Counterfeit Power

Hey, welcome to my show, Self Talk with me, Dr Ray Self. Can you believe it? This is episode 198. 198 podcasts. I appreciate you listening today. Today, I'm going to be talking about a really serious topic about counterfeit power, and how we inadvertently step right into it. Very important show and, but I think it's going to be a blessing to you. The show is sponsored, as always, by the International College of Ministry, enrolling right now at icmcollege.org. I pray that, um, the show will bless you and help you. Be sure and share it with your friends, and download it, subscribe, you know, all that good stuff to do. Anyway, thank you for listening to this episode about counterfeit power. What is that? How does it happen? How do we do that? Let's listen, and you'll enjoy it.

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Okay, here we go, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for everyone listening to my show. I pray, Father, that this show will be a blessing and that I'll speak truth - your truth, Father. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. Please anoint me for this time and anoint everyone listening to this show. And bless them, Father. In the name of Jesus, amen. So I want to talk about counterfeit power. What do I mean by counterfeit power? And let me explain this to you because I know you've heard this before. In, in the realm of Christianity, so many times you'll hear things like, um, “Oh, there's power in the, the tithe,” um, “there, there's power in, in the first fruit offering,” “oh, there's power in our praise, there's power in this, there's power in that.” Well, that sounds all, all great because we're always looking for an inside track with God, are we not? But is there power in praise? Is there power in the tithe? Is there power in the first fruit offering? Is there power in our confession? Is there power in all these things? Well,, let's talk about that because you hear this type of term all the time but the Bible's very clear on some things: that the power, the supernatural power that is valid, that is not counterfeit, belongs to God. And it comes to the Holy Spirit. And I put that in the show notes, Acts, you know, chapter one, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” True power, legitimate power, comes through the Holy Spirit. It comes through the name of Jesus Christ, through Jesus. It's, it's, it's Him. Now, there are– there is other power out there. There's the power of witchcraft, there's, and– there's the power of all these New Age stuff which is all demonic. Let's just put it this way: there's demonic power and then there's the power of, of the Holy Spirit and a lot of things that people attribute to being powerful…If it's not Jesus Christ, if it's not the Holy Spirit giving glory to Jesus Christ, it's going to be counterfeit, and it's dangerous. And so, what I'm trying to tell you is we need to be careful when we subscribe power to certain things, actions. “There's power in my tithe, there's power in my praise, there's power,” you know, “in, in my offering,” there's in all these different things that we do…”there, there's power in my confession.” Well, all power and all glory belongs to Jesus Christ. 

Now, there are things that we do that please Him and I think can uh, that the, the Holy Spirit can work with. You know, a positive confession is something the Holy Spirit can work with, okay? A negative confession is something a demon can work with, okay? A tithe is something God can work with, but to say the tithe has power in itself is actually incorrect. To say your praise has power in itself is incorrect. Now, our praise, it pleases God, okay? Our praise worships God, but we want to be careful that we don't credit power to something other than God Himself. Now, we have God in three persons. There's the Holy Spirit who is the, who is the power of God, we have Jesus, the Son of God, and then we have God the Creator. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one God. That's the Trinity, that's a whole nother discussion. But so many times it's like we keep looking for a way to have additional power, a way that we can really do something powerful and if I do this and if I, if I…you know, there's power in the anointing oil, there's power in holding my– raising my hands, there's power in shouting, there's power in tongues. But you see, I think, and, and scripturally, anything that we attribute power to that's not Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, to me is counterfeit. 

Now, is it good to praise? Absolutely. Is it good to have a positive confession? Absolutely. Is it good to give? Absolutely. All these things are good, okay? And there's power in thanksgiving, yeah, I hear that; but you see, the power is not in our praise, the power is not in our giving, the power is not, not in our worship, the power is God. It's the Holy Spirit. Now, worship and praise pleases God, and the anointing tends to come when we do praise and worship. Giving pleases God, okay? Um, you know, positive proclamation, you know, there's, there's life and death in the power of the tongue. We talk about the tongue being powerful, but it's not that, it's not that my tongue is powerful; it's what my tongue can invoke when I speak the Word of God. God responds to that, the Holy Spirit responds to that. When I speak in agreement with the devil, the devil will respond to that. So the power, the supernatural power, is either coming from the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, or it's coming through demons, or there's no power happening at all. 

