Unlocking the Heavens: Release the Supernatural Power of Your Worship (17 page)

He gave each man an empty clay pitcher and had him shelter a burning torch inside. Each man also had a trumpet. Upon command, they were to shatter the clay pitchers, revealing the lights, and to blow a loud sound on their horns. Gideon would never have thought up this strategy on his own and if anyone besides God Himself had suggested it, he would have laughed it off. Yet, Gideon followed God’s strategy to the letter, and it worked beautifully:

Gideon told the men, “Watch me and do what I do. When I get to the edge of the camp, do what I do. Surround the enemy camp. When I and everyone with me blow our trumpets, you blow your trumpets, too. Then shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’” So Gideon and the one hundred men with him came to the edge of the enemy camp just after they had changed guards. It was during the middle watch of the night. Then Gideon and his men blew their trumpets and smashed their jars. All three groups of Gideon’s men blew their trumpets and smashed their jars. They held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands. Then they shouted, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” Each of Gideon’s men stayed in his place around the camp, but the Midianites began shouting and running to escape. When Gideon’s three hundred men blew their trumpets, the Lord made all the Midianites fight each other with their swords!
(Judges 7:17-22 NCV)

In the dead of the dark night, Gideon’s men had crept up silently around the Midianite encampment. Usually only the captains of thousands possessed horns, so the enemy thought a vast army had surrounded them when they heard the three hundred horns. Besides, when they heard the breaking of the clay pots it sounded to their alarmed ears like the clashing of swords. They went crazy with confusion and fright. They freaked out. In the darkness, they turned on each other and annihilated themselves.

This brings me to a fourth important result of releasing God’s new sound:
a new sound releases faith
. The sound of the clay pitchers breaking and the trumpets blowing inspired panic among the Midianites but exultant faith among the Israelites. In the same way, Joshua defeated Jericho not so much because of the loud shout but by faith: “By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30 NRSV).

Fifth,
a new sound releases the prophetic
. Revelation 19:10 (KJV) reads, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” which indicates the connection. Prophecy is not some kind of mystical hooey; it is simply hearing God’s words. A prophet knows what God is doing and saying. The best way to get in touch with the Spirit of God prophetically is to worship until you can walk right into the throne room.

You and I are mere “clay jars”: “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NRSV). It does not matter whether you are tall and I am short or whether we are rich or poor. What matters is our voice. When we release it in worship, we surrender ourselves to God. We break our clay pots open with praise, and we defeat the enemy without lifting one foot.

Our victory will never come until we get our clay vessels broken. We can either fight in our own insufficient strength and lose or we can win against all odds by letting God’s light shine. Our God is an awesome God, worthy of every victory shout!

Chapter 15

HEAVEN AND EARTH RESONATING TOGETHER

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit
(J
OHN
3:8 KJV)
.

A
s God’s Spirit moves across the earth, He is always looking for a responsive heart: “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show his might in behalf of those whose heart is blameless toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 RSV). He is looking for someone who will echo His heart in the earth. He wants to blow across a responsive person the way you might blow on an empty bottle causing a sound to resound from it. When He is active, something takes place on the earth that mirrors Heaven. As Jesus prayed: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-10 KJV). As you can see in chapters four and five of the book of Revelation, that resonating sound is a lot like Heaven.

The new Heaven and the new earth are going to include a restoration of that sound that is passing between Heaven and earth. It is a sound of worship. As a believer, you have been given authority to allow Heaven to invade the earth, but the only way you can do it is by making a Heaven-sent sound. When you echo the frequency of the Spirit of God, you will find that the sound breaks things in your life that need to be broken. Much like the breaking of a bottle of anointing oil, a new anointing gets released. Heaven invades. We can’t contain it.

MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE LORD

God is waiting to hear a sound arising from this generation—Heaven to earth; earth back to Heaven; Heaven down to earth again, always resonating with power. When that heavenly sound is released, things happen. The Kingdom of God comes a little bit more into the earth as the people of God exercise their legal dominion over the earth.

We are far too weak in our own strength. Even an all-around athlete at the peak of his or her form or a person with a genius-level mind cannot bring Heaven to earth. But “the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). Sometimes you get to the place that you don’t know what words to say to God. It doesn’t matter if you can only moan, as long as the sound originates from the Spirit of God. There is something powerful even in an “Oh…Oh…Oh, God!”

In fact, one of the most powerful prayer warriors I have ever known in my life is a man who said nothing but, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” for two hours straight. I was with him the whole time; that was all he said, but man, his moaning could get more miracles from the Lord than all of my wordy prayers. Something came out of his inner self that was like the Spirit of God blowing across his spirit as if he were an empty bottle. He didn’t have to drum up the sound as you could do by thumping on the bottle. (Naturally, that would be an effective way to create sound with an empty bottle, but that’s not the sound God is listening for. He wants to hear the resonant sound that His own Spirit makes when He blows over a responsive person or group of people.)

What happened on the day of Pentecost proves it:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance
(Acts 2:1-4).

MAKING AN IMPACT

The power of that sound reverberating through the atmosphere, coming from the breath of the Holy Spirit, releases something in the heavens that changes things on earth. What does it change? Notably, it changes governmental authority, righteousness, the creative order, and the enemy.

