As the session began, you could still feel the raw presence of God from the morning session as the congregation spent the previous 15 minutes worshipping God with songs of praise from the ministers.
This ushered in Pastor Poju for the first afternoon session of Day 4. He mentioned that his sessions will be focused on the Blood of Jesus. According to him, it is “the atomic blood of Jesus”.
He began by reading from Heb. 12:22 where he explained that the blood of Jesus Christ acts within us to cleanse our conscience so we can truly worship God. “The Father accepted the blood as a way of opening the door for us to come boldly into his presence”.
He stressed that it is not possible to see God – have fellowship with God – and remain as the same person, but the problem is that we are trying so hard to produce the standard of God by self-effort. He added that we try to model a religious piety meanwhile it is a show with no substance.
He went on to explain that the blood is primarily for God – for atonement. He added, “God forgave man but had to keep his sense of justice. He didn’t forgive by overlooking what we did but by looking on the blood. The purpose of the blood is God publicly justifying us and saying that we are no longer guilty because you were not the one who sinned when sin was imputed to you, so you do not have to be the one to pay the price. You have inherited righteousness just as you inherited sin from the one man who sinned.”
He used Lev. 16:7 and Rev. 12:7 to further explain this truth, adding that the main work of the devil is accusation. “The devil brings his accusation on legitimate grounds and this becomes a ceiling in the lives of the accused. His strategy is deception and this warfare is going on. In order to hurt a believer, the devil weaponises the words we use everyday.”
For the Child of God to solve this problem, he or she needs to engage in concentrated battle against the thoughts he plants in his mind. “You win the warfare to the point that things just begin to open up.”
While encouraging the congregation, Pastor Poju said that in Isaiah 54: 17, 18, God made it clear that it is our place to condemn any tongue that rises against us in judgement. Overcoming happens by the confession of what the blood of Jesus has done.
He spoke on the efficacy of words, saying, “Words are vehicles of supernatural power. Words are not ordinary; they are what connects us to the realms of the spirit. The enemy makes us feel that words are just natural and shouldn’t be taken seriously but the truth is that words never die.”
To butress this point, he gave an illustration with the curse that Joshua placed on any man who rises to rebuild the walls of Jericho. “In 1 Kings 16, this was fulfilled. Even when the person who said the word had died, the words still remained.”
Another area he spoke about was the use of the tongue. He reiterated that satan doesn’t have the power of death anymore but the power is now in your tongue. If he can get you to say the words that will do you in, he’s fine.
“The devil uses your tongue when you are careless with your words. So, the first thing he looks for is self-imposed curses – things you say that contradict what God is set to do. He uses them to establish events in your life. And the second thing he uses is the pronouncements of men that you opened yourself up to due to wrongdoing.”
In closing, he explained that the only way to counter these accusations that the enemy has used on us is by making declarations about the blood of Jesus. He ended the message by leading everyone to the confession of the blood of Jesus.