So what I want to say is, we always want to give all glory, all credit, to the Lord. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Now, there's power in me, there's power in you, but that power is the Holy Spirit. Period. End of subject. The power is the Holy Spirit. So if I say there's power in something else, that's not actually true. Now again, there's things that we do that the Holy Spirit likes and He responds to it and that is powerful, but the power is coming from the Holy Spirit. It's not coming from my actions, it's not coming from my giving, it's not coming from my anointing oil, it's not coming from how I raise my hands, it's not coming from me speaking in tongues. It's coming from the Holy Spirit because I'm doing things that are in agreement with the Holy Spirit, I'm doing things that the Holy Spirit likes, the Holy Spirit can work with, or, I'm saying and doing things that the demonic forces, the dark forces can work with. So the power is not in my tithe, the power is not in my praise, the power is not in my confession, although all these things are really, really good to do. The power belongs to the Holy Spirit. The power is always coming from the Holy Spirit. The power is not coming from tithe, it’s not coming from worship, it's not coming from your confession. All these things we should do. What happens is when we tithe and give, and when we worship and when we pray in the spirit, the Holy Spirit responds to this, but the power is coming from the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is glorifying Jesus Christ. The power is always coming from– true power, real power, legitimate power, is always coming from the Holy Spirit. That's the true power, okay? 

Jesus was full of the Spirit, that's why He did His miracles. So the power comes from the Holy Spirit, not from my actions, not from something I said, not from something I gave. Now again, these things can please the Holy Spirit, and He will respond to that in power. I hope this makes sense but again, I don't want to attribute or give credit to another thing, object, or action as having power in itself other than Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And so, so many times we say, “Well, there's power in–” I remember one time there’s uh– “there's power in our faith, there's power in our first– first fruit offering, there's power in thanksgiving.” Well, these things we do can in– please God and invoke a powerful response from God, but the actual power, the supernatural power, is not in our actions, it's in God's response to our actions, if that– hope that makes sense to you. 

You know, I'm not trying to be too technical here, um…And then you have the dark side. There's always so many people– “Well, there's, there's power in the uh…” just today I was talking about somebody with essential oils. “Oh, they're powerful, essential oils. Oh, there's power in nature, there's power in the wind,” you know, “there's power in, in the psychics, there's power in a tarot card, there's p–” and all this is demonic evil power. “There's power in these curses and spells.” And there actually is power, but it's counterfeit, evil, evil power, and it's coming– and people do these things, demons respond and act upon what they are doing. They, they act upon the witches' chants, the witches’ curses. They act upon the New Age mess and junk, and they act upon it. You see, when we attribute something supernatural and…we, we claim it’s supernatural, and it's not the Holy Spirit, it's going to be demonic. You understand what I'm saying, is? So, and people do this all the time. Yoga, what– one of my pet peeves. “Oh, we do yoga, then we, we get this enlightenment coming up our spine, that Spirit of Kundali will enlighten us.” “If we, if we say this mantra and we do these exercises enough, we get enlightened.” Enlightened to what? What, what, in, in, in yoga is Hindu worship. Yoga poses are worship poses to the Hindu gods. Yeah, it's powerful because the demons love that stuff and they respond to it. So when we do Godly things such as praise, praying in the spirit, giving, worshiping, the Holy Spirit responds in power but the power is coming from the Holy Spirit, it's not coming from things I'm doing, things I'm saying, things I'm trying to achieve – that's works. That's my works. The power’s maybe that's a good way to put it. The power is not coming from my works and my efforts; it's coming from the Holy Spirit. But when my works and my efforts are in agreement with God and in agreement with the Holy Spirit, in agreement with His Word, then powerful things happen. 

The power is not in my faith, but my faith pleases God. Without faith, we cannot please God, so when I act in faith, it pleases God, and God responds to my faith. You see Jesus responding to people's faith in the New Testament. Their faith didn't contain the power; their faith was something that pleased Jesus, that He would respond to and react to and powerful things would happen. So maybe I'm being a little bit too particular here, but we do not want to call something powerful…that something innate has power or our actions has power when all true power comes from the Holy Spirit. 

