Bill Winston - Understanding the Anointing
The anointing abides in you and whatever you do should what? Should prosper. Say amen to this. So I'm saying, Jesus is saying, "Wait a minute. The same thing that was on me is on you, and so this anointing by even using this anointing, this anointing will grow in terms of its intensity, but it comes by you". Somebody's got to use it. Now, this anointing must flow through you. So what we did is we went to 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 and in 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 we saw where this, the chosen of God, why he chooses the one He chooses.
Look at verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men, for you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the what? The foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised has God chosen, yea, things which are not, to bring to nought the things that are. Why? So that no flesh should glory in His presence. So what am I saying here? God is choosing people who are not people who self acclaim themselves as strong.
In other words, they are people who God can work with who has made room for His strength to work through them and through it, they'll never be defeated. So He has chosen to use the weak, glory to God, things of the world to manifest His mighty strength. Isn't that good? Now if you look over to 2 Corinthians in 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, you'll see here with apostle Paul, verse 7, he said, "Lest I should be exalted above the measure through the abundance of revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh," now that didn't come from God, that came from the devil. "The messenger of Satan to buff at me, lest I should be exalted above measure".
Now that's buffet, it's not buff-ay. Buffet me, okay. Verse 8, for this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said to me, my what? "My grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in thy weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities". Infirmities there does not mean sickness or disease, it means weakness. Infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Now let's look at verse 9 and CEV translation and let's see what it says. Look what it says here. But he replied, "My gift of undeserved grace is all you need. My power is strongest when you are," what? "Weak". So, if Christ keeps giving me His power, I will gladly brag about how weak I am. So it's very important that when God chooses you, you make up your mind right away that I'm not taking any credit for this, that God who chose me is going to use me.
Another one we saw is when David came in, let's go back there one more time, 1 Samuel and 1 Samuel Chapter 17, and this is when... 16, pardon me. This is when God was choosing David. The prophet Samuel came to the house of Jesse and Jesse had some sons, I think eight sons. So he said, "I'm coming here to anoint someone at your house". Well that made Jesse feel real good, praise God. I must have been doing something right, somebody's coming to anoint my boys. Well, all seven of them, I think he had eight total. All the others except David passed before Samuel. God said these are not the ones. Now, I've got a feeling one of the reasons why he chose David is because David knew he couldn't do something, in the natural, and that he would be one that would give God all the glory. See?
So here he asks a very important question, verse 11, and Samuel said to Jesse, "Are here all your children"? So you have to ask the right question sometimes because other than that, David would have been out there keeping sheep today. So what happened is he asked the question, he said, "Yeah, I've got one more, but he's young. He's keeping sheep and so forth and so on. They are menial tasks for the household". "Well," he said, "Go bring him in here". Once he brought him in, God spoke to Samuel and said, "This is he," and he took the oil and anointed him. Now, once he anointed him, he had no outward proof that this worked. He had no proof that this worked. How did he know to anoint David? By the Spirit of God. Once he did it, how did he know it was done? By faith. He just carried out the will of God. Right there on that spot, he didn't see anything. I can guarantee you David didn't go in the corner and pick up a chest of drawers. You know what I mean? He didn't do anything. Samuel left, knew it was done.
I'm saying once you get saved, born again, baptized in water, and filled with the Holy Ghost, it's on you. Don't be trying to feel something. "Can't you feel it, pastor"? No. No, I can't. No. You got it. Sitting in that chair, looking at me, you got what I got. Watch this. And we've got what Jesus has. Right now. And the more you act on it, the stronger it becomes. It's not that it's increasing in strength. It's increasing in getting through you. Now, this anointing is powerful because I saw in 1 Kings, 2 Kings Chapter 13 where they threw a man who was dead on the bones of Elijah in his grave and the man got up and started walking and was completely healed. I saw over in Acts and Acts Chapter 19 where handkerchiefs were taken from Paul and the next thing you know, taken and put on people who were demon-possessed and they got delivered. This is the same anointing that's on you right now. It's not but one anointing.
So the Bible calls it a mystery. Say mystery. So your brain is not going to know this. The only way it can be done is renewed to the fact that this is in you. You can't feel it. So I'm just saying that as you get stronger and stronger though, you'll see some things and sometimes I can feel the heat in my hands and so forth like that. When you pray for some people, they'll say "Wow. I felt some heat coming there". That's that anointing taking over and so forth and so on. All right? Now, in Philippians 4:13, he says "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me". In 1 John Chapter 4 in Verse 4, he says "That greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world". Are you with that?
Let me delve into something here that I want you to hold on. Okay? Because we're going deeper. Matthew 4:4 says something. "Jesus answered and said 'It is written man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God". Say every word. All right. Now, so the Bible gives us the truth. The Bible gives us the truth. Now, if somebody reads the Bible and say "I don't believe that," the Bible says "Let God be true and every man be a liar". That's found in Romans, Romans Chapter 3 in Verse 4 I think it is. So I don't care whether you believe this. Well I do care, but I don't. I believe it. Watch this. And God believes it. I believe it. Okay. You believe it. All right. Okay.
