Smith Wigglesworth- Storming Heaven for Your Breakthrough
Jesus spoke of John the Baptist, who, although in the wilderness, stirred the nation, and they came to him. He didn’t set up camp in Jerusalem or some major city but in the wilderness so that the crowd came by the power of God. He was able to release the supernatural power of God and the Lord turned up and moved. How many of us need the supernatural power of God demonstrated in our lives? How many want to see a real revival, but do you understand that it can only happen through the supernatural power of God?
If we look back to the early Pentecostals like Smith Wigglesworth, they were flawed individuals, and yet they saw incredible power. Is there something we can learn from them on how they prayed? Having read many documents I have found that one key was storming Heaven.
“Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by storm.”
Matthew 11: 11-12
If you look at Smith Wigglesworth’s life, one key to his spiritual success was his prayer life. Going back to his time in the Salvation Army, Smith learned how to storm Heaven and demand the Lord.
Smith explained:
Acts 1. You will have to voice many things to bring them into fact. God wants us to have great faith. We had nine children and it didn’t matter which cried in the street, my wife knew which it was. He’ll come to the one that cries first. I want to help you to determine that by the power of God you will not be ordinary.
If we are determined to be extraordinary for God, it must start with our prayer life. We must first recognize who He is, who we are in Him, and what our inheritance is because of Him. Smith said:
You have to have a clothing of almightiness. It is an insult to God to ask for power after we have received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. You have power. You have to ACT. God inserts into you Divine activity with mightiness.
Our prayer life should demonstrate the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. Some think we need the Holy Spirit for the miraculous, when we also need Him for the things we consider mundane.
Smith added:
Every time I preach. I preach my best. Every time I pray, I pray my best.
We often don’t think of our need for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power in our prayer life. After all, we all know how to pray, right? But if we are not seeing the results we want and know are ours, then something must change. That change is with us, not Him.
“Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear.”
Hebrews 5: 7
Jesus recognized that the Father had what He needed and His Father was able to meet the need and keep Him from death. Secondly, He knew if He asked in godly piety and refused to quit, He would get the answer.
We must first recognize that the trouble, trial, or problem we face is an opportunity. Smith said:
“Jesus began his ministry everywhere by miraculous manifestation and then they all pressed upon him to hear. Jesus was the first fruits. We have to step into line with the first fruits. God makes the opportunity, we have to take the opportunity. We can live so that opportunity is always occurring. Unless we are ready to do the impossible, we will never come to maturity. God has said that impossibilities are with men and possibilities with God. Are you living in God or man? Opposition! It can be all opportunity! There is not a thing that isn’t opportunity to the man of faith.”
These opportunities are occasions for us to work with the Holy Spirit so that Jesus might be glorified. Smith explained:
If you make a stop between Calvary and the Glory, you miss a great deal along the way. Always have something which is BETTER. You say, What makes you so full of the inspiration of faith? Because it is “from faith to faith.” After you have once laid hold of the plan in simplicity of faith, you will be in a new world. There is such a thing as talking about faith without using it as an inheritance.
Smith then added:
You have to examine yourself to see whether you are in faith or you are only talking faith. The Baptism of the Holy Ghost has brought to us the fact of a remarkable Personality dwelling within us which is ALL faith. The new birth is God in the LIFE. God’s Word lives. It is the only book that has Eternal Power in every line. You will lose out if you put aside this Book for any other book. You must have the word of God abiding in you if you want faith to be in evidence. Faith doesn’t require any strength to carry, but it carries you. It doesn’t matter how you are clothed as a believer, if you haven’t got the Word of God in your pocket, you are not properly dressed.
To have an extraordinary prayer life where we do storm Heaven and see results demands that we have a strong abiding in the Word. When the Word dwells in us richly, we walk in the abundance of revelation regarding His Will and ways. Further, because His Word is alive, it has the power to transform us because God made it that way. As Smith explained:
You are born of the INCORRUPTIBLE Word. Then there is within you the Word that can change everything that is in the world, but not if you waver.
We must be consistent in our desire and pursuit of His Word. Smith added:
The resources of God are waiting for the man who will not seek
his own. We can live in the presence of God so that immediately Satanic powers present themselves we shall discern them. We must take charge of every affair for God. Faith is a divine establishment of courage until that courage sweeps you through every condition. You cannot come into the Divine Order only on the line of being soaked in the Word. Before a man can bind he must know that there is nothing binding him.
We can storm Heaven when we stand clean and pure before Him. This is why Smith stated:
If there is anything in your heart which is in the way of
condemnation you cannot pray the prayer of faith. Purity is vital to faith. The most staggering condition of helplessness that could ever be brought before you, is your chance for God to use you. How is this faith received? By the ACT from that which you have. If you ACT with what you’ve got, your faith will be increased. You never can increase in faith until you ACT.
We need the Holy Spirit to teach us. Smith explained:
I tell you what makes us lose the confidence is disobedience to God and His laws. Jesus said it was because of them who stood around that He prayed; but He knew that He heard Him always. And because He knew that His Father heard Him always, He knew that the dead could come forth. There are times when there seems to be a stone wall in front of us, as black as midnight, and there is nothing left but confidence in God. There is no feeling. What you must do is to have a fidelity and confidence to believe that He will not fail, and cannot fail. We shall never get anywhere if we depend upon our feelings. There is something a thousand times better than feelings, and it is the naked Word of God.
We must abide in the Secret Place of His Presence where we stand confident of Him and in Him. We have spent the time to know Him, His ways, and His will through the Word that we are in fidelity with Him. Obedience comes from a hearing heart, that is we seek to hear what He says and to do His Word in our lives.
Smith added:
The obedient always obey God when He first speaks. It is the people of God that He will use to make the world know that there is a God. The just shall live by faith. You cannot talk about things which you have never experienced. It seems to me that God has a process of training us. You cannot take people into the depths of God unless you have been broken yourself. I have been broken and broken and broken. Praise God that He is near to them that are of a broken heart. You must have a brokenness to get into the depths of God
When we walk made by Him in the Secret Place, we know Him and are known by Him. This is the place where we refuse to let go or quit when we pray. It is not about us continually asking for the same thing but rather refusing to give Heaven rest until Heaven moves. We pray through until we see the breakthrough, for we mean business with the Lord God, and He means business with us.
Smith said:
There is a rest of faith, there is a faith that rests in confidence on God. God’s promises never fail. “…faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). The Word of God can create a resistless faith, a faith that is never daunted, a faith that never gives up, and never fails
He added:
We fail to realize the largeness of our Father’s measure, and we forget that He has a measure which cannot be exhausted. It pleases Him when we ask for most. “How much more.” It is the much more that God shows me.
Smith also said:
It is on the line of perfect confidence in Him. The confidence comes not from our much speaking, but it comes because of our fellowship with Him. There is a wonderful fellowship with Jesus. The. chief thing is to be sure that we take time for communion with Him. There is a communion with Jesus that is life, and that is better than preaching. If
God tells you definitely to do anything, do it, but be sure it is God that tells you.
He added:
Oh, beloved, may God help us this afternoon to get our eyes off the
conditions and symptoms, no matter how bad they may be, and get them fastened upon Him, and then we shall be able to pray the prayer of faith.
