Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (29 page)

In the New Testament, the Greek word translated
“Jordan”
comes from a Hebrew word meaning “a descender.” I believe baptism in the Jordan River symbolized surrender to God, which is the entrance to the supernatural, including the working of miracles. Remember, the way “up” to God always starts by going “down” in surrender and humility before Him. Jesus was empowered by the Spirit after His baptism in the Jordan River. (See Luke 4:1.)
The Scriptures say,
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him”
(Acts 10:38).

A number of biblical events are connected with the Jordan River. For example, in the Old Testament, the prophet Elisha instructed Naaman of Syria to dip seven times in the Jordan to be healed of his leprosy. At first, Naaman was offended and suggested that he might bathe in superior rivers located in his own nation. Those other rivers represent human ability rather than God’s supernatural power. When Naaman was persuaded by his servants to follow Elisha’s instructions, he was completely healed. (See 2 Kings 5:1–14.) It was not the water of the Jordan itself but Naaman’s obedience to God’s command that brought about his miraculous healing.

When you surrender voluntarily to God, He will not deny you
His power; it is guaranteed!

Many Israelites chose to be baptized by John in the Jordan as a sign of their repentance. (See, for example, Matthew 3:1–2, 5–6.) Each new generation of people must come to their own “baptism in the Jordan”—their own “descent” from pride and self-sufficiency through surrender to God and yielding to His will. Many people in today’s generation want a shortcut to God’s power without having to surrender their will to Him or having to die to “self.” Yet, to be empowered by God, we must be willing to yield to Him. The reason Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit
“without limit”
(John 3:34 niv) is that He continually surrendered to His Father.

We all need a Jordan experience, a place of surrender, before we can receive a fresh anointing from God. Such power is poured into an individual who is God’s “vessel,” someone who has found his identity in Christ, so that he is enabled to manifest the activity of the supernatural. Every time I surrender a specific area of my life to God, I see His divine anointing move into that area, and I experience an increase of His supernatural power. This is a great benefit of surrender. As we yield to God, we are enabled to heal, to deliver, and to believe God for other miracles.

What are some areas in your life in which you need empowerment? Are you willing to surrender your will to God in regard to your relationships, your finances, your ministry, or any other area about which God is speaking to you, in order to be empowered as Jesus was?

The place/area of your life in which you yield your will to God is the place/area in which you will be empowered.

The following testimony, by a man named David, demonstrates the power of surrender. He writes, “My arrival at King Jesus Ministry can be explained only as a supernatural intervention of the living God. I started as the pastor of a religious organization that did not believe in signs, wonders, and miracles from God. However, my insatiable hunger for God caused me to question that doctrine. Slowly, a series of events led me to the revelation that there was much more for me than what I had previously known. Several years later, while I was praying, God spoke one word to me—a word that changed my world by uprooting me and leading me to a place I had never imagined going. That word was
Miami
.

“Encouraged by my wife, I explored the possibilities, and, a short time later, we made the decision to resign from the church where we had thought we would spend the rest of our lives, and move to a city where we didn’t know anyone. We arrived in sunny South Florida with ‘dreams and visions.’ Our plan was to start our own church, but God’s plan was very different.

“One Father’s Day, while I was praying and fasting and seeking God’s will for our future, His audible voice came to me with a specific order: ‘Go to King Jesus Ministry.’ We entered the church anonymous and unnoticed but greatly enthusiastic. I was so touched during the service that, for the first time in a church environment, tears flowed down my cheeks. At a later service, Apostle Maldonado spoke to my wife and me. He asked us to set our dreams aside and receive training in order to be sent out by King Jesus church to minister, and we agreed.

“We had to surrender to God, allowing our old foundation to be transformed. We let go of one mantle and received a new one. We had a humble beginning, like that of a new believer. The hardest decision to make was to give up my credentials as a pastor from our previous organization, not knowing if I would ever have that title again. God spoke to us about surrender, so we followed His instructions, gave up control, and committed to walk by faith in His will for our lives, disregarding the titles and the status we’d formerly had, with the understanding that God had a mission for us.

“In time, Apostle Maldonado ordained us because the Lord had put it in his heart to do so. Ever since then, I have enjoyed the privilege of traveling to the nations with him as part of his team. We received everything we wanted for our ministry and for our family because of our surrender. As we’ve lived a life of surrender, God has opened many doors for us, and we are active in the vision of the ministry. Now I understand what it means to walk in the supernatural power of God, to cast out demons, to set the oppressed free, and to heal the sick. My wife and I are very happy to be at King Jesus church. We hunger to move in God’s love in order to manifest His power and to continue to do the work of His ministry, so that our lives can bring other people closer to Him.”

Surrender involves letting God be God in and through us. When you surrender to Him continually, you can give to others out of what He has given to you. It should be the passion of every believer to manifest God’s presence wherever he goes and to be used by Him to heal the sick, win souls for Christ, and set free the oppressed.

The level of anointing that operates in your life is proportionate to your level of surrender.

A measure of God’s anointing is held back from us when we have not fully surrendered our heart to Him. God has provided divine anointing not only for healing, deliverance, and other miracles but also for business, the arts, communications, sports, and other fields. These anointings are waiting for God’s people to fully yield their lives to their Creator. We receive everything from God by His grace, but that grace is activated through the surrender of our heart.

When Shane from Puerto Rico decided to surrender to God and commit to Him once and for all, his life was transformed. He writes, “During my childhood, I continually looked for love but was unable to find it. I never met my biological father, and my mother was in prison until I turned five. My brother, sister, and I lived with our grandmother, and when my mother was released from prison, she came to live with us, but she was battling a drug addiction that kept her away from me time and time again. She spent nights as a prostitute, smoked crack, used cocaine and heroin, and was constantly in and out of jail.

