Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Ephesians 6:10. To be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might: a few words can embrace a great many ideas. If we understand the Scriptural principles involved in these three words, identification, transference, and boomerang, we will perceive everything that God has been doing in the whole of the Word of the Lord.
“Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” Your position before God is one that is imparted to you through identification. You identify yourself with the Lord; it is His righteousness, not yours. You stand in His name, not your name.
We continually revert to living our lives individually instead of living our lives in the Lord. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. John 15:7. You are not moving in your worthiness or in any individual position that you can gather up; you are moving in the Lord. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
You say, “Well, I’m not worthy.” Again, identification and transference are involved here. The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9. Everything in your salvation depends upon the righteousness of Jesus being transferred to you.
When I speak a blessing or minister to you, I draw upon a basic principle of the Bible: transference. God believes that He can transfer His attributes to you. To you, a death doomed, sin-ridden mortal, He can transfer His righteousness, His eternity, and create those very things in you by transferring them from Himself to you. God believes that! And if you believe in salvation, then believe also that His ambassadors and His ministers can lay hands on you and transfer from the fullness and the provision of the Holy Spirit to you. You must believe that.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, Galatians 2:20. Identification becomes our part; transference becomes God’s part.
I believe for it, and as I am identified in my mind with His provision, His strength, His power, and then immediately transference begins to work. We do it every day. The devil does it every day. People do it every day.
Have you seen how transference works when you are around someone who has the gloomies? After you have been with that person awhile, you are the one who doesn’t feel well. You say, “Oh, do I have a headache. I feel so depressed.”
That is why people love to have someone to talk to. Unconsciously they start dumping their problems. When they are through (you haven’t said a word but have just sat there), they say, “I’ve enjoyed talking to you so much. You’re such a good conversationalist; so sympathetic.” They walk away briskly, and you stagger out. Transference! People do it every day.
Parents need to understand the element of transference in disciplining children, rather than trying to operate through pain. Discipline works best when you approach them while they feel remorse (which is a type of repentance) and their spirits are open. If you spank in anger, you vent upon the child your bad feelings and bad spirit.
Never punish a child in anger; never go after him because your nerves are frayed, or you will convey the wrong thing. It is better if, while you spank him, you talk to him with a perfect spirit, saying, “You are going to walk with God. You’re going to love to be honest; you’re going to love to be truthful; God is going to bless you; you’re going to love to pray.” Transfer to him these goals.
Even in the dead soul realm, transference works just through the power of suggestion. The world uses it. If in the soul realm transference is used through hypnosis, through counseling, and through suggestion, how much more in the spirit realm can we prophesy to one another and convey a thousand times more?
We know that people under hypnosis can be greatly influenced by what is said to them. Hypnotherapy is accepted as a means of medical treatment, but I am reluctant to have anyone control any part of my being, even my soul, with suggestions over which I have no conscious control and may not even remember.
I recommend that if you want to deal with your soul, use autosuggestion. Go into a period of meditating upon the Lord and tell yourself what you want till it reaches the depth of your soul-consciousness. But do not place yourself in the hands of some man who may not even be a child of God and who may give you many suggestions that would be harmful to you. The power of transference in this case would not be good.
When I get a word from the Lord, I try to transfer it to those to whom I’m ministering. I do not present a word to be debated about and weighed. “Here, let’s see what your royal highness comes up with. Do you want to accept it or not?” No, I want it to have an impact. I want it to bother you so much that even if you consciously reject that word, you cannot shake it in your heart; your spirit will respond to it again and again. I believe this is what God sets about to do through the word I give.
What is this ministry we have? That you would be living epistles, read and known of all men (2 Corinthians 3:2). And how do we do it? We write it not with pen and ink for your considered opinion. We write it with the Spirit of the living God upon your heart! That, again, is transference; a living, burning word, transferred to your heart.
