Men Of Like Passions Part 2 by Pastor Philip Olubakin: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

There Is No Move of God Without a Man

Across every generation recorded in scripture, there has never been a genuine move of God that wasn't carried by a man or woman God laid His hand on. Judges 5:6 — "In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied" — a season of stagnation, until God raised up someone to stand in the gap. The reason a specific word reaches you is that God has chosen you as the person meant to stand in the midst of your own family or circle. He does not waste His seed on ground that won't receive it.

Deborah: A Mother Called to Judge Israel

Deborah didn't wait to be given permission to matter — she rose as a judge and, in the song of Judges 5, is called "a mother in Israel." Wherever you find yourself feeling small or overlooked, remember that God has never been limited by how visible or credentialed a person already was before He used them.

Gideon: Pain Precedes the Cry

Judges 6 — Israel was greatly impoverished, not from a lack of effort, but because the Midianites destroyed the fruit of their labor as fast as it grew. There's a kind of divine strategy behind pain: God generally will not deliver someone from a condition they're still comfortable enough to tolerate. It was only once the suffering became unbearable that Israel finally cried out — and only then that the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon under the oak, addressing him not as he currently felt, but as who he was becoming: "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour."

Gideon's honest question — "If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us... where be all his miracles?" — wasn't rebellion; it was the raw question of someone in real pain looking for an explanation. God didn't rebuke him for asking. He simply gave him an assignment.

Tearing Down the Altar at Night

God's first instruction to Gideon wasn't to fight Midian — it was to tear down his own father's altar to Baal and build an altar to the Lord in its place, which he did quietly, at night, with the help of ten servants, out of fear of his own household and the men of the town. He worked carefully and quickly, making sure the task was finished before morning. Sometimes the first battle God calls you to isn't the visible enemy outside — it's the compromise still standing inside your own house. Before Gideon could lead Israel into open victory, he had to deal privately with what had been quietly tolerated in his own family for a generation.

A Testimony: Praying for Boldness Against Darkness

After witnessing a deliverance where a demon-possessed individual was set free, a young minister prayed earnestly through the night, asking God that his own voice would become something the demonic realm recognized and feared — not out of pride, but out of longing to be genuinely useful in that kind of ministry. In the following days, opportunities to pray for the demonized began appearing where none had before. Bold, specific prayer for a genuine spiritual assignment tends to be met, in God's timing, with the very opportunities that prayer was reaching for.