 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Can I hear you praise the Lord! Hallelujah! I have to say that I really feel at home here. Hallelujah! My name is Ricard, I'm an evangelist all the way from Sweden. Some of you may know me, some of you may not, but we are not here to talk about me today, we're here to talk about Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! And before I start I want to use this opportunity of course to give honor where honor is due. I want to thank my Father in the Lord for everything that he has done for me and all the way long he has been supporting me. So daddy thank you very much for everything you've done for me. Thank you sir. And also I want to thank of course the leadership and the pastors of the church here for inviting me and giving me the great privilege and honor to share with you what God Almighty has put on my heart here today, before even formally knowing me. Actually it's a great privilege and I thank you very much. Hallelujah! And also I want to encourage each and every one of you that are sitting down here today. Hallelujah! Because I believe that there's something that is going on around the world today. And where I come from Europe, Sweden we are seeing it happening. And I know that you people here as well you're seeing it happening. And there is something that is going on there's like a rumbling in the spirit that is happening and it's been happening for some time now but it's getting more and more obvious. And I think that what is actually happening is that there is a new generation of people that are rising up all over the world. And the people that are rising up are people that are not concerned with names or titles or whatever. But the only thing they have as a concern is for the name of Jesus Christ to be glorified. Hallelujah! And I strongly believe that this ministry, hungry generation, has a vital role to play for that generation and that coming revival has already started to spread across this nation and also around the world. Hallelujah! So tell your neighbor you are in the right place at the right time. Hallelujah! Praise God. Yes, I just want to take just one or two more minutes to talk about what I'm really talking about. I think that this coming revival is a faceless revival. And there are people that are, as I said, rising up. They are like there's an army that is rising up around the world right now. And these people that are rising up, they are not so much concerned with just the Word of God alone. Because we know that the Word of God alone is very fundamental to our Christian life, but it's not enough. After the Word of God, there's something that comes together with it when you practice the Word of God in truth and in life. And that is the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. Hallelujah! And the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life brings about the power of God. And that, I believe, is the difference from this coming revival and revivals in the past. What we are seeing is that we are not just seeing the Word of God being ministered across the world, but we are seeing people that are rising up. They don't care about if people know their name or not. They are so crazy and on fire for that power of God that that is exactly what Jesus Christ needs to bring the coming revival across the world. Hallelujah! And I just want to encourage each and every one of you. You are in the right place. This is a ministry that has only that fire as the foremost thing in their life. Hallelujah! Praise God. So you are in the right place at the right time. And these people that are rising up around the world as well, they know that it's not just Word of God, as I have said, but this power of God that we are talking about. It comes by your own desire. You can't just begin to go out and, you know, claim the power of God. If you don't know what you're doing, you may get into some certain situations that you will not be able to handle. Hallelujah! But this generation is coming, they have hunger and thirst for the holiness. Hallelujah! Remember that the Spirit that brings about the power is called the Holy Spirit. That means that the only way for you to have the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, which brings about the power of God, is for you to have a hunger and thirst for holiness. And that is one of the things that I'm really happy and that is one of the reasons why I really feel at home here, because I know that holiness is one of the things that the leadership and the pastors here have dearly at their heart. Hallelujah! So once again, I want to thank you for allowing me to come here and share with you what God Almighty has put on my heart. Hallelujah! Praise God! I'm not going to really talk about holiness today, I'm just using that as a bit, something that God has put on my heart that I see is coming more and more around the world. Praise God! What I'm going to talk about is something completely different, but it's something that is very dearly to me, because it's something that I have experienced throughout the years. And that is something that is called the authority of God. Hallelujah! Praise God! How many know that we as Christians have been given an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions? Raise up your hand. Hallelujah! How many again? One more time, raise up your hand. How many here don't know that we have been given an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions? How many here are not going to raise up your hand today, no matter what I ask? Hallelujah! Praise God! Yes, we have been given an authority as people of God to trample on snakes and scorpions, and those of you that say that you know that we have been given that authority, how many of you know