Pray Luke 4:18 // PREACH THE GOSPEL to the Poor
By Mando Matthews
ekballopasadena.org
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me, To PREACH THE GOSPEL to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed;” Luke 4:18
“How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10:14
In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit fell on the apostles who gathered in the upper room and they were filled with fiery tongues. Immediately they went out from the upper room and a great crowd gathered… When they opened their mouths to explain what happened, 3,000 people were gripped by their words of power and immediately converted and baptized.
According to Charles Finney, the most well known revivalist and preacher of the 2nd Great Awakening, says this about the apostle’s Acts 2 baptism of power in his book, Power From On High, “They manifestly received as the supreme, crowning, and all-important means of success was the power to prevail with both God and man, the power to fasten saving impressions upon the minds of men. …This power was not the power of inspiration, for they only declared certain facts of their own knowledge. It was not the power of human learning and culture, for they had but little. It was not the power of human eloquence, for there appears to have been but little of it. It was God speaking in and through them. It was a power from on high–God in them making a saving impression upon those to whom they spoke. This power to savingly impress [was] upon them. It was, doubtless, the great and main thing promised by Christ, and received by the apostles and primitive Christians.”
Finney continues, “To the honor of God alone I will say a little of my own experience in this matter. I was powerfully converted on the morning of the 10th of October. In the evening of the same day, and on the morning of the following day, I received overwhelming baptisms of the Holy Ghost, that went through me, as it seemed to me, body and soul. I immediately found myself endued with such power from on high that a few words dropped here and there to individuals were the means of their immediate conversion. My words seemed to fasten like barbed arrows in the souls of men. They cut like a sword. They broke the heart like a hammer. Multitudes can attest to this. Oftentimes a word dropped, without my remembering it, would fasten conviction, and often result in almost immediate conversion.”
I believe that God is empowering a new generation of preachers so filled with the power of the Holy Spirit that everyone around them will be convicted concerning “sin and righteousness and judgment” as in John 16:8, and many thousands will be added to the church, baptized and discipled.
Prayer:
Lord, raise up a generation of preachers who will be so filled with the Holy Spirit that they are compelled to preach the Gospel with great power to a lost world. Fill my tongue with your fiery tongue, to preach the Gospel with great power. During the 10 Days of Hope California, Oct 1-10, may the Gospel be preached in with great power that leads to thousands being saved in California!
