The Hidden Requirement For Spiritual Encounters by Apostle Arome Osayi: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Testimony Is Not the Same as Opinion

In Bible study you have come across the judgments of God, the commandments of God, and the testimony of God, and there is a temptation to think these mean the same thing. They do not. A testimony is what God says about himself, by himself. Moses asked God, "Show me your glory," because he was intimate enough with God to sense there was more to know. In response God proclaimed his own name to Moses. That is a testimony. A meeting must be arranged before a testimony can be entrusted to you. There is a difference between preaching and testifying: in a testimony, God entrusts you with something he said about himself, and when you bear witness of it, you are not speaking from yourself, you are conveying what was entrusted to you.

Matthew 11:25-27. Jesus thanked the Father for hiding these things from the wise and revealing them to babes, and said no man knows the Son but the Father, and no man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. When Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus confirmed that Peter had listened in on the whispers of his Father.

Without a Testimony, All You Have Is an Opinion

John 7:11-12. During the feast of tabernacles the people murmured about Jesus: some said he was a good man, others said he deceived the people. Those are opinions, and opinions will keep colliding with one another until a testimony comes to break the silence. Our generation is confused. Many have left the church because it is no longer popular; even professing Christians in large numbers no longer believe in speaking in tongues. If we are going to gain ground again, we must be able to tell the difference between a true testimony and a man simply witnessing about himself.

• The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy: it means Jesus is still speaking, and if the words come from his mouth, that is prophecy.
• The book of Revelation is a book of prophecy, and if you are not careful, you will see only events, predictions, places, and possibilities and miss the testimony underneath them.

The Testimony That Turned a Zealot into a Witness

Acts 9:1-6. A young scholar of the Pharisee sect, trained under Gamaliel, was so zealous against the name of Jesus that he secured letters of authority from Jerusalem to arrest believers, men and women, and bring them bound to Jerusalem. He rode out with pride, backed by international authority reaching as far as Damascus. No man could stop him.

Then Jesus met him on the road: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Saul asked, "Who art thou, Lord?" which reveals that at that point he did not actually know who Jesus was, even though he had already committed himself to destroying his followers on secondhand information. Jesus answered, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest," and gave him a parable: it is hard to kick against the pricks. That which is cast in eternity cannot be stopped in time.

• Only Saul heard Jesus speak; the men who traveled with him saw the light but never heard the voice, because the testimony was entrusted only to him.
• Jesus sent Ananias to Saul during Ananias's own morning devotion. Ananias objected, reminding Jesus of the damage Saul had done, but Jesus revealed that Saul would be made a vessel who would suffer greatly for his name's sake. Ananias never repeated that revelation to Saul, because it had been given to equip Ananias, not for Saul's consumption.
• Saul went into Damascus blind, and throughout his life he never finished telling the story of that road, because he had a testimony no one could take from him. You can take away a coat of many colors, but you cannot take away a testimony that has been entrusted to a man.

Acts 26:13-16 adds detail not recorded in Acts 9: Jesus told him, "Arise, and stand upon thy feet, for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness." It is only those who have received a testimony who are commissioned to arise. There is a difference between a minister and a witness: you can be a minister without being a witness, but you cannot be a witness without being a minister. To be a witness you must have seen things, and your ministry becomes evidence for what you have seen. Your witness ends where your encounter ends. If your preaching feels stale, it may be because your witness has expired and you have not secured another encounter.

Three Requirements for a Divine Encounter

1. Tribulation and Patience

Revelation 1:9. John introduced himself as "your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ," on the isle of Patmos "for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." There is a protocol of pressure and suffering designed to diminish self, and that is a requirement for the testimony of Jesus.

• God will not answer prayers the way you expect. He will stretch you, and you will need to wait for him, because he is king, not a politician looking for your vote.
• In Luke 4, Jesus closed the scroll after reading from Isaiah. The minister who received it back did not know the book he was handed was a closed one; a book only opens when Jesus opens it, and it closes again when he is not there.
• Your walk with Jesus is a marathon, not a sprint. The same God who gave a couple a baby after thirteen years of waiting could have given it in the first year, but he does everything in a way that gives him glory, not in a way that lets his glory be shrouded by your impatience.
• Abraham tried to make things happen through Ishmael while he still had the strength. It was only after his body was as good as dead and Sarah's womb had closed that he had nothing left to boast in, and that is when God showed up.