Here is how I know that there is an impact on governmental authority. The book of Revelation shows us twenty-four elders falling down at worship. (See Revelation 4:10.) And in Psalm 149, I see that ruling elders and kings fall down at worship for another reason:

Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful! For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory. Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to wreak vengeance on the nations and chastisement on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written! This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the Lord!
(Psalm 149:1,4-9 RSV)

When the sound that comes out of the Body of Christ begins to resonate through the atmosphere of this earth, chains and fetters of iron limit the actions of world leaders. You may say, “I don’t like the president’s policies.” Well, quit complaining about them and start praying instead. You will begin to see things line up with Heaven if you pray and worship with a heavenly voice. The president and others may never understand what is happening, but it will be almost like blowing a dog whistle; human hears can’t hear it, but the dog lines up with what you want him to do. When the people of God release God’s sound, it doesn’t matter if they are Democrat, Republican, black, white, green, or yellow; something about the frequency of that sound of the Body of Christ in the spirit realm causes things to break and to be bound and loosed.

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven (see Matthew 16:19). God says, “release a symphony on the earth and I will do something in the heavens that will reverberate back to the earth.” The sound goes back and forth. Heaven echoes what we are echoing.

Then, we are changed. Those of us who have been redeemed, who are known as “the righteous,” are broken anew and remade. When Isaiah stood in the courts of Heaven in the presence of heavenly worship stricken with awe, he became unraveled and undone: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5 NRSV). He fell on his face overwhelmed by the sound of Heaven.

That sound has an impact on the creative order. The first disciples prayed, and the building was shaken with a divine earthquake (see Acts 4:31). In Second Chronicles 5:11-14, the trumpeters and singers joined in unison to give praise and thanks to God, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and other instruments. As they raised their voices in praise, singing, “He is good! His love endures forever!” the temple of the Lord was immediately filled with the glory cloud of God.

God created us to make a sound because it has an immediate impact on the enemy. God created us as praise instruments, holy noisemakers. Why else would an infant cry immediately after birth? That cry does something; it makes things happen. That’s how we were created. If the cry of a mere baby puts things in motion, just think what a cry from the Body of Christ can accomplish.

God says, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger” (Psalm 8:2). God created us to make a sound because of our enemies.

The devil can’t stand to hear your voice releasing sound into the heavens in the form of praise to God because he knows all about its impact on the spirit realm and his demonic forces. He knows that such a sound can shut demonic forces down, and he knows that such a sound initiates the release of the glory of God into the earth.

It all comes out of a sound.

BREAKTHROUGH SOUNDS

I cannot emphasize enough that we must learn how to participate in God’s symphony of sound. Several Hebrew words for praise help us understand more about it.

The first one is
zamar
. One place this word can be found is in this passage from the book of Judges: “Hear, O kings! Give ear, O princes! I, even I, will sing to the Lord; I will sing praise to the Lord God of Israel” (Judges 5:3). Other versions substitute the phrase
make melody
for
sing praise
, because the word
zamar
means “to praise by singing.” This is quoted from the song of Deborah as she stood with the Israelites when they were under their enemy’s attack. No enemy threat was going to prevent Deborah from singing her praises of God!

The second word is
barak
. It is used frequently in the Old Testament, and here is a familiar example from the psalms: “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103:1-2 KJV).
Barak
means “to kneel down,” specifically to kneel in order to speak about someone’s excellence. It does not mean merely the action of kneeling; it means kneeling coupled with telling someone how praiseworthy he or she is. In the psalm, the psalmist is saying, “You are excellent, O God, and You are worthy. Everything in me bows down before Your excellence.”
Barak
is a sound of praise that occurs along with a change of posture.

A third Hebrew word for praise is
towdah
. Like
barak
, this word appears often in the Old Testament, and it means “to thank God by means of a sacrifice of confession, opening your mouth in praise with personal gratitude to God.” Here is a good example from the book of Leviticus: “And when you sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that you may be accepted” (Leviticus 22:29 RSV).

In the temple, when an animal sacrifice was made this was the word that was used. When they killed the sacrificial lamb or red heifer and the beast would cry out with a bleat or a bellow, the worshippers would say,
“Towdah!”
The sacrifice expressed their worship of God.

Our lives can be painful sometimes, yet praising God out of the midst of the pain, as sacrificial as it may be, puts you in the position of an overcomer. We refuse to let pain control our praise. Our praise controls our pain, not the other way around. It is
towdah
when I confess God’s greatness in the middle of my pain.

When their brother Lazarus died, Mary and Martha were in the extreme pain of grief. Jesus arrived, and Martha met him, saying to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21 NCV). He replied, “Just believe.” Of course, that was not easy. Lazarus had been dead already for four days. “By now, there will be a stench,” said practical Martha. She had been going into the tomb every day for the first three days after his death, anointing her brother’s body. The Jews believed that after three days the dead person’s spirit completely leaves the body and the surrounding area and that there is no longer any hope whatsoever of a resurrection. Here it was the fourth day, and the tomb had been sealed.