Chapter 1
With all the many forces in the world swirling all around you, do you sometimes feel weak and impotent?
Do you sometimes feel irrelevant? Not in control? Powerless? A helpless victim of “the system,” or selfish and maybe ruthless people.
Do you harbor secret fears? Fears of the future? Fears of disease? Fears of accidents? Fears of so many things over which you have no control?
Does your life lack purpose, and are you just getting by day by day? Are you tired of all the mundane trivia that seem to demand all your time?
Do you lack energy, motivation, or drive?
Are you plagued with physical or emotional problems?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you need “the power.” Actually, you need the power even if you answered “no” to all the above.
How would you like to have more power than the President of the United States ?
More power than the Secretary General of the United Nations? More power than top professional athletes? More power than the richest person in the world?
Everybody wants some kind of power. It may be financial, political, social, intellectual, athletic, romantic, personal, or many other kinds.
Some of these kinds of power are available in varying degrees temporarily, but they are usually difficult to attain. In many cases it may take a lifetime, if attainable at all. Plus, when you get them, you realize that they did not produce the happiness you thought they would. In fact, they often bring great misery.
Then after all that effort, all of a sudden – poof! – they are gone. As you draw your last breath, to your angst you suddenly realize that they were nothing but a grand delusion.
A good example of this is what happened to nine of the wealthiest men in the world, who once had great power. In 1923, a very important meeting was held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago . In attendance were nine of the world's most successful financiers, men who had found the secret of obtaining worldly power. Now, decades later, let us see what happened to these men:
The president of the largest independent steel company, Charles Schwab, died bankrupt and lived on borrowed money for five years before his death.
The president of the largest utility company, Samuel Insull, died a fugitive from justice and penniless in a foreign land.
The president of the largest gas company, Howard Hopson, went insane.
The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cotton, died abroad, insolvent.
The president of the New York Stock exchange, Richard Whitney, spent time in the famous Sing-Sing Penitentiary.
The member of the President's Cabinet, Albert Fall, was pardoned from prison so that he could die at home.
The greatest "bear" on Wall Street, Jesse Livermore, died a suicide.
The head of the greatest monopoly, Ivan Krueger, died a suicide.
The president of the Bank of International Settlements, Leon Fraser, died a suicide.
Their power vanished, like vapor. As far as I know not one learned about the power described in this book. There is nothing wrong with wealth per se, but it is not synonymous with real power or happiness.
The Roman Empire spanned most of the known world and was one of the most powerful empires in history. But Roman power eventually crumbled and was reduced to dust.
Adolph Hitler's Third Reich was a great, conquering power that swept through Europe in the mid-twentieth century. But in just a few years it was reduced to rubble and Hitler was dead, a suicide.
The Soviet Union was a gigantic world power but is no more. Its brutal dictators are all dead.
During the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union and a period in my U.S. Air Force career, I had great power at my fingertips. I was a Missile Combat Crew Commander (MCCC) in one of the first Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) units. In just seconds, with an order from the President, one simultaneous turn of our keys from our steel-reinforced Launch Control Center (LCC), 50 feet beneath the South Dakota prairie, and a 30-second countdown, my deputy and I would have launched ten nuclear-tipped missiles to rain total destruction upon our targets, vaporizing them (probably including some cities, but we were never told what our targets were). Ten missiles from many other LCCs would accompany them. Each missile was many times more powerful than what was dropped on Japan during World War II and each was capable of destroying a city. Thank God we never had to launch, but the deterrence provided by our capability and readiness helped prevent World War III. That was many years ago. Those old missiles and their warheads are obsolete now and are on the junk heaps of history. But all that nuclear power, combined with all the modern weapons of today, is nothing compared with the real power described in this book.
All human power eventually fails, because it is not real power. By the way, it was on missile duty that I began to think seriously about life, death, and the power described herein, and I began to study it.
Real power. There is only one kind of real and lasting power that at the same time brings joy and peace.
This real power does not eventually vanish like a vapor. It is a power that is permanent, and its effects are permanent. It is with you morning, noon, and night, forever.
this power is not natural, but supernatural. It is not physical, but spiritual. It cannot be measured in kilotons. But it is no less real, mighty, and greater than megatons.
There is a strange paradox about this special power: It is both totally free and also extremely costly. You cannot earn it, but there is a price to pay. I will explain.
Another strange thing is that this power is “promised” and guaranteed by the highest authority.
