7DAY Breakthrough Healing Challenge: Day 5

God wants to use what you went through…

Today’s Prayer

God we thank you for the wisdom that comes from warfare. We thank you for giving us the victory and the using our pain for purpose. Help us to see those who you want to bless through us, who need a flashlight in their darkness and who you have assigned to us for anoint with the oil from your healing. Here we are God, use us! In the name of Jesus, Amen!

OVERVIEW

Today’s Message

Have you ever met somebody who knows the Savior that didn’t have a testimony? Some folks don’t know that oil is not cheap. Lord have mercy! If you have the oil, you’ve paid the price. If you have the victory, you’ve paid the price. There is no cheap oil.

When God anointed you, He equipped you to go through some stuff to use your story for His glory!

You remember the garden at Gethsemane. Jesus was praying for His cup to pass and the pressure from the cup caused him to sweat blood. That same blood that Jesus sweat in the garden, is the same blood that He shed on the cross! You have the same blood, the same power, the same purpose that Jesus had.

Put this in your spirit…the bible declares, “I want to know Christ–yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). This power, this victory we have in Christ comes with “participation in his sufferings.” What we go through in life is for the glory of God and the establishment of our faith for the purpose God has for our testimony.

“for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13)

See, when we go through without understanding that we are God’s purpose, His chosen vessels to impact the world, the devil will cause us to look at what we’re going through as punishment as opposed to purpose. Can we be transparent?

There was no way that I was supposed to make it out of childhood in my right mind. There was no way that I was supposed to be more than a statistic or a lost cause. Some of you know what I’m talking about. Some of you have been under attack since birth, and have had to fight all your life. Some of you have gone through major battles, hurtful and traumatic experiences, major losses and have suffered in ways that most folks can’t even imagine. There are some testimonies that only God knows about, and nobody would be believe us even if we told them — because you don’t look like what you’ve been through!

What I’ve learned about that scripture, “…to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,” is that if you have purpose, you will have pain. You won’t get a free pass, free oil or a free ride. Understand this, for you to become who God created you to be, for you to walk in the authority and power of Christ’s resurrection, you have to grow through experiences that will take you through hell. Oil is not cheap. 

I tell folks all the time, don’t envy somebody else’s oil. You can best believe that if they have oil, if they have power, if they are walking in the boldness of God, they have seen hell. I didn’t know what a Christmas tree was and had never opened a Christmas gift until I was 13 years old. Until I was 13, I didn’t know what was like to not go to bed hungry and or go to school without being hungry. I did not know what “Nike” was until is 17 years old, and had never had worn a new pair of tennis shoes until is turned 14 years old. I was used to going to bed with the lights on so that the roaches and the mice would stay behind the walls. You can homeless and living in a home at the same time…

You may not have that experience but we’ve all had an experience. Every experience sows a seed, forms a truth, that becomes a belief. What I realized about experiences, as a child and an adult, is that you don’t decide what you go through, you decide how you use what you go through. You don’t control the cost of the oil, you don’t control the sufferings, you don’t control the pain that births your purpose. You are the vessel that God pours His oil into. You can only decide if you’re going to use what God gave you…if you are going to be a victim or a victor.

There was no way that the devil thought I would become the head of National and international corporations. There was no way that the devil thought the poor boy who went to school in dirty clothes and holes in his shoes would become the president of a National corporation. There was no way that the devil thought that God would use me to give my testimony to thousands of people who thought that they couldn’t make it, that they needed a pedigree to make it, that they needed to fall from heaven to make it, that they needed to be rich to make it, that they needed anything but God to make it!

See, I didn’t just make it, I crushed it. I made it despite. I made it for the people God assigned to my testimony. I made it for God’s glory. When you make up in your mind that it happened for you and not to you, you will understand what the Apostle Paul meant when He said: “…Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Did you hear what the Apostle Paul said, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me!” Resurrection power is in what you went through!

What the devil intended to break you with, God uses to make you with. God knew that my childhood would give me the oil, the ability, to witness in the boardroom, in high places, about the goodness of the Lord. God knew had it not been for what he allowed me to go through as a child, I would not have been humble enough to handle the power he had in store for me as an adult. I would not have His heart, I would not have His compassion with power. During my career, people would be astonished that I would esteem the janitor, the least of them, higher than the “important” people. People would be shocked when I would give individuals without pedigrees the opportunity to soar. I didn’t walk around the office shoving God down people’s throat, I shared the heart of God, prayed for people, and proved to unbelievers that God is cool.

When God gives you experience, your experience will make room for you to be used for God’s glory! But you have to be willing to share God. God pours His oil in us for us to pour it out. If we only look at experiences as victims, we will never get what God intended. That book won’t be written, that business won’t be started, that ministry won’t be started, that platform will be wasted, that relationship won’t give God the glory, that broken person will be passed by, that opportunity will be missed, if we don’t use what God gave us to do what God created us to do…SHINE!

God said to the devil about Job: “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity…” (Job 2:3). Somebody needs to know that God allowed it because He could trust you to give Him the glory for your story!

Are you willing to turn what the devil intended to kill you with into testimony that God intended to make room for you with? Can God use you, your oil, your experience, your test, your trial, for His glory? If God allowed it, God intended for you to use it! 

When you use what the enemy tried to kill you with, God is edified, your testimony is glorified and the enemy is horrified!

Use it!

Today’s Challenge

1. How has it shaped me? Did it make me bitter or better?
2. How have I used it? How have I applied what I’ve learned?
3. How can or have I used what I’ve been through for God’s glory?

In addition, read today’s handout, “Dissolving Past Pain and Moving Forward In Your Life.”

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