Fleas in the Barn

(Luke 10:19 KJV) Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

    The reason this scripture is so important to me is because it tells me of the power I have to face any difficult situation. This power and authority were given to all of us when Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Thanks to Jesus, we are no longer natural beings with a spirit, we have become spiritual beings with a body. That means we can operate in the same power and authority that Jesus operated in. Wow!!

According to our text, our natural enemies are nothing more than something

under our feet when we walk in the Jesus kind of anointing. Perhaps the

following story will encourage us that the power of truth in our text is as real for us 

today as it was for Jesus’ disciples.  However, I do believe that it takes some measure

of faith on our part to activate such promises.

Many years ago, it was a common practice for men who lived in rural areas, (particularly in southern states), to go out into the woods and pray for God’s blessings on their revival meetings. Sometimes the woods would be full of men walking around praying out loud for the fire of God to fall on their church meetings so that sinners would be saved.

In my early days as an evangelist while living on my East Texas farm, I had a neighbor on the adjacent farm that used to travel with me as I would go preach. I remember on one occasion I drove down to his farm and told him, “Let’s go to your barn, (rather than the words), and have a prayer meeting”. He informed me that his barn was full of fleas, for which I replied, “we don’t have time to go to the woods so we will have to take authority over those fleas” … and I quoted our text.

We went to his barn and took authority over the fleas and started our prayer meeting. We were having a powerful time of prayer when the neighbor on the next farm heard about our prayer meeting and wanted to drive down and join us.

He had no more than stepped through the barn door when the fleas jumped on him and liked to have eaten him alive. He ran out the door swatting fleas and calling them dirty names. We could still hear him communicating with those fleas as he drove away.

My friend and I continued to pray in the power of God until we felt we had the victory over what we were praying about.

As we left the barn that day my friend asked me, why the fleas did not bother us like it did our neighbor? I said because we came into this barn claiming the power and authority in our text … and he didn’t.

The fact is, life is full of fleas, or things that will attack our flesh, mind, will and emotions, and that’s why the Lord gave us the power and authority over such things. In my eighty-five years of life I have never seen a time when more people are being attacked by the fleas of life. Fleas such as sickness, disease, confusion and need.

The purpose of our text is to encourage us that God has already made a way for us by giving us the power and authority over all the fleas of life.

Please allow me to share a quote from Bill Johnson book, God is Good, which I think can apply to this writing, “Faith doesn’t deny there’s a problem … it just denies it a place of influence”.

Father,

We know there are many fleas in life, but we thank You for giving us the power and authority over these fleas.  Help us to activate our faith by claiming that, “Your word is true and sharper than a two-edged sword”. Help us to purposely walk in that level of authority and victory.

Amen