Now again, I want to make this clear. I know I'm sounding a little bit repetitious, but you got to get this straight. It is good to worship, and worship can be powerful. Now, it's not my singing that is powerful, it's not the words to the song that are powerful, it's not the, the guitar playing and the keyboard playing that's powerful, it's when we worship, the Spirit of God responds to that and the power of God comes into the room. But the power is not coming from our worship; the power is coming from God. The not power– the power is not coming from my giving of a tithe; the power is coming from God. The power is not coming from my faith, the power is coming from God. Do you understand what I'm saying? And I think it's important to differentiate that, and I'm talking to mature Christians here, and I hope, I hope you get this. So all glory goes to God. God's a jealous God. When you look at the history of Israel, the only time - I mean, God put up with a lot of stuff, right? They rebelled, they sinned, and they did all kinds of stuff, but the only time God was ready to destroy them was when they started doing something spiritual that was not about Him. Remember the golden calf? They were worshipping a golden calf. They were doing something spiritual that was not centered on Him. And that caused God to be angry; He's a jealous God. 

So if something has a supernatural aspect to it and it's not the Holy Spirit doing the supernatural, it's going to be displeasing to God and can also be something that demons can work with. If it's supernatural, if it's a miracle, all true miracles and all true power is coming from the Holy Spirit. Other things: actions, words…words are not powerful in themself– by themselves. A word is not powerful; however, a word can cause a response from the Holy Spirit - a positive response - or a word can cause a response from a demon. So the words are important and, and the Bible says that words are powerful because they invoke power either of the devil or of God. I hope that makes sense. 

So do not call something…claim that this has the power– some object, some action, some thing that we do contains the power of God. The power of God only comes through the Holy Spirit, who resides within us, and He also resides without us. So again, worship is great, praise is great, and when– you know, I love to praise, I love to pray in the spirit, and so many times when I worship and I pray in the spirit, I will feel God's presence, and that's powerful. Well, what I did was not the power, the power was coming from the Holy Spirit who responded to what I did. So the power always comes from the Holy Spirit. When the Bible said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” that's the power of the Holy Spirit. So all power, and supernatural, if it's of God, is coming from the Holy Spirit. If it's supernatural and has some power in it, and it's not the Holy Spirit, it's going to be evil and displeasing to God. And that's all I can say about that. I hope this makes sense to you. It's kind of a heavy show, sometimes I get a little heavy, um, but let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I pray, Father, if I've said anything in this show that's displeasing or dishonoring to you or incorrect, just let it fall to the ground and forgive me, Lord. But Lord, my heart is here that, that we make sure that all glory and all honor goes to the name of Jesus Christ and that the power of God, that the true power of God is coming only by the Holy Spirit. Not through different things, not through uh, through money or through a word or through an action. The power of God is through the Holy Spirit. And Lord, I know that our actions are important and our words are important because the, the Holy Spirit will respond to that, Father, and our faith is important, Father. But we just want to make sure, Father, we give credit, proper credit where credit is due, and that's what I'm trying to say today, Father. So Lord, I thank you for everyone listening to the show. Bless them, Father bless them, Father. Let there be no confusion today, Father. In Jesus’ name, Father, I pray. Amen, amen. Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate you listening to episode 198 of Self Talk. Amen.

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Well, folks, this closes out episode 198 about counterfeit power. And you know, all I'm trying to say is that all power, all supernatural power, true supernatural power that is real and pleasing to God comes through the Holy Spirit. So we want to be careful in claiming that other things contain power, that other things other than the Holy Spirit– that our actions contain power, that uh, my words contain power. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't do these things, what I'm saying is the power is coming from the Holy Spirit and our words can invoke the Holy Spirit, can please the Holy Spirit and cause a response by the Holy Spirit. But, the power is not coming from my action or my thing I'm doing, the power is always coming– true power is always coming from God manifested through the Holy Spirit. And of course, there's always that counterfeit, you know, the, the, the New Age stuff and the mystical stuff that's all over the place. But I hope this has made sense to you, and just, you know, just…all we got to do is say, Lord, I give glory to you. I know that um, all power and all glory belongs to you, Lord, and I'll praise– I praise you, Father. We worship you, Lord; we thank you, Father, and Lord, the only power I have is your power. The only good that is within me, Father, is your Holy Spirit. And so Lord, bless everyone listening to the show today again, Father. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

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