Jesus.
- Powers that fought my father, powers that fought my mother, and you are fighting me, die in the name of Jesus.
- Battles from my dreams, dry up in the name of Jesus.
- (Lay one hand on your head and one hand on your belly button.) Garment of darkness, from my father’s house, catch fire, in the name of Jesus.
- Blood of Jesus, sanitise my foundation, in the name of Jesus.
- My breakthroughs, my prosperity, receive deliverance in the name of Jesus.
- O God of Elijah, arise and uproot anything you have not planted in my life, in the name of Jesus.
- God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, appear in my situation by fire, in the name of Jesus.
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