how we use this authority in our daily life? Raise up your hand. Hallelujah! Praise God! And that is what we are going to talk about today. The believer's authority. Hallelujah! Praise God! If you can turn with me to the book of Luke chapter 10, Luke chapter 10 verse 19. Praise God! It says, Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Hallelujah! This is Jesus Christ is addressing his disciples. How many disciples of Jesus do we have here today? Hallelujah! If you are not yet a disciple, you're going to be a disciple in Jesus' name. Hallelujah! Praise God! So this is Jesus Christ is talking to his disciples saying that I have given you an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and many people they know, they take this word of God, they have read it and they understand that, yes, I have an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, but how do we actually exercise this authority as Christians? Hallelujah! Praise God! And that is what we're going to talk about. In the book of Romans chapter 10, the Bible says that there's power in our mouth. The belief in our heart is released by faith out of our mouth. If you look at Jesus in the book of Matthew 4, Jesus was in the desert praying and fasting, and there the enemy came to him and started tempting him. And with all the temptations that the devil gave to Jesus presented before Jesus, the only response that Jesus gave to the temptation was the spoken word of God. He confessed the word of God against that temptation. You know what many people do today? When they face temptations or snakes and scorpions or difficult situations, what they do is that they begin to pray in their heart, and they pray, God, deliver me from this temptation. Help me to overcome this temptation. God, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. But at the end of the day, that's good. I'm not saying that prayer is bad. Prayer is the most important thing in a daily Christian life. Hallelujah! But it's not just all. Jesus Christ spoke to that temptation directly and said, man shall not live by bread alone. Hallelujah! And that was the only way that he could overcome the temptation. Hallelujah! So also we as Christians, we have been given the same authority. Jesus Christ was the firstborn Son of God. We all were sons and daughters of God. He was the firstborn, but we are the sons and daughters of God. That means that whatever authority that has been given to Jesus, the same authority has been given to us. Now the snakes and scorpions that we are talking about here, we heard, listened to wonderful testimonies of power, of evangelism, where you go out and you pray for people, and people receive the deliverance, the healing, the chains of weakness and bad habits of broken in their life, and they receive the most important thing, salvation of their soul. But the snakes and scorpions that we are talking about here is also the snakes and the scorpions in our daily life. Hallelujah! Now I'm not talking about physical snakes and scorpions, obviously, but we are talking about temptation. Well, some may have physical ones, I don't know, but the ones I'm talking about are temptations, trials, hardships, and so on. The common calamities of human life. And these situations come at various times in our lives. And the devil knows, listen to this, he knows the authority that you and I possess. He doesn't want you and I to know, because he knows the moment that we know what we have, he's out. Hallelujah! So he does everything he can to cover that authority so that you and I will not know who is at our back covering up for us. Hallelujah! So what he does, I want to use the example of Job in the book of Job 1. Let's quickly go there. I love Job so much, because any time when me, myself, I'm facing temptations, hardships, or various circumstances, I look to Job and I say, well, I have nothing to complain about just yet. Hallelujah! Praise God. So here we are. God was boasting about Job's faithfulness and how good a servant he was among his peers. And the devil was there and the devil said, well, it's not strange that Job is always faithful. You have blessed him far beyond anyone else of his peers. Let me touch him for a bit. Let me tempt him. Let me send snakes and scorpions into his life and we'll see if he will not deny you to your face. Hallelujah! God said, go ahead. But on one condition, you cannot touch his soul. Hallelujah! That same condition stands today. We are the children of God. The devil knows that he cannot snatch us out of the hand of God. So what does he do? Look at the example of Job. You know, the Bible is our standard. Everything that is written in this Bible is for a purpose. There's nothing here that was written by accident or by coincidence. Everything has been divinely planned as a book of instruction for you and I until eternity. So what happened? The devil came to Job, tempted him, took everything from him. And then all the temptation that Job faced, it came down to one single moment in his life. And that was when the voice of temptation came to Job and said, curse God and die. Why? Because the devil knew that as children of God, we have an authority. That authority can be used in two ways. He knows he can't take your soul. So what does he do? He uses our circumstances to tempt us to destroy ourselves. He can't. He can't take your soul. He can take away your house, your wife, your husband, your car, but he cannot destroy your soul. That is why he uses our circumstances as people of God to tempt us, to speak lies to us. And the moment that we listen to the voice of our circumstances and begin to confess that voice of failure, destruction is upon us. Because he has not been given authority to destroy us. The authority we have is authority to