BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

2 0 : B V O V the New Testament? Are there any examples of spiritual partnership there?" Certainly. Just look at the disciples who helped in the earthly ministry of Jesus. They became partakers of His Anointing. They did the same works He did, exercised the same authority in His Name, and walked in the power of THE BLESSING on the same level with Him. As Jesus' disciples today, we're following in their footsteps. We've become partakers of His Anointing and we're walking in the promise He made in Mark 16:17-18: "These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." As we do those things, we're actually carrying out the assignment God gave to Abraham—we're taking THE BLESSING of The LORD to all the families of the earth. As believers, that's our primary job. "Well," someone might say, "I think our job, as believers, is to spread the gospel." It is! We just haven't fully understood what that means. We've thought of the gospel as being simply the good news that Jesus purchased forgiveness for our sins and made the way for us to be born again. But it includes more than that. The full gospel is the good news that through Jesus THE BLESSING is back! That God has brought to pass in our day what He began in Genesis 13 when He "preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8). That BLESSING is released and spread abroad in our day just as it was in Abraham's day—through divine partnerships. It's manifested first as we enter into "the fellowship [or partnership] of…Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Corinthians 1:9) and become partakers with Him in the anointing that belongs to every believer. Then it's further multiplied as we partner with other ministers of the gospel, and become partakers of the anointing and grace God has given them to equip them for the specific work to which He has called them. You can see what I mean in Philippians 1. There, the Apostle Paul was writing to some of his ministry partners. Expressing his appreciation for them, he said: I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship [or partnership] in the gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace (verses 3-7, emphasis mine). Just think for a moment about the grace that was on the Apostle Paul! It enabled him to operate in the power of God at a very high level. One time when he and Silas were locked up in the bottom of a dungeon, it exploded into manifestation and, as they were praying and singing praises to God, an earthquake hit. It rattled the foundations of the prison so hard that all the doors in the place came open. Where did that earthquake come from? It came out of Paul and Silas. It was produced by the power of God that equipped Paul to be an apostle and assisted him in "his bonds." The grace that worked in him for the "defence and confirmation of the gospel" manifested in the form of signs, wonders and miracles. It produced the remarkable healings that marked his ministry—the anointing that flowed into the handkerchiefs that, after they touched his body, healed and drove demons out of anyone who came into contact with them, and the kind of lightning-like power that temporarily blinded a sorcerer named Elymas in Acts 13 when he tried to stop Paul from preaching to a political leader. Talk about an exponential increase in the anointing! That's the kind of divine power the Philippians tapped into when they became partners in Paul's ministry and grace. Nothing but a Pencil I'll never forget the first time I understood this. I was a student at Oral Roberts University, just getting started in ministry. I was working

• Cover