"Expect a Miracle" - Part 7

Oral Roberts valued the anointing. Here is what he said.

“I tried each time to be absolutely certain I was anointed by the Holy Spirit.

We must give the message and stay anointed while we give it. I discovered that secret the hard way. There were times when I felt my message so strongly in me that I got cocky and didn't spend enough time seeking God to anoint me as the messenger to help deliver those who were suffering.

God's Word is already anointed. Preachers or teachers must also he anointed. We are handling divine material, not just a secular message or some argumentative theory. We are to deliver the Word as an oracle of God, knowing God personally and intimately, feeling the needs of the people to the extent we feel what they feel, and knowing that as mortal beings, we cannot of our own knowledge and ability do anything in the spiritual realm by ourselves. 'And the Lord went with them, confirming his word with signs following' (see Mark 16.20).

I soon knew when I was anointed and when I was not. It is awesome to face a group of people, few or many, knowing that they have mortal bodies but immortal souls, that some are terminally ill, that all are sick in some way, and understanding they came not only to hear me but also to hear God's voice speaking inside them through the Word preached. Not feeling that awesomeness leads to tickling their fancy with a message that has no heart or soul in it, or lulling the people to believe God is not all-powerful and able to do 'exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think' (Eph. 3:20).

That is the reason many who are called do not enter the ministry; the awesomeness of it intimidates them. That is also why some feel they must preach the gospel, but they seek an easy way out by preaching surface-type talks, without the Holy Spirit's powerful anointing to prick the hearts of their hearers.

One day as I was studying Jesus' words in Luke 4: 18 on the anointing, the Lord spoke these words to me:

"'The anointing is that divine energy that separates you from yourself and fills you with the glory of God so that when you act, it is like God acting, and when you speak, it is like God speaking.

I knew it was God speaking because it lined up with His Word and with what happened in Jesus Himself when He had preached and taught and healed-the three things He did during His earthly ministry. Those three things He did have burned in my spirit, and I have risked everything to understand how to apply them to myself and to my preaching, teaching, and healing in Jesus' name.

The anointing separates you from yourself so that God is in charge of you. The anointing fills you with divine energy so that you are not limited to preaching or doing God's work solely in your own strength or reason.

That is one reason the prophet said, 'The anointing breaks the yoke." (See Isa. 10..27.) There is a yoke on people, and it's not Jesus' yoke, which is "easy," as He says in Matthew 11.30. It is the yoke of bondage to sin, fear, hate, vengeance, jealousy, ego, lying, stealing, murder, sickness, disease, lack, and demon possession - in fact, to everything that destroys human beings and their dreams and hopes.

The anointed preacher, who has spent hours preparing himself and his message, sends the hot fires of the Holy Spirit to bum the yoke off people who believe, and supernaturally brings them into totally new attitudes, new purposes, new commitments, and new expectations. There is simply no other way to do this through ministry for people.

Jesus explains it in Luke 4:18:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he bath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;
he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised.

The mortal person doing the preaching can prepare until he or she memorizes every word of
the message and delivers it flawlessly, but unless he or she is anointed, the message will not cut through Satan's wall of bondage, it *W not open the eyes of the understanding of people to their possibilities in God, it will not activate the listener's faith, and it will not heal, deliver, recover, set free, or bind up the wounded!

I discovered that the difference in being anointed and not being anointed is monumental. Without it, you're on your own. With it, all your senses come alive, your mind blossoms, your body feels light and graceful in its moves, your spirit is in control, and you realize what you're doing is God inspired beyond any measure you know. People hearing or dealing with you know all this, too. That is, they feel something powerful and wonderful that they can't always understand or explain. But it reaches inside them for a decision to be made one way or the other toward the Lord.”


(Roberts, Oral. 1995. Expect a Miracle: My Life and Ministry. Nashville Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers. p 352)