How can all this be? That is the exciting part!
It can change your life
The power can change your life.
Bob experienced a major disappointment in his life. He was shattered, and over a period of a few weeks, he began sinking further into despair. He had a deep-down feeling of hopelessness. But suddenly, through an unlikely set of circumstances (no doubt, directed from above), Bob learned about this power and how to get it. That very day, it was like Clark Kent coming out of a telephone booth after donning his Superman cape. There was a radical transformation in him. There was no more despair. Now there was power, victory, and joy. In fact, his total life changed, and he has since been a positive influence on many others. Believe it or not, the process took only minutes!
What do you do? What do you do when your world seems to be caving in around you? You need the power.
What do you do when a feeling of hopelessness tries to take over your mind? You need the power.
What do you do if you sense evil attacking you and you seem strongly drawn to do something you know in your heart is a sin against God and others? You need the power.
What do you do if suddenly you find your life in danger and threatened? You need the power.
What do you do if you are suddenly told that you have a terminal disease? You need the power.
What do you do if you are suddenly told that a loved one has a terminal disease? You need the power.
What do you do if you struggle to even get out of bed in the morning, without energy or motivation? You need the power.
What do you do if you find a person or group struggling to know the meaning of life and you know the answer, but you are at a loss for words and are too timid to speak up? You need the power.
God, your Creator, wants you to have His power, and He has made provision for you to have it. He wants it to flow in your life. Every person needs the power but most do not have it. This is tragic, because God offers it.
I will tell you how to get it, and believe it or not, get it fast —actually while you are reading this book!
Conquer, not just cope
I am not talking about the power to cope , but the power to conquer . There may be things with which we sometimes must cope, but God has called us not to be just copers who grit our teeth and bear it, but to be conquerors and, in fact, more than conquerors. God says, “W e are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Sometimes we just cope until we finally realize that we are supposed to conquer.
Stop coping and conquer! Don't be a whiner, be a winner! Don't give up, get up!
When a crisis hits us, we are not to just passively accept negative consequences. We aggressively come against it with the power .
When a sickness hits us or a loved one, we are not to just passively accept it. We attack it with the power. I had a mole on my chest for many years. One morning while shaving I noticed that it began to look suspicious. It had become darker and funny looking, a warning sign the magazines tell you about, one that would normally cause one to run to the dermatologist to have it removed and a lab test done, with dreaded results. My natural mind thought, “cancer,” and fear tried to come upon me as I pictured myself wasting away in pain and agony. But my supernatural mind suddenly kicked in that morning, and I released the power into it. The very next morning, while shaving again, the mole suddenly dropped off into the basin and washed down the drain. There was not even any scar tissue left to tell where it was. It was like a baby's skin. Later I will tell you how I did it (see Appendix 1). You can do it too. It may happen differently for you, but the outcome can be the same.
When a danger physically threatens us and when we face it with the power, the danger retreats and disappears. With fear, the demonic source slinks back into its dark hole. It cannot stand the light of the power.
For example, a few years ago I was on a commercial jet airliner when a serious mechanical problem developed just after takeoff from the Orlando International Airport . The pilot announced over the speakers that we should prepare for a crash landing. An older lady seated next to me was almost hysterical with fear. I gently put my hand on her hand and said, “Ma'am, everything is going to be all right. Jesus has assured me.” I had released the power into the situation (I will tell you how in Appendix 1). Astonishingly, just a minute later the captain came on the speaker and said that everything was now back to normal! He gave no explanation. The lady was stunned but so relieved at this sudden, miraculous manifestation of the power. I was not surprised at the outcome, but the quickness of it surprised even me. There is no doubt in my mind that God put me on that airplane so that His power could be released through me, without which people could have been killed.
Pastor John Hagee of Texas tells about the time a deranged or demon-possessed man rushed down the aisle of his church toward him with a gun in his hand shouting that he was going to kill Hagee. But Hagee had the power. The man fired several shots at him at point blank range, and all of them missed. Later trajectory analysis by the police revealed the bullets should have gone right through Pastor Hagee. I know of an evangelist who had a similar experience with an abductor in Mexico .
When a strong temptation or problem hits us, we are not to just give in to it, rationalizing it because, “Oh, well, these things happen,” and “After all, we are human.” With God's power, we can be superhuman. We can overcome.
On the following pages, you will learn how to be a container and instrument of the power.