say, devil, get behind me. I don't have your time. Hallelujah. But that same authority can be used to say, God, I deny you. Why God? Do you allow this to come upon me? God, don't you hear me any longer? I said I needed a promotion, not a sac letter. Why all this? And what have you done? You have fallen for the devil's trick to use your own authority that has been bestowed on you from on high to cause destruction upon yourself. Hallelujah. This is very, very important. When you know that there's nothing that happens to you in this world that can ever destroy you, then you begin to know the authority you are standing in. The only way that Satan, devil, the liar, whatever you want to call him, he's under our feet, by the way. The only way that he can drag you down to where he belongs is when he calls you by tempting you to confess that failure over your own life. That's what he tried to do with Job. Job refused. Hallelujah. There was someone, someone came to church for healing. This particular woman was an elderly woman in her maybe late sixties or early seventies. She had a severe back pain. She couldn't walk well. And she came to the church and the minister of God prayed for her and she received her healing. She was using this walking frame and she received her healing. She threw away the walking frame and she started walking to the glory of God. She said, thank you Jesus, I've received my healing. Hallelujah. And she walked back to her place of habitation. After a couple of months at that point, I received a phone call from this woman and she said, evangelist, I was the one that received prayer a couple of months ago and I was healed. But this morning when I woke up, I started feeling some pain on the left side of my back. You know what, evangelist? I think the back pain is coming back again. Hallelujah. You know what I told her? I said, dear lady, my mother, don't give the devil your attention. The greatest embarrassment you can give to Satan when you face such situations is to ignore his existence. We know that he exists, but he doesn't deserve our attention. Hallelujah. That you wake up with back pain today. It may be because you slept in a strange position. Madame, it doesn't mean that back pain is coming back again. Hallelujah. And she agreed and she said, yeah, maybe it's because I slept in a strange position. Yeah. And I said, begin to confess it. Don't listen to your circumstances. Don't listen to the symptoms. Listen to the word of God. The word of God says, by his stripes, I am healed. Hallelujah. After about two weeks, she called back and she said, the pain has gone away. Hallelujah. Imagine if she would have continued confessing, I believe the pain has come back. Oh yes, now that's the next step. Last time it was like that as well. When I get out of bed, it's very difficult. And from there, step by step, she listens to the voice of the tempter and she walks straight back into the situation she was in before. Why? Because she has an authority in her mouth. Hallelujah. Praise God. I want to use this opportunity to actually share a very short testimony. It's about my own dear mother. Some months ago, my mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer, heart disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. And she was the only symptom she had was that when she walks, she gets tired easily. She got tired easily. So she went to the hospital and they diagnosed one by one, by one after the other. And when it happened, of course, she was destroyed and she said, I'm only 59. Why? Why is this happening? But she quickly realized that she cannot allow this situation to cause her to doubt what the word of God says. She had to continue confessing, standing on the word of God, saying that I don't care what the doctor said. The doctor can be used by whoever to manipulate my test results. I believe in God more than man. And she kept confessing, kept confessing, kept confessing. This was about four months ago. And glory be to Jesus Christ today. She is cancer-free. The heart condition is gone and we believe that very shortly the last healing is coming as well. Hallelujah. Me personally, I know that if at that time she would have allowed herself to begin to confess sickness, Jesus Christ would not have been able to heal her. Why? Because Jesus Christ needs our faith and we unconsciously confess what we believe. You may not consciously be aware of it, but what you say every day is what you believe in your heart. If you come to church and say, I am healed, I am healed. But at home you say, oh God, not this pain again. Oh, it's getting more. It's getting worse. That what you say at home is what actually counts. Hallelujah. Praise God. So it is incredibly important for you and I to realize that there is an authority. This authority has been given from on high to you and I to trample on snakes and scorpions in our daily situation. If we allow those situations to speak to us and we listen to them and begin to confess those things, we are never getting out of it. Hallelujah. I want to use another example. There was someone that came to church as well. This person had, I hope you don't mind if I share some examples as well. Hallelujah. Someone came to the church and this man he had worked at the same working place for over 15 years and he had trained many people and the people that he trained have been promoted before him. He's still stagnant in his working place and he wasn't able to get any promotion. He wasn't able to get anywhere and he had been watching YouTube searching for spiritual solutions and he realized that probably there may be an evil spirit that is causing this in my life, that is holding me back. So he looked up at church and he came to our church and he was there. He was praying for God