So, what did Jesus do? He became fully knowledgeable and fully persuaded of God’s Word. He was looking into the Word of God from the age twelve to thirty, finding out what the prophets said. He was reading Isaiah and Jeremiah. He was studying the law of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and seeing the pattern of Himself. He was reading David and discerned that the written Word was talking about Him. You begin to walk in power when you start looking into that Word and find out that “it is talking about me.”
He read in Isaiah 53:5 “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” As He was reading it, the Spirit of God said, “That’s about You!” One day, at about eighteen or nineteen years old, perhaps He looked over Deuteronomy 18:15 where Moses said: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” And the Spirit of God said, “That’s about You.” He was reading where the Bible says: “For He shall grow up before Him as a tender …root out of dry ground” (Isaiah 53:2), and “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness…” (Jeremiah 23:5), and God said, “That’s You.” So, Jesus began to walk with this knowledge.
Many of us want to do ministry and do great things for God. We receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost, but we have not take the years “between twelve and thirty yet,” and we are wondering why God isn’t using us as we desire to be used. Do you know why? It is because we have not yet established the discipline to fame our world by the Word of God. When situation come to us, we say the first thing that comes into our mind instead of what is already in our spirit – you cannot do ministry like that.
In Matthew 16, Peter at Caesarea Philippi had confessed that Jesus was the Christ. One of His disciples finally knew who He was by the Spirit of God. Jesus asked them:
“Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, but who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:13-16).
Because most of us are not of Hebrew origin, we do not understand the power of the revelation when Peter said, “You are the Anointed One.” What he was saying is, “You are the One whom all the prophets have told us was coming; that is who You are. You are the One of whom Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Habakkuk, and all the prophets spoke.” “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (Matthew 16:21). “from that time” means He was not saying this before, but from that time He started saying, “You know what, I am going to go to Jerusalem, I am going to die, and I am going to be raised from the dead.
Now, notice what Peter did when He said this: “Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men’” (Matthew 16:22-23). Why was he saying that? It was because Peter did not understand what Jesus was doing. Jesus was speaking the Word of God that He had to speak in order to be raised from the dead. Because the God-Kind of Faith speaks what it believes based on the Word of God, you have to tell anything that will keep you from speaking God’s Word to “get behind you.” Look at those people and say, “You do not understand what I am doing; I have to do this to get God’s results. I am not just speaking. This is the way I am going to get out of this. This is the way I am going to do and finish what everybody says cannot happen! This is how I am going to accomplish what nobody has ever accomplished before! I have to take what God has said to me and say it!”
Notes to Remember
"You are going to get what you say, not what you pray."