Now, over in Matthew Chapter 16, this is when Jesus is here up in Caesarea Philippi and he was with the disciples and he asked them who did they say that I, the son of man, am. That's for a reason. They answered and said, some say "You're John the Baptist," so forth. He said "But who do you say that I am"? And Verse 16, Simon Peter answered and said to him "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God". Jesus answered and said to him "Blessed are thou Simon boy Jonah for flesh and blood is not revealed as to you, but my Father which is in heaven". So the Father told him what the answer was. Verse 18, "And I said to thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock, I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it".
Now, what picture is in our minds from that scripture? Because here's the right picture. No, here's the wrong picture. The wrong picture is not you and I sitting up in the church building and the devil trying to beat on the door trying to come in. Okay. Because sometimes he comes in with people. Okay. That's all right. We're putting him out. That is not the picture. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. No, no, no. The right picture is you invading Satan's territory. Watch this. His gates will not hold you out. Gates often symbolize a seat of authority. It won't hold you out. It won't hold you out. So this is what he said. Then he said this in the next verse. In Verse 19, he said "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven".
Now let's look at another translation of that. Let's try the CEV translation again. "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and God in heaven will allow whatever you'll allow on earth, but He will not allow anything you don't allow". With that verse, who is the one that is responsible for what is allowed? We are. We are. And you will find that when your life has not changed, usually it's because you are not in control of it. You have given control to somebody else. I'll say it again. When your life has not changed, 99.9% of the time, it's because you have not been in control of your life. You have given control to somebody else. Do you remember when in Mark chapter 10 there was a man called Blind Bartimaeus? You remember that?
Verse 46. "and they came to Jericho," they came to Jericho, Jesus and the followers, "and Blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging, and when he had heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, 'Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.' And many charged him that he should hold his peace, but he cried out more a great deal, 'Thou Son of David, have mercy on me', and Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And when they called the blind man saying unto him, 'Be of good cheer. Arise, He calleth for thee,' and he casted away his garments, arose, and came to Jesus. Jesus answered and said unto him, 'What will thou that I should do unto thee?' And the blind man said unto Him, 'Lord that I might receive my sight'. And Jesus said to him, 'Go thy way. Thy faith has made thee whole.' And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way".
Now that's one. Turn to John chapter five, please, because I want to take this principle and strap it around you so that you can always judge what's going on, because we are blaming too many people. We done blamed the man, the government. Come on. We done blamed city of Chicago. We had blamed everybody except the one we need to blame, and I'm telling you, as long as you blaming somebody you're not changing. Let's take that out. "Well, they caused so and so". Well, fine. Then let's go on and now it's up to you. I won't read all of this. Here's a man, and this in John chapter five, this man was sitting beside the pool of Bethesda and you know, every now and then the angel came and stirred up the water and whoever jumped in first was healed.
In verse five. "And a certain man was there, had an infirmity 38 years. Jesus saw him lying and knew that he had a long time been in this case and He said to him, 'Wilt thou be made whole?' And the impotent man began to blame somebody. 'Well, I have no man and the government didn't send me my check on Saturday,'" and so forth and so on. You can always tell when you're blaming somebody. You never move. Try to move and blame. Now I'm not saying somebody didn't do something. I'm just saying if you get in a certain frame of mind, then nothing changes. See, when you change it's because you believe differently. When you blame somebody, it sends a signal to your subconscious that you have nothing to fix. You have nothing to fix. And your subconscious does not change, because it's got to have a reason to change.
So, I want to read that verse again because it's very strong. CEV translation of Matthew chapter 16, 19. "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and God in heaven will allow whatever you allow on earth, but He will not allow anything you don't allow". That's in your finances. Come on. In your body. Come on. In your house. Come on. In your business, in whatever it is. And honestly, man, that's powerful but faith calls for you to be responsible and so you have to be. That's the fight of faith. A lot of times, we try to put it on somebody. I'm not saying that somebody didn't do something, but I'm just saying I had to get over it.
I remember when I was at IBM, and I was coming out of flying fighters for the military and you know, fighter pilots think they all that and a bag of chips. So what happened was I came and I joined IBM and so I mean, I went through the training just with flying colors and I was president of about three of the classes and so forth. So I was tall hog at the trough. And so what happened was now, I'm trying to sell. But sales wouldn't come. They wouldn't come. They would not come. Man, the first month didn't come. I had cut my salary in half because I'm expecting to make the rest up on commission. But when they cut that thing in half, boy, you would feel that thing. No, I better say it again. You can feel that when they cut your salary in half. The next thing I know, here I am, see.
Now all kinds of things went through my mind, you know. Visions of sugar plums, you know. "Well, they don't like me. Us black people, blah blah". And then, pretty soon I woke up. I said, "Wait a minute". Are you following what I'm saying? "Wait a minute". And I have to admit, getting saved helped me to wake up, you know. But I said, "No, no, no, no. It ain't going to happen". You follow what I'm saying? Man I caught a hold of that thing, caught a hold to the kingdom and sowing and reaping and so forth. Came out number one down in the offering. Number one. I had to get over all my excuses for not being successful. When you got the Holy Ghost in you, angels working for you, the blood of Jesus to clean you up when you mess up, come on, all of that and you going to make an excuse? Satan's job is to not let you take responsibility for your life. It's his job. Don't let them take responsibility for it because if they do, they're going to tap into God's power.