DOMINION OVER DARKNESS (PART III) VITAL KEYS FOR CONFRONTING DARKNESS

1. You must be born again; there is no short cut. Anybody who is not born again is in darkness and darkness cannot confront darkness. John 3:3 says “… verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. He cannot see the kingdom of God because he is not of the kingdom of light. He belongs to the kingdom of darkness. 1 John 1:1 says “… God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man commeth unto the Father, but by me”. John 14:6. Matt. 5:14 says, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid”. Declare this ‘I am light and in me there is no darkness at all’. Darkness is an aggressive personality so you must be angry when dealing with it. Being born again is the matriculation. Nobody can confront darkness who is in the dark. The devil knows this and this is why he uses the weapon of compromise to weaken the Church. The greatest problem in the Church today is compromise and there are people who have climbed the ecclesiastical ladder today without any spiritual encounter. If you are not a product of spiritual encounters, you will make wrong decisions. Without encounters, you are likely to become an agent of darkness when you climb the ecclesiastical ladder instead of being a custodian of light. When I was not a product of spiritual encounters, I decided to go and discover the truth when I had the opportunity to take an independent decision. That is what happens when you are in the dark; you will be looking for what you have not lost. It was during my Youth Service Corp programme in Maiduguri in 1985 that I saw the stupidity of my decision; I repented from the depth of my heart that day which happens to be my birthday and cried out to God to please help me. I burnt all the books I was reading and God, in his mercy, began to reveal himself to me. I started having encounters every night. Brethren, Jesus is real. Jesus is the way; if you miss Jesus, you have missed heaven. It is not to God through any saint. There is nothing like purgatory, there is no intermediate state. The Bible says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”. Heb. 9:27. Jesus is the way not a way. The day I had an encounter with him, I shouted ‘so you are the truth I have been searching for’. He then handed over to me a Bible. That was my first call into Ministry spiritually. You can be called by man but until God calls you, you are not called.
2. The key of proper Consecration. If you want darkness to run away from you, you must have proper consecration. If you are not properly consecrated and you decide to fight witches and wizards, they will come back to fight you. This is because they know your level of consecration. There is a close relationship between consecration and concentration. That is why today, we have Pastors who are not men of God. This is because a Pastor who is not consecrated cannot hear God. You cannot be busy here and there and still think you can make it, it does not work that way. You cannot elevate any other call above the call of God. That is one of the reasons why the world is upside down today; what we have is ecclesiastical piety without value; ecclesiastical piety that cannot solve any problem. The world is sick and dark and the only hope is the Church but not a compromised Church. Jesus said you are the salt of the earth. Matt. 5:13. The test of Christianity is not in the belief; it is not in the hearing of the message. Even demons believe and tremble, it is in the doing. For you to properly consecrate, you must:

1. Repent comprehensively from your heart. When dealing with God, don’t reduce him to your size. Remember that God is omniscient, he knows everything so what are you covering?
2. Renunciation. Acts 19:18. People who practiced black magic brought their books running into millions of dollars to be burnt. When was the last time you saw this? Today, we have knights whose occultic materials are still intact; they are in the Church. Renunciation is burning the bridge. When you give your life to Christ, throw away all your occultic materials; break away from sinful associations, break away from your wicked ways, throw away sinful things that gave your money. My niece had a friend that was working in an oil servicing company where the General Manager tried all he could to seduce her but the lady refused to give in. As a result of her refusal to have amorous relationship with the man, she lost her job. Thereafter, she cried to God and after some months, God intervened and she got a job in one of the foreign missions in Nigeria where she was being paid in foreign currency with opportunity to travel abroad on a regular basis. Where did you burn the bridge?
3. Dedication/Re-dedication. After you have repented and renounced, the next thing to do is to re-dedicate your life afresh to God, if you have already done so in the past. Dedication means handing over every area of your life to Jesus Christ. Stop being the Lord of yourself.

TO BE CONTINUED.