How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6)

Mike Connell

Now that was a pretty unusual thing to get to do because, you know, it didn't make any sense to me, but I was in the early days of just listening and learning and doing. So day after day, I would walk into the classroom, and I would just speak, [prays in tongues] I stand in charge of this classroom. I stand as one responsible for every student who comes in here today. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I forbid the operation of demons against every student that'll sit in this seat - because the classes flow through the day. So I'd go around, and I didn't pray the same prayer all the time. I'd pray it once, and then just lay hands - in Jesus' name I bind every spirit operating, I release blessing, I release learning, I release understanding. I release a great atmosphere in to this classroom. I release the presence of God into this place.

Now I spoke as one believing totally it would happen. Now I wasn't sure, because I'd never seen anything like this happen before, but I did it anyway, and it took about - I wasn't sure, or didn't feel initial changes of it, but others noticed it. Now what happened was this, there were several things happened. The first thing that happened was, one of the teachers noticed the difference, and she came and spoke to me, she said: what's up with your room? I said: what do you mean? She said: well I noticed every time I have a study class in your room, it's very quiet, and they're peaceful, and I get a lot of work done too, because they're so quiet. I said: is that so? She said yes, it's the only room in the school it's like this. What's different about your room? I said: I don't think you'll want to know the answer [laughter] and she said no, tell me. I said: I'm sure you won't want to know the answer, and she said: no, tell me.

I said: well you tell me again what is it like in there? She said well, it's very peaceful, and the students really work, and I get a lot done. I said well here's what I do - I take authority over the spirits that trouble children, and release peace and the blessing of God to learn into this classroom. I could tell she didn't want to hear, but [laughter] - that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. Nevertheless here's the thing: I didn't feel any change, but someone coming in did. The next thing I saw two girls that lined up outside and they said sir, something's weird about your classroom. I said what's weird? She said every time I come by we shake. I said well that sounds interesting, I've never seen - come in and show me shaking. So they came in and [laughter] their shaking got worse in the classroom. I'm thinking wow, this is amazing! I'm only six months, eight months a Christian - this is great to see something like this, and sure enough they're shaking.

So I realised then that they were involved in the occult, they were involved in the spirit world, and what was in them was reacting to the classroom. I enquired and sure, that's what was happening. We prayed, and immediately it went, it just stopped, and so I was aware then that without me knowing that something had happened, the whole atmosphere had begun to change. So then I began to pray, not only for the demons to be still and quiet, and prayed for the presence of God to come, I prayed then for the productivity, for the work to grow and increase. In the course of a period of time, probably about three or four years, my classes just went like that in terms of numbers, and in terms of outcomes of people passing exams.

I asked the Lord to give me creativity, because remember what I said? You have to be present, and you have to engage in a creative way in whatever you're doing, so you can't just leave it all up to God. We shift the spiritual atmosphere, then you front up, and you look for whatever creative ways you can do things. God gave me some creative ideas for the teaching, and so just to give you an idea, when I started I had 10 Form 7 students - 10, that was it in the whole school - and I had 20 Form 6 students. After we'd got into this flow of praying and releasing the presence of God and bringing creativity into the school, by the time I had left I had two 7th Form classes of 20-plus, say 25 each, which was almost the entire upper school, and I had four 6th Form classes of 25-plus each, nearly the whole of the upper school. I had nearly the whole upper school in my physics classes, and almost all of them had high accomplishment in their results. I think out of 100 university entrants, I got all but four through, year after year, and they were only because they were put in, and they didn't have the maths from 5th Form level to cope with the work. It was just an administrative muck up.