Anointing is something that not many people really understand.  I know that I was in the same place not too long ago.  Anointing isn’t the same thing as talent.  Talent relies on a person’s natural ability to do something.  God isn’t concerned with how we are naturally able to do things.  In fact, He clearly states that…

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 KJV

This means that when God calls you to do something he is ready, willing and able to make it possible for you to accomplish it – not by talent or natural ability.  

The point is that God’s anointing is His innate ability that overrides our own ability to accomplish a task. 

Anointing will take a prayer, song or sermon that might not look to the untrained eye as anything special and will elevate it to a place of usefulness in God’s kingdom – not because of anything that the person did, but because of the anointing. 

Anointing comes from obedience

No one will ever operate in any level of anointing on their life if they are not first obedient to the voice of God.  

I’ve heard crazy stories about pastors and ministers doing things like punching people in the gut and God healing them of a stomach tumor.  Or think of Jesus who spit in the dirt and rubbed it on a blind man’s eyes.  

Now does that sound professional to you?  

Any child can spit in the dirt and yet the creator Himself used that as a way to heal that man. Why?

Because obedience is better than sacrifice. God says that He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. 

Obedience takes a level of humility sometimes that we don’t truly understand. 

Imagine you are sitting in a prayer line and God tells you to say something embarrassing to someone, would you do it? 

God gives you a word for someone. Are you going to humble yourself and give it?  Or maybe it’s much less spiritual.  God tells us to serve one another.  Maybe it’s as simple as being willing to vacuum the floor or pick up the trash of someone who clearly just doesn’t appreciate your hard work.

This isn’t so unusual.  I’ve had to do many things that I didn’t want to do in my life in the ministry.  The secret is that the biggest leader is the biggest servant of all.

And He sat down, and called the twelve and said unto them, “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Mark 9:35 (KJ21)

Humility is the biggest secret to greater anointing.

Anointing has nothing to do with you.  That’s good because neither did salvation.  

David is a perfect example of humility.  

David lived his life as a shepherd boy.  Then one day he used his relationship with God – that he nurtured from the secret place in a field with sheep – to change the whole nation.  

He went from being a nobody to having women all around the nation singing songs about him.  

Think about this.  It’d be like you working your job every day and just talking to God and worshiping God daily.  Then one day you stand up to the Talaban and send them running with one single action.  Now people know your name.  You’re getting invited regularly to sit in the Oval Office while the president talks to foreign dignitaries.  You talk with the president and begin learning valuable lessons about how to operate as a leader.

The president himself tells you that he wants you to meet his daughter and marry her.  

Get the picture?

David went from a poor boy in the field that his own parents didn’t believe could be / should be king to a man in the king’s court. 

(Notice his actions in both circumstances didn’t change.  He was a boy who worshiped God and delighted himself in the Lord in the field, and when he entered the king’s courtroom, he was still just a man delighting himself in the Lord.  The only difference was that his audience was no longer sheep.) 

David had the opportunity to grow in pride.  

He totally could have gotten puffed up and in that moment He would have lost it all.  

Two times in 1 Samuel God tells us that David handled himself wisely. 

Therefore when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him.

1 Samuel 18:15 (KJ21)

Then the princes of the Philistines went forth. And it came to pass, after they went forth, that David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was much esteemed.

1 Samuel 18:30 (KJ21)

See. When Saul started to see the anointing on David’s life because of his humility and love for God, Saul tried to give David opportunities to get puffed up and even tried to kill him.  

David could have harmed himself by allowing his pride to get in the way of the call God had on his life, but the anointing kept him protected from Saul’s hand.

The same could be said about you or I.  

Anointing protects you

We each have an opportunity to either walk into the calling that God has for us or to be lifted up in pride and … fall. 

• Satan fell.
• Adam fell.
• So will you or I if we decide that pride is the right path.

If David decided that he really was all that and decided he was better than Saul or allowed some other form of pride to enter his heart, then he would have stepped out from the anointing and therefore the protection of God. 

There never existed a person on this planet who possesses anointing that also possesses pride. 

Now we are talking a lot about pride, but if you’re like me, I just thought pride was saying Hey look at me! I’m amazing at ____. You should really listen to me. 

But the truth is that pride is so much more than.

I wrote a whole blog post on this very question: What is pride?

Just like David had the opportunity to be lifted up in pride so do each one of us – don’t let it happen.  

This is SO IMPORTANT. 

The truth is that pride steals the anointing from your life, but if you humble yourself in due time you’ll be exalted.  

Your actions should stay the same.

Behave – now – like you are already where you want to be and your life will naturally follow that progression. 

So to wrap things up…

I just want to say something my pastor always says.  

I can’t always tell you what the anointing is, but I can tell you what it isn’t! 

We’ve all been in church services that I like to describe as… dry.  There’s no anointing.  You just know when it’s God and you know when it ISN’T God.  

Let’s keep our eyes on Jesus and walk in levels of anointing that no one has ever seen before.  

Then he answered and spoke unto me, saying, “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ saith the Lord of hosts.

Zechariah 4:6 (KJ21)

We are called to a DRY and THIRSTY land looking for the anointing of God.