I once took a fast that eventually lasted two hundred and sixty-four days, though I did not know in advance how long it would be. Around the one hundred and seventieth day I was tired, fed up, and discouraged, and the Lord spoke and said I had not yet paid the price to arrive at the date of my appointment. On the two hundred and sixty-fourth day, he showed up. Before he came, he sent angels ahead of him, and I mistakenly thought that angelic visitation was the answer to what I had been praying for. Because my hunger was still shallow, I settled for it and moved in healing and anointing for five years before I realized that encountering angels was never what I had originally set out to seek. I went back and pressed in again, this time asking specifically for mercy.

• It is this very patience that many cannot endure that drives them to seek demonic shortcuts instead. A pastor whose church was not growing grew impatient with the process God had him in, sought out demonic help, was initiated, and began to see money and results, but he knew inwardly that his soul was lost. In Satan's protocol, patience is never required; that is the trap.

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Effective Prayer Dynamics James 5:16 - Wofbec 2024

by Apostle Joshua Selman

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I am willing to wait. I am willing to carry it. There is no shortcut in the protocol. It is a marathon, not a sprint. No quick fixes. Of the five hundred disciples who watched Jesus ascend and were told to tarry in Jerusalem, only one hundred and twenty were left by the day of Pentecost, because in every generation believers do not survive the requirement of patience.

2. A True Heart

Hebrews 10:19-22. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus... let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." This journey beyond the veil is a heart journey, and the currency of that journey is assurance.

• Satan's target is always your assurance. He attacks it through your mind with doubt: "Why is my case different? Why did that person get their miracle and not me?" Assurance, confidence, and rest come from the heart; doubt and accusation come from the mind.
• The heart is made up of the whole soul (mind, will, and emotions) plus the conscience of the spirit. The spirit itself has three parts: fellowship (the connection with God that begins at new birth, like a SIM card that lets a phone access a network it could not reach on its own), intuition (spiritual knowledge, or "epignosis," that you did not learn but that the Holy Spirit deposits directly), and conscience (the platform where the Holy Spirit registers his feedback).
• Your conscience must remain sensitive and available for God to speak into it. It is a privilege, not a punishment, for the Holy Spirit to make you uncomfortable, because that discomfort is often what keeps you from walking headlong into error.
• Holding on to unforgiveness poisons the conscience. A woman prayed for a man's death for twenty-five years after he left her with the burden of raising their children alone, until the Holy Spirit finally asked her, "Can't you release this man?" She wept and surrendered it, and only then did the situation change. No one deserves to remain chained to that kind of idol for twenty-five years.

Washing the body with pure water means letting the word of God regulate every appetite, so that no appetite is given authority equal to the Holy Spirit's. Any appetite indulged contrary to the word will register on the conscience and disqualify you from full assurance of faith.

• Sight, sex, comfort, and hunger are common gateways demons use once an appetite has gone unchecked. Fasting exists to starve the flesh so that when temptation comes, it finds nothing left to negotiate with.
• Jesus was driven into the wilderness to be tempted, and rather than wait passively, he went looking for the tempter through fasting and prayer, because a second contest had to take place after Adam's fall in the garden.

Proverbs 4:23. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. I will keep my heart. I will empty it of hate and bitterness so that it can remain light and capable of full assurance of faith.

• We draw near by the spirit and the blood. We make a determination to seek your face day and night, living in the consciousness of your presence, angling our hearts to hear your voice.
• Lord Jesus, I belong to you. I am a product of the salvation that is in your blood. Tonight, every hold of the enemy over my life, in every shape and in every fashion, let it be uprooted in the name of Jesus.

For anyone who has not yet given their life to Christ, the invitation remains open: turn your heart over to him, and he will write your name in the book of life and begin something new in you.