Another
Coffee Break:
Exercising Spiritual Authority
August 22, 2014
I'd really intended to
get back to our series on Dealing With Fear today, but just felt to continue
the break a bit longer. During the past
three weeks we've talked about the Eskdale Miracle. Consider today's sharing somewhat of an
extension.
What
I’m about to share with you has been shared before in bits and pieces in
previous Coffee Breaks, and if you've seen or heard this before, pardon me for
the repetition.
During
my years at Long Beach Christian Center with Dwain McKenzie, I found a house
for the family on Harding Street in North Long Beach, perhaps a mile and a half
or two miles from the church. It was in
this house that the Lord stirred me to begin fasting at least once each year
for forty days.
Following
one of those early fasts, I just felt in my spirit to begin walking the
neighborhood each morning. In
Deuteronomy 11:24, we read of Moses’ prophesying in part to Israel prior to
their entrance into the Land of Promise, “Every place whereon the
soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours.”
That scripture went through me like a shot! The emphasis of the Holy Spirit was that I
should “possess” the territory where I lived – not by buying up all of the
houses and property, but by exercising the authority of the Lord in a tangible
way.
As my walks began, I started one block at a
time. Each morning, I would walk the
complete circumference of the block, praying over each home on that block,
occasionally stretching out my hand toward a home as I was directed by the Lord
and speaking something like this, “Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I
establish your Kingdom authority in this home.
Raise up righteousness here.
Bring salvation, healing and deliverance. I claim this home and this family for the
Kingdom of God.”
Over a period of weeks and many months, the
practice continued. I began to enlarge
the territory. For awhile it was simply
one block. Then it was two. Then it increased to three, then four, then
five, then six, and so forth, until I was covering a pretty large territory.
The practice was always the same. As I walked, I would pray in tongues. Sometimes I would pray with my understanding,
saying, “Father, I agree with your Word, and I take this territory for your
Kingdom. Everywhere the soles of my feet
tread, I take this territory and possess it for your Kingdom.”
I frequently extended my hand towards homes,
towards the public schools, toward businesses, praying over the occupants, the
school children, the school administration, the businesses and their
owners. There wasn’t any visible effect
from my prayers for perhaps as much as two years. One by one, I began to hear of or meet
families in the homes I was praying over.
Very few of them actually came to our church, but I began to find that
many of these families were coming to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and
Savior.
Frequently, as I met the families, they would tell
me where they had begun to attend a church or become involved in some
fellowship. In some cases, I actually
met their pastors. People began to be
saved, healed of various diseases and afflictions, and set free from evil
spirits – all as a direct result of simply consistently walking the territory,
praying over them and extending the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as I
walked and prayed.
One day, about a block south of our home, I
happened to see the Long Beach police conduct a raid on one of the houses I had
prayed over. It was a house I had really
felt strange about, but was new enough to this kind of prayer and intercession
not to recognize what I was sensing. It
was a house I consistently proclaimed the authority of the Kingdom of God
over.
Turns out the house was being used for the
manufacture and distribution of drugs – heroin and cocaine. The police shut it down and put the drug
dealers out of business – at least in my neighborhood. I knew it was a direct result of the prayers
and the consistent walking of the area.
A few months later, a house on the opposite side of
the street and down a half block from our home was raided by the police and
shut down. Because of the red light
above the front door that used to come on every evening, I suspected that it
was a whore house. It was. Again, Holy Spirit made clear to me the fact
that it was because of the exercise of spiritual authority taking place.
I became emboldened. I called up Dick Parrish, who also served on
the pastoral staff of Long Beach Christian Center, and asked him to join me in
some of these walks. Then Dwain McKenzie
(who had been my lifetime friend, brother in the Lord, and was the senior
pastor at LBCC) began to join in the walks.
We began to walk the territory near the church.
About two blocks from the church was a home where
some bikers lived. Every time we walked
past the place, I stretched out my hand toward the home and proclaimed the
establishment of the Kingdom of God.
