For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ (Romans 1:16-17, NIV)
The Apostle Paul said: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.” (Romans 1:16). Why are we not ashamed of the Gospel? Because it is the greatest demonstration of the Power of God on earth! – It is the power to deliver everyone who has faith to believe!
What changes nations is not some new teaching or doctrine. No, it is the simplicity of God’s Word, the Power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Today we are in danger of underestimating the Power of God, and that’s why Paul said, “I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the Power of God!”
I see the Power of the Gospel in action – and I want you to understand the effectiveness of true conversion! Our faith is in God through Jesus Christ, and in the authority of His Word. Our Gospel has unlimited power to completely deliver and change men! Until you have such an absolute, powerful experience in your own life – that there is no uncertainty, no hesitation that there is one way only, one price, one salvation, complete and life-changing – you cannot demonstrate Christ to the unbelievers! When you yourself have this absolute experience of total salvation in your own life – then this is the demonstration of the Power of the Gospel!
‘The Gospel of Christ is the Power of God’ (Romans 1:16). Evangelism should be part of our spiritual walk with God. If I ask you what are the essentials for every Christian, especially new converts, to do, you would quickly tell me – pray every day – read the Word every day – join a real live church. Water baptism and so on would quickly follow, along with serving God, fellowship with the saints and of course to be filled with the Spirit. I would add to this, evangelise – but not the way so many think of evangelism or evangelists. The Gospel is simply the good news. Your first responsibility after conversion is to spread the wonderful news of what God has done for you!
Acts 2:22-36 describes how Jesus was approved of God through the miracles, wonders, and signs that God performed through Him. The Power in the Gospel is indelibly linked with the miraculous. Throughout Jesus' ministry in the Gospels, and then with the disciples in the book of Acts, we read that it was the miracles which was the evidence of the message they preached. In 1994 I was preaching in Khabarovsk, Siberia. The Crusade on the Saturday night saw us under a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit, and many hundreds crowded into the open-air of the football stadium as the praise and worship team ministered. Then when I made the appeal almost every person came forward, so many, that surely everyone who had come into that stadium, lonely, lost, without faith or hope, and without Christ, found Him that night. Their hopelessness and despair had changed into the glory of the reality of knowing Him who loved us with a dying and undying love.
Then I said to them,
"Here in Siberia, in the Far East of Russia, you have been taught for seventy years that there is no God, that He is dead. I can demonstrate, I can prove that He is alive. Look, I have no power of myself to heal the sick and crippled. If there is no living God, if Jesus is dead then tonight when I lay my hands on the sick no one will be healed or delivered. But IF God is alive, then by the power of His Name, miracles, signs and wonders will suddenly happen and this place will come alive with the power of God. But ONLY if Jesus is alive! THIS is the demonstration and proof!
"I want to pray for the sick so that you can know God loves you and that He is concerned about the value of the human soul. Some people say Stalin killed as many as 100 million people, most of them died out here in Siberia. The fact is, if Stalin, from the first moment of his birth, had begun to write down the name of every individual who was to die under his regime, he would not have completed that list by the day he died. Under a system like this, people as individuals don't count.
"But I want to tell you about a loving heavenly Father who puts such tremendous value on a human soul that He was willing His Own Son should die just for you. This is the greatest revelation of all time, that God could love with such feeling and emotion, to set you free from sickness, sin and death to give you a freedom you've never understood. To know Christ is the only way to life. It's the living Christ who's alive today who can work miracles.”
When I began to pray with the sick and crippled, the miracles which God had promised, began. A young man in a blue tracksuit moved forward patiently, showing no sign of the pain he felt, or the desperation of his cry as a man to be made whole. His right hand had been crippled by a car accident. The doctors could do no more, their work had spared his hand but left it clenched and lifeless. BUT GOD...! I touched him, rebuking the cruelty and power of Satan, taking the strength and authority, I have in Christ. In His Name, I straightened those crippled fingers and brought back life and strength into that wasted hand. The joy and happiness which showed in his face as he began to move the fingers once dead! His thumb took a little longer, but it too responded to the Master's touch. Although it was collapsed rigidly into the palm of his hand, it finally came free and he knew Who had touched him.