Haven’t you felt it working like that? If I have a word and I know it is a word from God, I give it to you. The moment your spirit has the witness within it and receives that word, it receives more than an idea; there is an impartation. Transference comes. Jesus said, Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. John 15:3. He sent his word, and healed them … Psalm 107:20. The Word can do tremendous things.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Ephesians 6:10. Identification, transference, and then … boomerang!
The boomerang is a nice principle. I tried to throw one away, and I could not get rid of it! That is the way the boomerangs are. And when you send out blessings, they tend to multiply. The next time the Spirit moves upon you to give, remember the promise: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Luke 6:38.
When we love, it comes back again; it multiplies. It hits the target, seems to split and expand, and the person receives the blessing—but the greater portion returns upon the head of the blesser.
The same boomerang principle works if you are less than victorious. That is why the Lord says, “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:35). That is why you should be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, because the minute you take things on the level of your own feelings, in your own strength, or in your own wisdom, you are operating in the flesh, and what you send forth will come back to you in the flesh.
Didn’t Haman die on the gallows he built (Esther 7:10)? Saul killed himself by falling on the very sword with which he tried to kill David (1 Samuel 31:4).
If you learn the principle of boomerang, you will never have to fight your own battles, never have to defend yourself, never have to hate an enemy. You had better not hate him, because the minute you send hatred, it will come back to you. When he is hit with it, if he doesn’t send back your hatred, he will send back his own, whether or not he understands.
Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. Luke 6:27, 28. You say, “They won’t appreciate it; they will hate me for it.” Perhaps, but see what will come back to you. You will be blessed with your own blessing, helped with the help that you offer another.
A whole church can become tied up with an unforgiving spirit, for when we get malice in our hearts and are unforgiving, everything stops right there. Didn’t the Lord tell us how to pray? “ ‘Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ … For if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:12, 15).
God doesn’t have to make a sudden decree, “You I forgive; you I don’t”; it automatically happens. I believe that the works were finished from the foundation of the world (Hebrews 4:3). Even the works of final judgment were completed. I am thoroughly convinced of this, for many things in the Word bear this out. God does not do one thing to torment you; He does not do one thing to harass you. You do it all by yourself.
The minute you open up to His Word and you begin to bless, God does not make a special decision to bless you. I think you simply tune in to a whole plan that He has working, principles that are in operation.
We know that Satan will be cast into the bottomless pit, the place prepared for him (Revelation 20). I agree that God has a place of abode for him, but Satan is creating his own torment to the extent that he has tormented, and evil spirits have harassed. In the final analysis, all that he has done to harass and destroy the human race for all these centuries suddenly will he loosed from them and will all come back on him. He is the one who has done the whole thing. He is preparing his own torment.
You say, “Don’t you believe in hell?” Of course, I believe in hell, but God is not tormenting anyone there. But it seems as if some people create their own hell right now; the things they loose come back on them before the time.
The Scripture says that some men’s sins go before them to judgment, and some men’s sins follow (1 Timothy 5:24). When people’s mean and vicious actions come back on them, their hell has already begun.
God, in His goodness and in His mercy, operates on identification, transference, and boomerang, and these principles keep working all the time.
One of the most effective ways of growing can come from being in a service such as a Bless-In, where there is body ministry.
You open your spirit to the Lord, then to your brother and sister, and you start blessing them. Many people have found deliverance in this type of service where identification, transference, and the boomerang operate. Even without really knowing what they were doing, they moved in it and were blessed.
The principles of a Bless-In (a service where each member draws from the Lord and turns to consciously “bless” each other) teach us how to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might by drawing from the Lord and sending out.
We keep drawing and sending out. How does this affect us? This is where the boomerang comes in. We cannot identify with the power of God to draw and be one in Him, to be strong in Him and in the power of His might, without becoming constantly filled with those things. In fact, as we become more and more engaged in this, our capacity for blessing increases.
Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27. I may be one of His hands, part of His mouth, or one of His feet. I am a member of His Body; I identify with Him. Did you ever see a head rich and a foot poor? I cannot be identified with Christ as a member of His Body and be poor or helpless. Do I go around confessing I am weak? No, my confession is, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
“I know, but I can’t overcome this. I’m just too weak.”
