Proclamation Power

Last weekend, I watched a very powerful sermon by Derek Prince on YouTube.  It’s called “The Power of Proclamation.”  If you have not seen it, I highly recommend you do so.  It has been reverberating through me all week, and one truth in particular: “Proclamation releases the authority of God’s Word into a situation…your own life, your family, your church, even your nation.”

I can barely take that in, but the Holy Spirit is connecting it to something that Martha told me years ago (and several times since): ask God for His Word on a person or situation, and when you get a promise from Him, stand on it.  I always thought that “stand on it” meant just defending it.  Kind of like playing capture the flag – you guard the flag, right? But now I see that there is an offense to standing on God’s promises as well.  Proclamation!

If I proclaim the promise that God gives me for a person, then I release the authority of His Word into their life.  If I proclaim the promise that God gives me for a terrible situation, then I release the authority of His Word right into the middle of the mess.  I’m not just holding on for dear life to His promise as I’m assailed by doubt and fear. No, I am striking out at the doubt and fear and making them bow to the only Authority that they acknowledge: the power of the name of Jesus Christ.  And all while sitting in my living room.

I don’t fully understand the power of proclamation—but Satan does.  Derek Prince talked about the Middle East and North Africa as the hardest area on earth to penetrate with the Gospel, and he tied it to the power of proclamation.  He said that hundreds of years worth of proclamations (“There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet…”), five times a day in thousands of mosques, has fortified that area.  I never thought of that!

I wonder now if the Lord brought the hammer to my unbelief in part to prepare me for this revelation.  To proclaim His Word in faith, believing that it will accomplish all that He wants it to and will succeed in the very thing He sent it to do (Is. 55:11), is to release the power of His authority in full.  Just imagine! For those days when His promise seems far away or simply impossible, here is the step beyond just defending against doubt and despair.  Doubt and despair can be sent back to their wretched hole in hell as Authority banishes them through proclamation. Ha!

I think that my experience of healing through spiritual warfare involved proclamation.  I proclaimed God’s promise of complete forgiveness and cleansing by the power of His Blood (the Gospel!) and the pain disappeared.  His authority was released into my body.

I find that I am a little wild with joy over all of this.  Just think! God gave us the means – and great privilege – to usher His authority into the lives of people, and into the turmoil of situations big and small, by proclaiming His Word with a believing heart. A whole new world has opened up for me as I begin to grasp the enormity of this, and all I can think is, “All right, who’s next?!”

For as [surely as] the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring forth,
so [surely] the Lord God will cause rightness and justice
and praise to spring forth before all the nations
[through the self-fulfilling power of His word].
Isaiah 61:11 AMP