Nearly twenty years passed after we had walked that
territory when the Lord orchestrated an opportunity for Della and I to meet the
bikers who had occupied that home Dwain, Dick and I had walked past and prayed
over. Della and I were in Atlin, British
Columbia sharing and ministering with friends from Anchorage.
We were invited to come over for dinner to the home
of an artist and sculptor who lived in Atlin with his wife and teenage
daughter. Sitting around the dinner
table that night, we happened to mention Long Beach. The artist perked up his ears, as did his
wife.
“You were in Long Beach, California?” he
asked. “When was that?” I responded that I had been there for about
five years in the early and mid-1970’s.
“Wow, what a coincidence,” he exclaimed. “So did we!”
I asked him what part of Long Beach he had lived
in, and he described the street where Dwain, Dick and I had walked. Now it was my turn to be amazed. He and his wife went on to tell us that they
had been a part of the biker crowd, living a pretty wild, hippie kind of life.
I started to laugh.
“We never met during those days,” I said, “but you were surely some of
the people we prayed for as we walked the neighborhood.”
He almost came out of his chair. “You!
You! I used to watch you stop in
front of our house and stretch out your hand toward us. Never could hear what you were saying, but we
figured you must have been praying or something like that. That’s when my wife and I experienced the
Lord Jesus Christ coming into our lives and convicting us. That’s when we came to know the Lord for the
first time in our lives!”
I continued to walk the neighborhood where I lived,
gradually increasing the size of the territory where I walked until I was
walking portions of Atlantic and Long Beach Blvds.
One day as I was walking Long Beach Blvd., I was
shocked to see an X-rated porn theater that had just opened up. Something rose up inside of me in anger that
Satan would attempt to so brazenly encroach on territory I had been claiming
for the Lord. I walked right up to the
front of the theater, put my hands on the building and began to proclaim the
establishing of the Kingdom of God in the place.
Despite the fact that folks were standing out front
of the place and staring at me like I’d lost my marbles or something, I began
to speak out loud, “Father, in the name of Jesus, I establish your Kingdom
authority in this place. I shut this theater
down!”
It was several weeks later that I was driving down
Long Beach Blvd. and decided to check on
the porn theater. Not too surprisingly,
it was shut down. All of the billboards
and placards were gone and the theater marquee was empty. I thought to myself, Wow, this is too good to pass up.
I parked my car and walked over to the front of the
building, and again I placed my hand on the outside of the place and began to
proclaim the Word of God. I said,
“Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I again establish your Kingdom in this
place, and I raise up righteousness. Let
this building become something that will serve your purposes and be to your
Glory.” Then I got back in my car and
drove away.
Again it was some weeks that passed before I
thought of the theater and decided to go and check on it. As I drove towards the building, I saw a man
standing on a ladder putting letters on the theater marquee. I pulled over and parked and watched him
spell out the following, one letter at a time:
E – V – A – N – G – E – L T – E – M – P – L – E.
Brother, did I ever let out a war whoop! It had worked! What was once an X-rated porn theater was
shut down, and a church and worship center opened up in its place. I’ve no idea how long that church functioned
in that building, but years later when I came back to Long Beach for a visit,
it was still operating.
Naturally, I wasted no time in sharing it with the
folks at Long Beach Christian Center.
Dave Dobbs, who was also part of our staff, happened to be driving with
his wife in the San Fernando Valley some months later. They came across a huge construction site
where a large number of construction workers and a lot of equipment were busy
building some very elegant appearing structure.
Dave drove around the place out of curiosity to see
what was being built. A large sign with
an artist’s rendition displayed a future Buddhist temple. Dave remembered my experience and sharing
about the theater and thought, This is a
principle we need to apply here.
He and his wife parked their car, got out and
walked to the chain link fence that surrounded the property. They stretched their hands towards the
partially constructed building and proclaimed, “Father, in Jesus’ name, we
establish your Kingdom over this place, and we shut down this project now!”
It must have been two or three months that passed
before they happened to be back in the
Valley and thought about the incident.