Forget your weakness; identify yourself with His strength. I do not believe in willpower on a natural, human plane. It was a term someone invented, but I don’t think anyone really knows how to work with it. It is not willpower, but it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).
You cannot even have a will that is stable unless God works in you to put the will there. You must identify with Him, and soon because you want to want Him, He blesses you. You will to serve Him, because He puts it in your will to serve Him. As you identify with Him, the transference begins.
You may be proud that you have grown in your walk with God, but you didn’t do a bit of it yourself. It was transferred to you. He imputed it to you. He imparted it to you, and you grew by receiving His life and exercising in it. Exercise is natural to life—just watch a little baby. From the time he is born, the baby starts moving and kicking; That is why mother has to check him frequently to see if he has kicked off the covers.
No one said to the baby, “You’ve got to exercise;” it was natural to him. The minute life came, he began to move in it. That is what you are doing when you come to speak an anointed word or sing psalms in the services. Why don’t we limit it to those who do a good job? Because we want everyone to move. Life develops with movement. We identify with Him, there is a transference of life, and we keep moving. We keep speaking the word of the Lord and prophesying to one another. We are God’s people, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
We carry within us the most dangerous form of pride known to the old Adamic nature, the form of pride which comes before the Lord and thinks it can please God. Then, because it fails, this pride goes into a deep self-condemnation which does not bring true repentance at all.
In effect it is saying, “I could have done better. I am sorry I didn’t do better. I know it is in me to do better, so I condemn myself that I did not walk perfectly.” This sense of guilt is based upon the lie of pride that there is anything good in your flesh. You must realize that those who are in the flesh are going to walk in the flesh.
We must open our hearts to the Lord and say, “I know I can’t do it in myself. I know that You have done it all for me, and I draw it, Lord, in Your name, and by the grace of God I can walk in it.” Have confidence toward God, not toward the flesh, and you will change. You will have a miracle. Everything will be different for you from the moment you accept this truth.
Get rid of the self-condemnation. Say, “Lord, I know you have saved me; I was a sinner, saved by Your grace. I love You, and I’m sorry for everything that stands here inadequate before You. I know that You love me, and that is why You died for Me. You provided it all that I can be perfect and entire in You, wanting nothing.”
Whenever you begin to think, “I’ve got to do better,” remember, it will be in the Lord only. You start in the spirit, finish in the spirit (Galatians 3:3). You begin by drawing from the Lord; keep on drawing it from the Lord.
SATAN WORKS BY TRANSFERENCE
Would you like to understand why each piece of armor in Ephesians 6 was named as it was, what it covers, and what you appropriate for that piece? It is all the armor of God.
In every case in the spiritual armor, you deliberately put on something from God: you put on an attribute of God and you identify with Him. In no instance is it a buoying up of anything inherent in the old nature. It is entirely a transference from the Lord to you.
These messages can give you keys to help you into a walk of perfect victory in the Lord. They will help you to stop worrying about yourself and start looking to the Lord.
Self-condemnation rests on too many people. Whenever self-condemnation rules, real repentance has never been exercised. If you repent deeply enough, you will get rid of it because you will have put the whole matter in the hands of the Lord. You will not be constantly chafing and condemned over the fact that the root of the old nature is still there when it shouldn’t be.
Satan works by transference too. He tries to stir things through people’s emotions. He uses a negative faith, which is fear. If I am afraid of a man, I honestly in my heart believe that man can hurt me. If I am fearful of my weakness, I believe it will have expression and that I will do the wrong thing. Fear is negative faith. We read in the Scriptures, “The thing which I fear comes upon me” (Job 3:25). Satan works through fear wherever he can. If he can bluff you to move off the promises of God into a place of fear or doubt, the negative faith works, and he will get to you. But if you believe God and stand in the promises of the Lord, the transference works from God to you. You must dial in what is going to work in your life. Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7.
