Now he gets saved and he gets saved. He believed on Lord Jesus Christ and he was baptised. If you believe in your heart, you're baptised, you'll be saved. There's no doubt about it. He was a saved man. Now he looks and he's a follower. Not only that, he's following the disciples. He's joined in the crowd and he's following, so you'd say he's a person who once was out there in the world, he got saved, got water baptised, he's now in the church and now he's following on, watching what God is doing and he's learning as he goes. Now notice what he does. He sees that when the apostles lay hands power comes. He thinks I want power!
Let's just put it a different way. Oh, I want the anointing! I want the power that's on you! You can't believe how many people come up and say I want you to lay hands on me! Give me a double portion of your anointing! I say no, I won't...
Congregation: [Laughter]
And I won't. I won't, and the reason I had a guy do that one meeting, he come up - actually did it at three meetings in a row, one after the other; come up and said I want the double portion. I want the double portion, pastor pray for me, pray for the double portion! I said no. He went away disappointed. He come up again the next night, same thing. No! And the third time He come up, I said no! No, no, no! I won't. He said why? I said very simply, I said first of all if I had double I'd have it for myself.
Congregation: [Laughter]
Okay. Now what I really - what I said to him was this; I said I've been watching you for three nights in a row and I've noticed we've had hundreds of people in need, hundreds of people weeping, being delivered, ministered to and I saw you with your suit and a big Bible wandering around. Not once did you ever put your arm around anyone, hug them, come alongside them, help them, minister them, comfort them, do anything to indicate you were interested in people. I said why would God anoint you with power, when all you're interested in is just promoting yourself?
Now this is what the issue with this guy was. He wanted power to promote himself and Peter put his finger straight on it and he said you cannot use the power or the gifts of the Spirit. You can't use the prophetic dimension. You can't use the flow of the Holy Spirit to establish your identity and make yourself very important. He said I see what the real problem is; in your heart is a deep rooted bitterness and you've never resolved it, and he said also you're in the bondage of inequity. You're operating without respect for God's way, God's principles, God's timing. You're just trying to promote yourself - and that word bond means this. When a Roman soldier had a prisoner, what they would do is they would put a chain on the Roman soldier's left hand and they'd link it to the prisoner's right hand, so the prisoner always was linked to a soldier.
The soldier had the sword. He could just hit him anytime, bring him back into line, so the word bond is describing something like this. He said I see that your right hand or right arm, the works in your life are thoroughly chained and in slavery to an independent, rebellious root in your life that comes out of bitterness and hurt, and you were just wanting to use the gifts and good things of God to promote yourself and to give out to people you're important. You're trying to establish your identity, and he said there's no way you can have a part of this. So that's the only other place I found where that inequity is, apart from the issue with Saul.
So get back to it again; two things that are foundational for me to produce good works - one, I need a personal relationship where I'm listening to the Lord and listening to what He has to say, and two, the second thing is, I need to let God work in my heart concerning my motives for what I do. Otherwise what I'll do is I'll just be like everyone in the world and I'll use people to get me ahead. This is a chronic sickness within the body of Christ, where people use gifts and roles in order to promote or advance themselves and fail to see that this is inequity that will cost you everything. All gains will be temporary, but in eternity they will be seen for what they are and your reward which only God can give will certainly be lost.