Simplifying the Anointing Part 3 – Results

“The anointing is RESULTS.”

That was how a youth minister defined the anointing in the after-meeting of a youth event I attended as a young youth pastor almost twenty years ago.  This simple definition stuck with me mostly because it was so simple.  I honestly did not like the idea that it could be that simple because if it was that simple, those of us who had an anointing for ministry could not take credit for achieving any complex spiritual mastery.  Yes, that was prideful, but that’s the reason I didn’t like this definition.

God gave simple instructions to the Israelites for identifying the anointing:  “But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).  Simple measurement, either it happened or it didn’t.  So a smart false prophet would only foretell events that would happen after his own natural death.  But most of the true prophets in scripture foretold both events that would happen soon and events in the more distant future.  The fulfillment of the more immediate prophesies proved we could believe what they said about the future.

When Jesus identified the anointing in His life, he quoted Isaiah, who spoke about both a current anointing on himself and the anointing on Jesus. But when Jesus said the scripture was fulfilled, what was the scripture identifying?  Results.  The gospel preached and received, broken hearts healed, captives freed, blind people seeing, oppression ended, and God’s purposes fulfilled.  While all these results can be manifested in both spiritual and physical ways, they all change individual lives, and the important changes are eternal.  All through the old and new testaments, when the anointing is on God’s servant, lives are changed.

Whenever the anointing is truly flowing through a minister today, whether it is through prophesying, ministering, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, or showing mercy, lives will be changed.  So when you wonder whether some man or woman is “anointed,” simply ask “Was someone’s life changed forever?”  Look for the results.  It really is that simple.