Witchcraft works on transference. In countries where people die because of witchcraft, they believe in it. They fear it. There is more witchcraft and devil power in the United States now, but until recently, almost everyone scoffed at it. It is common knowledge that a person under a curse may get only a little headache or a little oppressed if he doesn’t believe in it.
I believe in health. People who believe in sickness are sick all of the time. I believe in life, not death. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13. I do not believe in evil, I believe in good. I do not believe in curses, I believe in blessings. Curses exist, but they have no strength unless I believe in them. Only when I put my faith in them can they operate.
Christ defeated Satan for me. Therefore, it is not a matter of my strength; it is a matter of my appropriation.
My identification with Him releases the transference. I am strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. We war against principalities and powers, but we do it in His might, in His strength. If we don’t, and he bluffs us out, we are defeated. Satan can usurp only as much power as we allow him because his power is gone. Christ took it away! All of the manifestation of Satan that we see in the world is the usurped power people let him have.
All authority in heaven and earth is Christ’s (Matthew 28:18). When we cast out a demon, we are saying, “Here, boy, your defeat is already on you. You are defeated. Off to the abyss, in the name of Jesus.” We stand in the victory of the Lord; that is all it takes. Let us not be reluctant to lay hold of it.
We activate what we speak; words can be living or they can be deadly. The Word is living (Hebrews 4:12); it is a thing that is spiritually alive. Remember what Jesus said, “The words I speak are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). They are.
Conversely, if Satan can get you to open your mouth and speak discouragement and unbelief, you are sending forth death, and it ministers death. Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Do not ever forget that what you say is very important. The Word says we will even be judged for every idle word (John 12:36), because it just isn’t that idle. Watch how you speak. Remember all the instructions about your speech.
“Why,” you say, “I don’t swear anymore.” Perhaps you don’t swear, but you may be turning loose things of death by being a grumpy old crank, speaking your discouragement all the time. It can be very deadly. Children whose mothers harass them often have more sick days than they have well days, for the mothers are ministering sickness and death through their mouths.
When I minister to a person, the minute they are open to receive, the thing of transference is so strong that my nerves and body and senses suddenly begin to react like his. I can feel what he is believing for. I think his thoughts. It is not a matter of mind reading; that is on the soul level. I become identified with them. We are one together, so I begin to feel and react as they do. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are capabilities which we have within the Body of Christ to move by the Holy Spirit. It is so simple, and soon everybody will move in this.
Oh, the gifts and the ministry will be universal. Won’t it be delightful? We want to be identified with Him. The goal of this is perfection: to be just like He is, conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29). Isn’t that a goal? And we are all going to move together until we get there.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, … when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God which effectually worketh also in you that believe. 1 Thessalonians 2:13.
When the Word is not received, it becomes an occasion of judgment, especially in these days. Jesus said, “I don’t judge any man.” This is amazing, for the Father put judgment in His hand. He just kept speaking the word. “I am not judging people at all. I give them a word, and they go into judgment because My word shall judge them at the last day,” Jesus said (John 12:47–49).
Everything that is to come upon the earth in the way of judgments will come by a word from God. That word will be spoken, and if the word is not received, judgments will result. If the word is received, it will create within those who hear. Our position will not be arbitrarily deciding which man dies and which man lives. That is not ours to say. We are to speak the word of the Lord, and He has chosen that the word Jesus speaks will be the means by which He will judge the world.
Self-condemnation looks at sin just enough to abhor it but doesn’t face it honestly. Real repentance faces it to the extent that you say, “This thing in my life must go. I will not exonerate it, make excuse for it any longer, or try to ignore it. I will face it and then reach in and appropriate His righteousness.
The real depth of repentance reaches into the righteousness of God. Anything that does not reach into the righteousness of God is imperfectly done. Making excuses or trying to better yourself will only cause the self-condemnation to stay with you. The spirit is still aware that the job is not done, so you are continually condemned. Self-condemnation is removed completely when you honestly repent to the depth, when you face the thing to its very depth of reality. “If there is any more of this, bring it up, Lord; I’ll face it all right now.”
