Of course you go in there and it's just oppressive with spirits of grief and all kinds of things. So anyway we go in there and we begin to walk and they're setting up their instruments, a guitar and a keyboard and whatever. I just began to walk, began to pray and then suddenly the Holy Ghost came on me and I felt the presence of these demons in there, of grief and despair and death. Immediately I just suddenly react and went in Jesus' name I command those spirits to go and boof! The atmosphere shifted just like that. You could feel the change. People that came with me were quite surprised - oh, what happened? Now at the funeral the presence of God came so strong you could hardly believe that this was like it - like normally for a situation like that everyone would be in really bad shape. But the presence of God and the love of God came so wonderfully you almost forgot what we were really on there about. Just God came, you see - but if I didn't know how to shift that, those demons would have stayed there and dominated the atmosphere and made it a miserable time.
Now, so we have authority to speak words that change atmospheres, affect people's lives, release giftings in them. Fathers can bless their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers can bless their family, you can bless the people around you instead of cursing them and speaking negatively of them, criticising them and running them down and swearing at them. What's this going to do? You're releasing demons. We're not called to release demons, we're called to release the Holy Ghost and angels! Got to learn how to do it. You have authority to do it! You were called to do it, and if you're the only believer there you must do it - or you're giving up and letting it all go to the devil; probably justifying it by saying oh well, they're all sinners, they deserve what they get. This is not the heart of God. See, you're authorised to pray for the sick and see them healed. We're authorised to break bondages where people have been cursed, and to set them free. We're authorised to do that. You were authorised to do that. Who authorised you? Jesus did when He gave you the mandate to go out and make disciples. You can't do that unless you can deal with the demonic and break the curses, and set people free and pray for their healing and bless them.
You're authorised to pray for people to be filled with the Holy Ghost. You're authorised to do all kinds of things in Jesus' name, but if you don't know what you're authorised to do it's almost absolutely certain you'll never do it. And if you don't have the key of knowledge you'll never do it either, and that's the tragedy in the 21st Century of the church in the west is it doesn't know what it's called to do. So for goodness sake don't complain about how bad it is if you're the ones called to change it. You just add more cursing and increase the problems. We're the salt and the light, therefore it's our responsibility to actually make a difference. It's interesting when I was in City Harvest some years ago. Pastor Kong shared with me how they were crossing over, they were making a decided effort to turn the church out into the community and his wife who was Pastor Sun at that time - she resigned from the pastoral role and they began to, because she's an outstanding worship leader and beautiful person, lovely singing voice. They began to invest into her to prepare her to go out into the media.
The goal was to get up and get good enough to get on MTV, to hit it in America and then through that reach into Asia. Now guess where the biggest problems came? See, the church in the nation. Oh what? This is all wrong. You understand, the church has got a problem; when a believer rises up, hits the charts and is making it in Hollywood because it can't conceive that that's our destiny. Hollywood, don't complain about Hollywood. Hollywood's a creative gift to the world. It just needs to be redeemed, so don't complain it's gone off. It needs salt and light to change it. See the problem with the church, it just stands back and complains and grizzles and moans and groans, and forgets our identity. We're the ambassadors of the kingdom and our message is repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. There are changes and we can help you make them. You're an ambassador to advance God's kingdom. Every believer here can pray for the sick and pray and set people free, lead people to the Lord, set people free of bondages; if there's a house full of demons go in and clean up. If you don't know what to do for goodness sake line up when we train you and do it!