“When I turned seven, my mother called a taxi so she could go and buy drugs, but when the taxi arrived and she got into it, I jumped onto the hood of the car and begged her not to go, because I knew she would not return for months. The Department of Children and Families opened an investigation into our family and decided to take away my mother’s custody of my siblings and me. From the ages of ten to fourteen, I lived separated from my siblings and grandmother. When I was fourteen, one of my cousins adopted me; but when I was seventeen, for lack of money, he threw me out into the streets.

“I lived in the streets, left school, and started using drugs. I would sleep in my sister’s car. I remember saying to the Lord, ‘Father, I need help because I don’t know in what direction my life is heading.’ For two years, I lived a lifestyle of immorality, alcohol, and drugs. Every morning, the Spirit of God would tell me to change my life; otherwise, the only thing I had waiting for me was death and destruction.

“The homeowner where I then lived was a Christian, and one day she said to me, ‘I don’t know what you are doing with your life, but you have to change; otherwise, you will not live with me for much longer.’ At that moment, Jesus spoke to me and said,
Let go of all your fears. I am with you.
I opened up the Bible and read a Scripture about God guiding the children of Israel through the desert, and essentially saying to them, ‘Remember when you didn’t have shoes for your feet or clothes on your back or food to eat? I was there. I took care of you and prepared the way.’ The Spirit of God fell upon me, and I began to cry in His presence. The next day, I went to King Jesus International Ministry, where I surrendered my life to God. Since that day, He has filled me with His love, joy, and peace and has transformed me. I have known the love of the Father through everything that I have learned in this ministry. I earned my high school diploma, obtained a full-time job, and am currently attending college. God restored my life, and I live to preach the gospel of Christ and to share His love with the world.”

Consequences of Refusing to Surrender to God

There are many blessings related to surrendering to God. But there are also consequences for those who refuse to surrender to Him. Let us review several of them.

1. The person who refuses to surrender to God never advances in the process of heart transformation—or he stalls somewhere in the midst of that process.
   He becomes conformed to “self,” so he does not grow and mature in Christ and, consequently, reflects a distorted image of God. If he is a believer, he may even begin to walk away from the Lord.
   

2. The person who refuses to surrender to God suffers an inability to believe in His promises and to access His supernatural power.
   In practical terms, the individual’s only reality will be the natural realm, and he will always feel dissatisfied because he will live outside the spiritual atmosphere in which he could receive and experience the life and blessings of God.
   

3. The person who refuses to surrender to God cannot carry out his true purpose in life.
   He is unable to hear what the Lord is saying to him, and he is distracted by interests that are not aligned with God’s will for him.
   

4. The person who refuses to surrender to God often experiences friction in his relationships.
   Because he has not died to “self” and subdued the sinful nature, he continues to feed his selfishness and stubbornness. Consequently, his family ties, friendships, and other associations may become severely strained. His may even experience the breakup of his family.
   

Surrender is one of the means by which we have access to,
and can appropriate, the power of God.

God will sometimes use adverse circumstances in people’s lives to cause them to seek Him and to surrender to His will, so that they may receive His blessings. For instance, though He never causes sickness, He may use sickness to draw someone’s attention to Him. This is what happened to a woman named Vanessa. When she was seven years old, she began to suffer from uterine bleeding. By the time she was fifteen, she had already undergone several surgeries. When she was twenty-one, the doctors diagnosed her with uterine cancer. She had quarterly medical examinations and eventually underwent a hysterectomy. But then she began to suffer frequent dizziness, and she was later diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis.

Then she met one of the leaders of our church, who invited her to our New Year’s Eve service. That day, I preached about our supernatural God who can heal any sickness and change any adverse circumstance. Vanessa returned home angry. She was furious with God because she didn’t consider herself a sinner, and she had prayed and sought God for healing; yet, instead of improving, her body kept getting weaker and weaker.

Then she cried out to God with a surrendered heart, asking Him to show her that He is real. She made a covenant with Him, saying, “If You heal me, my children and I will always serve You.” The following Monday, she went to a doctor’s appointment to have a test related to the multiple sclerosis. The technicians kept repeating the test, and she was there for four hours. She was told that the machine was broken, because they couldn’t find anything wrong with her; yet even when they used another machine, the results were the same. Vanessa went home upset with the doctors, but when she went for an appointment with her oncologist, something similar happened. The doctor took biopsies, and four doctors reviewed the results of the tests. Finally, her doctor said, “Vanessa, I don’t see anything.” When she was back at home, alone in her bedroom, she started to cry. She was broken and grateful, recognizing that the supernatural power of God had healed all of her sicknesses.

Christ is Lord of your life only in those areas that you have surrendered to Him.

Qualities of the Surrendered Heart

When an individual has a surrendered heart, he manifests the following qualities:

• The person with a surrendered heart is quick to respond to God and to answer Him.
  He does not doubt God or stubbornly resist Him, because his internal struggle with “self” has diminished, and his obedience is usually immediate.
  

• The person with a surrendered heart always says yes to what God asks.
  This response leads him to be in God’s perfect will and to receive all His blessings without restriction.
  

• The person with a surrendered heart yields to change.
  He has a willing spirit that allows the Holy Spirit to continuously transform his heart, leading him to reflect Christ’s nature and to help establish God’s kingdom on the earth.
  

• The person with a surrendered heart worships God as an act of submission and love, not out of a sense of obligation.
  He knows the reality of David’s prayer,
  “In your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore”
  (Psalm 16:11).