Once you bring it all out, something within wants to give way to the built-in impulse to secrecy, to cover over. We always try to cover over. That is why we do not remember everything. We are built so that our memories will, in time, block out what we want to block out.
Sometimes mental problems exist because people cannot face their experiences or situations, so they blank them out even if they have to blank out their whole conscious way of life and their sanity. The desire for secrecy must be faced and repented of. Start there if you really want to find what is wrong with you. Say, “God, I repent of being such a hypocrite that I want to cover over even to myself. I repent of trying to keep things so secret and hidden.”
When you have repented thoroughly, the work is done so perfectly that when you go to wait before the Lord, you will respond like David did in some of his psalms. It will almost sound like boasting. “O Lord, I love You with a whole heart. I have set my heart on You.” You are not always going to be finding impurities. There will be an end to it. Then will come the confidence, We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. That is one of the greatest texts in the Word of God; so deep, so beautiful.
What we appropriate from our spirits affects our souls, and even affects our bodies.
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. 1 Corinthians 15:45–48.
You can almost choose which is to come forth. Every believer has had two births. At the first birth under Adam, he is a living soul; under the new birth his spirit has come alive. By a new birth under Jesus Christ he is now a living spirit. As he walks along, if he walks by the Spirit, he will manifest in his whole life the nature of Christ; or, if he walks in the soul, he will manifest the nature of Adam. Which do you want to come forth, the Adamic nature or the Christ nature?
You have the choice of identifying yourself with Christ or of identifying yourself with Adam. I want to identify myself with Christ. I received through heredity an explosive temper, and I sought God carefully that I might absolutely refuse that nature. The Lord changed it. Do you know why? Because I refused a hot-headed temper and said, “Jesus, I want Your long-suffering.” It is all to His glory. It operates because I refused one and I opened up to the other. This body was an expression of the Adam creation. Therefore, it is mortal; it must go. But Paul said, “We have a body in the heavens, a spiritual body. We groan not to become a disembodied spirit, but to be clothed upon with the other body which is from on high” (2 Corinthians 5:1–4). We will always, through eternity, be a spirit, soul, and body. The Christians who are dead are spoken of as sleeping (John 11:11; 1 Corinthians 15:51). The soul sleeps, the body goes back to dust and decay, but the spirit is alive and with the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8), and that spirit is very much in the cloud of witnesses, with those who observe and see.
A spirit seeks to be embodied so that it can have expression in the realm where it wants to express itself. Even the devils want to be embodied. They seek to possess humans. In one case when they were being cast out, they begged to go into the swine, for they did not want to be disembodied or to be in torment (Luke 8:31–33). Sometimes a spirit such as a spirit of deafness will fasten itself to an organ of the body and stop its functioning. However, a person can be blind without a spirit of blindness; one can have epilepsy without having a spirit of epilepsy. People can be mentally sick without being demon-possessed, but many in mental institutions are demon-possessed; spirits have entered their minds.
Even you do not want to be a disembodied spirit. You want to be clothed upon with the body which is from heaven, the body that will be like Christ’s, Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working (power) whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. Philippians 3:21. So you see, we shall have a body just like His, and in our spirits we will be just like Him, for we are born of Him. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2:1. He has made you alive. This is what it means to be born again.
What about the soul? The soul becomes more and more like a switchboard between two realms. The soul interprets what the senses receive and reacts to emotions, decisions, and things. The soul also reaches into the realm of your spirit and draws from that. When someone persecutes you and says some evil against you falsely, if the old flesh nature is operative, it comes up to the soul, which reacts by getting mad and wanting to fight. But if the spirit is in control the soul reacts to the spirit. When your spirit is plugged in to God, in times of persecution, your eyes see the rocks falling at you, yet you react like Stephen. “Lord, don’t lay this sin to their charge.” What a difference! You have to constantly tune in to God and the new nature, and crucify the flesh with all its affections and lusts (Galatians 5:24). Soon, whatever you see, hear, or feel—whatever comes through the senses—the soul filters out, and like a computer, the reaction is automatically good; it is right.