They drove back to the construction site of that building, and – to
their astonishment – saw weeds grown up around the place. Construction had ceased almost from the day
they had spoken the word of authority.
Seems like it was almost a year later that Dave was
back in the Valley and thought about checking on the place one more time. The Buddhist trappings of the place were
gone, and it had been redesigned into a nice office building.
By now, you are beginning to understand what I mean
when I talk about Spiritual Authority.
That is the authority of Holy Spirit working in folks who are submitted
to the Lord and sensitive to His voice and leading. We don't get to do these things just because
it seems like a good idea. We do them at
the prompting of Holy Spirit. He plants
a rhema in our being and a holy boldness to
go with it.
That’s the kind of authority that brings
healing. That’s the kind of authority
that brings deliverance to people in captivity to Satan. That’s the kind of authority that tears down
the thrones of spiritual rulers – the apostle Paul refers to them in the Greek
text of Ephesians 6 as kosmokrator: world rulers of darkness – demon princes
who exercise power and influence to execute wickedness.
What is so fabulous is that Joe everyday Christian
has access to that authority, if he can simply grasp it. Folks get cheated out of living and walking
in this realm because of false teaching, because of screwball doctrines, and
mostly because of fear, doubt and unbelief.
If Christians would begin to exercise this kind of authority right in
the neighborhoods where they live, we would have a radically different world
today.
I shared a fair portion of the above with a group
of young folks at a fellowship in Barnwell, Alberta when Della and I were there
three or four years ago. The pastor and
his wife had a young son, two-year-old Timmy, who had club feet and had never
walked. Hearing the story of the healing
of the child in Eskdale spurred their faith and they asked if we could pray for
young Timmy. The Lord had already told
Della that He was going to repeat that event that day, so their request was not
unexpected.
We saw Holy Spirit repeat the miracle as little
Timmy walked across the platform in front of everyone for the first time in his
life. There wasn't a dry eye in the
place!
Shortly afterward, four young men in the group
suddenly got up from their seats and rushed out the back door. Remember the Eskdale experience I’ve talked
about? Barnwell is nearly 100% Mormon,
and like Eskdale has a population of about 350 people. Right next to the building where this
fellowship was meeting was the local Mormon ward.
These four young men went over to the ward hall and
stood on the sides of the building. They
placed their hands on the building and began to pray, “Father, in Jesus’ name,
establish your Kingdom and raise up righteousness in this place.”
No sooner had they gotten back to the service that
was underway when four young women decided to follow suit. They were frustrated that the guys hadn’t let
them know what they were doing, and they were determined to play their part in
whatever the Lord was going to do.
Naturally, they headed over to the ward, and each one of the four stood
at one of the four corners of the building.
They essentially duplicated what the four young men had prayed.
While they were praying over the place, the Mormon
bishop came out and saw them. He walked
over and said, “What’s happening here?
Can I help you?”
The girls sheepishly said, “We’re, uhhh….we’re just
praising the Lord and declaring His righteousness.”
The bishop kind of scratched his head and said,
“Uhh, OK. I guess that’s a good thing to
do on the Sabbath.” He got in his
vehicle and drove around to see the other girls standing at the corners. When they saw him, they beat a hasty path
back to the fellowship hall.
It was both amusing and an enormous blessing to see
young people respond so instantly. What
comes from it remains to be seen, but one thing is sure. When folks respond to the quickening of the
Lord, seeking to broaden the scope of God’s rulership in a practical dimension,
He always comes through with signs following.
Keith Moore made a statement in one of the
Southwest Believer's Conventions we went to that I've never forgotten, and it
applies to what I've just shared.
Eskdale, Long Beach, Barnwell…..they’re all examples of what happens
when you apply this principle.
When you want what God wants for the same reason
that God wants it, you become unlimited and unstoppable!
And that’s the absolute truth! That’s SPIRITUAL
AUTHORITY!
Let me remind you that
if you are in need of healing or deliverance from any kind of torment, please
join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at
7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000. Then enter the access code: 124763#. To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy
opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to
your need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is now available on
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