to set him free, set him free. Finally the man of God prayed for him and truly exactly the way that he expected it to happen, something came out of him and immediately afterwards he said, wow, I feel so free. And when he came back to his country, the first thing that happened when he came back to his working place, right? They said, okay, your boss has been looking for you. He said, wow, oh God, you are fast to answer prayer. Hallelujah. And he majestically walked into his boss's office and he said, I heard that you've been looking for me. He said, yes, I've been looking for you for quite a few days now. Finally, you are back. I want to see you sit down. How was your journey? He said, well, we thank God everything went fine. He said, okay. Unfortunately, I have some news for you and you know that our company has not been doing very good recently and we have to let some of our staff go and looking at the list of performance you are at the lower end. So unfortunately, I have to let you go. Here is your sac later. Please help me greet your wife. Hallelujah. So when he received the sac letter, he looked at him. He looked at the boss and then he looked at God and he said, is there some kind of communication problem? I said, I needed a promotion God. This is a sac letter. What's up? Hallelujah. Praise God. So I don't know what you call it in US. You understand sac letter? Hallelujah. I heard someone here. You know, I'm from Sweden and I've been across the world. My accent is just messed up. So I hope you can understand me, at least half of what I'm saying. I would be happy. Hallelujah. Praise God. A sac letter or whatever you call it. Hallelujah. Where I come from, we say bottle of water. But when I came, I realized it's a bottle of water. So I'm trying to, you know, work on it as much as I can. Hallelujah. Praise God. So he received a sac letter or, you know, he was let go from his work, relieved of his duties. And when he came home, you know, he had to explain to his wife. And the boring part of the story was that they had actually taken a loan for him to be able to go and receive deliverance at our church there. So to explain to his wife that, you know, he promised his wife that once I receive my deliverance, everything is going to work out. Just trust me, let us take this loan and everything is going to work out. But at the end of the day, he came home and he had to tell his wonderful wife that he didn't work out quite the way he planned. So the wife was of course not very happy. And at this particular time now, he was face to face with a dilemma. And this dilemma is, is he going to listen to the voice of his circumstances and begin to question God and say, God, why do you do like this? God, you know, I've been faithful for many years. You know that I give tithe in church. I always attend church service. I speak of you publicly and you do this to me. I'm telling you, if you don't fix this situation, you're losing one. Hallelujah. No, but instead he chose to say, God, you give and you take away. I trust you now as ever before. Let your will be done in my life. Hallelujah. And it took some time. There were some months that it was very, very difficult for the brother in question. But finally, after about six months, a job opportunity came his way and he was able to start his own company and he started making much more money that he could have ever done in his former company, even if he was promoted. Hallelujah. What does this? Hallelujah. This simple example just shows that many times when we come to God, we pray for certain things, but we don't actually know what the will of God is. You pray for something, say, God, give me promotion. I need a promotion. You know, I'm not praying for selfish reasons. God, I have children to feed. I want to do charity. Promote me, God, and I will return it to your kingdom. And God is on the other side standing here and saying, my son, this is the way I want you to go. Hello. Can you hear me? Come this way. And we are here and we are saying, God, hear me. God, I need you pray. And he's at our back saying, my son, here, this is the way. But many of us, because we are so filled up with praying for what we actually want, not for what we actually need. We don't hear God when he answers us. Hallelujah. It was God that made him to get sacked because if he wouldn't have done that when the job opportunity came his way, he wouldn't have seen it. In fact, he might even have rebuked it as a temptation from Satan and say, God, I'm praying for a promotion and these job opportunities are coming my way. I rebuke you, you temptation. I will be faithful. Hallelujah. So many times, God Almighty does such situations. He allows such things to happen to us so that he can put us back where we belong on track. During this period of time, your confession is of utmost importance. Don't listen to the voice of your circumstances and I'm not going to take so very much time more. I want to go to the book of Matthew, Matthew 14. This is one of my favorite scriptures in the whole Bible. Oh my God. Anytime I read it, I really, I feel something on the inside. It's so wonderful. Hallelujah. Matthew 14 verse 28 and Peter answered him talking about Jesus and said, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Hallelujah. So Jesus replied and said, come. And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. Hallelujah. Oh, I love this scripture. You know why? Because Peter did something that no man had ever done before. When he, he said, God, if it's you, tell me to come. And Jesus said, yes, come. He took a step and he began walking on the water. At this time, when he was walking on the water, water, water, hallelujah. You know, when you get excited, you forget the grammar rules that you have learned. So