Weight by Pastor Lawrence Oyor: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Recap: The Foundations

We have established that there are foundations that ensure you encounter God. Matthew 5:6 — blessed are those that hunger and thirst for they shall be filled. The element of hunger guarantees you will experience God. An hungry man is an angry man; automatically a hungry man is a serious man. When they give you food and you don't eat, you are not hungry. Hunger imparts seriousness.

We have to break it down in our generation because most people are simply not hungry. That's why you pray with your hands in your pockets — it hasn't reached deep enough. When what you are hungry for overwhelms you, you know.

We have been establishing foundations: be hungry, be sincere, be intentional — which is to be serious. Now let me give you background to why this is so important.

What Is Weight?

Power can be measured, and the intensity of persons too can be known. From the first few minutes of praise and worship, one who is sensitive can already tell whether there is a problem with the spiritual energy level. Those who have been choir members for a long time understand this — if a person comes and has done their back end, we can tell. When there is no back end, we can also tell.

I remember one Sunday I came back from outside the country and the weight I knew was coming from the strings — the weight of presence and power that was resting on a musician as he ministered. Without him telling me, I could tell that the weight following the strings was different. He had just come from seven days of retreat.

Weight can be measured, and the weight of what you are encountering as you're listening can be measured. How do you measure it? Check how much journey your heart makes while you are listening.

The reason the will journeys in prayer and in the word of God is because the will experiences the weight of God's glory. The more glory you experience or encounter in the presence of God, the more influence that will have on your will. So check yourselves — are you now willing to do things you were not willing to do before? If yes, it means you have been experiencing the weight.

There is no transformation without this weight. People will be listening; you will be getting information in your head, but no transformation in your heart. You teach on prayer, they won't pray. You teach on fasting, they won't fast.

People Gather Around Weight

I knew why people gather in large numbers around certain ministers. People gather around weight. Talk is cheap. Carry weight. A person can be speaking simple things — it can be from wisdom, from success, or from teaching — but when they tell you to do something, you will have done it before you check why. That is heavy weight.

Weight makes more impression in five minutes than someone without it makes in three hours.

Weight shrinks time — it makes an hour feel like ten minutes. Weight arrests your attention. Many of you are distracted people, but when you sit under a heavy utterance, you notice you cannot think any other thought. Sometimes it is so weighty that you are literally stuck in that place, unaware of your own facial expression.

How can you start a work, a church, a ministry, or a discipleship group without weight? Nobody will change. An object keeps moving in a straight line until acted upon by an external force — the greater the external force, the more the object is moved. The real reason for spending time in prayer is not to get a car or a house; it is to increase in weight.

Sins Against the Weight

We must not breach the consecrations that preserve your weight.

The reason some were strong and are not strong again is that they sinned against the consecrations that preserve and guard their weight. It can be as simple as one collaboration or one stupid thought you entertained. You can do one thing and enter a dry season for six months.

When you don't have weight, it can be frustrating. You probably know more than the person who has weight, and you wish you could be given the mic to talk. But if they give you the mic, nobody will listen. Weight means that even in a very simple or short utterance, things shift.

We cannot touch this world, we cannot even scratch the assignment, if we don't carry weight. Witches and wizards check weight before they decide whether to attack or not. They weigh you. They know suicide missions when they see them. Those who don't know are probably freshers — when they try it and something happens, others confirm.

How Weight Is Built and Sustained

One of the ways you generate weight is prayer. Prayer. Prayer. Prayer.

That is why the foundations of hunger, sincerity, and seriousness were laid first. If you merge those three foundations together, you will build weight in the spirit. It is impossible not to.

There is asking for rain in the time of rain, and there is contending for rain whether it is the season or not. When there is sacrifice, fire will fall. So whether or not this is a declared season of breakthrough, we can create breakthroughs by mounting pressure as believers.

When people have prayed for rain, God will answer by sending you. You enter the territory and the territory opens up without any further prayer or programme — your presence in the meeting becomes the answer.

I took part in a session once where we prayed from about eight in the morning. A brother joined us around two or three in the afternoon, just speaking in tongues — only present for a short portion of what the others had been building for hours. By the end, the weight of what had been accumulated rested on and through him, and the room was shifted. That's the nature of accumulated spiritual weight.

Sometimes the weight is not even coming from the person on the platform. There was a man who carried enormous weight in a fellowship. When he left, the entire fellowship felt his absence. Weight sits on a house.

Prayer is not a unit. Prayer is not for the few. Men ought always to pray — not the prayer unit, not the few. Everyone must pray.

The Weight and Spiritual Warfare

When you are considering weight in the context of spiritual warfare — the enemy understands it. A bat was found dead in our office during a thirty-day prayer programme. The office had been completely shut — no hole, no way anything could have entered. From the day before where I had been bowing in prayer in that office, to the next day, the thing had fried. You could tell something struck it. That is not a story for hype; it was carefully verified. That is what weight does.

You can be frowning without weight. You don't fake weight. People experience weight.

DGC must never come to a point where this weight is gone. It is not about the pastor — it must sit on the house, it must sit on us as a family.

Weight and Giving

By a person's giving, we can tell that somebody has shifted. There was a man who in the early days of DGC wanted to collect change back from a relatively small offering he had given. Not long after, by the grace of God and the work of weight in him, that same person was sending hundreds of thousands. He said, "How come you're praying like this in DGC and you think you can give to DGC and not shift?" When you have pastors who are not taking from the house for personal gain, and the back end of prayer is running, something about that environment will challenge you to shift.

Some of the major shifts happen when you decide to do something significant for the house of God — things you had been waiting on dropped.

Let the weight of God's glory rest upon your life. Let a weight rest upon your ministry, on your voice, on your business. Let a weight rest on your social media. People will listen to you because there is a weight on your life. Let the grace of God rest on you and let that glory of God cause men to honour you. They will look at you and say, we don't know why but there is something about you — it is that weight. Something arrests them. Let the weight of God's goodness rest upon your life in Jesus mighty name. Amen.