Richard Roberts
To experience a fresh anointing of God on your life requires change. I have learned that nothing good comes quickly or easily. As you go up to a new level, there’s a price to be paid. Much of the price to be paid is on your knees, praying in the Spirit, seeking the Lord¾not seeking after things, but seeking after Him.
In Bible days they took skins and filled them with liquid. But eventually those skins became old and brittle and in danger of splitting and spilling the liquid. So they were rubbed with oil and water to make them pliable and fresh.
God wants to make us pliable with a new anointing, but first, unbelief has to be removed from our lives. Unbelief is different from doubt. Doubt doesn’t believe God because doubt doesn’t know the Word of God. However, unbelief knows the Word of God but chooses not to believe.
When you don’t believe that you can do what the Word says can be accomplished in your life, that’s unbelief, not doubt. Many of us have doubt. Doubt is not a sin. But if you want to take a step to a new level, if you want a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, if you want to be smeared with the oil of the Holy Spirit¾and that’s what the word anointing really means, smeared¾then the unbelief has to come out.
What did the psalmist David pray? Search me, O God . . . and see if there be any wicked way in me (Psalm 139:24). There are times when self-examination is in order, times when we are to take a look deep inside and pray, “God, I long for a fresh anointing of Your Spirit. I repent of any unbelief, and I accept Your Word. I choose to believe and not doubt. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”