I'm getting excited. That's why. Hallelujah. So he was walking on the water and for every step that he took, he kept his focus on Jesus Christ. Waves were crashing down around him. The storm was very hectic. But he decided, I'm not going to look at this situation. I'm not going to listen to the voice of my situation. I'm going to only focus on Jesus Christ. And for every step that he took, the storm told him, you are sick. But he said, Isaiah 53, verse five, by his stripes, I am healed. The situation said, you are weak. He said, Psalm 28, verse one, the Lord is the strength of my life. The situation said, you are poor. He said, Philippians 419, the Lord shall supply all my needs according to his riches in glory and Christ Jesus. And he took another step. The situation said, you are not free. And he said, the Bible says, when the Son of God sets me free, I am free indeed. And for every situation that came his way, he kept confessing the Word of God. Now listen to this. He wasn't walking on the water. It's not that he was walking on water. He was walking on the Word of God. He was walking on the promise of God. The same is for us today, people of God. Whatever storm or situation you can be facing, whatever temptation, weakness or bad habit you are facing, when you walk on the Word of God, that situation cannot bring you down. There's nothing that situation can do to you. The less attention you give to the enemy, the less he will attack you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. But the moment that Peter lost his focus from Jesus and he began to look around and say, wow, that wave is much huger than me, much more huge, much bigger, much greater. Hallelujah. So he was walking and he said, wow, that wave is really huge and it's going to come crashing down on me. And he lost his focus from Jesus. What happened? He started sinking because the only way that he could walk on top of his circumstances was by walking on the Word of God. It is your and mine responsibility to not listen to the voice of our situation. That voice will always be there. You know what it will say? Especially when you have prayer line here and they pray for you and you receive your freedom. Maybe you have that feeling too that there's something that some kind of darkness stays affecting me. I don't really know what it is and people around you fall down and this one cries out and this one shouts and when they pray for you and you just stand there and you don't really feel anything at all, actually. And we begin to think that, well, I didn't really feel that I was set free. Maybe they didn't touch me good enough. You know, after all, they prayed for that person for almost 15 seconds. That one for almost 15 seconds. Me, just five seconds. After all, I'm not feeling so good, actually. We fail to realize that faith is not a feeling. Our feelings are one of those waves that come crashing down once in a while. Those things are actually one of the things the enemy uses more than anything. Our emotions, hallelujah. I'm not saying the emotions are not from God. They are from God, but we need to know how to control them because if we let them control us, suddenly we are sinking. So because you don't fall down when they pray for you, doesn't mean that you are not set free. In fact, the greatest testimonies that I have heard throughout my life are from the ones that nothing happened to them when they were prayed for because God is spirit. He doesn't operate in the physical. You don't need to feel, it's good if you feel. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but if you don't feel anything, it doesn't mean that God is not working in your life. Can you imagine when you, if you're having, maybe you're having appendicitis, I think it's called appendicitis, right? And you go to the hospital and you want them to cut it out. I mean, while they're cutting you, are you feeling anything? No. You're in a coma, you know, they have, they have tranquilized you, you know, so you don't feel anything or they've put you out or I don't know. I don't know how to, you know, express myself at all times. And it's been long that I preached in English actually. It's been like six months. So it's surprising how fast my English language have deteriorated for the past six months, actually, but it's coming back again in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. So you don't necessarily feel anything at that point. And in fact, if let's say that you didn't know that they are taking you for a surgery to remove your appendix, when you wake up from the surgery and you don't know that they have operated you, you will say, oh my God, this appendicitis is really bad. I'm feeling serious stomach pain right now because they've just done operation, right? Not knowing that that problem is gone and it's just the symptoms remaining. So don't listen to the voice of your situation. Hallelujah. Listen to the word of God. Confess the word of God. And when you do so, you begin to realize that just as Peter, nothing can bring you down or take you out. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah. So without taking too much time, I just want to say a short prayer if it's okay. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this time in your presence as we have heard the word of God from you Lord, me especially God, make me a doer of the word. You have sent forth your word to heal spirit, soul and body. You have sent forth your word to change. You have sent forth your word to break chains of bad habits and weaknesses in my life Lord and in others. We pray, let it be permanent in Jesus' name. Make me a doer of the word Lord in Jesus' name. Make a way where there seems to be no way Lord, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ we pray.